ONE SMALL QUESTION
I have skeptics who attend my tours all the time and most of them keep their opinions to themselves, or if they do have an opinion, they post it on Yelp or what have you, but never to my face. Someone on a ghost tour once said to me, “I don’t believe that people actually come back after they’re dead.”
“Not in the flesh,” was my reply to this gentleman and I left it at that. I’d decided to forego any academic discussion because it would take more than just a two-minute explanation.
It goes without saying that in the age of live video, people always want proof. Be it ocular, audient or what have you, people need the immediate satisfaction of seeing, hearing and knowing right there and then. Case and point, a woman whose husband had been dead for the better part of a year called to ask me if I could explain why her deceased spouse made no effort to communicate with her from the other side as he had promised? I explained that I had no answer for her because I did not know her husband and that I was not there when the alleged promise was made between the two of them.
“Well, then how am I supposed to know?” She asked.
“That question is for your husband,” I replied. “He’s the one you should ask.”
“Okay, thank you so much!” She was cheerful in her reply and she asked one more question before she hung up. “This is kind of freaky but do you mind being with me when I ask my husband that question?”
It was clear that this woman was not going to give up, so I replied, “Sure why don’t you give me your address?
In less than forty minutes I was parked in front of an old 1925 style house at the end of Waikiki. It was one of those houses with the double-pitched hipped roof. It became the prototype for most cottages built in the same style with it’s sloping roof and overhanging eaves. An older local Japanese woman came walking out the front door and greeted me with a hand shake and a smile, “My daughter and son are in the house waiting. They’re into this kind of thing so they will be taking video and also be recording on digital if that’s alright?”
“Sure, that’s fine.” I replied. I was surprised to see that the woman’s daughter and son were my age, you have to understand that most people my age don’t normally have an enthusiasm for the otherworldly since they are already twenty or thirty years from crossing into the veil anyway. The siblings stepped forward and introduce themselves, after which the son said, “You don’t have to introduce yourself Mr. Kapanui, we know who you are.”
When people say things like that, I’m never sure if I’m supposed to take it as a compliment or a warning, “We can start whenever you’re ready ma’am?”
“Kenneth? This is Anne, your wife! Are you here? You said you’d contact me after you were gone but I haven’t heard anything and it’s been a few months? Did you have something that you wanted to say to me Kenneth?” The woman Anne reeked of desperation even though she wore gold bracelets and healing stone necklaces. “I’ve been waiting for a long time Kenneth.”
I held my finger up to my mouth, indicating that everyone present should be silent and let the recording take. I began to smell the atmospheric isotope in the house and suddenly I was struck with a pounding headache, which is a clear sign that something was going on. Anne’s son and daughter began reeling and both walked over to a large red couch where they took a seat. They were both rubbing the back of their necks and blinking incessantly, however, Anne did not seem to be effected by anything. Then, everything went back to being the same as if nothing had happened, “Alright, so let’s play back the video first, and then the recording.” I instructed.
On the video, you can clearly see Anne standing in the middle of the living room, firing off her questions. When she makes her last statement about waiting, the video suddenly becomes distorted and the atmospheric isotope came back and myself along with the two siblings were again struck with terrible headaches. It all stopped when the video ended, next was the recording and the same thing happened, the smell returned as did the headaches, but we did manage to hear something on the recording because Anne stood there shocked, her eyes red with tears. The recording was played back and there indeed was the gruff sound of a man’s voice that said one word, “Nag.” They played it again a few more times so that we could verify what we heard, finally, I had to ask, “Nag? What does that mean?”
Although he and his sister were in tears as well, the son answered. “That’s what my Dad called my mom when she bugged him all the time, “Nag.”
I turned to Anne and said softly, “See? I told you, only your husband could answer your question, not me. Are you at least happy now?”
“I was expecting something more meaningful or romantic but he calls me a nag instead. I should have known, typical samurai attitude,” Anne scoffed. “For nothing, I try to communicate with him, he never communicated when he was alive, why did I expect anything more?”
“Anne,” I said as I put my hand on her shoulder, “you just answered your own question.”
No comments:
Post a Comment