Beyond the Veil: Ghost Stories and Contacts from Beyond

 

Once in the long ago, there was a place on the internet much like Ricochet’s PIT. It had started out as the comment section for an odd news story, but it continued on with hundreds of thousands of comments long after that particular story was no longer accessible. Because of the initial story, it attracted an odd and quirky bunch who were soon camping out on the thread. One of these internet squatters was “Tor.”

Tor was hilariously funny. Over time, some of his history emerged. He had been a minor Olympian for his European nation. At one point, he had been in his country’s military and had participated in Desert Storm in the 1990s. Much later I found out he had also been in the forces involved in trying to protect civilians in the break-up of Yugoslavia. There was a lot of pain behind the funny.

When a bunch of yahoos decided to fly jumbo jets into buildings, Tor re-enlisted in his nation’s military. He was in his country’s special forces. He was sent somewhere, I was never certain where, although I had clues. The one thing I know is that wherever he was sent, his country was not officially there or participating. Remember when a photo in the news media outed the fact that some Polish forces were participating in, was it Iraq? Well, he wasn’t Polish, but he was in a similar situation. His nation’s government was fulfilling obligations, but did not want to admit it to the public. He was always cagey as to what was happening due to concerns over operational security.

Whatever place he was in, there was a bomb. One of what later became known as Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) took out a bus near where he and others happened to be standing. It blew him back hard, and he landed on his shoulder. He had minor injuries from shrapnel and scraping along a hard surface. He also had fibers from his flak jacket embedded in his shoulder. But, he got up and walked away from it, which was more than many were able to say from the incident. Three days later, he fell down dead. It was renal, liver, and heart failure.

Officially, since his country was not participating where the injury occurred, he had been injured in a training accident in his own country. Yes, governments lie.

Luckily for Tor, he was close to medical facilities, and he was quickly revived. The IED had had some chemical weapon included. It had taken a few days for the trace amount to which he had been exposed to shut down his systems. He was evacuated to a military hospital in Germany where he spent the next several months. The doctors were able to deal with the after-effects of the chemical weapon, but there were other complications from the initial injuries. He lost a few fingers to gangrene. But the thing that caused the most trouble for months on end were those fibers from his flak jacket that had been embedded in his shoulder. The area would not heal, and it became infected. The doctors finally determined that the arm and shoulder would have to come off.

In the months he had spent in the hospital, someone had suggested a new place on the internet for him to go, a place where wounded warriors used poetry as a form of therapy. As he knew I was a poet, he had brought me over there as well. We had spent time together through that site and communicated nearly daily. The site was a bit more private than the place we had initially met had been.

On the day he was to have surgery, I did not go on the internet at all.

I was doing dishes after dinner when I heard someone behind and above me laugh with the thought, “How domestic!” I immediately knew it was Tor coming to say goodbye. I dried my hands and went back to my office to turn on my computer and log in. There on the poetry therapy site was a fresh announcement from Tor’s brother. Tor had just passed a few minutes before. He had been too weak to survive the amputation surgery after months in the hospital.

My friends, I know that many of you have had contacts from those who have passed. What are your stories?

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  1. Mike LaRoche Inactive
    Mike LaRoche
    @MikeLaRoche

    Arahant (View Comment):

    Mike LaRoche (View Comment):

    RightAngles (View Comment):
    After reading all these. can someone please assure me that my father isn’t watching me, like ALL the time??!

    I can think of a way to find out. ?

    Gee, Mike, what’s your method? ?

    It’s not my method, but Greg’s. ?

    • #61
  2. Arahant Member
    Arahant
    @Arahant

    Mike LaRoche (View Comment):
    It’s not my method, but Greg’s. ?

    That’s what I was thinking of, too.

    • #62
  3. RightAngles Member
    RightAngles
    @RightAngles
    • #63
  4. RightAngles Member
    RightAngles
    @RightAngles

    Arahant (View Comment):

    Mike LaRoche (View Comment):
    It’s not my method, but Greg’s. ?

    That’s what I was thinking of, too.

    Haha! Yep, grab my butt and get struck by lightning.

    • #64
  5. Arahant Member
    Arahant
    @Arahant

    • #65
  6. MarciN Member
    MarciN
    @MarciN

    Arahant (View Comment):

    Hypatia (View Comment):
    He was someone who had always given a lot of thought to death and the dead–sounds morbid but he was Irish, so it really wasn’t.

    I laughed at this. I think @garymcvey would also appreciate it.

    My father-in-law was Irish and my mother-in-law was Italian. Nana used to be so annoyed with Pa. He’d start every day with the obituaries. :) “The Irish are so morbid” she would complain.

    When my daughter went to Ireland for the summer after she finished college, she called me one day to say, “Oh my gosh, Mom. If Nana were here, she’d be laughing. Every day at noon, they read the obituaries over the town’s public address system.” :) Too funny.

    • #66
  7. Hypatia Member
    Hypatia
    @

    RightAngles (View Comment):
    After reading all these. can someone please assure me that my father isn’t watching me, like ALL the time??!

    People aiways say that: they’re lookin’ down atcha!

    But I can’t help but wonder: then what do the dead do when everybody they knew is also dead?  Pick a person at random, like kids betting on which raindrop will get to the bottom of the windowpane first?

    • #67
  8. Arahant Member
    Arahant
    @Arahant

    Hypatia (View Comment):
    Pick a person at random, like kids betting on which raindrop will get to the bottom of the windowpane first?

    There is a story in that.

    • #68
  9. Hypatia Member
    Hypatia
    @

    MarciN (View Comment):

    Arahant (View Comment):

    Hypatia (View Comment):
    He was someone who had always given a lot of thought to death and the dead–sounds morbid but he was Irish, so it really wasn’t.

    I laughed at this. I think @garymcvey would also appreciate it.

    My husband is half Irish. His Italian wife used to be so annoyed with him. He’d start every day with the obituaries. ? “The Irish are so morbid” she would complain.

    When my daughter went to Ireland for the summer after she finished college, she called me one day to say, “Oh my gosh, Mom. If Nana were here, she’d be laughing. Every day at noon, the read the obituaries over the town’s public address system.” ? Too funny.

    My friend used to call the obituaries the “Irish sports pages”. I don’t know how to explain it, somehow they love death as much as life.  It’s really rather a good way to be…

    • #69
  10. Arahant Member
    Arahant
    @Arahant

    “Who are you going to watch today, Cyrus?”

    “I’m not sure yet, Leonidas. How about that little girl who is just waking up over yonder?”

    “I watched her a few days ago. She’s quite a handful. Just don’t get between her and the ice cream.”

    • #70
  11. MarciN Member
    MarciN
    @MarciN

    Hypatia (View Comment):

    RightAngles (View Comment):
    After reading all these. can someone please assure me that my father isn’t watching me, like ALL the time??!

    People aiways say that: they’re lookin’ down atcha!

    But I can’t help but wonder: then what do the dead do when everybody they knew is also dead? Pick a person at random, like kids betting on which raindrop will get to the bottom of the windowpane first?

    I once said something along those lines to my mother-in-law about this very thing. She had lost her husband and her oldest child (my dear friend Elaine passed away from cancer in her late forties). My mother-in-law was crying one day, and I said, “They are probably not too far away. You can probably see your whole earthly family after you die.” I was fumbling to say something that might give her a little bit of comfort, or at least a good laugh.

    She looked at me sharply and said, “What kind of heaven would that be? To keep on worrying? And to see all the suffering?”

    It was an interesting comment.

    • #71
  12. Percival Thatcher
    Percival
    @Percival

    MarciN (View Comment):

    Arahant (View Comment):

    Hypatia (View Comment):
    He was someone who had always given a lot of thought to death and the dead–sounds morbid but he was Irish, so it really wasn’t.

    I laughed at this. I think @garymcvey would also appreciate it.

    My husband is half Irish. His Italian wife used to be so annoyed with him. He’d start every day with the obituaries. ? “The Irish are so morbid” she would complain.

    When my daughter went to Ireland for the summer after she finished college, she called me one day to say, “Oh my gosh, Mom. If Nana were here, she’d be laughing. Every day at noon, the read the obituaries over the town’s public address system.” ? Too funny.

    You want to find out if anybody you didn’t like died as soon as you can so you can enjoy it all day long.

    • #72
  13. DocJay Inactive
    DocJay
    @DocJay

    Fascinating story.  Thank you.

    • #73
  14. Nanda Panjandrum Member
    Nanda Panjandrum
    @

    Have had a visit from my late youngest brother on my 30th birthday…An armful of the most brilliant and fragrant flowers  I’d ever seen; and a visit from my father shortly after his death…Both assured me of their well-being and love for me.  Mom P. is always here…. :-)

    • #74
  15. Arahant Member
    Arahant
    @Arahant

    Nanda Panjandrum (View Comment):
    An armful of the most brilliant and fragrant flowers I’d ever seen

    Reminds me of another story. My mother had a friend, Jim, who passed on. A few months later, she was going through the mail and came across this ad that had yellow roses. She didn’t know why, but she felt she should cut them out and send them to Helga, Jim’s widow. She had no idea why she felt that way, but she did it.

    A few months later, she called Helga to find out how she was doing. Helga thanked her for the clipping. Jim had always sent her yellow roses on their anniversary since he called her his yellow rose. (Helga was a blonde.) The clipping arrived on their anniversary. My mother had known none of this, but helped act as intermediary to deliver the yellow roses for Jim.

    • #75
  16. Boomerang Inactive
    Boomerang
    @Boomerang

    Jan (View Comment):
    In my 94 year-old grandmother’s last weeks we did hospice for her in the living room of the home she shared with my mother. We wanted her to feel centered within her family and took shifts so someone was always sitting with her.

    One night I was on over-night shift. The house full of sleepers was so quiet the only sounds were grandma’s labored breaths and the loud tick-tocking of the grandfather clock in the foyer. Through the long night I felt, intensely, that as long as I listened close, grandma would keep on breathing. Along about the time I saw faint sunlight reflect on the sky above the hills, I got up fretfully and paced silently around the living room, still urging grandma’s every breath and listening to the clock. Feeling chilly I went over to the couch to get the throw and wrap myself in its warmth. Then I sank down on the couch, promising I would sit in the softness just for a minute. Glancing at the clock, it was 5:33 a.m.

    Between the sound of grandma’s breath and the next tick of the clock, I slipped into sleep. And I dreamed.

    In my dream grandma made a huffing, rustling noise so I turned quickly to look at her and was alarmed to see her thin arms push her covers away and lever herself to a sitting position. Jumping up from the couch, I ran to her side to keep her from falling from bed. “Grandma!,” I shouted (because grandma was a bit hard of hearing), “Be still!” Grandma turned her face to me and smiled, a lop-sided radiant smile. She slipped her legs over the side of the bed, pushed her bedside tray full of pain medications out of the way, and said, “I don’t need those any more.” She gazed around the room, grasped both of my wrists and held my arms away from her. “I’m going to take a shower,” she announced. Her papery old hands released me, then caressed my cheeks softly. Turning, she walked easily into her bedroom and closed the door.

    I stood there as if taken root. I heard the shower go on, then off. I worried. More rustling sounds and grandma emerged from her room, luminous. And very young. Face fresh and unlined, body tall and lithe, her hair full and shining blue-black. Clothed in a purple gown, she twirled across the living room, turned her eyes to me and murmured, “Everything is okay.”

    Something soft and heavy suddenly thumped hard against my legs and I glanced down to see a large orange cat. My favorite kitty. Who had died four years before. He leaped against me again and commanded, “Wake UP!”

    And so I awoke. In the few minutes I had dreamed, grandma has passed on. It was 5:37 a.m.

    Wow, that’s amazing! What a gift!

    • #76
  17. Boomerang Inactive
    Boomerang
    @Boomerang

    Arahant (View Comment):

    Boomerang (View Comment):
    The next day my brother called to tell me that Josiah had been born.

    Reminds me of a dream I had recently, but the results of that one are still pending.

    What did you dream?

    • #77
  18. Dean Murphy Member
    Dean Murphy
    @DeanMurphy

    I’ve had several experiences like this.

    I was home from college during some break, and my room was in the basement.  I dreamt that I was at the bedside of my great aunt Lou.  She was a very nice and spunky lady.  If you’ve seen “Beetlejuice,” the character Juno, the case worker, reminded me of her a lot.

    I remember she was scared, and I was one of about a dozen people there, and we were reassuring her that we would stay with her while she “let go”.

    When I woke up, I heard the phone ring, and my Mom answered it.  When she hung up, I said to her “it was Louthella, wasn’t it?”

    She said that she had passed over night.

    • #78
  19. Annefy Member
    Annefy
    @Annefy

    I think I have told this story before but it’s a favorite.

    After my dad passed my mom kept dreaming about my dad. In her dream he was angry and frustrated. Not normal behavior for him, but we’d all seen it once or twice.

    A woman I knew spoke often of a friend who claimed she could talk to the dead. We ended up at the same party one night – unbidden she told me she saw an old guy hovering around me. (Pretty likely anyone my age knows an old guy who had passed so I wasn’t exactly convinced)

    But i told her about my mom’s dreams and that it was upsetting her as she didn’t know why my dad was mad.

    So random person proceeded to ask random old guy hovering around me. She told me my dad was frustrated that he had never told us how much he loved us.

    While that was true, we all knew he did.

    When I repeated all this to my mom she looked at me quizzically and said: does that sound right to you? I just shrugged.

    My mom then told me she thought my dad was mad because she hadn’t bought a big screen TV until after he had died

    • #79
  20. Arahant Member
    Arahant
    @Arahant

    Boomerang (View Comment):

    Arahant (View Comment):

    Boomerang (View Comment):
    The next day my brother called to tell me that Josiah had been born.

    Reminds me of a dream I had recently, but the results of that one are still pending.

    What did you dream?

    Short and highly-edited version: I was speaking with a guy who said he would be reincarnating soon. He said his name would be X (Name edited out), and that the name means Y (another name I have edited out). I was confused, since I know the meanings of both names, and their meanings don’t even have roots in common. Then I realized he meant his name had been Y in his last life but that it will be X in the new one. So, sort of an odd dream and odder impression by most people’s lights, but I have a feeling I shall be seeing him soon.

    • #80
  21. Little My Member
    Little My
    @LittleMy

    We always had a good laugh that one of the founders of the House of Love and Prayer in San Francisco was a psychiatrist, and another was a NASA engineer. The House was the “hippie synagogue” associated with Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach.

    I had the opportunity to help out our friend, the psychiatrist before he passed. Years later, I was going through a major crisis in my life, and in a dream, I saw Moshe, who only said to me “Hang in there,” and was gone.

    It gave me a lot of encouragement, and I gradually worked through the mess that was my life at that point.

     

    • #81
  22. Arahant Member
    Arahant
    @Arahant

    Little My (View Comment):
    Years later, I was going through a major crisis in my life, and in a dream, I saw Moshe, who only said to me “Hang in there,” and was gone.

    It’s funny how small these encounters sometimes are, and yet still so important.

    • #82
  23. Daphnesdad Member
    Daphnesdad
    @Daphnesdad

    There are many stories to tell from my years practicing past-life regressions and spirit releasement.

    A client I am able to speak about – she signed a release in the low-fee clinic – was a week away from a scuba diving vacation and experiencing great fear, though she had many hours of training and prep diving.

    We determined through the somatic bridge technique the answer was in a past life.  She moved through two past lives to the source of the feeling of fear.

    She was a man in his 50s in that lifetime, on a cruise.  He fell overboard at night after drinking too much all day in the hot sun.  He was surprised the water was so warm and green.  As he sank a shark swam up to him and somehow got the message to him that, “You don’t belong here,” as he drowned.   That was the focus of her fear of ocean diving.

    She and her husband were in their early 20s.  He asked to be present in the session, and I said it was up to her.  They both agreed he would stay and she could ask him to leave at any time she was not comfortable.

    She was weeping and asked him to leave at that time.

    The rest of the session dealt with guiding her own internal process to reframe the lesson from that lifetime, clarifying that as the only “stuck” place, and that a little fear while diving can be a good thing.

    All sessions begin and end with acknowledging this is sacred work done in a sacred space and everything we do will be for the highest good of everyone involved.

     

    • #83
  24. Arahant Member
    Arahant
    @Arahant

    Daphnesdad (View Comment):
    There are many stories to tell from my years practicing past-life regressions and spirit releasement.

    I think you just let something out of the bag there. ;)

    • #84
  25. Daphnesdad Member
    Daphnesdad
    @Daphnesdad

    Arahant (View Comment):

    Daphnesdad (View Comment):
    There are many stories to tell from my years practicing past-life regressions and spirit releasement.

    I think you just let something out of the bag there. ?

    A glimpse of Pandora’s wooden containment vessel?

    • #85
  26. Arahant Member
    Arahant
    @Arahant

    Daphnesdad (View Comment):
    A glimpse of Pandora’s wooden containment vessel?

    Not as much as the time I asked, “What is your church selling?” Now, that was a hornet’s nest. :D Still, sounds like you had an interesting practice.

    • #86
  27. Daphnesdad Member
    Daphnesdad
    @Daphnesdad

    Arahant (View Comment):

    Daphnesdad (View Comment):
    A glimpse of Pandora’s wooden containment vessel?

    Not as much as the time I asked, “What is your church selling?” Now, that was a hornet’s nest. ? Still, sounds like you had an interesting practice.

    Yes, my wife says I have several days of stories, now that she’s heard many of them more than once in our 19 years together.

    A unifying theme in both my court reporting and hypnotherapy careers is confidentiality is absolute.  It ends up being a good excuse not to write about either.  Of course, most court cases are public, and with hypno when there is a signed release . . .

    • #87
  28. Arahant Member
    Arahant
    @Arahant

    Daphnesdad (View Comment):
    Of course, most court cases are public, and with hypno when there is a signed release . . .

    That and writing to provide anonymity. It’s then called a case study, or some such. ;)

    • #88
  29. Kent Lyon Member
    Kent Lyon
    @NanoceltTheContrarian

    One of my college professors, Hugh Nibley, toward the end of his life described an experience that occurred when he was participating in Market Garden, in a foxhole somewhere in Holland. One morning his grandmother was standing at the foot of his foxhole. He waved at her. Later he received news that she had died that day, back in the USA. Nibley was an ancient history scholar, trained at Berkeley. He was teaching at the Claremont Colleges as a young professor when Pearl Harbor was attacked. He immediately went to the nearest recruiting office and signed up as a private in the army. His intellectual capacity was quickly recognized and he was sent to a training program for intelligence operatives, a program that included all kinds of strange individuals with superlative cognitive abilities. Of them all, Nibley was the only one who wound up on the front lines. He served as he intelligence person (he held the rank of Sergeant) for the 101st Airborne, that famed “Band of Brothers” as they moved through Europe after D Day (he was supposed to go into France on a glider on D-Day but a general took his seat–the glider crashed and all aboard were killed; Nibley drove the company jeep onto the beach on D-Day+1 and met his unit inland) although he got no mention in the book or the film version of that history. He knew every unit in the German Army. In Holland as part of Market Garden he tracked the movements of the Panzer tank divisions as they amassed opposite the center of the  American lines, and tried to warn his superiors of the coming offensive (which became known as the Battle of the Bulge) but was ignored. Nibley was a life-long devout Mormon and Professor at Brigham Young University. I took a class from him the first semester of my Freshman year there. During his long teaching career he never mentioned his WWII experiences.

    • #89
  30. Daphnesdad Member
    Daphnesdad
    @Daphnesdad

    As a court reporter in San Francisco Municipal Court I went wherever my judge was assigned.  In 1978 he was assigned to Department 1 on the third floor of City Hall, a grand building of granite and marble finished in 1913 after the 1906 earthquake and fire destroyed the earlier version.

    Soon after moving into the southeast corner courtroom I began hearing a clear message while sitting in my office in chambers.  It was always the same, “You will not be alive after November 29.”

    Made no sense to me as there was nothing in my life before that date that would raise the potential for my demise.  Driving an automobile in San Francisco is a game of guts ball at all times day or night, so that was always a possibility.  I was occasionally out and about at late hours from my work schedule — it was not unusual for me to be transcribing my notes until midnight — and serious crime happened everywhere in Frisco’s 49 square miles.

    I didn’t know it at the time but my desk in chambers was directly above the second floor office of Mayor George Moscone.  I was roughly 15 feet above him the moment he was assassinated by Dan White on November 28, 1978.

    The warnings stopped the same day.

    After, one of his aides described the mayor in the week leading up to his death as “jumpy,” and out of sorts.

    I believe I heard what he was hearing.

    • #90
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