This is the post that got the suggestion to start a blog. More will be forthcoming!Several years ago I was at my best friends house for a halloween party and I was dressed as the grim reaper. I came out of my room and saw her daughter who was just two sitting on the floor playing. She looked up at me and was chattering away and I raised my arm up and pointed at her, and beckoned. She gave a shriek and covered her head with her arms. I put my arm down and she stopped shrieking and she looked at me, then resumed chatting as if nothing had happened. I raised my arm again, and she shrieked again, then after I put it down, she started chatting again, as if nothing had happened. Now, She is a good kid, and her parents have never done that gesture to point at her and gesture for her to follow in silence. So, how did she know? what made her relate the gesture with being afraid?Several years before her birth I had the opportunity to hypnotize both her mother and her father and do something pretty- well, cool.Her husband didn't believe in anything. total binary thinking, it was there, or not there. Well, Hypnotizing people isn't hard. Really. You get them to relax ,and then count backward while visualizing the number they are saying in their head. If they can do that, its an easy step to the next part. As they count backwards, they invasion themselves as going down steps. Well, my friends husband went down the steps, and saw it was just a dark room. nothing there and he was discouraged. So I had him imagine a tool that could cut through any wall, and he did, and on the other side... he found a room that was total white. and if he would make a door through that wall, he found himself back in the black room that had the stair case. So I had him go up the stair case... and he found a park, with a lake and it was one of the most beautiful, peaceful places he had ever been into.Now, as much as he is analitical, he is also very talented, and that creativity doesn't come from nothing. He is a new soul. He doesn't believe in life after death, ghosts, when people die, they die.His wife on the other hand, had been having dreams about something that happened the same time each year, and the dream repeated with more detail forthcoming.It started the same, walking down a hall, going to a door that had a knob in the center, opening it, the feeling of anticipation. later, the dream had her walking down steps to the park and feeling despair- going to -a trench, and looking over the burnt grass. She would wake, and would have a feeling of dread.It took several sessions of Hypnotizing her to go over what was going on.her voice- changed. it picked up an accent, and she was saying words that I wrote down and we had to look up later. She was speaking german, though she had never taken it in schoolShe told of how her father taught her how to drive the family car, sitting on his lap driving about her mother. She was a young boy in germany and she gave names and dates, and events, and as it progressed, we learned who owned the door. Where she was, what she saw, and she read dates off of letters, and names, and it took two months of digging, - the people she spoke about did live, we found who she was. It came to a conclusion one afternoon when we finally explored the last part of her dream. She (the young man) left the office, went down the steps and walked down the street to the park. Everything was in ruin, the bombs had destroyed his life, his father was disgraced, his mother dead, there was nothing left. He went to the park, stepped in the trench...My friend sat up, with a jerk to her body- wide awake and fell into my arms sobbing. the young man whom she was dreaming about had killed himself in that bunker. the touch of cold upon the skin had been his own gun.What was interesting was, her dreams started just at the time in the young mans life that he had made the decision to join the youth army. each step of his life was marked in another years dream that compiled upon the other.When we first started this project, she was skeptical, until she woke from being hypnotized and realize her face was wet from crying. She hadn't remembered anything of the earlier sessions, and didn't believe when I had told her what she had said, or the sound of her own voice on the recorder.until she felt the tears on her face All of that is years ago. Her husband still is the same, ether things are one way, or the other. They bought a hundred year old house and everything was fine until they started to renovate it, and her nephew who is gay came to live with them.Her nephew is an old soul, like her daughter One day her daughter came to her and said "Mum, there is a man in a funny hat coming around to the back door." My friend went to the back door and looked, and there was no one. Now, to get to the back door, you have to go past the dining room windows, where her daughter had seen him, and there is a fence on the other side, and around the back yard so there isn't any place for him to go. and there was no one.The funny hat was a bowler. Her nephew told her several days later that odd things were happening in the room where he was staying. - things being moved, the light above the bed flickering through out the night- just- things. My friend meditates every night, and it was shortly after that she started being interrupted by people who told her their names. She went to the court house and did digging into the record of the house and found out information, on who these people were. I stayed at her house over the holiday for two nights. the first night I was awakened by a sound and I got up and every single light was on in the upstairs. I turned them off and went into the bathroom where the water was running. Turned that off. went halfway down the steps to the landing and looked around to see if everything was ok. it was and as I stood there I felt someone take my fore arm gently and pull me upstairs, and I *felt* them say "Its ok, just go back to bed." I did, and I couldn't sleep, so i read a bit and then went to sleep.The second night I was exhausted from a long day and couldn't get comfortable and was laying on my side when I felt a push on my shoulder and *heard* someone say, "Just- go to sleep* and I turned off the light and rolled over and was alsop in a moment. Now, my friend has taken photos of this room. Long exposure, 200 asa film with a small appature on a tripod- 24 r exposure. yes, there is something in the room. Standing there. I have been a photographer for several decades. I have developed my own film and I developed and printed these ones as well.I can't explain what it is.well, I can.but,there are some who would be skeptics.Which, opens the door to a comment that someone made to me yesterday about "old souls"I have been hearing the term more frequently than before. Perhaps it is at the age to believe or understand something like that.It was in reference to another persons child who had been ill and went through procedures with out complaint, not even a wimper. and when you looked at the childs photograph, there was- a quiet, acceptance in the childs eyes. one that - well, when the other person saw the eyes, said. "This child has an old soul."there is a comment about the eyes are windows to the soul. I believe this. While my friends daughters eyes are the same color as her fathers- they have- something more to them. a sensitive - an understanding about the workings of the world. and how could a two r old know about who the grim reaper was anyway??The concept of souls being- well, recycled- is appalling to some, and accepted as a cultural path to others. before you post an answer to this, I want you to try something. it won't take long, and its simple and safe. I want you all to lay down, get comfortable.walk yourself down 100 steps as you visualize them, and the number on the step, until you get to zero. if you did it right, if you are truly concentrating on what you are doing you should feel the same heavy peaceful feeling that you do when you just wake up in the morning and haven't moved.Look around you.If you are an old soul, there will be a door, and a key. If you open it, you may see- something- a hall with doors, or, it may open to something else.if there is no door, then - well, make one, even if you have to cut through the wall with something. If you see just a white room as my friends husband did, then go up the steps and look around.tell yourself that your going to remember all of it as you relax.the very worst that can happen with all of this is that you fall asleep.Everyone believes in something. even if its themselves. Kath