Careful What You Wish For

What I’m about to share with you is an experience that I’ve shared with only two other people. When it happened, it shook the foundations of what I called reality at the time.

This happened in the summer of 2018. I’d been a practicing, professional psychic medium for less than a year. I was still coming to terms with feeling and hearing sensations and impressions, spirits and entities that were external to me. I wasn’t denying it, but I was still working through the fact that it was happening, and not just that it was happening, but it was happening to me.

It was in the middle of summer. In my backyard, I have what’s called a hörgr, a type of outside altar. I made it with various stones from my yard, stones that I’d collected from around my property, and one special stone I took from my parent’s property. When my parents were settling their piece of land, they put in their own septic system. When my father was digging twelve feet down in the ground or so, he pulled up a slab of granite that was perfectly and uniformly two inches thick, and in the shape of an eye. He placed it up against the foundation of his house and forgot about it, and when I was creating my hörgr I had to include it.

I constructed the hörgr by building up a squarish base of stones, about two feet high, then placing the eye-shaped piece of granite on top, weighing it down and securing it with two large pieces of quartz. I constructed the rest of the hörgr with quartz, bringing it to a peak of sorts into which I pour offerings. I built the hörgr on a large boulder, whose top was just peeking up from beneath the ground, and on top of which a magnificent apple tree grew. I love sitting on the edge of this boulder, with the hörgr in front of me, under the relaxing canopy of this large apple tree.

The idea of a hörgr is to have a place to honor the spirits of the land by making offerings to them. The ancient Norse used to create these when they went into new lands, offering blood sacrifices over the top of the stones. I’ve always found it interesting that a culture that would plunder, pillage, and kill other people would see relationship with land spirits so vitally important as to make offerings and sacrifices to them. It was one of the first activities they partook in when venturing into new lands.

My hörgr was only a month or so “new” at this point, and I’d made it a point to sit in front of it after making offerings. I can’t say that I was meditating, but I wasn’t sitting there completely engaged with all my senses. I was making it a point to sit in front of my hörgr after making offerings, silently and in a way to respect and appreciate anything that might come through.

Over the course of that summer, I’d had a couple of odd encounters with a pileated woodpecker. I’d been sitting in front of my hörgr, silently, and in the distance, I heard what sounded like the cry of a dinosaur. I knew it was a bird, but it was wild, and loud. On the edge of my yard, in the woodline, was a dead tree, and this dead tree lined up perfectly in my line of sight with my hörgr, so much in fact that as I was looking at my hörgr this dead tree appeared to be an antenna of sorts that “grew” out of the center. It was perfectly lined up with the hörgr, of course a detail that didn’t pertain to my perception of the hörgr until what was about to happen. 

If you’re not familiar with pileated woodpeckers, they’re a larger version of most woodpeckers, native to North America, strikingly beautiful in their red, white, and black colors. They need large sections of old arboreal forest to find dead trees, in which they find the bugs and grubs they feast on.

After hearing this cry of this bird way off in the woods, only moments later, as I was looking at my hörgr, did I see a pileated woodpecker hop up the dead tree, directly in line with the hörgr so it appeared as if it bounded right out of the top of it. It pecked away at the tree, getting a snack I presume, then flew into the tree directly behind the apple tree under which my hörgr sits. At this point it was probably ten feet away from me, above and behind me, making these beautifully exotic and haunting calls. Then, it flew into the apple tree over my head, hopped about a bit, making its pleasant shrieks, then flew off.

This happened to me again the next day. Two days in a row did this woodpecker visit me, the second day just sort of appearing in the tree behind me, shrieking, hopping into the apple tree above my head, shrieking and hopping about a bit, then finally flying off.

I felt no danger, nor ill will. I felt a bit of awe and a lot of reverence. Here I was, in the active practice of showing appreciation to the land, and one of its many beautiful inhabitants made itself known to me. I won’t ever forget it.

It was a couple weeks later that another inhabitant of the forest made itself known to me. This was the incident that frightened me, frankly, and made me readjust how I see reality in general. It was around this time of my encounters with the woodpecker that I put a petition (purely mental in nature) out to the Universe. I’m not sure if it was prior to the woodpecker’s visits or after, but I believe it was before. 

I made a request of the greater powers around me for one specific thing, foolhardy as it may have been. Up to this point, I’d been less than a year working as a psychic medium, and over the course of doing so, I’d experienced a vast array of sensations and impressions, all delivered to my mind. I can hear, feel, taste, smell, and “see” all sorts of things in my mind’s eye, brought forth to clients in a tangible way that can be validated by those around me. Up to this point, though, everything had existed in my mind’s eye. I put a request out to the Universe to allow me to see with my eyes, actually see paranormal or supernatural entities with my eyes, like I can see this laptop on which I type, or the trees and grass and rocks that make up my backyard. I know there are people out there that can see visually, or claim to be able to see visually, entities or spirits - I wasn’t one of those people up to that point, and anything that I can see visually now just happens out of the corner of my eyes, in my peripheral vision. Everything happens for me in my inner landscape, but that makes it no less real or powerful.

I sat under this apple tree in front of my hörgr and made the appeal to those greater powers around me - I promised that I was brave enough to now “see” with my eyes, as if the beings and energies were physically around me. I made the promise that I would be brave enough to handle whatever they showed me.

Sadly, I don’t think I was able to keep that promise.

It was one afternoon that I was sitting in front of my hörgr, after making offerings of apple cider down through the center, and I was in a slightly meditative state. I was relaxed, my eyes were not closed, and I was just gazing around the yard. I had nowhere to be and I was enjoying that idle time, sitting and communing with the energies around me as best as I could.

Then I saw it. Or him, to be more specific.

One of the main trunks of this apple tree under which I sat arched over to my left at a 45-degree angle. So imagine looking through a couple of trunks of apple tree, one that was perpendicular to the ground, growing straight up, another bearing off to the left at this angle. About 50 feet away is a copse of birch trees, behind which sits a gigantic maple. It was full summer and the trees were covered in healthy leaves. 

Through these apple tree trunks, between the birch trees, I could see a section of maple leaves about 12 feet off the ground. And to my wonder, to my absolute bewilderment, and to this day I still can’t believe what I saw in those maple leaves:

A face.

My guess was this face was about 8 feet long, from tip of face to bottom of chin. Now, this face wasn’t straight up and down, perpendicular to the ground...no, it was at an angle, leaning to the left. Strangely this face was almost in the same angle as the apple tree trunk over which I saw it. I can clearly remember the outline of the forehead, the outline of the cheeks and nose, and there were literal spaces through the leaves where the eyes would be, with a single leaf sitting where the pupil would be. The mouth was an oval, and it was moving. It appeared as if this head was speaking to me, though I couldn’t tell you what it was saying. It felt very much a trickster to me, mouthing to me. There was what seemed to be a glint of humor to the face, as if saying “See, now you’re SEEING.” It felt mute to me, and I wondered if I framed my question or petition incorrectly - I’d asked to SEE, but I didn’t ask to use any other senses. I had certainly not asked to hear.

I felt no threat, or danger, just like the incident with the woodpecker. What I did feel was fear - and not fear from this face in the leaves, but fear from something that was so outside my normal experience. What I was seeing was something truly Otherworldly, just as I had asked for. I heard or experienced nothing in my inner landscape, other than what I saw with my eyes, and I believe that was because I was in such a state of shock, I forgot to “listen.” I forgot to calm down, control any sort of adrenaline spike, and was so taken aback by what I saw I removed myself from the moment.

And while this was all strange, there was something even more strange about this experience. This wasn’t the first time I’d seen this face. Seeing it now, in the trees, made me remember that, in fact, I had seen this face just the day before. I had been sitting by my hörgr and this face appeared to me, but it was such an incredible experience, such a frightening encounter, that I completely blacked it out.

I didn’t remember that it had happened to me until it happened the next day.

I’d never had this happen to me before, as far as I can tell. I’d never blacked anything out, but then...if I have, how would I know? If this face in the trees hadn’t appeared to me the way it did a second time, there’s no way I would remember the first time. I’ve never had an experience like this before - remembering something that I’d forgotten simply because it happened to me again.

I’m not sure if you’ve ever had to deal with blacked-out memories before, but there was a certain feeling of violation, a certain surrender that I had to provide to the situation that I wasn’t ready to. I felt vulnerable. I felt watched.

And I felt scared. I’m not ashamed to admit it. I felt frightened...not by what I saw (a large part of me was fascinated) but by what was happening.

At this point I’d given several hundred readings, where I had successfully connected the spirits of the dead with the living, but I’d never experienced anything like this. And it truly amazed me, that I could have had an experience that was so outside the realm of my understanding, my normal perception, that my brain blocked it out, that I had absolutely no memory of it.

Until it happened again, and the second time around, it made me remember the first incident.

I won’t say I’d ever been overly drawn to Celtic mythology or lore. The runes and Norse spirituality were what pulled me into esotericism, and I was a child of the Nineties, the decade where it seemed like everyone wore a Celtic knot of some sort. The mythology and stylings of that particular branch of spirituality seemed overly utilized by folks who wanted to seem trendy, or cool. Funny now, with what’s happened to modern Norse stylings, with almost the same thing happening and people finding it trendy. I had no experience with Cernunnos or any other Celtic deity, had never really been drawn to them in any way. I just have a tendency to be an outlier - if a large group of people are engaging a certain thing, I tend to shy away from it for fear of being subsumed by a large group of people.

I bring up Celtic mythology because what I saw very much seemed to be a Green Man. I’m not sure if it was the Green Man, or simply a manifestation of a spirit in the forest...but it seemed very much like what a Green Man would appear as, a face formed from leaves. I can’t tell you anything about the experience, other than what I saw. I don’t know much about the Green Man, and I don’t believe he’s specific to Celtic myth, but I know that’s where he’s mostly known from. I just know what I saw.

A face, in the trees, outlined so I could see it perfectly, with a moving mouth. I regret not having more strength of will in that moment, I regret not having more courage and bravery, to engage the entity or spirit who was making itself known to me. I have yet to try that same thing again, but I learned a lot about myself that day. No matter the amount of bravado I believe I have, no matter the amount of courage and bravery I believe I have, I don’t have nearly the amount that I believe I do.

And I learned another very useful lesson that day, especially when it comes to matters of spirit:

Be careful what you wish for because you just might get it.