Every true story should start with a Who, a What, a Where, a When, a How and a Why if known. Alas, to avoid having a hex put on me or sued for defamation (if that’s even possible in this case), I will leave out specifics. Why, you ask?

I recently went to a small strip mall to buy a designer donut. Whoever thought that there would be designer donuts? The first time I heard of such a thing is when Dunkin Donuts opened up. My parents would have pitched a fit if they had lived to see a donut costing $2.59 but that’s what I had paid for a rather large, disintegrate the minute you bite into it chocolate covered Bavarian creme. As I left the store to get back to my truck I spied a sign in a window that said “Tea and Tarot”. I used to be a HUGE devourer of the Cozy Mystery series. One good thing that has come out of this tale is I discovered the mystery series by Kirsten Weiss. Hopefully, the library has purchased Tea and Tarot. The promo sounds fantastic!

Thinking there really might be a place as cozy as all the Cozy Mystery books portray, I opened the door and stepped into a huge retail space with very little merchandise, a couch with a very old lady at one end, a large coffee table with no sign of a teapot in sight, and a chair with a late middle aged, bleached blond. My first thought was how on earth can this business make a profit. Commercial rent is astronomical. There was a cash register and counter a good 12 feet from the door, four-five shelf units and a kind of bookcase in the rear, a bathroom, and what looked like a massage or reiki room and that’s it. There was a sparse offering off books, tarot cards, a few crystals, and not much of the usual paraphernalia.

My favorite crystal shop in Salt Lake City just expanded. The main room has floor to ceiling displays with so many crystals for sale there is almost a glare from all the glittering offerings. They have professional lightening and low volume music that lulls you into an alpha brain wave state. There’s incense and the tinkling of windchimes and they have so many books and expensive meditation musical instruments – cue example – that you could get the urge to take out a home equity loan!

The store where I was told to get my things and LEAVE NOW was nothing like Sacred Energy Empowerment Center and the staff couldn’t hold a candle snuffer to Janet! So, WHAT happened? Well, as soon as I got through the door, the blond started in with the usual fake psychic fake nice hello routine. The older lady was quite striking and she told me two fascinating stories of paranormal experiences. The blond reminded me so much of an episode from Absolutely Fabulous that I will let the clips speak for themselves.

And just in case you are like I am and you don’t know your fashion designers, I searched for the transcript. You can thank me in the comments below.

I love old cheesecloth!

That’s Nicole Farhi. Could you put.

In case I have not YET made my point there are two more videos to drive home the point. As a side note, when I first discovered JP, the late Notorious Doc decided I had to ABSOLUTELY watch the Bondi Hipsters. I did! I wrote to JP on Facebook and I wrote to the Bondi Hipsters and suggested that when JP made his annual trip to Australia that they all meet up. They did and I got a thank you from both set of comedians. I think that’s cool. JP is now so famous, I doubt he would have had time to read my message.

The octogenarian didn’t look healthy and the blond kept dabbing her eyes with a facial tissue which had out served its purpose long before I arrived. The blond was also a fidgeter and she’d stand up, then sit, then smile, and then looked oh so pained, then act like she had just remembered where she had left her checkbook. 

A mother and daughter came into the store by accident. They were trying to find a place to wait in the air conditioning until an appointment elsewhere. That gave me a chance to hear a ghost story from the older lady. I’ll post that in its own post. What happened later after the mother and daughter left was very odd. A woman I had met two weeks prior elsewhere in town came in and I thought OMG what are the odds! And it is this woman that triggered a lot of research into reiki and chakras and woo.

This woman I will not describe because it would be too cruel to put into words. Think of the scene about a boggart. I didn’t realize until just this second after a brief introduction, something in me snapped and I burst out laughing. In my mind I saw a boulder creature that existed about a million years ago. She had a very, very old soul but not one you’d ever want to meet. I said, OMG “You’re SO OLD!” Instead of asking me what i meant, she took an immediate offense despite the fact that I was trying to gain control of myself as I said, “no no for Pete’s sake we’re about the same age, it’s your SOUL! She still was appeared miffed. “The last time I saw you was a million years ago!” Flat affect response.

After I met that woman, I discovered that she had blocked me on Facebook so when she came into the store, I was rather creeped out. I do not know how long she was in the back corner but it seemed like a half hour. She then said, so we could all hear it, “I need help getting out”, and the shop clerk rushed over and they were then outside in the parking lot for a very long time. When the shop clerk came back in, I thought well, all the fishing around for confirmation for your intuition, let’s see if you can “see” an answer. I asked a question and with that was told

“You need to get your things and leave now!”

“What?”
“As a representative of the owners of the store, I need to ask you to leave now!”

“What did I do?”

“Get your things and leave!”

I looked at the old lady who had a blank expression. I got my orange juice bottle, my bag, and stood up and walked straight to the door. As I opened it one of them said “Have a safe trip”.

I fussed about writing this up until last week when another of the women I met at the other business sent me a text using Vanish Mode in Facebook Messenger. I did know such a thing existed. As I scrolled to read it, it vanished! Facebook let’s you send whatever and then deletes it like some sort of “Get Smart”, self-destructing cassette tape in “Mission Impossible”!

What is said was that I was to stop going around “stealing” energy and if I didn’t stop I’d have to “deal with her”. WHAT THE BLEEP?

What I had asked about was something I found very disturbing. This woman, not the blond, had claimed she could SEE chakras. Yes, SEE chakras. And all my colors were way off. My throat was red, I had a white beam of light coming out of my right eye and no light coming out of the left, and on and on it went. She claimed she could see spirits of deceased relatives and entities around me.

BUT THERE”S MORE TO THE STORY!

After I left the store, I drove for about an hour and stopped in a trading post. The fellow there said that the town I had just been to was a creepy town and no one likes it. Odd you should say that I said and I launched into my story. His smile was huge as he said, “MY NIECE got thrown out of there last year”? “Really”? “Next to the donut shop”? “THE VERY ONE”, I said.

HIs niece had gone in to get advice about a VERY bad day and got told to leave. As we compared notes, they all assumed it was because the niece is very dark skinned and a Native American. Nope, I said. Cause I’m well, white. We both thought for a minute and then figured they were fake psychics. And there’s nothing a fake psychic hates more in this world is someone who really IS psychic.

So, I returned home and did MORE research. This is a FANTASTIC article by a Sanskrit scholar with whom I really want to study with when I can afford his courses. The video is by a corporate lawyer who has one of the best blogs I’ve ever read.

And the last two videos – a summary of Hulu’s “Shut Eye” and a clip from my all time favorite show, Bewitched, to lighten the mood.

I’ll post the ghost stories later in the week. They were almost worth the discomfort of hearing “LEAVE NOW”.

UPDATED September 3, 2022 – Video clips had to be remade to avoid copyright infringement. YouTube’s flagging algorithm is inconsistent.