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The Old Woman Who Passed Through a Car - Lakewood Ranch, Florida
Old Hag Syndrome - Little Rock, Arkansas
Phantom Footsteps at HMCS Acadia - Cornwallis, Nova Scotia, Canada
The Woman in a White Robe - Sheffield, Alabama
Strange Lights on Cuba Road - Barrington, Illinois
Wilderness Battlefield Apparition - Locust Grove, Virginia
Lighting Candles - Rochester, Minnesota
Pulling My Son's Leg - Chester, Arkansas
Mom's Visit - Rockland, Massachusetts
Shadow People Following Me - Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada
The Girl Playing the Flute - Honolulu, Hawaii
A Haunted Desk? - Stoughton, Massachusetts
Being Watched - Moore, Oklahoma
A Haunting Melody - Nebraska
Two Black Wolves - Goldsboro, North Carolina
The White Glowing Entity - Danvers, Massachusetts
Haunted Person or Haunted Place? - British Columbia, Canada
Tormented - Warren, Pennsylvania
Ghostly Mist at a Pub - Carrollton, Texas
It Crawled Into Bed With Me - Bono, Arkansas
Grandpa Joe's Coma Visit - Cincinnati, Ohio
Ghost Cat Presence - Novat, California
Psychic Impressions at a Victorian Home - Peoria, Illinois
A Disappearing Car - Duluth, Minnesota
Black Mass Filmed During Investigation - Northern California
Mildred's Ghost - Licking, Missouri
Glowing Figure on the Porch - Niles, Ohio
Tag Aboard the Star of India - San Diego, California
Ghostly Image Caught at Gym - Overland Park, Kansas
My Floating Sister - Leavenworth, Kansas
My Aunt's Spirit at Meling School - Bmlo, Hordaland, Norway
A Scary Sleepover - Billings, Montana
Socks Back From the Grave - Kellogg, Idaho
Meeting Great Great Gramma - Freeport, Florida
The Man in Mum's House - Castleford, West Yorkshire, England
Haunting at the Silver Queen Hotel - Virginia City, Nevada
My Haunted Childhood - Norfolk, England, UK
An Angry Little Girl - Valentine, Nebraska
The Girl With the Ring - York, England
Oatman Hotel Ghost - Laughlin, Nevada
The Falling Lamp - Southampton, England
Laughter on the Spiral Staircase - Springville, New York
I Miss My Dad EVP - Northwest Ohio
The Toowong Experience - Brisbane, Queensland, Australia
A Glowing Cigarette - Phoenix, Arizona
Black-Hooded Entities - Kentucky
A Civil War Soldier - Gladstone, Virginia
Ghost Boy and Girls - Chicago, Illinois
The Man in Blue - Rock Rapids, Iowa
My Son's Spirit - [location withheld]
A Misty Oval - Los Chavez, New Mexico
An Unruly Customer - Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Pirate Ghosts - Milton, Florida
Shadow Person Passing By - Medford, Massachusetts
Haunted Chair? - Gainesville, Florida
The Shadow - Pluckley, Kent, England
Various Encounters - Anoka, Minnesota
The Scarecrow and Mr. Lincoln - New Bern, North Carolina
The Boy in the Mirror - Los Angeles, California
Red Flashes on Video - Milton, Florida
Dad's Home Early - Pontiac, Michigan
Old Man in a Flannel Shirt - Millbrook, Alabama
The Old Lady With a Lantern - Tampa, Florida
The Thing From the Ouija Board - Upstate, New York
Civil War Soldier's Ghost - Gonzales, Louisiana
Scared and Annoyed - Grand Rapids, Michigan
Waverly Hills Sanatorium Sighting - Louisville, Kentucky
Angel of Death in the Courthouse - Washington, DC
The Shadow Man and Nun Statue - Cortez, Colorado
The Figure in the Window - Amherst, Virginia
The Hovering Sadness - Alabama
The Girl That Wasn't There - Dunedin, New Zealand
Unseen Helping Hands - Albany, Oregon
The Crash in the Hallway - Lake Charles, Louisiana
Apparition in Williamsburg - Williamsburg, Virginia
The Shadow Behind the Door - Martinez, California
A Hotel Guest's Final Goodbye - Derbyshire, UK
The Little Man in Our Room - Brazil, Indiana
Dark Figure in Chicago Museum - Chicago, Illinois
Thanksgiving Ghosts - Colorado
Three Knocks That Saved Me - Round Rock, Texas
The Man in My Closet - Arlington, Texas
The South Bridge Poltergeist - Edinburgh, Scotland
Shadows in the Closet - St. Theresa Point, Manitoba, Canada
Looking For the Bars - Williamsburg Hill, Illinois
The Man at the Top of the Stairs - Carthage, Missouri
My Fear of the Supernatural - Lebanon, Kentucky
My Friend in Time of Crisis - Waterbury, Connecticut
Old Jim on the Warehouse Floor - Rochester, New York
My Spirit Contacts - Kentwood/Middleville, Michigan
Watch For the Lady in the Bird Cage - Tombstone, Arizona
Faces in the Camouflage - Taqqaddum, Iraq
A Skeptic Near Pinewoods Cemetery - Troy, New York
Shoe Shopping From Beyond - Huntington Beach, California
The Man in My House - Welland, Ontario, Canada
A Haunting Near Channel Road - Sanger, California
Faces in the Mirror - Billings, Montana
Sharing My Bed With a Ghost - Mexico
The Slender Spirit - Pembroke Pines, Florida
Shadows in My House - Ocala, Florida
My Haunted Office - Las Vegas, Nevada
Shadow in the First Baptist Church - Boise, Idaho
The Little Girl's Shadow - Chattanooga, Tennessee
Knocks at 2 AM - Naples, New York
A Possessed Patient - Ashland, Kentucky
A Haunting in The Booter - St. Andrews, Scotland
Ghosts at Union Station Hotel - Nashville, Tennessee
My Family's Haunting - Rio Grande, Puerto Rico
Happy 2008 to the Spirits on the Land - Milton, Florida
The Tall Man Gatekeeper - San Rafael, California
The Evil Force - Marin Headlands, California
Cold Wet Grandfather's Visit - Oostende, Belgium
Haunted Barracks - Dermott, Arkansas
Cell Phone Calls From Beyond - Simsbury, Connecticut
A Little Girl at Stone's Public House - Ashland, Massachusetts
Bones in the Basement - Kansas City, Missouri
A Woman's Voice - Richmond, Virginia
A Dark Mist - Barbers Point, Hawaii
The Hanging Soldier - Nyack, New York
Shadows in My Home - Tijuana, Mexico
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January 23, 2008
Cold Wet Grandfather's Visit
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Mimi, Oostende, Belgium, May 1990
In 1990, my ex and I spent three weeks in Belgium, France, and England,
tracing my family's roots and furthering my ex's obsession with World War
II. My mother, who survived Nazi-occupied Belgium as a child, and moved to
the U.S. in the fifties, recommended several places to visit. The ex and I
rented a small apartment in Oostende, a little town on the North Sea.
Foxholes and land mines are still partially visible along the dunes, though
they are fenced in with barbed wire and "Danger" signs. But that did not
stop the ex and I from exploring!
One night after exploring the old World War II foxholes, we drifted off to
sleep in the little bedroom in the apartment. I was awakened by a man
standing over me in a dripping-wet old-fashioned raincoat, shivering from a
rain storm. He was holding a tin cup with coffee in it and began speaking to
me in Flemish, the official language of Belgium. I knew enough of the
language to understand what he said, "You know me! You know who I am!" He
pointed to the coffee cup and said, "I am so glad to see you. She will know.
She will know." Well, not knowing who "she" was, I dismissed the whole thing
as a strange dream.
In the morning, I rolled out of bed and stepped right onto a soaking wet
rug. The wet stain was in a circle, directly where the man had stood in the
dream. The ex awoke and I began to tell him about the dream with the man in
the old raincoat with the coffee. His eyes widened and he did not speak. In
fact, he finished describing the dream to me, because he had the same dream
and saw the man standing over me. I still recall the details of the man's
face. When we returned to the U.S., I showed my mother the photos we took of
the area along the beach and told her about the dream I had that night. My
mother looked at the photos and listened to me describe the man. It was then
that she explained that where the photos were taken was the exact spot where
my grandfather (her father) had been taken prisoner by the Nazis. He was
forced to walk along the beach to basically be a human mine detector. If he
was not blown up, obviously, the Nazi's were safe to hunker down into the
beach area.
My mother, as a girl, was in charge of making the coffee at the house.
Getting good coffee beans during the war was impossible, but they made do.
She made coffee for her father, mother, and grandmother and passed on that
love of good coffee to me. The man in the "dream" was actually a visitation
from the grandfather I had never met. Grandfather survived World War II, as
did the other members of my mother's family. I made a pledge to my ex that I
was bound and determined to visit and be visited by as many remaining family
members as I could, since they were scattered across the small Belgian
countryside. What I did not count on was a visit from a family member who
traveled quite a distance to meet me for the first time.
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