Ghosts in the Margins
“Why do you always write that spooky stuff?” That’s what my grandma once asked me years ago—a beautiful Southern belle whose worldview was the complete opposite of spooky; focused on the importance of family, good cooking, and being kind to others… I miss her so much!
When she asked me that question, I simply smiled and said, “I just love the spooky stuff, Grandma.”
But the truth runs much deeper than that.
Ever since I was a child, I’ve had recurring encounters with the supernatural—real experiences that would chill you to the bone.
All my life, I’ve heard my name whispered from the shadows, or felt a feather-soft touch from the other side. The watchers and talkers, the wanderers and the anchored, the strangers and the familiar—all reaching for someone who will listen to them, share their message or heed their warnings.
My favorite encounter has always been the one that came with solid proof and witnesses….
The spirit of an old medicine man began visiting me regularly when I was young. I’d see him in the twilight shadows, or hear him in daylight, and then meet him in dreams. In one particular dream, he held out a ceremonial bowl and said it had belonged to me in another lifetime. I took it and examined the strange design: an almond-shaped eye, with a square iris and a circular pupil. It had two marks that crossed one side of the sclera vertically, and one that crossed the other side in the same way. I’d never seen anything like it. I became obsessed—I started recreating that eye in all of my artwork. It resonated so deeply in my soul, an echo from the other side.
My brother-in-law noticed. He saw this unusual design appearing repeatedly in my drawings, my paintings, my beadwork. Finally, he asked, “Why do you keep drawing that same weird eye over and over?” So, I told him about my dream. He laughed and called me weird. But I was used to that.
About a week later, he showed up unexpectedly on my porch. I opened the door, assuming he was there for his brother, but he wasn’t. He held out his hand and said: “I think this belongs to you.”
That morning, while beach-combing along the bayou, he had found something more incredible than any spearhead or fossil that he’d ever come across in his wanderings—It was a pottery shard, carved with the exact eye from my dream. Every odd detail. Every line. It was MY eye.
That was a pivotal moment for me. The girl with secret ghosts had finally been seen…by a living witness and by something more. The eye was sent as a reminder and it echoed with the label the medicine man had given me—Spirit Walker.
Ghosts aren’t just stories, or things that go bump in the night. Not for me. They are family. They are memory. They are grief and love—woven into porch rails and attic beams, tucked beneath floorboards, curled around the core of my soul. This is who I am and this is why I tell stories the way I do—to honor the ones who walk with us unseen and to understand them a little better. And sometimes… simply to make peace with the fragments of memories they’ve left me with.
The Pottery Eye:
Found on Choctawhatchee Bayou
in Choctaw Beach, Florida
P.S. I still keep this eye with me. It’s been over twenty years now, but that deep resonance has never gone away. It might just be a shard of clay to most people—but I know better.
Some truths are carved before we remember them— a living echo of what was and still is.
