Psychic Experiences: Ghosts from the Old Gunpowder Factory
A lot of people ask me. Have you always had these visions? When did you know you were “psychic”?
Growing up, I was not like the kids on the psychic kids shows who can’t have normal lives and hear voices and see scary ghosts. The awareness of psychic phenomena happened much later.
The one undeniable psychic experience I had happened about 6 years ago in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. I had moved back to Rio for a few years, after a living in New York for a long time.
An afternoon at Jardim Botânico: Rio’s famous Botanical Gardens
My closest friend in Rio joined me for an afternoon at the Jardim Botânico. The Jardim Botânico, as it’s called, it’s one of Rio’s greatest places to visit.
Inside the Botanical Gardens, in addition to the thousands of species of fauna and flora, they have temporary exhibitions within the grounds of the Botanical Gardens. These exhibitions are located inside some old colonial-style houses they have on the premises, and as we were walking by we decided to take a look at what they had up.
Inside this one house, there was an exhibition of 19th Century plates and porcelain artifacts, as we went in and I saw these plates, I got a very strong feeling “this is not what this house is about” and I got a flash.
This is the house I had stopped by with my friend to see an exhibition of 19th Century porcelain plates. That is where I had the vision.
“We waited for so long. No one came to rescue us ”
I got this flash of this image of a group of four or five men, one of whom was speaking to me. As he spoke others stood there, silently, in the blackened ruins of a building. They were completely burned. Not just burned. Charred, like charcoal. Just like a piece of wood after a bonfire.
This man was speaking to me as if he and his group were still alive. “We waited for so long. No one came to rescue us. We were waiting for so long. No one came to save us”.
They were in a room that was completely darkened and burned out. The image reminded me of buildings after 9/11, the aftermath of an explosion. The building they were in was completely burned and destroyed.
The image I was seeing was completely at odds with the lush and beautiful environment of the botanical gardens and the exhibition they had up, of porcelain and plates from the 19th Century.
Immediately, I turned to a receptionist, sitting at the desk by the entrance. “Has there ever been an accident in this building?”
She said, “Yes. This building used to be a gunpowder factory”.
The only surviving ruins of the old Gunpowder factory inside the Jardim Botânico: (1)The gate that carries the coat of arms of the Portuguese Crown and the colony of Brazil.
The Old Gunpowder Factory
As soon as I got home I did some online research to find out more about this gunpowder factory. The gunpowder factory had closed. In 1831. In other words, these were ghosts from almost 200 years ago!
The gunpowder factory was initially built to support the defense of the Brazilian territory [ source ] after the Portuguese Court moved to Brazil. Napoleon invaded Portugal in 1807 and the Portuguese Royal Court moved to Rio de Janeiro in 1808 [ Wikipedia ] and and returned to Portugal in 1820 . The gunpowder factory closed in 1831 after “The Great Explosion”.
The Ruins of the old Gunpowder Factory
The Portal and the Ruins of the old Gunpowder factory mark the beginnings of the Botanical Garden. The first Gunpowder factory in Brazil was created on May 13, 1808 by decree of the Prince Dom João . It occupied the old headquarters of the Rodrigues de Freitas sugar plantation.
The gate that carries the coat of arms of the Portuguese Crown and the Brazil-Colony, giving access to the Gunpowder Factory. In 1831, there had been a Great Explosion [ROSIE’S NOTE: the explosion then led to the closing of the Gunpowder Factory and to the establishment of the Botanical Gardens ]. The only thing left were the ruins of its walls and the portal that stands to this day.
[Full text in Portuguese here ]
It’s one of these unexplainable and extremely clear events that tell you, there is something “psychic” happening. In this case, I even had a witness, my friend Raquel who was there with me at that moment and heard first-hand the story and saw me approach the receptionist. I could not have made it up. The story connected to a verifiable historical event, there was no way this could have been just my imagination.
After the Great Explosion of 1831, only these walls and the gate (left) survived.