Paranormal Experiences: My first encounters and how it affected my life

National Paranormal Day allows those of us who believe a day to reflect on the paranormal happenings. When I first developed CircleofQi.com I was reluctant to tell my own paranormal experiences because I feared what people would think.  Soon after I learned that people were accepting of my experiences and even advised me that most of them are in fact messages from the other side that I need to be listening to.  So this May 3, 2020, I will tell the full story of how I became aware of paranormal existence in my own life.

On or about the age of 6 or 7 I was experiencing bouts of sleepwalking, or in my case sleep riding.  We were stationed at a Naval base in Tennessee and we had been there about six or seven months when I began sleepwalking and one night I was found outside riding my bike around the neighborhood.  I don’t recall the experience myself, only the stories my mother told me growing up.  We lived in a trailer on the base and this trailer was a place that carried some energy.  We moved this trailer from a park outside the base onto the base in the mid-1980s.

While off base in the trailer park events and activities are embedded in my memories for life.  It was here that I met the infamous Prince Mongo before he was the prince.  We had block parties and things at times go a little wild. My parents were in their late twenties early thirties, unlike my friends.  One summer I remember a block party where someone had an ice cream truck in our cul-de-sac and someone started shooting fireworks and somehow the truck was either hit or someone used the truck as a base, but the truck caught fire.  Since my father was a firefighter, luckily he got things under control.  But that night also brought out energies that stayed with me for a while.

Later that fall I remember me and my friends playing in the woods near the house and it felt like someone was following us.  I never recall anyone approaching us, but it was eerie and uncomfortable for me.  For a while, after this, my sleepwalking would intensify.  Like most sleepwalkers, I don’t recall the actual events, but in some cases, I do recall the feelings during the time before and after.  I remember being in my bed and looking out the door to the hallway and seeing a tall mass of what appeared as a man in a top hat.  This presence would carry over onto the base in this same trailer.  This presence was never frightening but I was leery.  This presence continued for years thereafter.  Only visually, nothing else.

Then at age 10 or 11 another sleep-riding incident happened on the base and thereafter, I remember, the presence of that man began appearing more often.  It was mostly in times when I had something big happening.  The first experience outside the trailer was later that summer. I was starting my first summer on the swim team where I competed in meets and Mom would carry me from town to town surround the Memphis area.  One time we were going to the Germantown meet and we were leaving the base and driving up Highway 177 (now known as Germantown Parkway) and we were crossing into Germantown city limits when I felt someone touch my shoulder while I was in the car.  I flinched but I didn’t show a reaction.  I looked around and thought oh it’s just my brother messing with me.

Then as we arrived at the event center I went into the locker room to get my swimsuit on. While I was changing I felt another tap on my shoulder.  Now I am slightly alarmed. These were the first times I had ever felt the presence physically.  I looked around, there is no one else in the room.  Then in the shower stall just to my left, I saw the shadow of the man with the top hat, I heard him say, “You are going to do a great job.  Swim strong.”  At 10-years-old I was petrified to hear this and then even more when the presence just disappeared after speaking.  While I competed that day I would see the presence around the pool area.

In 1992(ish) my dad was sent to do a tour overseas for 12 months. I was about 12 or 13 years old then and I recall being very angry at mom for dad’s leaving.  I told her, “I hate you, it’s your fault dad is gone.” She never reacted at that moment but our relationship was definitely different after that.  I would have rage toward her for the smallest of things and I would test my limits.  I recall a few times she grounded me and a couple of times I was slapped in the face, but nothing too bad that would leave a mark in my mind.

Dad was still overseas when we were transferred to the Virginia area for his next assignment.  We would pack everything up, a moving company would move the trailer and we were off.  During the time we were packing I don’t recall the presence appearing.  It wasn’t until we were at the new location that he appeared for the first time in about seven or eight months. I made new friends and we began exploring our surroundings on the base.  A creek flowed through the trailer park and we used to play in that area and from time to time this presence appeared.  It was always as if he was just there to watch over me while my parents were not around.

We stayed in the trailer, I believe, two years. My parents sold it and then we moved into base housing quarters. These quarters were near a cemetery but that meant nothing to me.  I don’t recall much happening here until my dog was attacked by a neighborhood dog and I was skittish thereafter.  After the dog attack, random things happened; flickering lights, random sounds, visual apparitions, and then the man in the top hat.  Now I am about 14 years old and I began reading Edgar Alan Poe in school and his poems and stories were eerie to most, but I was drawn to his work.  The more I read the more I wanted to read.

We stayed in this house, I believe, a couple more years before we were transferred to Texas (1995 ish).   It was my time in Texas when my memories began as far as activity in my life.  This would have been after my maternal grandfather died and my other grandparents were now very much part of my life.  Strangely, I don’t recall much of my first few months in Texas while in junior high school, but once I entered high school I have lots of memories.

It was my sophomore year of high school when I began hanging out with a diverse group of kids. Some were skaters, some were jocks, some were band geeks, and some were just your run of muck kids.  Seems like every day I was somewhere and we were acting up.  I don’t recall the exact details but I do recall me being with my friends at someone’s house while their parents were out of town and in the back room of that house some other kids were smoking weed and playing with an ouija board.  I stayed my distance for fear of the ouija board, but later that night I remember seeing an apparition.  It wasn’t my normal man with the top hat, it was a woman.  She appeared in a white linen dress, dark eyes, long dark hair, and was disheveled.  She scared me at first.

“Who was this woman, why is she appearing to me,” I said to myself. I left the house and walked down the street, the woman appeared near a pond close to the house. “Who are you, what do you want,” I asked.  She pointed to the house across from where I was standing and disappeared.  That eerie exchange startled me enough to take myself home and clear my head.

I had several encounters over the years and at times I was scared but mostly I felt connected to the angels and spirits of my ancestors.  While we were in Texas my mother and I began our studies of various Native American tribes and this led me to believe these spirits were merely messages that I needed to absorb over my life.

My senior year of high school we moved back to the Memphis area and I finished high school. During the summer of 2000, while I was in college, I had reconnected with my childhood best friend, who was also a military child. We made plans for her to stay with my family when she arrived.  The morning she was leaving from the east Tennessee area around 6 am I remember being awakened with fear and sweating a lot and crying, screaming about what just happened.  My mother came to console me to calm me down and a few hours later we were shaken by a call from her mother telling us she was killed in a car accident.  Coincidentally, the accident happened at roughly 6:05 am.  I mourned her passing for days, however, I never attended her funeral. We were like sisters for all our lives and her death shook me to my core.

Soon after that my family moved into the last house my parents lived and my brother now lives.  This is the last home I spent with my parents before moving back to Texas for college.  During the time in their home, I resided upstairs in what I felt was my own wing separate from the main living space.  At night I recall waking up and staring down the stairs in the hallway that led to the guest room and my mom’s office and I would see the man with the top hat. I also recall several instances of random things falling or sounds at night. The most awkward moment would not come until years later after my dad passed away.

While I had the man with the hat inserting his presence into my life for many years it wasn’t until I was in college that I named him Tom.  I just got the urge one day to say, “Hello Tom, I hear you and I welcome your messages. Thank you for connecting.”

These experiences over for more than 15 years led me to ask questions about the paranormal. I was later indulging in television programs that talked about ghosts, the paranormal, the demonic, and event studying people that had similar experiences.  Years passed and I would acknowledge various experiences, but it was in 2012 a few months prior to my mother’s death after a 9-year battle with cancer that things got very serious for me.

What happened in 2011-2015 that led to me putting the Circle of Qi tribe together and talking about my experiences?  If you want to know more, subscribe to my email and join the Circle of Qi news to learn more about my personal journey with the paranormal.