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Psychic 'ain't afraid of no ghost'

The (Charleston, SC) News and Courier, July 12, 1990

By DAVID W. MacDOUGALL
Of the Post-Courier staff

 

    The lampshade is turned around. The pictures on the wall are crooked. The couch is out of place. An antique secretary in one corner of the room looks as if it's been ransacked.
     "I've left everything the way it was," says Jean Taylor, as she stands in her living room.
     No, a river of slime isn't flowing into her house and she has yet to be attacked by transparent monsters, but there is something strange going on in this Mount Pleasant neighborhood.
     First, there was the pounding noise, a constant "thud, thud, thud" emanating from the laundry room. "It was a hollow sound," Mrs. Taylor says. "It was like someone or something was trying to get somebody's attention."
     And one night she returned home to disover that the bed and dresser had been moved away from the walls in her bedroom.
     Then, her late husband's hat mysteriously found its way to the head of the dining room table.
     If Mrs. Taylor were living in New York, she might have called the likes of Bill Murray, Dan Akroyd and Harold Ramis, stars of "Ghostbusters and "Ghostbusters II."
     But this isn't New York. This is Charleston. And the only person doing any ghostbusting around here is Elizabeth Baron, a psychic.
     You may or may not believe in ghosts. You may think people who do believe in ghosts need to see a psychiatrist. But when people believe they are being taunted and haunted by ghosts, they often turn to psychics.
     Unlike the bizarre lady dwarf who specialized in "cleaning" haunted houses in the movie, "Poltergeist," Ms. Baron looks like any woman you might bump into at a supermarket.
     For this ghostbusting session, Ms. Baron appears at Mrs. Taylor's door with a smile and a handbag. No ectoplasm traps. No proton packs of psychokinetic valence detectors.
     She is accompanied by her son, Michael, and Howard Comen, a private detective.
     Comen, a Connecticut native, sports a baseball cap, shorts and a T-shirt. He typifies the hard-boiled private eye - gravelly voiced and abrupt - just the type of person you'd imagine lurking in the bushes to take videotapes of wayward spouses.
     Comen and Michael set up a video camera in Mrs. Taylor's living room. It's not for capturing images of ghosts", he says. "It's for recording St. Catherine of Siena."
     When he talks about ghosts and spirits, Comen always adds qualifiers, "If this is true," he says, "If this turns out to be real …"
     But when he speaks of St. Catherine, Comen acts as if he's talking about someone as familiar as his sister. Perhaps that's because he's spent several hundred hours talking with the spirit of St. Catherine, a l4th century nun who Ms. Baron believes came to her in a vision years ago and began using her as a medium or channel.
     Comen, who describes himself as a skeptical Jew, was, at first, skeptical about Ms. Baron and St. Catherine. When her information began to check out, he felt he had to pay attention.
     "The way I look at it, I talk with lawyers, doctors, drug addicts, criminals and people on death row to get information. Why not talk with something that is alleged to be a spirit?"
     This is the second ghostbusting session at Mrs. Taylor's house. During a previous session, Ms. Baron determined that the spirit of Hugh Taylor III, Mrs. Taylor's husband who died last August, was lingering around the house.
     And the spirit of Mrs. Taylor's mother-in-law, Ella Taylor, had been lingering too. Ella died almost 30 years ago.
     "The reason houses are haunted," Ms. Baron says, "is because there is some kind of psychological disturbance, something that a dead person is still holding onto with that person that he's haunting.
     "Some people call them ghosts, but it really is vibrations. Like, if you had an argument with your mother. It would bother you because you love your mother. If she died, it would bother you even more because you couldn't talk to her. And it would really bother her because she couldn't reach you. On the other side, when you don't have a body any longer, you have all these feelings. You have nothing left except thought and love and hate. It bothers you so much that you try to make amends. And you do it any way you can."
     The spirits of the deceased who have these unfinished feelings are said to be earthbound spirits", Ms. Baron says. "They shake things. That's called a poltergeist when they start doing things around the house. Or sometimes they'll just put ideas in your head."
     During a previous ghostbusting session, the ghost of Mrs. Taylor's husband came through her and talked with her and their two sons. He asked his sons for forgiveness.
     Ms. Baron says she was able to guide his spirit as well as the spirit of his mother "Into the Light". The pounding noise, which had also been heard by Mrs. Taylor's son, Eugene, stopped. The hat stayed where it belonged.
     Mrs. Taylor thought her problems were solved, until the night her older son came over to watch two Elvis Presley movies on the VCR.
     "It got to be about 2:30, so he decided to stay the night," Mrs. Taylor says. "The next morning I came in here to turn off the light and I found that all of this had happened. This secretary here had been kept locked. It was always locked."
     Suddenly a bulb in an overhead lamp burns out. Everybody laughs nervously.
     Mrs. Taylor continues: "This sliding desktop had been pushed back as far as it would go without all of this stuff falling off of here. And this lampshade here, was turned around and tilted."
     Ms. Baron smiles and nods as Mrs. Taylor points at the evidence. "Let me get started," she says. "I want to walk through the house and see what vibrations I can feel."
     With Mrs. Taylor, her son Eugene, Comen and Michael following closely, Ms. Baron walks from room to room, stopping occasionally. to sit down and soak up the vibrations.
     First, she checks the laundry room where the pounding came from. "There's nothing here," she tells Mrs. Taylor. "Your husband is gone."
     Next, there's a sitting room in the front of the house that is being used for storage. It's filled with boxes and bags of antique glass bottles, old appliances and sundry bric-a-brac. It used to be the bedroom of Mrs. Tayor's father-in-law.
     Ms. Baron finds a chair and sits down. She closes her eyes. "I'm getting a strong impression from your mother-in-law," she says. "She may not be here, but I can still feel her vibes."
     The group moves into an adjoining room, which is also filled with storage items. "This was Oliver's room," Mrs. Taylor says.
     Ms. Baron falls on the floor and begins weeping like a child.
     "Oliver, what's the matter dear?" asks Mrs Taylor. She turns to Comen and says, "I think Oliver's taken over her. Oliver was my husband's mentally retarded brother. This was his room."
     Comen and Mrs. Taylor begin addressing Ms. Baron as Oliver.
     "We love you Oliver," says Mrs. Taylor.
     The weeping continues.
     "Let's go out and sit in the living room, Oliver. Maybe we can talk to your daddy."
     "He doesn't care about me at all," Ms. Baron whines. Her voice is high-pitched and childlike.
     "I know," Mrs. Taylor intones sympathetically. "He hasn't been very pleasant to you, has he? Your daddy wasn't good to you, was he?" The whimpering continues.
     "How about your mother? How about Ella? Was Ella good to you?"
     "She hated me," squeals Ms. Baron.
     "Oh, I'm so sorry," says Mrs. Taylor. "I didn't know that Ella hated you. Do you want to come out and have something cold to drink? You like Coca-Cola. Would you like to have a Coca-Cola?"
     After more comforting words from Mrs. Taylor, Ms. Baron rises to her feet and snaps back into her personality.
     The party returns to the living room and Ms. Baron sits in a chair that belonged to Oliver's father, Hugh Taylor Jr.
     Nothing. She had hoped to feel his vibrations in the chair. She feels nothing.
     Mrs. Taylor, who has been to channeling sessions at Ms. Baron's New Life Center, plays an audiocassette of a session. In the session, Ms. Baron, as St. Catherine, told Mrs. Taylor that her house was troubled by the earthbound spirit of a man who had mistreated his sons.
     The group listens to the tape while Ms. Baron handles Hugh Taylor Jr.'s sword, his family Bible and a number of other things. On the tape, St. Catherine had said something about a shaving mug so Eugene scurries off to the attic in search of the mug.
     He begins parading a succession of personal effects before Ms. Baron, reading glasses, change purses, a flag that was draped over Hugh's coffin, and two or three shaving brushes.
     No shaving mug can he found.
     Ms. Baron is unable to feel the man's vibrations in any of these things.
     "This is not as easy as it seems," says Ms. Baron, "When we came over here before, we went right to it. They just took right over. But it's not always that easy."
     Ms. Baron says she won't he able to rid the house of Oliver's spirit until contact with the spirit of his father is made. Father and son, both long dead, have to work these things out before going "into the light."
     She decides she won't he able pick up the father's vibrations during this session. It will close with Ms. Baron going into a trance and summoning the spirit of St. Catherine.
     Reclining on cushions that have been spread out on the living room floor, Ms. Baron closes her eyes and begins praying. "Dear Father, I ask you to forgive me of all my sins. Let your Holy Spirit come through and give us the information that will help us to rid any kind of anxieties from the persons who live bere...I also ask that you remove any anxieties or blocks that I may have."
     Ms. Baron begins singing the hymn, "Sweet Hour of Prayer." Her eyes close and her breathing slows.
     "Hi Catherine, how's it going tonight?," says Comen. We appreciate you coming down. We're trying to help Mrs. Taylor with her problem here in this house. I've got three or four questions, then if you could answer any questions she might have so we could figure out what we're dealing with here.
     "The first question is: We kind of want to get an idea, with Oliver in the other room, what can we do to get him out, or send him on his way?"
     "He's scared," Ms. Baron (St. Catherine) answers. "This cannot be done without a lot of prayer and meditation."
     Then Comen asks if the father has reincarnated into another family member.
     "No, he has not," says the medium.
     "He took over the body of this young man many, many years ago and has been living through him all of these years. But there are two separate entities there. There are two souls that have never been blended. Therefore, the young man is filled with turmoil and he does not know where it comes from. There are actually two personalities in this young man. He is a beautiful soul and he needs to go on and be his own person. But he cannot do that until he rids himself of this man. This man is tired and weary. This man's wife has gone on."
     "How can the young man rid himself of this other spirit?" Comen asks.
     "He must allow Elizabeth to speak with him. Not his mother, not his brother. But allow her speak with him. At first he will be a little bit reluctant to believe, but with prayer and meditation surrounding him with God's ligbt, this will all be taken care of in a very short time."
     Mrs. Taylor starts asking questions. "Elizabeth, Do you have a message for me?"
     There is nothing but silence.
     "Elizabeth, why can't you..."
     "Catherine, Catherine," Comen reminds Mrs. Taylor.
     "Excuse me. St. Catherine, do you have a message for me?"
     "My child, there is somuch turmoil within you that you have not allowed, you've got to let go. Meditate on a daily basis, sending the light into the top of your head and throughout your body.
     "Once you find peace of mind within yourself, then you will find the God within you. You will find that you will be able to care for anyone and everyone."
     The medium goes on to tell Mrs. Taylor to pray in every room of the house, to surround the house with God's white light.
     "You must rid yourself of all memories that are here. The best thing for you to do would he to move into another home. For then, that would be your home. This has never been your home. It has heen someone else's, always."
     The medium reminds Mrs. Taylor that she can only make suggestions. "You have your free will," she says. "I don't want to take that away from you."
     When the session is over, Ms. Baron promises to come back another night and help remove the spirits of Oliver and his father. She doesn't charge Mrs. Taylor for this work.
     "It's still in the investigative stages, this ghostbusting stuff," say Ms. Baron. "So I never charge anyone for this kind of work. When I do a reading, that is my profession and I know I'm competent at it, so I charge. But we're just learning about this other stuff. I do it because I care about people."