Darkness isn't a color, it's an absence of light. Darkness is not always associated with evil things. In that sense, darkness is a state of mind, a perception of whatever is happening and of yourself. Scientifically, in extremes of all lightness or all darkness, the human eye loses it's ability of perception to differentiate colors. Therefore, you can be of "the dark world" and still be good soul. Better stated not all "dark" things are necessarily evil. Evilness is a state of mind and consciousness.
Not convinced yet? Well try this...
In spite of the world being dominated by three major, monotheistic religions, there are still many people who believe in superstitions as well as other supernatural powers and dark forces. Around the world people are still frightened or even entertained black magic, werewolves, vampires, witches, genies, ghosts and sorcerers. Our book, television and movie industries are constantly recycled with stories to that effect. Have you ever heard of the following TV, movie and novels: "Bewitched" "I Dream of Jeannie" "Aladdin" "Beauty and The Beast" "Twilight Series" "Interview With A Vampire" or "The Underworld" movie trilogy. One of my favorites from many years ago, "An American Werewolf In London". Let's not forget the generation hopping "Halloween" movie series. We even have people playing "the living dead" Zombie games all over the country.
So clearly, we believe in powers and things - outside of our religions - should we happen to belong to one of the three majors. Still not convinced? Try breaking a mirror around Friday the 13th, or throwing a black cat in someones path on that same day. See how many people you get to hop across the sidewalk to avoid the cat.
I have my own story to tell. A ghost story. I didn't realize how powerful it's reality was to my life until I was in my late teens. Since my late teens, I've come to accept that have been protected several times from certain death and/or serious injury by a spirit that probably is that of my grandmother from my mother's side. I am Christian by faith and do not in anyway doubt God's power to protect us or to decide when it is our time to come home. But I also do believe we have guardian angels who step in and help us avoid leaving this world too soon, or from suffering great injury.
When I was a little boy between the ages of 5 and 9, I was often haunted by what I felt was a shadowy figure in the tiny bedroom that I shared with my older sister in our New York City apartment. I would always feel this presence looking over at us in the corners of our bedroom and throughout the apartment. There were even periods when I would turn my head and feel that a shape was moving out of my peripheral whenever I would turn my head very fast sideways. Then I would make a complete head turn and no one would be there. I was never afraid of this shadow, but I know how strongly I felt the shadow did exist and expressed it to my family.
My mother initially down played my experiences, but later on did talk about feeling her mother's spirit herself. By that time I was done feeling any "spirits" and had moved onto becoming a crazy, normal 10 year old boy. I could have cared less about ghostly spirits and had moved onto sports. What I didn't put together until I was twenty years of age, and had just survived a very serious car accident - was that I had already been the survivor of two near deaths incidents when I was younger.
Sometime when I was 4 years old, I had taken an interest to all the adults in and around my life smoking cigarettes. So one afternoon, my mother stepped out of our walk up building and left me and my 7 year old sister alone upstairs to take our afternoon nap. I decided otherwise. I convinced my sister to light (since I didn't know how to light a match) up a match and she ripped a piece of paper from a telephone book and handed me the paper. She then lit the paper and when the paper got too hot, I dropped it. We were in the bedroom area of that walk up apartment building.
It didn't take long for that fire to literally spread around me and my sister. She was older and taller and simply jumped over the flames. I was frozen with fear to move. Those flames looked ten feet tall to my little legs. Although I was crying, I remember feeling calm. My sister ran out the door. Minutes later, a family friend, one of my mother's girlfriends at that time stepped over the flames and just picked me up and jumped back across and out the door. I just remembered not feeling alone the whole time the incident happened. Like someone was there with me keeping the flames from engulfing me...like a perfect circle...until help arrived. There is no other way to explain it.
Later on when I was 9 years old, growing up in the East Village, and long since crossing the street by myself I had a moment of stupidity when I was leaving my mother's workplace. Instead of using the corner like I normally did to walk back home, I decided to make a run for it and crossed into the middle of the block, not seeing or being aware of a speeding car that swerved around another car that was double parked. My high school athleticism was many years away, this was the mid 70's where the cars were long, still had big grills in front, and basically when they hit you - your body parts just got washed off at the car wash. Today's cars...in even accidents less than 10 miles an hour can cause a lot of damage to the car due to crumple zone standards. Nope, the cars in the mid 70's were still those steel and chrome front end death machines.
I remembered that as the car was bearing down on me, and I had just a split second before impact, my body lifted up. I'd like to say that I jumped up, but once again I was just 9 years old and had no signs of the very good leaping ability I would show display in my teens. I was just a scrawny kid. However, somehow my body had managed to get so high in the air that I ended up on the hood of the car. The car had come to a screeching stop, and there I was sitting on the hood, which had just been barreling towards me a chest level a split second earlier. I had "nailed" my landing on the hood so good, I didn't even roll. I just put my hand down and slid off the man's car - who was stuck between cursing at me and trying to figure out how he hadn't mowed me down.
Eleven years later...I was the passenger in my college roommate's car. It was October 1986, and we had just ran into town to cash our college checks and wanted to get back to campus to catch the New York Met's playoff game against the Houston Astros. As we drove along the main through-way back to campus, we hit a lot of rush hour traffic. It was bumper to bumper, until we arrived at the 4 way intersection to turn into our college campus. So he had to make a left turn. He waited patiently, we had the signal light, but unfortunately the opposite lane traffic had began to speed up and was actually becoming a speed zone as people wanted to drive through before the light turned red.
When the lane looked clear to cross, my roommate stepped on the gas and proceeded to make the left turn. As we crossed the lane, I remember looking out my window and seeing nothing but headlights as clearly another car was speeding through to avoid being caught at the red. New York state driving rules say that my roommate was wrong for crossing the lane before making the left turn - but I have to tell you - that other car was definitely driving well above the speed limit to beat the light.
His two headlights were right on top of my door. He was right on top of us as we turned. My roommate would say that he gunned his car and that's what saved us from clearly being completely impacted 50 mph in the middle of the car, on the passenger side (me!). But I felt another force at work push our car through just enough so that my door and window were never impacted. Instead the rear passenger side wheel well and trunk received fulled impact. We were still hit so hard that the car was lifted, turned and hit a parked car that was sitting at the light going in the opposite direction of our left turn. Yep. It was a three car accident and we walked out of it without a single scratch. Two cars totaled but no one hurt or injured.
About an hour later, I remember sitting in one of the main cafeteria, listening to the game on a radio and talking with friends about the accident. It was then that I began to feel that I had been in that same moment of near death and certain injury before. But that it didn't make sense because I had never been in a car accident before with my roommate.
Then one of the guys at the table joked that I must have had a guardian angel to miss getting hit by the front end of the other car by about 18 inches. It was then that I realized that there were even additional times, to the two already mentioned, that I had so many similar close calls to serious injury or death throughout my entire life. I always seemed to land on my feet. At that moment with my friends, along with the deja vue, I began to feel a strange presence in the cafeteria. I felt like that conversation and moment had occurred several times before, even though it had just happened.
Later that night, I looked into the shadow corner of my room and waved thank you to my grandmother and said my prayers of thankfulness to God as well.
Do you have any "shadow stories" you'd like to share? Feel free to email me at NYEastside.info@gmail.com and with your permission, I will publish here.
