When I was a child (I was I believe around 5)
We lived in a big old red brick house in a village in Yorkshire England. I was playing at home in my bedroom (with my lego) I had the cutrains drawn and my bedroom light was on.
While I played I heard footsteps from one of the other bedrooms come down the hall and into my bedroom.
As I looked up the footsteps stopped in front of me.
There was no one to see.
Well I was scared rigid...I didn't know what to do,I couldn't hide under the covers because I wasn't in bed and I couldn't get to the door to run away because the footsteps were in the way.
So I sat there getting increasingly scared and hoping something good would happen (Rescue that kind of thing) when I started to smell what I now know to be lavender.
I am not sure how long I sat there,it seemed like forever at the time,but I finally got up the nerve to run out the door and down stairs.
Only to find no one in the house.
Ever since that day I have always known on entering a house if it has a resident other than the physical ones.
I have thought about it alot since and I am pretty sure the old lady with the lavender perfume, who it turns out inhabited the spare bedroom at that house, was just checking on me to make sure I was ok because I was so young and on my own.
I saw her several times after that but it did still freak me out when she walked about invisibly just making footstep noises.
We left that house when I was about 7 I think and I have always wondered about the lady there.
What prompted me to write out the goings on here was that I was just thinking about the house and got a very clear picture of the lady, first of all when she lived there, then as she is now still living upstairs in the spare room and occasionally making everywhere smell of lavender.
It's good to know she is OK
So now I thank the Lavender Lady for sparking my sensitivity to the unseen others that live all around us.
Zygo
Your post made me wonder what it is about lavender that seems to have a connection to the other world. You so often hear of a visitation linked to the smell of lavendar. Well, if could be that a lot of the visitors are old ladies who used to smell of eau de cologne of a lavendar persuasion in life but I, as a herbalist, (well kind of) think that it may have something to do with the fact that lavendar is a calming herb, it is relaxing and stress relieving. Maybe it is the visitor's way of telling us that everything is alright and there is nothing to be stressed about.
When I was growing up I lived in a house in Cemetery Road. I spend hours wandering in the cemetery (and stealing the 'jewels' off the graves) and I often used to wake up to strange designs written in the mist on the window, or strange smells, often lavender. Now I realise that I had been bringing 'friends' home with me but the I was scared stiff and was still sharing my mother's bed 5 days up to 7 until the day I was married.
There are none so blind as those who will not see
It's a well known saying. It means that if people don't want to understand / see/. appreciate something then they never will.
In Cometome's case, clearly her mother and the nurse must have realised that something supernatural had happened but because they did not believe, or want to believe they simply refused to see it.
It's like if you see a ghost and then convince yourself that it was just a trick of the light. You make yourself believe that you did not really see a ghost.
Therefore you are blind because you did not see the ghost even though it was, actually, there.
Or if you walk past the begger in the street turning your eyes away beacuse you do not want to face the fact that there are people so poor they live in cardboard boxes. You walk back to your warm comfy home and if someone asks you about the begger in the street you say 'What begger?'
I have been asked numerous times how to see "ghosts".
My answer is that as far as I know everyone see's them all over the place.
The trouble is that most people either don't recognise the fact that they are "ghosts" or just simply don't want to admit it to themselves so just see another person walking down the street.
I think, Chakira, that the lavender connection bears more investigation.
I must admit I hadn't really thought about it before but I have heard of other people mentioning lavender or jasmine when they have experienced a visitation.
I have had Blackberries on an occasion or two but that was a specific person and my grandfather used his aftershave to announce his presence.My Gran uses a wierd little rainbow affair on the wall with no smell at all.She did always like to be different (must be the Romany in her)
C.T.M I love to find rooms like that.
To be honest I actually gravitate towards them and find that I actively seek them out.
The lady at our house was very friendly and whenever I saw her, she was always smiling.
I don't remember her ever speaking to me but she did have a thing about everybody knowing she was there, which meant creaking floor boards or closing doors.
I didn't mind the doors with the odd turning handle but the floorboards were the killer .You could actually follow her about the house by listening to the foot steps.
Very creepy (secretly I am sure she knew that and did it especially noisily just for that effect)
Zygo
The other side effect of this particular awakening is that I have always lived in very active haunted houses ever since.
The sense of smell is a strange one. In some ways the forgotten sense. People readily admit that they can be deeply affected by what they see and hear and, to a slightly lesser extent what they touch. Claearly what you taste/eat affects you greatly but what about smell.
Aromatherapists are now coming to realise more and more that the sense of smell has a far greater influence on our bodies and minds than was previosly thought. Smell has a profound effect, particularly on the mind and our emotions.
Have you ever noticed that when you enter a superstore you smell fresh baking bread as soon as you go through the door even though the bakery is right at the back? This is becase the store pipes the smell all through the shop because it has an effect on our brains and actually makes us buy more.
Smell is linked strongly to memory. It has been discovered that memories provoked by smells are stronger and more vivid than those provoked by pictures.
It may be that the smell in some cases is an advert.....this is me you can tell by my smell, but it may also have other purposes....I will make you smell jasmine because it will spark off a memory of me and make you feel more secure......I will make you smell lavender/roses because it will make you calmer/less afraid/more receptive to what I am trying to convey.
It is an interesting thought
I identify strongly with the smell linked to memory theory.
My grandparents on my mother's side are both deceased, and often there are smells which drift through the rooms where I live which remind me of them.
I have lived in many houses, but the smells are always there and are always the same.
My Gran only had one - African Violets. She always wore it as her perfume of choice for special occasions.
My grandad had several - Treacle Mints which he ate almost constantly, he always had a bag in his pocket. I remember sitting on his knee, patting him to see which of his pockets rustled.
The second one was jam: strawberry, blackberry, damson, raspberry, you name it, he made, it along with marmalade, lemon curd, and chutney of nearly every kind. Their house and his clothes smelled of boiling fruit and spicey vegetables nearly all summer long.
The third one is warm fresh tomatoes. He grew them in a huge (or maybe it just seemed huge to me when I was small) greenhouse, and when the sun was on it they got warm and well if you've ever smelled a warm tomato growing on the vine or freshly picked from a warm greenhouse you'll know what I am talking about.
The last one is parraffin which he smelled of all winter long as he heated his green house with parraffin heaters to stop his plants from catching frost.
I smell those scents by turns everywhere I live and although they do make me feel a little sad because I will never be held by them or hugged by them in this lifetime again and I miss them. They comfort me too because to me it shows that my grandparents are still thinking about me, watching over me, caring for me, loving me. There is no greater comfort than that.