This story a part of the True Ghost Stories page on Obiwan's UFO-Free Paranormal Page. Please do not copy or distribute without permission from Obiwan and/or the original author!
Date: Sat, 7 Nov 1998 21:52:20 -0800 (PST)
To: guestbook@ghosts.org
yourname Lynda
email circe_goddess@hotmail.com
story Well, I'm not sure how frightening this story will be but it is true -- at least my perspective.
I am now 25 years old and this event happened when I was 13. I had never experienced death before and this one was a shock. I had a cousin that I was very close to as a child. He was like an older brother to me and I loved him dearly. We were kind of like best friends. We only got to spend summers together as he lived over 2000 miles away in another province. But we kept in contact through phonecalls and letters.
We had not seen each other in person in almost three years so we missed a bit of "quality time" together until this particular summer; the summer of 1986. I had even missed our last phonecall, I went away to a bible camp for a week. While I was there, I went swimming in a river and nearly drowned. I jumped from the top of the raft into the water and went down VERY deeply. I lost my air and started breathing in water, I actually saw my life flash before my eyes. (Yes, it does happen that way.) It was a sobering experience and I didn't get back into the water again that trip. (to this day I prefer man made pools).
Three days later I was back at home and my Mother's family were coming to my house for a reunion of sorts. Mother's older brother was home from away and this was to be a party. I had just moved into my new bedroom into the basement and had been getting ready to show it off to the relatives.
Around 6pm in the evening (hours before the guests arrived) I had been sitting on my bed organizing some letters when I had this vision. I saw my cousin Daniel before my eyes. I had my eyes open and this was like a vision in my mind. The image was a bit wavy and he was wearing a pinkish t-shirt and his hair was billowing around his head. I can still clearly remember this image and it scares me to this day. At the time I brushed it aside and made a mental note to write him a letter telling him about my new bedroom.
Mother's family started arriving around 8:30pm and I was showing off my new bedroom to one of my cousins. The telephone rang at 9pm and I heard my mother answer it. She said, "Kathy, oh my God, what happened to him?" Her voice was shaking and I could hear the panic in her voice. (My father had been away on a trip to the province that my aunt lives in and I thought something had happened to him.)
My cousin and I ran upstairs as my mother was hanging up the phone. She was telling my aunt that she'd call back as soon as my grandparents arrived at our house. Mother started looking through the phonebook for a phone number and started to cry (my mother is a very private person and there were people in the house, this was alarming). One of my aunts asked her what happened. My mother kept looking at the phone book and said, "It's Daniel, he's... I can't say it." It was then that I looked at all of the adults in the kitchen and very calmly said, "He's dead." Mother started to cry and said yes.
All of the adults started to panic and then I started to scream no. It couldn't be, not my Daniel, my best friend. But, it was.
His body wasn't recovered until the next day. When the telephone rang, I knew it would be my aunt telling us that he had been found. I can't explain how I knew this, I just did. I refused to answer the phone because I didn't want it to be true.
I later found out that he drowned at the exact time I saw his vision. I think he may have been telling me goodbye. I'd like to think so.
But to continue with this story, I wanted to go to Quebec for the funeral. My family had decided that I was too young to attend a funeral for someone so close to my age.
I can't remember when it was after that I started having nightmares about my cousin. He was always in a pinkish t-shirt with glowing red eyes and his hair was billowing around his head -- just like the vision. He had never been in my room (before he died) but he would always come around the side of my bed with his hands outstretched trying to touch me. I would always wake up shaking and stay awake until dawn. I don't know why I always dreamt that he was going to hurt me but I did.
When I was 18 I went to Montreal to visit my aunt and I finally got to pay my respects to his grave. It was an emotional moment for me and I don't think I'll forget that moment of peace. He had been gone for five years and I missed him but I finally healed. The nightmares stopped. Bizzare, eh?
A year later, I moved to Montreal to live with my aunt for a while and late one night I told her about the nightmares I used to have about Daniel. My aunt can see things and so can I (apparently), we discussed a lot of these things and she told me that when Daniel drowned, he was wearing a tie dyed t-shirt that had been fuschia over his swimming trunks. It scared the hell out of me. I saw him drown, at the exact time of his death. There were two provinces between us and I saw it happen.
I swear to you, dear readers, that this happened to me. I can't explain it any better than this. I have had other things happen to me and I've seen things happen as well to others before they've happened. Not all of it has been bad but this has been the most significant.
Sorry about the length.