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The Carner Institute: Dr. Harriet Orsom
Statement of Dr. Harriet Orsom regarding her ability to see ghosts. Statement given October 7th, 2021. Review by Mason Brooks, Principal Investigator of the Carner Institute, Auberton.
Do not confuse my participation in your statement collection as my condoning of your beliefs and operations. This is simply the transaction of information for information. I had rather avoided coming here, but you all seem to be what I need now. I am not as young as I wish and so do not have as much time nor ability to find new sources of information beyond your walls as your grip is ever wide as it is staining. You want my story, well here it is.
To state the obvious, I can see souls. No, I don’t mean ghosts. Ghosts are souls wandering around well past when they should have faded away. When I say I can see souls, I mean I see the soul when it leaves the body. Anyone can see someone die, the body trying to rattle with it’s own end and beginning of decay: the occurrence of death, but I see a lot more. I see the spirit experiencing death, what we go through in our final moments and right after. I believe you all might refer to this as a “post-mortem echo”? I feel that takes so much of the life out of it, no joke intended. I’ll give you my story about what I experience as I feel it best to.
I imagine I’ve had this ability since I was born, but who knows, really? Earliest I can remember of this was when I was 3 and we had this ant infestation in our house. My dad would kill them with his hand, just squishing whole lines of them. I remember seeing little bursts of light coming from them every time they got squished, like an LED flashing on an off. One moment moving, a light, then no more movement. Of course I had no idea what I was seeing, let alone the truth of it being that I was seeing a spiritual essence leaving them and just thought that’s what happens when you squish an ant. I used to try and get my classmates during recess to see it, but that only resulted in me being labeled as crazy with no others able to see it.
First time I saw a person die was when I was 6. I was at the Johan Carnival back in 75’. We went every year and I loved the place, especially the ferris wheel. I’d ride it many times and I know my mom was annoyed with how many times I dragged her on there, but I was just a kid. If you remember, the 75’ Carnival had that ride failure where the swinging pendulum ride broke and carts and people ended up flying off. I doubt you do. You seem too young. One person hit the ground right next to the ferris wheel. The man luckily died on impact, though this only made my experience the more memorable.
As soon as he hit, there was an explosion of light from him, far greater than any ant could ever hope to accomplish. The pavement was engulfed in an array of blues and purples and greens shrouded in a milky white glow, roaring and swirling like a fire that consumes a home. The whole scene lit so brightly that it was all I could see and I thought myself blind. I would guess it lasted say four or so seconds if I recall correctly, then faded outward, like all the color that called this man’s body home had fled into the air around it. The event was, of course, startling and I screamed in terror. My parents had me see a therapist for some time due to the trauma, which is when I found out that no one else sees fire when one dies. They attributed it to my imagination trying to rewrite the traumatic memory, but I wouldn’t be here if that was true, now would I?
I started to notice these lights in many places. I’d see lights in the yard when birds would be foraging for food. My plants had a faint glow to them as they slowly withered. Bugs would also have that glow when stuck to fly paper and starved. The first time I was given enough time to watch it unfold slowly was when I was 10. I had a dog named Terry, lived to 14 years: a good dog he was. In his last week, I could see the blues and purples and greens with him, but not in a burst. It was more like it was emitting from him, leaking out, recognition that his body could no longer hold them. As each day passed, more and more would come from him. Through simple math, I knew which day he was going to die before anyone else did. I held him as he passed and the color faded away, knowing he was fully gone by then.
I came from a Jeb!ist background and my family were frequent visitors of the church so I of course contextualized this from a Jeb!ist point of view. I had came to the conclusion that what I could see was the souls of those passing and seeing them as they left the body. Those who died suddenly would have their souls ripped from them in a burst of escapement while those who died slowly would have them fade out more and more as they approached death. I also concluded that we are not the only ones with souls, but all living things have souls, from animals to plants and anything else alive. I thought myself to be blessed by Jeb! himself, maybe I’d even become a saint someday. I didn’t share this with anyone from the church as the therapy taught me that people would not act kindly to this, and I doubt the church was open to the idea of Jeb! blessing a girl with the ability to see souls. However, I did hound the church staff and pastor with my questions about the afterlife and death. I even memorized whole passages about death, though they never really felt very accurate to me. My understanding of the end felt different from those who say they wrote the word of Jeb!.
In secondary school, I became very interested in ghosts and the afterlife, learning all I could on it, fascinated by it. I even went down a few dark holes with it. I never killed an animal, that path, but, honestly, looking back, I could have easily gone down that route if I wasn’t careful. I was a teenager, so of course I decided to base my identity on this. Goth aesthetic wasn’t really a thing back then, but I like to imagine that I was a proto-goth. My family wasn’t too happy about my obsession with death and ghosts, but it got me to want to become a doctor so they thought I’d outgrow it and it lead me into a successful career, so they lived with it.
I wanted to know everything I could about the body leading up to death, which brought me into biology classes. In all honesty, I wasn’t the best student when it came to this as I came in more just to know what happens to the body during death as the other parts of the field bored me. Despite this, medical care seemed like the best fit for a job and I didn’t have any other interests I thought could actually get me a good paying job, so I went with that. Luckily the medical industry reforms at the time made a pursuit in medical care much easier to obtain.
University was tough, but I made it through. On occasion, I would wander the medical building on campus when I knew people were being treated, peaking through the small windows in the doors. I saw a few people die in there, most having a fading death. However, I did see one that was a little more exciting. One of the staff has botched the operation and the patient died of blood loss. As they were dying, the room was full of the cooling lights. Nowhere as large was what I saw at the carnival, but the energy was still spurling out in swirls and waves. It was quite pleasing to look at, like a sunset if it were the tide on a beach.
I did graduate and go on to medical school, eventually having a residency and being able to be up close to patients on the verge of death. Unsurprisingly, my ability proved to be quite useful. Your soul happens to flee your body starting at the most damaged section of you when you approach death. A gun shot to the chest will created an exit hole through your chest. A cancerous end will have the strongest radiation come from your tumor. In my field of medicine, this makes it much easier to find where you need attention. A few successful calls from me and I ended up around the operation table more time than I was not. Glowing recommendations from the hospital staff made a medical license far easier to get than should be possible. I joined the Nhi Medical Center and didn’t leave for 40 years.
My position at the hospital did not become what I thought would become. I originally was always in the medical room, but transitioned toward administration, consultation, and partially nursing. One’s soul is quite a bright viewing and that amount of visual stimulation can be overwhelming, especially when you’re right over the body and that’s all you can see at times. I’m surprised I even managed to stay employed there, but I guess it’s useful having me around. My job granted me more free time outside of work, which I did not waste and spent regularly researching anything I could on the soul. There were successes, but also many annoyances and lack of motion. I stopped counting after a while how many gothic and cult-like groups I ended up in just trying to find small and specific answers.
Your Institute’s name came up quite often, though I never thought of actually consulting you. Your goals and methods have become ever increasingly questionable and at times horrid over the decades. However, your library is perhaps the only reliable source of information left that I have not searched through. So, here I am. Have your damn statement.
Statement ends. Dr. Orsom is a first for me. The ability to witness the post-mortem echo leave the body is something I have personally never heard of before. People have most certainly seen post-mortem echoes before, but not like how Dr. Orsom describes how she sees them. Her statement contains quite the amount of new information on echoes, if we are to take it as factually correct. I would have hoped to have had a discussion with her, but she seems very stern on keeping the arrangement she has with us as is. I do believe she may eventually allow a talk between us, of which I hope to be the first she talks with.
For classification, she most certainly is an Esoteric Practitioner of whom engages in Orphic Sensing. I do wish for us to gain more information from her, but realize that will require cooperation that is currently difficult to gain. I also do not see her in anyway as a threat that concerns us. Recommended procedure is Beholding Level 1 and Caution Level 1. Review ends.