The Hedge Witch

I’m writing this story because I liked the older lady who, first living, then in spirit, continued to inhabit a small connecting room, which was probably a garret in an earlier construction of Sharon House (mentioned in a previous story, “Four Failures”).  I liked the woman because she was fearless and irreverent but was, also, comfortable enough to listen to what I was proposing to her on this evening.

In the current layout of the house (if I remember correctly) this room is now a go-between, with bedrooms on one side and further rooms and a stairwell on the other side.  The residents of the house, it was revealed, never felt at ease in this space, choosing to skip through the room as quickly as possible, when it was necessary to be in that part of the house.

As before in Sharon House, the ladies from our psychic development circle were present as we proceeded with this ‘clearing’ and, so, I was afforded the benefit of feedback, via their mediumship skills, from the soul we encountered.  Before any communication though, I sat (in the window opening) for a while and was able to tune in to this being, to the extent that, I was able to see the woman (in my mind’s eye), could feel her likeable energy and sense her wisdom.  What I was seeing was a late-middle-aged woman with wiry red hair, dressed in drab garments.  She was, obviously, not well to do, by her appearance.  I informed the group of what I was sensing and seeing and we were in agreement.  We, then, began communicating with the woman.

During this discourse and (as sometimes happens) later, I was getting a lot of information from spirit (and, probably, the old lady herself) about how she came to live out the latter part of her life in this room, in this house.  She was, like many of her ilk, an itinerant who travelled the country using her herblore and charms to heal people.  She had no home per-se, so made do with sleeping rough in the roadside hedges, as she travelled and eked out an existence among the poorer people of the countryside.

I gathered that a child of the house was suffering from an illness that the doctors of the time had no answer to.  In Ireland then, and to this day, people have a powerful belief in ‘charms’ and cures that get passed from generation to generation and have done, from ancient times.  I gathered that all was tried to heal the child but to no avail, until, eventually, this old lady and her ability with herbs was mentioned.  Despite her poor image and standing, the distraught parents sent for her.  She came and got to work collecting the herbs and other ingredients she needed to effect a cure for the child’s condition.

The old lady’s knowledge and beliefs came from the druids and, most likely, the majority of people (Christian now) feared and avoided her, because of the established churches’ power and conservative views, and only consulted her kind as a last resort.  That was the case here too, but she was successful in healing the child and, as a result, the grateful parents, despite their different religious views, secured the old woman in the little room, where she had a comfortable existence for the remainder of her life.

We learned,too, that she had a sister, also steeped in the old ways, who was known to visit her, while she was lived at Sharon House.  They went walking together, probably on the lookout for herbs and useful plants, as they rambled.  I used this knowledge as my cue to help her cross-over.

Note;

“Rescues”, where there is two-way communication, are easier because an incentive can often be found that pleases or motivates the ghost to accept the assistance without fuss.  I told this woman that time had moved on and the new owners needed to make the house more liveable and healthier for the living.  I told her, too, that her sister was in heaven by now waiting to reunite with her, where they could go walking as before.  I continued, saying she would have a home there, to her liking, where she would not have the annoyance of strange people traipsing through her room and could work with her herbs there as well, being now above suspicion and bigotry.  I told her that it was the same heaven for all of us irrespective of our earthly beliefs and biases.  All of this convinced her that what I was proposing was very agreeable and she needed no further incentive, as we guided her to the light, her home and family.

What I found fascinating about this particular ghost was that she was, essentially, a good person and a healer, but, because her beliefs were in Druid or Wiccan gods and deities, she held no conviction, fear or regard for the introduced Christian beliefs.  As a result, she scoffed at the previous efforts made to remove her from the room she now regarded as her home.  She told us (through the mediums present) that considerable effort had been made to remove her.  Exorcism was tried several times in the past but not by the current owners.  The family, like myself, prefer to treat these beings as human in every way, except for the obvious lack of a physical body!