Part I
She didn’t know the man who killed her. But she lived long enough to describe her assailant to police. He was caught, tried, and convicted. Court-appointed psychiatrists said he was “easily confused” and had “little control over his emotions,” but no reason for the assault was ever given.
Her name was Kathryn Oliveros. She was twenty-three years old when she died, in October of 1965. Her face slashed, stabbed in the chest by a man she’d never met, until a chance confrontation upstairs at the Old College Inn, across the street from the Murphree Area dorms at the University of Florida in Gainesville.
Although family and friends mourned Kathryn, she would have been lost to history, except for one thing...
She wouldn’t leave.
When I was promoting concert events in the early 2000’s, one of the club-sized venues I used was called the Blowhole – part of the world famous party complex known as the Purple Porpoise. It was in the same building that had been the Old College Inn.
Many of the employees had stories about upended chairs falling off tables or televisions turning themselves on and off after hours – when there was no one else around. They’d get chills in the otherwise stifling hallway on the second floor that was now mostly used for storage. Some of them eventually refused to go upstairs.
They said it was because of Kathryn.
I used a couple of rooms off that upstairs hallway as a green room, dressing room and restroom for the headlining bands.
One time the lead singer of a band was trying to take a much-needed nap on the old couch in the green room. As their stage time approached, I went up the stairs to make sure the band was getting ready. In a sleepy haze the singer asked me if some woman had been walking up and down the hallway while he was trying to sleep. I assured him there had been no one. The stairway at the far end was locked. The near stairway had security posted at the door. “Wow,” he said. “That’s weird. I would have sworn there was some girl in a white dress walking up and down the hallway.”
Another time, a band was fresh off the tour bus for load-in and I was leading their orientation walk-through so they knew where to hang out and get ready. As I indicated the open door to a large, tiled room, one of them took a step forward but stopped with the other foot in mid-air just before he entered. “What happened in here?", he asked. I wasn’t sure what he meant. I made some joke that maybe one of the stagehands had recently taken a rancid crap. “No,” he said. “Something happened in here.” He refused to go in.
It was the bathroom where Kathryn had been stabbed.
I am not religious. I don't believe in an afterlife. Over the course of five years or so, I spent hundreds of hours in that upstairs area. I never had an experience that seemed supernatural. I never even got a chill. But I didn't know how to explain those events I had witnessed. Those band guys were not local. They would have had no way of knowing about… Kathryn.
Is it possible that some essence of a person is left behind in places they’ve been? In some cases, for decades? And in such a way that some people can detect that essence?
Part II
In 1907, a physician named Duncan MacDougall conducted an experiment. He selected nursing home patients who were close to death, and weighed them in the moments immediately before and after their demise. He determined there was a small, but measurable, weight loss that coincided with the moment of death. And he decided this slight difference in mass resulted from the departure of the spirit.
Thus, he had determined the weight of a soul.
Twenty-one grams.
That was the difference he had detected. Three quarters of an ounce. The mass that contains the essence of each of us.
The results of this quest have long since been debunked. But it didn’t matter. The whole affair reinforced the notion, long held by generations of believers, that the soul is a tangible thing.
Part III
Recently, a friend of mine died after a terrible illness. As people paid tribute on his Facebook page, I couldn’t decide what to write. But, I pictured him in my mind, and thought of a funny story about him, and I wrote…
“Your energy will continue to light the world.”
And then it hit me… Energy and mass and light are closely related. Isn’t that what Einstein told us?
Isn’t it logical that we leave a trail of atoms wherever we go? And, in some places, more than others? Skin cells, saliva, and the very air we exhale – especially when we sneeze. Or cough.
Or die.
I found a scientific journal article that calculated the number of cells in the average human at three-point-seven-two times ten to the thirteenth power. For those who are bad at math that's more than 37 trillion cells.
And don’t they all contain some essence of us? Some molecular thumbprint?
It’s an interesting question to ponder, especially when you realize no one really knows how memories work. The human brain is just a gelatinous mass of wonder, a chemical playground where things go on that we can’t even begin to understand.
Somewhere there is a tiny clump of neurons in my skull that knows my first-grade teacher was Mrs. Zebunka. But how does my brain retain that information, and retrieve it whenever I want it?
How can it conjure up an image of one of my earliest memories of my dad – him playing porpoise in the warm, shallow waters of White Lake in New Hampshire, while I rode like a papoose Poseidon on his back?
If someone else gained access to that clump of neurons, would they see the same thing?
At the moment we expire, do zillions of molecules go drifting off, and, since matter can’t be created or destroyed, do they continue to exist, carrying forth some essence of us? Something we could think of as part of our soul?
Did your last bite of food contain a tiny bit of Julius Caesar or Joan of Arc? Take a good, deep breath. Perhaps you’re inhaling a few molecules of Mother Theresa or Abraham Lincoln. Although, I suppose it’s equally likely you’re inhaling a bit of Genghis Kahn or Adolph Hitler.
Maybe some people have a different perception of those molecules that float all around. Maybe they can experience the memories contained in those cells.
Maybe they’ve seen Mrs. Zebunka?
But isn’t that really the essence of all us? The memories and experiences that make up our existence…?
Could it be that some of us have the ability to decipher the code contained in these wandering bits of other people? Could it be that we all have that ability but most of us just don't do it in our conscious state?
That would explain many things… Weird dreams. The sensation of déjà vu. Even random ghost sightings.
If that’s true, we’d have to face one important, additional question… What if the ghosts are actually inside us?
