Spirit Revelations

(For Lady Janet Douglas; the “Gray Lady” of Glamis, Castle and my ancestor) Lost in the corridors of my imagination I dreamed… I saw myself as my own ancestor; as if I’d lived for over four-hundred years. Things I’ve never owned were on my person and people I’d never known surrounded me. Why am I seeing through her eyes; feeling her clothing and jewelry against my skin? Dreams change but, this scenario…well it doesn’t. I went through her entire day; looking for clues to…me; I was not there. I never really rode in a horse drawn carriage; down gas lit streets of cobblestone but, I did in the dreams and it was so real. I must’ve dreamed her twenty times or more; all the while, in her body; it was beginning to terrify me… each dream, more real than the last. Television, the wondrous invention that it is; led me to her name…Janet. Then, the daydreams began…rain on the cobblestones; the smell of burning coal fires and the way the sleeves of my dress… no, her’s; it was her dress…hung on my arms. My Mother, delving into her family tree; didn’t plan to go back so far but, I couldn’t keep Janet at bay; she came day and night and I had no choice but, to host her troubled spirit. Like I said before, television led me to her identity; the library did the rest. The dead do give up their many tales. Once I learned that a lady, wrongfully accused of witchcraft and treason had, been hanged; she ceased to visit me. Blood may be, “thicker than water”, but an injustice to an ancestor flows across centuries of time and space; more fluid than water; it carries many truths into the light. Janet was King James V sister-in-law but, she had to make her statement, even if it took centuries. She chose me to tell about her innocence; how she and her husband and young son, died for a lie. I learned that when ancestors speak; we must listen. It’s when we don’t that, history sometimes and so sadly, repeats itself. Janet was one in a long list of histories innocent victims and centuries later, we still put to death, innocents… the guilty, ensure it and the saddest fact is that, we allow them to do so. Ghosts like Janet, forever try to teach; to enlighten the living; it’s a pity that we fear those who can help our society the most. If you dream that you are someone else; don’t dismiss it. God sometimes, allows spirits to, work his mysterious ways, among us.