The Grey Man (2)

You should know, the things you're about to read aren't frightening. My ghost story is of an everyday sort, no banging pots or pans, no eerie figures in white cowls, no phantom hitchhikers, just the story of one guy (me) and his 'friend'.

I guess it was around 1997 when I first began to suspect a spirit might be playing a role in my life. A pattern developed which I noticed and played upon to test.

It seemed objects of mine would go missing seemingly at random. I'm a messy guy, but well organised, my room might look like a chaotic a mess but I could walk in, move two shirts and find a specific book or tool right where I know I left it the last time I had it - you could call my life, and my cleaning habits, very roughly organised chaos.

I began to notice that sometimes, when I went to look for something, it wouldn't be where I put it. I'd go looking, and without fail get angry. As it turned out, whenever anything went missing, I'd have another significant unresolved issue in my life... I'd discover I'd lost something trivial, like a screwdriver, and as I'd search the house in places I knew I'd never put it, just for the sake of making a methodical search, my mind would wander and I'd find myself thinking about the more significant problem which typically I'd have pushed to the back of my mind.

As the search would progress, my mind would work through this other problem, I'd have an epiphany and decide how to deal with it, and bingo, next pass of the house and I'd find the screwdriver ...exactly where I knew I'd left it and had already looked three times in varying degrees of frustrated anger. This always struck me as odd but I never suspected spirits had any part in it.

One day it came to me. As soon as I lost something, why bother searching the house? Why not make a nice hot brew, take a seat and think about my life, work out what the real problem is, reach a solution and then go and get whatever I was looking for, since it would be bound to be exactly where I thought it was, knew it was, once I'd sorted out the 'real' problem? Trust me, the idea sounded more crazy to me when I came up with it, and felt even more crazy the first time I tried in, than it will ever seem to a casual reader. But sanity is relative, and in my situation, it seemed worth a shot. So I tried it. I remember the first time I did it I was looking for my wallet which I'd left on my bedside table. It wasn't there, so I sat on my bed and kind of talked to myself.

"ok" I said "what's the real problem?" and worked out I was feeling guilty because I was getting behind with my writing deadlines. I was planning to go to town and meet friends, when I knew I should be writing. I decided it would be better to do the writing first, so I went to my study and belted out a quick thousand words, returned to my room and, right where I knew I left it, was my wallet. Well, I laughed so hard! It was crazy, but it had worked, and it seemed my theory was right!

Shortly after that I moved house, and my new roomy and I were talking about ghosts and so on one night, and I told him, (I'm still not sure why) that I have a spirit who steals little items from me once in a while to push me back onto track with my life. A few days later he said "I think your friend is doing it to me too now." I asked him what he meant, and he explained he had just lost his keys and found them, after looking all through the house, on the hook where he always puts them, but where he had already checked several times in his search.

The pattern seems to be that after you realise the object is missing, you get very frustrated and short tempered, then distracted, and your mind starts to wander. His story fitted my pattern exactly, so I told him about my shortcut remedy. He took months to try it, but it worked for him too.

So, why do I call him the Grey Man if I've never seen him? Because that's the impression I get of him. He was very tall and powerful in physical stature, and in his lifetime he was mentally very powerful, like a shaman of some sort. He lived a long life, died when he was quite old and retains a strong image of what he looks like, but never bothers to project that image. He also has a great sense of humor and seems to be compassionate, almost angelic. He can infuse me with emotions, sometimes when I'm down I'll feel a wash of joy or happiness so intense I'll laugh out loud at nothing in particular, and feel a familiar presence and know the grey man has just touched my life and my heart again.

He's also done the whole feeling of dread thing to people who have come to my house when I'm not there. I have an open door policy, all my friends are welcome in my home if I'm there or not, and they know it, but once in a while one will complain that my friend didn't want them to wait for me to get home. What happens in those cases is, someone comes around and lets them self in to my house. They have a sense that they are not alone, and often it's so strong a feeling they'll walk through the house looking for me as they're convinced I'm there. Then, without warning, and without being driven into panic, they'll just get the feeling they are not welcome. This feeling gets more intense the longer they stay, until it becomes imperative that they leave. One friend complained of being made dizzy and fainting by trying to ignore the compulsion to leave. Oddly enough, if they speak out loud and say they are friends of mine, they're left alone. Not many of my friends believe that, but the ones who do swear it works. He likes to know the living are aware of him, I think.

I don't know who the grey man is, or where he came from, or why he helps me, but he's a great friend to have on a dark night and seems to be a rather powerful spirit. I've been to places that are haunted quite badly, like port Arthur, the maitland gaol, yet I've never had an unpleasant paranormal experience, only a much stronger sense of the grey man, almost like he's exerting his strength of will to keep other spirits from harming me.

He's calmed down a lot over our years together, but then so have I. I don't lose things very often any more, maybe because I pay more attention to the kind of problems that led to things going missing in the first place, but I still feel him with me often, and hope to meet him on the other side when I pass over, because he's always been there for me in this life, through dozens of homes and three states he's always been with me.

Thanks for reading. Hey, do you loose things and find them again later? think about it... maybe you have a little friend too! My advice is, give them your energy, talk to them, welcome them. He seems to like knowing that I know he's there.