Thursday, November 14, 2013

THE UNEXPLAINED REVISITED



Last week when I blogged about ghosts I had more comments than I’ve ever received for a blog and many mentioned supernatural experiences they’d had.  I found them very interesting. In my blog I had vaguely referred to experiences that occurred after my oldest son died of cancer when he was eighteen. Some wanted to know more about that. In this blog I’ll write about it as well as something else that's unexplained..

Any parent can imagine how horrible it would be if their child died, and I don’t think the age of the child matters – it is horrible, and until one actually goes through it I’m not sure one can grasp how much it changes one’s life. Anyway, sometime in the weeks following John’s death, my sixteen-year-old son saw John.  Joey was lying on the bed in my husband’s and my room when John appeared standing beside the bed smiling at him. There were no words just the smile. Joey stared at him for a while and then turned away unwilling to believe what he was seeing. In a few moments, he turned back and John was still standing there smiling at him and then slowly faded away. My youngest daughter, Mary, would hear John come in at night with the chain on the wallet making its usual sound – remember when wallets with chains carried in the back pocket were popular?  I longed to see John, to get a message from him and one night it happened in a dream – a dream I told no one about for over a year because I knew no one would believe it was anything other than a dream. In the dream, he was lying on a couch and he was dead. But then suddenly he sat up and smiled at me. I said, “John, you’re alive!”  Immediately I thought, Oh, no! We gave your car to Joey. And then I asked him, “What is Heaven like?” He smiled and with great enthusiasm said that it was wonderful and he was going to take a train into the mountains. I knew he’d thought about living in the mountains someday.  I had a few other dreams of John over the years, but they were dreams and I knew it when I woke up, but the dream of him telling me about Heaven, I knew was his way of telling me that he was okay.

John had met Martha when she was visiting another patient when he was undergoing treatments at the Cleveland Clinic before the chemo was started. He started to date her when he recovered from the chemo and before he’d start a new bout. But several months before he died, he stopped seeing her. I asked about it and he said she lived too far away and it took too much gas, etc. I offered to pay for the gas, but he declined. I’m sure now he knew he wasn’t going to make it, and didn’t want Martha to get too emotionally involved, but he never admitted that. Martha heard about John’s death a month after the event when she was at a football game in our area. She called me a few days later and told me how much she cared for him and how sad she was. We talked for a short while, but I did not tell her about my dream. The next summer Martha happened to be at the same 4H camp in the same cabin as Maria, a niece of mine. Martha told Maria, about the boy she’d dated and cared for who died and when Maria told her about her cousin who had died they soon realized they were talking about the same person. Then Martha told Maria how the night she learned about John’s death she was sad and crying when she fell asleep. She dreamed John called her on the phone and told her not to be sad. He was taking a train into the mountains and was happy. We both got the same message from John and neither of us had talked about it to each other. My sister-in-law, Joanne, who didn’t know about my dream, either, asked Maria to tell me about what she’d heard at camp.

I'm walking beside a vendor in Venice.

Years later Mary treated me with airfare on a joint trip to Italy for my retirement. Once when we were in a cathedral lighting votive candles, she had an overwhelming vision of John in her mind. He was giving her a big smile, and she felt he was sending the message “Oh, wow! You and mom are in Italy.”


Another weird happening that had nothing to do with John, happened to my daughter, Mary, in Rancho Palos Verdes, California. She lived in an apartment close to a park on the cliffs overlooking the Pacific Ocean. It was a long way down to the beach and in the daytime, people walking on the beach looked not much larger than insects. One evening after dark, Mary and Hugo, a fellow she was dating, decided to walk to the park to watch a full moon over the ocean. They took along wine, snacks and a blanket to sit on. Thick cables were strung from post to post with signs warning people not to cross over because of the danger.  Clowning around, Mary pretended to be climbing over the cable next to one of the signs. Hugo used her camera to take pictures of her. Sometime in the days following, Mary downloaded the pictures to her computer, and noticed when the picture of one sign was enlarged, the rust on the sign showed an image. She enlarged it to fill her whole computer screen and it was a sepia image of a family dressed in clothes of the 1800s – a father, mother, several children and a baby.  

They went back other times to take more pictures of that sign and others, but it never came up that way again, nor did it when she took a picture of me with that sign. I’ve tried enlarging my picture with the sign and only get rusty shapes. I saw the picture they took that night on her computer and there was no doctoring of the picture by her or Hugo. They would not have known how to do it even if they’d wanted to do so. We’ve speculated that maybe a horse ran away with the buggy and a family in it and they went over the cliff. Or maybe a road at one time went close to the edge and the edge collapsed. No one could survive a fall from that height.

Last Saturday, I met with my local writers’ group. There were ten of us, and in all the years I’ve been meeting with them, supernatural events have not been discussed. I decided when it was my turn to share something I’d written, I’d read my blog. I wasn’t sure how it would be received, but before I read mine, James, a young poet, read his poem on a ghostly experience he’d had. He admitted he exaggerated some parts, but said the rest really happened. He’d written the poem two weeks before my blog. Jill, an author of children’s stories, looked at me in disbelief. When it came time for her to share what she had brought to read, she admitted she’d been hesitant to read it until she heard my blog. She read about her gift; the gift she’s had since she was a small child of seeing spirits. When she visits old houses before anyone familiar with the history of the house tells her anything, she’ll tell them what she sees and feels. It sometimes spooks them since it often goes along with what they know about the history or even things that had happened there they had not mentioned.  Her mother, who writes memoirs of her young years, always comes with her to our writers group and she backed up Jill’s story. Although no one else had anything to read dealing with the supernatural, six out of the ten who were there had stories to share of strange and ghostly encounters, and some were really spooky. Unless something really spooky happens to me, I’m done with this topic, although I do have more I could write about that has happened to me.

I know non-believers can explain away the experiences with my son, but what about the picture on the sign of the family from the 1800s? What is your explanation for that?





19 comments:

  1. Belief, unlike facts, cannot be proved or disproved, which is why we call it belief. In the end it doesn’t matter what is fact and what is belief; what matters is what we do differently after the event or experience.

    ~ Jim

    ReplyDelete
  2. I wrote a blog a few years ago about my and my husband's experience with a ghost. Before we married, my husband lived in a haunted farmhouse in PA. We heard the front door slam in the morning and felt cold hands going over our bodies in bed. For a while I couldn't go in the house without him because she didn't like me. Everything changed after he proposed, yes, in that house. When he started packing up because he moved to VA with me, she seemed remorseful as if she knew she had behaved badly and wanted our company.

    Funny thing is that we knew the couple who later moved into the house. They never heard or felt a thing. I think there are people who are more sensitive to the "other" side. Neither of my parents have shown up, although there are times when I sense my mother--but nothing overt--then again it could just be me.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I believe experiences like those described strike a note with everyone. They can be explained away by people who find the idea uncomfortable but they remain real to people who believe. As a psychologist, I used to tell students, "perception is reality." What is true to the client should be accepted as true by the therapist to engage the client in therapy.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Jim and Warren either don't believe or fail to say. Sorry, guys, but you've waffled!

    ReplyDelete
  5. I do believe there's something to your experiences, Gloria.

    ReplyDelete

  6. Funny, E.B. They have, haven't they. I think those who have never experienced strange things like you have, find it hard to believe it isn't just someone's imagination. I believe some people are more sensitive to supernatural things. I don't think I have as much sensitivity because except for shadows, I never heard or saw anything in my old house.

    However, that being said, once when I was camping in Maine with my sisters and having a terrific time, I became extremely sad and overwhelmed with the feeling. When I called home the next day,I found out my six-year old granddaughter had gone into a coma and been life-flighted to a Pittsburgh hospital. My daughter had been crying for me - wanting me with her. Of course, I caught a plane and flew from Maine to Pittsburgh that day. I have never before or since felt such an overwhelming unexplained sadness before or since.

    ReplyDelete
  7. I've said before that I am agnostic on ghosts. I do not have any personal experiences that I have attributed to ghosts, but I do not "know" they do not exist.

    Therefore, based on my lack of experience with them, I do not believe in ghosts; but I don't have a problem or concern with others believing in them.

    I am convinced that humans (and other animals) experience things that are beyond our current understanding. I've mentioned my grandfather's experience of "knowing" he needed to leave a Masonic lodge meeting and get home, only to find my grandmother passed out from carbon monoxide poisoning. And, who can explain falling in love? (Not the biochemists, who might explain chemical reactions that give a buzz, but not why we feel that for one person and not for another.)

    ~ Jim

    ReplyDelete
  8. Hi Gloria -
    I, too, have experienced one of those dream messages. One night I dreamed that my dear aunt was sitting on a beach, relaxed and happy, watching a sunrise. Somehow I also knew that it meant that she had passed. A few minutes later, the phone rang, waking me up. It was my mother calling to tell me my aunt had died.
    It was a weird experience, but it was also weirdly comforting.

    ReplyDelete

  9. Sarah, thank you for believing in that.

    Jim, my siblings are agnostic when it comes to that, too, although one sister, who is the most strident about it all being nonsense, once shared with me her vivid dream about our mother walking with her not long after she died. Today she refuses to believe it was anything but a dream although I get the feeling it's still very strong in her memory.

    Shari, thanks for sharing that. I hear from some people they never dream or don't remember their dreams if they do. So maybe they're not open to something like that.

    ReplyDelete
  10. One of my father's (much older) sisters, Aunt Mary, was very fond of some of my siblings, especially Patti.

    Since childhood, Patti had panic attacks that limited what she felt she could do.

    At my aunt's funeral, Patti wanted to share some of her memories, but public speaking is one of the situations that triggered the panic attacks. She felt very strongly, though, and despite the feeling that she was going to pass out, she stood up to speak. She says she felt an arm around her shoulders, looked over and saw my aunt, who was smiling and nodding. Aunt Mary mouthed, "You can do this," and Patti immedidately felt calm and was able to continue.

    She has not had a panic attack in the fifteen years since that.

    ReplyDelete
  11. What a beautiful story, KM. Thanks for sharing it with us.

    ReplyDelete
  12. Mom, you clearly have the story wrong. I would never "clown" around near a cliff like that and I am not much of risky person anyway. Actually, Hugo was just snapping random pictures at that stars and the dark and the pictures came up because the signs were in front of us.

    ReplyDelete
  13. Norma Husshttp://www.normahuss.comNovember 15, 2013 at 9:06 AM

    I've never had a personal experience with a ghost, but I remember one my mother had when I was a child. Believed it then, believe it now. (And I put ghosts in my mysteries.)

    ReplyDelete
  14. Yes, you do, Norma, and very good mysteries they are, too. I haven't put a ghost in my books yet, but I have in a short story I wrote.

    ReplyDelete
  15. Ghosts make Great stories. Some believe they stick around when they have unfinished business, but it is more likely that the people they leave behind have the unfinished business.
    Patg

    ReplyDelete
  16. That makes sense, Pat. But sometimes I wonder if it's something like a TV picture that is stuck in a certain wave length, not so much an actual ghost, but an image that keeps playing over and over. Some of what I hear from others, the ghost or spirit seems to be there without being totally aware of the people around them. And yes they do make great stories. In fact, I think I may have one in my next book, or rather a suggestion of one that the reader can believe or not.

    ReplyDelete
  17. "what about the picture on the sign of the family from the 1800s? What is your explanation for that?"

    Without seeing the picture, what would you expect us to say? Obviously, it sounds like a double exposure, because why else would it be sepia? Wouldn't a ghost image be in color?

    ReplyDelete
  18. Paul, it's on a road sign so it wouldn't be in color. No, we can't see the sign very well--granted--but I believe Gloria, who had to think that it was significant for her to take a picture (and perhaps steal the sign, which I can't picture Gloria doing, but it isn't attached!). Thanks for reading, Paul. Good luck on your writing.

    ReplyDelete
  19. Paul, It only happened the one time she took a picture of that sign, and she had never taken a picture of any picture of that family anywhere. I have that camera and no matter how many times I've taken a picture with that camera, I've never had a double exposure.

    ReplyDelete