Part 1 of 2

I would like to tell you some stories. Stories of the land, stories of our predecessors, stories of healing.

As I have been traveling across the the surface of mother earth, sleeping so close to her in the back of my car, she has begun to call me to lands that need healing work. Much like people land has a history that is not always pleasant, sometime the very ground holds the memory of this history; invisibly scarring the earth’s surface in the same way that people can be invisibly scarred by traumatic events. In the same way I am called to offer shamanic bodywork to people, I too am called to heal the land. These are some of her stories.

CHIRICUAHUA
It was twilight as Yeshua, my lover and I were heading to the campsite at the base of Chiricauhua Canyon. As Yeshua drove through the desolate flat land leading up to the canyon, an ancient race of beings revealed themselves to me. I started seeing little black spots out of the corners of my eyes. It was as if I had looked at the sun too long producing little amebic-like black spots in my sight. Only I definitely was not looking at the sun and the black spots where much bigger then sun spots. They ranged in size from around 4 feet to 8 feet high. I alerted Yeshua to what I was seeing and he slowed down so we both could tune in.

These shadowy beings were ancient and connected with the Chiricuahau land, their energy felt very alien, it was obvious they were not human. I could feel their immense pain. They were wailing “WHY?!?!?!?!?” An atrocity had befallen them, raped the land that was also them. These beings were not the land but were, perhaps an extension of the land. They weren’t angry but their searing pain had taken them to a state of confusion; wanting, needing to know -why.-

Their intense pleading question reminded me of an experience I had had with a ghost years before. I used to work as a guide for Austin Ghost Tours. One of the many haunted locations spoken about by Austin Ghost Tours is the Driskill Hotel and one of the many ghosts at the Driskill Hotel was the ghost of the screaming women.

There is a ghost who haunts the walk in freezer at the Driskill Hotel. At the time when this ghost was a living person this area of the Driskill was probably just a dark corner of the kitchen and it just so happened that the Driskill decided to put the walk in freezer exactly where she haunts. This haunting occurred so frequently that the old staff members would make up an excuse to send the new staff members to the walking in freezer, alone, late at night.

“Hey, I forgot to grab the ice cream” they’d say, “would you run and get it for me?”

As the unsuspecting new employ entered the walk in freezer more often than not a woman would appear right in front of them and scream. Only there wouldn’t be any sound to her screaming. It was an image of a woman, in complete terror, screaming. We, at Austin Ghost Tours used to not know anything about her other then the experiences the staff shared with us. I had always liked telling the story of the screaming woman and would do so every tour.

One summer the screaming women became quite active. The medium, Michaela Torasco happened to join my tour that summer. The day after her tour she wrote an email sharing, “I had a few encounters last evening. . .The 2nd encounter happened when we were getting ready to enter the hotel. I heard a woman screaming in terror. . . When the guide [Alexsondra] shared the story about the screaming woman, it landed that this was who I was hearing.” One of my coworkers had a tour guest filming her tour and when the guest entered the Driskill you could hear the faint sound of a woman or child screaming in the background of the film. Finally, on another one of my tours a teenager fainted while in the Driskill. Later that night, a woman on the tour told me she had originally been standing on the spot where the boy fainted. While in that spot she had felt hot, dizzy, and heard screaming in her head so she moved, only to have the teenage boy take her place.

The medium, Michaela offered to come into Austin (from Wisconsin) and do a private session at the Driskill with myself and my co-worker Monica Ballard.We chose a quiet night to meet. As Michaela started to “tune-in,” I could feel the power flowing through her. Surprising myself, I had a sense of the ghost. I asked if she was from the 1800s and wore a long servers dress and Michaela confirmed she was. Michaela slowly began to reveal the story of the screaming woman. She was a young staff member of the Driskill. She had caught the eye of a Driskill manager and (being flattered by the attention) she had flirted. Then one night he raped her. Her ghost was caught in a silent scream of the horror and shame of rape. She was ashamed because she had flirted with him,  she thought that perhaps she had brought the rape upon herself.

The ghost of the rapist was in the Driskill as well. His energy one of false bravado; like a bird who puffs up his feathers to make his enemies think he is bigger than he actually is. I recognized the energy signature of such a man. A man who is scared and ashamed of himself, hiding behind false ego to cover the pain and fear that there might be something deeply wrong with him. The very hiding of this pain, shame, and fear makes it grow until (in an attempt to release it), it bursts out of him in an act of pure evil like murder or (in this case) rape, not only making the very thing he fears come true but also spreading the shame to his victim.

This was the information the screaming woman needed to know: It wasn’t her fault, she didn’t bring the rape on herself, she was the victim of a man who was so afraid of being evil that he became the thing he feared most. He is someone to be pitied but certainly not a blameless man lured into rape by her seductive flirting. Her rape had nothing to do with her flirting and everything to do with his trauma. As soon as I was able to relay this perspective to the screaming woman her whole energy shifted; she was released from the trap of her shame induced silent scream. The Michaela said she was now free to cross over to the other side but that she decided to stay because she had fun scaring the new staff members.

I knew the message that released the the screaming woman from the trap of her shame induced silent scream was the same message the spirit beings of Chiricauhua needed to be released from the trap of their painful confusion. The Chiricuahua spirits needed to know that they weren’t raped by any fault of their own. That often, a person who rapes, is one that is in pain and knows no other way to release it then to take it out on others. That a rapist may even be someone who is wounded in such a way to be so blind that they can not see the pain they are causing others. I called upon the screaming woman of the Driskill to teach this lesson to the spirits of Chiricahua. The spirits of Chiricahua received the message. The tension that was created by their confusion was eased. They were still very sad and in pain but they were one step further along their healing journey.