Still fuming about the email I had just read, I felt a tug on the link I had established with LuEllen and knew that she had gone planing again.

I quickly tried to calm myself, so I wouldn’t take any overt emotions into the transitional plane, and I planed after her, following the cord that connected us.

When I landed, I realized I hadn’t taken enough time to dampen my emotions. Instead of the gray, foggy nothingness that I had grown used to, I found myself standing in a landscape straight from a science fiction novel. The rock-strewn, dusty beige ground was seamed with deep steaming chasms, and I was standing next to a small caldera filled with bubbling mud.

Brushing the hair from my forehead, I took a deep breath and started coughing.

So, much for deep soothing breaths, I thought.

Moving away from the stench of rotting eggs that wafted up from the boiling mud pit, I tried to let the simple act of walking still my stirred up emotions. The unique thing about the transitional plane is that space and time really have little meaning. Everywhere is the same, and there really isn’t any here or there. Once you’re here, that’s it.

Oh sure, you can walk, run, or even fly, imagine yourself in a car or on a horse, or any other conveyance, but unlike the physical world, you’re not really moving from point A to point B.

The transitional plane is whatever you want it to. The whole thing is just super malleable energy. So, if you imagine yourself in Chicago in the 1930’s, then that’s what you’ll see and that’s where you’ll be. That’s why it’s so important to have a good rein on your emotions and your imagination. Because if you come over in a snit, well…look at me. Or if you come over while dreaming about gangsters, well those gangsters become very real. 

(You know all those alien abductions? Yeah, lots of people have strange dreams, and lots of people come wandering into the transitional plane when they dream.)

As I walked, I focused on the mental image I had developed that helped me rein in the scattered emotions and surround myself with tranquility. It was a simple technique, really. You created a mental image of something, someone, or somewhere that made you feel good, calm, relaxed, tranquil, and pretty soon, your emotions responded.

The real trick was getting your head to focus on that image rather on the problem or irritant that was causing your emotions to fray. Most people couldn’t do it. Even I had problems with it at times, but this wasn’t one of them, thank goodness. Pretty soon the landscape switched from rocks and steam, to flat ground and fog. Just as the landscape returned to normal—at least normal for me—and I could let go of the mental image I was holding, I began looking around for Lu.

She should have been right here, after all, I was following the cord that linked us. That should have brought me right to her, but she didn’t seem to be anywhere around here. Something wasn’t right.

I reached for the cord that linked us and still felt nothing. How could that be? Hmmm, maybe I misinterpreted the energy pulses on the cord, I thought, though I was far from convinced. As I stood there debating about heading back home, I heard a young girl’s laugh.

I turned toward the sound and let it lead it me through the nothingness. As I focused on the laughter, the fog cleared to reveal a normal-looking suburban street. The street was filled with all the usual mundania of suburban life—quaint, pastel-colored houses with green tidy lawns, all surrounded by large, leafy trees.

But while it looked normal, there was something not quite right about it. I picked my way past chalk drawings scribbled on the sidewalk and a discarded bike that lay on its side on one of the lawns. I heard the laughter again, and in the distance I could see the backs of two people sitting on a porch swing in front of a pretty green-sided bungalow. I recognized LuEllen even from where I was, and I suspected that other person was a construct—an image created from memory—of her mother. Much as the whole neighborhood was, a construct, I mean.

I suspected Lu had created a slice of home, a home once shared with her mother. And while I understood her need, she couldn’t keep escaping into her memories, imagination, and the transitional plane. I felt badly for her, really I did, but she really needed to let go and move on. I was no child psychologist, but even I knew that this wasn’t healthy.

Continuing my stroll toward Lu and her mother, I felt my ethereal skin crawl. I looked around at the neighborhood construct and just knew that something was off. Wouldn’t have Lu created her dog, Sparks? And what about her friends, the kids she usually hung around with and that lived in the neighborhood? And what was it about her mother that didn’t set right with me?

Close enough to hear some of the conversation, I stopped, and feeling like the worst kind of snoop, I eavesdropped. The honey-smooth voice of LuEllen’s constructed mother floated to me, “…of course you can stay, Sweetie.” The construct then leaned over and hugged Lu. “I never wanted to leave, and if you stay, then we can be together for always.”

There it was; now I knew why the neighborhood construct was so off. This wasn’t a construct that Lu had created. This was created by someone else based on what little they could glean from reading Lu’s emotional energies, energies she usually broadcast quite widely and openly.

It was most likely a trapper—that’s what I’d heard them called, anyway, though this would be the first time I ever encountered one. Trappers were souls that didn’t want to be away from the physical plane, so they would do whatever it took to get back, including taking someone else’s body. They hang out on the transitional plane waiting for likely wanderers, usually someone naïve, unaware, or curious, or even all three. You know the type—people who just want to see what its like to be out of their bodies, people stoned on drugs and other mind-altering substances, or people like Lu, unable to let go of someone they love and knowing nothing about the transitional plane.

Trappers wait for people who have no business on the transitional plane, and then they lure them into staying by playing on their emotions (fear, loneliness, depression). Once they get the victim sucked into a scenario, like what was going on with Lu, they planed over to the physical world and walked into the unmonitored body.

Does it upset the balance of things? Sure, big time. Does it stop the trapper from doing it? No.

It doesn’t happen often. There are too many guides, watchers, escorts (like me), and guardians wandering around. But every once in awhile, there comes along someone who is so determined to avoid the astral levels, who refuses to admit that they are dead (at least physically) that they manage to get past the rest of us. After all, there are a lot of souls to be watched over and just so many guides, watchers, and the rest.

I gave a silent sigh and tried to decide my best approach to breaking up this little “reunion”. Somehow, I had to convince Lu that this wasn’t really her mother, without alienating her. I think in her heart Lu already knew it wasn’t her mom, (most constructs don’t have a lot of depth unless there is a lot of emotion fueling them, and in this case the only emotion feeding this construct would be greed, not love.), but she wanted it to be her mother so badly, that that was helping to keep the construct fueled, too.

I decided the best way to break this up was to get mom to reveal herself; however, I had no idea how to do that. As Lu started giggling at something the mom construct said, I walked over to the porch steps and made my presence known.