Seeing
Red
Have you ever walked down a crowded street
and suddenly felt a shiver of fear as someone passed you? Did you turn around
to see what caused that sensation? Was it the negative energy surrounding that
person you felt? As it invaded your own energy, it alerted you, but did you do
anything about it?
Not much you could do, was there? Signal a
police officer and say, “That man has an evil aura!” See where that lands you.
I can recall at least three specific occasions when this happened to me. They
were so vivid I could probably describe the weather, what I wore that day, and
the exact location of the incidents. I admit I’d have to close my eyes and
spend a little time on the recollections.
In a crowded city where crimes occur every
day, there’s no way to follow up on that feeling. How would you know if it was
perpetrated by “your” stranger? Most crimes never make it onto the news outlets
anyway.
Once I worked with a man in a show in New
York and while we waited in the wings for our cues to go on, I had a sudden
compulsion to say, “I know about you.” I don’t know where the thought came
from, nor why I said it, but his reaction was astonishing. He blanched and said
in a hoarse whisper, “What do you know? How? How did you find out?”
He carefully avoided me for the rest of
the run of that show. His acting was fine, and he never did anything to draw
undue attention to himself, at least no more than any other actor might do.
There were one or two other ESP incidents
throughout my life; one in particular was, again, among actors when we were
joking about being psychic. A woman next to me put her hand in mine and said,
“Can you read my palm?”
Jokingly, I held her hand in my open palm
and then passed my other hand over it, playing up the role of medium, when I
was overcome by a dark shadow and saw her in a car accident. I dropped her
hand, and said, “I can’t really do this.” She knew right away I had sensed
something, but I dropped the subject and left the party early.
Three days later, on my way home from the
grocery store I felt compelled to stop at her house. She was not a friend of
mine; I had never been to her house. I only knew where it was because we all
had contact sheets for one another. When I got there an older woman answered the
door. It was Rachel’s mother, who had come in from out of state. I said I was
there to see Rachel. Mother said, “I’ll see if she wants to come out. She’s
resting.”
As it was early afternoon, I asked, “Is
she sick?”
“No, she was in a car accident on the
bridge the other night (Mid-Hudson Bridge) after a cast party.”
Our paths did not cross again for nearly
two years when once again I felt a compulsion to stop at her house. And, as
before, her mother answered the door. And again, she said she’d see if Rachel
was up for visitors. It turned out Rachel’s five-year-old daughter had died the
night before of a sudden brain infection. We spent hours talking about past
lives and connections. I have never seen Rachel since that day, and so hope
that means there were no more traumas in her life.
This week, at my writing group, a new
person entered the library meeting room. I asked if he was looking for the
writing group and he said yes and took a seat. When asked to introduce himself,
he went to great lengths to explain why he didn’t like another group he joined
and so he thought he’d try ours, to see if we were any better at critiquing. As
he shuffled papers in his hand to show that he writes short pieces, I watched
his hands turn red—bright blood red right up to his wrists. I blinked, looked
at other members in the room to see if my eyes had gone funny, but didn’t see
any other discolorations. I looked back at his hands and once again, saw the
red. As he spoke the red faded.
I told the person sitting next to me about
it and she said, “He’s a writer; he uses his hands and he’s obviously angry.”
That’s what I saw.
Now I have to take all these incidents,
plus several I haven’t mentioned and put them together in a book. Title: Seeing Red.
Veronica Helen Hart is the award winning author of nine published novels (Champagne Book Group), several plays, and one multi-award winning musical. She is a Regional Director for the Florida Writers Association, a member of Sisters in Crime, and Daytona Area Writers. Visit her website at: uppitywomanpress.com.
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