…….A young, middle-aged woman, while confined to her home suffering the ravages of a nasty cold she contracted from her spouse, spends long, cough filled days in her recliner, binge streaming scores of episodes of a program she recently discovered on Netflix called, “The Dead Files”. The series chronicles the paranormal investigations of physical medium Amy Allan and her partner, Steve DiSchiavi, a retired NYC cop, as they respond to requests from desperate people seeking answers to unexplained paranormal occurrences in their homes and businesses. The two work independently, coming together only at the end with remarkably similar findings. Is it proof of spirits living amongst us, or just a carefully choreographed hoax designed to mislead the viewer? Come, explore with me in the Twilight (of cold meds) Zone…..
Yes, I am the ailing body with toes pointing towards my contact to the outside and in this case, the other world. Almost everyone who know me well accepts the fact that along with my deep spiritual belief in God, I also firmly believe in angels, and allow for the possibility of a host of other types of beings unseen by the average person. Programs like this attract me and entertain my mind. That being said, I’d like to switch gears here and focus on a very much human part of this equation; the people who feel these entities sharing their homes and the effect that this belief, real or imagined could have on a family or individual.
As a part of Steve and Amy’s investigation, family members, including the children, are asked to describe what they have been experiencing. One little boy, about seven, sat on his bed, his legs swinging, telling about the person who visits him at night. Another, a girl, spoke of a little girl who played in her closet. Both said they never shared what happened at home with their friends. I wondered what it would be like for these children to live their everyday lives holding such potentially socially explosive information under wraps.
Remember those kids in school who, although they seemed pretty normal, seemed to make it a point to become part of the woodwork, never doing anything that could in any way bring attention onto themselves? They just seemed sad. Their body language said, don’t come any closer, like an invisible wall protecting them. The question is from what?
In the lexicon of my childhood, there was really nothing I could identify as a reason for this kind of behavior. I could understand shyness because I was painfully shy, but in my shyness I always felt open to anyone making that first move. I understood sadness. I’d lost pets and known kids who’d lost their grandparents and even a parent. As a child I feared losing my parents. I understood illness. As the oldest member of my family and therefore being the first child to enter the germ pool that surrounds elementary schools, I pioneered most of the horrible childhood viruses that have been replaced by vaccines. I was a pro at knowing what it felt like to sick. The only thing worse than losing a parent to death when I was a kid was having your parents divorce. It just didn’t happen very often and the stigma on children was very real.
The things I had no frame of reference for are the things a child could suffer I have become aware of in my adulthood. Sadly, I now know just what kinds of fears a child could be hiding behind an invisible wall, abuse, gun violence, substance abuse, sexual abuse, ear of abuse; both physical and sexual, the pain of a family deteriorating, the uncertainty of sexual orientation, the pain of being hungry or even homeless and worse of all, the fear for personal safety. These are all things that most certainly existed in my childhood, to some degree, but they were not visible to me. I wonder how many of the quiet kids in school who appeared to be suffering from youthful insecurities were in fact suffering far worse. I have no idea what a scrawny little kid in braces could have done to make their lives more bearable, but I hope just as fervently that I’d didn’t make them any worse.
As for “The Dead Files”, don’t judge me. I don’t make fun of most of the country spending their Sundays watching grown men jump on each other in tight-fitting clothing. Okay, so maybe I do, just a little!