I certainly believe that demons are active and up to no good and that they cause their own malicious mischief here and there. ** But I also think that there are other things going on that are of a paranormal nature that are not diabolical in nature or in origin.** Ghosts, after all, were reported in ancient times and in ancient cultures by people who didn’t have a belief in Heaven, Hell, and Purgatory, so, if every haunting is merely a demonic plot to cause Catholics to doubt the solidity of Christian doctrine on the afterlife, what on earth were the demons playing at back then?
I never, ever believed in the paranormal & thought that stories of ghosts were just told by silly people whose imaginations had just “run away” with them. UNTIL, my Father died & left his wife of 60+ years here on her own.
My Mother was a very common sense type person, not one AT ALL to put much store in other people’s “silly ghost stories”. However, about a month or two after my Father died, she “saw” him tending his garden. She simply told me, that he had “visited” her & said, with some aggravation, that he was still wearing that beat-up old gardening hat of his. (She’d tried to buy him new ones when he was alive, but no luck there. They’d simply hang in his closet.) She never mentioned that day again. I figured that, as some scientists say, the image of a loved one is so imprinted upon our brains, that we will see the image sometimes after they are gone.
Anyway, this episode was not mentioned again for 9 years & my Mother went on about her life as best she could. About a month before her death at 86 years of age, she said to me, "Your Father has been coming to sit with me in the evenings. He doesn’t say anything or do anything, but just sits with me as I watch T.V. She said this so "matter-of-factly…just as if she were telling me that Agnes next door brought by some pictures of her newest Grandchild.
Again, this was NOT like my Mother, whose mind was usually on such substantial things…One Granddaughter had broken up with her boyfriend, my son had just bought a new car & “If Jacob (a great grandson) is coming to see me, I’ll need to know what kind of cookies are his favorite”.
Her death was a peaceful one, & as I said, happened about a month after these “visits” started occuring. I’d like to believe that Dad just came to sit with her to ease her departure from this life & her entrance into another. At least, that’s what I hope it was.
<hums the ‘Jeopardy’ tune>
