Readers Stories
A Ghostly Mission Steve Jones has been a California State Park Ranger at La Purisima Mission in Lompoc, California for the past 14 years. He's seen some things you won't find on any mission tour. Jones is responsible for closing the park at the day's end. But he says the mission sees visitors well after the gates are locked at 5 o'clock. "It started when I first started locking up: you'd feel cold spots throughout certain parts of the mission and occurrences that were very unusual ... doors slamming at weird times ... hearing things in the background ... and other people telling you about (similar experiences)," he says. Jones first encountered a "physical" presence one-day in June 1995. He entered one of the mission storage rooms to pick up a wig for a costume belonging to one of the mission volunteers who lead visitor tours. After turning off all the alarms and walking through a back door of what once was visitor's quarters, he saw what had become a familiar sight for the last few years: a bed that looked like it had been slept in, but that hadn't had a guest since the days of the mission padres. He said, "Suddenly there was this vision, I saw this sort of pearlescent, opalescent personage ... almost like a hologram". "It looked like Benjamin Franklin in drag." Startled, Jones stepped back into the doorway. "What little hair I had was standing on end," he says. The flashlight he was carrying went out and had completely come undone. After screwing the lens in and replacing the batteries, he began to walk out. The "personage" stood up and looked at him. "I didn't hear any voices but I could feel a real communication going on. I was speaking out loud, it wasn't," he said. After sheepishly trying to explain that he was there to only to fetch the wig, Jones walked out of the guest quarters, followed by the apparition into the room where costumes are kept. He said "I was startled at first, but then overcome by a feeling that everything was OK". It was one of at least 30 times Jones and the apparition would meet. He believes the ghost was that of Father Francisco Payeras, one of the mission's founding fathers. Since that encounter, he's learned that several other rangers and volunteers at La Purisima have come across everything from the sound of a galloping horse when there are no horses to be found, and encounters with the ghosts of Spanish soldiers and Chumash Indians who lived and worked at the mission under the mission padres. Jones recalled a visit by well-known ghost researcher Richard Senate. He came to the mission with a team of psychic specialists many times to see just what they could find. On this particular visit, a woman, who was walking through the mission church with dousing rods began getting some very strong "hits" by a door near the altar, next to the spot where Father Payeras is buried. She felt herself thrown up against the door, the woman was pinned, her hands shaking and beating the doorframe as she screamed for help. Shaken, but not ready to turn away, the group returned the next day to take more readings. They had used a tape recorder in the church that they thought would reveal nothing more than silence when played back. But the first listen revealed the sounds of the Misa Viscaina, a Gregorian chant that was commonly heard during the mission's heyday. Jones says these are but a few of the unusual occurrences he's encountered during his tenure at the mission. It's been enough to at least bring him to believe that what he's seen is very real. "People consider that between this life and the afterlife, there is a veil and I think at La Purisma that veil is very thin." Steve Walsh
If page is loaded out of frames click Here
|
