When the Ghost Screams(37)

But was the meowing she heard really that of her cat?

Janice Oberding and her husband, Bill, and I all sat on the Constantinos’ huge, comfortable couch and listened as they played their favorite EVPs.

“The woman’s voice is really clear on this one,” said Mark, as he brought up another file on his laptop computer. It was the EVP obtained the day Debby was in the kitchen, when her kitty meowed in such an odd manner. The EVP began with a long string of meows that was presumably the voice of their kitty, Wheezy.

The taped meows were followed by a mysterious adult male’s voice, meowing back at the cat, in the playful manner that humans do. I listened with interest, but it was the next word spoken by a distinctive female voice that made me sit up straight. It was a single word, formed into a question.

“Marvin?”

I gasped. I knew the voice well. It was my own.

“That’s me!” I exclaimed. “Play it again!”

I made them play it over and over again, and each time I heard it, I repeated in awe, “That’s me!”

“It does sound like you,” Janice agreed.

But how could it be? The recording was made thirteen months before I had met any of these people, before I had ever set foot in Reno.

“Marvin?”

It took a few moments for me to regain my composure enough to explain to my new friends the significance of Marvin.

None of them knew about the sadness I have carried daily since May 2005. They did not know about Marvin. Marvelous Marvin was my tuxedoed cat who was not quite two years old when I lost him. It is not something that I like to talk about, but it is with me always.

Normally an inside cat, Marvin’s first taste of the wild may have been his last. A freak set of circumstances ended with me and my cats camping for several days on a friend’s wooded acreage in Eatonville, Washington, in May 2005.

My animals are my only children, and it hurts to put these words down on paper. My cats were out of my sight, when I heard the horrible yips of a marauding pack of coyotes. I rushed to investigate, but the coyotes were gone, and so were Marvin, Piper Sam, and Frank.

My remaining cats stared at me, their eyes wide and concerned. But they could not tell me what had happened. I pray every day that the three missing cats were simply frightened away by the coyotes and have found new, wonderful homes.

Now, as I write about the ghosts of victims, I wonder if Marvin was the victim of the coyotes. Has my charismatic kitty become a subject in my book? Is he a spirit, sending me a message? Did Marvin somehow manifest my voice, so that I would know that the frantic meows were his?

I have no answers, but so many questions.

At the time that Debby obtained the EVP of the voice like mine, it was several months before the awful day I lost my cats.



Marvin, my amazing kitten, and I are working on a project called “A Kitten’s Work Is Never Done.” Marvin sews his own clothes. Marvin carefully hangs laundry in the little set I built for him and then yawns, exhausted from the work. Did Marvin communicate with me out of time and out of space from the other side? (Leslie Rule)

If Marvin’s ghost did supply the cosmic meows on the EVP, how did he do it three months before he vanished?

As mentioned in the previous chapter, the theory that time is nonexistent on the other side may apply here. Perhaps Marvin’s spirit traveled to the best place possible to get a message to me.

If so, it was not the first time that Marvin took paranormal steps to telepathically communicate. In October 2004, I received a telephone call from a psychic whom I barely knew. She lived in California, and I had spoken to her only a couple of times when I interviewed her for a story.

She knew little about me. She knew that I had cats, but I had never described them to her. On the morning that she called, I had been worrying about Marvin. He was lethargic, and his eyes were runny.

“I had to call you,” she told me. “One of your cats contacted me. He is black and white,” she said, as she described the exact areas of Marvin’s white markings. “He has a cold, and you need to take him to vet, but he will be OK.”

I was stunned. How did she know?

“He is very persistent,” she said.

I immediately took Marvin to the vet, and as the woman had predicted, he had a cold. He received medication and soon recovered.

Since Marvin went missing, I have wished many times that he would communicate with me as I close my eyes and imagine that I am holding him.

All three cats who disappeared were my beloved furry friends. Marvin, however, stood whiskers and tail above most felines. Unusually intelligent, he also was very loving to both people and other animals alike. I still hope that he is alive and well. I hope that the psychic messages he is sending are from this side and not the other. I am afraid, however, that Marvin is another murdered spirit.