thoughts

  • Meet Me in St. Louis

    Meet Me in St. Louis

    Every year, for as long as I can remember, I watched Meet Me in St. Louis with my mom. Every Christmas. That was our tradition. She loved that movie. I didn’t realize it at the time, but she was teaching me something. About music. About warmth. About how certain stories quietly become part of who

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  • Holiday Weaponized

    Holiday Weaponized

    You will often hear that Christmas should not be celebrated because it was “originally pagan,” tied to the Roman sun god Sol. Like most things involving history, the truth is more layered than a meme allows. Jesus was almost certainly not born in December. Most scholars agree that date was chosen later for symbolic reasons,

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  • I Don’t Know

    I Don’t Know

    When it comes to the unknown or the paranormal, I am not chasing answers. I am trying to understand what we are actually dealing with. I think the desire for answers is natural. We all want them. But with something like the paranormal, what you are more likely to encounter are ideas, patterns, and possibilities,

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  • On My Work

    On My Work

    I have been watching some of the conversations happening across paranormal sites and blogs, and I want to make something very clear. If you are going to talk about my work, please make sure you have the facts first. A lot of people like to take credit for my research, and a lot of people

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  • A Season for Ghosts

    A Season for Ghosts

    I often think of Dickens’ A Christmas Carol when I think about ghosts this time of year. December has always felt like the most haunted month to me. Not because it is frightening, but because it brings the past closer. Dickens understood that. He tapped into something deeply human when he wrapped a ghost story

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  • Walking With My Father

    Walking With My Father

    I had a dream last night that stayed with me long after I opened my eyes. It felt real in that quiet way some dreams do. In the dream I was walking with my dad at Christmastime. We were at Northwest Plaza in St. Louis, going to see Santa, and I was maybe four years

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  • Gratitude, Without the Myth

    Gratitude, Without the Myth

    Thanksgiving is a time to understand the meaning of gratitude and thankfulness.

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  • The Hidden Tokyo

    Tokyo is a city that never really sleeps. It hums, it glows, it moves like electricity through glass. But that is not the Tokyo I chase. The one I love lives quietly behind it all, in the soft hum after the song ends. It is the Tokyo that hides under stairways, down narrow alleys, and

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  • The America We Were Sold

    I wish I still believed in the United States of America we were sold when we were kids. You remember the one. The country built on the solid foundation of freedom. The place where all men were said to be created equal, and where anyone could achieve the American dream if they worked hard enough.

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  • Still Standing

    There are times when I wish I could go back to the days before I saw the darkness for what it really is. Before I understood how deep it runs, not just through the world, but through people too. The difficulty comes when once you have seen that darkness, you cannot unsee it. You cannot

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