by Jim Harold
Now, unfortunately, again she is facing some serious health issues and the boy is back.
The one thought that her family has had on it is that her mother was pregnant two other times and had a late-term miscarriage. The prevailing theory is that it's one of her brothers that she never got to meet in this life, coming here to watch over her when she needs help.
-Hunter, New York
Jim's Note: Hunter has released a fictional novella, The Waiting, that draws on this experience. You can find it at http://www.amazon.com/Waiting-Hunter-Shea-ebook/dp/B00I41ZACK/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1406993697&sr=1-1&keywords=hunter+shea+the+waiting
Please keep Hunter and his wife in your thoughts and prayers.
PART FIVE:
BIZARRE
60. A Living Statue
When I was a kid, my mom had this two-foot-tall bronze statue of the mythical character Pan, who is known for being a little mischievous, sitting on our fireplace. One night I was in bed, I must have been about 3-years-old, I heard some rustling around in our living room. Our house was really small, so you could basically hear everything that went on. I remember getting out of bed and looking and this bronze statue was literally rifling through my mother's purse, which was really weird. I thought I might've been dreaming. I still to this day wonder if I was.
It turned around, looked at me and chased me down the hall to my parents' room, where I jumped up into the middle of their bed. I jumped underneath their covers. I started kicking and screaming, because I was sure Pan had followed me up onto the bed. When my mom and dad woke up and turned the lights on, there wasn't anything on the bed. Of course, when I told my mom that her statue had been in her purse, she laughed at me.
My mom and dad went out into the living room to check to see what was going on; my mom's purse was sprawled out all over the floor, and the statue was knocked over in the kitchen. This statue was really heavy, about 30 pounds because it was bronze. As a small child, there's no way I could've picked it up.
I couldn't go anywhere near the statue after that. It really scared me, so eventually my mom ended up selling it. Regardless, the whole experience defied logical explanation.
-Kat, California
61. A Strange and Fantastic Voyage
I was 15-years-old and I was at my best friend's house. Her mother wasn't home. My friend Lorene was doing chores, and I was just hanging out. I was alone in her living room just sitting on her couch. I was bored, so for some reason I started to look at my right hand. As I sat there, looking at the lines of my hand I felt a buzz in my ear. The next thing that I realized, I felt like I was inside my hand. In the '60s, there was that movie, Fantastic Voyage, where the people go in the little tiny spaceship and go inside the human body. It was kind of like that.
First, I felt like I actually went inside my body and then suddenly, I felt as though I were outside of it. My awareness was hovering maybe about 10 feet away at ceiling level from where my body was sitting on the couch. Next thing I knew, I was looking at myself on the couch, which is not the same as looking at yourself in the mirror. It was very strange, but I got really excited. You would think that I'd be terrified, but I wasn't.
Maybe it was because I was a naïve young girl, but I thought, "Woo hoo, I'm out of my body! Man, let's go! Wow, I can fly." I don't know how long I actually stared at myself. I remember actually feeling like I was looking down and wondering, "Wow, where are my arms and legs? I kind of feel like I have them, but then I don't." I could see myself, still sitting on the couch, looking at my hand but I still had this out of body awareness.
Now that I wasn't shackled by my body, I decided that I wanted to cruise the neighborhood. I went through the ceiling and I remember being surprised that I could actually see the construction of the house and the roof. I could see the inside of the structure. As soon as I popped above the roof, where I could see the street around me, I felt the sensation of being pulled back down into the room, very quickly.
Next thing I knew, my friend walked into the room. I was screaming at the top of my lungs, "Lorene, look at me, look at me! Look at me, I'm out of my body." I was flying over her head. She just looked at me on the couch and paused for a moment. Then, she just continued on doing her chores.
Suddenly, I was aware of these disembodied male and female voices. They were five feet away from me and were talking to each other in hushed tones. One said, "What do we do?" Another replied, "I don't know, she's not supposed to be here."
I was trying to figure it all out. During this time, my senses felt very heightened. The next thing I knew, about five feet to my right there was a pinpoint of brilliant, bright light. This pinpoint of light was from a different direction than the voices.
I was just curious as to what was going on. This was almost forty years ago, so it was well before "going to the light" stories were popular. I had certainly never heard of them.
I could hear the voices saying, "Shush, shush, she's here" or something like that. I looked at that light, and it was tremendously bright but it didn't hurt my eyes.
Then, a woman's voice originated from the pinpoint of light and it started talking to me. I can't remember everything that she said because of the excitement and outrageousness of it all. This very calming female voice told me all kinds of things about my life. She said that I would have two daughters. She added, "One of them will do something that will scare you." I remember that I immediately had a very protective emotion. A fear over something that didn't even really exist yet. I didn't have children because I was only 15.
At the time, I said, "Oh my God, oh my God, what should I do? What should I do? Should I take her to church?" One of the male voices from that group there said, in a very, very strong voice, "You could do that."
I remember one of the disembodied voices saying, "Shush, she's not supposed to tell her that." One of the other ones said, "Shh, be quiet." It was as if this woman's voice from the bright beam was superior to them in some way.
The superior female voice said, "You have to go back." She said, "You're going to help a lot of people." I thought OK. I didn't want to go back. It was the feeling of being like a little kid when your mom said, "Okay, it's time to go to bed now," and you reply, "No, I don't want to go." I felt myself being literally pushed back to my body.
When I went back into my body, it was a very slow process, and I went in through my feet. It seemed like that took a long time for me to go in and fit back into my body. I didn't move for a long time, I think partly because I didn't want to return.
I didn't tell anybody about it for several years, because I had to process it. I thought nobody would believe me and that they would just laugh. It was too fantastic and too real. I couldn't stand the thought of anybody laughing at me. If someone told me this story I'd think that they were nuts. Yet, it was real. When I finally did tell someone, she said, "Oh my God, did you ever think that you might've been dead?" I said, "No, not at all. I was more alive than ever." I don't think I was dead at all. I don't think I was having a near-death experience. I think I just was out of my body for a little while. I was young and excited and I wanted to go.
-Diane, California
62. Doppelgänger Delivery
I was in high school during the late '90s. One day, I was just sitting in class when one of the office assistants came into my classroom and had three white Oxford style shirts with her. Apparently, they were for me. I recognized them as mine, but I couldn't figure out why they were brought in for me. I thought my mom had just lost it and, for some reason I didn't know, thought I needed them. I was just really confused why the shirts were sent to me. I didn't ask for them, and I didn't know anything about it.
So, at lunch, I called my mom and said, "Why did you send these shirts to school? I don't need these." She had no idea what I was talking about. She was on the other line with my dad, and she clicked back over and said, "Your dad said that you called him and said you needed them." There was only one problem, I'd never done any suc
h thing.
I'm a little OCD sometimes, and the day or two before I had just rearranged my closet and reorganized it. I don't have any brothers or sisters and nobody but my parents had been in my room. I told my mom, "Hang up. Tell Dad to hang up. I'm calling him." I called and told him that I'd never called or asked for any shirts. He said, "Yes, you did. You called me and you told me exactly what shirts you needed, exactly how many there were, exactly where they were in your closet, and you told me where I needed to take them at school. You said you needed them." I insisted I never called him.
It might be natural to think that it was a prank but that doesn't make sense either. This happened in the middle of the school day, and even back then, a lot of people had cell phones. But the fact was that in the 90's most people didn't carry them throughout the day in school. Most of us just kept them in lockers or whatever because they were very basic. There weren't apps or anything like that.
My dad owned his own business, and this call was made to his business line. The only people who might have even thought to do that would have been my close friends, and my dad knew them all very well. He would have recognized their voices. I really have a hard time believing that anybody, especially my friends, would have done that to somebody who was in the middle of a work day. It would be very uncharacteristic of any of them to do that. I didn't really have enemies, per se. It didn't seem to fit. My dad swore up and down, "No, it was you. It was you. It was the same inflections in your voice, the same everything." A parent knows their own child's voice. It was very scary to me.
Another thing about it not being a prank is that I don't see what the point would have been. It wasn't funny and it was completely random. So to me, if somebody was going to pull a prank, I just don't see them doing that. There doesn't seem to be any payoff.
I really don't know what happened. Some people I've talked to say it sounds like poltergeist activity. I really don't know. Was it a doppelgänger calling out for laundry?
-Amanda, Indiana
63. The Headless Conductor's Lamp
This is a very unusual story, but it's absolutely true. I live in Arkansas and there's been this urban legend in my area for decades. There is a road heading out of my town and if you drive on it, you're supposed to see this mysterious light. The light is supposedly from the lamp of a dead train conductor. He was decapitated and is said to be still walking around with his little light, trying to find his head.
I had been out on this road about 200 times in my life and saw absolutely nothing. The road had no houses on it; it was about four miles long and was spooky because the trees hang over the road. Since it is out in the country, there are no streetlights, so it is pitch black.
One time my mother drove a bunch of us out there and we really didn't expect to see anything. Of course, we were about 13-years-old and there were four of us in the back and three in the front. I was sitting behind my mother. We were driving down this pitch black road and all of a sudden the girl next to me says, "What is that?" I turned and looked out my window, and there was a light in the trees following us. We were going about 45 or 50 miles per hour. It was coming from the side where it was dark and I thought it very strange.
I asked my mom, "What is that?" We went another 50 yards and it disappeared. Then the girl on the other side of the car started yelling. We looked. It had moved to within a foot from the window in the air right next to our car. It was maintaining pace with us. Of course, everybody started screaming! This was in 1972, so there wasn't a lot of technology back then that could do something like this. Everybody started screaming and I kept asking my mother, "What is it? What is it?" She said, "I don't know. I don't know." It just kept following us.
Then it zipped behind the car as we're going down the road at 40 or 50 miles per hour. It went in front of the windshield and we could see it. It wasn't way up in the air only about a foot from the window. This thing was a big ball of light. There was nothing inside it, no object, because I was close enough that I could touch it. It was just light. It was about the size of a basketball. By this time, we had complete pandemonium in the car.
My mother started yelling, "Y'all be quiet, y'all be quiet!" Also, you have to understand my mother. She believed in absolutely nothing paranormal and never did until the day she died. So this kind of shook her up. This light went around the car and then it was in front of us, about 20 feet in the air. My mom started to slow down and I asked, "What are you doing?" She said, "I'm going to find out what this is." She stopped the car. The light was just hanging up there. It had stopped also. She turned off her headlights; it was still there.
It's crazy. I wouldn't have believed this if I hadn't have been there with my mother. She opened the passenger door, stepped out and as soon as she did, it was gone. It just disappeared. She stood outside for a few minutes and we were all screaming, "Get back in the car!" We thought it really was some guy with no head because we were young kids. We were screaming. So she got back in the car and I said, "Mother, what is it?" She said, "I don't know, but we're getting out of here. We're leaving."
We started going down this road again, and we went a mile or so with no sign of the light, so we thought it was gone. Well, no, it wasn't! The thing popped up again in front of us. It chased us or stayed right with us always keeping at the same distance. My mother went up to about 70 miles per hour at that point, because she wanted to see if it would follow us. It did follow us all the way until we left that road.
After that, I probably went out there 50 more times and I never saw it again. I would tell this story every once in a while and somebody would say, "You're full of it. No way this happened." I said, "Ask my mother." She would say, "Yes, it happened just like she said. I don't want to talk about it."
When we were talking privately, I'd ask her, "What do you think that was, Mother?" She'd say, "I don't know. I don't want to talk about it." I mean, she'd cut it right off.
Even my father told me later on, that episode had shaken her for a couple of years. She didn't believe in anything – no UFOs, no anything. Nothing paranormal. She had a hard time trying to square her beliefs with what she saw.
-Cindy, Arkansas
64. My First Amusement Park
I grew up Catholic, so we weren't supposed to believe in things like ghosts and spooks. Yet, ever since I was a child, I've had this weird obsession with anything paranormal. I would ask my dad to tell me ghost stories instead of bedtime stories like other kids. My parents never knew where it came from because none of them are obsessed with these types of things.
I think it started when I was about four or five. I kept getting this picture in my mind of me sitting in a stroller. At least, I assumed I was sitting in a stroller because in this vision I was at about that height. I was looking up at the back of my mother and she had this blue and white knitted short-sleeved sweater that I always remember her wearing when I was small. In this vision, my mom was at an amusement park waving to my sister and my dad on one of those pirate ship rides that goes back and forth.
I just thought I was having a memory from when I was a toddler or something like that. It kept popping into my head and so, as a little girl, I went to my mother and I told her about this. I asked, "When did we ever go to an amusement park and where was this?" Her face went completely pale, and she said that all four of us had never gone to an amusement park together.
Strangely enough, what I had described to her was the day she found out she was pregnant with me. My family had gone to an amusement park that day and she couldn't get on the ride because she was so nauseous. She had an inkling, but it wasn't until later that night she confirmed she was pregnant with me.
I think that's what kicked my obsession with the paranormal into gear. I've never heard of anyone else who has recounted that type of experience. So far, it is one of a kind as far as I know.
-Maggie, California
65. The UFO Kids
It was the summer of 1999. I was about to go into the 9th grade. Some friends o
f mine got together and we were going to have one last hoorah before we started going through that growing up phase. The five of us were spending the night at my friend's house. We were doing the normal thing that kids do, Truth or Dare, video games, stuff like that. We all had our sleeping bags out on his trampoline and we were all spiraled around it. We were talking about life, aliens, ghosts and just talking in general.
We quieted for a little bit and we were ready to fall asleep. All of a sudden, we notice this green, glowing orb. I would describe it as being about as high in the sky as a low-flying plane, and it was about the size of a full moon. It seemed like it was just hovering. As we saw it above our heads, we all shot up on the trampoline to look up at it. It seemed like it took off just due north at an incredible speed. It passed over and out of sight over my friend's house.
There was no sound to it. Shortly after it went out of view, the whole northern skyline just lit up red, as if something had exploded. Of course, we all looked at each other and asked, "You saw that?" Everyone said, "Yeah." Then we just took off running around the house to see if we could see anything else. Nothing. We noticed some neighbors a little bit down the way and we asked them if they saw something. They said they saw it too. Another neighbor, who drove a truck for a living, was pulling into his driveway and he said he saw it as well. To this day, I'm not sure what it was.
