Dear Julia:

My father died last year and I have been trying to contact him somehow. I just started with recording a few times, and tonight I had my first EVP experience. When asking for my father, a voice said "We are hurting your father, okay." It didn't sound angry and it didn't frighten me, but now I'm riddled with doubt. I'm worried about him since he always said he would contact me and he hasn't yet. Could you please tell me if it's possible to know if my father is all right somewhere? Thank you!

Silvia

Dear Silvia:

The first thing I have to tell you is not to believe the voice you heard. Any spirit or entity that would tell you something negative or disturbing is of the lower astral, and lower astral spirits are known for their tricks and dishonesty. So please don't worry that anyone is hurting your father.

Many people seem to view the afterlife as pure heaven: a place of unending peace and beauty populated by blissful, friendly, helpful spirits. It is my understanding, however, that other dimensions are very similar to life on Earth. Just as there are both good and evil people here, there are good and evil beings in other dimensions.

I hope you wouldn't broadcast your address on the radio, inviting anyone who wants to stay with you for a while to come on over. Just imagine the sorts of characters who would show up for this wonderful "free" opportunity! Most of them wouldn't be the sort of folks you'd want as house guests. When you experiment with spirit communication by inviting in any spirit who wants to talk, you are essentially opening yourself up to be taken advantage of on a psychic level.

Just as there are opportunists in the physical world, there are opportunists in other realms. Most con men try to win people over by gaining their trust, and many metaphysical opportunists try to do the same thing. When people experiment with Ouiji boards or things like EVP, these astral parasites may pretend they are friendly or helpful in order to get us to open the door so they can move on in.

These entities have been feeding off of human energy for eons. They know what makes humans tick, and they use our emotional natures to their advantage. Some of the most cunning (such as demons) will pretend to be a beloved departed relative. They often come through Ouiji boards or automatic writing, claiming to be the spirit who is sought. Some can even mimic the voice of a departed spirit and read our minds to say the very things they have to say to convince us that they are who they claim to be. Some will take the form of a helpless soul on the other side, like a cute little child who is lost and all alone.

When we naturally open our hearts and souls to these entities with empathy, and begin to engage in an effort to help them, they are able to attach to us and feed off of our energy. It is therefore not uncommon to see people begin with what appears to be a friendly or innocuous ghost, only to have things turn darker and more disturbing over time. This is because these entities don't really want our love and compassion – they want the biggest energy fix they can get, so they try to evoke very strong emotions such as fear and anger.

This is sort of like a down and out, alcoholic uncle showing up on our doorstep and telling us what he thinks we want to hear in order to gain our trust and move in. He says he just needs a place to stay while he sobers up and gets back on his feet, but he doesn't mean it. If we let him in, before we know it, he's drunk all the time, making a huge mess of the place, burning holes in the upholstery when he passes out with lit cigarettes in his hand. If we don't nip the situation in the bud, soon he'll be inviting all his junkie friends over to party and enjoy the free ride at our place.

I'm not saying that EVP work should be avoided by everyone at all times. Many people have had amazing experiences with their loved ones on the other side through instrumental transcommunication, or ITC. (See the World ITC website for more on these incredible phenomena.)

This doesn't mean, however, that spirit communication is easy, always safe, or for everyone. It's a tricky endeavor to undertake. The only way to engage in it safely is to know what you are doing and to above all approach it from a very high vibration with a sound foundation of faith. For this reason, the very people who tend to feel most drawn to it – the grieving – are usually not ready to go there.

You being worried that your father is not all right on the other side definitely supports the explanation that you attracted this experience by opening up a portal to another dimension from a low personal vibration, for your worry indicates that you're coming from fear. Further, after someone we love dies, it usually takes some time to move through our heavy feelings of grief in order to facilitate positive contact. Certainly the fact that you got this negative message indicates that you failed to align with a high level of experience. If you continue to engage in EVP work without learning how to approach it safely and from a high vibration, you could get yourself in way over your head and end up with a nasty astral parasite infestation.

Since all psychic work should be undertaken from a very high vibration and a strong foundation of faith, I highly recommend that you focus on cultivating these qualities before you continue. If or when you do attempt something like this again, make sure you actively work with the law of attraction to manifest the sort of experience you desire. Be very clear going in about what you want to gain from your efforts, and pray for your guides and angels to help you align with a positive, beneficial experience. Always state very clearly that you will only interact with honest, sincere, benevolent energies. It would be prudent to work with other people in these sorts of efforts instead of experimenting on your own for a number of reasons. It is also essential to develop your intuitive faculties and to trust and rely on them in order to sense the true nature of the spirits you communicate with.

In the mean time, you may be able to experience the contact you desire with your father with the help of a gifted hypnotherapist or medium. Induced spirit communication via a hypnotherapist would be my first recommendation. Though I was a Spiritualist medium devoted to bringing through messages from loved ones in Spirit for many years, in my experience, direct contact with our loved ones in Spirit is far more healing and comforting than receiving messages via a third party.

The only problem with the hypnotherapy approach is that very few therapists know how to successfully connect people with their loved ones in other dimensions. I've had wonderful success with inducing spirit communication with people I see here in my office, and I'm working on developing a program designed to help anyone who wants to connect with someone in Spirit to do so. As I want to make it all that it needs to be in order for it to work for a wide variety of people, however, I expect it will take me many months to finish. In the mean time, I recommend you seek out a therapist you can see in person, and also work on preparing yourself as described above so you can manifest wonderful results in all your future psychic experiments.

- Julia

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