Ghost Stories - The Goodbye

This is my last ghost story. But it’s not really a ghost story, more of a spiritual experience.

Late one May, the Smithsonian sent me to Kingsport, TN to perform random test counts during an inventory. Since my wife’s family is from that area, I decided to take her and our daughter with me—our son was not yet a glimmer in my eye! We planned to spend a week after the inventory visiting my wife’s aunts, uncles, cousins, and grandfather. We loaded our car with way too much baby junk (our girl was 16 months) and headed south.

The inventory went well and other than my wife’s cousin breaking her pinky toe when she got up to offer me a drink, the first few days in Kingsport were uneventful. The cousin’s husband thought my hotel was in a sketchy neighborhood and offered to loan me a “piece” (a handgun) the first night, but I declined. As I said, things were uneventful. Then Saturday arrived.

Saturday afternoon we received a message, relayed by my wife’s ditsy sister to an aunt, that my mom was in the hospital. We thought it was a miscommunication. My mother-in-law was very ill, but my mom was fine—my wife had just spoken with her Friday afternoon. Thanks to poor reception and bad timing, we had a hard time reaching anyone. Finally around dinner time I got in touch with my sister’s husband. He claimed not to have details, but said I should, “Come home, now!”

We loaded the car, purchased lots of caffeine to carry us through the night, and headed for home. After several hours, my watch started to annoy me. So I removed it and slipped it over the gear shift. I was a little anxious, but confident everything would be fine.

Then without any warning, I had a vision (while driving). I seemed to be hovering over the trunk of my car, looking down on the back seat and the back of my own head. In the vision, the backseat was empty (in reality it was packed with junk). Suddenly, a figure started to rise up out of the seat. It was a robed figure, similar to the stereotypical image of death. My view changed, now I was seeing it from the left side of the driver (me). No face showed from under the hood. It brought its hands up and placed them on my shoulders from behind. I seemed to actually feel something touch me. That made me shiver and the vision was gone. I didn’t know what I had just experienced, but it seemed important. I checked my watch and saw that it was 10:20pm (Saturday night).

To wrap this up, my mom had a cerebral aneurysm Saturday morning. She was still breathing on her own when the nurse made her rounds at 10:00pm Saturday night. But by 11:00pm she was not--my vision occurred at 10:20pm.

Officially, she passed away on Monday morning…the last Monday in May. But I suspect she was gone earlier. I was her only child not at the hospital on Saturday night. I think the vision was my mom reaching out to tell me goodbye. Yes, I know that sounds crazy. Some may think I dozed off for a second and the timing was just a weird coincidence. That would be a logical explanation. But I felt wide awake and drove another 5 hours after that. I think it was an experience beyond the realm of logic.