The Astral Body and Ghosts

and astral experiences. This happened quite a while ago but I finally got around to writing it as an essay on 2nd August 1996

It must have been a few minutes before five o’clock in the morning when I realised that I was awake. But somehow things did not seem quite real. Was I actually awake? Half awake? Or still asleep? The bedroom didn’t seem right, you see. It had an ethereal quality about it.

Somewhat to my surprise I found I was sitting up in bed, my back against the headboard. This in itself was unusual. But what was even more unusual was when I suddenly became aware that my wife, Rita, who sleeps on my right, was also sitting up.

Then a very very strange thing occurred. I noticed that not only was my wife sitting up, but she was also lying down. There was, in fact, two of her. Yes, two. One Rita was lying down, her head on the pillow. The other, was propped up against the headboard. At this point this is all which registered. Two Rita’s, one propped up against the headboard: one lying down, head upon her pillow.

Then I noticed something even stranger. The Rita who was sitting up was semi-transparent. I was not only seeing her I was looking through her. Rather than being solid flesh, my wife appeared to be made of a smoky, grey-green substance- three dimensional-but not quite right... a thought...is this her astral body?...  

At that instance the alarm clock under the bed went off with a terrible racket.

Clang...... And at the same instant I felt my body give a tremendous start or jerk. Much the same as one does when falling off to sleep only much more intense.

The next moment I was lying down. Somehow the piece, or part of me, which had previously been sitting up at the headboard, was back lying down in bed- head on pillow.

Moreover, my head was facing to the right and Rita was no longer sitting up against the headboard. She, too, was lying down. The part of her that had been sitting there just mill-seconds before, had vanished.

It was a shock. A tremendous shock. For I knew that this had not been a dream. I had experienced my first consciously remembered, OBE, or “Out of the Body” experience.

Very mysterious. Uncanny. To many- unbelievable. A mistake. A delusion.

To me though, now, I'm of the opinion that reports of out of body travel are believable.

But before you, dear listener, close your mind and say that this must be untrue, I add some other experiences. And there have been a lot through the years.

Way back in 1946, when I was a boy of ten, I awoke one night to see a stranger standing by my bed. The stranger was a woman, dressed in the old Victorian style, with bonnet and shawl. I could not see her face. She was a middle-aged woman, somewhat plump, dressed completely in black and she had one arm outstretched pointing out through my bedroom window. It was all very vivid and clear. Yet, once again, the room had a somewhat unreal and surrealist appearance about it.

I did not give this experience another thought until the following morning when my elder sister, Ada, then 14 years of age, said to me, quite unexpectedly at breakfast. “Arthur- Did you see the lady in black last night?”

Now, this was a strange question- strange, indeed- for Ada and I slept in different rooms with a brick wall between us. How could she have seen what I had seen? And how could she have dreamed what I had dreamed?

Then Ada went on to say that this ‘apparition,’ this Woman in Black, was a sign that someone had died. That as a ghost she was Folk Law, and very well known. Ada seemed quite knowledgeable about the subject. But I could not recall of her ever mentioning the matter to me on any earlier occasion.

Of course, ‘Seeing Ghosts’ or ‘Apparitions’ meant nothing to me a ten years of age. And I'd never heard of astral bodies or of people having an astral experience.   But ghosts?   I was surprised to learn, later that day, that a little boy who lived in a house which could be seen from my bedroom window had died of pneumonia that very night.

Strange?

Maybe. Yet still the event’s significance did not register and it was quickly buried in the deep recesses of my memory. Until I turned fourteen.

At fourteen years of age a number of very strange things happened in my life in quick succession. But I’ll need fill you in a little on my family’s background in order to explain it.

My family and I had been raised in a rather tough area in London, in the U.K.. Probably because of this, one of my brothers had got on the wrong side of the law. By age sixteen he not only had a criminal record but was sent away for a year to a Boys Correctional Centre, or borstal, as they used to be called.

My brothers name was Edwin, though we used to call him by his nickname, Tippy. It was a name given to him by our mother, because of his habit of standing on balls and and toes of his feet as an infant.

When Tippy came out of that tough borstal at age seventeen he was a changed person. I dread to think of what had happened to him in there but now he was quiet, kept to himself. He’d become a sort of recluse. He slept in late. Then he would carefully press one of his two new suits -given to him by the authorities- and go out for long walks by himself. He was always by himself. He seemed to have no friends and sought no one’s company.

And he started his first job which, apparently, he hated.

Of course, I was too young to understand the classic symptoms of deep depression. At fourteen, I was as bright and cheery as ever.

One day I went off to see a movie, a picture featuring two of my favourite comedians, Bud Abbot and Lou Costello. The name of the movie was Abbot and Costello’s African Adventure, or something of that nature.

The film was particularly hilarious. I laughed almost until I cried. I just laughed and laughed.

Then, suddenly, very suddenly, I stopped laughing and became serious. Then agitated. Then concerned. I could not explain what I felt or why I felt it but I knew that I had to go home. Something was desperately wrong. I came outside and walked to where I could catch a bus.

What was happening here...was this some sort of astral experience...a subconscious contact? Could we have astral body contact with people without our knowledge? Were there astral bodies travelling all around to let people know intuitively that something was not right?

On arriving home one of the first things I noticed was that there was a police car outside my house and quite a lot of people milling around. Once inside I got the shocking story. My brother, Tippy, was dead. He had hanged himself; committed suicide in a wardrobe.

Two days later I saw his ghost. Not once, not twice, but several times. Tippy had had a habit of popping his head round the door before coming into a room. And this is what I saw. Or thought I saw. My reason told me (or was it fourteen years of society’s conditioning) that there are no such things as ghosts. I kept trying to rationalise it away. It had to be memory. It had to be imagination. It couldn’t really be Tippy’s Ghost. Everyone knows there were no such things as ghosts.

And then, shortly after I’d seen Tippy’s ghost one last time my elder sister Ada, said, “Arthur. I’ve seen Tippy. Yes, I saw his ghost. Have you seen him?”

I hope you enjoyed reading of my experiences in The Astral Body and Ghosts. What I tell you here actually happened. Maybe you, too, have had some unusual experiences you like to tell others about; maybe out of body travel or simply a partial out of body experience such I described above. Or a ghost sighting. If you have, don't be shy. Tell others. Rattle a few cages of the Skeptic Society, eh?

Keep smiling

Tom.