Note: A little different from the usual stories in the Archive, the three short stories here were sent in by one author and describe the psychic abilities of three women of three generations of her family. Enjoy.
PROPHETIC WORDS
Author's note: As a child my mom told me stories about my Great-Grandma Rosa (who died
before I was born). Grandma Rosa was a full-blooded Cherokee Indian, and
she seemed to have a "sixth sense" about things. I call it a "gift." She
would have "good" or "bad" feelings about things. She would have "visions"
or "dreams" that would often come true. One of the most unsettling stories I
heard about one of her visions was her prediction that one of her sons was
going to die.
Grandma Rosa spent her last years on Earth in bed. She stayed sick most of the time and she had asthma. She lived in the mountains of North Carolina and there weren't the kind of treatments back then that there are today for simple things like asthma. My mom tells me about how the Indians used "herbs" for it...and that was all she had to treat her illness as well as her asthma. Because she was always sick, she didn't go outside or travel much.
She had never been very far from home. She had also never seen or heard the ocean.
Her son went away into the Navy. He spent a lot of time at sea. One day Grandma' Rosa was in bed asleep. She woke up suddenly in a panic. She told my grandmother (Maxine), who was still young and living at home, that she could hear waves crashing on the stairs. She said it sounded like the house was sitting right on the ocean and the waves were tearing thru the house. (All this said by a women who had never heard waves and had never been to the ocean) She felt sure of the sound...she knew what it was that she was hearing.
She then said to Maxine...
"Maxine, I have a very bad feeling. It's your brother. Something has happened to him. He has died. I can feel it...and I can hear it. The ocean has swallowed him and he won't be coming home."
Grandma Rosa was sure of all that she felt and was nearly hysterical.
Maxine tried for hours to calm her down saying that everything would be
okay and telling her not to worry.
The next day men in uniform drove into the yard. Grandma Rosa was waiting for them....expecting them. But Maxine was not and her eyes became huge like quarters when she saw the uniformed men get out of the truck and make their way up the front steps. In their hands they held a telegram and a flag. As their eyes met Grandma Rosa's eyes, she felt calm, knowing the news they brought. But Maxine, in stunned disbelief, stared at her mother as the men started speaking.
"Mam, we are sorry to inform you that your son has passed away due to a tragic accident. He drowned and there was nothing we could do to help him."
They handed her the flag, saluted her, and walked away. All the while Maxine was crying, staring at her mom, amazed and in her mind hearing her mom's prophetic words:
"I can hear the waves crashing down the stairs,"
Those words rang in her mind, over and over again, haunting her.
THE GIFT
Author's note: My Great-Grandma' Rosa was the most unique women in my family. She possessed
a "Gift." And she passed it down to her direct female descendants. My
grandmother (Maxine), my mom (Roseann), me (April Rose), and my sister Genie.
I call it a "gift" because I know of no other word to explain it. We sense
things. We have prophetic "visions" and "dreams." And some of us sense
"spirits" or "beings from the afterlife." There are many stories to tell but
I will tell one now about my mom.
As a little girl I remember seeing my mom rush into the house one night and turn on the TV. She sat there, eyes wide, watching the eleven o'clock news.
A story came on about 15 minutes into the broadcast and my mom started shaking. She looked scared and she even cried a little. I never really knew what that was all about until I got a little older. She told me the whole story when I was about thirteen.
My mom would have these "visions." They were of many different things and people. Sometimes it was bad things and sometimes good things.
My mom had a vision one evening. In her vision she saw a car accident.
She told my dad about it. It was a man driving...she didn't know him personally. But because of her vision she was able to give details. She knew the man was driving and hit a women in another car. She recognized the place in her vision and knew where it was going to happen. She knew the man's name but not the women's. She knew the man was going to die but that the women would live. She saw that it was evening, and had the feeling that it was about to take place any minute. She was telling my dad all these details and was scared. She didn't know what to do. She wanted to help. To warn these people. But she knew after several minutes that it was too late.
That night she came home from my grandparents house...and immediately turned on the TV. It was time for the local news broadcast. She watched, fearful, praying no accidents would pop up on the screen, praying she wouldn't hear the man's name, praying she wouldn't see or hear anything she had seen and heard in her vision.
But it wasn't to be. About fifteen minutes into the broadcast... pictures of a fatal car accident popped up onto the screen. For several minutes she sat there watching as the reporter's talked about the accident. They also mentioned the name of the man and said he was D.O.A. She watched as they talked about the other vehicle, and the women driving, who was taken to a nearby hospital. She was in critical condition, but she wasn't going to die. My mom watched as her vision unfolded right before her eyes.
My dad stared at her sympathetically and in disbelief.
LAST BREATH
Author's note: Strange occurrences runs in my family. I sense "spirits" on a regular basis. It's always unsettling. But the most unsettling experience with a spirit happened when I was thirteen.
I was living in North Carolina at the time. The house we were living in was over thirty-years-old, and we moved into it when I was ten. My room was the master bedroom and had its own bathroom and walk-in closet. At first I was excited that my parents had been willing to give me the master bedroom.
But soon after moving in strange things began to happen in that room...and the belated feeling was gone. In it's place was fear. Many times I would hear things falling in the room or bathroom. But upon inspection everything would be in place just as I had left it...despite the noises. I would see shadows moving when noone was there. I would come home to find lights turned on that I knew I had turned off before leaving. I would hear footsteps.
No one was there those times either. I wasn't the only one to hear or see those things. My mom or sister often experienced the same things when close to or in my room. By the time I was 13 I thought I had heard and seen it all. But then, unexpectedly, one night, I experienced the most terrifying experience of them all. It was late, nearly two o'clock in the morning. Everyone else in my family had been asleep for hours. I had just finished reading a novel and was settling into bed to go to sleep. I turned off the light and closed my eyes. Within seconds I could hear breathing. Loud breathing. It sounded labored...as if the person breathing was struggling and fighting just to take each breath. I looked around my room in terror. I was sure that someone was in the room with me...even though I couldn't see anyone. I quickly turned my light back on. I looked around puzzled. Noone was there, and the noise had stopped. I tried to calm myself, telling myself that it wasn't anything. I turned the light back off, closed my eyes, and the noise was back.
Breathing in and
out....long, loud, slow breaths.
It kept breathing...and it sounded so
close.
As if it was right next to me.
I lay there, trying to remain logical telling myself that it would stop. But it didn't. I felt frozen to my bed...as if I couldn't move. I was terrified. Unable to stand it any longer I ran to my sister's room. I woke her up and told her what was happening.
She didn't believe me and came back to the room with me to prove that nothing was there. When we walked into my room the breathing was gone again.
She stayed with me several minutes and then went back to bed when we couldn't hear anything. But as soon as my light was off and my head was on the pillow I could hear the breathing again. This time I took my pillow, went to my parents room, and stayed in there the rest of the night. I tried to put the event out of my mind, only to learn facts several days later that I couldn't ignore.
We were good friends with all our close neighbors and were visiting with an elderly gentleman several days after the breathing incident. We had recently been remodeling some rooms in our house (to sell it) and were talking about the age of the house when Mr. W started telling us about how he and his wife had lived in that house before she passed away. He said that once she passed on he could no longer live there, so he moved into another house in that same neighborhood.
According to him, his wife had cancer. In her last months there was nothing the doctors could do for her. She didn't want to spend her last days in a hospital...so he took her home to stay. During her last dying days she wasn't able to get up, so she just stayed in her bed fighting the disease that had taken over her body, and that was where she took her last dying breath.
Casually I asked him if he meant the master bedroom. His answer was yes. I had suspected so. And feel even to this day that the breathing I heard, along with the strange noises, and occurrences, was the spirit of his deceased wife.
After that I didn't feel threatened by the "spirit" or "presence" that I often felt in that room. But I was still happy and somewhat relieved when we moved several months later.
