PSYCHIC OR PHYSCO? (part 2).

I knew my sister was planning something from the moment mum and I arrived back from England.  This was more due to the change in her behaviour and personality than any intuitive sense.

But the day she ran away, Saturday December 18th 1976 I woke with a strange feeling of emptiness and a memory of dreaming of my sister during my sleep.  At 4pm that afternoon she went up into the back garden and disappeared from our lives.....

I knew Billy was dead even before I reached the Darlinghurst Police Station.  I had been with a client and during the act, could not get Billy out of my head.  The parlour rang me to tell me I had to go straight to the police station.

Billy was  the reason I left home and gave up my teaching degree at college.  He worked for one of Sydney's most powerful and wanted, but untouchable underworld figures - Abe Saffron. The police informed me that Billy had been found floating in the rooftop pool in a hotel in Oxford St Sydney, dead from a heroin overdose.

I hadn't known Billy long, but you know when a person does drugs, especially heroin and Billy was definitely not a drug user.  The police armed with that statement and the knowledge that I had also come into contact with Abe Saffron advised me to leave Sydney.  In fact they even threatened me with arrest if they saw me back on the streets or in the parlour.

 

A few days later and I moved to Adelaide with two boys I had been working with.
Eventually I ended up living with a wonderful guy and his boyfriend who basically adopted me.  They lived in a complex of 3 adjoining flats and we all became the best of friends.

This was the time I started really getting into drugs.  Mostly smoking joints, but we also took LSD and Magic Mushrooms occasionally.  Twice during that time I had unexplainable events happen both revolving around Billy.


The first was waking up one night and hearing Billy clearly calling my name.  I heard it at least 4 times and then my neighbour and his barking dogs came rushing down the side passage.  My neighbour hadn't heard anything but his dogs had become agitated and started jumping at the window to be let out.
 The second time was even stranger.  Admittedly we were all on LSD at the time.  Sitting in the lounge and being crazy.  I looked up at the kitchen window and said 'Oh look there's Billy'.  I could see his face clearly.  Two of the girls also saw a face at the window and screamed.

Put it down to tripping, but for whatever reason we had been taping our night on a cassette recorder.  Other friends rewound the tape and listening back it was really eerie.  Not only could you distinctly hear a change in our tone in the minutes before the event (we all started getting louder and more hysterical in our conversation) but in the background you could clearly hear the two dogs begin growling and getting louder and louder at the same time.

Then one night I had a dream about my father.  Not my favourite person but I woke up and just knew I should ring home.  My father had been seriously burned the night before when a petrol canister blew up while he was working and he had been rushed to hospital.

A year late and I'm living in Crown St Sydney in a very old 3 story terrace house with 2 friends.  My two friends both chose the basement rooms to sleep in and I had the 3rd floor front room.  On the same floor was a small bathroom and a tiny wood paneled back bedroom.  I don't remember how many nights it was before I began to feel a presence every time I went upstairs which made me feel scared.

Then one night I woke up and thought someone was using the bathroom on my floor.  There was no one there but I couldn't shake the eerie feeling which I got looking towards the back bedroom.  




From that night I firmly closed the door of the back bedroom before going to sleep.  The next night at around the same time I woke again. The back bedroom door was ajar.  This would happen every night for the next 5 or 6 weeks until one night I had a really big fight with one of my flatmates.

I went upstairs to my room deciding whether or not to stay.  The back room decided it for me.  The longer I stayed the stronger the negative vibes came from that room.  I would like to say I could hear an angry voice telling me to get out, like in the movies, but I can't.  But in my head that's all I could hear, getting louder, stronger and more negative with every passing moment.  I rang my parents at 2am in the morning and said I was coming home.

As the taxi arrived and I walked down the stairs I could feel a great triumphant surge of energy behind me....the house had won!



Drugs and lifestyle would get the better of me for the next 20 years.  That's not to say I didn't have other episodes which I will mention in later chapters.

But the night my 'partner' of 10 years died, December 17th 1995 was one worth mentioning.

He had AIDS and that night I had left him knowing he would die before morning.  He had slipped quietly into a coma around 9pm.  His wife (explanation also in later chapter) was asleep in one of the visiting rooms and I couldn't wake her.  The nurses assured me they would wake her when the time came and I went home emotionally and physically exhausted.

Asleep in bed I awoke shortly before 1am.  Standing in the bedroom doorway was my partner.  His image as clear as a picture.  He was calling my name again and again.  When the telephone rang a few seconds later and his image disappeared I didn't need to answer the phone to know he had died.

 

Finally and coincidentally I actually had an event last night.  Maybe it's been all the  reminiscing over the past few days.....

My current partner and I run a guesthouse.  Most evenings I cook dinner and afterwards he returns downstairs to chat with guests and work on the computer while I stay upstairs watching TV.

It's a routine that rarely varies.  I'm watching TV and suddenly in my mind I'm thinking my partner is with some-one having sex.

This morning while I am doing my room rounds with the manager we find that one of the unoccupied rooms has been slept in.

I casually ask my partner, 'who was sleeping in room 4 last night?'
His grinning reply, 'Oh that was me'..........