A Message from My Great Grandmother

Full transcript of the My True Ghost Stories episode “A Message from My Great Grandmother.” Listen to this episode.

A message from my great-grandmother sends me to an interesting place, a place familiar to her and new to me. Welcome to episode 43 of My True Ghost Stories. My great-grandma Linda, like me, had a deep connection to the other side, and she had no qualms whatsoever about letting her medium ship show. Linda made a plane that she was connected to the other side, and she made something of a living from it as well. She read tea leaves, she read palms, and the tarot.

She held saances and had psychic visions. Sometimes she would announce her psychic visions loudly in the supermarket, much to the embarrassment of her children. My great-grandmother's canning recipes involved all the regular ingredients, cucumbers, water, dill, and then symbolic features like a rock from the center of a field, which she insisted was just as important as adding the right amount of dill. And I believe her. And although I don't really cook or can, I consider the symbolic aspects of a project just as important as the physical.

And this is definitely our family's culture. Since I write this right now, my daughters are texting me from a witchy store where they are buying supplies to clear an apartment energetically that one of them is moving into this weekend. So it's definitely our family's culture. My great-grandmother and I, I think, recognized this spiritual similarity between us instantly, this medium ship. Apparently when I was only five, my mother took me to Indiana to visit her mother and to see great-grandma Linda.

The story goes that I fell in love with grandma Linda. We lived in New York, so we did not see them often, but upon meeting Linda as a five-year-old, I wanted to spend every minute with her and I insisted that she come on all of our outings. So I think I saw that she had the same thing as I do, this connection to the other side, even though I was too young to know what that was. She acted like a regular grandma on that visit. It's not like she invited me a five-year-old to a say-on or anything, but I knew she was somehow a kindred spirit.

My mother recently found a letter that Linda sent to me right after that trip. Grandma Linda talked about a blanket she had sown for me and a flower that I had picked for her that stayed fresh for a whole week, and she talked about going out into the field and getting some tomatoes for a recipe, but mostly in this letter she talked about how she missed me. I saw her a few more times before she passed away in 1981 and I just thought she was the coolest. I have an old photograph of her next to my bad, a photograph of her feeding her chickens. My mom gave me that picture to me in a frame when I got my own backyard chickens.

My mom also recognizes the similarities between me and Linda. Along with her palm reading and loud supermarket visions, my great-grandmother Linda was an active member of the Spiritualist Church. The Spiritualist Church has a belief system centered around the idea that the spirits of the departed can communicate with the living. Spiritualists often use mediums to facilitate this communication. The Spiritualist Church was particularly strong in Indiana.

In fact, there were over 50 Spiritualist Churches in Indiana by 1924 with an estimated attendance of over half a million people. And that information is from the Discover Indiana website. The popularity of the Spiritualist Church had subsided a little in Indiana by the time my grandmother was involved, but Spiritualism was still very strong there when she attended. I don't know the nature of her involvement, just that she was an active member, attended regularly, and that she was a medium, so I imagine she participated in that way. As a medium.

Great Grandma Linda is one of my guides. I have talked about my guides on this podcast before. It's a circle of saints, archangels, or rheshas, bodhisattva, and guardian angels, like Grandma Linda. These guides advise me and direct me in different situations in my spiritual life and when I am dealing with trapped spirits. Grandma Linda is one of the guides who I call upon to escort spirits to the other side, and she also send me messages about my own life sometimes.

I received a message from her recently. I was doing my morning meditation and part of what I do in my morning meditation is to ask if anyone in the circle of saints, archangels, or rheshas, bodhisattva, and guardian angels, if any of them have a message for me. I used to go around the circle and ask every single one of them what message they had for me today, but that was exhausting and took way too long, and I don't have all the time in the world. So I started to ask if anyone has a message for me. And I usually get one or two messages from different entities in the circle, and one day about two months ago, I received just one message, and it was from Grandma Linda.

And the message was, go to the spiritualist church. And that was it. I didn't need her to elaborate. It was pretty obvious what the message was. The obvious next step was to go on the internet and find out where a spiritualist church near me would be.

And it popped right up, a spiritualist church right here in New York City, having in-person services, and the next one was in three days. And I did no other research. I figured I would learn in-person. I put it in my calendar. I figured out the best trains to get there.

I was kind of nervous because it was something new, and I didn't know what to expect. The page said that they had a service, and then a say-ons afterward. I figured I would go to the service, but not the say-ons. I wanted to start slow, and Grandma Linda's message did not say, join the spiritualist church. It said, go to the spiritualist church.

To go I did. I headed out on the train and got there 50 minutes early. I found the address and the unmarked door to the side of the steps that was described on the website. I opened the door, and I saw that I was at the back of a small meeting room. A meeting room that looked a little like a mini church.

And there were about 20 people already sitting in chairs facing a small podium in the front of the room, and several quiet conversations were going on. And even though I was 15 minutes early, I acted like I was late, and I tipped-toed and snuck quietly in and sat in the back row. But I am not shy at all, so I introduced myself right away to the woman sitting next to me, and I asked her if she attended this church regularly. Yes, she answered. I am a minister here.

She was also not shy at all, and very friendly. I told her it was my first time, which was probably pretty obvious, and we engaged in a little small talk, including where the bathrooms were. I left my coat on the back of my chair while I went upstairs to use the restroom before we started. I of course took my purse with me. And I got back downstairs, all the rest of the chairs had filled up, and they were opening folding chairs to make another two rows behind mine to accommodate all the people who I just come in.

And the starting time of 7 p.m. passed, but I could see some bustling around at the back of the center aisle, so it seemed like the service was about to start. And I was right. It started. It was pretty casual.

There was no processional hymn, no call to worship, no singing at all. And the minister, not the one who was sitting next to me, the minister who had been standing up front chatting quietly with the people in the front row, just stopped chatting with the people in the front row and began addressing the whole group. And everyone immediately quieted down, and she welcomed us. The next thing we did is that together we read the Declaration of Principles, which were pretty cool. They had to do with a higher power, a mediumship, fairness and kindness, respecting nature.

It was all my kind of stuff, and I began to think that I am going to like this spiritualist church. And I silently thanked Grandma Linda, and I felt her thank me back. Here we read the Declaration of Principles. There was a guided meditation focusing on relaxation and intuition. And after the guided meditation was a short homily from the minister, focusing on kindness and forgiveness.

And after all this, the readings of the Declaration of the Principles, the guided meditation, the homily, they said, Now we are going to have our mediums come up and give a reading to three people in the room. The minister explained that if a medium had a message for you, they would point you out and ask your permission to give you a message. Three people, two women and one man stood up and headed up to the front of the room. These were obviously the mediums. When they reached the front, they turned around and faced us.

The minister asked them who was going first. One of the women said she was going first and pointed to a man in the second row. She asked his permission to give him a message and he said, Yes, the medium described a woman who turned out to be his aunt who had passed away. And the aunt had some concerns about his health and the mediums spoke clearly of a doctor's visit. The man had been to that day.

And it was all spot on. And I thanked Grimmel and again because this was turning out to be really legit. And then it was the male mediums turn. He stood there with his eyes closed, his head down and then he looked up. He opened his eyes and pointed at me.

May I give you a message? He asked. And at first the lady in front of me started to answer but he said, No, no, the woman behind you, which is what I had thought that he had been pointing at me. So I answered, Yes, you can give me a message. And he said, There is a woman with you.

She has always been with you. She looks like you. Is it your mother? Has your mother passed? The name is something like Melinda.

I couldn't believe it. Oh my God, I thought it's Grandma Linda. Often when a medium hears a name and a message, the letters can get a little jumbled and you have to think about similar names with the same letters. And in this case, I figured he was hearing Grandma Linda. It's not my mother, I answered, but I know who you're talking about.

He didn't ask for who it actually was and I didn't elaborate. What was important was hearing this message that he had for me. He went on. It's a woman who has passed on who looks like you and she's very happy. She's very happy because you are doing something that she used to do.

Now as you know, I'm a medium but I can still get blown away when a message comes from the other side, especially one for me. And here it was. I am being told by a medium at the spiritualist church that Grandma Linda, who I had gotten a message from, that I should go to the spiritualist church like she used to do, is with me and is happy that I am doing something that she used to do, which is to go to the spiritualist church. The medium asked me, does that make sense to you? Yes, it does, I answered.

He said, okay, now the woman's spirit is clapping and everybody laughed. He didn't ask me for any details like what is the thing that you're doing that she used to do, which I would have loved to stand up and tell everybody about my great-grandmother and myself. But the medium had more things to say. So I kept quiet and kept listening. He went on.

You need to travel. I see a small European town with a train station in it. Are you traveling soon? I had no plans to travel so I said no. And he said, well that's what he saw and he didn't know what it meant.

And he finished up the reading and then they moved on to the next person. And I have no idea what that next reading was. I was totally freaking out that he had seen Grandma Linda and confirmed for me that she was happy that I was there at the spiritualist church. And that travel part? I didn't know, but I would think about it.

I went home and I called my mother. Mom, you're not going to believe what happened. I told her that I had gone to the spiritualist church because I had gotten a message from Grandma Linda to do so. And then I told her about the medium's message that a woman who looked like me was with me and was happy that I was doing something that she used to do. I told her he said the name was something like Melinda.

And I was about to tell my mother about how names and messages from the other side can have the letters all jumbled up and that he had heard Grandma Linda. But before I could explain that, my mother said, Jennifer, great Grandma Linda's real name was Melinda. Linda was her nickname. Nobody ever called her Melinda. Hardly anyone even knew that that was her real name.

So I guess on the other side she is using her real name. And as for that tiny European town with the train station, the day before I started writing this episode, I was frantically searching for a lost set of keys, which I of course found. But as always happens in frantic searches through the house looking for something, I found a bunch of other lost things as well. And one of those things that I found while frantically looking for my keys was a family tree that my grandmother, Linda's daughter, had typed up. I looked through it later after I had found my keys and saw that I had ancestors that lived in a tiny town in Switzerland in the 1800s and that they had moved there because the father had a job working on the trains there and that train station is still there.

So I guess I'll be doing some traveling soon after all. I have many, many great stories that are not ghost stories and I have started a Patreon featuring those stories and it's called My True New York City Stories. So if you've been enjoying these ghost stories and like my storytelling style, I will be releasing one new New York City Story a week for my Patreon subscribers. The link is below. Please subscribe to the Patreon and thank you to all of you who have already subscribed.

And also, if you have enjoyed this episode of My True Ghost Stories, please take a second to review it, subscribe and share it with a friend to help this show grow. And that's all for today. Thank you for listening to today's episode and if you think your house is haunted, want energy cleared from your space or need a custom spiritual ritual, I'm here to help. Don't forget to join me here every Tuesday for a new episode. Until next time.