My encounters with spirits.

My experience's with spirits. video of orbs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=st-YiCRx1mI

My Encounters with Spirits Rev. Edward C. McClelland

Throughout my life, I, when I least expected I encountered spirits from the afterlife, or the unknown, in one way or another. I will preface this story with the fact that I for my entire life have had the condition known as hyperthymesia. It is also known as highly superior autobiographical memory (HSAM.) It is a somewhat rare condition that allows people to recall life events with extraordinary detail. My first encounter was when I was three years old. I was sleeping in my crib in my parent’s room when my bedroom was still being constructed. The house that my family lived in was a two bedroom house with two large closets back to back on the second floor. One closet was for the second bedroom, the other a linen closet in the hallway. The construction job combined the two closets into a small bedroom for me. We had moved to that house because of its potential to add a third bedroom. I can remember once very late in the evening, something caused me to lookup and from my vantage point, there was a man peeking around the corner of the doorway into the room. He was right next to the foot of the crib and was looking directly at me. I was so scared that, when I tried to scream, nothing came out. When attempting to describe the being, I didn’t know of the word translucent. All I told my parents was that he was all white. So, my parents, were thinking that I meant white meaning Caucasian, and they would ask me things like, what color was his hair, etc. and things like that. I only saw him from the waist up and he was not perfectly solid. I mean I couldn’t see anything behind him, but translucent is the best way I can describe him. He had high cheek bones, and his hair and extremities were the same translucent color. The first person that I thought that he looked like was Abraham Lincoln because of his face being longer and short wavy hair. For many years the topic came up in conversations about him, and I always swore what I said about the event was true. After that happened, and even when I had moved into the new bedroom but still quite young, I would sometimes be afraid to go to bed, thinking of that nighttime visitor. My mother, whose parents came from northern Great Britain, would usually tell me what her mother had told her, when she was afraid of ghosts. “It’s not them that are gone that can hurt you. It’s them that’s here”.

As a teen, I used a finished basement room for my bedroom all through my high school years. One evening when I was aged seventeen and I was still recovering from an injury; I was taking some kind of pain medication for the injury, and I had fallen asleep early. I then abruptly awoke still fairly early in the evening, feeling irritable and I saw a man standing there who appeared to be somewhat translucent with south Asian features, possibly from India. Unlike the encounter that I had when I was three years of age, I was not timid this time and I let out in a loud, but groggy voice, "WHO THE BLANK ARE YOU?" The apparition vanished before the words were finished coming out of my mouth. My mother had been on the first floor enjoying a glass of wine and was feeling giddy and when I went upstairs to tell someone about it, she said “Yes I heard you” in a cheerful tone, as she giggled and mimicked what she heard me say to the spirit. I felt shaken and then went back downstairs and hoped that no other spirits would come and visit me. I told and retold my tales of spirits for years, but I didn’t know that there would be more visits. On March 2, 2008, my wife, our pets and I were living in the old farmhouse that we had bought and renovated. There was ice on the ground that day and I had gone to the barn to get something and on the way back it is apparent that I slipped on the ice and fell, causing an injury to my head. I cannot remember falling but when I came to, I saw our golden retriever, Campbell with his fur cropped short and I couldn’t understand how he got that way. In reality, I had taken him to the groomer the day before, but the memory of it was completely wiped from my mind. I then made it to the inside of the house and in a concerned voice I said to my wife "What happened to Campbell? He is bald." She couldn’t understand why I was asking her and then she noticed a large red lump on the side of my head. I was feeling nauseous and while my wife was busy calling our family physician, I did exactly what one should not do that has had a head injury. I went and lay down on the bed. We met our physician at his office and after examining me, he had wanted me to go for an MRI, but I was always claustrophobic, and I wouldn’t agree to go for one. He then wrote a couple of prescriptions for me. I don’t remember what medication that I was prescribed, but between them and the injury I felt severely off kilter for several weeks. I was taking time out of work and was not supposed to be driving because of the injury and the medication that I was taking. Two days later on March 4, 2008, I received a call from the hospice nurse that was caring for my mother, informing me that my mother would not be with us for much longer. My wife was at work, so I jumped in the car and drove to be with my mother. When I arrived, she was not conscious, and I sat next to her, talked to her, and tried to comfort her. I told her not to worry that we would all be together again someday, and we would have all our animals back that we loved. Our horses, our dogs, cats, and more. The nurse had regularly been giving her doses of morphine to ease her discomfort and little by little her breathing got shallower, and when she breathed her last, I was very sad and filled with grief, but still hopeful that we all would be together again. When I left, I called my wife and told her. Approximately a week after the funeral, still in a stupor from the injury and the medication, I awoke for an unknown reason in the middle of the night. I looked towards the foot of the bed and there stood my mother. She was smiling and looked like she had when I was a teenager and approximately in her early forties. She was there for at least a full thirty seconds or more. I closed my eyes and opened them again. She was still there smiling, and while my eyes were affixed to her, I tried to wake my wife for her to see. I was unsuccessful in waking her and told her about it the next morning. My wife responded to me, saying that it was probably a combination of the injury and the medication that made me see her. This event was all that I could think about and a few days later, after Sunday church services, still searching for answers about it, I told the pastor who expressed no guidance, or interest but only gave me a look of shock and unbelieving. I assumed that she thought that either I had been hallucinating or that the event was un-biblical and contrary to her Christian beliefs. I didn’t mention it again, to just anyone. In the year 2021 and when she was age seventeen, I lost my German shepherd, Ursula. She had succumbed to a genetic disease called degenerative myelopathy which is somewhat common with large breeds of dogs. For weeks, every morning that I awoke and realized that I no longer had her, I put my face in my hands and cried. She had been a wonderful and sweet companion for seventeen years. One evening, a few weeks later during the covid lockdown, my wife was working in her home office and although it was still early evening, I decided to just go upstairs to bed and call it a day. I got in bed and tried to get comfortable. There was no one upstairs with me, neither cat, nor dog, nor human and the next thing that I heard was the century, old pine floors creaking and the sounds of a dog going around and around in circles as dogs do. Then I heard the sound of something softly hitting the floor next to the bed with no visible person or dog. Anyone who has ever had a dog knows this sound well. Right away, I thought of Ursula, and this was her way of showing me that she was still with me.

Years went by and I anonymously contacted several physic mediums. I still do contact physic mediums, including pet mediums and I have had mixed results. I have gotten better at choosing physic mediums and can usually tell five minutes in whether they can make contact or not. Some tell me things about my mother and father, In-law’s and old friends that have passed on. When my wife and I contact any mediums, we have given only a first name, and we use an extra cell phone that cannot be traced back to us by name or address. One woman specializes in contacting dogs, cats and horses that have passed. Another woman physic medium that we went to see, who had no possible way of knowing anything about us except my wife’s first name and unlisted cell phone, came out with pets’ names, and the first thing she said when my wife sat down was, ”I am hearing an older woman that is close to you, saying that you should slow down on your job and get back to your painting.” My wife’s mother was a somewhat famous artist in Canada that painted a great many beautiful landscapes and still life’s. My wife had dabbled in it as a young girl and as a teen but has worked as an accountant for many years. When seeing a physic medium in person, I keep a digital tape recorder in my shirt pocket and listen and re-listen at a later time.

I am prone to missing things the first time that the medium has said. One day in In June of 2025, I had been feeling weak and didn’t realize that I once again had Lyme disease. I was trying to get my chores done in my weakened condition and in my frustration, I said out loud, “Ma I wish you were here to help”. That evening, I had the strangest dream. It felt so real, not like the normal dream that you forget five minutes after waking up. It was clear in my mind all day. I dreamt that I had arose in the morning and went into the living room and my mother was there and she had just arisen from a sleeping bag on the floor, and I said ”Ma what are you doing here?” And she replied that she was here to help.

So later that morning my wife and I went and ran some errands out around town and my Ring camera went alerted us that there was movement around one of the cameras. In the master bedroom we kept all three dogs when we were going out for any length of time. Uma and young Wallace in dog crates, because they both absolutely would get into trouble if allowed to roam free. Montgomery did not need to be crated and could always be trusted not to get into anything while we were not at home. On the video, it looked like several orbs came flying out of the closed closet door, and the dogs were all alerted and were looking up at them. I have posted the video on YouTube and Facebook.

On the first week of February 2026, we were still very much grieving over the loss of both Montgomery and Uma due to serious illness. Uma in December 2025 and Montgomery in January of 2026. One evening Wallace, our only dog left at the time began to circle my chair and growl and kept looking at me and then over my head at the ceiling, continuing to growl, with his cackles raised on his back. Both my wife and I felt like an electricity in the air, and I suddenly felt like something ran into me suddenly for a brief second. Hard to explain. We on the following week contacted the pet physic medium and we told her about the event, and she seemed to think that it was a passerby spirit who was just checking us out, and not one of our loved ones. A few days later we went to the pet rescue and adopted a sweetheart of a dog who is a mix of Great Pyrenes and we named her Sheila. I also am now attempting to sign up for a spirit mediumship class. I am told by most Physics that I speak with that anyone can do it with the proper guidance and practice.

I often talk to all my loved ones that have passed on aloud in a normal speaking voice ones that have passed as though they are still right here with us, as I do believe that they are.

Rev. Edward C. McClelland 02-08-2026