Believe It or Not

I do not particularly believe in ghosts, nor do I particularly believe in other supernatural phenomena. On the other hand, I don’t disbelieve, either. I have never really been convinced either way. Where is the evidence? However, there are some events that cannot be easily explained. I know this to be a fact.

My family has always been rather close-knit. Even when spread across miles - even a half-world away, there seems to be connections between members of the family. I grew up listening to stories of things that had happened in my family... things that could have been ‘coincidences’.

One such story was the tale of my uncle. As a teen, he had spent the night with some friends. He grew sick and they brought him home. My Mother and Grandmother had left to go shopping before he arrived home. But for some reason, my Grandmother said, “Something is wrong... we need to go home!” So they turned around and went home. There they found my uncle, with a ruptured appendix. If they had not returned home when they did, chances are he would have been beyond help, if not dead, by the time he was found.

A few years later, his younger brother was drafted into the Army, and served in Vietnam. In a time of crisis, when many men in his unit were killed, he cried out in anguish for his mother. Half a world away, my Mother (his second Mom growing up) and his Mother (my Grandmother), living in separate states, woke up in the middle of the night, hearing him call out....

I grew up hearing these stories... and believing them. But, it’s like the Grand Canyon. Part of you can believe it, but ... it’s not the same until you have seen it. You see the pictures, and you hear the stories, but you cannot possibly imagine the truth of the enormity of the place until you visit it in person.

A few years ago, I was working a late shift, and sleeping during the day. I had a very vivid dream about my brother, one which shook me up, badly. In my dream, he was driving a farm tractor, pulling a bush-hog (something that he does do). In the dream, the bush-hog struck a fallen log, causing it to go forward and hit him in the back.... All I, the observer, could see, was that he was laying across the steering wheel of the tractor, unconscious, while it continued down it’s path. I can remember running after the tractor, but then I woke up. It was so real – so vivid. I didn’t know if he was dead or hurt or what.

I had to get ready for work – and I went... but at my break-time that evening, I made a call to my mother. It seems my brother had been in an accident. The details were nothing like those in my dream, but.... At this point in his life, he was working in a mine. Part of his job was to double-check connections to explosives before they were detonated. He went down in the ‘hole’ to check things out, and came across a bad connection. He disconnected the wire while working on it. Along about that time, the other miner called all clear, well away from the hole (where he couldn’t hear), and ‘pushed the plunger’. Explosive charges went off all around him, but the one he was at, luckily, was still disconnected – and so did not explode.

For a few weeks, he was hard of hearing – almost deaf for a few days. That was the worst of his injuries. The various charges which had been set did their work – but whether it was luck, or divine intervention, or whatever, my brother’s life was spared.

I actually had my dream the morning after the explosive events occurred. At the time of my dream, my mother was writing me a letter, telling me of the events surrounding him. Was there some ‘connection’ between myself and my brother – or my mother, for that matter? Or was my dream simply a coincidence? If it was a coincidence – why was it so real to me, that it scared me, making me go back and call her? I do sometimes remember dreams, even vividly – but I’ve rarely ever had a dream that shook me to my core the way that one did.

Well... call me crazy, that’s okay. Maybe I am. I am not trying to convince anyone that either myself or any of my family members have any sort of psychic abilities. We’re just ordinary folks. We don’t bend spoons, or talk to each other mentally, or see the future. But, what happened was an interesting phenomenon, at least, to me.

The part of me which likes to see concrete evidence before I believe in things – the ‘Doubting Tom’, as it were, still thinks, “Yeah, right....” But, I have seen with my own eyes that sometimes things cannot be explained with science, with hard evidence. Some things just have to be accepted or rejected as they are.

Along those lines, I'll add one last comment. Maybe - just maybe... this is all fictional. Maybe I made it up. You decide. Just like ‘Ripley’s Believe It... Or Not”.