To whom it may concern,
It all began quite innocently. For my entire life I have lived in a Chicago suburb and just blocks from Lake Michigan. For as long as I can remember I loved going to the beach and collecting beach glass. When I was little it was something to do that was both fun and relaxing. As an adult I find it to be a sure fire way to relieve stress.
Over the years I have collected lots and lots of beach glass. I fill a bowl with some and keep it on a coffee table. I have jars filled to the brim, each jar filled with a different color. I put some in a glass and plunk a votive candle in the middle. I have even attempted to make simple jewelry.
More and more home magazines are featuring articles about sea glass collectors and jewelry makers. There are sea glass festivals, books about sea glass, and an official North American Sea Glass Association has been founded.
There are a gazillion web sites about some aspect of sea glass from private jewelry designers to sites on ebay selling sea glass in bulk. There is even fake sea glass, sometimes being sold fraudulently, passing it off as the real thing.
Christmas ornaments can be made from it, mosaics, kitchen and bathroom tiles, and coasters. You can drill holes in it yourself or have a sea glass drilling service drill them for you. Then there are even more things you can do with it.
One day while poking around on the internet I typed in “jewelry made from sea glass”. I wanted to see what was being created by all the different jewelry designers.
That’s when I came across By the Bay Treasures and Charles Peden, jewelry designer and sea glass collector. I was fascinated by his website. He did so many different creative things with glass he collected from the beaches near San Francisco. Here was a guy who was so into it he would rappel down cliffs to reach a secluded beach.
I liked him immediately. On his web site he talked about By the Bay Treasures being a family thing. How he and his wife and two young daughters would all go together in search of sea glass. As a family. It was so normal sounding. They appeared to be a perfectly normal family. An All American family. He was the breadwinner and she was an at home Mom. They had a beautiful seven year old and a brand new infant. Life looked good. Good and normal.
They lived in the historic town of Benicia, CA in a beautiful condo with a view of the water for them and a pool for the kids. So normal. They had lots of friends and had family in nearby Santa Cruz. Life was good. Life was normal.
I read about the sea glass drilling service Charles offered and emailed him asking for more info on the cost and the shipping procedure. Should I send my glass or buy some of his, or could I do both.
And here is when it all stopped making sense. Charles promptly answered my questions and later I came up with more. And he promptly answered those. In my emails I started saying “Say hi to your wife Heidi for me” or “How is Heidi feeling?” or “How many days until the new baby is due?” And within a few months Charles and Heidi and I became friends. Good friends. I am old enough to be their mother and young enough to be their friend. So here is this growing friendship between three people who had never met in person, yet it felt like we had known each other forever.
Then one day Charles emails me and jams a stick in the spokes of our seemingly normal lives. He asks ?Chris……do you believe in Spirits? As in Spirits of people who have died.”
I answered, “Yep, sure do. Why are you asking me this?”
He answered, “Because I think we have one staying with us. Her name is Isabelle and she was born in 1878.”
So much for normal. I said, “Huh?”
He said, “I can feel her. She was murdered and last night I experienced her death.” And he went on filling me in with more details. I was fascinated.
I said, “I had no idea you had this ability!”
He responded, “Neither did I. This just started happening very recently.”
The next day he emailed me and said ?She was here again last night. We took pictures and you can see the orbs. I’ll forward them to you. Tell me what you think.?
And sure enough. I downloaded the file and there were several pictures. Very interesting pictures. One was a picture of Heidi sitting on the couch, staring blankly at either the wall or the TV. She looked like she hadn’t slept in days. To her right, on the arm of the couch was an orb. It was Isabelle and I could see her face in the orb. This was a first for me.
The next picture was another one of Heidi on the couch, staring blankly at the wall/TV. In her lap was little Maya, staring intently at the ceiling. Up around the ceiling were wispy, bright white streams of fuzzy light. A lot of them. Charles had added the note “This is a picture of a psychic hurricane that Isabelle created just to get a rise out of us.”
The next picture was of Charles. He was sitting in a chair with his hands facing up and resting on his knees. He had a very strange expression on his face and it looked like his eyeballs were rolling up in his head. His mouth was hanging half open. He looked screwy. Not normal. Charles added the note: “This is me channeling Isabelle. See the other orbs ? One on the mirror and one right behind me, over my right shoulder.” That’s not normal.
A few days later I received another email. This time he told me there were several Spirits staying with them now. It was getting too “crowded” and Heidi was becoming more and more uneasy and just wanted things to be “normal” again.
Isabelle moved in almost on a full time basis. Charles spent hours researching all the facts Isabelle had “told” him, trying to verify her existence and her story. I had the feeling that he better get that information soon……before Heidi had her bags packed.
Soon he had gathered all the info and it all matched up. What Isabelle had told him could all be verified through Benicia ‘s historical records. All of it. Every single word. This was amazing.
Heidi and Charles continued to have a revolving door filled with various “Spirit Friends” coming and going. Each one telling Charles their bizarre stories.
With every passing day Charles’ psychic and medium abilities grew bigger and better. Almost everyday they would call and tell me all about whatever had occurred the night before. There were some incredible things happening to them and around them and through them……almost around the clock.
Heidi handled it the best she could. Better than I would have handled it. Charles would go out for the day in his Kayak to collect sea glass to make money to keep a roof over their heads. Heidi would stay home to take care of the girls and deal the best she could with spirits who were hanging out at their place. Almost every time Charles would come home he would be accompanied by a few wayward ghosts who had met him while he was at the beach. Often there would be a ghost who needed help in crossing over.
Within days Charles discovered he had the ability to help people cross over to the other side where they belonged.
A week or so later he called to tell me that now when he walks down the street and sees someone he can see their dead relatives hovering around the person and he could tell what the person was experiencing in his job or in his home.
His gift just continued to blossom. Every day there would be some new development. The big one for me was one night Charles called and said my Dad, who had passed on two years ago was at Charles and Heidi’s and wants to talk to me. I never doubted Charles for even a split second. I just went with it. Within 10 seconds my Dad told Charles something that only my Dad and I knew about. I asked Charles to ask my Dad who, if anyone, was with him. Charles said, “He’s with his sister Ellen.” Something else that Charles had no way of knowing about. Since that first connection with my Father, Charles has called me several times to tell me that my Dad was there and needed to talk to me. And sometimes my Dad just shows up at Charles and Heidi’s just to hang out with Charles.
One night Charles and I were on the phone and talking about how incredible this whole thing is and how quickly it is progressing. And how accurate he has been almost 100% of the time. So I asked him to tell me what he sees or feels is going on around me right at that moment. Keep in mind that Charles has never been in my house and we are talking on the phone thousands of miles apart. He started to pick up on my cat and my cat was telling him how he came to us as a stray, where he had come from and who he lived with and why he left and found me. Charles then described what my cat looks like and how old he is and he was 100% accurate.
This was Charles’ first experience communicating with a living animal. A few days later I asked him to tell me everything he sees or feels about one of my dogs. Charles described what the dog looked like, his age and he said the dog was experiencing a problem with his eyes and that it was very painful. Earlier that day I had taken him to the vet and was diagnosed with a degenerative condition in both eyes. He had ulcers on both corneas and the vet said he didn’t know of a more painful condition. Again Charles had hit it right on the head.
Recently I had been considering a change in my career and asked Charles what he saw or felt about it. He said he saw me teaching the class I had hoped to teach and he saw me teaching it in a dance studio. At the time I had not put anything together for the teaching and I didn’t know of anyone who had a connection with a dance studio. A week later I began taking a class with six other women I had never met before. After the class we walked to our cars and I started talking with one of the women from the class. I mentioned that I was hoping to begin teaching a class of my own soon and was looking for a place to hold the class. I said I would let her know when and where it would be held and maybe she would be interested in taking it. She said she had a better idea. She told me she was part owner of a new dance studio and would I consider teaching my class in her dance studio. I said I would love to. To Charles I say thank you…….another job well done.
Chris Graf
Wilmette, IL
