Anyone Want To Hear A True Story? It's a Ghost Story

I was thinking about ancestors and family and the people who have gone on to their next spin on the wheel and after seeing a IG post about a tarot spread to honor the dead I remembered this experience.  Up until my brothers death, I never pondered much on the spiritual side but once he died and I had 2 experience that blew my mind, I knew I had a journey of learning ahead of me. And that journey has not stopped yet.

So, while it is almost Halloween and the veil is thinning, here are 2 personal experiences I had the week after my brother died.  They still give me goosebumps to think of them. I think they also gave goosebumps to the few people I have told these stories too as well.

1 ~ One Last Trip Home

My brother died on August 8, 1997. He died sometime late at night, estimated at 11 PM.  None of us knew this at the time - we wouldn't know for another week. Yet, a few events surrounding this, echo.

It was a Friday night and my brother had left the house in the  mid-afternoon. Several of our neighbors saw him go and waved. We had lived in that house for 10 years so everyone knew everybody.  He had on his favorite  dark red hoodie, black jeans and his backpack. 

When he was finally found it hit us hard.  My parents lost it and I had to drive home while trying very hard not to think about anything. It wasn't easy.  I ended up having them taken to the hospital overnight because of how devastated they were. While I sort of meandered around the house alone, cleaning up and wondering why my brother killed himself.

I finally decided to pass some time on the upstairs computer, playing hand after hand of spider solitaire.  At 11 PM, I heard the front door open and close. At first I didn't think anything of it because it was a normal sound. Until I realized no one would be expected home...  Then I heard feet cross the flagstone entry, then the wooden flooring. My heart decided to have a speed race and I was having trouble breathing. The door to the hall was slanted so that I couldn't see the stairwell but I could HEAR feet, slowing coming up the stairs.  Frozen, I listened to them and just about fell out of the chair when the footsteps SKIPPED the 6th riser, which always creaked loudly, so we skipped it if we were coming in late. ONLY my brother and I did that.  

Having had zero interaction with anything supernatural and being completely overwrought, I realized as the footsteps were hitting riser 9 and 10 and almost to the top, I was saying over and over again, "no no no stop no no no."  And then the steps.. stopped.

I am not sure how long I sat there frozen but finally I forced myself to stand up and fling the door open and nothing was there... although I could smell my brother's aftershave. But he lived there so his scent was there - and while that was indicative of nothing conclusive. I knew it was him and I was both scared and sad that I may have missed seeing him.... but emotionally, I was too out of it to think straight.

Here comes the goosebumps:

The neighbor across the street was closing up her drapes that same night, when she glimpsed someone walking up our front walk. She was startled and alarmed at first as it was late, until she recognized the familiar walk and sweatshirt. Still, as she told us later, something made her shiver and she closed the curtains as her clock chimed the eleventh hour. (She wasn't aware that my brother had been found dead earlier that day)

After the funeral, she was hesitant to talk about it but felt it important. While cleaning up all the gifts of food and drink, she started telling us what she saw and when she saw it. She also told us that she believed in spirits. At the time, she had no reason to believe she was seeing one, because it was a perfectly normal thing to see my brother walking up the porch steps at any given time. 

It wasn't until she told us when she saw him that I shivered. She described him down to his shoes and backpack and said he didn't look "ghostly," but solid. She would have sworn to anyone asking that she saw the real person. But we all knew that to be impossible. Yet, at 11 PM, we both saw and or heard him.

I think my brother was coming home one last time.

2 ~ A Hug Goodbye?

In the days after his death but before his funeral, I stayed with my parents, none of us wanted to be alone.  I had a lot of trouble sleeping, so I found myself up most of the night reading or just staring at the wall. I couldn't concentrate, I missed my brother so bad and wished again, for a chance to see him. I started to cry. Up, until that point, I hadn't cried at all and these were wracking sobs that I had been holding in, afraid they wouldn't stop if I let them go. It hurt so very much.  

I kept saying over and again, "I just wanted a hug, I just wanted to say goodbye, I never had that chance..." 

A litany to keep a hold on whatever sanity I had.  I begged and pleaded, as the grieving do. It was so hard to deal, I was angry that he left without a note or any sort of goodbye. So I was pissed and heartbroken and just wanted a goodbye.  It was the first time I ever truly knew what a broken heart felt like.  

My brother had this way of hugging people - sort of sideways with a nice should squeeze. I just wanted one of those so badly and was silently pleading and ranting in my head that he owed me one.  

When all of a sudden, it the midst of wracking sobs and anguishing ache - I realized I was laughing, Like totally happy laughing when all is well and nothing is wrong and I felt such PEACE. And I felt his arm around me - and that should squeeze. I physically felt that arm around me.  Everything was suddenly OK and I had one moment, of perfect beauty.

As I sat with that warmth the clock chimed. It was 11 o'clock.

Soar Eternally Free ~ I miss you..

The Tarot Card I drew, well, it fell out of the deck at me, was The Tower.  And I think I probably already knew that. It would have taken a very Tower moment for my brother to have killed himself. I may not know what that moment was, but I know it had to have been bad.  I have never once tried to contact my brother via divination - I figured I  got my hug, anything else can wait til I see him again.