The following queries were made to Holbrook Paranormal Site Investigations.

Q: Me and my friends were messing around and decided to go hang out in a graveyard after midnight about 12:30. The graveyard has a really old section that everyone says is haunted so we went there. We did not destroy or mess anything up and we did not do any drugs. My friend dared me to lie on a grave and I really didn't want to but I did. I laid down for about 30 seconds and then got up. It felt weird but everyone was laughing so I thought it was OK. We stayed in the graveyard for about an hour then left because we didn't want to get caught by the cops. When I went to bed, I could not sleep and was creeped out. After I went to sleep I woke up because it felt like something was poking me. I put on the light and saw a book get thrown off my dresser. It freaked me out but I ignored it and thought maybe it was my imagination and went back to sleep. I found out the next day that my friend who dared me had some weird stuff happen to him too. No one else had anything happen to them. This lasted for about four days and we think it is because of what we did. One night I just said out loud that I was sorry and all the weird stuff stopped. What was this and is it over? If you can help, thank-you. (Ryan P., CT)

A: Ryan, the good news is you’re not alone in your experience and in most of the cases of this type, it does not last very long. This would be different if there was desecration or disrespect for the graves or anything in the graveyard. Some would say that the act of lying on a grave is disrespectful but the way you described the event it sounds more like you had a “hitchhiker.” Some spirits or entities are attracted to the energy or presence of some people and will “attach” to them for a short time. This is all according to the strength of the spirit or entity which dictates how long they stay with no action on the person’s part to get rid of them. The way you described what happened and your actions, I do not believe this to be an evil or malevolent spirit entity. You may be one of the people who attracts spirits or entities due to your energy and may have to take some steps to keep this or something worse from happening in the future. If you have future problems of this nature, feel free to request procedural information.

Q: I am in my mid-twenties but during my teens I was very caught up in the dark side. I worked with black magic which I thought was very cool until I brought harm to someone else. It was part of a group spell. It wasn't really bad but the person took a bad fall and was hurt with banged up legs. It scared me to see a direct result happen.
After that I stopped doing spells on other people but I was wondering if what I
did when I was younger is having repercussions on me now. I am not very happy and don't seem to have much luck. If my past is affecting me, is there any way I can undo any of it? I think this is more than just a guilty conscience. Thanks and I enjoyed your last column. Nicholas K., SC

A: First, I would like to thank you for your honesty with your question. It shows that you have a good idea that there is a fine line you crossed in your past. The telltale sign is that you know that you were in the wrong and that it is a real problem for you now and more than a guilty conscience. Why I started my response with this statement is because you need to look within yourself and see if you have asked for forgiveness and have tried to make amends for your part in hurting another. There are many people that believe that an individual will reap what he/she has sown in his/her life. There are others who believe in Karma and the principles that our actions now will affect our next life and that our past life actions are affecting us in our current life.  I believe it is a little of both and that a lot of your problems now come from the path you were on. I will not preach to you or ask you to believe as I do … it is up to you to know what is right for you.

This is how I see my life working. Life is like a long road that has many cross roads intersecting it and we each have our own journey to travel. Sometimes we are alone on our road and at other times we have many people on the road at the same time and same mile marker. We have choices to make all along the way and when you were younger you took a road on the dark side and while on this road your actions or intent hurt another. So, you saw the error in your actions and decided to take another road and have turned away from this dark path. What you will need to do now is to look at yourself and make sure that you are on the right road for you. If things are not going well for you, it may be an uphill place in your road or you may have not totally stepped off the dark side road. Has your road led you to help others and have you grown spiritually or does it seem that everything is against you and nothing is going right? These are questions you have to ask yourself and only you can truly know your own heart and soul. We do sometimes have to go back and clean our house of all the things from our past to move on with our journey so that we do not have any thing holding us back. This would be touching on forgiveness - we have to forgive ourselves before we can expect others to forgive us. With this we can feel a weight lifted from us and we are able to see our part in things more clearly and what we will need to do to make amends. In cleaning our house we need to see if we have any items from our past that are keeping us connected to that past. These items could be books, jewelry and friends that we need to let go so we move forward. If you still have any of the items you used in your black magic spells, they will need to go or at least be cleared. We have all outgrown friends in our lives and if you still have people in your life from that group that cast the spell you may still be unknowingly aiding them with your energy. I know that letting go of friends can be hard but if they are into black magic and you are not, why take a chance that you could be drawn back in to the dark side.  You seem to have a good head on your shoulders and a heavy heart which shows that you don’t want to be a part of hurting others. You may have a tough time as part of your Karmic debt but as your deeds for the light grow you will erase that debt.  If you want to be strong in your spiritual beliefs, read up on some psychic protection because when you start cleaning your house and your life, you may come under some spiritual attacks. Keep in the light and this will pass also as you cut the strings that keep you connected to the past. I hope that my response to your letter helps you in your journey.

Q: There is a bunch of girls at my school who say they are witches. They hang out behind an old abandoned house and sometimes inside of it. They planted a garden and said that they grow plants that they use to make potions for love spells and cast spells against people they don't like. One of the girls likes my friend and tried to put a spell on him so a group of us went out and trashed their garden when they weren't around. I know they found out it was us so what can we expect out of this? I am not afraid of them but I am worried about my friend because the girl is pretty and he is getting attracted to her. My friends are starting to get scared. What should we do now? Thanks. Jonathan, RI

A: Jonathan - First off I don’t condone the trashing of the garden but I do understand your motives. This should have been handled differently from the start so that there would be no negative actions taken on your part. From my understanding if we have a coven of witches casting spells on us and we react with negative actions and intent we give strength to their action or spell. So let’s look at the ways to counteract the love spell first. There is more than one type of love spell and some are more the power of suggestion than any magic. If your friend was attracted to the girl because she is pretty and he is aware that she is interested in him it probably has little to do with magic. Unless he has totally stopped doing the things he used to do and he is not eating or sleeping and all he talks about is the girl then there is a problem. In your letter you did not say this you just said that he is getting attracted to her. This to me sounds more natural than supernatural in nature. If you think the girl is not right for him you will need to talk to him and tell him what you have heard and what you have done. You should do this without any slander or negative energy so that you will be as you have shown by your actions a concerned friend. You need to remember that at this point in your life you and your friend are growing and changing from day to day and your likes and dislikes change also. He may have not liked her until he found out that she liked him. This is just my point of view and others may not have the same take on this but this is mine.  Now let’s address your group’s actions in trashing the garden.  When you say trashed I would guess that you destroyed the plants that they had cared for and planted. This is part of nature that was destroyed needs to be replaced. They don’t have to be the same type of plants but something else needs to be planted. The negative act of destroying the garden is fuel for any negative intent they would have against you so you need to balance the scales with good deeds. Next, I do not know you or your groups’ religious beliefs but many of the religions have ways of asking for protection from evil. This couldn’t hurt. I would not be scared of what they are going to do. The fear of them is a negative energy and in itself part of their art. If you think they can hurt you then they can, if you think they have power over you then yes they do for you are giving it to them. The power they have is limited to what they give up and what you give them to work with.

Q: Can you tell me what a vortex is and if it is dangerous? Also, can a vortex be created or opened and how is that done? What would be the metaphysical purpose for doing this? Thank you. Lynne, MA

A: Webster’s Dictionary states: VORTEX “whirling motion of any fluid, forming depression in the center of circle: whirlpool: whirling mass of air, fire, etc which draws with irresistible power.” I do not believe that this type of vortex is what your question is in regards to; rather I believe that you are asking about the gateway that opens from the spirit world into our world. It may be referred to as a gateway between different dimensions. This type of vortex is sometimes captured on film and sometimes appears as a tube or funnel shape mass that may resemble a whirlpool hence the name vortex. Another way of looking at it would be that a vortex is a door between here and the spirit realm or other dimensions. It is my understanding that a vortex is this type of door and a door that swings both ways.

In your question, you asked if a vortex is dangerous. The vortex itself is not dangerous but opening a vortex could be dangerous. The danger that is involved with vortexes is not the doorway but what may come through that door. I look at it this way, the doors at a jail are locked so that the bad people that would do us harm are not able to come and go as they please. For the most part vortexes are natural occurrences due to many different reasons like the crossing of way lines or the magnetic properties of an area but they can be opened by us also. Some say that you will create a vortex by having two mirrors facing each other head on due to the mirrors reflecting a reflection. This would create a vacuum in the space between the mirrors and could cause a vortex to form. These types of vortexes are looked for in ghost investigations as a possible cause for the haunting. So, if you put two mirrors facing each other you could form a vortex but this type is just a door into our world due to the vacuum. 

Some healers I know open vortexes to send the negative energy away. This is done with the express intent to help someone and with light and love. They do this with a tool to start the energy swirling like a whirlpool and then ask for the vortex to be open. When they do it this way while asking their guides for help or other types of spiritual help they open a vortex that only funnels the negative away. There are others that use vortexes to help them to do their work as mediums. When this happens, the spirits of the departed come through to communicate with the medium and these vortexes are in most cases opened by a spirit guide or other type of spiritual helper who stand as a doorkeeper. The guide will only let the sprits in that have business on this side with the person that the medium is helping. Most of the healers and mediums I know have worked with their guides or spiritual helpers for many years and know if they are dealing with them or not. If they are in doubt, they will not open the vortex with them to keep from being tricked and opening a vortex they have no control over. I do know that some in the black arts open vortexes to bring in help to do their black arts. Here again we are talking about a vortex that is opened with a specific intent so it is not just an open door. The main difference is that evil does not play by the rules and once opened you may not be able to close the door. This would leave an open door that any negative or evil entity could travel through to do as they wish in our reality. These vortexes are not easily closed and can cause an area trouble for many hundreds of years.

Q: I have sent an attachment with my email. This is kind of embarrassing but I had this dream that I cannot shake. In the dream I was somewhere I did not recognize. The sky looked reddish and there was lots of dust and smoke. I was terrified. A couple of symbols appeared out of nowhere and then the dream stopped. I drew out the symbols on my computer as best as I could (I am no artist) and have attached them. Can you tell me the significance? I do believe in spiritual and metaphysical things. I'm not sure if this dream is a warning or if maybe it is something to do with a past lifetime as was suggested to me by a friend. I have no conscious past life memories and have no desire for hypno-therapy. I am just curious. Thank-you. Liza, F (no state given)

A: First off dreams can be views of past lifetimes or spiritual messages that use symbolism that sometimes we do not understand. Some dreams may be just a subconscious dumping of things that we have seen on the day before. These types of dreams usual don’t stay with us after waking, that is because they have served their purpose. The dumping dreams (I call them) are the delete key of your mind to make room or to just clean up all the things that you have seen. From what you have said in your letter I do not think that your dream was a dump dream that leaves the other two possibilities. The spiritual message dreams may have symbolism that you do not understand but they usually don’t have symbols that you can’t identify. For example, you may not understand what it means when a white horse runs through your bedroom but you know it is a horse. So that leaves a past life dream and that fits with the symbols that you sent as an attachment. With a little help from a friend we found an exact match for these symbols in the book "Symbols, Signs and Signets" by Ernst Lehner. The book indicated that they are area symbols of Pompeii and of Pompeian stonemasons and that was all that the book referenced on the symbols. Because there was an exact match and you said that you did not recognize the place or the symbols it could be  past life memories surfacing. That is unless you have been watching the History channel when they were doing a show on Pompeii or have recently read a book on Pompeii then it could be a dumping dream. I also do not know if you have traveled to Pompeii in this life and that you may have seen the symbols and did not even know that you did. I think for the sake of the answer I will assume that you have had a past life dream. So now that we have ruled out a dumping dream and are looking at it as a past life dream we can see what meanings could it have.

We have all had many past lives in many different places and as radically different types of people so that our soul can get the lessons that it needs to spiritually grow. Sometimes our phobias can be linked with past life events that we still need to work on for our soul’s growth. Looking at your dream you did not say that you were with anyone, but you did say that you were terrified. If being alone in a strange place causes you fear than that would explain being terrified but I do not think that is the answer. If we keep the past life explanation going then the symbols fit with the surroundings that you described if in a past life you lived in Pompeii. You said, "The sky looked reddish and there was lots of dust and smoke." This fits with the eruption of Mount Vesuvius that caused the end of Pompeii in the first century. So you can see that some of your dream can be viewed as being past life memories… but why are they surfacing now? You will have to look at your life now to see if there is anything that may have triggered your dream. There is a chance that there is a message in the dream that is linked with something that you did not finish in the past life. You may want to look into Pompeii and Roman life to see if you can isolate what may be an issue that caused your terror in your dream. This is of course if you wish to do some work on your past life without hypno-therapy, you can use several different crystals that will help you to access you past lives in your dreams and meditations. Petrified wood is on that is especially useful for grounding insights that you gain from experiencing these memories. Dioptase is useful for the attainment of past-life insights and for the activation of one’s higher purpose. With its help you may be able to identify any lessons that you have carried forward from you’re past that show up in your dreams and affect your life. These stones may aid you so that you will have more control over a past life dream.

Reprinted with explicit permission of Holbrook PSI and The Galaxy Express.