The following is a former winner of the Amazing but Incredibly True Story Contest.
Copyright Muse Enterprises for the author, 1997
The women in my family on both sides have been blessed with a seeing that has at times proved helpful or supportive and at others just plain eery. My grandmother used her needle dangling from a thread to circle the abdomens during the pregnancy of each daughter and granddaughter,"guessing" correctly at the baby's gender, birth date and due date and foretelling for the future mother her new child's personality and gifts. Her "old country" stories kept all of us riveted to ourchairs as she told of strange happenings and fortuitous visions that had eased our family's path before arrival in the new land.
My other grandmother forbade us to ever use the Ouija board, only hinting ominously about some terrible encounter she herself had experienced in the early 1920's. Her ancient Victorian mother read our tea leaves and warned us of our futures if we did not heed her words. So none of us were surprised that to varying degrees my sisters, my mother and myself were sometimes visited with a strong sense of deja vu or a foreboding about events to come. My mother continued to hold long conversationswith her mother and grandmother after their deaths, stopping at appropriate times to hear the to-us inaudible replies they made.
Our father was a journalist. He was not a seer himself, but he was a believer after growing up surrounded by his aunts and mother. One cold February he had set off for a European junket where he had a number of stories to cover. We said goodby to him, knowing that we would not speak with him for several weeks.
What we didn't know was that one of his stories included a visit to a haunted English mansion where he was to sleep in the room supposedly haunted by a ghostly "white lady." He expected to sleep comfortably and cover the story as a journalist would by writing about the tales others told of the White Lady, which he would then include in the article for Reader's Digest of interesting places to visit. We also didn't know when he expected to return, since in those days you came home when a seat was available on a transatlantic flight.
One night at about 11 pm something awoke my mother and me. We met on the stairs, convinced that we could hear my father calling my mother's name from out on the terrace. My mother called to the rest of us to wake up to greet our father and we all ran downstairs to welcome him home. My mother wrestled with the heavy front door of our white elephantfarmhouse and flung it open. We ran out into the dark night calling for him. We couldn't find him and we could no longer hear his voice. Worried, we got flashlights and combed the yard to no avail. My mother told me we must have been dreaming and chased us back to bed, but I knew that I had been asleep and had been awakened by my father's calls. I KNEW it. The next day, I realized that my mother knew it too because I overheard her calling the airline to see if he had indeed caught a flight home.
When at last my father returned, he told this tale. The same night that my mother and I heard him call us, he had been dutifully asleep in the "haunted" room. A sudden chill had caused him to slowly awake, and his eyes had become fixed on the door to the room where a misty light was growing to human size and assuming the shape of a ghostly woman. Startled and frightened, he had called my mother's name. Jumping out of bed, he had turned the lights on and slowlythe shape had dissipated and the chill had vanished. . The time? About 4 am, British time.
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