This is a common subject here. If you search for such threads, you'll find a number of them. I've gotten so I keep a text file to copy rather than recall some of my experiences in real-time:
It was an unsolicited event in 1983. I woke up one morning, getting ready to go to work. Headed towards the hall leading to my vanity and closet and stopped in my tracks to see my 83 year old grandmother at the end of the hall smiling at me. Interesting, considering my grandmother was not visiting and lived nearly 800 miles away. Plus last I heard she was in the hospital.
Within two or three seconds she simply vanished. Evaporated into thin air. I still recall shaking my head over what I thought I saw. Seemed so preposterous at the time I just shook it off and left for work. Later I received a phone call from my mother telling me that her mother had passed away the night before in the hospital. I was stunned...but chose to keep what I thought I saw to myself. Within the same month, I did go to my doctor to find out if I had some kind of conscious hallucination. They couldn't find anything overtly wrong at all. Of course I have no pathological history of hallucinations or substance abuse.
I spent nearly the next 20 years in deep denial about this experience, and I eventually started reaching out to other lucid people online who claimed to have similar experiences. And of course, the subject of paranormal investigations started popping up on television. I began to have a sense of validation instead of enduring the usual skepticism and condemnation. But even my own immediate family members balked at my experiences when I finally told them.
In 2003 in the middle of an afternoon in a bedroom, I was working on a computer. I was sitting on a sofa with a monitor on a tv tray facing towards the door. Suddenly through the top of my glasses I noticed someone standing at the doorway which was no more than say three feet away. I just assumed it was my mother who needed something. (I began being a full-time caregiver to her the year before). As I changed my focus and and looked up, instead of my mother standing there it was a woman I didn't recognize. She looked startled as much as I must have. I didn't flinch...but was thinking of when ET and Gerdie met eye-to-eye...lol.
The woman was wearing a red blouse, a black skirt and had her hair in a bun....looking sort of like Olive Oyl from Popeye. Definitely had some kind of nostalgia thing going. But before I could utter a word, like my grandmother she simply evaporated in front of me. Gone. I was speechless. And pretty shook up. This was no hallucination. I was alert and focused working on an old computer operating system, trying to rehabilitate a "legacy" computer in broad daylight. Whoa............but who was this person? What were they doing in my home and why?
This time I didn't try to go into denial again. Quite the opposite I couldn't get the woman's startled face out of my mind. I had never seen her before....or so I thought. I couldn't let go of that image. Eventually for some reason, that face started to appear familiar to me, and I started looking at old family photos. Sure enough, I came across that face again. But the picture was dated 1930. It WAS my grandmother. But from another time and place.
No, I haven't had any such "visitations" since. However it has always bothered me as to why me? I loved my grandmother, but no more than all my other cousins who frankly lived much closer to her and were more familiar to her. Or was I simply the one grandchild who is more receptive and sensitive to her materializing on this plane? Did she have some kind of "message" for me? I have no idea. It continues to weird me out to this day. Why me? Lately I ponder a bit on whether having mild autism is a factor in this to some degree. I really can't say. But no, I don't have conscious hallucinations or hear "voices".
After that I went from an ambivalent agnostic to something very different. I'm not prepared to explain things in any detail, but for myself I know there is far more out there than we can see. Is it a belief to me? Not really. I just consider myself more of an eye-witness. Do I seek to prove such experiences? No, I can't. Nor do I care. It's my reality. The rest of you must seek whatever your reality may be.
And of course a few years later I got reacquainted with my cousin (from a different side of the family) who has also had paranormal experiences of her own. We both live in the same area now, and occasionally attend paranormal investigations. Interestingly enough, we've both witnessed paranormal phenomena occasionally with several witnesses.
It was an unsolicited event in 1983. I woke up one morning, getting ready to go to work. Headed towards the hall leading to my vanity and closet and stopped in my tracks to see my 83 year old grandmother at the end of the hall smiling at me. Interesting, considering my grandmother was not visiting and lived nearly 800 miles away. Plus last I heard she was in the hospital.
Within two or three seconds she simply vanished. Evaporated into thin air. I still recall shaking my head over what I thought I saw. Seemed so preposterous at the time I just shook it off and left for work. Later I received a phone call from my mother telling me that her mother had passed away the night before in the hospital. I was stunned...but chose to keep what I thought I saw to myself. Within the same month, I did go to my doctor to find out if I had some kind of conscious hallucination. They couldn't find anything overtly wrong at all. Of course I have no pathological history of hallucinations or substance abuse.
I spent nearly the next 20 years in deep denial about this experience, and I eventually started reaching out to other lucid people online who claimed to have similar experiences. And of course, the subject of paranormal investigations started popping up on television. I began to have a sense of validation instead of enduring the usual skepticism and condemnation. But even my own immediate family members balked at my experiences when I finally told them.
In 2003 in the middle of an afternoon in a bedroom, I was working on a computer. I was sitting on a sofa with a monitor on a tv tray facing towards the door. Suddenly through the top of my glasses I noticed someone standing at the doorway which was no more than say three feet away. I just assumed it was my mother who needed something. (I began being a full-time caregiver to her the year before). As I changed my focus and and looked up, instead of my mother standing there it was a woman I didn't recognize. She looked startled as much as I must have. I didn't flinch...but was thinking of when ET and Gerdie met eye-to-eye...lol.
The woman was wearing a red blouse, a black skirt and had her hair in a bun....looking sort of like Olive Oyl from Popeye. Definitely had some kind of nostalgia thing going. But before I could utter a word, like my grandmother she simply evaporated in front of me. Gone. I was speechless. And pretty shook up. This was no hallucination. I was alert and focused working on an old computer operating system, trying to rehabilitate a "legacy" computer in broad daylight. Whoa............but who was this person? What were they doing in my home and why?
This time I didn't try to go into denial again. Quite the opposite I couldn't get the woman's startled face out of my mind. I had never seen her before....or so I thought. I couldn't let go of that image. Eventually for some reason, that face started to appear familiar to me, and I started looking at old family photos. Sure enough, I came across that face again. But the picture was dated 1930. It WAS my grandmother. But from another time and place.
No, I haven't had any such "visitations" since. However it has always bothered me as to why me? I loved my grandmother, but no more than all my other cousins who frankly lived much closer to her and were more familiar to her. Or was I simply the one grandchild who is more receptive and sensitive to her materializing on this plane? Did she have some kind of "message" for me? I have no idea. It continues to weird me out to this day. Why me? Lately I ponder a bit on whether having mild autism is a factor in this to some degree. I really can't say. But no, I don't have conscious hallucinations or hear "voices".
After that I went from an ambivalent agnostic to something very different. I'm not prepared to explain things in any detail, but for myself I know there is far more out there than we can see. Is it a belief to me? Not really. I just consider myself more of an eye-witness. Do I seek to prove such experiences? No, I can't. Nor do I care. It's my reality. The rest of you must seek whatever your reality may be.
And of course a few years later I got reacquainted with my cousin (from a different side of the family) who has also had paranormal experiences of her own. We both live in the same area now, and occasionally attend paranormal investigations. Interestingly enough, we've both witnessed paranormal phenomena occasionally with several witnesses.
