When I was growing up, I had a really good friend who was/is an artist. She's the ultimate foundation of every artistic character I have ever written in my books, and I learned a great deal about art and the minds of artists during our long-running friendship.
She knew my house had issues. Okay, that's a euphemism. She knew my house was fricking haunted. Undaunted, she stayed overnight frequently and at one point, during our college years, moved in for a few weeks due to circumstances. She told me, after she moved back out, that she didn't sleep much while she was there. My bedroom was on the second floor, just to the left of the top of the staircase. At night, while I was out like the proverbial light, she said that she would hear the basement door almost directly my room swing open, and then she would hear footsteps that came from the basement stairs, walked through the hall to the staircase leading to the second floor, climbed those stairs, and then arrived right outside my bedroom, where they would STOP. She assured me that I slept through this every night, and she heard it just about every night. One time when she felt that whatever was out there was trying to enter my room, she woke me up and heard me say, "It's okay. Just go back to sleep." And so she did. The only problem is that she found out later, while talking about to me, that I had 1) never heard her call my name that night and 2) never woke up to say any such thing to reassure her. WEIRD.
When we got to college, she started at the same university in Chicago that I did, but eventually went out to school in California for a degree in art. And she told me that the apartment she rented "had issues." (We know all about those.) She heard voices. Now, before you decide this was schizophrenia or anything related to psychosis, let me assure you that her mental health was just fine. But she did hear voices. They called her name. They had conversations in the next room that she could only just hear. They freaked her out. And that was when she introduced me to the concept of having clairaudience. "It's like clairvoyance, but with hearing instead of sight," she explained.
If you Google "clairaudience" or "clairaudient", you will find a whole slew of articles that come up on the topic. Some of them include indicators that you might have the ability. For instance, talking to yourself is a big indicator. So is having a deep connection to music. And so is hearing footsteps and knockings and things like that around your house. Hmmm. All three of those fit me pretty well. I just never thought of myself as having that ability. And thank God I don't hear someone calling my name, because that would be about my limit. Yes, I survived seeing a dead Union soldier, and yes, I deal with the noises and restlessness in the house when I'm working on my books. But having someone call my name would result in me pulling a J.K. Rowling and writing the rest of my work at a crowded coffee shop in braod daylight. Seriously.
There are noises around my house that I can't explain. Even Jim has heard them. My daughter and I (she of the clairvoyance, when it comes to dead people) frequently hear the same thing, like the footsteps of a child running through the house when there was no child around to do so. There were also noises in the house where I grew up; those were a given. Whether or not I would attribute clairaudient ability to myself, well, the jury is still out on that.
I'd put the links to some of those relevant articles into this blog, but I haven't learned how to do that yet on Blogger. (Can we say "Techno-doof"?) But if you go and read any of them, you might be surprised at how many of the signs and symptoms of clairaudient ability fit you, too.
So, if you do Google the topic and read the articles, and if those indicators match up with you, come back and let me know, and we can swap stories!
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