THE BEGINNING

I am not a Charles Dickens writing David Copperfield. The only extraordinary thing about my infancy is the multiple near deaths I experienced. My parents in 1958 were instructed by a physician not to "love" me, that I would likely expire. I was raised on tales of how my father would throw me into the air as one may a football and run to catch me so the rushing air would help the lungs to function. Perhaps these events set the stage in the "walking between the worlds" as Ora Tressie would later state. I do not know. I am thankful I have not full rembrance of those times as surely it would stop my heart as an adult.

Moving from California back to Ohio was the best thing that could happen. The local country doctor took me off soy milk, which was just in it's inception, and instructed mother to feed me foods heavily laced with milk such as puddings and mashed potatoes. It seemed that there was an allergy to whole milk products. This, I grew out of to a degree but even to this day if I take too much raw dairy willl flare up.

It was when I was three and a half that things begin to alter. A story was told how I fell down a flight of stairs. This happened because the hip never functioned quite well and has been a bother all my life. Upon rushing to me, my mother was astonished to hear the words "I'm allright and you are my mother again" This amazed her. My linguistic advancement had always been above the norm and I was aware of many words. The import of this statement confounded her.

There is an interesting correlation between my youthful progress in the unseen realms and the death of my materal grandfather who passed in August of 1961. It is that time frame when I began having odd haapenings. Perhaps, that is the way the universe intended it to be.

It was during that summer and autumn of 1961 that I started having parties for unseen friends. At the time, my mother assumed it was the normal thing many children go through and would ask tongue in cheek " Did your friends enjoy the kool-aid ?" However, when these "friends" were described, it caused her to write letters to my greataunt. They were not ordinary to say the least. Their torsos were slim and slight and their arms and legs were thin and spindly. It seemed as if they had no real gender for each looked similar to the other with variances in height and degree and length of limb. She was advised to "Let it be".

It was then that I also began speaking of some friends on a hill not far from our home. It was a lady who had remarked to me that I resembled her own lost son so much. One day, my mother asked me to show where I met this lady for there were no houses near where we lived in that rural area. Carefully, we went through the field to an old family plot from the early 1800s that sat in weeds upon the crest of a hill. My mother remarked later that  there had been readable stones and that apparently, a mother lost her boy aged 4 to a plague before she herself died some 6 months later. This again elicited a flurry of letters to Ora Tressie. Then came the admonishment, " Unless you are present, keep him away from cemeteries. Not all spirits are good ones."


During this phase, we would often visit Kenton Ohio where Tressie lived. My grandfather had passed so it had to be late fall or perhaps early spring 1962. Sitting on the floor, I was putting blocks one on top of the other. Tressie having many grandchildren always had various toys about her apartment. She looked down at me and inquired what it was that I was building. " A castle of blue ice and there are wise people there that know me and I know them". Tressie was not a tall woman being only 4'11" or so and she was herself on a crutch because of a bad right leg but could be very commanding when she had a mind. She looked at my mother and told her, "We must watch this one". Since my hip continued to be a plague, she remarked "Those that are blessed are often bothered."

When I was five, my father moved us to Washington state. What I can recall of it, the area was breathtaking and I enjoyed playing with my cousins who lived next door. While there, an strange thing happened. One night while I was in bed, a Lady walked into my room through the wall. She was beautiful. Golden hair streamed down her shoulders framing her face and fell gracefully on the pale blue robes that she wore. Grasping my hand, she led me out again through the wall and it was not night at all, but day. She had me look at the flowers and each flower had a face in it's center. It had been my habit to pick flowers and tear them apart petal by petal as children sometimes will do. I was cautioned not to do that, becuase as I was living, so too were they and I was led back to my room. The Lady vanished when my mother came in to ask who I was talking with for she had heard voices mine and another, I told her that she had scared the Lady away. Again, a flurry of letters went back and forth between my mother and greataunt. I later saw that same person in representation at my greataunts house and to this day I, also, have such a statue in mine.

Incidents such as these marked the beginning for me. I do not recall my grandfather at all except for a very large pair of shoes which would be a horse for me to ride on. However, the spindly friends, the lady, the Blue Ice Castle and the Lady I recall as if it were yesterday. In fact, in my late 20s, I asked my mother if these things acually happened since memories can be faulty and be confused with dreams. She assured me all that and more had happened. It grieves me that I cannot remember my own grandfather but I am joyous that I have been given a great gift.

So, to those with young children I may advise that before we chastise them for nonsense, perhaps take a deeper look into what is happening. The one thing that marked the beginnings was the presence of verifiable facts. The lady in the cemetery whose stone and those of her son told the tale, The Lady who came to me and instructed me and all the rest were verified by fact or some familial tradition. That is where the blossoms of psychism differs from imaginagtion. Imagination cannot be verified.


Nickell family picture. The short woman in the center is Ora Tressie and the man scowling to the left at the bottom is my grandfather.

YOUTH AND TEEN YEARS

I looked forward to school. My father had again moved us to California. In the early 1960's the state was plagued with smog and air pollution. My breathing was labored and I lost weight. I was first enrolled in kindergarten and astonished the teacher. When others would recite " twinkle twinkle little star" and such for poetry, I would recite the complete text of "Little Orphant Annie" by James Whitcomb Riley. The decision was made to move me to what was called "little first grade" an intermediary class.

My father, though, having a wander lust, decided to return to Ohio where I was enrolled in the first grade. The work was much more difficult and the result was I was sent to the school's psycologist who promptly declared that I had an excellent mind but because I was too young was suffering the symptoms of an early nervous collapse. I was given the rest of the 63-64 school year off. It was a pleasant time and nothing remarkable happened except that I read voraciously as I still do today.

In the summer of 1964, we moved to Millersport Ohio and remained there for the next ten years. It was the longest period of residency we ever had. In the autumn, I re-entered school. I thought other children heard and saw things that I had. I was sorely mistaken. Children can be very cruel and I was very strange. By the third grade, I had endured enough to cause another collapse and I was under doctors care for a month while the class was properly dressed down. I returned and the others were friendlier, but stand offish as one may expect.

It was in this period that things began to happen once more. From what I can ascertain, there are periods of dormancy and then growth spurts in the psychic realm or at least that is as it was for me. It was 1966 and my mother was scolding because one greataunt ( Tressie's sister ) and she had a difference of opinion. Blankly, I looked at her and said, "Don't worry, she'll pass away soon enough". I nearly earned a slap across the mouth for that. However, as I spoke, in 6 months she was diagnosed with colon cancer and in a year had passed.

I also begam seeing things in the television set. Pictures would form and I would see places and people. One evening, even with the set on, I saw one dead relative holding hands with one that was living. All evening I saw that. My mother told me not to look at the TV and then, there they would be in the darkened doorway. The thought of that evening still chills me as I write this. True enough, the living one followed the one that held her hand in very short time.

In all this, I do not want anyone to believe that this was happening 24/7. It was like a tide that would come and go as my emotions, distractions and attention were drawn. There were three brothers, we had friends and we were quickly growing. "Psychism" as it were was the last thing on my mind. Things, unexplainable things, would happen. Pictures would move, people in pictures would move and give me a fright. When visiting Tressie, I had my eldest brother remove two pictures from the wall as they "were looking and peering at me." They moved and were alive. Tressie assured me that neither Chester nor Arthur, dead forbears, would have ever hurt me.

My mother began using a spirit board in 1968. It was fashioned in a circle with letters and an upturned shot glass was used as a planchet. Only two fingers from two people were required. There were many "seances" of this nature held. Often, I was one of the participants with the glass. To fhis day, I possess such a board although it is rarely used.

These years passed like a kalideoscope of odd, strange things mingled with normalcy. Tressie told me that it was best to keep quiet of these things and to weave together all of it into a kind of fabric. As she said, "Those with power wear it as a garment" It is easy to say that and harder to do it. Tressie had lived since 1899, she had experience. I had none.

At least with my family, I have found that prior to a crucial phase in my life, the psychism would flare like a sunspot. It did during the time prior to and after my grandfathers death. It happened again.

In 1974, my parents split up and we moved to north western Ohio. By now, my "unseen friends" would not come in their guise. They had long abandoned that form and now came as lights to me.. some white, some yellow, some bluish, some black and brown. They have been with me ever since and always come near during troubled times. They came then frequently and I would talk with them as I still do. Should one install a hidden camera, I would be thought an idiot.

In 1975, my beloved aunt Tressie died. I was 16 years old, wrestling with not only a very strong psychic leaning but also a very gay orientation, which was not approved of. So, in a manner of speaking, I was closeted in two ways. I spoke of what I saw and heard only to my immediate family and to even them, I did not let on my orientation. In summer of 1976, I automatically wrote a book of some 100 pages and lodged it with a cousin for safe keeping. Dolt that I am, I later in 1980 destroyed it being convinced it was the "devil's work" so to speak. Interestingly, a woman in the Methodist church I attended came to me once and said that she had seen me leading a life helping others and doing as God wanted. Oddly enough, that has come to pass.

Many things happened. I wandered physically in a glen where when I went with my brother, no glade existed. Pictures would glow and lights appear. Once, I heard my name called and above me in the room lights gleamed like the stars and turning, I saw someting next to my bed blacker and denser than the darkness of my windowless room for I roomed in a basement at that time. Frightened I ran and my father coming down nearly fell on the bed clothes strewn about the room which I had not done, but had tossed them against the wall. What had scattered them we never knew.

I graduated in 1977. I had planned to go to the army in the Delayed Entry Program. However, my hip acted up and a physician informed me that by 40 I would be in a wheelchair. In the autumn of that year, my parents separated and eventually divorced.



My father and mother on their wedding day on July 25, 1947


The memorial stone for my great-aunt Tressie. A promising student who left the path once faintly heard her voice here years after she was laid to rest.

A HAZE OF YEARS

FOR THIS WAS I TRAINED 

SO WHY WRITE ALL THIS?