It is now years past, but my memory still holds to the warm invitation that I received from a very dear friend to her new residence in the rural backcountry of New England. In the glory of summertime, I arrived upon a simple traditional Cape House located on a large expanse of preservation land. The charms of pastoral land and animals were welcoming, with the joy of seeing my friend.
Our close kinship goes back to the early days of Art School and Karen was naturally looking forward to sharing her decorative visions with someone who was in the know. At first, I fell under the spell of color choices and fabric samples from room to room and my mind was ticking away with the decisions at hand. Amongst all the feelings of our happy reunion crept an unlikely but definite feeling of death invisibly surrounding me. Then more detailed information subtly impressed me that this feeling of death all around did not have anything to do with her family, but rather with the historic past of these rooms. There was also a mysterious feeling accompanying this information, that the former inhabitants had died there in unusual numbers and circumstances. No matter where I wandered in the house, this compelling wave of energy kept coming to me and I could not rid myself of it.
In the world of Spirit communication, this particular spiritual ability of a Medium’s awareness and knowledge of historic events that have already taken place (without any prior knowledge of them) is called RetroCognition. It can come out of seemingly nowhere and make you feel immersed in what the Spirit realm wants you to know. Receiving this information in such a spontaneous manner, I felt personally troubled for the time being. In consideration for Karen’s enthusiasm for her family’s new home, I tried to keep my feelings to myself. However, on the third day of my stay this compelling sense of a dying group of people became overwhelming, so I decided to carefully word my experiences to my host. It was not the kind of cheerful support and encouragement one would wish to give to a friend.
I have a naturally intense nature, so by the time I felt certain to reveal the information I was holding back I was emotionally spent. As I began to put into words what I was feeling, still careful not to upset my friend, she looked away quietly amused, then rose up without a word and went into another room. She returned after a few minutes and handed me a framed early photo of the house with a hand scrawled description of its history.
Built in 1835, the photo of the Cape was a copy of the original photo she had found in the local library. Ideally isolated on the edge of town, this house had been used as a “Pest House,” a historic name to describe homes chosen for quarantine shelter during epidemics. The town’s history had suffered several terrible epidemics and in one such Smallpox outbreak, local victims were sent to this house for quarantine. In another remote area of town, there exists a Smallpox burial ground, containing 12 graves for the unfortunate victims.
I felt a sigh of great relief come over me at once. All my feelings suddenly made perfect sense. After days of unrest and mystery, I felt peace within.
But there was more. In our discussion about the history of the house, Karen had her own experiences to share with me as well. From the very beginning of living in the house she had sensed a deep sorrow. And she was aware as she stepped into the house that suffering had gone on there. And early on there were disturbances in the house. Footsteps caused by spirits were heard on the stairs. Karen and her family had lived in this house for years without any knowledge of its past sad events.
My ability to know and play witness to the past historic events of her residence without any direct observation of the events gave my friend solace as we shared our spiritual experiences. It deepened our kinship and became one more chapter in the remarkable friendship we share.
I recently read that Smallpox is one of the deadly diseases we have been able to defeat with modern medicine. It is interesting that in some ways the energy associated with the human devastation it caused still remains intact.