Photo: Cemetery in Costa Rica – Javier Ortega
Our good friend Stephen Wagner from Paranormal.about.com always has interesting letters sent to him from his readers. Most are horrifying encounters with the unexplained, some raise concerns and questions about the little known paranormal phenomena.
In his post titled ” Haunted By Her Parents”, Stephen reminds us of the controversial question; “If ghosts do exist, do they exist without the disabilities or ailments they had in life?”
For example, my father was in extreme pain before finally succumbing to cancer back in 2005. After he had passed, a little boy who was the son of my Brother’s then girlfriend, claimed to see and hear my father.
According to the little boy (I think he was 3 or 4 years of age) he had said that my father was standing in the hallway and telling him that he was not in pain anymore and was able to walk. You can read about this in one of my earlier posts.
So the question always remains a hot topic for most. Can it be possible for people who have died and who suffered from Schizophrenia to be free of the disorder?
What about nervous or bad habits?
It cannot be denied that the haunting phenomenon is a reality. There are countless experiences dating back centuries, even millennia. What we don’t know for certain is what the haunting phenomenon really is or how it works. Is it a kind of psychic energy recorded on an environment that is replayed when triggered by some factor? Is it really caused by the actions of the dead? Or is the haunting activity generated by the power of our own subconscious?
They are important questions, but are often irrelevant to the people who are experiencing them first-hand. They only know that the unexplained phenomena are always perplexing, often unnerving, and sometimes deeply meaningful. Consider the case of Cathy C., the death of whose parents began a series of paranormal incidents that she feels can only be attributed to them. This is Cathy’s story….
-Stephen Wagner
THE YEAR 2008 WAS a very unhappy year for me as I lost both my parents within months of each other. Back in 2002, I sold my home. Although it was paid for, I found it difficult as a single woman to afford the renovations and upkeep that needed to be done, and after two break-ins, my parents offered me the opportunity to move back to the family homestead. In this way, I could assist both my parents with various errands and provide companionship, although both were just in their mid-60s at that time.
As time passed and my parents entered their 70s, my mom’s health began to fail, and since my father didn’t drive and they were not on bus routes, I also took over more and more responsibility. Surprisingly enough, it was my father who passed away first, in January of 2008, after complications from surgery seven weeks earlier. Although he suffered from grand mal epilepsy since his early teens, we had no idea that the anesthetic they gave him for gall bladder surgery would trigger two massive heart attacks, a triple bypass and eventual organ failure.
While in the hospital, my dad wasn’t very aware, and for the most part didn’t respond coherently to questions or conversation. The strange thing was, just one week prior to his death there was one moment where he squeezed my hand, looked at me, really recognized me and uttered the words, “You’ll be alright on your own,” which confused me at the time. Looking back, though….
FATHER’S VOICE
Well, we muddled along, as one must. On a sunny day about two weeks after Dad passed away, I had taken the family dog out to the back deck, which accessed the garage, prior to his run in the backyard. Imagine my surprise when I heard a voice that sounded eerily like my father’s coming from inside the garage. Both the dog and I reacted to the voice at the same time. I must admit that I was really caught off-guard and got someone else to go in the garage with me to check it out – and, of course, there was no one there.
My 17-year-old nephew, who moved in to help with things a few weeks before my father’s death, had a very strange thing happen to him a short time later. Friends of his talked him into using the Ouija board against his better judgment at their house one day. The planchette became very active and he asked who was there, and it spelled out my father’s initials. When asked who he wanted, my nephew’s secret pet name was spelled out. The board then spelled out PEANUT BUTTER JAM SANDWICH, which my dad had been asking for while in the hospital (he couldn’t eat anything). When asked if he was in heaven, he said NO. When asked if in hell, he said NO, which upset my nephew to the point that he came home in tears. No one else there knew these things.
ANOTHER DEATH, MORE ACTIVITY
Well, that seemed to be it, for the most part, and both of us shook it off and life resumed. My mom, very strong in character if not in body, carried on, although her health failed further. On April 22, I received a call from my nephew, who had arrived home from school. When he had arrived, there was a plumber who had been knocking at the door for some time, and when they gained entrance, they found my mom deceased in the house. My guess is that she just couldn’t carry on any longer without my dad, which apparently isn’t uncommon; many spouses pass within months of each other.
About two weeks after, things really started happening…
PARENTS’ HABITS CONTINUE
About two weeks after, things really started happening, and they seemed to be coming from both of my parents. The interesting thing is that a few things happened to me while alone in the house, and as I didn’t want to upset him, I didn’t relate them to my nephew. Only when he told me about the things he experienced did we speak of them mutually.
It started with shuffling footsteps up and down the hallway from my mom’s room to the washroom and back. Both of us heard that a few times independently. We also both experienced tuneless whistling that seemed to be coming from everywhere around us and from nowhere specifically. That was a trademark of my dad. I also saw a large, brown orb trailing golden sparks come toward me and pass by me from the dining room into the kitchen.
One day, when alone in the house, in broad daylight, and I was thinking about nothing in particular, I was downstairs in the laundry room and heard the kitchen chairs, which were on rollers, moving around on the kitchen floor above. Another day, while upstairs, I heard desk drawers opening and closing downstairs in the rec room. My nephew (who I hadn’t told at this point) met me at the backdoor upon my return home from work one day, quite white-faced. He had been downstairs in the laundry room and had heard desk drawers opening and closing, and also cupboard doors opening and closing in the rec room and hightailed it up the stairs. I went downstairs with him and, sure enough, there were open cupboard doors where they had been closed previously.
On one occasion, my teenage niece came over for the night. I had never told her anything that was going on as I didn’t want her to be afraid of her grandparents’ house. We were watching TV when rapping started happening on the wall beside me. On the other side of the wall was the hallway from my mom’s room. She used to knock if the TV was too loud. The first time I ignored it and my niece just looked at me, but the second time it happened a moment later, we both looked at each other and I said, “Did you hear that?” “Yeah,” she said, and I told her not to worry about it, that it was nothing.
There were several incidents of the sounds of someone opening the back door. Both the dog and cat heard this, too, and reacted every time… and, of course, there was no one there.
After that, it seemed to quiet down, until the day my nephew commented that nothing had happened to him for awhile, jokingly. A few minutes later, I was seated at the kitchen table reading the paper and could see him brushing his teeth in the washroom. I remember wishing he’d close the door while he was doing that, and I glanced up to see that the door was shut. A moment later I glanced up and it was open. This happened twice and after the second time, he was standing there, toothbrush in mouth, frozen, eyes wide open and commented that it wasn’t funny anymore. The door, according to him, had opened and shut twice quickly.
Read more at Paranormal.about.com
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