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Blithe spirit – Home alone

It was October and my husband had gone to Devon to collect his sailing boat from its mooring and bring it home.  He had taken our dog with him, so I was left all alone.  He said it would take hi about 4 to 5 days to drive down, get the boat out, get it sorted for the journey and the drive back.  It is not a big boat – about 20 foot long, but a he would be towing on the way back it might well take him a whole day to get back.

Our house is not big, but it is stone built , old [about 400 years old in pats] and full of nooks and crannies, squeaky floor boards, creaking doors and dark places, which you never notice when the house is full, but is all too noticeable when the house only has one person in it – me.  It was real October weather – a wind left over from a hurricane in the Caribbean, rain, even a little sleet, and scurrying dark clouds in the sky.  During the day it was just lonely, but the first night I was quite frightened by the wind howling round the house and all the squeaks and groans coming from – who knows where.  I shut te door of the bedroom, it was pitch black because we are near no habitation where light s are visible, and close my eyes and willed myself to sleep.

And sleep I did, though none too well.  Nevertheless I awoke to much the same weather, knowing I had two more nights of this before he and our little dog, the love of my life, returned.  I was emotional at the time too, because he had chosen a time to go which exactly coincided with our dog’s sixth birthday, an event I had wanted to celebrate.  So the next day I was tearful and just a little frightened.  It got darker much earlier with the stormy weather and the wind was extremely strong.  My husband phoned to say they were alright and had got the boat out the water just in time as the really bad weather had struck.  They were now getting it ready for the journey.

So three more days to go and two more nights and no dog to hug.

That night the whole house was creaking from the wind.  Doors were shutting themselves, floor boards were creaking just as if people were walking on them lights were flickering.  I went to bed shut the bedroom door and left the light on for quite a while reading nice books with poetry and comforting thoughts in them.  But at a certain point I knew I was going to have to put the light out.

From this point on I do not know whether what I had was a vision or a lucid dream.  I awoke – or at least I thought I was awake – I certainly remembered what had happened - to a sense of someone being in the bed with me.  The bed on my husband’s side was moving.  It creaked and I could feel movement from  my side as though a body was on his side.  I switched on the light – I was awake, panic stricken and terrified, but …. No one there.

My heart was going like the clappers and I did not feel at all well.  My heart is my weak spot and I suspect it would be all too easy to frighten me to death.  I read, more comforting thoughts, then a glass of water, I remember lying back on my propped up pillows exhausted, and I put out the light, too tired to continue reading however comforting the words.

Then the most frightening lucid dream hallucination or vision of all.  A I say I have no idea which.  I heard the door open to the bedroom.  This was nearly the end of me, my heart really did miss a beat – several beats and the pain in my chest was quite unbearable – a figure just like my husband entered the room and walked round the bed.  It was his silhouette and his features, though the dark made it impossible to say it was ‘him’.

He leant over the bed and kissed me on the cheek and said ‘I’ve come to say goodbye’. The he walked out of the room and the door shut.

At which point I did wake up, or at least thought I had woken up.  I knew it could not be him because he was in Devon – and he was incidentally – being kept awake by the storm raging round the house he was in.

I howled, the tears of fear and anguish just streamed down my face. 

Over and over all the recent books by research scientists, psychologists and neuroscientists [men all]  - without any human compassion, feelings or empathy towards those who experience this sort of thing, but with the curiosity of a detached magpie and the need to analyse in minute detail the experiences people have with pinpoint precision -  say that before a person dies, they often appear to their loved ones to wish them goodbye.  Of course this kind of analysis has a wholly negative effect, as if something like this happens you immediately think – my husband is dead or about to die.  Images of car crashes or sudden illness suddenly enter your head when before was only loneliness at their absence.

I was beside myself with fear, grief, terror and worry.  I couldn’t sleep. It was about 4.30 to 5 in the morning.

I got up, made myself some tea.  Went back to bed, then sent hi a text asking him if he was alright, so that he could reply when he woke up.  No reply of course, not at 5 in the morning, but in my overwrought condition ever minute he did not reply were an agony. 

At about 6 I dozed off from sheer nervous exhaustion and woke at 8.  Still no reply, so I rang him from my mobile from bed.  No reply, an answerphone. 

But at 9 o’clock an ordinary phone call came and the phone rang in the hall downstairs.  I stumbled down to get it and it was my husband.  He had just got back from taking the dog for a walk and yes he was alright, and they had decided to come back that day, because there was little point in delaying, the boat was securely tied on, the weather looked like it might only get worse making it more difficult to drive back. 

He had gone down with a friend and his wife rang me to say she had had a terrible night – the worst nightmares she had had for years and could she come round.  So she did and we spent much of the day together waiting for their safe return.  I told her about my ‘vision’/dream and she decided hers were rather lame in comparison and as a consequence she cheered up a bit.  We kept each other buoyed until the two returned – safe and sound, round about 6 in the evening.

I was able to celebrate my little dog’s birthday with a mock cake and a round of happy birthday – he even blew his candles out with his tail by wagging it furiously next to the candle.

So this sad saga has a happy ending – possibly.

But it has still left me with that uneasy feeling in my head about what it meant.

I have not analysed the experiences of the people on my site deliberately, to make sure there are no expectations or universal assumptions which start to appear about what something ‘means’.  All I have done is put the observations into classes such as out of body or vision, and as we have seen from my own experience, it is not at all easy to know sometimes what one has experienced.  I had no idea at the time whether my eyes were open or closed or whether I was awake or not.

Without all this unnecessary analysis done by scientists, aching to prove to themselves as much as anyone else that spirit exist [when most of the people who are not scientists need no convincing], my experience might have left me with a sense of comfort, that my husband was with me in spirit and that his ‘goodbye’ was simply an indicator that he was leaving early.

But the flurry of money making books that have come out, all intended to jump on the band wagon and all intended to make money from other people’s experiences – experiences told freely to researchers without any form of compensation being given – do a great great deal of harm. 

This site is free.

If the people doing this research were honest and genuine, their research – the stories told them by other people - would be made freely available too. 

Generally having been through this terrifying ordeal and having been left in a state of wondering, I found no comfort in the books these men have written, all I found was more and exaggerated terror.