Nathan Nayor/ Staff Writer
Growing up, my mom and aunt swore up and down that ghosts were real. From their terrifying experiences with a ouija board to haunted closets, and I thought it was all hogwash.
I was a big skeptic as a child, but in the summer before eighth grade, I had received my first Tarot reading, and after seeing the accuracy, I was no longer so skeptical of the metaphysical. I began learning how to read Tarot, Lenormand and Sibilla cards in high school. In my spiritual studies, I learned how flexible these cards can be and how they can be useful outside of generic fortune-telling.
I was visiting family in Cuba once, we were staying at a vacation home in Varadero. I’ve never been one for beaches, so I retreated to my room to read, and I felt a thick, cold presence in my typically warm room. I could feel its annoyance, a nearly tangible touch on my arm.
Typically, in a show, you start throwing salt and yelling Latin incantations at this point. But aren’t these spirits of the dead human too? I took out my tarot cards and shuffled. “You, who are you? What do you want?” If the ghost was going to be giving attitude, I saw no reason to avoid being curt.
I pulled The Hermit. As the name implies, the ghost was looking for solitude, and I was intruding on it. I could feel the apparition hovering near my bed, and I looked in its direction.
“You know this is a rental, right? You’re not going to be alone here. There’s an abandoned house a block away you could stay in, though. You’d probably like it, it’s got enough space for… whatever you were doing.”
The presence lingered for a moment, then disappeared. I sighed, “You’re welcome,” and lied down. I thought about what had just happened, and realized I just got rid of my first ghost, and it didn’t even take much more than a conversation.
I haven’t had any other experiences with ghosts, but I like to believe that they are probably quite reasonable people, probably more reasonable than the living. If they are stuck in our plane of existence, I could understand why the hermit ghost would want to be left alone. Perhaps it didn’t want more reminders of what life was like, or the changes that have happened out of its control. Either way, I can sympathize with their plight.
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