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Ghostbusting Report

Ghostbusting Report

Residence of M. & G. Hage
Red Hook, NY

October 16, 2013

The residence of my friends M & G, in a beautiful part of upstate New York, had been the site of a particularly virulent Native American battle in the 1750s, one that left eleven ghosts on the site.

During a stay at this lovely second home, I’d noticed a very, very deep quietude enveloping the land and house, deep enough that an acorn falling in the night woods startled my partner out of a sound sleep.  While taking a walk, the chirping of grasshoppers and soft cawing of birds accompanied us as soon as we left the property, and we observed that re-entering the site dampened, then eliminated their merry song.

A couple of weeks after performing some geomantic healing of residual battle energy on the land, I turned to healing the spirit population.  Closing my office door, I lit a couple of candles and connected with various helper spirits.  Gently I requested the Native American spirits from the site join in.  A deep quiet came over my office, notable in this city that never sleeps.  Even my cat, always near me and irrepressibly vocal, echoed the shift by leaving the room, only to perch outside, staring at the door. 

I sensed a line of individuals off to my right, waiting in patient stillness.  I asked the first to approach, and immediately glimpsed a possible explanation for the high numbers of spirits still tending this land.  The individual who approached me first was a one year-old girl.  The second to approach was a twelve year-old girl.  Might not these eleven gentle souls, hearts and minds stung by the fighting that had just ended their own lives, been stopped in their otherworldly sojourns by the sight of these innocents slain by the same dire battle? 

All who approached me after these two were older, mostly male, in their late teens and twenties.

The stillness grew as I slowly released healing essences to each soul in the line, blessing them and indicating they were free to undertake the next leg of their journey.  Eventually I came to the last spirit of the eleven.  I saw him more clearly in my mind’s eye than any of the others.  He was round of face and hair, with broad shoulders and strong limbs.  A feeling of quiet strength emanated from him, and I realized that even in his nether world, he’d protected and served the others by taking the last position, a man who cared deeply and quietly, doing all he could for his people even now.

After the departure of the last of my guests, the silence still reigned as I slowly disengaged from this sweet process.  I felt a sense of gratitude that I can experience something so moving and nourishing while helping others, wherever they might be.

Feng Shui & Geomancy Report - MH

I had the pleasure of staying at the home of a friend for a few flawless fall days a couple of weeks ago.  In appreciation, I looked into some of the conditions around a ley line that I'd discovered running through their property.

Below is my report.

Firstly, many thanks for letting us stay in your beautiful abode.

Your land, sloping as it does toward the Hudson near Red Hook, NY, with the dramatic vertical house perched on the edge of a ridge, was in beautiful glowing fall colors the entire time we were there.  The skies were flawlessly blue, and the days warm and beckoning. 

I expected to spend some time grooming the ley line that crosses your land, but was surprised to find that the land itself needed the work, and that the healed land would then support the ley line.  And even more surprising to me was that only one kind of healing was needed. 

One of the principals of Feng Shui is that all compositions of Nature, construction materials included, are permeable to human emotions.  Any place where humans have been living for decades, loving; fighting; yelling; or sitting in serenity, typically has a huge backlog of stagnant emotions to be cleared away through various methods.  Your place was very different, as the house is new and the land mostly uninhabited at the time you purchased it.  And the energy work needed was very, very focused:  Battle Energy Release Process.

What battle?  Mark jousting with the contractors?  Squabbles between Mark and Gloria?  Both seemed unlikely to be so overwhelming that they blanketed every other history of the land.  Such an intense battle must have been pitched with very high emotions and vicious, even deadly intent.  Then, when I tested for the century this battle was supposed to have taken place, I had my answer.

In the mid-1750s the Wappinger and Lenape tribes still occupied much of Dutchess County and adjacent areas, both branches of the Delaware Nation (http://www.hopefarm.com/dutches1.htm).  The former were known for intricate and beautiful baskets, the latter for ceramics.  They made their livelihood from both river and forest, probably enjoying a rich and comfortable existence.  There may have been territorial conflicts, but if I had to guess, I would bet they were invaded by the Mohicans of the Iroquois Nation, another branch of the Delaware peoples. 

The Iroquois Nation occupied the middle of New York State, across the river from you, and the Mohican branch was to the North, near Saratoga (http://www.archive.org/stream/cu31924028833030/cu31924028833030_djvu.txt, Chapter 2, paragraphs 12-18), all areas of which happen to be some of the richest agricultural land in the country. 

At the end of their empire, the Iroquois were trapped between the French coming down from Canada, and the British soldiers coming from the south.  Both sides were happy to play the Native Americans off against the other side during the French & Indian war, but their ultimate defeat came at the hands of the British soldiers.  The Brits, good farm boys all, were astonished at what they found when they finally overran Iroquois strongholds.  They found warehouses with an estimated one million bushels of corn.  They found corn standing in the fields 18 feet tall.  They found corn cobs a foot and a half long.  All of this wealth was produced in a system so efficient that it could be maintained by the women, children, and elderly of the tribe, which left the younger men free and unoccupied - never a good thing.

When I came to New York from Michigan I was amazed to hear that there were Native American reservations in the state – I’d never heard of such a thing.  It wasn’t until recently that I learned that the dearth of reservations in the Lower Peninsula of Michigan is most likely due to the Iroquois.  Their backlogs of grain allowed the men to leave their villages for years at a time, on “hunting” parties – actually war parties, that invaded, raped, killed, and if rumor is correct, sometimes ate many smaller Native American settlements far and wide.  The Iroquois invaded the Lower Peninsula, and would have done the same to the Upper Peninsula, except that they ran into the Ojibwa.  The Ojibwa hunkered down, fought dirty, sacrificed, martyred themselves and generally did all they could to repel the Iroquois, leading to a major defeat. 

In New York years later the Iroquois were again defeated, along with the Mohicans, by encroachment from settlers, and began streaming west to avoid troops, and later the French & Indian Wars, which commenced in earnest in 1754.  Most likely some defeated but still fierce Mohicans fled across your land, encountering locals.

Now.  Don’t get all spooked and confuse Indian Battleground with Indian Burial Ground.  There do not seem to be any graves on your land.  Perhaps the battle raged on elsewhere and the wounded were nursed at another location. 

I began to wonder if there was a particular reason the two of you were drawn to this place.  Some tests indicate there may have been involvement by both of you in this epic battle.  I even mused for a while on the vertical design of the house – you have a three bedroom, two bath house on something like a 25’ x 25’ footprint.  You’ve walked gently on the land.

It didn’t occur to me to ponder another important question until I got home.  Yes, there are ghosts, 11 of them.  I’ll heal them, too.  Neither Gina nor I got any creepy feelings while in the house, and we’re both sensitive in this area.  They must be elsewhere on the land.

What we did notice was the silence – dead silence.  An acorn falling from a tree was such a contrast to the quietude that it woke Gina up in the night.  Not even insects were singing during parts of the daylight hours, yet they chirped merrily in the woods and meadow at the end of your personal driveway.  When we walked back up your driveway, silence reigned again. 

My work consisted of approaching the spirits of the land in a somewhat shamanic manner, and informing them that mankind was finally showing up to help clean up the battle trauma.  Gently encouraging Nature to release this energy allows a more balanced and healthy state, a process that takes about 72 hours, and then engagement in a slower, deeper healing.  Due to the depth of healing nothing more should be done for six months.

As a sweet rejoinder, we saw a deer and two fawns, two woodchucks and a bat all within an hour of my having completed my work.  

New York Restoration Project - Swindlers Cove

In 2012 I was lucky enough to spend a season as a gardener at Swindler's Cove in northern Manhattan.  The training in horticultural techniques and  the opportunity to work with a mosaic of people was invaluable. The cove is a breath taking jewel, unknown to most New Yorkers, but well worth searching out in it's northern Manhattan hideaway.  Thanks, NYRP, for a great season.

Frieda's Farm

Frieda Lim's Slippery Slope Urban Rooftop Microfarm

This is the fifth season I've been lucky enough to work with Frieda Lim in her urban rooftop farm - http://www.slipperyslopefarm.us/.  Frieda and I met in Dan Kittredge's Nutrient Dense Crop Production class, and have worked since then to bring the incredible vitality that nutrient dense work thoroughly into every aspect of the farm.  Oddly enough, Feng Shui really comes into its own, in my opinion, with plants and agricultural issues, and utilizing that tool has been my role in keeping the farm healthy and full of luminous vitality.   The photos below speak more than a thousand words!