I have a very strong feeling about making contact with spirits on “the other side.”

I don’t.

In fact, I recommend just leaving them the hell alone.

This isn’t because I think all spirits contacted are actually demons or something (though it’s certainly possible), or that communication with the dead is necessarily the tool of Satan (I suppose it depends on the context), or even because I am scared of spirits.

It also isn’t because I believe that contacting the spirit world is a bunch of bull dookie. I actually do believe the spiritual world might be more than just Heaven and Hell. I do believe that magic is real, or that at the very least some set of psychic forces that might as well be magic exists. I even think it is possible for spirits to haunt a place or even to, on rare occasions, reach out to us.

For example, Mrs. Blue mourned the loss of her mother to cancer greatly. It was a deep emotional wound, and it rocked her deeply, right down to her faith. At a certain point, though, she felt the very strong presence of her mother one day, as if she were trying to speak to my wife. And the message my wife came away with was: “Let it go. Let me go.” My wife did, and even though she still thinks about and misses her mother, it isn’t such a consuming thing.

I believe that her mother reached out, or was allowed by God to reach out, and put her mind at ease. There has been no other contact like that, and I suspect there won’t be.

I look at it this way:

Mediums exist. I’m sure many of them are charlatans (or deluded) but I also believe some of them are real. My problem is that there are very few people who can reach the spirit world to dial up a little conversation with a dead person. There are a lot of people who would like to hear from their dearly departed. But if we were meant to be trying to reach them, I just think it would be a lot easier. I mean, I figure there would be a system in place to let them reach us instead of us having to punch a damn hole through the spiritual wall using some medium with a psychic sledgehammer. Or to dial up the super-secret toll-free number to the other side.

An acquaintance of Mrs. Blue’s recently lost her father (at a relatively young age; he was in good health and I think he was in his early 60s). Recently, she posted on Facebook how grateful she was that John Edwards (the famous medium/psychic, not the former presidential candidate) was able to reach out to her dad. She was so grateful. And maybe it was her father. Maybe it wasn’t. But I feel that if folks are on the other side, unless the other side is as messed up as this side, shouldn’t they be more spiritually aware? Is there any reason those spirits need us to pick up the psychic phone if they have a better set of equipment over there? They’re spirits, and yet we have to do the work of making the spiritual connection?

It doesn’t add up for me.

And the thing is, even when mediums contact spirits, doesn’t it always seem to be the “Everything is fine, be at peace” message?

So, shouldn’t we just leave them be? In peace. Why do we need to bother them to set our minds at rest? Because, if there is an “other side” we’ll see it soon enough. And we can talk to them then.

Yes, the spirits of our dearly departed can speak to us. But I think what they really want us to hear is that little voice they leave with us when they departed this world, that we’d probably hear if we listened: “Remember me fondly and remember me well, and I’ll see you soon enough.”