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(This picture is a possible apparition of Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain. Read this blog for the story.)

Last night, I posted this note to myself on twitter at about 2:10 am: Making a note to remind myself in the morning. Knocking on the kitchen wall and window. Asked it to stop and it obeyed. Said Lawrence and a big bang on the wall followed. Investigate for heating ducts tomorrow.

I didn’t get much sleep last night, to say the least. I’m well accustomed to various entities passing through and trying to get my attention. A long time ago, I learned to tune it out at night, otherwise I would never get any sleep. Some souls, however, know how to get my attention even when I try to “turn off” my intuitive senses. My grandfather, Sam Jewett (nicknamed Brick), is one of them. My great-grandmother, Esther Dobberteen, is another. A couple of soldiers I’ve picked up along the way can also get past my intuitive block, and Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain being the most persistent among them due to our previous relationships and his choice not to reincarnate with this generation. His occasional presence in my life and my willingness to talk about it opened me to ridicule a long time ago and I have accepted that. It doesn’t bother me anymore. In other people’s shoes, I would probably give me the side eye too. On the other hand, my connection to Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain (I was his wife in a previous life as written in the book Unveiled: Fanny Chamberlain Reincarnated) has taught me to not be so judgmental of other people’s paranormal experiences. If it can happen to me, it can happen to anyone.

Last night was an interesting encounter. I went to bed around 12:30 am and I watched television while I waited for my grandmother to get herself into bed too. I ended up getting sucked into the movie For the Boys and I was awake longer than I intended. The house was perfectly still when I turned off the television around 1:40 am and I rolled on my back to do my nightly meditation ritual. Almost immediately, knocking rapped out from my kitchen wall and the glass panes of the kitchen window. At first, I ignored it, passing it off as the house settling or some other natural noise. Just as I had that thought, there was more knocking on the window panes, only louder. Still, I ignored it. After about ten minutes of ignoring it, the knocking got so loud that I jumped and I was afraid it was going to wake up my grandmother across the house.

“Stop! You’re going to wake her!” I blurted without thinking.

Immediately, the knocking stopped and even though I was very doubtful that the noise was anything but my house popping and settling, I did think it was odd that natural popping and settling stopped the second I told it to stop. I decided to test it just to make myself feel better.

“Who’s there?”

No response. I was fairly satisfied that it wasn’t anything paranormal, but after a few minutes, I still hadn’t shaken the feeling that someone was in the room with me.

“Lawrence?”

Immediately, I got a response of softer knocking on the window the way someone would knock if they were trying to be quiet. I don’t like to jump to conclusions though. My mind ran through every natural possibility for the knocking but I couldn’t figure out how a natural occurrence was responding to verbal commands. At that point, my dog, who had been asleep at my side, jumped up and ran to the living room as if someone had called her even though I didn’t hear anything. It was dark, so I couldn’t see what my dog was doing in the living room, but after a minute or two, she came back to bed and went to sleep again.

I rolled over on my side facing the living room, resolved that I wasn’t going to be able to figure out what was going on until today. Frankly, it was after 2 am and I was very tired, even for a rare encounter with Lawrence. Just as I settled, I heard three footsteps near the divide between the living room and the place where I sleep, which is hardwood floor. Not only did I hear clear footsteps but the sound was that distinct clopping of old boots (his boots are pictured). I felt energy in the room as well. Then I was fairly convinced that it was Lawrence dropping in for a visit. People who spend enough time with me know exactly what the boots sound like because they have heard it too. My mother has seen boots walking by her in reflections as well. I suspect boots from that period are such a distinctive sound that he and other soldiers use it to make themselves known. The sound is comforting to me in a way that is not entirely in the here and now, as if I found the sound comforting in that time as well. The sound of his boots on the floor meant he was home.

I could not find any reason why there would be knocking on that part of the wall or the window when I checked things out this morning. Last night I even waited for the heat to kick on but no strange sounds happened when it did, nor were there any strange sounds when the refrigerator motor kicked on too. If someone runs water upstairs, the pipe makes noise on the other side of the house, not on the window pane in the kitchen. There aren’t any trees brushing up against the house either. There are delicate vines. Either the vines turned evil and tried to bust through the window or something paranormal happened. Was it Lawrence? Well, all the indications said it was him. Without a big blinking sign or him saying, “Hello! It’s Lawrence!” there will always be detractors and skeptics. That’s okay. I tried everything I knew to find a natural explanation and I couldn’t find one. This has happened a few times before this year but I always dismissed it. Last night, however, Lawrence or whomever it was, refused to be dismissed and ignored. I can be a little bit stubborn sometimes!