Granite Has a Heartbeat: The Paranormal as Normal

I consider the paranormal to be normal. Not that I wouldn’t be scared if my bed suddenly took off across the room or if the windows slammed up and down, but I would ask myself if I wasn’t causing all the ruckus with my angst or pent-up emotion, much like a teenaged telekinetic. Of course, the first thing I would do is pray.

I believe that our ancestors took the paranormal on faith, without proof. For the most part, in modern times, we refuse to take the paranormal seriously because we don’t understand it. That’s the key. One day we will have all the scientific proof we need. But, for now, the paranormal is truly “para” – outside the normal.

I used the paranormal in Dreamwater as a device to help my characters move ahead – not as a deus ex machina – God coming down from on high to intervene – but as a normal, every day tool used by extraordinary people who know how to use it.

I hardly know where to begin when talking about Dreamwater. The paranormal abounds! That’s just the way it is. 

In Dreamwater, two psychics warn New Low that he must return to Marblehead because his mother is in danger of being arrested as a witch. Jordana, a young prostitute, Ned’s friend and consort, tells him that “the Devil is in Marblehead” and Jordana’s mother, an Oracle, gives Ned instructions on how to rescue his mother, “Hide her in the sacred temples, the ones that are built of heavy stones, stones that are aligned with the rising sun, along the path of the snakes.”

Marblehead is laced with tunnels, or so the legend goes – called the snakes in Dreamwater. Several shops and houses in Marblehead are joined by tunnels that also lead to the sea. These tunnels were probably once used by smugglers, and later, most likely used again by escaped slaves in the Underground Railroad. However, like most secrets, the use, even the existence, of the tunnels is very hard to prove as little evidence survives. In Dreamwater, the snakes have paranormal powers.

Marblehead is built on granite. While researching Dreamwater, I wanted to find a book about phenomenon associated with ancient sites such as the Witch’s Cave in Nahant where Ned hides his mother. I found only one – Paul Devereux’s Places of Power, Secret Energies at Ancient Sites: A Guide to Observed or Measured Phenomena.

Burial Hill, Marblehead, MA

It was Devereux who had some success in measuring the sounds granite makes when he used ultra-sound and was rewarded with what I like to call granite’s “heart beat.” I gave the Witch’s Cave a sunrise alignment (a real cave I discovered in Robert Ellis Cahill’s New England’s Ancient Mysteries) as well as a drumming beat that only Molly can hear. In real life, I can tell you that one is transformed in Marblehead. Marblehead is enchanted. Perhaps the living granite has something to do with its powerful force. However, most places, when left natural, have that very power. Earth is beautiful and powerful. If only we didn’t pave over Nature or build malls where marshes should be, we would still be experiencing this force more directly.

In Dreamwater, Molly is an innocent young girl who is attracted to Ned’s dangerous character. When Molly is accused of witchcraft, Jordana has a dream in which the sun and blue sky are hidden away in a dark hole. She knows Ned’s true love has been arrested and thrown into a cell. Reluctantly, she sends Ned a dream. He wakes in terror as he witnesses the black hanging sack being thrown over Molly’s fair head.

As someone who is sensitive and just a little bit psychic, the idea of sending someone a dream in order to communicate or the idea that granite has a heart beat, is not so far-fetched. These are matters of course. Modern psychics live their lives every day using psychic tools the same way they would pick up a knife to cut a vegetable or turn on the faucet for water.

I know how normal the paranormal can be. I know psychics have dreams of great consequence, and true psychics can send information to others, psychic or not, through forms of energy like dreams, visions, sometimes even TV or the internet.

An interesting example of this kind of communication happened a few years ago when I was doing research for When Two Women Die. I came across the website (no longer available) of the psychic, Lynne Olson, who said as she watched TV, in this case, the show Ghost Adventures, she had spoken to one of the spirits in a particularly evil Las Vegas house. She asked why he was still there, and the ghost answered, “There’s no heaven for the likes of me. This is a pretty good deal for me. Me and this house clicked.” Later, lead ghost hunter, Zac Bagans remarked, “The house and I clicked.” Zac had no way of knowing what the psychic had heard or what the ghost had said.

I’ve been following ghost hunting for decades now. I have never forgotten a ghost hunting show (years before the Dan Ackroyd’s Psi Factor) by Peter Ackroyd, Dan Ackroyd’s father, that revealed some of the best film footage I have ever seen to this day, including night footage of a very lively kitchen where drawers and cabinet doors were opening and closing, plus some lovely ghost writing in the air. This show is also no longer available. Early ghost hunting used a lot of Polaroids, recordings, and night cameras, still used today. In Dreamwater, in 1995, Peter Treadwell is struggling to come to terms with his wife, Beth’s murder (When Two Women Die). Meanwhile, his little girl, Emily, sees and speaks to her mother’s ghost. Peter’s son, Pete, is eager to invite ghost hunters in to investigate. Young Pete takes a quick Polaroid after his little sister says their mom is right there in the kitchen. The snap develops right before their eyes into a shining orb with a world of special effects within it. Later, the fifteen-year-old ghost hunters – using early 1995 technology - find more evidence, including Polaroids of ghost writing, EVP recordings, night vision (One of the fifteen-year-old ghost hunters has a laptop with early Army technology.) and night film of a stuffed animal being petted (obviously, night vision filming is more “earlier-than-the-rest-of-us” U.S. Army technology). In Dreamwater, a psychic is used by the ghost hunters to communicate with Beth’s spirit. Questions are asked and answered through a child’s toy. Later, Beth’s spirit has a unique interchange with her husband, comforting him as only she can.

orbs 

(Each one as unique as each spirit!)

Last, but hardly least, I haven’t mentioned Edward Dimond’s magic telescope, which allowed Ned’s mother Rosie to view her son far away in the Jamaicas, a comfort that got her arrested for witchcraft. Dimond’s telescope is legendary in Marblehead and was used by the old psychic to watch for Marblehead’s fishing vessels in trouble on the high seas (When Two Women Die).

When we think of the paranormal being “para” or outside normal experience, we are ignoring, or at least, taking for granted the wonders going on all around us. When someone says to me, “I don’t believe in all that crap. I need scientific evidence,” I like to say, “Look around you. Do you see anything that is less fantastic than the paranormal? Anything science truly understands? A tree? A flower? A dog? The sun?” I doubt it.

©Patricia Goodwin 2013

Patricia Goodwin is the author of When Two Women Die, about Marblehead legends and true crime and its sequel, Dreamwater, about the Salem witch trials and the vicious 11-year-old pirate Ned Low. Holy Days is her third novel, about the sexual, psychological seduction of Gloria Wisher and her subsequent transformation. Her newest poetry books are Telling Time By Apples, And Other Poems About Life On The Remnants of Olde Humphrey Farme, illustrated by the author, and Java Love: Poems of a Coffeehouse.

Dreamwater

   

    In order to write Dreamwater, the sequel to When Two Women Die, I had to follow my character, Ned Low to some very dark places. On the surface, he is the powerful, evil character we love to hate. But, Ned is more than that.

    When Ned was kidnapped at the end of When Two Women Die, I knew in my heart what would happen to him. Upon researching the time period, my suspicions were confirmed. Because I thought the most obvious position he could hold was cabin boy, a lowly servant on the ship, the first thing I did was look up the definition of cabin boy. I found this sarcastic reference on urbandictionary.com: “Often buggered by the professional sailors onboard until they get shore leave.” Buggered is a slang term for sodomy, though both terms have been used to mean other forms of sexual contact, or even loose living in general. Further research reinforced what I thought would happen. But, the clincher came from the articles (ship’s rules) of pirate Captain Bartholomew Roberts, which stated “No boy or woman to be allowed amongst them.”

    From that rule alone I knew I was right. The fact that a rule needed to be made said very clearly that the situation was real. Ned would probably have been sexually abused. I felt, in Dreamwater, Lowther would have taken Ned for himself exclusively.

    17^th Century attitudes toward sex were very different than our modern ones. We think in terms of child abuse, and rightly so. As late as the 19^th Century, however, child prostitution was rampant. Decent people will always find adult sex with a child to be abhorrent. Nevertheless, for many children in the 17^th Century adult sex may have meant survival - a very sad kind of survival. Every day, Ned wants to “slit Lowther’s throat” but he needs him to survive.

    Pirates were savages. Not followers of rules, though historians will tell you, “Oh, yes! The ship’s articles were taken very seriously.” I think historians are referring to privateers, those civilized beings that bathed, dressed in silk and played violin. A privateer was a different animal. A privateer had a license signed and sealed by royalty to commit theft and bring the spoils back to his King or Queen. If a privateer killed while committing this royal theft, the law might look the other way.

    Pirates were criminals. They had no license to steal or kill. They may have had articles but, from my research, I doubt a real pirate followed stringent rules. Even now, shipboard rules are in place to keep order, as a ship cannot sail in chaos. However, pirates were wild. They were almost constantly drunk, and often fell overboard because of it and drowned. To illustrate the bedlam that was normal on a pirate ship: the articles of the real pirate Ned Low included rules about drunkenness during the taking of a vessel, as well as rules against shooting pistols below deck. Sex between men aboard ship, where quarters were cramped and privacy nil, seems to have been a matter of convenience and mutual consent; it happened regardless of rules. The rowdy celebratory sex that occurs after successfully taking a ship in Dreamwater was a well-chronicled part of pirate revelry. Pirates’ lives were based on risk and murder, thievery and instant gratuitous pleasures that were to be grasped quickly and savored lest the chance be wasted. Death was quite literally at their door.

    In my research, I also learned this harsh truth: pirates loved to torture. Pirates were vicious. They celebrated their victories by playing with their victims in ways that rivaled the Inquisition. Every form of torture I mention in Dreamwater was documented and performed at one time or another by actual pirates or slave traders. For instance, as an adult, the pirate Ned Low really cut off and roasted the lips of a captain whose ship he had taken, and forced the man to eat them. Slave traders could be just as brutal as pirates, using torture to control their captives.

    However, Ned Low is more than a villian. He has redeeming virtues: his strength, his vulnerability and his love for women.

    In Dreamwater, Ned is taken up by the whores of Isabella as a kind of toy or mascot. Ned is also in love with Molly Treadwell. Ned Low is more sociopath than charming rogue, but his appreciation for women and especially his affection for the good and beautiful Molly Treadwell redeem him. And, yes, a part of Ned’s attraction to Molly is his desire to have power over goodness. Perhaps to defile goodness, but after doing so, he is in love. Goodness wins.

    In history, the real pirate Ned Low was a romantic. In his youth, he had been something of a playful thief back in England. He tried to go straight in Boston, where he wed his true love, Eliza Marble. The real Ned Low did not become a pirate until his beloved wife died in her second childbirth. He had already lost a son. After some trouble during which Low killed a man, he turned to piracy. Low left his daughter behind, an action about which he expressed deep regret. Sometimes, when he was lucid and not drunk, he would “weep plentifully” for his lost child.[1] Because of his own romantic experience with love, Low always asked a man if he were married before pressing him; he would only press single men on to his ship. He was known to free female prisoners.

    Loving Molly might be Ned’s redeeming virtue and Molly may essentially be a good person, but her affection for the wicked Ned proves her youthful attraction to the forbidden: Molly is not completely innocent. Like a typical pre-teen, Molly is off dabbling in things she shouldn’t – magic and romance with a bad guy. I had no intention of joining Ned with Molly. She threw her scarlet ball of yarn according to the courtship game in When Two Women Die, but when Ned’s foot came down on it, and all the girls giggled, I realized Molly loved Ned. I had intended to marry her to another character. It was clearly an instance of characters taking off in their own direction away from the author’s intention. I felt something shift in Molly and I followed her lead. I always listen to my characters and consider where they want to go. I am in charge, but after all, they are the ones who love and fear and struggle.

    I want to talk about age. In Dreamwater, Ned and Molly are very young. Because of their youth, I wanted to stress in 1995 how advanced young people can be; that is why I made Pete and Sarah very smart at only ten, and why the ghost hunters are fifteen years old.

    In the 17^th Century, there was no age of consent, as we know it, because fathers gave their consent, not girls or boys. Children were betrothed or even married at age two or three, sometimes because one parent, or both, had died. Marriage was an economic necessity of life. A partnership of survival. A classic example of early marriage is in Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet, when Juliet’s mother chides her for being unmarried and middle-aged at fourteen. Elizabeth Treadwell herself was married at fourteen. Molly Treadwell, at ten. Therefore, we do have a marriage consummation scene between eleven-year-old Ned, who has been tutored by the prostitutes of Isabella on Isla Hispaniola, and Molly, who is a ten-year-old virgin.

    Ned is also strikingly handsome. We seem to have a deep psychological need to be attracted to our villains. Some of our most popular villains are handsome. From Robert Lovelace and Alec D’urberville to Patrick Bateman and Tom Ripley, we love to hate an appealing villain. Ned is certainly good-looking. In When Two Women Die, when we first see him, I describe him thusly: “His sharp features cut a darkly handsome profile into the bright day.” Some have called Ned a hero, because of what he accomplishes in Dreamwater, but I think we have blurred the line between hero and villain. Sometimes, in our stories, our villains become our heroes.

    I want to take a minute to discuss the liberties I have taken with history. The real Ned Low, according to records, was born in London in 1690. I wanted Ned to be a character in When Two Women Die and I needed him to be at least nine years old in 1690, so I adjusted his birthplace and his age.

    There were other, more inconsequential, details I altered for my own use in When Two Women Die. I changed Edward Dimond’s house to be much simpler than historians believe because I disagree with them about the house. I think it was built much earlier than the 18^th Century, because Edward Dimond was in Marblehead before the 18^th Century. For the sake of drama and character, I wanted Ol’ Dimond to be a loner in a very small fisherman’s shack. I also made Elizabeth’s house more humble, with a ladder instead of a staircase in order to add tension and danger to events that happened on that fateful stormy night when she and the children hid from pirates in the upstairs bedroom. I changed Roger Williams’ name to “Codger Williams” for effect. By 1690 he was already dead when I needed him to ride down the road so that Rosie could throw raspberries at him. However, the real Roger Williams really did try to force the women of Salem to wear a veil over their faces and John Cotton really spoke against him. Just at a slightly earlier time. I wanted to show how attitudes were beginning subtly to shift in Salem toward the dangerous and frightening situation of the witch trials. In When Two Women Die, Rosie goes to see Ol’ Dimond to ask his psychic advice about her pregnancy. In Dreamwater, just two years later, she will be arrested for practicing witchcraft with the old seer.

    Dreamwater, like When Two Women Die, is full of magic and paranormal occurrences. Marblehead, with its simple historic homes, old winding streets and dramatic rocky shores, lends itself to mystery. Pirates are still sighted climbing over the rocks and the mysterious Englishwoman’s screams are still heard at midnight. I hid Rosie, Molly and the baby, Lena in the “Witch Cave” in Nahant, possibly a site of ancient worship, where an accused witch and her daughter actually did hide in 1692.[2] Magic and the paranormal (more normal than we realize) were ever-present in our ancestors’ lives and are still present in our own. We’d recognize these constant, daily phenomena if we only looked with open eyes and open minds.

    Of course, in Dreamwater, I have a whole set of other characters in 1995 who are also struggling to make their dreams come true: Peter Treadwell is trying to come to terms with his young wife’s sudden death, while his daughter sees and speaks to her mother’s ghost; his son Pete wants to study ghost hunting, but finds himself caught up in internet dangers; Jo Simmons just wants to enjoy her new business and her new husband, but she is being stalked; Cassandra is working very hard on understanding reality as well as she understands her psychic visions.

    We’ve learned a great deal about how to live since the 17^th Century, as you will see, when you read Dreamwater. Now we have someone to call when we are in trouble. But, we still struggle. 

    As ever, Marblehead emerges as an extraordinary place. A place of almost paranormal loveliness, a place of history, of magic, a place where people still strive, but a place where many, rich and poor, have divined how to live, how to find their dream and how to make it real.

---

[1] Edward E. Leslie, Desperate Journeys, Abandoned Souls, Houghton Mifflin, 1988, account of the captive, Philip Ashton of Marblehead, p. 95.

^[2] Robert Ellis Cahill, New England’s Ancient Mysteries, Old Salt Box, 1993, p. 32.

Patricia Goodwin is the author of When Two Women Die, about the legends of Marblehead, and Dreamwater, the sequel to When Two Women Die, about the terrifying journey of Ned Low in 1692 and the restless ghost of Beth Treadwell in 1995.

Edward Dimond, Marblehead Psychic

In my thriller,  When Two Women Die, during Elizabeth Treadwell’s dramatic and frightening day in 1690, she advises a friend to seek solace in the wisdom of the old seer and psychic, Edward Dimond, who lived at the foot of Burial Hill, where all the ancient Marbleheaders were laid to rest. Edward Dimond was an old man in this story, much admired for his ability to help townspeople find lost items or discover who had committed a crime. He was also feared for his strange way of climbing Burial Hill in the midst of raging storms to “speak” to Marblehead’s sailors caught in a gale over 500 miles away in Newfoundland. And, I’m sure, he was held in awe for his superior sailing prowess, which made it possible for him to take over in an emergency and guide experienced sailors in how to regain control of their own ship. His intelligence is obvious. He needed to clearly “see” what was happening on board and quickly figure out how to reverse the dangerous situation.

What exactly did our old psychic Edward Dimond do? That’s the question I asked myself. I set out to find the answer.

First, here is the information we have on the psychic Edward Dimond. According to Thomas E. Gray’s The Founding of Marblehead, a woman named Rebecca Norman (born 1655 or 1656) married an Edward Dimond from Marblehead. We know that his house was supposedly “built” in 1720. I have always been of the belief that there is another, more simple house, probably built much earlier, inside the house we see today, which is clearly of 18^th Century style. The original Dimond house was knick-named the “Old Brig” because it was reportedly constructed of remnants of a beached ship, possibly a brig, a two-masted, square-rigged vessel. In When Two Women Die, I described Ed’s house as a simple fisherman’s shack more dramatically suited to the solitary, independent lifestyle of the sailor and seer I portrayed.

According to legend, here’s what Ed Dimond did: Edward Dimond climbed Burial Hill and projected his voice hundreds of miles in raging storms to help ships in trouble. The men on board, again, according to legend, heard Ed’s voice shouting instructions to them, probably recognizing his voice as that of a wise and trusted neighbor, jumped to, and following his every command, saved themselves and their vessel.

But, how did the sailors “hear” Ed’s voice in all horrible turmoil being raised by the storm’s energy, by the pounding thunder and crashing lightning? In When Two Women Die, I imagined Ed’s voice to be like that of a friend’s spoken directly into the sailors’ ears. I imagined that Ed’s voice is eerily quiet, whispering at times, yet heard distinctly through the storm’s chaos.

Did the sailor’s “see” Ed too? Did he physically appear to them? From the legend as we know it, Ed did not appear physically, so we must go with that information in this essay.

In my search, I began with the phenomenon of astral projection, described thusly by Crystalinks: “In astral projection the conscious mind leaves the physical body and moves into the astral body to experience. In astral projection you remain attached to your physical body by a 'silver umbilical type cord'. Some people are able to see the cord when astral projecting. People who say they experience astral projection often say that their spirit or astral body has left their physical body and moves in another dimension known as the spirit world or astral plane. The concept of astral projection has been around and practiced for thousands of years, dating back to ancient China.”

Once more, going on legend, the sailors did not see Ed Dimond; they heard him. If someone is astral projecting, word-on-the-ether is that they are on a different plane. Most likely, the physical body can’t be seen. Now, I know better than to define any psychic phenomenon. Everyone’s astral projection is probably different, and many might argue with me right now about being “seen”. That’s fine. Please let me know if you have astral projected and have been seen and heard. I'm sincerely interested, and can be reached through the comments below or through my website. Meanwhile, we don’t have any stories about Ed Dimond’s being seen on board the floundering ships. We do know that he was seen here on Burial Hill. So, his body remained standing on the hill during a violent storm. Can a body do that during astral projection? Usually, the physical body remains somewhat inert during the astral projection process, waiting for the spirit to return. Ed was extremely active and very strong to be able to stand there and hold his ground in high winds, especially at his advanced age.

Ok, so it wasn’t exactly astral projection. How about remote viewing? According to the International Remote Viewing Association, remote viewing “is a novel perceptual discipline for gaining information not available to the ordinary physical senses. Used extensively by so-called ‘psychic spies’ during the Cold War for classified military projects, it has a long history both as an intelligence gathering tool and as the subject of research and applications in the civilian world.” The IRVA teaches remote viewing; it is a skill that can be developed through practice. However, without true psychic ability, most taught remote viewing is fuzzy and ineffective. Ed Dimond was neither fuzzy nor ineffective. Also, the ability to communicate remotely was something not even the CIA could accomplish by the time they ended their “Stargate” remote viewing efforts in 1995. (Not that I believe the CIA ever ends anything. They probably just call it by a different name.)

I found an interesting example of psychic remote viewing on the website of the psychic Lynnne Olson who, while watching the Ghost Adventures’ “Las Vegas, La Palazza” house episode on television, actually interacted with the ghosts. The “La Palazza” house was a particularly nasty example of the ghosts of Las Vegas organized crime. Lynne Olson spoke to the ghosts during the show, asking questions and receiving answers. The most evil ghost told her that he stayed in the house because, “There is no heaven for the likes of me.” In this case, the psychic used the television as a conduit. Like us, and the physical world around us, which is constantly vibrating with atoms, spirits are made up of energy. The television channels energy. The idea that spirits could communicate through the television is almost too rudimentary to mention. Ghosts have been known to appear on televisions, even sets that are turned off. However, the idea of a conduit is interesting. Perhaps Ed Dimond used the storm as a conduit? Storms have plenty of energy crashing about. Not only energy but also water. We know that spirits gain a great deal of energy from water. Perhaps Ed Dimond also knew how to siphon the power of water, not only of the storm itself, but also of the powerful ocean.

I was still researching remote viewing and reading PSI Spies by Jim Marrs when I came across this passage: “In one study of native North American spirituality, the story was repeated of a Penobscot Indian (Penobscot tribe, Maine) who went on a hunting trip with his wife, son and daughter-in-law. The women stayed behind at the hunting camp, while the men went off, promising to return within three days. After four or five days, the women became anxious about the men’s safety. One night the Penobscot wife told the daughter-in-law that she was going to sleep and would dream about the men. After a long time, during which the younger woman believed she saw a ‘ball of fire’ exit and enter the wife’s body, the wife stirred and said, ‘Don’t worry, they’ll be back tomorrow. They had good luck and are bringing lots of game. I just saw them sitting by their fire eating supper.’ The next day, the hunters returned loaded with an abundance of game.”

I have never seen the fireball. But, I have heard about it now three times. Once, in a story told by Nostradamus expert, Erika Cheetham: she was attempting to film (with a film crew) the grave of Nostradamus when a fireball ripped through the church and destroyed their equipment. Another time, a practicing herbalist to whom I was telling the Nostradamus story told me she had seen the fireball. And, now, I am hearing about the fireball in a Native American story. There is no mention of the fireball in the Ed Dimond legend. But that doesn’t mean the fireball is not a part of the story, just that we don’t know about it. However, that psychic tale about the Penobscots got me wondering. Could Ed Dimond have learned to develop this psychic ability through contact with Native Americans?

I decided to write to the author of PSI Spies, Jim Marrs. I filled out his online contact form asking about Native American psychic ability. I really didn’t expect an answer, but there it was, in my inbox a couple of days later: “Howdy Patricia, (He’s from Texas.) Thank you for the most interesting e-mail.  It sounds like Ed Dimond was a Whooper, a vocal communication method used by the Appalachian mountain people and probably derivative from Native Americans.”

I was stunned. Could Whooping be heard physically? Was Whooping like yodeling; did it rely on the echoing of mountains? I had to ask the Appalachian Native Americans. 
Ironically, I turned to the internet to find out more about Native American tribes in Appalachia. I discovered a website of Native American Communities (tribes, as such, no longer exist) of West Virginia and wrote to one of their spokespeople. I received a reluctant answer.  Again, in true irony, modern Native Americans are sometimes squeamish about being publicly spiritual. However, my respectful tone had won this person over to at least answer my questions. I never got an answer about Whooping. But here is what I was told: that what I had described Edward Dimond doing was called “far-seeing” and “far-speaking” by the Native Americans of Appalachia, and that by any account, Edward Dimond’s ability was rare.

Rare. I knew it!

I’ve been studying paranormal stories for a long time, and I have never heard a story like Ed’s that did not involve God-like beings, like Jesus or angels. Jesus appeared to his disciples and angels also appeared, whether in life or in dreams. Spirits of departed loved ones also appear to us and communicate sometimes in our minds without words. Other spirits have been known to show up and interact with the living. But Ed was not dead and Ed was not a god. Ed Dimond had to overcome the limitations of the physical body and the physical world in order to call out over hundreds of miles during a storm and be heard.

I believe our ancestors and Native Americans were closer to nature’s forces than we are and more able to get in touch with these forces and use them than we are, even if we, modern man and woman, are psychic. Why? Lots of reasons. First and foremost, the earth’s power is unspiralling. The energy of heaven and earth was more powerful in the past. Second, the soil, water and air were more pure. Third, the food had more nutritional value. That last statement is almost a joke. Our food is nowhere near as powerful as it was in the 17^th Century. No comparison. Our food has deteriorated since the end of World War II, when fast foods and processed foods became the norm.  When I think of the real food I saw growing up Italian, and what I see on the supermarket shelves now, I shudder. My mother, who is traditional Italian, does not touch 90% of the packages in the store. Most people in the United States do not even know what food is. They’ve never seen it or tasted it, and they certainly have never felt the effects of it. The power of human beings has never been realized. Now, add to that equation a psychic human being eating powerful food and drinking powerful water and breathing powerful air, in a more powerfully energized time.

        I believe the Native Americans, by living in nature and understanding and using natural forces every day, were able to remote view and astral project with much more ease. Now, I also believe there were ordinary Native Americans, not every one was spiritually powerful. Psychics stood out even then. But, even ordinary Native Americans were stronger and healthier than the Europeans who came to America, unless, of course, they had bad habits that made them weak or unhealthy. Much of what the Native Americans were able to accomplish came to them naturally because they were strong and healthy and able to channel spiritual and physical energy in an efficient way. Much of what they did probably seemed normal to them.

        I believe in psychic ability. I don’t need any of its phenomena proven to me. I think skeptics are a waste of my time. Skeptics are arrogant enough to believe that only what they understand can be real. From the first moment I heard of Edward Dimond, I knew that his psychic ability was a natural and rare talent of unusual power and control. I now believe this talent was probably developed to its legendary level through contact with Native Americans. It’s possible that Native Americans used fasting and walking out to a spiritual place; music and drumming; chanting, herbs and water to reach a crescendo of concentration. We don’t know if Ed Dimond had time to use any of these methods in an emergency, but he may have developed his concentration using any of these practices. 

According to the Marblehead Reporter’s Marblehead 101 feature, “The Naumkeags, part of the Algonquin nation of woodland tribes, came to Marblehead for the same reason that people come today, fishing and living by the shore in a relaxed and healthful way. For the Naumkeags, Marblehead in the summer was part of their route. They used the time to fish, clam and collect shells; particularly prized were mussel shells with beautiful iridescent purple insides. They also collected salt from the ocean shores.”

Many Native Americans came and went from this area. In early colonial times, there was much more moving about, picking up and starting new elsewhere, than we probably realize, for Native Americans as well as the colonists. People followed opportunities to improve their lives. Ed Dimond and everyone else had the chance to meet and learn from folks from far away countries and from far away areas of this new country.

The Naumkeags lived beside Edward Dimond in Marblehead, an area, which, I believe, is enchanted. The energy here is rare, powerful and vibrating with life’s forces. The architecture has remained straight and simple, standing solidly on ground, made of natural materials, perfect for channeling heaven and earth’s forces. The ocean freely rushes and leaves the shore. Men make their living from the sea and sail for pleasure. The massive granite under every structure both channels and receives energy. Water streams underground and forms ponds above. I can only imagine what life in Marblehead was like when our amazing ancestors lived here making their living from the powerful ocean with psychics, pirates and natives as neighbors.

Please visit patriciagoodwin.com for book trailers, poems, books and info about the author. To purchase When Two Women Die: An Historical Novella of Marblehead, Telling of Two Murders Which Happened There, 301 Years Apart, please click here.

©Patricia Goodwin 2011

Patricia Goodwin is the author of When Two Women Die, about Marblehead legends and true crime and its sequel, Dreamwater, about the Salem witch trials and the vicious 11-year-old pirate Ned Low. Holy Days is her third novel, about the sexual, psychological seduction of Gloria Wisher and her subsequent transformation. Her newest poetry books are Telling Time By Apples, And Other Poems About Life On The Remnants of Olde Humphrey Farme, illustrated by the author, and Java Love: Poems of a Coffeehouse.