Review - When Ghosts Speak

Foreword: When it comes to ghosts, people can be imprecisely segregated into three blurred groups.
a. Ghosts and Spirits are bullshit.
b. I don’t know what to think or say.
c. They are out there! Let me get my Ouija board out tonight
I fall into category b. This post is meant for category b and c readers only. May I request the vast majority of a. category denizens to please skip this post and check Facebook instead.
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I recently finished reading “When Ghosts Speak” written by Mary Ann Winkowski. In this book, Mary Ann – now a paranormal investigator – tells her incredible story. She reveals the difference between earthbound spirits and those who have crossed over, why ghosts stay on the earthly plane and the importance of the “White Light” that appears when any creature dies.

I loved reading this book. In fact, I am a self confessed loser when it comes to books and reading (which has surprised me a zillion times, as I claim to be a writer. How can you write well if you do not read well!). As soon as I read the first page of this book, I was hooked. This book (irrespective of how much is believable) has managed to satisfy my long felt peeve of applying some crude structure or framework to this pseudoscience of afterlife, occult or whatever term your lexicon hosts. I am very much a charts guy. Anything and everything should and must be categorized neatly or roughly into a chart showing groups, then sub groups then sub sub groups. For example - lets take God. My limited influences still yield me a stucture as follows - Group1: Religion; Group2: Non Religion. Under Group1 we can have Monotheism (only one deity) or Polytheism (many dieties). Under Monotheism we can say idol worship (Christianity) and non idol worship (Islam, Sikhism). So on and so forth. I hope you get the drift of my everything-should-fall-in-order view of this world. Now, there is an absolute innundation of ghostly material around us, in literature, television. Hitherto it was unclear how to make a chart and group logically all things related to 'afterlife world'. Namely - demons, exorcism, satan, spirit, poltergeist, wicca, witchcraft, black magic, ouija, seances, mediums, automatic writing, curses and spells, pentagrams the list just goes on and on.

After reading 'When Ghosts Speak' I must say I have achieved the first logical grouping. Group1: Pre Crossover; Group2: Post Crossover. ALL that long laundry list would fall into either of these two master groups. How exactly, I still am unable to figure :-). Let me leave you with the table of contents of the book. I strongly recommend this for anyone serious enough in this field. Otherwise avoid.

Part 1 – Listening to Spirits
1. My Story – Discovering a gift

Part 2 – Understanding Earthbound Spirits
2. The Truth About Ghosts – Separating fact from fiction
3. The White Light – An opportunity to cross over
4. Why Some Souls Stay Behind – And how I convince them to cross over
5. Funerals – Expect to attend your own
6. Murders and Suicides – When spirits stay after unnatural deaths
7. Children – How young spirits are different
8. Animals – Loyal after death
9. Evil Spirits – Rare but real

Part 3 – Living with Ghosts
10. Asking For Trouble – How people attract earthbound spirits
11. Signs That You Are Not Alone – Identifying the presence of spirits around you
12. How To Deal With Ghosts – Protecting yourself from the influence of earthbound spirits
13. Curses And Other Negative Energy – What you can do to prevent, remove or weaken negative energy

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