by Paul Dale Roberts, HPI Ghostwriter
I waited in an area that had a picnic bench with a clump of trees for my interview with a real witch. The area was somewhat remote and I looked around and saw nothing around me. Then I heard some birds chirping and from a clearing at this park, a mysterious woman in black appeared out of nowhere and started walking towards me. She said..."hi, I'm Donna, I'm your witch." I looked at Donna and said.."step in my office and let's do this interview, have a seat." As I pointed at the park bench table. Donna relates to me that she has been interested in the Wiccan culture since the time she was in high school. Her screen name is a Gaelic name, it's Badb. Badb is named after the Celtic goddess Badb Catha, she may take on the name of Badb as her permanent craft name but hasn't decided yet. The circle she belongs to is Sacred Fire Circle, which is having it's Sacramento Mabon Celebration 2007, it will be an open circle and everyone is invited. They will conduct a leaf burning ceremony, to release negativity into the atmosphere. Each member and guest will receive an acorn, which represents future harvests.
Donna's Encounter with the Thor: The Norse God of Thunder
Donna tells me that she became a practicing witch in 2003, she has extensively studied the Wiccan culture and embraced it full heartedly. She will never forget the time, that she was with a group of Wiccans and they were singing chant songs to the God Thor. The Lady of the Circle named Belisama Fire lead the group into chant. The more they chanted, the night became stormy. The presence of Thor was felt and all of a sudden, it started to rain in buckets, the heavy winds blew wildly and the tarp that gave them shelter blew to the ground. When the chanting resided, everything went back to normal. They later learned that there was no other storm anywhere else, the storm only hit the location of where the Circle was at.
Donna Joins HPI
Donna has recently joined H.P.I. (Haunted and Paranormal Investigations) of Northern California, as a Paranormal Investigator and went on their 2007 Haunted Placerville Tour (haunting investigation). When going on this tour, Donna was surprised to feel a wall of energy at one of the locations she visited on this tour. But, this is not the first time Donna has dealt with the paranormal, she has been plagued by the paranormal since the age of 16. When Donna first contacted me, to write her story (an occurrence that happened in the Fall of 1972 in Niceville, Florida), she sent me this in her own words:
"I lived in a double-wide mobile home for four years with my parents in a mobile home park on Eglin Air Force Base near the Gulf Coast of Florida when I was in high school. At that time, if the military member was sent overseas for a short tour, the family had to move off-base until the member's return.
When my father received orders for a one-year stint in Thailand in the early 1970's, we moved the mobile home to Niceville, a small town near the base. My parents bought an unimproved lot and had trees taken down, electricity put in, a septic tank installed, and whatever else needed to improve this piece of property. Within a very few weeks, my father was off to Thailand and my mother and I lived in the mobile home alone.
I was in Georgia on a high school band trip when my parents made the actual move. I got home around 10:00 PM a couple of days later. My room was not set up yet, so my mother got me a pillow and blanket and set me up on the couch in the living room. That night, my first night in this home, my sleep was disturbed my multiple noises - mostly knocking on the wall and the sound of footsteps. I'd been in a similar situation when I was very young, and for some reason did not feel afraid. I just said out loud, "Please let me go to sleep!" and the noises stopped.
The next day I was in the backyard exploring. I have always loved nature and became interested in a line of ants traveling across the yard. I found their nest and squatted on my haunches to look at them. I suddenly felt a hand on my back and was pushed forward to the point where I had to put my hands out in front of me to catch myself from falling on my face. I told my parents about it and they just laughed at me. Nothing else happened for several weeks, except once when I was pushed again, this time in my bedroom while my father was putting some shelves together for me. When I was pushed, I nearly fell on top of him.
For the year and a half that my mother and I lived in the home, there were many incidents where we heard knocking on the walls, footsteps, sobbing (from my room), bad smells like something had died, light fixtures coming on by themselves when they weren't plugged in, a fire-ant invasion in my mother's toilet, shadows in the window, a blob of gray mist hanging beneath the ceiling, the sound of water dripping (the drops sounded like they were falling from a height not possible where the sound was coming from), light switch sounds but no lights going on or off, my name being called, cold spots, a feeling of not being alone - and even a full-figure apparition on one occasion of a very petite or young female with a long dress and lots of hair piled up on her head - much like the ladies wore in the Civil War era. These events became more and more frequent as time went on.
We also had other family members that visited during this time and they, too, had experiences. The interesting fact about all of this, is that none of them, including my father, shared their experiences with my mother or me for fear of scaring us. My uncle and my grandfather visited together once, and didn't share their experiences with either of us or each other. It was only years later that my family, including my father shared their experiences with my mother and I. We were all in awe of the fact that we had all had separate experiences that were collaborated years after the fact.
We eventually sold the place because my father received orders for Travis AFB near Fairfield, CA. We had no idea about any problems at the site since then. We know that the mobile home we put there is gone and there is another in its place. That's the extent of my knowledge of these experiences at the time of this writing.
The only information I have to offer right now is that Niceville, FL, was at one time a very small fishing village. The lot we lived on was very near the water. We can only surmise that at one time there either was a settlement of some sort or maybe a homestead on or near the property my parents bought.
Below are added comments from Donna, as she relates to experiences she had in her present home in Rancho Cordova:
"Once, while I was home alone I was sitting in the den watching TV when I heard my name called. I was sitting on a couch that was in front of a large window, and the voice sounded like it came from outside, through the window behind me. I couldn't tell if it was male or female because it was almost a whisper, but not quite. It just said, "Donna."
Another time, my mother, a family friend name Eunice, her two teenage children, Sue and Jim, my friend from next door, Debbie, and I were all sitting outside in the backyard having a good time. Sue, Debbie, and I decided to go next door to Debbie's house for a while. Debbie and I walked around the back end of the house, through the front yard, out the gate at the front (hitch) end and to the road. At the road we had to double back the other direction as Debbie's house was next to the back end of mine, causing us to travel the length of the front of my house toward hers. In the meantime, Sue went inside through the back door near the end of the house to use the bathroom. I go into such detail to illustrate the time it took for us to make the trip vs. the time it took Sue to reach the bathroom. It was starting to get dark and the lights were on in the living room and the curtains were drawn. When Debbie and I reached the road we both, for some reason, looked toward the house and we both saw a shadow of a male figure in the curtains of the living room window. As we watched, the figure moved out of the window, in the direction of the back of the house where the back door and bathroom were. We both ran to her house and told her mother what we had just witnessed. As we were finishing our story, Sue came in looking very white. She said that while she was in the bathroom, she heard footsteps coming from the living room area of the house and walking toward the back. Time-wise, it was exactly at the same time that Debbie and I saw the shadow.
Once, coincidentally while I was living at that home, my boyfriend and I had just returned from a date and were standing in the driveway when we both saw what we thought was a UFO. It was a reddish light that just stood very still in the night sky and finally just vanished after a few minutes. Also, one dark, moonless night my mother and I were driving south on Sunrise Blvd. here in Rancho, somewhere between the American River and Folsom Blvd. when we saw some kind of ship fly toward us from our right. It made a large sweep over us and turned back in the direction from which it came, and flew off. It was huge and the lights were in an elongated triangle pattern. It did have blinking lights but was either too large or too close to be an airplane - it was too dark to tell. If I were to hold my hands out at arms length to describe how much windshield space it took up, I would have to hold my hands about three feet apart!"
Donna believes she is an empath and her whole family is a magnet for the supernatural. From the time she was 16 and up to the age of 17, she lived in a mobile home in Niceville. She experienced ghostly encounters, as mentioned above in her blurb. I discuss what she wrote to me about her experiences and ask Donna was there anything else that was unusual. She said, one day her dad walked into a room and it was filled with smoke. Her dad thought it was a fire and when he looked again, the smoke was gone. On another night, family and friends felt an icy cold presence move through the home. Donna's ex-boyfriend on another night noticed the flashlight dimming on its own, then the lights in the home came on for no apparent reason. Donna always felt presences at this home and she wonders if the small fishing village that once was on this property had anything to do with the presences of this home.
Donna goes on to tell me that 2/3rds of her life has been experiences of the paranormal. She has seen ghost animals, a luring ghost cat. She once saw a ghostly hand move the shower curtain. She has seen 'shadow people' move about the house. Once while laying in bed, she felt someone sitting on the bed and it caused an indentation on the bed. All through her life from her grandmother's home in Pocahontas, Virginia to the Mobile Home in Niceville, Florida to Castle AFB (at this AFB housing community, she witnessed the animal spirits, the entity that sat on her bed and the shadow people) to her present home in Rancho Cordova where there are at times poundings on her walls. Donna feels that her family attract entities from the other side and her connection to the Wiccan culture goes back as far as to her grandmother, who was known as "Grannie".
Perhaps entities that dwell in the realm of the supernatural are attracted to Earth people known as Wiccans, because Wiccans embrace nature and respect the Earth. The Earth and nature is filled with energy and the harmonious nature of energy embraces the Wiccan culture and brings on energy entities to watch over them and to protect them. Donna is a unique young lady and she is filled with stories of her encounters with the supernatural. So many stories, that it would fill a good size book. I am honored to write a small piece of her life, because I have met a woman who is one with nature. As she departed into the surrounding area of trees, I felt a small gentle breeze go with her.