“Die by fire!” We all yelled, eyes closed, bible in hand, but I sense no danger. Attending different church revivals with my mum in Nigeria, a superstitious and religious society has made me aware there are possibilities outside the realm of our physical world.
Grandma passed in 1995. I was watching a movie in the parlor when I saw a white shadow in the passage. I froze.
She had lived with us for months before she got sick and passed. I asked my brother if he saw anything strange in the passage but he chastised me for asking a stupid question.
Years later, while living with my uncle after his wife passed, I would often dream about his wife telling me to help her take care of her kids. But I had no earnings. I was shaken to the reality after my aunt said my two-year-old niece told her that her late mum always carried her at night. My niece slept next to me.
My job as a TV producer was fun until my boss fell ill from diabetes and typhoid. He shrunk from a size 20 to a size 0 in just a few days. Death embraced him.
His burial was on a Friday and mourners were shocked to see his hands shaking in the coffin. The next Monday, I received a call from a journalist who claimed my late boss had given him my number on Friday at the Nigeria-Benin Republic border to book an appointment for them to meet at the office.
Why would a buried man give a living person my phone number?
Hilarious to my colleagues, traumatizing to me. He sometimes appeared in my dreams telling me that he is not dead but hiding. A week later, a woman turned up at our workplace claiming to be his baby’s mother and shared how she would dream about him telling her that he is not dead but hiding.
My best friend’s mum appeared in my dream. She believed me because my description of her mum was exact and I told her where she said she was going. “That is the place she was buried,” my friend said, hugged me and burst into tears.
From local descry to international drama, ghosts seem to locate me.
I was excited to visit South Africa for the first time thinking no dead roam there, how wrong I was. Showering, I saw a dark shadow spectral reaching out to touch me. I screamed “blood of Jesus” and it flew away.
My guest ran to the bathroom, bewildered. “Ghost! Ghost!,” she said.
That was proof it was not my imagination. Other neighbors shared their encounters with the “ghost”. No tenant ever stayed up to a month in that building. A neighbor shared that some tenants move out the day after an experience with the spirit, yet the landlord was not willing to perform exorcism rites to cleanse the building.
“Ghosts only appear in the bathroom to hurt people,” a prophet told me in church when I shared I felt the ghost was lonely.
Swaziland was memorable with no ghost bumping. Sound asleep, suddenly, my eyes opened and I saw my host’s sister creeping. I told her to leave the room and went back to snore. Surprising myself, my eyes opened again, and I caught her straight in the act, dipping her hands inside my bag, to take my money. The stealing was foiled.
Another sleeping occurrence was at a friend’s place which made me wonder about my psychical abilities. Snoring, I suddenly opened my eyes to see her older brother trying to quietly pull off my wrapper with one hand and take a naked picture of me with his other hand. My eyes shone at him, he trembled, and scampered away. Apparently, he was shocked I woke to catch him in the act.
He tried, he failed, I conquered.
Some have called me “witch,” others a “possessed marine spirit,” but I call myself a “daughter of Zion.”
How do I harness those experiences? I can comprehend some incidents were at my benefit, but not the mission of the spirits, because the dead should not have any business with the living.
Despite my awareness of science and technology, it has not erased the fact that there is life outside the physical realm, and it has nothing to do with growing up in a superstitious and religious society.
