Tiger the Cat speaks with Aern the Ghost/Spirit

When I was a young boy of 9 or 10 -- when our family moved to their current home in south River Heights in 1975, whenever I went downstairs it was dark there. I always was so scared of being down there alone, and I would always rush back as fast as I could back upstairs.

I knew I saw some kind of dark coloured male spirit standing there watching me run from the basement and up the stairs.

And ever since I started to bring my 2nd cat, Tiger, to my parent's home, he never really liked being there much I thought. He would meow and meow and I always got the impression that he wanted to go back to my apt.

But today I guess because I've been opened again to ghosts because of my cat Smiles coming back twice in spirit form to my apartment (June & October 2009).

I brought Tiger over, and let him go downstairs for a bit. He meowed as usual, and in fact Pat, and Scully the Parrot, and Tiger and myself were all sitting down for a bit to watch the 1988 animated movie The Land Before Time on Laserdisc.

Pat went back upstairs because I had gone up again for some food.

When I returned I could hear Tiger talking. He was at the back of the laundry room, when I heard him say "Hello, Hello. Erin?"

So now this ghost/spirit has a name.

Now what do we do?

This and possibly more spirits have been present in the that space for possibly 100s of years.

Mom of course can't see them and of course she doesn't really believe in them because I believe she is "rational" and not really spiritual or psychic like Pat and me are.

Then Tiger spoke again from the back of the laundry room, while I was sitting at the other end of the basement but could clearly hear what Tiger was saying...

He said "Gotta go, Erin", meaning Tiger had to leave the spirit(s) and was going back to me at the other (north) end of the basement

As I remember Aern running scared passed him in the 1970s, he wore a dark cloak and a top hat, and his whole outfit looked like it was from the mid-19th century. So he must have been dead for at least 100 years before our family had moved into the home-space.

I used to be scared of this man figure I saw on my way upstairs, but now I feel so sorry for him. I want to help Aern (male version of Erin) to reach to the tunnel of light that gets his spirit & soul up to Heaven. I don't sense he is "bad" but that I guess in the old Christianity he probably didn't go up to the tunnel because sometimes Christianity scares humanity into making us believe that God is "vengeful" and "you're going to Hell if you sin".

I've discovered though that God really is more merciful than we let on to believe. If we have sinned a bit, as long as it is not major stuff like murder, then we basically do "Heaven time" and will one day reincarnate again into a new body.

If Aern and other human spirits had just let go and gone into the light when he had died over 100 years ago, his soul would have reincarnated into the body of a male again, and if he chose, he would have been born in Winnipeg with a new name -- God's way of totally forgiving our sins. I will try and communicate that to Aern if I see him again though. I don't want him to continue to get stuck the way he's been. I'm sure the rest of his family has been waiting for him in Heaven for a long, long, time, if they haven't reincarnated themselves at least once by now.

Jim