Halloween Story Time: Ghostly Encounters

[p.falk]

Anyone have any potential otherworldly experiences?

When I was in 4th grade I awoke from a nightmare. In that nightmare I was running down a sidewalk, late at night, while being chased by a couple of small dogs. They were attempting to nip at me while I was defending myself with one of those rings that had multiple measuring spoons attached. Swinging this ringed measuring spoon set behind me as I ran forward.

Now awake, I'm lying in my bed and am agitated from the nightmare. Thinking of the dream while being awake it's striking me as being not all THAT scary.

I start hearing the whistle/whirring of one of those cylindrical plastic whistles. They were about the length and width of a man's thumb and in the center was a metal disc with perforations that would whir/whistle at a high pitch the harder you blew into it.

So I'm hearing this sound and as I'm laying back in bed I look towards my bedroom door which opens into the hallway. The bed's headboard faced the bedroom door. I should note that it was about 2am. Looking towards the doorframe I see what looked to be a young girl (older than me at the time) lying prone on the floor but with her upper body slightly propped up on her elbow as she held the whistle to her mouth.

Confused and assuming it's my sister I call "Jessica?". But I notice that it can't be Jessica. The shape stands up, but is now obscured from my vision as it's on the other side of the doorframe. Then it passes my doorframe towards the kitchen where it seems to vanish as passing by.

Desirous to run to my parents' room but afraid to go out into the hallway I freeze with a sense of terror I had not heretofore experienced. No other options before me I sprint to my parents' room and jump into their bed.

Now I can't recall if I remember actually saying this, or if they reminded me of it the next day... but I was yelling "I saw a mere image".


For awhile afterwards I was afraid to fall asleep... or, to put more accurately, I was afraid to be the last to fall asleep in my house. I came up with a story I told myself: that I would never see her again until she visited every house in my hometown. Oddly enough that gave my young mind some peace.


What's yours?

[Highlander]

Isaac Asimov, to my imperfect memory, addressed this phenomenon. He said that we remember the things that impact with coincident factors, but forget those that don't. Similarly, dreaming is a strange thing -- we can dream we are dreaming and/or dream we are awake.

I recall twice, when sedated in a hospital, that I was home and did chancy things like getting out of bed and walking around while out of my mind. In one case with a broken bone.

I liked your story. I offer this --

While in high school, I was spending the night in the house of a friend. At about 0200 hrs, I swore I awoke and saw, standing at the foot of my bed, a friend of his sister, in her nightclothes, looking at us. I was bemused and went back to sleep. The next morning I asked his sister about her friend being with her that night. She said that her friend was going to spend the night, but decided not to -- and went home. I was sure she was pulling my leg; the event was so real.

Of course, I was an adolescent, brimming with hormones and quite overtired.

[Signum Crucis]

When I was a teenager, my cousins and I were at our grandmother's house out in the country. The family cemetery is located about 75 yards from the house. It was around 8 or 9 pm that we were outside, and decided to walk to the cemetery. About halfway there, I saw something moving and stopped. My cousin Cathrine saw it, too. We stood still, trying to make out what we were seeing. It was a dark figure, carrying a red glowing lantern, coming toward us. When it walked through the fence surrounding the cemetery, we took off running back to the house.

I was staying with my middle daughter in Nashville, helping her with her newborn. I shared a bunk bed with my 8 yo granddaughter. She had the top bunk. I was working on a quilt late one night, after everyone else had gone to bed. Around 2 a.m., I went upstairs and crawled into the bottom bunk. After a minute or two, I heard my granddaughter making snoring noises and moving around on the bed. It kept up for a while, so I decided to get up and turn her on her side. She wasn't there, her bed was empty. She was in her parents' bed. Another night I was up late, quilting, and I heard cabinet doors slamming in the kitchen, which was across the hall from where I was working. I went in to see who was making the racket. There was nobody in there.

My grown children have seen me in places where I wasn't. In the daytime. Once two of them saw me walking down the hall of our farmhouse. I was, at that moment, sitting on the sofa, watching tv. The same thing happened in my cabin. I was in the living room, and one of my sons saw me walk through an adjoining room. On a third occasion, my oldest daughter saw me standing in the kitchen of her house. I was an hour away, at my own home.

[Highlander]

Your doppelgänger seems to get around.

[Signum Crucis]

Yep. I keep wondering what she's up to.

[Obi-Wan Kenobi]

Are you bilocating?

[p.falk]

A couple of days before my dad would die I was in his bedroom with him. We had moved his bed out of his room and had a hospital bed put in its place.
I'm in his room with him just sitting on a chair while he lies there. He would drift in and out of lucid moments. At times being present and talking to me about normal things of life.... and then other moments he would just seem to be floating off and staring aimlessly forward.

At one point, during a more lucid moment, he turns to me and asks "Tim, who are those 4 people standing next to you?". The hair stands up on my neck... I just said, "Sorry dad, I don't see anyone." I'm a bit unnerved though and had no idea what to ask. Then I asked him, "do they seem happy or angry?". He looked in the direction for a moment and said, "They seem pretty happy."

This is the end of July, 2017. My mom had died back in 2003. My daughter Lucy would be born in about two weeks. We gave Lucy my mom's first name (Bernadette) as her middle name. And I was really excited for my dad to get a chance to meet Lucy "Bernadette" before he died. Such was not to be the case as he would die days later and Lucy would be born in a couple of weeks.

But the next thing he asked me, after asking about the 4 people was "Who is the little girl in the corner of the room?". I wanted to ask him more about that but almost immediately after he drifted into his more abstracted state. It's a comforting thought that God would give him a glimpse of his granddaughter before leaving this world. Maybe it's something else altogether... but a fella can hope.

[Obi-Wan Kenobi]

Such experiences are not at all uncommon with the dying. The veil between this world and the next gets thin.

[Signum Crucis]

Are you bilocating?

Not that I'm aware of. It's a bit unnerving that it's me they see. Sometimes I wonder if I'm just a ghost, and I don't know it yet.