Deborah Sickle Hill

Tag: supernatural

  • Spiritual Detours – Gettysburg

    ©Deborah Hill

    (This is NOT FICTION)

    Have you ever heard the saying, “Don’t throw out the baby with the bathwater”?

    A friend and I have both survived near-death experiences—events that altered us permanently. On long drives, we often dive deep into conversations about spirit, soul, God, and nature. We’ve walked away from rigid dogmas—those rules imposed by religion that demand your belief to belong—and instead, we’ve chased after truth. Real truth. The kind you feel in your bones.

    Hence, throwing out the bathwater and keeping the baby.

    That mindset often leads us to places charged with meaning. On this particular day, we felt called to Gettysburg National Battlefield.

    We took the Taneytown exit just before sunset. As we approached the old Cyclorama, my friend said quietly,

    “I feel something pulling me here. Something important.”

    “Tell me when to stop,” I said.

    “Stop.”

    We parked beside an older man and his massive Irish Wolfhound, Tanner. He greeted us kindly and shared that he was a local who came to the battlefield seeking meaningful encounters. Usually, he sat at Little Round Top. But tonight, he’d felt drawn here instead.

    He’d had a near-death experience—just like us.

    For over an hour, the three of us stood and talked. About life. About death. About energy, God, and the battlefield itself. “This place is alive with spirit,” he said. “Something here vibrates because of the hell that happened.”

    And I understood exactly what he meant.

    We looked around at the silent cannons—posed and waiting, like sentinels. Witnesses to the deadliest battle of the Civil War. I shivered.

    We are sensitives—whether born or trauma-made. Drawn like moths to flame. To trauma. To death. To sacred, ruptured ground.

    “It’s the energy,” my friend said. “Spiritual energy.”

    I couldn’t disagree. What is spirit, if not supernatural energy? The Shekinah. The Holy Spirit. Energy.

    She seeks to understand it. Me? I feel it. Especially trauma. It lights something up in me.

    You don’t need a wild imagination to be humbled by Gettysburg. The place speaks for itself.

    As the sun set (the park remains open until 10:00), we parted ways with the man—three strangers connected through invisible threads. Before he left, he said, “Be careful.”

    We drove slowly through the darkening park and passed the Wheatfield. Suddenly, we both felt it—tingling skin, tight throats, nausea. The air felt electric, charged with something unseen. Then, as soon as we passed the bend, it disappeared.

    “You felt that?” she asked.

    We described it the same way.
    Yes, I had.

    At Devil’s Den, we got out and wandered behind the granite boulders. A low rumble echoed nearby—maybe thunder, maybe phantom cannon fire. That’s not unheard of here.

    My friend led me to a tall tree and stood still.

    “There’s peace here,” she said.

    But I felt dizzy. Nauseous. Unbalanced.
    “Stand next to me,” I told her.
    She did—and immediately felt the same.
    The air smelled metallic.

    Blood, I thought, but didn’t say.
    I know that smell.

    Maybe it was the dark. The uneven ground.
    But we didn’t feel normal again until we walked away.

    Later, as we drove past Little Round Top, I was hit by sudden chest pain, nausea, and a sharp pain behind my eye.

    For a split second, I thought I’d been shot.

    I swerved and pulled over.
    The sensation vanished.

    “Do you still feel peace?” I asked.
    “No,” she said. “It feels horrible now. So much death. I’m ready to leave.”

    As we exited the park, we passed the same cannons we’d seen earlier—but I saw them differently this time. They were more than relics.
    They were keepers—of sorrow, of pain, of history we can’t possibly comprehend.

    They reminded me of my own inner wounds.
    Silent. Unnoticed by most. But always there.

    Not everything in life can be explained.
    But we’re not alone.

    There are hundreds of thousands of us—like Tanner’s owner, like me and my friend—living on the fringe between the seen and unseen.
    We’ve experienced too much.
    We’ve been changed.
    And we’ve been given a gift: vision born from trauma.

    A gift that lets us throw out the bathwater—and still keep the baby.

    Maybe that’s why we keep returning to places like Gettysburg.
    Not just to understand the past.

    But to connect with a world we can’t always see.

  • The Pink Elephant in the Pews: Christianity & the Supernatural

    The Pink Elephant in the Pews: Christianity and the Supernatural

    Reading time: ~4 minutes

    “The supernatural is the manifestation of events attributed to forces beyond scientific understanding or the laws of nature.”
    — New Oxford American Dictionary

    What does the supernatural have to do with Christianity?

    Everything.

    Without the supernatural, there is no God. No miracles. No answered prayers. No angels or demons. No resurrection. No afterlife. No parting of the Red Sea or plagues in Egypt. Remove the supernatural, and you’re left with a shell of spiritual tradition—fairy tales dressed in Sunday clothes.

    So why do so many Christians hesitate to say they believe in it?

    It’s like caring for a beloved pink elephant and then denying it exists the minute someone asks.
    “What pink elephant? I don’t believe in pink elephants. That’s absurd!”

    But supernatural experiences didn’t end thousands of years ago, did they?

    Some argue, “The age of prophets is over.”
    Others say, “Only Jesus could perform miracles.”
    Still others cite Scripture’s warnings against sorcery, divination, and necromancy—as if these verses deny supernatural reality. In fact, they confirm it. You can’t be warned about something that doesn’t exist.

    Remember when Saul summoned the spirit of Samuel from the dead? He didn’t imagine it. Samuel appeared and spoke. That’s not symbolism. That’s a ghost. It’s right there in the Bible.

    So why the discomfort?

    Why do some Christians shut down when the supernatural is brought up—as if faith in the unseen doesn’t require belief in the unexplainable?

    Here’s the truth: If you don’t believe in the supernatural, you can’t fully believe in Christianity.

    Spirituality and the supernatural are intertwined. Without one, the other crumbles. The Bible isn’t just a collection of moral stories. It’s a chronicle of the extraordinary breaking into the ordinary. A burning bush. A virgin birth. Water turned to wine. A man raised from the dead.

    In fact, the more literally you take the Bible, the more you must embrace the supernatural. It’s not just the foundation of the faith. It is the faith.

    U.S. Catholic magazine affirms this in Tim Townsend’s article, “Paranormal Activity: Do Catholics Believe in Ghosts?” It states:

    “Ghosts confirm, rather than refute or disturb, Catholic theology of the afterlife.”
    Belief in the seen and the unseen isn’t optional—it’s essential.

    And yet, in conversations, I’ve heard this:

    “Of course I’m a Christian. Jesus died and rose again for my sins.”

    “So you believe in the supernatural?”

    “No, absolutely not. You don’t really believe in that stuff, do you?”

    Sigh.

    Why are we hiding our light under a bushel? Is it fear of judgment? Of being called foolish or irrational?

    It can’t be fear of God—because without the supernatural, there is no God to fear.

    If we deny the supernatural, we deny the very core of our faith. No resurrections. No divine interventions. No hope for eternal life. No visions, no visitations, no burning hearts stirred by an unseen presence.

    Without it, there is no mystery. No wonder. No awe.

    In the same article, theologian John Newton reflects on those who claim to see ghosts:

    “I certainly see no good reason, all other factors being equal, to deny that someone who claims to have seen a ghost has not had a genuine experience of some sort. The question then is: what sort of experience has occurred?”

    Exactly.

    Should Christians run from the supernatural? If we did, we’d have to throw out half the Bible and all of our hope.

    Without it, there’s no revival. No being born again. No faith healing. No dreams or visions. No heaven. No hell. No divine purpose. Just Sunday routines, stripped of spirit.

    And if we deny it out of fear or pride, are we not like Peter when the rooster crowed?

    So I’ll ask you plainly:
    Do you believe in the supernatural?

    Maybe the language feels uncomfortable. Maybe it’s easier to say “God” than “spirits” or “angels” or “miracles.” But that doesn’t make them any less real. We’re ants trying to comprehend the foot that built the stars. And if God could create the laws of nature, DNA, time, and consciousness itself—how arrogant are we to say what can’t be?

    We don’t have to understand the supernatural.
    But we do have to acknowledge that it’s always been part of the story.

    Call to Action:
    If this stirred something in you, share it. Start a conversation. Acknowledge the pink elephant. And most importantly—don’t be afraid to believe in what you cannot see.
    🕊️ Faith lives there.