On one hand I believe in ghosts. On the other hand, I don't believe that most people see them. I suppose part of the contradiction in my beliefs is the uncertainty as to origins, lore, and explanations of any ghostly presence.
There are numerous movies about ghosts or spirits or somehow corrupted beings that have either come back to earth from another place (that is generally unpleasant) or never left and are really pissed off, or suffused with evil, or some such thing.
I think that the reality of lingering or visiting spirits is simpler, and lighter.
A week before Christmas my daughter-in-law heard and saw some things in her house that frightened her. She heard footsteps in a room where there were no people, and saw a shadow cross the front door. When I lived in the house she is in, I never sensed any presence of any kind, and I consider myself pretty open to that kind of thing. People had died in that house long before I lived there. And since.
The interesting thing here is the date of my girl's experience. It was one day shy of the eighteenth anniversary of my grandmother's death. And Gram died IN that house. I do believe that if my girl really heard and saw something, then it was Gram.
This morning my dogs were looking out the sliding glass door and whining and growling at the fence top. When I got up and looked I saw a black cat sitting on the fence in one corner. A cat on the fence is not a common sight in our yard, but not unheard of. The slightly freaky thing is that the cat was the spitting image of our Sammy who died a year and six days ago, and who is buried in the back yard below the spot where the cat was sitting. When I brought my husband over to the door to see the cat, it was gone. Now, I'm not saying that I crossed the room to fetch him and when we both came back the cat was gone. I was standing looking at the cat, I motioned him over while I could see the cat. I moved out of the way so he could stand where I was, and when he looked the cat was gone.
Yes, the cat could very well have simply jumped off the fence in the moment it took for us to change places. And that may very well be exactly what happened. The dogs saw the cat before I did. And then it was gone. And it looked just like Sammy who we still miss.
The idea of loved ones coming back to visit is comforting. The concept that they loved us so strongly in life that they still feel connected to us in death makes the abandoned little girl in me feel special in a way my own parents never could.
Or this could all be a reaction to the brandy I put into my coffee this morning.
1 comment:
No, they're real. For the longest time, and in several houses, an invisible cat would jump up on the bed, walk around and settle down by my feet. I'd look up to see which cat it was, but no one was there... In our SF house I and our roommate at the time occasionally saw a cat flying though our kitchen, but there would be no cat in the kitchen when I ran out to check. I'm betting Sammy may well have visited you. I'm also betting that the brandy made the coffee extra delicious and sustaining.
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