Record-Eagle
Outlook
Page 15
Friday, July 29, 2005
Ghost Story
Linda Alice Dewey's spiritual experience
led her to start her own book company
by Erin Anderson,
Record-Eagle staff writer
 |
Linda Alice Dewey never thought that a decades-dead Irish immigrant would be the one to help her find her place in life.
Growing up in the Detroit area, Linda Alice Dewey always had an affinity for northern Michigan. This love for the region continued through a 20-year teaching career in Michigan as well as through an 11-year stint living in Arizona.
"Michigan has always been my love. My heart was here in northern Michigan, but my soul grew in Arizona," Dewey said.
After nearly two decades teaching music and remedial reading at the junior high level, Dewey was ready to turn her attention to her spiritual education. Having recently relocated to Chandler, Arizona, Dewey, 56, began to explore the areas that had always intrigued her.
Introduced to others with similar ethereal interests and integrating herself with the diverse and welcoming spiritual community of the Southwest, Dewey immersed herself in obtaining answers, as well as just enjoying the enlightening journey.
"While I was in Arizona I developed my spiritual skills -- spiritual talents that we all have," Dewey said.
But it wasn't until a 1995 visit to her family in northern Michigan that Dewey had the opportunity to employ her well-honed sensibilities in the service of someone in need.
While on an evening walk, Dewey's brother offered to show Dewey and her friend, Lisbeth, a little-known graveyard hidden in a cool and quite wood outside of town.
"It was July and everything in the woods was green and very still; when we go to the cemetery there weren't even any birds singing," Dewey said.
The graveyard, just off Forrest Haven Road, is over a century old, and many of the markers have long since crumbled or the names have worn away. It was Lisbeth who first felt something -- a presence -- and she announced, "There's someone here."
She wasn't quite sure what it was. For all her mystical forays, she had never experienced a ghost.
Confused by conflicting thoughts, one thing struck here: the overwhelming emotion of empathy. "It seemed so lonely there. I was creeped out a little, but mostly I kept thinking, 'What would it be like to be there, all along in the woods'," she said. So she called out to it.
And so began the amazing adventure of Aaron's Crossing. Almost immediately, Dewey learned what she believes is the spirit's identity and the reason for his lonely unrest, and over the next several months, she strove to help him home.
Her new book, Aaron's Crossing, not only chronicles the events following her 1995 other-worldly experience, but resumes years later as a first-person narrative, an "as-told-to" memoir that chronicles Aaron's life in his own words, the result of his dictation to Dewey upon resurfacing years later.
Although Dewey is adamant about the truth of her tale, she understands that many people will reject it as fantasy or, even worse, something dark or evil. Having been raised as a Christian Scientist, Dewey was brought up to believe there was no such thing as ghosts or spirits.
"People in the old countries all believed in this sort of thing -- in spirits, communication and intuition -- but we no longer do," Dewey said. "in our modern 'age of reason' and scientific proof, we've thrown the baby out with the bathwater."
Although some might think her meeting with the metaphysical would lead her away from mainstream religion, Dewey explains that exactly the opposite occurred.
"Since this experience, I've become a converted Christian," said Dewey. "And I really fought against that at first. I had been very against organized religion, so for me to convert was really something."
After she completed her manuscript, Dewey went in search of a publisher. But finding one proved more challenging than she thought.
"I shopped it around everywhere, and everywhere I'd hear the same thing: 'We love this, it's well-written, it's interesting, but it doesn't fit anywhere,'" Dewey recalls. "It wasn't a ghost story in the traditional sense, and it wasn't a true memoir, and it wasn't non-fiction or a novel."
Eventually, Dewey realized that if she was going to share her words, she was going to have to do it herself. She formed her own small press, Northern Spirit Books.
"We've invited other authors whose work ahs a real purpose, those who don't quite fit other places," Dewey said.
Dewey is also showcasing her work at Horizon Books through a series of summer performances. For years, Dewey had been writing songs, but she was never quite sure why. She had the impulse to write all kinds of music, and some songs about ghosts in particular. At the time, she couldn't say why.
"Everything really does happen for a reason," Dewey said. "Even if, at the time, nothing makes sense and you're not sure you're doing the right thing."
At her Horizon Books performance, she incorporated the theatrical talent of some of her friends, as well as her own singing and storytelling abilities, in a program of magical mysticism christened "Reader's Theatre."
Dewey will continue her performances, only this time it will be simply she and her keyboard churning out fun, fold-like tunes in a series she's dubbed Linda Live!
But for Dewey, the most remarkable result of the book is the reaction from readers.
"People are really relating. They're writing in with their own 'ghost' stories."
The reader response has been so overwhelmingly positive, Dewey is beginning to feel her next project coalescing: publishing a compendium of her readers' stories about their supernatural encounters.
For now, however, Dewey is happy to concentrate on the present and Aaron's Crossing's success. She hopes it will not only entertain her readers, but also give them a sense of peace and reassurance.
"People can read it and do as they like with it; they can believe it or not," Dewey states matter-of-factly. "What happens inside another person, between them and whatever it is that they're relating to as a higher power, that's not my business. I feel this is my life purpose -- putting the message out there.
