Category: A Spiritual Look At All Forms Of Entertainment…

I doubted that paranormal activity existed for a very long time until I experienced my own real taste of it, but more on that in a moment. Many movies have been released lately that are depicting this genre. One of them is The Conjuring, which since it’s release a bunch of weeks ago, has made a ton of money and built a lot of hype surrounding it. I finally decided to go see it because of this. As it began, words were placed on the screen that said the movie was based upon the true case files of the Warren’s, who were a paranormal investigative team that accumulated over 10,000-plus haunting cases dating as far back as 1952.

While the movie did its best to scare me, which at times it did, I began to wonder as it ended just how much of it was factual. After doing a little research on the internet to find out more details on the actual case file for which the movie was based upon, I found some serious discrepancies. So as not to ruin anyone else’s experience from watching this movie as it was entertaining, let me just say that Hollywood took a considerable amount of leeway in making the film. What really happened to the Perron family at their farmhouse in 1971 was noticeably different as compared to what the family experienced throughout the movie.

In doing this research, I also discovered other horror movies that were based upon factual events had similar exaggerations in their films. Some of those included The Devil Inside, The Haunting In Connecticut, Amityville Horror, and The Exorcist to name just a few.

Hollywood has done a great job today making scary movies even scarier, especially for those based upon true events. And while I’m not denying that those events didn’t happen, it’s the way they are being portrayed that has me appreciating what I’m seeing as pure art and and not reality.

Are there things that go bump in the night? Are there ghosts? Are their malevolent spirits? My belief is that the answers to each of those questions is yes. But that’s only because I’ve had my own paranormal experience, that changed my doubting mind.

I once owned a bed and breakfast named the Island Manor House that was operating in a home built around 1848. The home held much history from it’s conception and often guests would report seeing various ghostly apparitions. Two of those included a little girl who always seemed ready to play or a woman in an old nurse’s uniform that checked in on guests in their rooms in the middle of the night. After doing some research into these events, the other owner and I learned the original family who owned the home had a girl who died at a young age. In addition, we found out that part of the home was once used as a Civil War hospital for soldiers who were wounded. Even with hearing similar stories over time from random guests, I never saw any of what they had reported and remained skeptical. But one morning, I noticed something odd that began to change my view surrounding all of it.

In the center of the B&B, there was a common room that I called the Game Room. It had a fireplace, a chest of games, and a table that had a built in chess set on top of it that I had purchased for the room when I had moved in. Every night when turning in, after all the guests had already done so, I always moved the chess pieces back to their starting positions for a new game. But on this one morning, I noticed a single pawn had taken it’s opening move while the rest of the pieces were as I had left them the night before. I moved it back and went on with my day thinking nothing of it. Morning after morning as guests checked in and out, this continued to happen. I thought my business partner was just playing a joke on me, but when I asked, he had no idea what I was talking about. A number of weeks continued with this single pawn moving forward and it really began to bug me until I finally decided to take the matter a little further on one specific morning. When I emerged that day, every single guest in the house was in the dining room having breakfast, and the other owner was cooking. I spoke into the empty air and said “if there is a ghost in this house, show me in a more direct way that you are real…” I laughed off my insanity and went into the dining room for a minute just to check in with the other owner and say hello to all the guests. When I came back through that common room with the chess set, all of its pieces were moved around the board as if a whole game had been played. It was then that I knew and really began to believe that ghosts do exist and that there was some truth to paranormal activity.

So while I’ve come to accept that there is some truth to those questions I posed earlier, I’ve also come to understand that Hollywood takes a lot of their own liberties when making any film based upon factual events, especially those which are paranormal based. I’m sure if they were to portray my ghost story, it probably would be turned into the table levitating or the chess pieces flying around the room, neither of which happened. Don’t get me wrong, I actually enjoyed watching The Conjuring. But I decided the next time I see any movie like this that states it’s content is based upon factual events, I’m going to take it with a grain of salt, sit back, relax, and be entertained by that Hollywood magic.

Peace, love, light, and joy,

Andrew Arthur Dawson

Most people around my age have probably heard of the name Rodney King and the story behind what happened to him. A similar, and less well known story, but just as tragic, was what happened to Oscar Grant on January 1st, 2009, when he became another wrongful victim of racial profiling and was murdered by a Bart police officer named Johannes Mehserle at Fruitvale Station.

Recently with the release of the movie titled “Fruitvale Station”, the events that happened in that early morning tragedy have taken a much larger spotlight in the nation. I have to admit that up until I saw that movie the other day, which was directed by Ryan Coogler, I didn’t know anything about the terrible misfortune that happened to Oscar Grant.

While the movie did a fantastic job depicting the last 24 hours in the life of Oscar, it also shed even more light into the police brutality that still exists in our country which often arises out of racial profiling. Having grown up in a middle to upper class family that lived in a completely white neighborhood out in the suburbs, my family never experienced any of what people like Oscar went through. But back on an early summer night in 1991, I met someone very similar to him when I was hanging out at a house in the inner city of the area I grew up in. For the three months that followed, I spent time with this individual and got to see a completely different side of the tracks and one that Oscar Grant would have been all too familiar with.

I have often looked back at that summer and felt amazed that I even survived through it. Some of the things I did during that time period were definitely illegal and very insane. Sadly, this person who became my best friend at the time also became someone who was the object of my sex and love addiction even though I was never able to admit that to myself or him back then. He and everyone else I spent time with were black yet I was still readily accepted even though I was white. He was also a small time drug dealer just like Oscar was, who did enough of it just to get by. He had his group of close friends who drank and smoked weed with him at night too. And it didn’t take long for me to be quickly absorbed into his world as I started doing the very same things as him.

There was one night that I was hanging out without him and with one of our mutual friends instead and I can still remember what happened in vivid details. The two of us were lighting off small firecrackers on the train tracks and heading back to his house to crash for the night when suddenly police came out from all directions and drew their guns on us. We were both thrown up against a fence, roughly searched, and talked down upon with curse words even though we hadn’t done anything wrong. The officer who searched us definitely didn’t like how I looked. At the time I had a six inch high flat top, lines and zigzags throughout it and my eyebrows, and wore clothes that definitely fit the inner city look. He told me if he ever saw me downtown again, he was going to “put my wigger ass in jail”. It was the first wake up call I had in my life to how privileged I really had it, as compared to what that friend and all the others I hung out that went through, every single day of their lives.

And that incident wasn’t the only one to happen to me like that either. When I went back to college, I retained that inner city look and went to house parties quite often. On one night I went for a stroll from one of those parties to go get a pack of cigarettes as I smoked them too back then. I was walking up a street headed to the nearest store when a police car passed by. With a screech and a quick turn around in the middle of the road, the car raced up to me and two policeman jumped out. They drew their weapons and threw me up against their cruiser and searched me. When I asked what I had done, I was told to “shut the fuck up”. They then literally forced me quite hard into the back seat of their cruiser without reading me any rights and took me to an apartment complex a few miles away. A person then emerged and walked around the cruiser looking in at me, then shook their head and left. After that, the police took me up the street and kicked me out of their cruiser with no explanation of what any of what had just happened was all about and I was miles away from where I needed to go.

It’s sad but what I experienced is probably only a mere fraction of what many black people, as well as all the other minority races, continue to go through. Oscar Grant lost his life to police that were racial profiling and acting violent because of it. Thankfully, my ending wasn’t the same from when I once fell prey to the same thing. But what did come out of all that for me was a greater understanding and compassion for what the minority races have to endure in this world from so many others, including the police. Fruitvale Station was a riveting film about that and a rather good portrayal of how inner city life can be like for a minority based individual like Oscar was. Hopefully there will come a day when things like his homicide won’t happen anymore. Until then, at least a movie like this will help raise greater awareness to the racism that still exists in our country.

Peace, love, light, and joy,

Andrew Arthur Dawson

Back in 1999, there was a cute little film named EDtv, starring Matthew McConaughey, that was released into the theaters. A simple concept really, it was about a television network who followed a guy named Ed, twenty four hours a day, 7 days a week, and aired it as a show on prime time. The show soon became a number one watched program where everyone always wanted to know with great anticipation what was going to happen next to Ed. Zoom forward to 2013, and it seems as if I can find a version of EDtv on every single channel almost all the time.

I’ve lost count of how many shows exist now that are about following the lives of certain people or groups of people. Some of the real big named reality shows in the past few years, have included Duck Dynasty, Jersey Shore, Here Comes Honey Boo Boo, Keeping Up With The Kardashians, and The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills. And this only is just a fraction of all of them that exist. Not only are there reality shows that follow this type of sub genre which are labeled as Documentary style, there are plenty of other classifications as well including historical re-creation, science, dating, law enforcement/military, makeover, lifestyle change, fantasies fulfilled, hidden camera, game shows, talent searches, spoofs, and parodies.

Ironically, what was once the majority of the type of shows that existed when I was growing up are now fast becoming the minority. Much of the world has become fascinated with watching everyone else’s realities now. Why is this? Why are millions upon millions of people watching reality television when they have their own realities to deal with? Is it an escape or an avoidance of their own lives? I don’t have the answers to those questions. The only thing I know is that I miss television from the 80’s when most of those shows didn’t exist.

Back in that time, when I was a teenager just starting to get into television, there were only a handful of channels to watch. During the morning it was all about cartoons, during the afternoon it was all about talk shows, soap operas, and games shows, and during the evening, all the programming was fictionalized drama or comedy based shows. Shows like The Hulk, The A-Team, The Six Million Dollar Man, The Bionic Woman, Knight Rider, Too Close For Comfort, and Three’s A Company were some of my favorites. While shows like this still do exist in different incarnations, they are rapidly becoming extinct and being replaced by those scripted reality shows that people are watching so much more of now.

What’s ironic is that my life is full of reality every single day but I don’t have any camera crews following any part of it. Is that because I’m not important enough or because my life doesn’t have something that’s interesting to follow? I’m sure Honey Boo Boo thought the very same thing until her life became a hit television reality show. Regardless, I try not to invest much time in watching any of those reality television shows these days. I find it’s more important for me now to work on creating my own reality of being a healthier person in this world who is dedicated to helping God bring more light and love to this planet. No offense to the Kardashians or Honey Boo Boo or any of the Real Housewives from anywhere but there is no difference between any of you and any of those of us who don’t have shows about our own lives with maybe the exception of the fact that you are making a lot more money from people who keep tuning into the shows about you. We are all God’s children and each of us have an equally important reality and purpose in life that don’t need cameras to chronicle any of it.

Could our world be a much more loving place to be in if we all started tuning out some of those reality shows and started tuning into working on our own lives a lot more by bettering ourselves and being more loving to each other? By working on bettering myself and being more loving to everyone, I have learned to really enjoy my own reality as compared to my past where I wanted to tune it out and follow someone else’s instead. The last thing I want to do now is spend my days vicariously watching anyone creating their own realities when I am already doing so with God. So maybe then I should have a show named ANDREWtv…NOT!

Peace, love, light, and joy,

Andrew Arthur Dawson