Ghost in the Drama Department

Ghost in the Drama Department

A True Story….. by Monica Walsh

http://writing.ie/meet-the-authors/tell-your-own-story/mining-memories-past-and-present/392-ghost-in-the-drama-department-monica-walsh.html

It was a stormy winter’s night and I was alone with Richard III.  The wall clock was showing 9 pm and I still had lots to do.   In those days the RTE Television Drama Department was based not within the campus at Montrose but on the other side of the Stillorgan Road in a large period house called Airfield.  My tiny office was on the hall floor, near the foot of the main staircase.

Immersed in sorting production requirements for the Shakespearean play, I was dimly aware of the noise of an approaching vacuum cleaner in the otherwise silent house.  Soon my door was pushed slightly open and the kind face of the middle-aged cleaning lady peered around it.

“Oh dear! Are you here all on your own at this time?” she asked.
“Have to be”, I smiled, “I have stuff to finish”.
She stared at me strangely.
“Aren’t you a very brave girl.  Are you not afraid?”.
“Not at all, no, I’m grand.  Anyway I won’t be too much longer”.
“Rather you than me, pet!” she said, shaking her head as she cleared the waste basket.  “I’m off home now.  Take care!”

Time passed and I was clacking away on the manual typewriter when I heard the sound of the front door opening.  A man’s footsteps came up the hall past my slightly-open door and I expected him to look in and greet me, which would have been usual for colleagues coming in and out of the house outside normal office hours. To my surprise he continued straight on and up the stairs.  That puzzled me, because my first thought had been that it was someone from the Production Office of the weekly drama series which was on the other side of the hall just past the foot of the stairs.  Any of that team would have looked in for a brief chat.  Upstairs there were only the Engineering Department’s offices whose occupants left at 5.30 pm and would not usually have had any reason to return.

After a while I heard him come back down the stairs, pass my office again and leave.   “How rude!” I thought.  “Imagine not even looking in to say Hello when he can hear the typewriter clacking away and my door is ajar!”

Some time later when I had almost completed my work, I heard the front door open again and the same footsteps coming up the hallway. “Who’s that?” I called out as the footsteps marched past my room.  There was no answer.  He continued on his way up the stairs.

Angry now, I jumped up to give whoever it was a piece of my mind for not having the courtesy to identify himself to me at that late hour, and I headed for the stairs.  The footsteps had already gone around the curve, reached the top landing and – I thought – entered the first office on the upper floor.   As I rounded the curve in my turn I saw the door of that office – fully closed. In a split-second I realised that I had not heard it either open or close, but as I reached the top of the stairs I found there was no-one in the long first-floor corridor.   At the same time I had stepped into a space at the top of the stairs that felt bone-chillingly cold. Though realisation was dawning rapidly, so as to be left in no doubt whatsoever I called out at the closed door:  “Who is in there!”    Still no answer.

A shower of icy shivers ran down my back as I realised that this was an other-worldly experience.   I shot down the stairs, grabbed my coat and bag and left the building as fast as my shaking legs would carry me.

Next day I took my mid-morning break in the small tea-room across the hall from my office, where colleagues from the Drama Department and Educational Programmes were all gathered around the one big table.

“Something very strange happened here last night”, I announced as I sat down.
Chatter ceased immediately and all eyes turned to me.
“What happened?”, someone asked.
They listened intently as I told my story.
And then someone said: “Did you not know?”
“Know?  Know what?”
“Did you not know that the house is haunted, and several people have had that experience!”

In the chat that followed it emerged that while that some people had heard the other-worldly visitor while working late, others never had.  It does seem that some of us are more sensitive to sights, sounds and scents of a paranormal nature than others, and I already knew from countless previous experiences that I was one of those people.

Many years later I was back in Airfield House working on the televised version of a modern play.  Colleague Laura McAuley and I were working closely together on different aspects of the production.  She asked if I knew about the ghost, and when I told her of my encounter with him she suggested we make a pact that when working late in the Production Office neither of us would leave before the other.

Late one evening we were engrossed in our work.  It was just past 11 p.m.; we had been out on location since 7.30 a.m. and had returned to the office to sort material for the following day’s shoot.  Silence reigned as we worked separately, fighting tiredness to concentrate deeply on our tasks.  Soon, however, our focus was broken by the sound of the front door opening and heavy footsteps coming up the hall.

Laura looked across at me, terrified, her blue eyes huge.  We waited, speechless and rigid with tension, to hear if the footsteps would go up the main staircase.  We were in a back office past the foot of the stairs.  To reach us there were a few steps up to our doorway and in the wall between the office and corridor there was a small window at head-height just above those steps.

To our horror, the footsteps did not go up the main staircase but were heading decisively towards our room.

Paralysed with fear, my heartbeat was thundering in my ears.  Laura was clearly in the same state.  As we heard the footsteps coming up the steps to our doorway I felt my scalp surge with cold prickles of terror.  A man’s face appeared in the corridor window. We screamed our heads off, going quite hysterical as fear and shock gave way seconds later to massive relief when our eyes passed the message to our brains that the head was wearing a navy-blue peaked cap, and it was the security guard from the Television Centre across the road on his rounds!!

When we had all gotten over the shock and the guard had gone on his way Laura and I agreed that our nerves were shot to hell, that unfinished paperwork would have to be shoved into briefcases and car-boots and taken home, and that if we put the foot down we would just cover the half-mile to Madigans in Donnybrook before closing time.

As we shut the front doors behind us and turned to descend the front steps I cheekily called out “Goodnight!” to the ghost.  I think I simply missed the top step in the darkness, but as I fell down the steps onto the ground below Laura joked “I think he just gave you a kick in the arse!”   We jumped into our cars, blazed up Donnybrook Road, raced into Madigans and – to the amusement of a few other colleagues already well ensconced near the bar – collapsed on the counter gasping “Hot whiskies please, quick as you can!!!”

Though on that occasion we were unnecessarily spooked, the number of times the phenomenon I had experienced continued to repeat itself ensured that few people would have been happy to work alone in the old house at night, and on my next assignment to a televised play I was relieved that my closest colleague on the production was equally keen to make that “Promise you won’t leave me alone here!” pact.   One thing that complicated life further was that the only photo-copier in the building was on the upper floor at the far end of that long corridor, so the second part of the pact was to accompany each other up there when we needed to use it at night!

Soon afterwards I met someone who professed to know the story of the ghost of Airfield House.  She said there had been a tragedy – something to do with unrequited love – and a young man had hanged himself at the top of the staircase… at the very spot where I had walked into that ice-cold space where the footsteps stopped, although there was no-one physically there….

© Monica Walsh, October 2011

Monica Walsh has worked with RTE on the production of TV programmes such as “Hall’s Pictorial Weekly” and “Today Tonight” as well as documentaries, arts and drama. Also a translator (Institute of Linguists) she has lived and worked in Paris and Rome and travelled for the United Nations to many African countries. In 1990 she went freelance in her two fields of expertise, but soon afterwards her life was to take a dramatic turn when her healing gifts manifested spontaneously and within a few years, through word-of-mouth referral only, she had become a full-time healer and was tested successfully in the KENNY LIVE “Gift Healers” experiment on RTE-TV.  Also a writer, poet and occasional columnist, after twenty-two years’ practice as a healer she is now completing the first of several books which spring from her extraordinary journey.

This article was first published in the “Mining Memories” section of www.writing.ie

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The Power Within

By Monica Walsh   (from her column “Healing Hands” at The Hibernia Times online)

Sometimes the simplest keys to solving a problem are right under our noses, but when we are in the midst of difficulties we just can’t see them. For me, the key was a book that had been on my shelves for some time, read when bought but never since.

It had been a bad winter and spring. After years of debilitating illness which, having gone undiagnosed for a long time had become chronic — I’d had my umpteenth brucellosis relapse followed almost immediately by glandular fever.

In the midst of that, utter despair had driven me to decide to leave my secure job in television programme-making the following summer and go freelance with my various skills, to be more in charge of my time and have some chance of healing myself.

Still in the throes of glandular fever, I had just called my GP’s attention to something strange on my skin while telling him that I wanted to go swimming as soon as possible to regain some strength and fitness after the many bed-ridden months.

“I am sorry to tell you that you won’t be going swimming anytime soon,” the doctor announced. “That is the herald spot of a rare condition called pityriasis rosea. Within two weeks your torso will be covered in livid, itchy lesions and within a further two weeks it will spread to cover everywhere except your face, hands and feet. No one will believe it’s not contagious, so you will have to stay covered up from neck to wrist and ankle. Though we don’t know how it is transmitted and it is not easily passed to others, it IS viral so there’s nothing I can give you to help except anti-histamines for the itch. It just has to run its course, which is a minimum of two months.”

I stared at him in horror. “Two months?” It was May. The sun was shining. Since the previous August I felt I hadn’t been out in daylight. I had been working 70-hour weeks on a TV arts show till my brucellosis relapse in November. Because of that illness I had been totally socially isolated for the festive season, not for the first time. I had resumed work in January, though still exhausted, had collapsed with glandular fever in March in the middle of recording a studio show, had spent the last five weeks totally bed-bound, had just put my home on the market in order to fund my freelance start-up with capital from the profit margin while “buying down” to a property outside Dublin, and was hoping to be able to start living somewhat normally by mid-summer. Now I was being told swimming was off-limits and the next two months — at least — were virtually a write-off, too.

Leaving the surgery in turmoil, I wept in despair on returning home. Over the next two weeks the prognosis proved correct. By my next appointment the lesions had broken out all over my torso and had begun to show at the top of my legs. And despite the acute discomfort and the incredible fatigue and weakness I was still feeling, my GP thought I should go back to work, regardless of the pressurised and demanding nature of my job. My conclusion that the only way I could possibly recover my health and have some quality of life was to completely change my circumstances was confirmed yet again. I felt fury rising within me when I returned home. “I am just NOT going to live like this anymore!”

I knew I had to relax if I was to think clearly. I started to do a relaxation exercise I had learned in a yoga class. As I slid into stillness, memories floated into my mind of things I had heard or read in recent times. Deepak Chopra on RTE-TV’s Late Late Show had explained the connection between prolonged stress and the development of illness. A book I had bought called The Power of Your Subconscious Mind suggested that even the most serious physical illnesses could be reversed by harnessing your subconscious to work in specific ways while you slept. The image of that book floated before my eyes, and I leapt from my bed to search my shelves.

That night just before sleep I began an exercise aimed at eliminating the pityriasis rosea. The results were staggering. Within three days the lesions were no longer livid red, but beginning to fade to purple scar tissue. The advancing spread of lesions into my legs stopped short. Each night I continued the exercise, and each day I saw the disease dying off a little more. When I saw my GP for the 10-day check-up I was completely clear of lesions. This was when my entire body except for face, hands and feet, should have been covered with them.

My GP’s first questions were about the glandular fever and as he scribbled I added, “Oh, by the way, the rash is gone,” Without raising his head he said “Oh! That’s great.” Then my words penetrated fully and he threw down his pen and turned to me.

“It can’t be,” he said with a puzzled frown. “I know I diagnosed correctly.”

“I know you diagnosed correctly too!” I responded, smiling calmly. “I just decided I wasn’t having it.” I was so pleased with the results, I was enjoying the effect upon him of the news.

He stared at me and I could see the thought going through his head: “Has this one gone doo-lally on me now?” I raised my sweater to display my perfect, unblemished torso. “There are just a couple of patches of scar tissue from the biggest lesions; all the rest have disappeared completely.”

“But this is not possible!” he exploded. “This is unknown. This condition has a particular course and it doesn’t just stop and disappear half-way through.”

I couldn’t let his puzzlement continue. “Will I tell you what I did?”

He sighed. “Yes, please do.” He listened intently, his expression gradually changing, as I explained the story as I have written it here.

I knew there had been times he thought I was a hopeless case. He had developed that “Oh dear; her again!” look even behind the welcoming smile. “What has she got now?” There was a transformation in the doctor-patient relationship that day, as I demonstrated incontrovertibly that I truly wanted to be well and that if conventional medicine could not help me I was going to find my own solutions. This was just the beginning.

“That’s fantastic, Monica. Well done,” he beamed, when I had finished.

Little did either of us know that only about six months would pass before I would be telling him that not only was I on a self-healing journey, but parallel to it I had unexpectedly become a conduit of healing for others. He was remarkably open-minded and encouraging. We just never know, do we, what lies in store? But if a key is lying in front of us, we must put it in the door and turn it. Is there one lying in front of you? It can be in something we read, in something someone says, or in some opportunity on offer to us.

That book was one of my first keys – The Power of Your Subconscious Mind by Dr Joseph Murphy. The exercise which eliminated the pityriasis rosea was simple, and if you have a persistent skin condition perhaps you might like to try it. Other visualisations would apply for different illnesses, and the holistic healing shelves of your local book-store will have at least a few books containing appropriate suggestions.

Firstly, do some relaxation or meditation exercise to bring yourself into a state of stillness. Slow, deep breathing may be all you need. Thinking on the in-breath, “Breathe in peace” and on the out-breath “Let go of all tension.” Play some relaxing music while you do, to create a barrier against outside noise. You might like also to work through your body methodically, first tensing and then relaxing each muscle group individually. Doing this correctly, you should find yourself sighing or yawning as your body releases tension.

Do this at bedtime, when you are sure you will not be disturbed and that you will fall asleep directly afterwards. The visualisation you employ, in this case of your skin being perfect, is intended to programme your subconscious mind to work while you are asleep towards your desired outcome, according to the pictures you present to it.

In my case, once I was deeply relaxed I simply envisaged my torso, which at that moment was on fire with red lesions, as perfectly smooth and blemish-free. I imagined the pleasure of feeling good again, and of running my fingers over my skin, unable to find the smallest bump. I imagined myself sunbathing with my blemish-free skin glowing with health. I did this every night until the condition had disappeared completely.

If you have difficulty becoming relaxed enough to do this kind of exercise effectively, I would highly recommend learning some relaxation or meditation method, as managing to achieve a state of stillness – even just long enough for your specific purpose, if life is otherwise hectic – is a prerequisite to harnessing your own self-healing powers and working successfully with the magnificent repair-oriented intelligence contained within our own bodies. You may be amazed, as I was, at what you can then achieve.

This article was first published in Monica’s occasional column “Healing Hands” for www.thehiberniatimes.online

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A Spiritual Awakening

The Hibernia Times Article

by Monica Walsh

Direct experience of the divine is not easy to talk about, and I certainly never expected to find myself joining the ranks of those who do. But today it is getting slightly easier as twenty years have now passed since such experiences changed the course of my life, giving me the faith and trust to abandon in due course a twin-track career with its accompanying material security and social acceptance, and to accept the new uncharted path unfolding before me.

I was never religious, and despite those experiences falling into the classic Christian mystical tradition, nor am I now. I believe they were intended to point the way to a higher truth — our spiritual nature, the divine spark at our very core and our connection to the source of all creation, regardless of what we do or do not know, believe or do not believe.

I believe that what was communicated to me came in the Christian framework simply because that is my cultural environment, and that had I been born in a different part of the world it would have come in the predominant mystical tradition of that country. In my case those experiences were also intended to leave me in no doubt as to the divine source of the healing gift which was to manifest totally unsolicited just a couple of weeks later.

For three whole years I did not speak of those experiences — by which time I had become a busy healer through word-of-mouth referral alone — and then only on a few occasions when asked by clients how I was so sure of my source. It took me myself a full year to understand it all and to come to terms with being an instrument of healing for a higher power in which I had not till then believed.

This happened suddenly in the winter of 1990, when I was in a state of total collapse and had just been driven by increasingly debilitating illness, chronic fatigue and burn-out to cash in my chips — sell my home and resign from a secure and highly desirable job — to go freelance. I had learned at last of the direct connection between prolonged acute stress and the development of physical illness, and knew that in order to heal myself I needed to be in control of my working life rather than have it continue to be in control of me.

When the healing gift manifested it did so simply yet dramatically, through direct touch — I knew nothing of the human energy system or how people can learn to work with it. The results stunned me, and as the weeks passed and more amazing things happened, I was given enormous food for thought. This was not my energy:  I had none to give away.   This was not a learned technique; I had not studied healing — until just a short time previously the only healers I knew of were seventh sons and bone-setters and women who “had the cure” in a mysterious herbal concoction. While exploring it on someone close, I myself experienced an extraordinary inner peace, something I had longed for all my turbulent life. Bit by bit the penny dropped. Those mystical experiences and this physical manifestation were connected. I had been told “You Will Know,” in answer to my question: “Why am I seeing You?” And at last I did.

Regardless of my personal beliefs, the work I do today is carried out neutrally, without any religious overtones, so that the services I provide can be availed of by believers of any creed as well as atheists, agnostics and sceptics. Some people need to be comfortable about my source; others couldn’t care less as long as the work helps. No one has to embrace any belief system in order to receive.

People sometimes ask: “Do you feel blessed to have been given the gift of healing?” My answer can surprise. “No. I feel I was given a job to do, and I try to do it well. It is others who receive the gift of healing through it. The gift I myself received was the gift of faith.”  I had not had any, ever.  But I longed for understanding.

By the end of my first year, constant feedback on the great benefits people were experiencing through my sessions had proven to me beyond all doubt that a Higher Power existed. Physically and objectively measurable results were, for me, the evidence.  I realised, too, of course, that everyone has that direct spiritual connection with a higher power, though — like me till then — they may not yet have consciously awakened to it. On countless occasions clients, including many who were not consciously searching, found their experience was not just of a physical or emotional healing but a spiritual awakening and consequent personal transformation.

Spiritual awakening is the first step on the path of lasting healing. It has nothing to do with religion, but for some it may come within a religious framework. Often today it comes independently of organised religion. When we connect at last with the reality that we are not our thoughts, we are not our emotions, we are not other people’s perceptions of us and we ask, “Who is thinking these thoughts? Who is feeling these feelings?” we can begin to discern our spiritual core, our essence, that divine spark within us which is eternal, which lives on when all else falls away and which is directly connected with the Source of all creation.

Even one transcendent experience of connection with this eternal light which animates our human journey and a fusion with the greater light from which we spring transforms everything. As one client commented: “It is as if a switch was flicked in my life and the lights came on!”   Life does not necessarily get easier, but we begin to see more clearly and it definitely becomes less painful.

This article was first published in Monica’s “Healing Hands” column at www.thehiberniatimes.com

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Mystical Poetry

Welcome to my poetry page.  I have been writing poetry since i was seven – with very long intervals when life was too turbulent for creativity!  After my unexpected emergence as a healer – which had been heralded by powerful mystical experiences in the preceding weeks – I began to “receive” a lot of mystical poetry and stories, which eventually i put together into a collection called “The Spirit Sings”.  In due course I will do something with that, but meanwhile I will post here some of those that have already been published.

TIMELESSNESS

In ceaseless waves
We ebb and flow
From spirit into matter,
From density into Light,
If only we could remember.
Rising just a little higher each time…

Until at last there is no time…
There is no need to remember,
There is no need at all,
Only being
Pure love
And peace.

(c) Monica Walsh 1992

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ON MEDITATION (Spiritual)

From sunny fields of silken grass
Where cheerful daisies nod their heads
To soothing, shallow mountain streams
That gurgle over polished stones
And on up well-worn paths that climb
To snowy summits far above
While down below the world still weaves
A tapestry of mysteries
Whose slow unravelling depends
On many interwoven threads.
Take flight and land where’er you choose
And open doors you’ve never seen,
Explore the labyrinth of the mind
And call on friends who may reveal
The meaning of the path you take
And show you beautiful designs
Of rivers leading to the sea
Where crystal icebergs float like isles
Whose history sleeps deep inside
And ancient cities rise from sand
With minarets and domes of gold
Where riches unimagined lie
Awaiting the explorer.

(c) Monica Walsh, received 20.1.91.  First published in the internationally-circulated “Healing Review“, 1993

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The following poem is not “mystical” but it is indirectly about healing… letting go of what has not served our highest good and stepping into our own power.  I was invited recently to provide poetry of a healing or inspirational nature to Sibella International Poetry Magazine, and this one was published in their Winter 2013-14 issue.

FOOTPRINTS IN THE SNOW

Snow falls silently on the dusk-dimmed path
Blanketing your departing footsteps
In pure white forgetfulness.
The house is quiet now, as is my mind,
The only echoes memories
Whose power to stir me is long gone.
Soon the sun will shine again
And melt away the snow that cloaks
This barrenness in beauty,
Revealing renewed fertility.
But just for tomorrow, at first light
I’ll don that coat you never liked,
Throw the front door open wide
And make new footprints in the snow.

(c) monica walsh, 1991

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This next poem records a true experience of mine, and was published by Sibella International Poetry Magazine in their June-July 2014 issue:

Midnight Journey

One night through the midnight window
Of my ever-whirling mind
I flew to a space of freedom,
Star-spangled, velvet, kind…
Danced with the joy of lightness,
Hovered like a bird
And looked far down below me
At this Earth we call The World…
Found my hands on a silver bicycle
That ran on silver rails,
Leapt astride and was carried into
A place fit for fairy-tales…
Inside a globe-like structure,
A womb-like silver cave,
Ethereal figures floated
Within white and silver waves…
Now I do not remember
Whatever happened next,
Except for a sense of melting
And peace, and calm, and rest…
I woke in my moonlit bedroom,
Turned towards the sky and blinked,
The moon hung right over my garden…
And I swear I saw her wink

(c) monica walsh, 2006

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I wrote the next poem at the request of SIBYL (“For the Spirit and Soul of Woman”) Magazine (USA) for publication in their Autumn 2014 edition:

ON WINGS OF FIRE

Memories drift through the forest of her mind
Carried in the scent of wood-smoke
Or the mists that curl around the trees
Whose leaves of bronze and red and gold
Swish and swirl around her feet
Like fragments of ancient love-letters
Scattered to the wind.

The old ones have all gone now.
The spiritual touchstones of her wandering soul
Whisper but faintly as she sleeps,
And loss was painful for a time.
But in the embers of the past
Still glow the sparks of future fire,
New passion, hopes and dreams.

A bonfire flares, the flames rise high.
She feeds it with her broken dreams,
Lost loves, tired scripts, out-dated maps
And from its blazing heart she feels
Her spirit soar on powerful wings
Reclaiming life, and light, and joy -
Like a phoenix, born anew.

(c) monica walsh 2014

 

 

 

 

 

 

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