Beyond Brick and Bone: A True Ghost Story (Volume 1) (The Gatekeeper Series)

Product Description

In this supernatural memoir, the author shares her true story of growing up in a house of spirits, learning to co-exist with those spirits as a child, then channeling the story of those spirits as an adult–as a Gatekeeper. A fascinating tale of a family and their multi-generational home–a home that harbors explosive secrets from a volatile period in Chicago history.

Review

“Schippers’ book begins with a story of things that go bump in the night and quickly evolves into a tale of family haunting, madness, and psychological trauma interlaced with a nineteenth century tale of passion and murder. She points with a sometimes trembling finger at our deepest mystery and greatest frontier: the exploration of inner space and the human heart.”
— Rita J. McNamara, author of Toward Balance, Walking in Circles, and Energetic Bodywork

“Schippers speaks with a fresh voice in her memoir of childhood trauma, describing how she transcends terror and pain by communing with her ghosts and arising as a spirit medium.
Beyond Brick and Bone is a place where psychology meets the spirit world- blending who we are, where we are, and where we sometimes slip. Who would think that the spirit world could prove to be the safer place.”
,
Katherine Maynard MA, CCC-SLP, MSW

“In
Beyond Brick and Bone, Antoinette M. Schippers shares her incredible experiences of interacting with the supernatural from a young age. Fellow seekers fascinated by the other side should read it, full stop. Well done, Antoinette!”
 
— Jim Harold, host of the Paranormal Podcast and Jim Harold’s Campfire,
Jim Harold Media, LLC

About the Author

Antoinette “Tiyi” Schippers was born in the Chicago area during the mid-20th century as the third child in a family of ten.
Raised in a rich culture of storytelling, Tiyi learned at an early age how to captivate an audience with vivid and lusty tales. She
has been an early childhood educator for 40 years, is an accomplished songwriter and traditional American music performer
and has served as a city council member for nearly a decade in the small northern Michigan town wherein she and her husband
have resided for the past thirty-five years. Tiyi is the mother of four children and enjoys being a grandmother to five children.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

I awoke suddenly and completely in the wee hours of the night. My sister, asleep in the bed next to me, breathed softly. The solitary light in the room came through a window from the streetlight out front. It cast long shadows across the floor and the bed. I remained perfectly still listening for the sound of someone else awake, hoping to hear a television, or my parents talking softly. I heard nothing. The house lay sleeping. Mostly sleeping. My heart began to beat faster. Moving only my eyes so as to not draw attention to myself, I noticed the carved brass handle on the closet door begin to turn. I held my breath, watching, frozen, unable to move. I was three years old. The person we become—the way we see the world, and our place in it—is largely shaped by our first experiences. My earliest childhood memories include family, holidays, birthdays, maybe a favorite toy, but my clearest, most vivid memories coalesce around the multiple spirits with whom we shared my childhood home. I learned early on to recognize where the proverbial veil thins, and the things that sometimes slip back and forth through it.