This post is not part of A Woman of Substances but I throught I throw in a vignette from my life after getting sober for your enjoyment.
My mother died in 1998. In 2010 I got this message from her over the Ouji Board. Still on my case to get a job. My career had imploded by this point and I assembled a group of friends to do weekly seances called OUIJA WEDNESDAYS. I was at the lowest point in my life, I’d lost everything, so naturally I thought: “Why not talk to dead people?” Well they ended up coming through. I dropped a hankie in the afterlife and a whole crowd of ghosts came running to pick it up.Not just my mother, but friends and relatives of other attendees and randam ghosts came through—- for example, Hoagy Carmichael. I mean come on, only I would end up speaking with Hoagy Carmichael from the great beyond. I also spoke with my dead cat Trinky who apparently can talk on the other side of the veil.
I started holding these seances because my parents used to have seances in order to reach my my father’s dead son Barton (my half brother) who was killed at five years old. I’ve mentioned in the book that my parents had told me, when I was no more than five, that Barton’s ghost—real as Banquo’s— lived in the house with us. I became a drug addict. Those two sentences sum up my life story. Full stop.
My parents made homemade Ouija Boards, I did the same when I invited that small group of friends over. I held these seances to prove my parents wrong. Well that’s not what happened at all.
Did you ever hear from Toby? Woof.