by Jim Harold
It took me almost a month before I would venture to look in that cedar chest to find out if the picture was still there. I was kind of thinking, "I don't know if I want to look." I finally did look. The picture was gone.
That chest had not been opened since we moved into this house seven years ago.
I know she wanted to let us know she was still around. That book and picture was yet another way she proved it.
It really is comforting. I'm glad to know that she's still around and that she's watching over her grandkids, because she never got to meet any of them. I am very comfortable with her presence and it's nice knowing that she's still with us.
-Jerri, Georgia
38. The Hypochondriac is about to Die
My family is originally from northwest Georgia. We are very Irish and very superstitious. One of my favorite stories is about an after-death visit through a dream. I'm pretty sure it was real. My grandfather died in '91 and my grandmother passed two years later. He and I were very close, so I had a real rough time getting over it.
About six months after my grandma died, I started having recurring dreams of my grandpa coming to visit. A lot of it was just, "Hey, just want to check on you." In one of the dreams, he and I were sitting in my elementary school cafeteria, which was odd, because I was a high schooler at the time. This dream started out with him saying, "I wanted to let you know the hypochondriac is about to die."
The hypochondriac he was talking about was his mother-in-law, my great-grandmother. She had a medical dictionary by her chair and every day she would look up a disease then decide that she had it. She lived behind my grandparents, and she'd always walk over to my grandmother's house and share her disease of the day. My grandpa would always ask, "What'd the hypochondriac want?"
I knew exactly who he was talking about in the dream. Unfortunately, it was a running joke throughout the entire family. Yet, she was never sick; that was the weirdest part of it. I think it was an attention thing.
I told my mom about the dream, and she gave me funny looks. Two months later, on the way back from visiting friends in Germany, my great-aunt picked us up at the airport and told us that my great-grandmother had died while we were overseas. My mother just kind of looked at me, and I said, "I told you. This is none of my doing."
Maybe dreams are a connection to the other side? I think the boundaries come down. They certainly did in this one.
-Michelle, North Carolina
39. My Round Faced Angel
When I was a young child, I had a skeletal disorder that affected my legs and I had to have a couple of surgeries for it. The second surgery was when I was 8-years-old. That time the doctors were going to perform a new type of procedure, a new technique and we were pretty worried. I was old enough to understand what was going to happen, and I remember being really worried and scared. Of course, my concern upset my parents particularly my mother.
I remember my mom talking to me at night before I'd go to bed. She said, "Don't worry, everything's going to be okay. Nothing to be afraid of. Everything's going to go fine." Deep down inside, she was still kind of stressing about it. My parents were both worried, asking themselves if it was the right thing to do for their child? You know how parents worry about that for their kids.
One morning, I was getting ready for school, and my mom was sitting on the couch. She called me over and she said, "Christina, come here. I want to tell you something." I said, "Okay, what's going on?" She took both my hands, I was standing in front of her, and she said, "Well, I wanted to tell you something. Something happened last night and I want to talk to you about it." I said, "Okay." She said, "I just want you to know that you really don't have to be worried about this, because everything's going to be fine."
The previous night she had had a long chat with me about what was up coming up with the surgery. Then she went to bed. She said she woke up in the middle of the night, maybe 2 a.m. She thought that she had heard someone saying her name. So she woke up, but she didn't see anything. All of a sudden, she looked over to her left. She said there was this stout, little, old lady standing there next to her beside the bed, and she had this smile on her face. She just had this little round cherubic face and that there was this light coming from behind her.
This little, old lady spoke to her and said, "Are you Christina's mom?" Mom said, "Yeah, I'm Christina's mom. Who are you?" This lady spoke back to her and said, "I'm Christina's guardian angel. I've been sent here to tell you that you don't need to worry about Christina, and you don't need to worry about what's going to be happening. Everything is going to be just fine and there's no need to be afraid."
You can imagine hearing my mom telling me this and me just being really awestruck. I said, "Wow, really? That happened?" She said, "Yeah. I really don't think that I was dreaming, because I remember sitting there and all of a sudden tears just started streaming down my face." She said, "This woman smiled at me and again said 'don't be afraid.'" Then, all of a sudden she was gone. My mom just sat there, just cried tears of joy and was real shaken by it. My dad woke up and asked her, "What's going on? Why are you crying? What's wrong?" She told him the whole story. From that point on, she was just completely at ease with the whole situation and didn't worry about it from there on out.
Once the time came for my surgery, they allowed my Mom to come in with me while I was going under the anesthesia. She said even up to that point, when she was in there with me and holding my hand, she just felt totally calm and that everything was in good hands. I'm 27-years-old now and everything went fine and turned out well, just like my angel said that it would.
The whole experience was comforting for us. I hope somebody who reads this can take comfort in it too.
-Christina, Iowa
40. Two Toes & Baskerville
I had a cockatiel when I was 8-years-old. We were pretty close and every night before I went to bed, I would say goodnight to him. His name was Two Toes. He only had two toes; one was missing from an accident before I had gotten him.
One evening, I had this really intense feeling that something bad was going to happen to Two Toes overnight. I didn't know if somebody was going to take him or what was going to happen. To protect him, I went and got a scarf and tied it around the very bottom of the cage. I went to bed, and in the morning the first thing I did was go check on Two Toes. He was dead on the bottom of the cage. He had passed during the night. Putting that scarf there really proved that I really had those feelings. It wasn't something I had imagined after the fact.
I've had these feelings about pets more than once.
Later, my parents divorced, so I would visit my dad's house every other weekend. He had a great St. Bernard named Baskerville. My dad is a big fan of Sherlock Holmes.
I was at my mom's house one Sunday night. I was doing my homework and I suddenly had this really intense feeling that something bad was going to happen to Baskerville. I called my dad and I asked him to check on our dog. He said, "Oh, he's fine, he's fine. He's doing fine." I asked, "Can you go and see him? Is he in front of you? I want to know that you're checking on him." He said, "Yeah, I'm looking at him right now. He's great. Don't worry about it." I said, "Okay, but keep an eye on him, because I have this really bad feeling."
The next weekend, I visited my dad. He was in the middle of the process of moving and had been transferring items back and forth between houses. So, I got to the house and looked out to the yard and I didn't see my dog anywhere. I said, "Where is he? Where's Baskerville?" He said, "I didn't want to tell you this when you called me last weekend because I didn't want to upset you. I had been loading up the truck to take another trip out to the other house to move things, and I was going to take the dog with me. We were in the garage and he just kind of collapsed. I think he had a heart attack and died. I've already buried him in the backyard. I didn't want to tell you that because about a minute after he collapsed, you called me on the phone asking about him. I just didn't want to upset you by telling you this and worry
you during the week before you got over here. I wanted to tell you in person."
I've had a lot of pets and I feel close to all of them. I don't know how, and I don't know why, but I knew they were in trouble. I guess there was some type of intense bond, one that we can't explain.
-Audrey, Massachusetts
41. Dreams from the Other Side
I had a couple of dream experiences with loved ones who have passed on. First, my brother-in-law lost his brother in a drunk driving accident. It was very hard on their family. After his death, I started having weird dreams that he was coming to me and he was sitting in the back seat of an SUV-type vehicle. I was sitting in the front seat and I was taking a lot of pictures outside for some reason. He said, "Hey, you've got to just let them know that everything's going to be okay and that there's always the pictures."
The first time I had the dream I thought it was really weird and very realistic, but I didn't think much of it. Then one day my sister, who was very close with him, had a huge meltdown over the situation. That night, I had another dream and he told me, "Got to tell her everything is going to be okay. Let her know about the pictures. We'll always have the pictures." I finally told her, and she started taking a lot of pictures and looking through old photographs of them all together. She used the same camera she always used. She started getting some orbs in some of them, so that was a little weird. She said, "I think that might be him in some of these pictures." It's kind of nice to know that he was there trying to comfort her and my brother-in-law.
My next dream experience happened about six month later and centered around my stepfather. We weren't on very good terms for most of time during his relationship with my mom. I was a very stubborn person and I wrongly thought that he was the reason my mom and dad weren't together anymore. Anyhow, things changed as I got older. I had two kids and they called him grandpa. We still kind of butted heads a little bit every now and then but I eventually started to consider him a part of the family.
My mom and stepfather had been together for 15 years and had never got married. They both were in bad relationships previously and decided that they didn't want to mess up what they had. He always told my mom, "The minute I marry you, it's going to be the death of me."
Regardless, they finally decided to go to Vegas and get married. They did. A day and a half later, my stepfather had a heart attack and passed away. It was really hard. I never really got to tell him that he meant a lot to me and that he helped me through a lot of things. I started having dreams where I was sitting in a room on a futon couch and he was sitting down next to me. He kept telling me that he loved me, as if I was one of his own, that everything was going to be okay, and just to make sure that my mom was okay. He said she was sick and she needed medical attention.
I had probably about three or four dreams like that the year that he had passed away. Then, the day after Christmas, my mom was visiting for the holidays. She woke up and couldn't breathe. I kept telling her, "Mom, you really need to go to the doctor. You really, really need to get to the doctor. There's something wrong. I don't know what it is, but you need to find something out." I tried to tell her about the dreams I was having, but my mom is a skeptic and doesn't believe in anything like that. She ended up in a coma and she was in intensive care for two and a half weeks. We found out that she had high blood pressure, was diabetic, and had congestive heart failure. They said she was in very bad shape.
Somehow, while she was in the hospital, I had another dream and my stepfather came to me and he said, "She's going to be okay." A couple days later, she woke up out of the coma and recovered. The doctor said that it was really weird because they had never seen anybody come back after being that far gone.
I am definitely a believer. I think some dreams are there for entertainment purposes only. In some cases though, I think you reach a different level and you're able to receive messages that are coming in from loved ones.
-Kat, California
42. I'm Still Watching Over You
When I was 13-years-old, my nan died. Prior to her passing, I went to visit her and say my goodbyes although she was not quite connected to the world at that point. She was rambling and it was very obvious that the end was near. Ironically, it was her birthday. Afterward, I returned home. Me and my mother curled up on a couple of couches waiting for a phone call from my dad that we that we thought might be coming soon.
I woke up at 3:26 a.m. There was no reason I would have awoken at that particular time. The dog was curled up with me and jumped up. I sat bolt upright and looked at the time and thought that something must have happened. I went back to sleep and found out the next morning that was the precise moment when Nan had passed. The exact time listed on her death certificate was 3:26 a.m.
Nan used to look after me. I had very bad asthma when I was a child, and she would stay with me to make sure that I was okay while my dad took my mom to work. She always watched over me. It was tough when she passed.
The next bit of strangeness happened a week later. One night I woke up, looked over, and there right next to my bed, my nan was kneeling as if she were in a prayer position, but she didn't have her hands up. She was just kneeling next to the bed. She looked as solid as any real person. She wasn't looking at me, but down at the bed.
The final incident was in the form of a dream I had the night before her funeral.
Nan had lived in an old 1950s house on the next estate to us. In the house, there was a little corridor and just off of it were the kitchen and the living room. I had assumed that when they brought the coffin in for the viewing before the funeral, they were going to put it either in the kitchen or in the living room, because those were the most obvious places.
In the dream, they put the coffin in the corridor which led to these two rooms, so you had to lean against the wall to squeeze past it. There was barely any room to pass, even for a 13-year-old kid like me. I was in the living room when the coffin arrived in the dream. I walked up to the side of of the coffin and Nan turned around and looked at me!
For the actual funeral the next day, they put the coffin in exactly the same place that I'd seen in my dream...in the corridor. Nan was wearing exactly the same clothes as in the dream. Fortunately, she didn't look at me. Still, I did have to lean on my dad a bit at the time.
As I said, she took great care of me growing up. I think she kept coming back to say, "I'm still watching over you."
-Nik, United Kingdom
43. The Ides of March
Back in 1945, when my grandfather got out of the Army after World War II, he met my grandmother. She had been engaged to marry someone else; obviously, that didn't work out. They ended up falling in love and marrying. Then, as they say, the rest is history.
When I was growing up, my grandparents were pretty ill, even though they were still fairly young. My grandfather had diabetes and severe heart disease. In the early 1980s, my grandfather had a couple of heart attacks. They didn't really have many treatments like they do today. After these attacks his doctor said, "If you have another heart attack, that'll be the end. We really can't do anything more for you." He was only in his fifties.
Unfortunately, my grandfather did end up having another heart attack, and was rushed to the hospital. My grandmother stayed at home with my cousin. My aunt and uncle rushed to the hospital with him in the ambulance. As he was lying in the emergency room dying, my grandfather told them, "Tell Mitzi I love her and that I'll see her on the Ides of March." For those that don't know, the Ides of March is the 15th of March. It's the day Julius Caesar was killed, an old Roman holiday.
My aunt, of course, told my grandmother that Grandpa said that he loved her, but she didn't tell her about the second part, the Ides Of March statement. The next day was actually the Ides of March, so the family was on pins and needles. We were really nervous. My grandmother was in ill health as well, but the day came and passed and she made it through. At first, every year the family would get very nervous in March. As time went on, we
completely forgot about what my grandfather had said.
Fifteen years later, my grandmother got sick. She had pneumonia. It was the middle of winter, and she passed away. Of course, the family was sad. We were talking as people do when something like this happens to a loved one and my aunt reminded me that the previous day had been the Ides Of March. She passed the day after the Ides of March! My grandfather had been right all those years ago.
I almost think there's a veil that's lifted when you're dying, and that you can see things that others can't. I think my grandfather wanted to let her know that they would meet again.
-Jennifer, Minnesota
Jim's Note: When speaking to guests on my podcasts who specialize in afterlife topics, I've been told the soul can alternate between this world and the other side shortly before the time of death. Maybe these two lovers really did meet again on the Ides of March? Just a thought.