later I shared my gnawing concern with my mother. I explained that every time my sons get together with this particular uncle, a twist of fate soon follows, or so it always seemed to me. This day was to be no exception.
Minutes following this comment — intuition rains down on me — and I shot straight up off my chair, causing it to crash against the kitchen wall behind me! I remember spouting out, “Something just happened to the kids! Something’s wrong, I can feel it!”
My practical, logical-minded mother began to tell me that I shouldn’t be thinking like this! She asked me why I would say such a thing.
The words had no sooner left her mouth than her telephone rang. It was for me. It was the Meaford town police. A lady officer began explaining that my two sons and a third party had rolled and totalled the car! She quickly went on to add that they had been admitted to the Meaford Hospital. She also asked if I had any other transportation. I said no. So she immediately offered to come and pick me up and take me up to see them.
Long story short! Apparently, they picked up their uncle and went out for a short drive on some nearby gravel roads. During this back-road tour, it immediately started to pour down rain! Damon was driving and he did what any other driver instinctively would do. He reached up and hit the windshield wipers, only to be sadly reminded he didn’t have one on his side of the car. With no vision, they ended up going around a bend in the road and rolling the car a couple of times down over an embankment.
The police officer did add that they had “not” been speeding. She said they had only been doing about fifty miles per hour. She explained that, with a passenger in the front seat and a passenger on the same side in the back, when they went around the corner, the weight displacement added to the car flipping over so easily!
I remember getting out of the officer’s vehicle. I remember thanking her, but I don’t remember seeing her after that. I remember walking into the hospital and asking at the desk to see my sons. I also remember nervously asking, “Who was hurt the worst?” but not really wanting to really hear or know the answer.
In through the doorway I went. First, I spotted my youngest, Rye. I knew in his eyes he was happy to see me, but also at the same time pleading in his brother’s defence that he was so worried about the car. I quickly hugged him and said I’d be back after I checked on his brother.
The hospital was keeping him on the opposite side of the room. I could see a doctor with him. He was going over him closely, checking for signs of whiplash and whatever else they look for. I guess, as the driver, Damon had got it the worst.
Upon spotting me, he immediately started apologizing for rolling the car. I told him not to worry about the car, it was insured. I asked the doctor how he thought they medically looked. He told me that both of them were bounced around pretty good, but luckily both had been wearing their seat belts.
I don’t remember what happened with their uncle. He wasn’t there! At the time that was just as well, I had enough on my plate to deal with. All in all, they had relatively small bangs, bumps, and bruises compared to what could have happened. I think the biggest injury was their minds and naturally their nerves! Damon, especially, felt the responsibility for both his passengers and the car. He didn’t seem too concerned for his own physical condition!
The details that hang heaviest over me to this day about the accident are two-fold. Number One, how easily I could have lost both my sons in one easy freak swoop!
Number Two, the feeling of the energy that had shot through my body that day that told me something wrong had happened! How unnerving and helpless I felt, because I was unable to capture any of the details.
The best way I suppose to describe this feeling to others is like this. It is like someone witnessing a dog barking incessantly at something but not being able to see or hear what it is that the dog is barking at. You only sense that it can’t be good. All you really know is that common sense tells you to act defensively, to be alert, and to be on guard!
This source of energy has come to visit with me on other occasions as well. For the above-stated reasons, it continues to be both a blessing and a curse. It immediately overcomes me at different speeds, strengths, and lengths of time!
What I have figured out is that the older I get, the stronger it seems to get! Also, that it picks me! I never pick it! I usually end up pacing and my mind racing as it occurs. My mind and my heart do instant battle.
Which one wins? The honest truth? The one I feel the most!
May 26, 2005
The fact that there are so many words in the English language for ghosts and spirits argues on behalf of their very existence! Elsewhere in this book I have gathered these words together and arranged them in alphabetical order. Here I have gathered some “ghost stories” of the traditional kind, as I found them in the columns of old newspapers and journals. Not all ghosts, when they appear, need to be swathed in white shrouds or cerements — but many were and still are. It is worth noting that we do not “see” ghosts so much as we do “sense” their presence. Yet these ghosts are as much phantasms or psychical experiences as they are creatures of folklore. Perhaps for that reason they have particular penetrative powers!
They haunt us still.
Nova Scotian, Halifax, Nova Scotia, November 7, 1859
Mr. Hector M’Donald, of Canada, was recently on a visit to Boston. When he left home his family were enjoying good health, and he anticipated a pleasant journey. The second morning after his arrival in Boston, when leaving his bed to dress for breakfast, he saw reflected in a mirror the corpse of a woman lying in the bed from which he had just risen. Spell-bound, he gazed with intense feeling, and tried to recognize the features of the corpse, but in vain; he could not even move his eyelids; he felt deprived of action, for how long he knew not. He was at last startled by the ringing of the bell for breakfast, and sprang to the bed to satisfy himself if what he had seen reflected in the mirror was real or an illusion. He found the bed as he left it, he looked again into the mirror, but only saw the bed truly reflected. During the day he thought much upon the illusion, and determined next morning to rub his eyes and feel perfectly sure that he was wide awake before he left bed. But, notwithstanding these precautions, the vision was repeated with this addition, that he thought he recognized in the corpse some resemblance to the features of his wife.
In the course of the second day he received a letter from his wife, in which she stated that she was quite well, and hoped he was enjoying himself among his friends. As he was devotedly attached to her, and always anxious for her safety, he supposed that his morbid fears had conjured up the vision he had seen reflected in the glass; and went about his business as cheerfully as usual. — On the morning of the third day, after he had dressed, he found himself in thought in his own house, leaning over the coffin of his wife. His friends were assembled, the minister was performing the funeral services, his children wept — he was in the house of death. He followed the corpse to the grave; he heard the earth rumble upon the coffin, he saw the grave filled and the green sods covered over it; yet, by some strange power, he could see through the ground the entire form of his wife as she lay in her coffin.
He looked in the face of those around him, but no one seemed to
