A Spooky Experience by Pam Swain (ebook offline reader TXT) 📖

A SPOOKY EXPERIENCE

I could feel the hair on the back of my head stand up as I watched the scene unfold. My friend Julie was sitting opposite me, holding the handle of the metal cup holder, when the inner cup jumped out as if being moved by unseen hands. It fell onto the table spilling hot steamy coffee. Julie and I just looked at each other in astonishment and her face must have mirrored mine as her jaw dropped.

“Did you see that?” I spluttered knowing full well she had. “I think it must have been your mum, trying to tell us she is here with us,” I said, before she had time to reply.

“Yes,” said Julie calmly grinning, looking round the cafe. “This was the very table she and I ate at the last time I came over from Canada.”

Julie’s mum, Eve had died a week earlier and some very spooky things had happened to us over the past few days as we cleared out her house. Eve and I had been very close and she regarded me as her “other daughter.” She loved nothing more than to have the company of the both of us at the same time but this rarely happened as Julie lived in Canada.

On the first day I went to help Julie, I was walking up the path towards the house when I noticed a plant container on the ground under the window. I picked it up and put it back on the windowsill. Eve had been very particular, especially about her garden and wouldn’t have liked it on the ground. I was picking it up when Julie came to the door.

“Not again,” she said,” I have already picked that up three times today. Can’t understand why it keeps falling off, there is no wind. Anyway, come on in.”

The same thing kept happening for the next two days until one day we put the planter on the other windowsill and there it stayed. We mentioned this to one of Eve’s neighbours and she told us we had put it back in the spot Eve had always kept it so we realised she had been showing us it was in the wrong place.

The same day we looked into the back garden and the bird table, which had been secured into the ground a few years previously, was lying on its side and so were the stone garden animals.

Then there was the overpowering smell of Eve’s scent when we went into the bathroom and a strong smell of cedar wood in her bedroom. All types of unusual things were happening and when I arrived next morning Julie looked awful. She had been sitting up most of the night because the electric heater kept turning itself on. She unplugged it but it would just light up again by itself.

Eve had been given a touch lamp for her birthday three months before she passed away and she was fascinated by it. That lamp flickered on and off many times by itself during the following few days. We talked to Eve as if she was in the house with us and we weren’t at all frightened, just fascinated. We knew she was letting us know she was close by.
The day of the incident in the cafe we had decided to leave the house and go out for lunch for a break. When we came back it was raining heavily and we were running up the path to the house when Julie spotted something lying in the flowerbed. She lifted it and dashed indoors. It was a plastic folding rain hood. Eve had kept it in the drawer for when Julie would come over and used to make her wear it when going out in the rain, because she had long thick hair and Eve didn’t like her to get it wet.

After I left Julie at the house I tried to phone my teenage children to let them know I was on my way home. My mobile wouldn’t let me make calls or send texts. I collected my husband and told him about the phone. He tried and got through first time. My children were very annoyed and wanted to know why I had not answered when they rang. They had called me several times while we were in the cafe. My phone had been turned on beside me on the table the entire time. Nothing ever registered to say I had any missed calls.

On the day before the removal firm was coming to put Eve’s furniture into storage I took Julie to the Ideal Home Exhibition in the King’s Hall in Belfast to give her a break. We had an enjoyable day but all the time we felt like Eve was with us.

We went back to the house. It was late; we made coffee and sat down for a chat. Julie smokes and I don’t so she opened the window to let the smoke out. It was dark outside and we kept the curtains back. I was sitting in Eve’s favourite armchair and Julie was facing me on a dining room chair. As we were chatting I noticed Julie kept looking at the window and then at me. After a while I got curious and asked her what she was looking at.

“It’s okay. Just keep talking for a minute,” she said.

I continued our conversation and she started looking at the window and then me again.

A smile spread across her face and she said, “I am looking at you sitting there, but your reflection in the window is wearing your clothes and has mum’s face and has her arm spread out along the chair arm.”

My arm was in a different position and the way Julie saw Eve was the way she always rested her arm on that chair.

We continued talking for a long time and the entire time the reflection was that of Eve.

“Swap places with me, Julie, I said.

We swapped and I couldn’t believe what I saw. There is no doubt in my mind to this day that Eve was there. I saw her as clearly in the reflection as I could see Julie in the chair. It was just as Julie had said, her arm was outstretched, and Julie purposely folded her arms. I was watching the reflection side view on the window; she was staring straight ahead and then very slowly a smile spread across her lips and I knew she was happy to be with us.
Julie and I talked well into the small hours and the whole time Eve was there in the reflection.
This all happened several years ago and I feel as strongly now as I did then that Eve was taking her last opportunity to enjoy the three of us being together.

A few months later I was going to see a medium for a reading. She opened the door and said to me “There is an elderly woman at your shoulder trying to push in. She has a message for
you” and she had...but that is another story.

Publication Date: 01-30-2013

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