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: Tue, 15 Dec 1998 10:58:58 -0800 (PST)
To: ghost-stories@aurora.cdb.com
From: "Michelle J. Morgan" (morgnz@ida.net)
Subject: Ghost Story of the Day
Being a faithful reader of your ghost stories of the day, I decided to send you an interesting (though not particularly frightening) story of my own. In 1978, my older brother, Kelly, was killed in an automobile accident. At the time he was in the Navy and was stationed in Long Beach California. Kelly had been home on leave about three weeks before and had acted somewhat strange. For instance, he spent a whole day going around visiting old friends of the family. The odd thing about that was, most of these people were my parents' friends and Kelly was only 18. The last couple of days of Kelly's leave, he became really obnoxious; arguing with everyone, bothering my sister, brother, and me, just anything he could to upset us. Finally my mother figured out that he was trying to make us mad at him so we wouldn't be sad to see him go when his leave was up. After she told him it wouldn't work and we would love him no matter what he did, he went back to being my loving big brother.
Anyway, on Sunday, August 13, Kelly was killed when the car he had bought on leave, lost the brakes and steering while he was going down a hill in Long Beach. At the bottom of the hill was an old overpass that had been cemented in. You had to make either a right or left turn at the bottom of the hill. Without brakes and steering, they estimated that the car hit the wall at 80 mph. Witnesse's said they could see Kelly trying to get out of the car, but in his panic, he forgot to unlock the door (back then the locks were manual) and the door wouldn't open.
My family was notified the next day, by Navy personnel, and were told that it would be about a week before the Navy would release my brother's body because they had to do an autopsy to make sure he wasn't under the influence of anything. (He wasn't, and it was determined the car was the cause of the wreck.) While the rest of us were understandably distraught, my Mother just plain wouldn't accept Kelly's death. She would tell anyone who would listen that Kelly was just out to sea and would call when he got to shore, etc. We were becoming increasingly worried about my mom and Dad even thought maybe we needed to get her checked out, thinking the death had caused her to have a breakdown or something.
Suddenly on friday of that week, Mom came downstairs crying and saying that she knew Kelly was really dead after all. After some time, we found out what finally convinced her. She said that she woke up early that morning. It was still pretty dark outside and in her room. She sat up in bed and, being a smoker, she lit a cigarette. Just then she noticed someone at the door to her room. She saw Kelly leaning against the doorway, smiling at her. She said he was dressed in his Navy dress uniform. Thinking she was imagining things, she turned away and shook her head. When she looked back he was still standing there smiling at her. She said that was when she realized that Kelly was, in fact dead and that he was letting her know that he was still around and doing fine. After that, she accepted his death and dealt with.