We had the pleasure of hearing you give a presentation at a Mises event in Nashville. I have always found you interesting and honest, even when we had different political positions. Your writing style is so compelling to me anyway that the subjects you write about draw one in. You have wicked skills Naomi and since you have opened your perspective to include more liberty oriented content, I think you have grown mightily, both personally and as a writer. Keep up the fantastic work and thank you especially for your Covid related research. Bless you and Happy Holidays.
I too used to believe in "things that go bump in the night" until I exited the "demon haunted world" that Carl Sagan wrote about. Since I exited religion I haven't experienced a single "spooky" incident, whereas before I did on a regular occasion. Is there something "else" in our world? I don't completely discount it but I need proof. As with most things religious, your experiences are yours, and serve as "proof" to you, but not to anyone else. If I were to stay in that hotel and experience what you did then we could have a conversation with a shared background. Until then, I appreciate your writing and your point of view. Only time will tell if we will ever get to experience what Oscar Wilde hoped to experience on his deathbed..."and now the mystery."
That’s a really great story and told with the usual wit and flair. My story is a little different, and so much more boring. I was staying at that hotel for some biotech conference in the mid 2010s. My room was musty and drafty, but very large for just one sci-biz guy like me. The furnishings were almost grandiose. It never occurred to me that the room should be haunted, but I do seem to recall that the place seemed almost museum like..
Quite an experience. It seems irrational to deny the supernatural binary of good vs evil. Love and peace are as plain and familiar to us as hostility and predators. If 6000+ years of recorded history and every culture don’t agree, I’m open to counterevidence.
Ironically, a few binary deniers I know fancy themselves rational materialists. I think they are naïve. Possibly, some have never experienced anything “mystical or transcendent.” If they did, they carefully mis-attribute it to avoid coming to grips with their own spirituality, like Ebenezer Scrooge blaming an unsettling bit of cheese for the visiting Ghost of Christmas Past. Here's an interesting and deeper dive into rational-materialist coping mechanisms . . . https://graham-pemberton.medium.com/rational-materialists-cannot-cope-with-reality-f4b2f4aa5ff0
It seems safe to say your supernatural encounter at the Omni, even though it wasn’t overtly hostile or predatory (thank God), was definitely not love or peace. I had a similar experience. The malevolence was thinly veiled, but it was as purely and supernaturally threatening as experiencing the presence of God is loving and peaceful. In a potentially if not routinely malevolent world, why would anybody not want God’s protection available at every moment? I’m glad you have it, and we should be more open about that profound power. If it’s real to us, “we cannot help speaking about what we have seen and heard” (Acts 4:20). Thank you for doing that.
"Maybe some places are actually changed by sinful or by cruel or violent events, and that those in turn change reality in those places." Then Washington DC must be one of the most haunted cities in the country, or maybe the world.
The stroller in our family was called, The Batmobile.
I think time might be like a slinky connected at both ends.
You are a brave lady. If I feel the mattress depress and a small hand on my back at 4 AM, I am a long gone daddy from that joint, immediamante!
I've never seen a ghost, but I know plenty of people who say they have. I hope I never do, but anyone who believes in spiritual warfare has to believe in extra-dimensional beings, since that's where the spirit realm exists, in another dimension. And maybe this ties in with the more recent UAP sightings, and the growing interest in ancient civilizations here on earth. I think they're all connected, and active right now for a reason.
I’ve found as we continue our walk of faith and as we who dwell in the physical realm draw closer to the Creator of all things who dwells in the spiritual realm, or wherever HE pleases, also draw closer to the same spiritual realm. As you say the two realms may reside contiguously in the same "space and time". We who continue in our walk, through trials and tribulations are encouraged by HIM to use the physical and/or spiritual gifted abilities in our "caliginous" possession, unknown to us as they might be, to seek out each of our end games during our time and in our space. Maybe to find it was only our hands covering our eyes that was preventing us from seeing clearly what we always had within ourselves….. OR,
Someone who needs me! Wonderful song from Sliding Door. The synchronized manifestation of your two families and loves at differing times shows the LORD'S hand is and has been and always will be on you.
Thank you for allowing me to use your forum for my "billowing bales of bovine fodder" sounding board.
Fabulous! I learned from my dear friend that we can say, in a nutshell "You are healed and forgiven. Go in peace." Thank you so very much for this utterly fantastic piece.
Dr. Wolf, As always, I'm loving your writing. I'm a mom, grandmom and journalist in the south, and have so appreciated your most recent stuff (I'm also a conservative, but so glad I've been reading you!) I lost my first husband to brain cancer and other family (we're military) and over the years, I'm 63, have become more attuned than I could wish to things that we just call "ghost guy stuff" here at home, where I'm teased relentlessly but they do still listen to me when something happens. I live in THIS world, and I live with as much integrity, courage and purpose as possible to honor those loved ones who've passed before me. I know they want me to and I also know they.... I don't know what to call it other than "visit." Boy would I love to sit down with you someday and have a conversation about it all! Just follow your heart. And write things the way you feel them, as always. Blessings this holiday season!
A friend of mine once told me that she had an aunt who related this story: This lady had been the fore-woman of a team of cleaning ladies who worked at our big local hospital. They worked the graveyard shift. Their final duty of the night was to sanitize the operating theatres. This meant mopping everything with disinfectant cleaner and collecting and sterilizing all the surgical instruments and laying them in rows on a sterile white sheet so they could be counted. They always left one particular operating theatre for last because it had a mischievous spirit who played a prank sometimes. This happened often enough that it got to be a familiar routine. They'd get everything done and the instruments laid out to be counted – ten scalpels, 12 clamps, 5 forceps, etc – so the ladies could sign off on the count and sign out and go home. But there'd be one instrument missing. Understand, this is a sterile, swept out, mopped room with absolutely nowhere for a solid steel instrument to be misplaced. It was disappeared, dematerialized. My friend's aunt would ask the other ladies to step out of the room, then she'd politely ask the spirit if he would kindly put the object back so the ladies could sign out and go home. Then she'd leave the room and wait outside for five minutes. She'd come back in and the instrument would be back where it should be. This happened several times a month during this time.
Your story recalled this one. Hearing this story from a person who I knew was not kidding me or making up jokes really changed my mind about these things. I'd heard some stories from other friends over the years but this was the most interesting one. and informative too.
So I think there's definitely a perfectly rational and reasonable explanation for what happened to you. The room was haunted by spirits who were pranking you to get a rise, get attention, get you to admit that "Hey. We are real. Don't ignore us. We are just as real as you are!"
What's really irrational? Trying to tell yourself that you didn't see what you damn well know you saw. And many other people have had similar experiences, even the SAME experience.
Spirits can be real. They can manifest physically. This world is not just a material place; in fact material things – like cell phones and stainless steel surgical instruments – are really not "material" in quite the way the rationalists define them.
The spirit world is part of our world. So what's the big deal? Some of them are not nice but most of them are just trying to get some attention. What's so wrong with that?
I mean, that solid things like steel instruments can be dematerialized and rematerialized. That REALLY gave me a whole new outlook on this material world.
If I were to dismiss it, say my friend was deluded and it was Impossible when I know damn well my friend was on the level? I'd be cheating myself of important information about the world, wouldn't I? That would be silly and irrational.
You are on the right track Naomi. Many of us have had supernatural experiences. Many more of
us are sensitive to unknown influences. Your writing about these things opens doors to explore what this world is. I saw my grandfather's spirit at his time of death, about 3,ooo miles from where I was. But I couldn't see the face of this spirit so didn't know it was him and was so scared that I slept with a light on at night. For 63 years. You are very brave. I have finally found courage to face the fear, through Christian Faith. Faith is the antidote for fear. Now I would welcome seeing him.
What a beautifully reflective and courageous piece! Your return to the Kennedy Warren with Brian and Alex, decades after first living there, creates a poignant narrative about how life’s moments often echo in unexpected ways. The vivid imagery of chasing Alex down the same hallways where you once chased your daughter, surrounded by familiar faces and sounds, beautifully captures the poetic sense of time as a spiral. Your openness to this new chapter, embracing your role as a stepmom in the same place where you began as a mom, is deeply moving. It’s a testament to life’s ability to surprise us, drawing people, places, and roles back to us in ways that feel both mystical and meaningful.
I read about such things and I hear about them from people I love and trust, but they never happen to me.
Except one day 3 years ago I was bicycling on my side of the street, when a truck got impatient with traffic on the other side, gunned the engine, and came right at me. When I survived and gradually recovered ability to walk, I credited spirits who watched over me, in addition to the skills and dedication of several surgeons.
Addendum
Women being of the negative polarity must navigate thru what they attract.
Greetings Naomi,
We had the pleasure of hearing you give a presentation at a Mises event in Nashville. I have always found you interesting and honest, even when we had different political positions. Your writing style is so compelling to me anyway that the subjects you write about draw one in. You have wicked skills Naomi and since you have opened your perspective to include more liberty oriented content, I think you have grown mightily, both personally and as a writer. Keep up the fantastic work and thank you especially for your Covid related research. Bless you and Happy Holidays.
I too used to believe in "things that go bump in the night" until I exited the "demon haunted world" that Carl Sagan wrote about. Since I exited religion I haven't experienced a single "spooky" incident, whereas before I did on a regular occasion. Is there something "else" in our world? I don't completely discount it but I need proof. As with most things religious, your experiences are yours, and serve as "proof" to you, but not to anyone else. If I were to stay in that hotel and experience what you did then we could have a conversation with a shared background. Until then, I appreciate your writing and your point of view. Only time will tell if we will ever get to experience what Oscar Wilde hoped to experience on his deathbed..."and now the mystery."
That’s a really great story and told with the usual wit and flair. My story is a little different, and so much more boring. I was staying at that hotel for some biotech conference in the mid 2010s. My room was musty and drafty, but very large for just one sci-biz guy like me. The furnishings were almost grandiose. It never occurred to me that the room should be haunted, but I do seem to recall that the place seemed almost museum like..
Prayers for your unseen friends who reached out for your help.
Quite an experience. It seems irrational to deny the supernatural binary of good vs evil. Love and peace are as plain and familiar to us as hostility and predators. If 6000+ years of recorded history and every culture don’t agree, I’m open to counterevidence.
Ironically, a few binary deniers I know fancy themselves rational materialists. I think they are naïve. Possibly, some have never experienced anything “mystical or transcendent.” If they did, they carefully mis-attribute it to avoid coming to grips with their own spirituality, like Ebenezer Scrooge blaming an unsettling bit of cheese for the visiting Ghost of Christmas Past. Here's an interesting and deeper dive into rational-materialist coping mechanisms . . . https://graham-pemberton.medium.com/rational-materialists-cannot-cope-with-reality-f4b2f4aa5ff0
It seems safe to say your supernatural encounter at the Omni, even though it wasn’t overtly hostile or predatory (thank God), was definitely not love or peace. I had a similar experience. The malevolence was thinly veiled, but it was as purely and supernaturally threatening as experiencing the presence of God is loving and peaceful. In a potentially if not routinely malevolent world, why would anybody not want God’s protection available at every moment? I’m glad you have it, and we should be more open about that profound power. If it’s real to us, “we cannot help speaking about what we have seen and heard” (Acts 4:20). Thank you for doing that.
"Maybe some places are actually changed by sinful or by cruel or violent events, and that those in turn change reality in those places." Then Washington DC must be one of the most haunted cities in the country, or maybe the world.
As Spock would say, fascinating.
The stroller in our family was called, The Batmobile.
I think time might be like a slinky connected at both ends.
You are a brave lady. If I feel the mattress depress and a small hand on my back at 4 AM, I am a long gone daddy from that joint, immediamante!
I've never seen a ghost, but I know plenty of people who say they have. I hope I never do, but anyone who believes in spiritual warfare has to believe in extra-dimensional beings, since that's where the spirit realm exists, in another dimension. And maybe this ties in with the more recent UAP sightings, and the growing interest in ancient civilizations here on earth. I think they're all connected, and active right now for a reason.
Dear Dr Wolf, a fascinating story. I believe you.
I find it a bit weird that the hotel owners haven't contacted an exorcist to come and put these poor spirits to rest though?
Thank you for sharing. Take care.
I’ve found as we continue our walk of faith and as we who dwell in the physical realm draw closer to the Creator of all things who dwells in the spiritual realm, or wherever HE pleases, also draw closer to the same spiritual realm. As you say the two realms may reside contiguously in the same "space and time". We who continue in our walk, through trials and tribulations are encouraged by HIM to use the physical and/or spiritual gifted abilities in our "caliginous" possession, unknown to us as they might be, to seek out each of our end games during our time and in our space. Maybe to find it was only our hands covering our eyes that was preventing us from seeing clearly what we always had within ourselves….. OR,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=amclN9RG49c Tin Man, my personal favorite. And oh! don’t we love drama? WHO ARE YOU!!? Why ask if he already knew who they were?
Someone who needs me! Wonderful song from Sliding Door. The synchronized manifestation of your two families and loves at differing times shows the LORD'S hand is and has been and always will be on you.
Thank you for allowing me to use your forum for my "billowing bales of bovine fodder" sounding board.
J.
Fabulous! I learned from my dear friend that we can say, in a nutshell "You are healed and forgiven. Go in peace." Thank you so very much for this utterly fantastic piece.
Dr. Wolf, As always, I'm loving your writing. I'm a mom, grandmom and journalist in the south, and have so appreciated your most recent stuff (I'm also a conservative, but so glad I've been reading you!) I lost my first husband to brain cancer and other family (we're military) and over the years, I'm 63, have become more attuned than I could wish to things that we just call "ghost guy stuff" here at home, where I'm teased relentlessly but they do still listen to me when something happens. I live in THIS world, and I live with as much integrity, courage and purpose as possible to honor those loved ones who've passed before me. I know they want me to and I also know they.... I don't know what to call it other than "visit." Boy would I love to sit down with you someday and have a conversation about it all! Just follow your heart. And write things the way you feel them, as always. Blessings this holiday season!
A friend of mine once told me that she had an aunt who related this story: This lady had been the fore-woman of a team of cleaning ladies who worked at our big local hospital. They worked the graveyard shift. Their final duty of the night was to sanitize the operating theatres. This meant mopping everything with disinfectant cleaner and collecting and sterilizing all the surgical instruments and laying them in rows on a sterile white sheet so they could be counted. They always left one particular operating theatre for last because it had a mischievous spirit who played a prank sometimes. This happened often enough that it got to be a familiar routine. They'd get everything done and the instruments laid out to be counted – ten scalpels, 12 clamps, 5 forceps, etc – so the ladies could sign off on the count and sign out and go home. But there'd be one instrument missing. Understand, this is a sterile, swept out, mopped room with absolutely nowhere for a solid steel instrument to be misplaced. It was disappeared, dematerialized. My friend's aunt would ask the other ladies to step out of the room, then she'd politely ask the spirit if he would kindly put the object back so the ladies could sign out and go home. Then she'd leave the room and wait outside for five minutes. She'd come back in and the instrument would be back where it should be. This happened several times a month during this time.
Your story recalled this one. Hearing this story from a person who I knew was not kidding me or making up jokes really changed my mind about these things. I'd heard some stories from other friends over the years but this was the most interesting one. and informative too.
So I think there's definitely a perfectly rational and reasonable explanation for what happened to you. The room was haunted by spirits who were pranking you to get a rise, get attention, get you to admit that "Hey. We are real. Don't ignore us. We are just as real as you are!"
What's really irrational? Trying to tell yourself that you didn't see what you damn well know you saw. And many other people have had similar experiences, even the SAME experience.
Spirits can be real. They can manifest physically. This world is not just a material place; in fact material things – like cell phones and stainless steel surgical instruments – are really not "material" in quite the way the rationalists define them.
The spirit world is part of our world. So what's the big deal? Some of them are not nice but most of them are just trying to get some attention. What's so wrong with that?
I mean, that solid things like steel instruments can be dematerialized and rematerialized. That REALLY gave me a whole new outlook on this material world.
If I were to dismiss it, say my friend was deluded and it was Impossible when I know damn well my friend was on the level? I'd be cheating myself of important information about the world, wouldn't I? That would be silly and irrational.
A surgery suite seems like a logical place to find a poltergeist.
Indeed it does.
There's a great book: "Our Haunted Lives: True Life Ghost Encounters" by Jeff Belanger
You are on the right track Naomi. Many of us have had supernatural experiences. Many more of
us are sensitive to unknown influences. Your writing about these things opens doors to explore what this world is. I saw my grandfather's spirit at his time of death, about 3,ooo miles from where I was. But I couldn't see the face of this spirit so didn't know it was him and was so scared that I slept with a light on at night. For 63 years. You are very brave. I have finally found courage to face the fear, through Christian Faith. Faith is the antidote for fear. Now I would welcome seeing him.
What a beautifully reflective and courageous piece! Your return to the Kennedy Warren with Brian and Alex, decades after first living there, creates a poignant narrative about how life’s moments often echo in unexpected ways. The vivid imagery of chasing Alex down the same hallways where you once chased your daughter, surrounded by familiar faces and sounds, beautifully captures the poetic sense of time as a spiral. Your openness to this new chapter, embracing your role as a stepmom in the same place where you began as a mom, is deeply moving. It’s a testament to life’s ability to surprise us, drawing people, places, and roles back to us in ways that feel both mystical and meaningful.
Surviving Death by Leslie Kean.
I read about such things and I hear about them from people I love and trust, but they never happen to me.
Except one day 3 years ago I was bicycling on my side of the street, when a truck got impatient with traffic on the other side, gunned the engine, and came right at me. When I survived and gradually recovered ability to walk, I credited spirits who watched over me, in addition to the skills and dedication of several surgeons.