They`re all meditating. Or at least they`re trying. Except for the one woman who keeps opening her eyes and looking around to see if the others are really going along with this weird stuff.
They`re trying to contact the dead.
”The spirits are here. I see them,” says Ruth Berger, a self-described
”intuitive counselor.” Psychic, if you insist. Channelor, if you want to be trendy. ”They have some wonderful messages for us. They want to talk to us as much as we want to talk to them.”
On this crisp, clear, fall night, in the library of St. Peter Catholic Church in Skokie, Berger is leading 35 members of the North Shore Chapter of Naim, a non-denominational support group for Christian widows and widowers, through what amounts to a class in basic ghost-calling. For this audience, she`s a fitting speaker: Naim is the biblical town where Christ brought the son of a widow back to life.
Put aside all those dusty, outdated images of professional mediums at work. Forget the crystal balls, incense, gypsy bandannas, beaded curtains. This is how it goes in the 1990s: A smiling and exceedingly normal-looking woman in a well-tailored business suit arrives at a church, meeting hall, private home or apartment and, in a very matter-of-fact fashion, summons into the room what she advertises as the spirits of the dead.
Here in Skokie, she begins by recounting the plot from the movie
”Ghost.” At one point, Whoopi Goldberg, as a medium, allows Patrick Swayze, as a dead man, to use her body to contact his wife (played Demi Moore), who`s alive. A bizarre concept, but Berger insists that she`s been allowing spirits to use her body ”for the last 25 years.”
But only the nice ones. The mean ones, the tortured ones, the rowdies, the creeps-those she keeps out.
”Just because someone dies, doesn`t automatically make them an angel,”
she says. ”I don`t want murderers and people like that in my body.”
Who can blame her?
The spirits tell her all kinds of things. Like there`s no alcoholism there. Unless, of course, you die drunk. And the sex is often better. And there`s a spirit hospital where you go to heal right after you die. And loved ones really do greet you.
There is like a big college, where spirits learn and rest, Berger says. Basically, it`s ”quite pleasant,” but only if the people here can let go.
Sometimes they hold on because of guilt, sadness and anger; then the spirits are caught between two worlds. People contact Berger because they need help dealing with those emotions.
There was the couple from Minnesota. Their young son had died and they were inconsolable.
Berger held a seance on Halloween, the boy`s birthday, and the boy ”came through (her) body” and gave a healing message to his parents.
There was the woman who wanted to contact her husband, who had been dead for 25 years. He appeared and told Berger to tell his wife to call their daughter and tell her not to sign any papers.
It turns out the woman was about to sign some legal documents that would have been disastrous.
”Couldn`t she read?” whispers a doubter in the audience.
Two weeks later, Berger says she was driving and the dead husband shoved her. ”He shoved me so hard I almost had an accident.”
He told her to call his wife and tell her to call their daughter again. This time the hapless girl was about to commit suicide.
While Berger speaks, the group`s president, Walter Sala, records her talk. But he keeps getting feedback from the tape recorder.
”It`s the spirits,” says Berger, ”the electromagnetic energy of the spirits. It does all kinds of things. I`ve gone on TV and blown fuses. I`ve had fire alarms go off.”
She asks the spirits to please leave the tape recorder alone.
The feedback stops.
Later, when Sala listens to the tape, it`s blank.
”For some reason, nothing recorded,” he blank. ”For some reason, nothing recorded,” he says. ”That`s never happened before.”
”Happens to me all the time,” Berger says.
Usually, Berger says, the spirits have loving messages. They stop people who are about to drive off a cliff, that kind of thing.
But sometimes a spirit can be a noodge. Berger`s mother came back to ball her out, picking up right where she had left off when she had died five years ago: You`re not taking care of yourself. You`re not eating right.
Berger`s ex-husband kept making uninvited appearances. It appeared neither divorce nor death could part them. ”I kept sending him off to the light,” she says, ”and he kept coming back. I must have sent him back 60 times.”
After the meditation, one man says his wife died of a brain tumor 15 months ago, and he has been tormented ever since. He says they were so connected when she was alive that she would send him shopping lists with her mind and he would bring the items home. And now he often dreams of her.
”My feeling is that she`s worried about you,” Berger says. ”You`re not letting go of her. It`s not healthy for either one of you.”
”But she`s my whole life,” says the man.
”You have to move on,” Berger says. ”If you love her, let her go.”
He looks unconvinced.
Another man says his two daughters can see his dead wife, but he can`t.
”It`s too painful.”
A woman tells of a dream she had a week before her husband died. Her parents, both dead, were in it. The next morning she told her husband she thought they were coming for her. It turns out they were coming for him.
Another woman says she`ll think about someone and then open the Tribune and read that the person has died.
”My son says, `Don`t think about me, Mom.”`
Before the meditation Berger had told one man, ”There`s a lot of activity around you from the spirit world.” Afterward, he says, he ”didn`t feel anything, just my high blood pressure pills working.” But then he adds, ”I did keep hearing a phrase. Just before my wife passed away in July, she told my daughter`s boyfriend to take care of her. She said, `Take care of Leslie.”`
The man kept hearing, ”Take care of Leslie. Take care of Leslie. She needs you.”
”The funny thing is, yesterday Leslie was over. She`s thinking of changing jobs. I don`t know if it`s just a coincidence, or what.”
Messages from `the lights`
Ruth Berger lives in a perfectly normal apartment in Skokie. She looks like a perfectly normal woman. A little like Edith Bunker. She`s 58, with three children and five grandchildren. She`s divorced and remarried. She`s like a regular person. She just happens to see spirits and talk to ghosts. She starts sentences with ”I`ll never forget my first experience with ETs . . .” It`s nothing she ever wanted.
”I wouldn`t have chosen this for myself in a million years.”
But what could she do? When she was just a girl, puffs of smoke would come out of closets. Ectoplasm would appear.
”It scared me to death,” she says. ”It terrified me.”
She tried to ignore it. She sold Tupperware. Then one day, while waiting in line at the Jewel, she picked up a 50-cent book on handwriting analysis. She started to analyze a friend`s handwriting. The friend said, ”That`s not handwriting analysis-that`s ESP,” and gave Berger a book on parapsychology.
”It was like a dam burst,” Berger says. ”I stopped resisting it and a lot of the fears left. Then I just threw myself into it. I read everything I could get my hands on, attended every workshop I could find. Everything evolved from that. I learned to interpret the messages I was already getting.”
Over the years, she has had some pretty weird experiences.
One happened 15 years ago, at a conference on parapsychology. At midnight, everyone decided to turn off the lights and meditate. With her eyes closed, Berger saw four lights.
”I was the only one who saw them.”
The lights said, ”We`re here to tell you to stop nuclear testing.”
”What can I do about nuclear testing?” Berger asked the lights.
They told her she often spoke to groups of women and if she told the women, they would tell their husbands, and eventually the message would get to the right people.
Extra-terrestrial beings send Berger messages all the time. Her favorite was the comforting one that ETs are standing over all the doomsday buttons and they won`t let them get pushed. Anyone who tries will-zap!-go into a time warp.
”I was so glad to hear that,” Berger says.
One Twilight-Zoney kind of thing happened to her right in her home. She was sitting on her bed talking on the phone to a woman whose son had died. Out of the phone came the boy. ”Just like a genie out of the bottle.” And he was no small kid. He was a full-grown 16-year-old.
”He was big, solid (Berger says most ghosts are see-through), and angry. He stood in front of me, pounding his fist into his palm. He scared me to death.” She was eventually able to get him to leave the way he came, through the mouthpiece.
”But it took me a long time before I`d do any more consultations on the telephone.”
Berger also does exorcisms. She says she has compared notes with priests and, basically, she does it the same way. But, where they use crosses and holy water, she uses light and divine love. Although, from time to time she has used a cross or a Jewish star.
Once she was called into a house where the daughter was waking up covered with teethmarks. Berger went into the house and up to the bedroom where the little girl slept. The walls were pulsating.
”My heart started pounding and I heard loud, angry voices. Usually I`m calm, but I started panicking.” Berger went downstairs and saw a big, ugly black thing fly out of the house.
”But where do you think it went? The back seat of my car. For two months it lived with me.”
Eventually she was able to send it to the light. ”I learned I don`t have to get panicky with any spirit that scares me. Most are just unhappy souls who are lost.”
Her fee: $90 an hour
Today, Berger has a busy schedule. She writes in the morning, speaks in the evening and consults in the afternoon. Her fees: $50 a half-hour, $90 an hour.
People come because of health problems. Berger says she`s a medical clairvoyant and can X-ray a body and find the cause of a disease and steer the person toward the right treatment.
”A lot of people come these days because of stress. They`re worried about time and energy. They feel they can`t go through another mistake. For a while, everyone wanted to know about their love life. Now it`s all career and security.”
People come with questions. Berger sees the answer in technicolor motion pictures. The pictures appear around the person`s head. The ones directly over it represent the present. Those on the right are the past, those on the left are the options available in the future.
Berger once told a woman she saw her losing weight and meeting a man. When the woman didn`t, she got angry at Berger.
”It was her choice,” Berger says. ”I see the possibilities. I can`t make people do things.”
There are some questions Berger won`t answer. One woman wanted to know if her 30-year-old daughter was having sex.
”I told her it was none of her business.”
A lot of people think Ruth Berger is full of beans. They think she`s a hoax, a nut, a liar and a phony. Doesn`t bother her one bit.
”I don`t get upset. I don`t try to convert them. It`s like politics or religion. There are some subjects you don`t want to get into.”
