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The Maze - Eighteen at no time did any further paranormal experiences occur. He believed that whatever the spirits had been doing with him, all such matters were now out of his life since he no longer involved himself in the spiritualist group’s activities. By 1981, he felt emotionally strong and ready to go back to work. Ted took a job managing a prominent restaurant in Tuscaloosa and gave up the last year of disability income. For the next three years, his life was happy and uneventful, filled with the typical pleasure of close family contact and a com- fortable social life. There were problems, of course, but they were just normal situations, not supernatural events. He also kept in touch with Marie, and they remained close friends even though he was no longer with the group. She understood and supported his decision not to continue with psychic work. The toll he felt it had taken on him was too great, he explained, and all he wanted now was a simple, happy life. Marie agreed with him, but she had a message from the spirit guides to deliver. “T see that you will continue your work in the future,” she told him once. “Maybe so,” Ted replied, “who knows what will happen down the line? But since I’ve been back home and stayed away from doing any readings, I haven’t been bothered by stress, my health is fine, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. I’m glad the psychic stuff is gone.” Nineteen If this counsel or this work be of men, it will come to nought; But if it be from God, ye cannot overthrow it. St. Paul In January 1984, it all came rushing back. After almost three years of a life without paranormal intrusions, Ted thought he was free of such things, but one brief vision that winter night showed him, once again, that his freedom was an illusion. In a dreamlike setting, Ted saw a small man, apparently Mexican, dressed in a serape and straw hat, with a little mustache and the dark skin and hair of his race. Nothing really happened in the dream, no message was delivered, only the presence of the strange, silent, intense little man. Thereafter, once or twice a week, the dream recurred. Ted immediately associated the man with a psychic message Marie had given him in a reading several years before. She told him that a spirit guide named Raphael would be appearing in the future to work with him, and thereafter he did receive contact from such an entity. He wondered if Raphael and the little Mexican man were one and the same, but all he’d had so far was a presence, not a message. Then the dreams began to change. The Mexican man started giving him information, and Ted had no choice in his sleep but to listen. He was confused by what he heard, for although the message was clear, he didn’t understand the reasons behind it. Raphael, as Ted now thought of him, repeatedly delivered one single message. “You must leave Alabama,” he insisted in the dreams. Masquerade of Angels 178