buddhism – Jefe's House

Boneyards EVP Log – 11/3/13

Before proceeding I strongly urge you to read and hear the 10/20/13 seance transcript and video regarding the “Buddhist exorcism” the audience and I attempted to conduct in an effort to help “V,” the spirit of a 2-year-old toddler, escape and pass through the door to Heaven in accordance with the Tibetan Book of the Dead.

During the next show on 11/2/13 I was happy not to have heard from V, as it hopefully meant our so-called exorcism was successful and she moved forward.

Boy was I wrong. The following (and final) show on 11/3/13 left me completely floored. This is one of those good Ouija board stories. No possessed kittens, no dire warnings of doom, but a truly positive and spiritual experience. The Ouija board at its best. Read on…

Before proceeding I strongly urge you to read and hear the 10/20/13 seance transcript and video regarding the “Buddhist exorcism” the audience and I attempted to conduct in an effort to help “V,” the spirit of a 2-year-old toddler, escape and pass through the door to Heaven in accordance with the Tibetan Book of the Dead.

During the next show on 11/2/13 I was happy not to have heard from V, as it hopefully meant our so-called exorcism was successful and she moved forward.

Boy was I wrong. The following (and final) show on 11/3/13 left me completely floored. This is one of those good Ouija board stories. No possessed kittens, no dire warnings of doom, but a truly positive and spiritual experience. The Ouija board at its best. Read on… Continue reading “Boneyards EVP Log – 11/3/13”

Boneyards EVP Log – 11/2/13

Ghost: “We’re human.” The Saturday night audience was a full house of Halloween weekend and Day of the Dead revelers. At the closing seance, bold audience volunteers Mike, Mel and Tara personed the Ouija board. The planchette was shooting all over the place but sadly all we got was strings of consonants over and over which made for a frustrating experience. It did confirm that it was not alone and that there were 7 of them in the room with us at that moment. If you’ve been following the previous seance posts you know there are at least 12 spirits (or subconscious ideomotor impulses, depending on your beliefs) in the building whom I have affectionately dubbed the Synagogue Saints. It’s not unusual for all 12 of them not to make a showing at once.

The Hindu God Shiva, or Mahakala as the Tibetan Buddhists call him, is a prominent presence in the show.

The Saturday night audience was a full house of Halloween weekend and Day of the Dead revelers. At the closing seance, bold audience volunteers Mike, Mel and Tara personed the Ouija board. The planchette was shooting all over the place but sadly all we got was strings of consonants over and over which made for a frustrating experience. It did say when I asked what it thought of the show, CLAP. Also it confirmed that it was not alone and that there were 7 of them in the room with us at that moment. If you’ve been following the previous seance posts you know there are at least 12 spirits (or subconscious ideomotor impulses, depending on your beliefs) in the building whom I have affectionately dubbed the Synagogue Saints. It’s not unusual for all 12 of them not to make a showing at once.

(Personally I was thrilled not to hear from little V, because if she had made a showing it would mean our haunting Buddhist exorcism in the previous show had been a failure. I urge you to read/watch that now, and then to read what happened in the Earth-shattering final session on 11/3/13.)

While the Ouija session continued I fired up the P-SB7 spirit box as usual, and here are the highlights. The raw footage is 7.5 minutes. I have cut it down here to the most clearly spoken minute of highlights. Each has been slowed down and had the volume amplified while maintaining the original pitch, for better ease of listening. Transcript with my comments follows below the video: Continue reading “Boneyards EVP Log – 11/2/13”

Boneyards EVP Log – 10/20/13

Ghost: “Come to us.” Before proceeding I urge you, gentle reader, to read and view the previous show’s (10/17/13) seance summary as there is a direct carryover with this one culminating in my effort to conduct a “Buddhist exorcism,” for lack of a better description, on the 2-year-old “V,” a recent arrival at the synagogue and not one of the 12 original ghosts at this location that I call the Synagogue Saints.

All caught up now? Great, you may proceed.

Before proceeding I urge you, gentle reader, to read and view the previous show’s (10/17/13) seance summary as there is a direct carryover with this one culminating in my effort to conduct a “Buddhist exorcism,” for lack of a better description, on the 2-year-old “V,” a recent arrival at the synagogue and not one of the 12 original ghosts at this location that I call the Synagogue Saints.

All caught up now? Great, you may proceed. At the show’s climax audience volunteers Eric and Kristen personed the board. We at first assumed we were speaking with an adult spirit (or subconscious ideomotor impulse, depending on your beliefs) but then it kept spelling MAM, MAM, MAM over and over. At first we thought it was their initials but it told us NO.

Do you know anyone here? YES.

Who? LAURA.

Yep, there was indeed a Laura in the house who looked decidedly freaked at seeing her name spelled out on the Ouija board. How do you know Laura?

The response was more MAM over and over again.

LAURA: I don’t know anyone with those initials.

ME: It’s talking like a child saying the same word over and over. I think we’ve got a kid here.

MY USHER SUSAN: Do you mean MOM? YES … MAM, MAM, MAM.

Indeed the repetition was childlike and rather sad. We imagined a young child calling for its mother over and over and not sure how to spell it. This is extremely similar to my encounter with young MALA/MALALA 2 years ago during BZ:ABOTD who wound up following me from the Blue Grotto in West Philly to Plays & Players Theatre and taking up residence there but that’s another story. In short, it seems children who have died violent deaths are particularly frightened and stuck, not sure how to move on. Heartbreakingly, they especially want to find their mothers.

Where’s your real mom? KILLED.

Who killed her? Continue reading “Boneyards EVP Log – 10/20/13”

Boneyards EVP Log – 10/17/13

IMG_2813After a month’s hiatus we’re back online, folks. Boneyards is back from the dead to rock your underworld just in time for Halloween. Only 3 shows left–10/20, 11/2 and 11/3. Last night’s 10/17 show was the kickoff. Read on–

Something quite phenomenal happened at last night’s seance that closes every show.

After a month’s hiatus we’re back online, folks. Boneyards is back from the dead to rock your underworld just in time for Halloween. Only 3 shows left — 10/20, 11/2 and 11/3. Last night’s 10/17 show was the kickoff. Read on —

Something quite phenomenal happened at last night’s seance that closes every show. In short, a dead kid needs our help and I intend to help her. Will you join me? At first, our two Ouija volunteers Kathryn and Geoff (with verbal help from Questioner Karen and myself) got the planchette to tell us its initial, V, and that it was 2 years old. This has happened to me before but rarely; a child spirit that has been around for many, many years will take on a certain adultlike maturity even while remaining childlike in its answers and overall behavior. This was borne out as V, when answering a question, would point to the star shape on the Ouija board rather than spelling a complete word, just like any 2-year-old might. In a different context it might have been adorable. V did confirm that she was standing to my right (I held out my right hand and asked if she was near it or near my other hand), and that she was not alone. This didn’t surprise me as I already assumed that the 12 Synagogue Saints, as I call them, were in the room with us. But V told us that only 5 were present. I don’t know why, but I feel that V was a little girl although gender was never specifically discussed.

I crossed the room and fired up the P-SB7 spirit box.

Meanwhile at the Ouija board, the planchette moved to YES and stayed firmly planted; not just sitting there but refusing to move. If you’ve used a Ouija board a lot you know what I mean. We switched Ouija volunteers numerous times in an effort to “warm up” the board, like tuning in a radio, but the result was always the same. The planchette was firmly planted on YES. Prior to this, the planchette had also been moving extremely slowly and we cracked jokes that maybe it was an old woman who has visited us in a previous session. At that the spirit box called out “Lazy!” loud and clear across the room (see the full EVP video and transcript below).

But there is a larger picture unfolding here, readers. This kid, this perished toddler, V, is frightened and asking for our help. Some of the spirits around her are also asking us to help her. I’ll tell you what I plan to try in the upcoming show this Sunday, but first get the full picture–

As always the raw footage is 5 minutes long. I’ve cut it down to the most audible highlights. Every EVP has also been slowed Continue reading “Boneyards EVP Log – 10/17/13”

My Way or the Yahweh

On Faith

A Jewish-Hindu connection

Talk about a crazy commute. After a spiritual encounter, a stranger and I spent the next 90 minutes discussing the nature of the universe.

Jeffrey Stanley, 7/23/13

Not so long ago after nearly 25 years as a hidebound New Yorker I moved to Philadelphia for my wife Pia’s career needs, inadvertently becoming part of a popular regional migration known to urban statisticians as the 6th borough phenomenon. She’s Indian-American and we’re raising our child in a bilingual home. I’m a writer and professor. She’s a scientist by day and an Indian classical dance professional by night. Religiously we are at best agnostic but culturally we are Hindus, and will identify ourselves as such when pressed, like on the hospital intake form the first time we took our baby in for a routine doctor’s visit.

This identification sits well with me. Despite growing up Nazarene in the Bible Belt I had long ago developed an affinity for Hindu philosophy—ever since I’d come across a used copy of the Bhagavad Gita at a flea market in high school and realized how similar it was to the New Testament. I still remember the perplexed look on my Sunday school teacher’s face the morning I brought the Gita to church. I had marked the sections that reminded me of Christ’s words in the Sermon on the Mount with an orange highlighter and asked him why Hindus were all going to Hell and we Christians weren’t. Suffice it say I quit going to church not long after that. Christianity just wasn’t speaking to me. When I met my wife-to-be years later while canoeing in Brooklyn’s fetid Gowanus Canal I fell in easily with her cultural worldview. We were a match made in moksha.

Imagine my surprise when, on a recent Friday afternoon while returning to Philly on a crowded New Jersey Transit train out of Manhattan’s Penn Station I came face to face with the power of YHWH. I have regular writing and teaching obligations in New York City so I typically commute between the two cities once or twice a week. The pre-rush hour train was unusually packed and it was running local but that was fine with me. In fact I had chosen the local on purpose, adding an hour to my travel time to get as much work done on the typically placid ride as possible before reaching home and hurlyburly.

Still awaiting departure from Penn I sat alone next to the window of my three-seater bench, opened my netbook, and sank into writing comments on my university students’ movie scenes. This was my Screenwriting II class and the scripts weren’t half bad. I had barely made a dent in my work when a rocker in a long-sleeved T-shirt, jeans and two black triangular ear studs plopped down next to me. I felt mildly annoyed by the disruption as he took off his coat and tossed it on the overhead rack along with his bag, and I was relieved when he settled into his seat, took out a paperback and began to read. Hallelujah, he’d be quiet like me instead of yammering away or playing videogames on a so-called smartphone. I continued my work in peace but couldn’t help noticing that he was reading a book on Hinduism. Another time I might have struck up a conversation but I had a lot of work ahead so I kept my nose to the netbook.

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