My fellow gen-xers will probably recognize that quote. For those who don’t, it’s from the Price song, “Let’s Go Crazy”. Prince will always make me think of Mario because he was such a huge fan.

I also thought it was an appropriate quote for the past weekend for me.

I took a 4 day weekend and went out in my little trailer for the first time this season. But I also went to the Oregon Ghost Conference, which is the largest convention of that sort in the Pacific Northwest. It’s a 3 day, yearly event that encompasses pretty much everything paranormal and metaphysical with speakers, classes, vendors, psychics, mediums, tarot readers, and nighttime events like paranormal investigations.

I was there because of course I have a heavy interest in that realm, but also to participate in a couple events and then chat with vendors who may be interested in the services I provide.

One event was a very late night (or very early morning) paranormal investigation at the Elk’s lodge in Astoria Oregon. The investigation was led by a local team and was more geared towards “advanced” investigations. 15 of us showed up and almost everyone brought their own paranormal investigating equipment. I had an emf detector, an SB7 “spirit box” (basically a radio that’s been altered to “sweep” through am and fm stations and, in theory, able to be interacted with by spirits) and a thermal camera.

The most interesting things that occurred during the investigation were interactions with inanimate objects. Someone had brought a standard desk bell, like the kind you find at an old hotel desk. Definitely a mechanical device. I looked at it, picked it up, and can confirm it was a standard bell. The bell would ding all by itself. Not just that, but there were points where various people were asking questions saying, “ring the bell once for yes, twice for no” and while it wasn’t every time, there were responses to questions from the bell.

In another room, there was a standard battery flash light sitting on a chair in the middle of the room. I was in there by myself and asked, “Can you turn the flashlight on the chair on?”. I started up a video on my phone and stood there silently waiting. And then the light flickered on. It went off, then went on again and then off again. I really can not explain something like that rationally. It was just a regular little flashlight. You had to push a button in order to turn it on. No other way to turn it on.

So needless to say, that was an interesting 2 hours.

On the last day of the convention, I was walking around the vendors one last time. There were a number of psychics and mediums but no one really drew me in except for one. One of my friends had sat with her the day before and was rather impressed with what she said. So I signed up for her last reading. She is an evidentiary medium, meaning she likes to provide evidence that validates that she is indeed communicating with people in the afterworld.

Her approach is to ask the person who they would like to contact – name and relationship to the inquirer. My approach is to tell psychics or mediums absolutely nothing. I absolutely believe all sorts of things, including death not being the end and that some people can actually communicate with those who have died, but I also believe there are a lot of people who say they can do things and really they’re just taking your money.

So I threw her for a little loop by saying, “I’m just interested in seeing who comes through”. She didn’t waste any time. The first thing she says is that a male is coming through. He passed before his time and he’s sorry about that. He was also sorry that he never got to realize his full potential. She said his death was due to substance abuse. I told her I knew who it was. The only person it could have been was Mario because those details fit. You could argue that those details were still vague, but can’t deny that they fit in my case. What she said next though really led me to believe that she was indeed, the real deal.

She said another guy was coming through … possibly a grandfather. I was not close at all to my paternal grandfather and my maternal grandmother died before I was even born. Sure, they could have come through for some reason, but I asked her, “Are you saying grandfather because it’s just a much older person?” She said yeah, she got “mid 80s” for age. Then she said, “He doesn’t want to talk about what led to his death at all”. I told her I thought it was my dad – who was 86 when he died. She really emphasized that he didn’t want to discuss his death and kept telling her “I wasn’t myself”. She said he apologized for not being able to say anything (he likely had a stroke, ran off the road and crashed his truck … suffered massive brain trauma and was unable to recognize anyone or really communicate and died from injuries 9 days later). Then she stated, “your mom is still here” – not a question, a statement – then said he had a message for her … that she probably wouldn’t believe it, but that he looks after her every single day. She then interjected that he showed her that they didn’t always get along, especially towards the end (100% accurate). She said he also wanted to say, “Thank you for holding my hands, they were cold” (he always complained about his hands being cold and I was holding his hands at the end) and “Thank you for telling me it was okay to go” (I whispered those exact words into his ear before he died). She said some other things that were also accurate, but suffice to say, she gave enough specific details … enough evidence … that I was convinced she really could communicate with the dead.

So pretty interesting weekened!