The Leelanau Enterprise
Section 2
Thursday, February 3, 2005
Helping a spirit to cross over
by Cymbre Sommervile Foster
of the Enterprise staff
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For Linda Alice Dewey, death is not the end of her story.
An afterlife experience with a tormented soul not only changed her life, but taught the Glen Arbor resident the value of love, trust, and forgiveness in this life and beyond.
Dewey expects that some people won't believe her story. She doesn't care. Her work with a spirit first met in an abandoned Glen Arbor cemetery has been positive as both learned about themselves and what is important in this life and after, she said.
"Any fear I used to have about anything is gone. I've learned to go with my intuition. I also learned that it is all about trusting yourself, that was my lesson. His was trusting in others, that was his big test."
On a summer's day in 1991 while Dewey and some friends were on a woodland hike, they discovered a small, abandoned cemetery near Glen Arbor.
Dewey immediately sensed something -- a heaviness in the air. One of her friends, who is not a Catholic, drew down to here knees and made the sign of the cross.
Dewey wondered if there might be a spirit or ghost nearby. If there was, she said, she wanted he or she to know that someone cared.
"I called out to him, 'Whoever is here, our hearts are with you'," she said before continuing on. "You should never do that in a cemetery, but in this case it was a really, really wonderful thing to do," she said.
"I knew someone was
there; we had no pets and
everyone was asleep"
- Linda Dewey
That night while lying in her bed she had a visitor. "He moved something in my room. I felt a bump at the end of my bed," said Dewey.
She turned on the light, and saw her mattress pushed down as if by a hand. "I knew someone was there; we had no pets and everyone else was asleep," she said.
Dewey said she decided to reach out to her visitor instead of being afraid. She has always carried an intuition about the afterlife and our ability to tune into specific entities or people, even to the point of communication - no matter what dimension they are in.
"I decided that I could be afraid or I could help him. I started to talk to him and said I knew someone who could help him cross over but he had to do it on my terms, no more bumps in the night.
Dewey was visiting what was then her summer cottage. She asked the ghost to travel with her to her home in Arizona. Her trip was uneventful, so she wasn't sure that the spirit had accompanied her until a friend confirmed his presence.
That same friend channeled through another spirit to help the entity "cross over" to a place where he could finally be at peace. Dewey felt connected to the spirit during the two weeks she spent with him. "It was such a good experience. I felt like we became companions over that time, " she said. That wasn't the end of the story.
Fast forward nearly a decade.
Dewey said while half awake one morning she heard a voice in her head. "No, I'm not schizophrenic," she recalled, laughing. "But I had thought about what had happened, and I had wanted to know why he was a ghost and some people are not."
The "voice" in her head was her ghost, who she calls Aaron. He ultimately answered some of her questions as he "told" her his story. Dewey said she went to a computer an typed down everything she "heard." Eventually the narrative of Aaron's life and afterlife was turned into a novel titled AARON'S CROSSING.
Dewey explains her book: "Aaron examines his role in life and recognizes within himself the patterns that created his own misery, then takes corrective measures." The first half recounts Aaron's life; the later pages examine afterlife from his point of view. At the end of each chapter, Dewey inserts her comments and reactions to the information.
She learned that Aaron once lived in Glen Arbor with his wife and three children. After his third child died, his wife was so distraught that she also died a short time later. He felt he could not care for his children alone. It was difficult for him to look at his children who reminded him of his wife. He eventually left them with his step-mother, and moved away.
His death came unexpectedly at the age of 35 while working in Ohio. He was in a hayloft bringing up hay on a pulley when he looked down to see a mouse run across his foot. A hay bale knocked him from the loft and he broke his neck.
His spirit returned to northern Michigan, where he had last seen his children. Because of his unresolved issue of abandoning them, he was unable to cross into the next life, Dewey explained. Dewey is grateful that she was able to give him the final peace he sought.
"AARON'S CROSSING" will be available soon at local bookstores and Amazon.com.
Now that her book is finished, Dewey is immersed in her latest project - a musical adaptation of Aaron's Crossing for the Stage. A seven-member cast will reconstruct the story of "Aaron's Crossing" on Saturday, March 12 at 8:30pm at Horizon Books' Shine Cafe in downtown Traverse City. [Click Here for more information.]
Dewey, a former music teacher, is a singer and performer. She looks forward to seeing the story told in a melodic way.
Dewey explained that she and her troupe will file on stage, then turn their backs to the audience. During each scene, actors will turn to the audience to read and sing their parts. The cast also includes Norm Wheeler, Laura Murphey, Tina Taghon, Alan Ladomer, Evan Bauerle, and Debbie Connor. The director is Bill Dungjen; production manager is Sue Woodward.
"For all of them to say 'yes' to this project has been a blessing," said Dewey.
