Appearances

Friday October 28th WIOG Radio 102.5FM - Join me on the morning show 8a.m. to 9a.m. as I answer your calls and questions live on the air. 1-877-330-WIOG is the number to call for a free reading

Saturday October 29th - The Halloween Psychic Fun Fair 11a.m.to 6p.m.Saginaw, MI The Hampton Inn, off Tittabawassee Road and I-675 Exit. 10 readers, massage therapists, vendors and copies of my new book Maria Shaw’s Astro Diet available. This is the LAST fair in Saginaw until 2006, so please come out and see us!

Sunday October 30 - WIOG 102.5FM 7-8p.m. Join me for my hour long talk/call- in show "Affairs of the Heart", taking your questions on any topic. Comedian Jimmy Hamm sits in with me!

November 2 - Wednesday 3-4p.m. CST, WRMN 1410 AM, Chicago, ILL - Join me with Sandy and Clint for my monthly appearance on their hour long talk show. We’ll be "talking love and relationships" and answering your compatibility questions too.

November 5 & 6 - Midland MI Psychic Fun Fair 10a.m. to 5p.m. both days. Midland Holiday Inn. This is our last fair in Midland for the year.

November 10, 11 & 12 Two Events!!! Friday and Sat - I will be the guest speaker at the Saginaw Women’s Expo at SVSU. I will have a booth there and will be speaking twice.

On Saturday and Sunday - Port Huron MI Psychic Fair 10a.m. to 5p.m. both days. 10 readers, vendors and more!

November 19th - Lapeer Psychic Fair, Lapeer Center Building 10a.m. to 5p.m.

November 18-21 - I will be the keynote speaker in Toronto Canada at the Angel Wings Over Toronto Expo. I will also have a booth and be doing 2 two hour workshops. Please stop by and say hello!

We are rescheduling our November 20th date in Bay City MI at Under the Sun to a weeknight so I can be there. Keep checking the website for more details.

Every week!!! Check out my weekly horoscope column in the National Enquirer!

This week I was also interviewed in Star Magazine on Jessica Simpson and Nick Lachey’s marriage/breakup.

How's my Astro Dieters doing?

We started Maria Shaw's Astro Diet Study on October 1st…..here's three of the most recent results!

Lost 8 pounds in 2 weeks!!!
Maria

I lost total 8lbs—my pants are now loose—lost 2" off my hips—how great is that!!! Weekends are hardest time for me—too much fun—hopefully being prepared will help.
Judy

Letter from October 13th

Maria,
I am happy to report that I lost another 3 pounds this week. The total is 10 pounds since October 1st. I am happily wearing jeans. I haven't been able to do that in the last 3+ years. I have overcome the stress crisis I had last week. I am accepting it as part of my life and dealing with it as it comes along. Overeating will not solve my problem and it will actually make in worse in the long run. I plan on taking a extra long walk today. It is a gorgeous and sunny day to enjoy. Have a great weekend.
Carol
Scorpio

October 15 letter

In 2 weeks, lost 10 pounds!
Hello Maria, I weighed myself Saturday morning...192.5. Last time I weighed in I was 199.5. A seven pound weight loss. My total weight loss is ten pounds! I actually got down one size already.
Thanks, Natalie

Most Astro Dieters are losing 10 pounds in 2 weeks on the average. If they keep going at this rate, the average will be 20 pounds per month, beating Darlene (Our original Astro Dieter)'s record of 18 pounds in one month. If you would like to be a part of the study, you can still join, It's not too late! It's free after you purchase my book, Maria Shaw's Astro Diet. Call my office at 810-631-6887 to order the book and be added to our list or visit MariaShaw.com, and select "Store" to place your order. It is an ongoing diet study and you can join at any time over the course of the next few weeks if you like. With the holidays coming, it's a good idea to get a jump start on weight loss because it will be very easy to put on an extra 5-10 pounds between Halloween and Christmas!

I Was In New Orleans October 12-16th

My thoughts on what I saw:

After residents received the okay to come back into the city, I decided to see firsthand what happened to my house, the French Quarter and neighboring areas. The flights to New Orleans were all oversold and thank goodness there were taxi cabs waiting at the airport to pick us up. It looked like business as usual. As I drove into the Quarter, everything looked the same except there were lots of refrigerators sitting on the curbs, waiting for the trash man to pick up. But there was no smell, no garbage, no signs that a hurricane had went through my neighborhood. There was a curfew of 8p.m.-- lightly enforced. Getting out of the taxi, I was happy to see my house was still standing and looked just as I left it when I locked the doors in August. But when I made my way back through the busted black iron gate, I could smell smoke. The back corner of the house had some fire damage due to a house fire next door that completely burned the property down to the studs. Our courtyard brick wall was down too and I could see the house on the other side of it for the first time.

I went inside and everything looked as I left it but when I went into my bedroom, the ceiling has cracked and there was mold all over the place due to a leak in the roof. There were also water damage in my kitchen, bathroom and living room. The insurance adjuster said my bedroom will be gutted and new sheetrock put in place. Same for my ceilings. Getting contractors there is like pulling teeth. I called five that came highly recommended and only one called me back, saying he was booked for "forever" and probably couldn't get to me for a year. If any of you reading this know a reputable and dependable contractor who is willing to work in New Orleans for a week or so, please have him call me. I am thinking of using someone from out of state so I can get the work done sooner. It wasn't Katrina that caused my damage, but Rita. Katrina tore pieces of the roof off but Rita brought the hard rain that caused the water damage.

My friend Bonnie came over with a bottle of wine, pasta and soft shell crab that night and we had a candle lit dinner. Then a call came in from Cheryl who said our favorite restaurant, Muriel's, in Jackson Square was hosting their opening night with a cocktail party. We finished out dinner and went to check it out. The Quarter was quiet. Stores were boarded up. There was no activity in the Square and not a lot of lights on in the residences but Muriel's was full! By Thursday, more and more people started coming back into town and shopowners were opening. Restaurants were advertising special but smaller menus and the curfew was extended to midnight. I was able to get my hair done at a salon, go grocery shopping and visit a few boutiques that were open. New businesses were opening too. That was good to see. That afternoon Cheryl Welliver took us to her two homes that were destroyed by Katrina. I went out into Saint Bernard Parish where most of the damage from Katrina had occurred and it was sobering. House after house after house was destroyed. One home was wedged in-between two other houses. We were walking on a thick gray cracked, dry gook as we went up and down the desolate neighborhood. I was scared that it may be toxic.

We went to the Lake area and the Ninth Ward you have all seen on the TV news. We had check points to go through and show our local residency forms. There was no one in Saint Bernard Parish. The area was so silent. I couldn't even hear a bird chirp. It was eerily quiet, like something out of a movie. For hours we drove around looking at the damage. Words cannot express what I saw. It looked like a war zone. I was glad to get back to the French Quarter where things were already picking up just since I had left for the day trip, touring the devastated areas. There were lots of people on Bourbon Street. There was a two hour wait at my other favorite restaurant, Irene's, on Saint Philip. We didn't want to wait since we were starving so we went to this cute courtyard place called Amelie's on Royal. Bonnie and I sat outside in the lush courtyard with a flowing water fountain and listened to live jazz music coming from the porch of the Cornstalk Inn across the street. It was a heavenly place to be….that night…safe in the Quarter, dining in candlelight, a world away from the devastation it seemed. After dinner, we headed over to Lafitte's Blacksmith shop and there was a piano player there. The place was packed with Fema, Red Cross guys and National Guard. If you are a single woman, New Orleans is the place to meet men right now. The piano player was Johnny Gordon who was telling his story of how he escaped Katrina and drove 15 hours to Michigan! To a city he said was called Flint! He was complaining about his stay in Flint so I kept my mouth shut and Bonnie didn't say a word either! The curfew was now removed to 2a.m. due to the insistence of angry French Quarter bar owners who argued with the Mayor. The Fema guys weren't even off work until 9p.m. so it only made sense to extend the curfew.

70 people waited for a table at MeauxBar on Saint Philip for dinner that night so I made my reservations for Saturday night. By Saturday morning, tarot readers and artists were starting to line the Square. More boutiques were openings with special discount for locals. It was hard to find a parking space by mid afternoon. The carriages were cued up and taking tourists around town. Life had begun to feel more normal in the Quarter hour by hour.

I walked all over the Quarter and cleaned my house most of Saturday but took time out to get a muffelletta at Amelie's. The restaurant was short staffed with only one waiter but locals started showing up offering to help out and work for free to help the owners. The same can be said for Meauxbar that night. A local doctor was washing dishes, another local was seating people. Everyone was patient even though service was slow. We were just glad to be back.

Bonnie and I walked up and down Bourbon Street Saturday night. It was packed with Fema, Red Cross and National Guard guys and their girlfriends who came into town for the weekend. Music flowed from the clubs, people were singing and dancing in the streets. There was no parking spots to be found. If you had lived in a box the last 2 months with no TV and knew nothing of Katrina, you would never have known a hurricane hit the city. It was business as usual except for the National Guard who replaced the fundalismentalist preachers on every corner. The city felt safe. It felt like it was coming back to life more and more every hour. On Sunday, even more people showed up; many moving back into their homes. It was a regular Sunday afternoon in the Quarter except for some business that were still boarded up.

My biggest fear of coming back to New Orleans was NOT finding my house a mess but how I would feel about the Quarter now. Did it lose that amazing energy it held so many captive by? Would I still feel the presence of the ghosts, the pirates, the people who inhabited this city a hundred years ago ever again? Would New Orleans still be a magic place or an empty shell? I am relieved to report, it is the same…the feeling is still there but now it is even stronger,..more pure in a way. It's a city that has been cleared and cleaned (Katrina means cleansing) and now it's easier to feel the depth of the city's energy. Being a Cancerian, I need to have an emotional link to the places I choose to call home. There are not too many places I can say I have that special feeling with; Mackinaw Island and Genesee Mi are two and New Orleans is the only other.

All of the people I talked to in the Quarter, shared my sentiments; business owners, shop keepers and residents all said the same thing; “the people who are suppose to be here in New Orleans; to help rebuild it are here now or are coming back. They love this city so much that they HAVE to be here no matter what. The people who are selling, abandoning and leaving New Orleans, are suppose to leave. They are not suppose to be here. Perhaps their lives will be better somewhere else. Cheryl Welliver who lost everything is staying. Bonnie is staying. All of my neighbors except one say they are staying. I am staying too. And we hope you will come and visit us. More than anything right now, The French Quarter businesses need tourism dollars. If you are planning a trip, consider New Orleans. It is safer than ever. The great restaurants are opening. The Square is open and people are coming back in droves day by day. My prediction is, within 30 days, 70% of the Quarter will be back in business. There will be some business that will not reopen like my favorite shoe store on Royal Street but will replaced by new business. The city will be better then ever! With New Orleans being a Scorpio ruled city and Jupiter the planet of good luck moving to Scorpio, this week, it will rebound sooner than anyone may have expected.

Also I gave our friend Cheryl Welliver the donations that many of you sent me. She was so grateful and asked if I had addresses on everyone who donated so she could send them a personal thank you. Since I do not, I asked her to send me an email that I could forward onto all of you:

Dear Maria,

From the bottom of my heart I would like to thank you and everyone for the generous and sacrificial donations made on my behalf as a result of the impact by Hurricanes Katrina & Rita.

During your trip to New Orleans this past week, as we visited my devastated home in Chalmette and the devastated home and properties of my 90-year old, osteoporosis stricken, wheelchair confined mom in the 8th Ward of New Orleans, I couldn't help but be reminded that our earthly possessions are just "stuff", and that what really matters is the legacy we leave behind, what we do for others, the friends we make, and what we learn along the way.

Although we of course have certain needs for survival, and your donations will indeed be used to replace some of the items lost in the floods of Katrina, (some of the money will be used to replace 7 DVD/TV combos which I use at bridal/women's shows for marketing of our family's Wedding Video Business) , we are fore mostly here on earth to help each other, and you have done that. I have learned a very difficult thing for me—to be on the "receiving" end--thank you.

We lost everything and had no flood insurance because our properties were not in "flood" zones. We have had four months of previously booked weddings to cancel or reschedule (September through December, 2005) because of the City's disastrous condition; (who could survive with no income for four months?) I very much appreciate you and everyone for the love, notes, words of encouragement, prayers and donations.

Our future is dependent upon the rebuilding of New Orleans since our family business lies in the hands of Brides and Grooms having weddings in New Orleans. Thank you for helping us rebuild our family's livelihood—our means of financial support—video weddings. May God bless each and every one of you for helping me rebuild my life. Your prayers are coveted.

Love, Cheryl Welliver

Ghost House Stories
Date: 2005-10-10 By: Annie Wilder
Reprinted with Permission from the Llewellyn Journal

Every house that has been lived in has a story to tell. I don't know exactly how it works, but I believe that the actions and emotions of past inhabitants-even their beliefs, hopes, and fears-linger in the places where people once lived. And sometimes, these dormant memories from the past come alive again.

I live in a house filled with stories, an old Victorian in a historic Mississippi River town. I like knowing that for over a hundred years, families have lived here, raising their kids, making meals in the now antique stove, looking out the same windows that I look out each day. There's something magical or sentimental or energetically powerful about this house. My family and I have had many spirit visitors, odd vivid dreams,and remarkable experiences since moving in. Old-fashioned spirit sisters from long ago, the ghost of the old man who lived here before me, the apparition of a grieving woman, these are some of the spirits who have come back to the place they once called home-my house now. My Irish family spirits have come by when their help is needed, with whispered messages of support, positive energy, and even a sit-down visit from my Irish great grandma's spirit. Some of the ghosts who have appeared here seem to be just passing through...

The first spirit we met Leon Kuechenmeister, the old German guy who had owned the house before us. He was in the house when I bought it. I felt him watching us the first time my realtor and I walked through the house. Once grand, a sleepy shabbiness had descended on the old house. It had been converted to a duplex in the nineteen-thirties and then a triplex sometime later. I knew there was a male ghost in the back part of the house where the old man had lived, so I figured it was probably him. Leon had his reasons for sticking around, some involving important unfinished business and other reasons that were a little more surprising. Plain old stubbornness too, might have had something to do with Leon's refusal to move on. According to the other ghosts, Leon's the boss. Before I got to know him, I was afraid of Leon. Now, I think of Leon as a protective spirit, keeping an eye on the comings and goings of the nighttime house when most of the weird stuff happens. When a ghostbuster came to my house, Leon told her that "things had happened" that no one knew about in the back staircase attic landing, but he wouldn't elaborate. He said he was there to protect us.

Leon's story has been the most detailed and complete. I tell Leon's story in my book House of Spirits and Whispers. There are still people in the neighborhood and in town who knew Leon and his family when they lived here. Also, a bunch of Leon's stuff was still in the house and garage when we moved in, so I felt that I got to know something about Leon by seeing what things he cared enough to save. Leon makes his presence know by knocking on walls, turning on lights, closing doors, noisily walking around, and helping workmen. We often smell a cigar or chewing tobacco smell when Leon is nearby. Once, I heard Leon clear his throat and another time I heard him chuckle. I've actually seen Leon only twice, but both times he looked like a regular person-just a nice old guy. He wasn't transparent or all white or anything. I think it's because he was in a physical body not that long ago. The sad spirit woman apparition that I saw looked like a hologram. She looked like a real person but was transparent. Dressed in a maroon dress with a small print pattern, she had dark hair and looked like she was from the nineteen forties. The sad spirit woman was sitting at the foot of my bed, looking down. She was motionless and seemed completely unaware of me. I believe I was seeing a moment from the past when this woman had experienced overwhelming hopelessness and grief. My impression was that her sorrow was related to a young man, possibly her son. I have not yet found out who she is, although I am working on getting the stories of as many of the people who lived in my house as I can. I have the house deed with the names of all the people who owned my house before me. And I've been to the library and to the history room at city hall to do research on my house and the families who lived here.

I lucked out at the history room while researching the old-fashioned spirit sisters. The Hartnett family lived in my house at the turn of the last century. They had three daughters-Julia, Bettina, and Katrina-and two of the spirit sisters paid me a visit one night. Young women with pompadour hairdos and long dresses, they were up in the corner of a small sitting room, up in the air near the ceiling. I have seen one of the spirit sisters on a few other occasions since then. The old-fashioned spirit sisters were transparent and white, like traditional ghosts. I think that's because their spirit energy is from over one hundred years ago. When I was looking through historical photos, I found a graduation picture of one of the Hartnett sisters. Her hair was swept up in a pompadour and she was wearing a long white dress, just as I had seen in the sitting room. But I also found obits for all three Hartnett sisters, and two of them had lived to be old women who had died only a decade or so before I bought my house. That knowledge radically shifted my perspective. I had been thinking of the Hartnett sisters as young women lost in time, not as old women I might have seen at the grocery store if I had moved to town ten years earlier. It brought up an interesting question-why was I seeing their spirits as young women and not as they looked at the middle or end or their lives?

I am familiar with the theory of traumatic or emotionally charged events leaving an energetic imprint that can sometimes be felt or seen by others. I am also familiar with the shamanic concept of soul loss, which means losing spirit energy due to trauma or the threat of trauma when there is no way to escape. It's basically a dissociative state; a way of trying to stay safe in desperate situations. But the spirit sisters didn't seem particularly traumatized, so that didn't quite fit. That's when I started to wonder if some of their everyday happy energy remained in the house, and their spirits looked like young women because when they lived here, they were young women.

One of the Hartnett sisters, Julia, wrote her name on a seed poster when she was a young girl and it was the night we found the poster that Julia and one of her sisters appeared in the upstairs sitting room. The cover of my book is a photograph of the seed poster from our house. If you look closely, you can make out Julia's initials on the seed poster girl's forehead and a bit of Julia's full name, written in loopy cursive handwriting, on the seed poster girl's chest.

A new ghost has been dropping by my house lately. It's a cigarette-smoking ghost, which is a first in the eleven years that I've lived here. I don't know if the smoking ghost is a male or female-sometimes you can guess gender by which rooms the ghost hangs out in or the things they do. One night, the ghost was right behind me while I was finishing up a short story on my laptop. I got up to move away from the smoke smell and then the realization hit me that there was no reason why I should smell fresh cigarettes. (Or any cigarettes, since no one smokes in my house.) My daughter Molly dreamt that she met the ghost-it was an old woman with bright red hair, wearing dark sunglasses. The woman had a lit cigarette in her mouth, and was taking boxes out of my house. When Molly asked her what she was doing, the woman turned around, took off her sunglasses and frowned at Molly, and said, 'I'm helping your mother sell books." As soon as Molly saw the old woman's eyes, she knew she was talking to ghost.

My Irish great aunt Mary (Mimi to her nieces and nephews and all us younger than that) had bright red hair and worked as a librarian her entire life. And Molly just spent a year living with another elderly great aunt in Irish family homestead. Molly slept in Mimi's old room, so she probably does have an energetic connection to Mimi. I don't know the whole story yet, but that's what makes this all so interesting. Now I need to find out if my Great Aunt Mimi smoked, and see if Molly or I experience any more dreams, signs, or coincidences that confirm (or confound) Mimi as the smoking ghost.

I'm working on putting together a book of all the stories I can find about my house. It's going to include everything I can find about all of the people who lived here, the changing architecture and the changing fortunes of my house, and (if I can find any material on it) even what the land was like before any homes were built there. And I want to know what Leon was alluding to when he spoke of things that had happened that no one knew about in the house… Since House of Spirits and Whispers came out, neighbors and long-time residents of Sibley have approached me with first-hand accounts of odd experiences, rumors, and memories about my house. I'm writing it all down and sorting through it to see if it leads me in new directions. Even my house seemed to know I was writing about it – when I was working on my first book, I started seeing fleeting visual images of my house from the past – the open staircase landing, a chicken house or shed in the backyard, a corner of the front porch – I believe my house wanted to share its stories and secrets, most of them hidden or forgotten for more than a hundred years, but couldn't until now. I think it had to wait until someone was listening.

Llewellyn Worldwide, Ltd.
Llewellyn Worldwide, Ltd. grants permission to use this article as originally posted at:
The Llewellyn Journal -- www.llewellynjournal.com
P.O. Box 64383
St. Paul, MN 55164-0383

Have a great Halloween and a wonderful week,
Maria