A Chilling Family Reunion

I already told you at the beginning of this month’s theme that I personally believe that either my Asperger’s Syndrome and/or my being an empath is the reason I’m sensitive to so many things such as dream predictions that come true, paranormal experiences, instincts and gut feelings that pan out, messages from the “beyond,” déjà vu, visions, feelings of dread, etc., that turn out to be right on target.  That being said, it’s not uncommon when I’m driving somewhere that I might see either a person or an animal, and someone in my close circle of friends who was looking the other way asks, “Are you sure they’re alive?”  That always makes me chuckle because, yes, they were alive.  (At least most of the time.)  My passenger just missed seeing them.

A couple of years ago, my niece, Alicia*, passed away.  She’d been in the hospital for over a month then moved in briefly with her grandmother, then into a hospice center.  While she was in the hospital here in the town where I live, I tried to go see her every day.  She lived and worked near me, and I frequently saw her when I was out running errands, and she always had the biggest hugs for her Aunt Rachel.

When she was born, her name was Alicia Williamson.*  When she was eleven, her mom met and married a wonderful man who adopted her, and her name changed to Alicia Bryan*.  During the years she was little, she spent the night with me frequently, and we had a lot of quality time together.  When she started high school, she started calling herself Lecy Bryan*.  Her friends and even her parents called her Lecy, but her grandma and a lot of her family and I still called her Alicia.  She died just a month after her twenty-seventh birthday.

A few months after Lecy passed away, I was watching an old black and white sitcom on television, and the star and the guest star were both my Facebook friends.  So I posted a status of saying that I thought it was funny that in all my years watching reruns of that show, I never dreamed that one day I’d be social network friends with those two actors, and I tagged them.

After I posted that, one of the guest stars Liked my status, then I commented how it made me giggle that said star then Liked what I wrote about him.  In the meantime, Alicia’s mother, Marie*, Liked my status.  Marie is a very busy woman with two other small children, and she doesn’t often have time for Facebook.  Furthermore, unlike me, she doesn’t care for classic TV, so it was quite odd that she acknowledged my comment, but otherwise, I didn’t think much of it.

A week or so later, I started feeling a strong sense of Alicia being near.  It became so overpowering at times, it was if my chest was caving in!  This went on for several days, and a couple of times, my sister Michelle and my son Jeremy mentioned that they dreamed about her or couldn’t stop thinking about her for some reason.  My feeling went on for days.  (Usually when I have this, it comes and goes pretty quickly.)

After about eight days of this, I was home alone when I woke up.  But I saw Alicia as clear as anything sitting on the end of my bed!  She didn’t say anything, and I just chuckled.  I got up and went straight to the kitchen and started washing the previous night’s dinner dishes when suddenly, I “felt” Alicia with me again.  I stopped what I was doing and out loud said, “Okay, Alicia, thank you for visiting.  Do you want to tell me something, or did you just stop in to say hello?  I miss you, but I really need to get some work done.”

Suddenly, the feeling was gone.  For the first time in eight days, there was not an oppressive weight on my chest, and I didn’t have the feeling I was being watched.  I finished washing the dishes, then turned on my computer and checked my Facebook.

That’s when I found:  Over two weeks after my original post about the classic TV show, someone else (not my niece) named Alicia Williamson (my niece’s original name) who was friends with the actor that Liked my post (she was not my friend), Liked my two week old status!  And if you aren’t familiar with how Facebook works, this meant that anyone else who Liked or commented on that status got the same alert that I did:  “Alicia Williamson liked your post…”  Which meant that Lecy’s mother, Marie, also got that notification.  It also meant that the other Alicia Williamson had to go to that actor’s page and scroll through the old posts on his wall to find mine.  So when I read this, I went to his page and looked.  She didn’t Like any other statuses besides mine for the weeks before or after my post.  (Sometimes, a person will go to a famous person’s page and Like everything, and I wanted to see if that was the case here.)

I immediately called Marie, and she, too, was a bit freaked out by that notification and even more so when I shared the whole story.  She said she had been upset thinking about Lecy the past few days, but it actually brought her some comfort seeing her name like that out of the blue.  She felt it was definitely an omen of sorts.  A lot of people might say this was merely a coincidence, but as I’ve told you before, I personally don’t believe in coincidences.  And even when I tell this story out loud today, I literally get goosebumps which assures me that it was meant to be.

(*Not their actual names)

Time to talk:  Have you ever been thinking of someone who was deceased then seen someone else with their same name somewhere?  If so, how did you feel?  Do you believe there are coincidences or that everything happens for a reason? 

The Cabin in the Woods

A few years ago, one of my good friends Ann* told me that her mother Pam* was moving in with her because the mom’s boyfriend died a few months previously and she was very depressed.  Pam moved from her home in Tennessee that she shared with her boyfriend, Chris*.  I met Pam a couple of times, and while she was very nice, she was rather quiet and reserved, and I really didn’t know anything about her.

One night after not seeing Ann or Pam for a while, I had a dream.  In the dream, a short man named Mark* with dark hair and blue eyes, was sitting in a dentist’s chair in the middle of a rural cabin.  The cabin was large with an open floor plan.  There was a split-level area of the cabin with an open loft with an ornate rail around it, and a big bed with a brass headboard in the middle.  And brightly colored flowers were everywhere.

In the dream, Mark was talking to me, even though I wasn’t actually in the dream.  He wasn’t talking to a “dream me” but rather the real me.  He repeatedly told me to tell Pam that he was fine, that he was in a good place, and that he would always love her but she needed to move on.  He kept repeating it as if he wanted to make sure I didn’t forget a single detail.

The next morning, I woke up with an eerie feeling, and I called Ann and told her about my dream.  Instead of commenting, though, she said, “I’ll call you right back,” and hung up before I could say anything more.  A few minutes later, she called back and said Pam was on the other phone, then asked me to repeat my dream.

As I retold the story, Pam started crying and asked if I could draw the cabin I saw in my dream.  We hung up, and I drew a basic sketch of the cabin, then scanned and emailed it to Ann.

That afternoon, Ann called and asked me to come to her house.  I went there, and Pam was weeping.  She had a photo album on her lap, and she handed me a photo of a man.  I looked at the photo and gasped.  It was Mark!  Next, she handed me a photo of a cabin.  It was the cabin from my dreams, only without all the flowers and no dentist’s chair!

And then she told me: her boyfriend Chris was actually named Mark Christopher.  He died as a result of a tooth infection (hence the dentist’s chair).  She used to be a florist when she lived in Tennessee (which explained all the flowers).  And the day before was Chris’ birthday, and she was particularly depressed without him.  She said my dream message made her feel better than she had since she lost him.

(*Not their actual names)

Let’s talk:  If someone who was practically a stranger had a dream about a lost loved one of yours and passed a message on to you, how would you feel about it?  Would you be creeped out or feel peaceful about it?  Do you ever dream about strangers and later see them somewhere when you’re awake?

I See Dead People

Alright, so we already know that my last month’s “Games” theme was a big, fat FAIL.  But that’s okay, because for October, I have something so cool in mind, it’ll give you goosebumps.  In fact my theme this month IS “Goosebumps.”  Actually, it’s “Things That Give You Goosebumps.”  I’m talking about dream predictions that come true, paranormal experiences, instincts and gut feelings that pan out, messages from the “beyond,” déjà vu, visions, feelings of dread, etc.  With Halloween coming, I thought this would be a fun one.

Before I start, I have to give you a little prologue to my stories.  Many of you know I’m Autistic.  (I have Asperger’s Syndrome.)  People with Autism are hypersensitive to many (if not most) things, such as sounds, light, textures, tastes, and smells.  It’s  also a fact that we also have a higher instance of food allergies which I personally believe is because our digestive systems are also extra sensitive to certain food proteins.

Most people with Asperger’s Syndrome have a lack of empathy.  However, there are occasions such as in myself where we are actually exceptionally empathetic to the point that we actually feel the pain of others or feed off the energy of others which causes emotional drain among other things.  Usually when this happens, such people are known as “empaths.”

And if you believe in ghosts, you already know that they are made of energy.

That being said, I personally believe that either my Asperger’s Syndrome and/or my being an empath is the reason I’m sensitive to so many things such as dream predictions that come true, paranormal experiences, instincts and gut feelings that pan out, messages from the “beyond,” déjà vu, visions, feelings of dread, etc., that turn out to be right on target.  I think we’ve all experienced instances such as dreaming about someone we haven’t thought about in ages, only to run into them the day after the dream.  But while we all have these, I’ve been told throughout my life that I apparently have these instances more frequently than a lot of the people I know.

And one final tidbit of information, I’ve also shared with you that I’m a Christian.  So without getting too preachy, I just want to say that I do not want to be misconstrued as someone who takes on or seeks out things that are not of God.  That said, I’m also not claiming to have a charism or anything like that.  Throughout my life, whenever I’ve had such things happen, I’ve just called them “angel messages” and assumed that God let me see them for a reason.  ‘Nuff said.

And now, on to my stories…

When I was very small, I “played with dead people.”  A lot of people think that very young children are able to sense things like this and grow out of it later.  But my grandma used to always get irritated when she couldn’t find me, and almost always when she did, I was sitting in my closet with the door closed, talking.  And when she’d ask who I was talking to, I’d reply, “Dead people.”  (Don’t forget, my grandparents raised me.)

At the time, I truly did “see” the people I was talking to.  It wasn’t until I was older that I realized how bizarre this was.  My grandparents had a child that died when she was fourteen years old, long before I was born.  And one day in church, I announced to my Grandma that, “Aunt Dawn is here sitting beside us.”

Grandma just shushed me and told me to be quiet and pay attention until I told her that Dawn said not to feel bad about leaving her in Tampa and that it had to be that way.

Grandma turned pale and didn’t speak of the matter anymore until I was older.  She recalled the day and said it gave her goosebumps.  You see, there was no way at three years old that I could’ve known that Dawn died at a hospital in Tampa and that Grandma didn’t want to leave after they told her she was gone.  And that she frequently had nightmares about it for years afterward.

Several years later, when I was seventeen, my grandfather died.  About a year later, I had an extraordinarily vivid dream of my granddaddy and my Uncle David (who was alive).  They were in a restaurant in Manhattan, and Uncle David was choking on food.  He was clutching his throat and making gurgling sounds.  Granddaddy told me to tell Grandma and make sure she stayed calm and to tell her that he’d be fine.

The next morning, I woke and felt a cold chill pass through me as I was reminded of the dream. I went to the kitchen and found Grandma.  I told her I had a dream about Granddaddy last night, and she said she did too.  (We came to find out later that when he “visited” one of us in a dream, we usually both dreamed of him simultaneously.)  I told her my dream about Uncle David, and she just nodded and told me that was weird.

Late that evening, Grandma got a phone call.  Apparently Uncle David was visiting in New York City for a job, unbeknownst to her (or me), and he’d been in a restaurant when he had a mild heart attack (or some sort of “cardiac event”).  And when this happened, as you can imagine, he probably clutched his chest and made some gurgling noises.  And after a brief stay in the hospital, he was indeed fine.

So, while I may have misunderstood the “message” and confused what I thought looked like choking to really be a heart attack, the end result was the same.  Granddaddy came to me in a dream and showed me a prediction that came to pass.  And once again, I gave Grandma goosebumps.

Talk to me:  Do you believe in ghosts?  Have you ever had dreams that came true?  Have you ever been visited in a dream by a dead person?  Do you think you’ll like this month’s theme?