Observations placeholder
Lethbridge, T C - Ghost and Ghoul - The robin and the 'sending'
Identifier
021881
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
Around us, the people do not think the birds are sent to provide news, but that the higher spirit of the person enters the bird as a form of possession and the bird in its possessed state flies to the loved ones to enable the dead person to 'see' them for the last time, albeit through the eyes of the bird, and make its presence felt. They also believe that we can be reincarnated as birds.
A description of the experience
T C Lethbridge – Ghost and Ghoul
I have witnessed a 'sending', and I was not alone when it happened. Of course it may have been a coincidence and all the other recorded cases of sendings may have been so too. I certainly did not think of it as being anything else at the time it happened. Now I keep an open mind. So, for what it is worth, here is the story:
For a few years after the Kaiser's war, my mother, as I have mentioned before, had a house in Shropshire called Little Ness.
I had been staying for some time with a favourite cousin, who had developed tuberculosis of the lung, late in the war, apparently aggravated by flying at high altitudes without oxygen equipment. At times he appeared to be recovering, but I left him very ill.
My mother and I were having breakfast one sunny morning, with the dining-room window open on to the lawn. Suddenly there was a whir from the window and a robin landed on the floor beside the table. It began to hop, very slowly, clockwise round the table, pausing every few hops to look sideways up at us. I thought, 'Oh, a robin, hungry I suppose,' and threw down a few crumbs. The bird took not the slightest notice and continued its steady perambulation of the table, which was a large one, without even glancing at the crumbs.
Having made a complete circuit of the table, it hopped on to the window-sill and flew off into the garden.
My mother looked at me seriously, and said, 'You know what that means, don't you?'
'No,' I said, in some surprise.
'Jack is dead,' she answered.
So he was; we heard the news later in the day.