Allison DuBois: Don't Kiss Them Good-bye

Great-grandpa Johnson stood at the foot of my bed and said, “I am okay, I am still with you. Tell your mom there’s no more pain.”

I wanted to call for Mom, but I was paralyzed and awestruck. I wanted her to see him and know that he wasn’t sick anymore. I wanted her to see that he was back, or so I thought. Great-grandpa lingered for only a moment after giving his message, and then he was gone.

What was going on? One minute he was back, and the next he was gone again. Didn’t he want to stay?

I got out of bed and went down the hall to sit next to Mom’s door. I knew what had happened was not typical. Mom had never talked about seeing people again after their funerals. I was worried that she might think I was making up stories and I’d get in trouble. But I told her anyway. The experience was too special to keep to myself. I had to share it with her; Great-grandpa said so.

My mom did what most parents would do. She smiled, said, “Of course I believe you,” and then turned away.

But I knew she didn’t believe me. I felt so misunderstood. Her reaction, although normal, started me on a journey of denial and confusion. My logical little mind started churning. If I had only imagined seeing my great-grandpa, then he hadn’t really visited me.

I had always been told I had a vivid imagination, so I decided to keep these imaginative moments to myself. After the subject of Great-grandpa was dropped, I dismissed psychic occurrences and ignored all messages from the other side. Sometimes I thought I was hallucinating. I could see faded human figures standing next to people. Colorful personal information about strangers popped into my head and ran from beginning to end like a movie. I convinced myself that my mind was bored and was creating visions. But I was tired of visual congestion. I was overloaded by the other side and I didn’t even know it.

As a psychic child, I needed to be encouraged to talk about my ability, but how could my mom have known what I needed? It is not commonly known in our society how to help young psychics develop their gifts. One of the reasons I wrote this book is to assist parents and their gifted children in avoiding misunderstanding and confusion. I want to prevent young people from turning away from their gift, and instead to embrace it early in life.

I was an awkward eleven-year-old. My legs looked like a foal’s, long and knobby-kneed. My hair was long, curly, and red. My cheeks were covered with freckles, which I hated. But to an outsider, I looked like any other American girl without a care in the world. Like most sheltered children, I fell a little on the naive side.

One afternoon, I was riding my bicycle home from playing at a girlfriend’s house in my neighborhood, concentrating on what my mom had made for dinner. As I turned the corner, I passed an alley that was lined with middle-class wooden fences. Just then, a car pulled up beside me with two young men in it.

The man on the passenger side leaned out of his window toward me. With his long hair, he looked a little like my big brother, Michael. I thought maybe this was one of his friends. We lived in a cul-de-sac, so most of the teenagers driving this direction were there to visit him.

The moments that followed are burned into my memory forever.

He smiled and said, “You need a ride home?”

“No thank you,” I replied. My mom had taught me that being polite was important. “I live right around the corner. I’m almost home.”

Then he said, “Come on, it will be fun! Come drive around with us.”

I looked around. There was nobody in any of the front yards, nobody driving down Thirty-second Street, nobody around at all. My stomach felt sick. Something wasn’t right, but I couldn’t move.

A voice sounded in my ear: Go! Take off! Images of my house flashed urgently in my head over and over again. The voice startled me out of my paralyzed fear and I took off on my bike for my house. The car with the two men peeled out in the opposite direction and sped down Thirty-second Street. My chest hurt from holding my breath out of fear. I rode home as fast as I could and told my mom what had happened.

She did what the majority of parents do when confronted with this situation: She opted not to call the police. Having spent years promoting child safety, I know that, unfortunately, most attempted child abductions go unreported by the parents.

That same year a paperboy was abducted and sexually assaulted in my neighborhood. I know in my heart that if I had stayed put even thirty seconds longer, I would have been pulled through the window of that car and been a victim of a violent crime. I also know that because I listened to that powerful, authoritative voice on that hot afternoon in 1983, I am here to share my life story with my readers. I listened and I survived. Listen to your guides, whether you feel they are angels, family members on the other side, or simply guardians. They try to guide us through life safely and successfully, so pay attention to them. Don’t dismiss them. Don’t question whether they are really there—they are.

That same year, I remember, I saw a TV movie called Adam . It was the story of Adam Walsh, a six-year-old boy who had been abducted, murdered, and decapitated. As I watched the movie, I realized what abductors could do to kids. I was so sheltered that I had no idea that such awful things could happen. I realized what the two men could have done to me had I stayed any longer.

I did not understand why people hurt kids, but I knew that it was wrong. I knew that somehow other adults could help stop bad people from hurting kids. I vowed to myself that when I grew up I was going to do something to protect children from predators. It would probably be through politics or law. I wasn’t big enough yet, but I would be someday.

I remember my fear of abduction turning to anger and then into a plan. Within a year I wrote a school paper discussing my future career. I was going to be a prosecuting attorney, and someday I would be the judge who dealt out harsh punishment to people who hurt children. My path was already being defined. I felt the calling to turn the tide against child predators.

Almost two decades later, in November 2000, my life’s goal would reemerge as a result of a missing-person case in Texas that led me toward helping to establish a child abduction alert system in Arizona. I will be discussing that in the next chapter.

If I can provide law enforcement with perpetrator information that helps point them in the right direction, then I have helped in the fight against a lowlife. Balancing the scales is the reason I do what I do. If someone who hurts a child is held accountable, then society as a whole can rest easier. If I can help to ease the pain of a victim’s family members and somehow make their hearts lighter, then the heavy nature of the tasks I undertake is well worth it.

I know now that when I pedaled my bike home on that frightening day in my twelfth year that there was an angel on my shoulder, setting me on the path that I would follow as an adult.

As a college freshman, at age nineteen, I sat in my first political science class. As I listened to my professor lecturing each day, chronicling the details of various wars, I grew increasingly interested in how a political strategist could finesse a dangerous situation. It occurred to me that such people need not only historical knowledge to draw on but also an apparent instinct for defusing potential crises. Political strategists have played important roles in behind-the-scenes American security.

Now I was torn between wanting to be a lawyer and wanting to be a political strategist. I had a knack for knowing what people were going to do before they did it, and I often received a mental picture of a criminal while watching news reports of unsolved cases. But I was still too young and inexperienced to realize the extent of my ability. I was unwilling to think of myself as different from others. It would take more time and a chain of complicated events to bring that awareness and acceptance.