It’s not scary but I had a dream where I woke up to the phone ringing and my uncle telling me that my grandmother had died. When I got out of bed my mother told me that my uncle had called about an hour before to tell her that my grandmother had died.
That’s spooky enough for me!
Thread winner!
Not really a scary story, but perhaps one about the loosening of material bonds/limitations near death.
My grandmother died at the age of 94. I had nursed her at her home over a long period, from the time she began to fail until her death. For the last five months of this time, she was basically what we unfortunately call a ‘vegetable; she was bed-ridden, blind and deaf, and she didn’t recognize anybody anymore. There was no way to actually converse, because what was left of her mind was all over the place. When she spoke at all, her words made no sense – usually she was calling to relatives long dead; and once, she seemed to be seeing Jesus.
During that time, I had to do laundry by going out of the apartment and to the back of the building, into a laundry facility. One day in deep November, when it was very cold, I was walking back there with a load of laundry. I was tired, sad, worn out from the work of caring for her, and very depressed by the impending loss of this person who had been my ‘mother’, really, and my greatest friend. But I happened to notice that even in the cold, there was a lush, perfect patch of beautiful clover growing. It inspired me and lifted my spirits so much that I felt a great rush of happiness and relief.
When I got back into the apartment, I puttered around for a while and then went back to the bedroom, to check on my Grandmother. Out of the blue, she said very coherently, “Wasn’t that clover beautiful?” The most clear, coherent speech we’d heard from her in many months.
Remember, she was blind, deaf, absolutely bed-ridden, and mostly out of her mind at that point. There was no way that she could have gotten out of bed, looked out the window, and seen the clover.
This wasn’t the only time it happened. A friend of mine who sometimes helped me with her care experienced something very similar a little while later, where Granny seemed to know of an item that had been brought into the house, but which she couldn’t possibly have known about.
This always seemed to me to be evidence of a ‘blurring’ of the boundaries between minds, which may happen near death, and which many people seem to have noticed. I don’t know – it’s one of those mysteries that many of us experience but can’t explain.