Episode Seventy-Six: The Interview-Mairi Luthin

Welcome to episode 76 of Bite-Sized Blessings.

In this episode,

I get to interview Mari.

On her Instagram,

They describe themselves as moving and grooving.

And if you take a look at her social media,

You'll see that it's filled with pictures of the natural world with whimsical images.

And it's so very clear to me,

At least,

That when I look over her photos,

It's clear that connection and community are what they are all about.

This episode is about many things.

In the course of all my interviews and the course of my life,

I've run into so many people who are operating at a different level.

Not a superior level,

But just a different level than humanity.

They can sense things that others cannot.

Whether it's emotions,

I've certainly gone to healers who,

When they work on me or give me massage,

It's so very evident that they're tapping into something that I can't describe.

And my guest this week,

Mari,

Is definitely tapping into something that most of us cannot.

This episode is really about what haunts us.

Because we're all haunted by something.

We're haunted by our pasts.

We're haunted by our presence.

We're haunted by what we ate for dinner last night.

Did we eat too much?

What someone said to us on social media.

We're haunted by the legacy our ancestors left for us.

And indeed,

There is such a thing as literally being haunted.

Growing up in Maine,

Mari was absolutely in the center of a lot of that kind of activity.

And our episode is about a lot of that,

But it's also about what you do with the gifts that you're given.

What you do when you discover who you are,

As it slowly unfolds,

As things become revealed to you.

Life gives you opportunities.

Life gives you blessings.

Life shows you who you are.

And then you get to decide,

Do I embrace it?

Or do I run from it?

That's kind of what this episode is about as well.

And so now,

Without further ado,

Episode 76 of Bite Sized Blessings.

Not long after,

They still hadn't moved the door out.

It had only been like two months,

Honestly,

Since the cleansing.

They started hearing pounding coming up from the basement at night.

They started to hear the door moving.

They started to hear someone banging around in the basement.

Andrea was like,

I can't do this anymore.

I'm moving out.

So they got a new house.

My little cousin Kate is getting older.

I go visit her.

She's like four now,

Like a little little girl.

And we're hanging out.

And I'm talking with Andrea and I'm like,

So does Kate have any memories of the house?

And she's like,

Oh,

She won't go in.

Well,

Like,

Because you know,

They were renting out the house to other people.

They hadn't fully sold it.

It's a hard house to sell because it's so far out.

And when they would go and check on the property,

Kate would say things like,

I see a scary monster in the window.

And she's like three,

Not even four.

I think she's between three to four.

My cousin Elizabeth said that one time she was just playing with Kate and was,

Hey,

I want you to tell me what this is.

And she holds up a little baby walkie talkie.

Like,

You know,

You're playing with kids.

You're like,

Explain to me what this is.

What is this?

What toy is this?

What is this used for?

And Kate goes,

I used to hear scary voices coming out of that at night.

I think one thing that really comes to mind in a word that has felt very applicable this past couple of seasons is like a Weaver.

I feel like I'm really good at seeing where people fit and thrive.

Maybe not even necessarily myself,

But I think I'm really good at assessing a situation and being like,

You're really good at this.

Like you have a knack for this,

Even if it's not a hard skill,

Like maybe it's a soft communication skill,

But just being like,

You have this quality that I think would really resonate with this person,

Or you have this quality that really belongs in this area or like you two should just hang.

I think you two can hang.

So I think I I'd say that I'm like a good reader of the room and I'm a good communicator.

And I like to live in stories,

Whether it's about situations or people or myself admits them,

I'm good at seeing who's a player and how things could play out.

I grew up in a religious household in a lot of ways,

But not in like a lot of standard ways that a lot of friends that I have,

Have experienced growing up in religious families.

So my mother was Roman Catholic.

And so I grew up in a heavily influenced Acadian French Roman Catholic household.

My mother had us go to church pretty regularly as kids,

You know,

I did communion.

I had to learn my prayers when I was yay high and say them every night with the rosary.

But my family itself kind of like fell off on that once we became a certain age and I had gone through communion.

But I,

In a lot of ways was raised by my grandparents,

My mother's parents who are very Roman Catholic.

I mean,

I would go to mass with them every week.

I spent most summers,

A lot of any vacations I had as a kid,

I was there oftentimes alone.

I consider my grandparents,

My parents.

So there was a lot of trickle down and they would say sermons and like participate in church activities,

Like twice a week on average.

It's interesting,

Like Roman Catholicism,

I think,

Too,

Has so much mysticism kind of like embedded in its traditions,

Particularly like with the conversation that we're heading towards.

I think that is partly why there are experiences that are made accessible,

Particularly to a lot of the women in our family,

As well as like my grandfather,

He's someone who is very tuned in as well.

I would say that I'm thankful in a lot of ways to have that opening through my experience with Roman Catholicism as a kid.

I think there were periods of my life where I could have done without it.

There was like a lot of guilt and a lot of shame that comes with Catholicism.

My mother gave me a pin one time.

That was hers in high school.

And she was like a very rebellious young woman,

Especially having the grandparents,

The parents that were my grandparents that she did.

And it said I must have been like 15.

And it said you haven't been licked till you've been Catholic.

So if that's my mother's stance on it from when she was young,

That is like telling in that little pin.

And of course,

Like as a teenager,

I was like,

This is hilarious.

The memory of going to a mass with my grandmother,

And it was just myself,

She didn't ask any of my male cousins to go,

Very traditional.

And she,

You know,

The women always carry all the guilt in the family.

So she invited me to this mass,

And she didn't tell me what it was going to be.

And it wasn't the church like a normal one.

It was like some extra thing that they were doing.

And we all sat in a circle,

And there were like 12 of us.

And most of the people there were women,

And we just held hands.

It was like a confessional mass.

And we just said Hail Marys for an hour.

I was so young.

And I just remember being like,

Oh my god,

We're doing this again.

Get me out of here.

I did not sign up for this.

And like,

Like people like crying and holding their hands and saying their Hail Marys,

But I'm like,

Nine.

So yeah,

It's a mixed bag.

I was gonna say that I think that all really balanced religions,

If you can call religions balanced at all,

Really do include some mystical element.

They have the rules,

Of course,

Which is very,

Those are kind of maybe not movable,

But the mystical experience,

You know,

I just love the early stories of Hildegard of Bingen and Teresa of Avila,

Those nuns,

Those women who were in the church that had these experiences that were transcendent,

And change their lives,

And change the lives of so many other people.

You know,

Of course,

There were male mystics as well.

But it is interesting to me that many of the more well known mystics are female.

It's always made me think there is something in women that is more able and maybe more ready to access those realms or connect,

Maybe,

Or be in those mystical spaces.

I think that that's very right.

I think about this quite often.

I think like women body people,

Like they just,

There's so much giving and receiving that goes on in our bodies.

And even just like,

You know,

Even if you don't bear children,

But like the potential to go there to like create an opening where new life can can come in to be that conduit is I mean,

That's powerful.

And that's sacred.

I wish that we would put more spiritual emphasis on that,

And value our bodies.

As you were saying that,

Because we are already like,

I don't want to say predisposed,

But set up to open ourselves in that way.

My mother had a lot of experiences and my grandmother did.

And I recently was talking on the phone with my grandmother,

And I told her about an experience I had,

And she just like clucked her tongue.

And she's like,

Well,

You got it.

I think it's a couple things that I just want to say.

I think it is so interesting and so true what you've said about women,

The carriers of the shame,

The guilt,

Or,

I mean,

The whole world over.

And I think about that sometimes,

You know,

Why?

Why?

Of course,

In the Bible,

Eve transgressed.

And so that means for the rest of all female humanity that they have to carry the shame and humiliation.

But I do,

There's something deeply broken in many,

Many societies,

Many,

Many countries,

When women are made to feel less than shame,

Carry the guilt,

Carry the burden.

It's very heartbreaking for me that,

And so many women are willing to take that on,

You know?

Oh,

Yeah.

They're absolutely willing to take that on and kind of make themselves smaller.

And I just think,

Gosh,

What would the world look like if women were,

If that wasn't all put on women?

And,

You know,

Men took personal responsibility for what they did.

And there's also,

I don't know if it's a jealousy or resentment,

But I think maybe men,

I'm speaking so generally here,

Because not all men are like this,

Not all women are like this,

But maybe men resent the fact that women have this connection,

That they're able to readily access this energy,

This spirit,

This other realm,

Other realms.

I mean,

I'm just,

I'm theorizing here,

I could be totally wrong about this.

There are lots of different reasons for it.

But I think,

You know,

Certainly in my life,

The experiences that I've had that are extra normal or super normal or super natural,

You know,

I've had other people say,

Why don't those things happen to me?

And I think it could happen to everybody.

For some people,

It's thrust upon them.

And they don't necessarily want it.

But other people have to work at it.

And that's okay.

I think the people that it's thrust upon,

The reason is so they can lead the way for other people to know that it's possible.

I think that's very right.

I think I love what you said that it is possible for everybody.

And I think we've moved so far away from cultures and tradition that allows that to be fostered.

And I think a lot of us are just like,

We're so caught up in the momentary,

Honestly,

Drudgery of just daily life,

That we don't have the space and the community,

Because it's lost on our community.

We don't have traditions,

We don't have practices really anymore.

Particularly,

I would say in North America,

We've lost a lot of this.

And that is I am speaking very broadly here as well.

And just modern culture has lost a lot of this.

And some people just write it off as like,

Oh,

You know,

I can't connect in that way.

Like it's never happened to me.

So why bother trying?

And I say,

Open yourself up to it and try or talk to people who have,

Because you'll be surprised at the depth of where it can take you.

Before we get into your stories,

I do want to say something that just occurred to me.

I'm giving a lecture on beekeeping tonight.

And while I was doing research for the lecture,

Because of course,

No one can know everything about bees,

I learned that they have descended or evolved from a wasp from 120 million years ago.

So if you think about all that deep time of evolution,

And where bees are now,

And how they've created the society where they work together,

It's a community,

It's very reciprocal,

It's very supportive of all the other bees.

And then National Geographic put out an article about some recent studies that have shown that bees can sense the electrical fields of flowers.

And the flowers can sense the electrical fields of bees.

So when the bee flies up to the flower,

You know,

The flower wants to get pollinated.

I mean,

Who doesn't?

And the bee is hanging out and it's like,

Should I go to that flower?

And if it gets close enough,

The flower is like,

Oh,

They have video of flowers,

Ejecting pollen onto bees,

Like through the air to entice the bee to come.

And I just thought to myself,

Okay,

There is clearly so much we don't know about this world and about bees.

But even these transcendent or liminal experiences that you and I've had with these realms that a lot of people say don't exist.

They're kind of like that.

It's kind of like butting up against an electrical field,

Butting up against a realm,

And that realm kind of shoots some pollen onto you or reaches out.

I mean,

It's the exact same thing.

And so I thought to myself when I read this article,

Whenever humans are going to be in 120 million years,

If we don't kill ourselves,

We'll probably be like,

Oh,

That electrical field or Oh,

Or let's just step into this dimension.

You know,

It's very interesting.

Yeah,

I love that.

I love the idea.

I just love that image of the flower and the bee at play with each other.

They're like too close or no,

You're not close enough.

Come here.

I recently was reading and almost finished with this book on encounters with the Fae folk,

Who came out in like the 20s.

And he talks a lot about that he talks and he's able to see and I very much believe in Fae folk and all of those realms because they live in our consciousness.

They are so integral to our spirit and the way and to so many people's cultures and traditions and they manifest in I mean,

You know,

Most of the time we just think of Ireland and Scotland and Wales and the Celtic lore for these creatures coming forward,

But they're in every culture.

This person is able to see he describes them in his journal,

They're almost written in journal entries,

And he describes them as existing seamlessly in our world,

But apart from it,

And he talks of the recognition that they have when they see a human himself,

And how sometimes it's too much.

And sometimes they have to stay back because they can't get bigger in form.

They can't their energy gets like their their fields becomes tainted,

Just affected by the presence of like an Earthwalker.

I sometimes like to call humans.

Those books,

They change your life,

Right?

Because yeah,

Make it you see what's possible and what we're missing.

Who doesn't want to live in a fairy tale?

The world?

It's enchanted.

And who doesn't want to live in that enchantment.

But my mother and my grandparents on that side of the family,

It was just kind of a known thing that we had experiences.

My mother said that we would always hear three raps on the door when someone would die and pass.

Or if someone became very ill.

My grandfather has numerous stories of dream premonitions.

A pretty big degree.

He dreamt one time he's a professor in rural Maine,

And he's pretty old now.

But he was a young father.

And he had a dream that one of the buildings caught fire.

And then the next day it caught fire.

Things like that being visited by spirit guides and visitations like there are some things that have been clearly like part of the family,

The wrappings on our door.

We have a lot of olfactory experiences of loved ones that have passed on.

Cigarette smoke of my great grandmother was often smelled by my own mother and my grandmother.

And I myself have had an experience with my mother passed when I was 17.

And my mother was very keyed in she struggled with a lot of mental illness and addiction.

And so her personal practice really fell out.

She could have been a professional like tarot reader.

And I think energy worked for her at one time in her life.

And she really strongly considered this.

It wasn't something she was flippant about.

And she would read she always read her cards for friends and loved ones,

But she never read them for me,

Which was always very hard because I always wanted her to read them.

She said that she wouldn't read anymore because she had had a reading that was it scared her.

I think it struck a chord in her that she wasn't ready to work on with herself at that time.

I think seeing my mother as the person that she was with all of her struggles,

But also all of her potential made me really want to pursue that vein,

That spiritual vein that exists in our family.

Growing up in a more religious household,

I used to pray that I could be visited.

And I so desperately wanted that I wanted and I felt like I wanted that even more because I thought it would connect me with my mother at the time when she was so emotionally distant.

So when she passed,

People in my immediate family didn't even want to believe when I said that this happened,

But she was sick for a while and she passed one morning and oddly enough,

I was the one who got the phone call from the hospital,

Which doesn't make sense because I was a teenager and I don't know how they had my phone number,

My cell number,

It must have been a backup,

They must have had everyone's family numbers down.

But before I got the call,

My bedroom was above the kitchen on the second floor.

Grew up in a very old farmhouse,

I mean not born,

It was built pre-Civil War in Maine.

So it's a very,

Very old home and we had this barn connected to our kitchen,

Which is where we parked our cars.

We didn't have a garage,

We had a barn.

So I heard before I got the phone call three raps clear as day,

They woke me up.

I shot up out of bed and I heard one,

Two,

Three on the front door.

I went back to sleep and then I woke up who knows how much later and I got the phone call.

And so I had to wake up and tell my dad,

You got to go to the hospital.

I still don't know why he didn't get the call.

He would have answered.

That would have woken him up.

It doesn't make sense to me.

A little while later,

The first time that my whole family was sitting together in the living room since her passing,

Because my family's not very close.

And it was like the first moment where it was just my dad and my two siblings and I.

And again,

We have a very heavy kitchen door and it was spring and it swells when it's hot.

So it's like when you open and close it,

You got to like really,

You got to get a knee into it.

The doorframes in the house are not well constructed.

Everything's just a little crooked.

So you have to really work with it.

And we're all sitting in there and we hear the door open and then slam shut.

And we all look up and I'm remembering that I just had the three knocks a week ago.

And I'm sitting there and I'm just like,

Oh,

Well,

There we go.

And my dad and my brother are just silent.

And my sister's kind of,

Maybe it's,

She was married at the time and she's like,

Maybe it's so-and-so,

My husband.

She's like,

Oh my God,

Hello.

She's calling his name.

And she goes to the door and she opens it.

There's no one there.

Even telling the story again,

I get goosebumps.

Getting the three knocks was like a real confirmation that I could,

If I wanted to set myself up for experiences like people in my family had had.

As I remember my mother one night sitting in the living room and our house was old,

But it was not haunted.

I think people pass through.

I think people who are sensitive have people that,

I say people,

But they could just be energies or spirits that can get attached for a little bit and hang out and those come and go.

I think you have to be really careful and maintain boundaries and clear communication with them so that you don't become bogged down by them.

And so I remember one night,

She would just say really,

And this was close leading up to her death,

But she would say something like there's been someone watching me over there all evening.

And I'm like 16.

And of course this makes me a little nervous,

But I take it seriously.

And I do feel it.

It's like she says it and I was already feeling it.

And there were many moments in my house and my house had good energy.

There were just a lot of things coming and going.

My house was so old.

So oftentimes I would have to go up through the staircase,

The back staircase to my bedroom in the dark.

And I would feel it was as if sometimes spirits were following me or watching me.

And I it's very,

I've only had one experience or two where I've actually seen a full manifestation.

I have seen lots of lights.

I have seen orbs.

A common experience for me is objects moving,

But I would practice stopping on the staircase or the hallway,

Wherever it felt really intense,

Almost like breath on the back of my neck.

And I would just stop and I would say,

You need to go.

I feel you like acknowledge their presence.

I'd say,

I feel you.

I sense you.

And I need my space right now.

I mean,

It would be the kind of nervous where it was.

I didn't feel like I would ever be harmed,

But I also was very aware that if I just shot up the stairs as fast as I could and buried myself in my bed,

That that would be creating an environment that lends itself to more.

I mean,

I mean,

If,

If they're like a fear,

Hungry spirit or like,

You know,

Cause you don't know,

I didn't,

You don't know what you're working with.

I didn't want to elicit any of that fear.

I wanted to have a good,

Healthy boundary set relationship as we do with anybody in our life.

Even those people that encroach on us and feel icky,

We don't want to feed into the negativity.

So I would just,

I would,

I would consciously practice that.

There were numerous haunted houses in the family.

There was a notorious one.

And this is this,

Like,

I tell people about this house and I was young with my experiences with this house.

I was,

I was like a little kid.

I was like between seven to 10 and it was my mother's brother and he actually passed too.

So he was living there with a woman that he remarried and she was very sensitive and she had a lot of experiences.

It's also interesting how people who have these experiences somehow meet other people with these experiences.

I think that's really,

That's really telling.

You kind of just orbit each other.

This house was beautiful.

It was at the end of this country road in rural Maine and it was so stunning.

So Andrea was a great resource in feeling comfortable talking about things that scared me in these realms.

And her house was scary.

It was,

It was,

I have never been in a scarier spot ever.

It was a two story farmhouse.

There had been a couple additions made,

But it was,

There had only been like a handful of family families that had lived there.

I think they were maybe the third or the fourth.

It was across from a giant potato fields.

It had many acres of land.

You would have to walk a good distance to the neighbors.

It was so rural that one of their neighbors was an Amish family with like hundreds of acres.

And when Andrea saw this house with her history of experiences and just like a very intuitive person,

Trusts her gut,

Makes decisions based on those feelings,

All of that,

She sees this house and she's like,

Oh my God,

This is my dream house.

So they're living there.

And my cousins at the time,

They still won't talk about the house.

The last time I saw my eldest cousin,

David,

Who lived in that house for much of his teenage years,

He doesn't talk about it.

He doesn't want to.

They lived there for a handful of years,

Newly remarried.

Andrea was pregnant with my cousin and they gave birth to this beautiful baby and experiences were like small at first in the house.

You know,

They would hear footsteps.

They would hear furniture moving that became a little bit more intense.

Andrea would be home alone with the baby.

Everyone would be at work or at school and she would hear furniture moving across the floor upstairs.

When they began to remodel their kitchen,

They had tiles on the floor and they were thrown.

Someone had picked them up and was throwing them almost like little Frisbees.

My uncle Dan didn't believe any of these things until that happened during the remodel.

Didn't believe anything that had happened until a doorknob just turned in front of him and then turned back.

And I remember feeling incredibly,

Incredibly scared when I had spent time there.

Like I didn't sleep.

So eventually as the activity persisted,

My cousin Kate was a newborn and she was swaddled in baby blankets and you know,

To keep her nice and secure as you do with a newborn.

So she can't move very readily on her own.

Like she is a fresh baby and she laid to sleep in her crib.

And Andrea always set her facing the same way and goes in to check on her one night and she had been flipped.

There was a room downstairs.

They were aware that someone who had lived in the house was troubled,

Had like a lot of personal issues and struggled a lot.

And the office that they had had for Dan's,

My uncle's work was there was this door and it was graffitied from top to bottom.

Didn't think much of it like a,

You know,

A teenager was in the room,

They graffitied the door.

But then in one corner,

You could see as if it was scratched in with a fingernail,

It said,

I will be back.

And then in my little cousin's room,

The same room that she had been flipped,

There was scraped on the door up there again.

And the rooms were right above each other as well.

There was scraped into that door.

I will be back.

Haha.

Oftentimes when Andrea was nursing Kate in the evenings,

She wouldn't have the hallway lights on.

She had seen many ghosts in her life and,

You know,

They presented themselves to her fully.

She would see figures walking up and down the hallway.

It got to the point where she was starting to feel threatened and so scared that they called an energy worker.

Before they called the energy worker in,

They wanted to call the priest.

Because,

You know,

My grandmother being the French Catholic woman that she is said,

You know,

You have to call the priest to bless the house.

You can't call this energy worker.

You have to go with the church.

God will help you.

God will be there for you.

We will exercise the spirit.

So they called the priest.

I get I'm getting chills again,

Telling this story.

They called the priest many times,

But the calls never went through because the line would go dead.

So this is like a whole I mean,

It sounds almost like a like a haunted house movie.

And you know,

Of course,

I'm a kid when all of this is happening.

So I'm like,

Enthralled.

I'm invested and all the adults are like scared and don't want to talk about it.

And like my cousins who are in the house are scared and don't want to talk about it.

And I'm just like,

Tell me everything.

So this energy worker comes in eventually because they can't get in touch with the priest.

And she starts going around the house.

And she's like,

Oh,

My goodness,

She's this is not just one spirit.

She says your whole property is infested.

She goes upstairs.

And at the very end of the hallway between two of my cousin's room,

My little cousin,

The baby is at the at the start of the hallway.

And then my older cousins had rooms right across from each other.

And the portal,

She said that had been opened was at the very end of the hallway,

Where my aunt would see the figures coming in and out.

She said it came open very likely when the young man that had been living in the house was there and was going through it.

She said that the door with all of the graffiti was a very negative piece and needed to be taken out.

Interestingly enough,

After she had said this,

They had put the door into the basement.

And she closed the portal,

You know,

She did what she could.

And activity was fine.

The door was in the basement.

Activity had just saved off.

I visited during this period.

And I will say it was a markedly different experience.

But I remember going into the basement because I was curious and I wanted to see the door that was so scary and negative and bad and like possessed all of this awful stuff.

And what was also interesting was that the basement had a lot of graffiti as well.

And this graffiti was nonsensical.

Like it was a,

You couldn't make out what any of the words or the phrases were.

And Andrea,

My aunt,

Had reached out to parapsychologists,

People who study demonology and worship and all that and negative spirits and entities.

And she went this far because it was this much activity.

And they told her that these were demonic phrasings that she needed to,

She needed to really do some cleansing if she was going to stay there and cover them up and get rid of it.

But you know,

They're a family that's working and they have three kids and,

You know,

So they put the,

They put the door in the basement.

Everything was contained in the basement.

But it had become known that the young man who had been living in the house had been doing demonic ritual and practice.

Not long after,

They still hadn't moved the door out.

It had only been like two months,

Honestly,

Since the cleansing.

They started hearing pounding coming up from the basement at night.

They started to hear the door moving.

They started to hear someone banging around in the basement.

Andrea was like,

I can't do this anymore.

I'm moving out.

So they got a new house.

My little cousin Kate is getting older.

I go visit her.

She's like four now like a little little girl.

And we're hanging out.

And I'm talking with Andrea and I'm like,

So does Kate have any memories of the house?

And she's like,

Oh,

She won't go in.

Well,

Like,

Because you know,

They were renting out the house to other people.

They hadn't fully sold it.

It's a hard house to sell because it's so far out.

And when they would go and check on the property,

Kate would say things like I see a scary monster in the window.

And she's like three,

Not even four.

I think she's between three to four.

My cousin Elizabeth said that one time she was just playing with Kate and was,

Hey,

I want you to tell me what this is.

And she holds up a little baby walkie talkie.

Like,

You know,

You're playing with kids.

You're like,

Explain to me what this is.

What is this?

What toy is this?

What is this used for?

And Kate goes,

I used to hear scary voices coming out of that at night.

And I was like,

I want to hear scary voices coming out of that at night.

And you know,

With a baby walkie talkie,

It's turned off so that you don't hear your mom and dad,

But mom and dad can hear you.

One time my aunt and she lived there for like over 30 years.

My cousin had had two babies.

She's grown up with two kids.

And she's like,

She's the most for 30 years.

My cousin had had two babies.

She's grown up out of the house.

She's visiting her mom,

My aunt,

For the weekend.

And my aunt,

This entire time we're growing up and spending weekends at her house,

It's like,

Ah,

It's not haunted.

It's not haunted.

Because you know,

It's her home and she lived there alone.

She was a single parent for most of her life.

And it's just her and her daughter.

Multiple female apparitions had been seen in the house.

And Susan,

My aunt,

Would just kind of write them off.

But one night she's lying in bed and my cousin Laurel runs into the room and she's like,

I heard noises from the baby walkie talkie.

Again,

Similar to my cousin Kate,

Who heard noises coming through on her side.

And Laurel heard like a lot of feedback and garbling that wasn't a baby.

It wasn't human,

Essentially.

And then either that night or the next night,

My aunt is lying in bed and she's jerked by her ankles halfway out of bed.

I have lights flicker sometimes.

For a long time,

I used to think that the objects moving,

The lights flickering were either like a playful spirit with me or maybe it was my own energy.

And sometimes I'm still learning how to differentiate between those.

I have a memory of when this first happened,

Like an object moving when I was,

I must have been like 17.

And again,

My house is so crooked back East.

Every door frame,

Every window frame is like not quite right.

It's like people,

I mean,

It's like regular folk building onto their house with the money and the tools that they had.

And so sometimes it's just,

It's really,

There are corners that are wonky.

And there is this one window in my room.

I had four windows and I had a blind in.

And it couldn't actually sit in the window properly because it was so crooked.

So a standard window blind wouldn't work.

So I would have to manually do this every morning.

I'd have to scrunch it up and down with two hands to open it and close it.

And I'm making my bed one morning.

And I had been feeling a lot of energy in the space lately.

But all of this is new to me.

So I'm not thinking about it too much.

When I'm in my room and I'm making my bed,

10 in the morning,

It's like a Saturday.

And the shade,

The window shade just completely shoots up with a force that couldn't be done unless someone had yanked it and it was actually sitting into the window properly.

And that was my first experience of like,

Oh my god,

There's something with me?

Or I did this.

There's so much taboo around talk of like kinetic powers or telepathy.

And I'm not saying I have that.

I'm not at all saying that.

I'm not Matilda.

But I do think there is something to be said that people who do that kind of work can,

Because you have that in you,

I think you can bring it out of yourself,

Especially with the elevation of maybe another spirit there.

Like you're working together.

And then these things kind of manifest physically in your plane and in your sphere.

I've also made contact with fairies and fae folk in a pretty big way.

And that sounds,

I mean,

I don't tell people a lot of this because once they hear that,

They're like they roll their eyes and they're like,

I can't take these seriously.

So I get very self-conscious about it.

The first time I told Craig that I saw fae folk,

I was like,

Oh my god,

This is going to end everything.

Well,

I think it's a gift.

I mean,

For me,

Like fae folk and fairies are just,

I haven't ever seen them.

I certainly,

I was on a hike in Portland once.

And sometimes when I'm on hikes,

I walk through a place in the forest and it'll feel really heavy,

Like it's a my-asm that's in the path.

Whenever that happens,

I know,

OK,

There's something that I'm supposed to notice here.

And so I stop and I'm still for a while and I check where I'm supposed to turn.

I know,

This sounds crazy.

So I just sit there and I contemplate a little bit.

But this time I experienced the heaviness on the path and I was like,

OK.

And so I turned to this side of the path and literally in two seconds,

A branch was released from a bush and almost hit me in the face.

Yeah.

I was like,

All right,

Come on.

Funny,

Funny,

But not cool.

Yes.

Funny,

But not cool.

All right,

You're there.

Now I know you're there.

And it's OK.

Now I'm going to move along.

Turd.

If you can call like a fairy a turd.

I did.

Yeah,

I mean,

You got it.

They're mischievous.

They really are.

I grew up,

I feel like I was raised by a lot of different people,

Family that really,

Really took me under their wing in my hometown were the Satyrs.

And the first thing I was like,

She was like an idea,

Dear sister.

Her name was Nixie.

And she was Nixie Pixie and I was Aerie Fairy growing up.

And they were pagan.

They had a lot of care and acknowledgment of fairies.

And they left gifts out for them regularly,

Like leaving milk out,

Baking bread for them,

And creating places in the garden for them.

And I think in particular with spirits like that,

They just haven't been seen for so long.

And they used to be such active part in our lore,

In our stories,

And in our day to day life.

And in keeping house,

I think especially.

You want to invite those spirits in because they keep your house cozy and warm and playful.

Wanting to share these experiences,

But also not wanting people to think that I'm under the impression that I'm unique or special.

And having had these experiences,

It's something that you need to be shown.

And it's something that you need to be guided through by people who really can embody.

People who embody those things and practice them as a vocation and as their lifestyle that need to guide me.

We can lend a hand,

But we need to have our hand held and led too.

And that's why we need people who do body work and who are shamans and who can open up all of these other facets and layers that we can't access on our own.

Because we're just skimming the surface.

Thank you for listening to episode 76 of Bite Sized Blessings.

I need to thank my guest Mari,

Who was so very gracious in telling all of their stories,

Haunted or not,

Of their family.

I also need to thank the creators of the music used.

Taiga Sound Productions,

Chilled Music,

Alex Productions,

Frank Schroeder,

Music L.

Files,

Alexander Nakarada,

And Kevin McLeod.

For complete attribution,

Please see the Bite Sized Blessings website at bite-sized-blessings.

Com.

On the website,

You'll find links to other episodes,

To books,

To music,

And to art that I think will lighten and brighten your day.

Thank you for listening,

And here's my one request.

Be like Mari.

Be open to the mystery.

Be open to those things unseen around us.

Be open to the magic in the world.

And I'll see you next week for episode 77 of Bite Sized Blessings.

Music