My question to my niece after this true story is, "How can you sleep at night"?

Recently, my niece and her recently engaged boyfriend moved in with his grandmother (who was some ninety years old and very sick) in Eastpointe, Michigan to live and care for her.

The grandmother had recently made the decision to expire at her home. This happened on my nieces's watch.

During this period, a "dark apparition" would appear in the house. The apparition would appear and disappear without notice. It was visible to anyone or anything present. For example, the dogs would bark at it when it was present.

They contacted the local church authorities (Catholic) to have the apparition investigated and a nun was sent to the house. The nun did observe the apparition just like everybody else did. The nun asked the apparition to leave if it was a bad spirit, but told it it was welcome to stay if friendly. Receiving no answer, the apparition stayed in the house and the nun assumed that the spirit (or apparition) was neither good nor bad and was just neutral. It was noted that the grandmother's son had expired before her and it is thought it may have been his spirit. He passed away from cancer.

For the last two weeks of her life, the grandmother could not move nor speak nor even open her eyes and just laid in bed with my niece watching over her. The apparition was present at times in the room with her.

On the last day of her life, the grandmother sat bolt upright and started talking to my niece and the apparition as well. She then passed away.

The apparition has not been seen in the house since her death.

This is a true story.

My own version of the "Dead Zone" (after Stephen King).

On the six-month eve of my mother's death, I had an experience that night that I won't forget.

I found myself in my bed - in my underthings - awake and on top of a crumbling century-old red brick building. It was like one of those old red brick, industrial type buildings you might in some parts of southside Chicago or in the downtown area of Milwaukee.

The roof of the building was missing, and the top floor (the one I found myself on) was partially demolished. I looked around and noticed that the ceiling was missing and the floor and walls were partially demolished. I wondered how in the hell I had got there. The floor I was on appeared to be part of an abandoned old newsstand and book store stand. I could clearly see old books and magazines and their titles from my position on the bed. I could even clearly make out one obscure old book title. It was Naval Wrecks of the Great Lakes". And there were other nautical titles around.

I noticed that I was not alone. I was with a group of peope that had also come - or teleported - to the same location. I remember even having a conversation with one girl with long black hair wearing eyeglasses. But, I can't remember the conversation.

I then wondered how in the hell I was going to get back home. At that thought, I found myself back in my bedroom at home on my bed and that I was completely awake. That is, it seemed that I had not been asleep...

Did this really happen? Or was it some hyper-lucid dream? It was so vivid and felt so real.

I have heard of the phenomenon of prisoners finding themselves teleported to some other place to temporarily escape their misery, torture and imprisonment. (An aside; yes torture in prison does exist. A former coworker of mine - who was a former prison guard - revealed to me that he was usually depressed by the frequent beatings they inflicted on the inmates).

I never expected to have this phenomenon happen to me.

The Motel Room Bed and the "Incubus"

Lord, I almost forgot about this one, and how could I? This was the one of the scariest things that ever happened to me and that I think could ever happen to anybody.

I was living in a motel room at the time, several years ago, and not finding anything more suitable to live in I was quite content. Until one night...

As usual, I had turned off all the lights for a night's sleep. In the middle of the night I was suffocating while sleeping on my back. I awoke to the definite feeling that something had sat itself upon my face and physically blocked my airways. I fought to get up and struggled to turn on the light. There was no sign of anyone else in my room, but it was clear to me that something or someone had put itself on my face in my sleep. I got up and checked the entire room. The room was empty. The bathroom was empty. The single window and door were locked and bolted from inside. There was nothing under the bed. I checked everything in that room.

Satisfied that I was quite alone, I turned off all the lights again and returned to my bed. I managed to get back to sleep. Sometime during my slumber I had the same experience. Fighting for my breath I managed to get the invisible, suffocating thing off of me and struggled for the light switch again. I managed to turn the lights on again and repeated my inspection of my entire room and environment again. Nothing. And there were no signs that anybody nor anything else had been in the room with me.

I began to turn off the lights again, but left the bathroom lights on and the door open as a sort of a full-room nightlight. I managed to get back to sleep that night (I can't remember why I managed to continue to return to my sleep) and was not awoken again until it was time. My invisible visitor had failed to return, it seemed.

So what was it? Was it the legendary, mythical Incubus of the old tales? Or was it something else? Or was it purely my imagination? And, why did it happen to me twice in one night?

The "Dancing" Candle and the "Garland"

I suppose that nothing could inspire visions more than the death of a loved one.

My mother Barbara recently passed away (March 28, 2006 - the day after her seventieth birthday). I kept her memorial cards (from her funeral) near the head of my bed on my night-table with a "Safe-T" candle lit 24 hours a day as a devotion to her memory. I have since turned off the "Safe-T" candle (it is a battery-powered light shaped like a small candle).

The first or second night of her death, I awoke in the middle of the night and looked for her devotional candle light. It was not where I had placed it. I looked down at the opposite end of my night table and saw the light of the candle down there. I looked back at the head end of my night table and then the candle appeared to have moved back up there. I went back to a fitful, disturbed sleep and awoke again. I looked for the devotional candle a second time - and it had appeared to move again to the opposite end of my night-table (!). I looked back at the head end of my table and there was the candle again. I do not know nor recall how many times this happened that night. I am sure no one was in my room other than myself - how else could the candle move back to its original position while I was awake and watching for it? Since that the night the candle (lit or unlit) does not appear to have moved at all.

The night of the "dancing" candle episode, I had occasion to get up and use the bathroom. As I passed my late mother's living room, I looked at the couch she had been using previous to her death. She occupied that couch almost 24 hours a day for several months just prior to her death. At the opposite end of the couch which she occupied, I noticed something that looked like a pale ribbonous (sic?) garland hanging over it. As quickly I had spotted this vision, it had disappeared and has not returned. I checked my eyes in the bathroom mirror to be sure that I nothing in them to interrupt nor disrupt my vision in the dark or the light.

Were these true and profound supernatural occurences? Did my late mother have anything to do with these visions? Or were the visions hallucinations - simple hallucinations or the result of my grief and disturbance over the recent death of my mother? Will I ever know in this life? Will I know in the next life (assuming, I, we all have one of course)?

Was it a Demon or Alien or Both?

One very disturbing day led into one very disturbing night. Was my upset so powerful that it created some dimensional doorway to my bedroom or "invite" some paranormal visitor from the beyond? Was it an alien? Was it a demon? Are they one in the same?

After some very disturbing phone calls and conversations one day years ago, I was laying in my bed at night with absolutely nothing to do. I just lay there in a fit of uncontrollable passion. As I lay there, I saw something whipping at the outside of my bedroom window. There is (was) a tree directly outside the window, but the whipping (or lashing) was not caused by any branches from this tree nor any other tree. I saw this through the closed "see-through" sheer drapes hanging on my window at that time.

The whipping or lashing stopped. And I froze in sheer amazement as I saw a short, brutish reptilian figure walk through my bedroom wall from the outside. This thing could not have come through the single bedroom window as the screen, glass and sheer drapes were all closed. The thing - as I saw it - passed through the wall and materialized in my bedroom before me.

He/she/it was about four (4) feet tall and had four limbs - two "legs" and two "arms". The thing had a small, grotesque, lizard-like head with large jet-black eyes. It had an ugly, ferocious demeanor about it. It seemed to be in a very bad or unpleasant mood. Its entire body (it was naked, except for what appeared to be a black leather harness about its body) was covered in medium gray colored scales or scutes. It had a very tough, swarthy appearance about it - as it had just gotten off some long journey from some otherworldly sailing ship. There, in one of its "paws" was what appeared to leathery, whiplike object. I guessed that it was the same thing I saw lashing on the outside of my bedroom window.

I just lay there in total silence, staring this thing down and it stared right back at me with those deep jet black eyes. I wondered if I had lost my sanity, if this was some hallucination or was this thing really there? After a very short time, it appeared to have been "stared down" and turned to its left and walked into my bedroom closet and disappeared. It appeared to have dematerialized or gone back to wherever it came from.

What was it? I have had other visions of paranormal and unnatural things, but nothing quite like this before nor since.

So, my question to you is, when you are NOT sleeping - do you see visions that are not of this world? Do you see visions from the BEYOND?

I think, maybe, that I have.

THE ANGEL OF DEATH

Recently (this March, year 2006) I did have a terrifying nightmare that reminded me of a vision that I had when I was only a child.

This vision that I had had was of the Grim Reaper - The Angel of Death. I was in my parent's house, taking a daytime nap, and woke up.

When I awoke I was laying directly across from a large viewing mirror on my dresser (chest of drawers).

Laying immediately behind me, reflected in the mirror, was the Angel of Death. He (She?) appeared to be perfectly parallel to me and was longer (taller) than myself. He/she was completely immobile, inert, unmoving, but very visible. He/she appeared to be made of something like petrified wood.

I got up from the bed silently. I turned to look around to see this being - and it was gone. I turned and looked in the reflecting mirror - and saw only myself, the bed, and the bedroom.

The Angel had gone. If, it was ever there...

This March, one evening, I awoke from a terrifying nightmare. In the nightmare, I was standing next to some sort of concrete abutment, as at a bridge, etc.. Arising from the abutment was some gargantuan, blue-black, wrought iron, crooked skeletal hand. Alarmed, I backed away from the abutment.

Moving away, I could see a river next to the abutment. In the middle of this river was an islet, or a shoal... Stretched out on this islet/shoal, laying in repose, was a gargantuan, blue-black, wrought iron, skeletal form of the Grim Reaper - or the Angel of Death - with its gargantuan blue-black, wrought iron, crooked hand, extended above.

I remember trying to move away from this ghastly figure of death, and then I woke up.

The next day, after her seventieth birthday, my mother passed away.

As of yesterday, her hometown, Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, was flooded by the Susquehanna river and 200,000 people had to be evacuated. The day she was born, the Susquehanna river crested over and flooded out the entire town of Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. (Note: At my mother's funeral, her sister - my aunt and godmother - explained that the reason that they made it through that 1936 flood, was that they were living in a house on one of the highest hills in the town).

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THE DECAPITATED GHOST

Several years ago, in the early 1990's, I was still residing with my mother and father.

I was returning from a business trip with a salesperson for a major company that we working for at that time. I don't think I will advertise their name here at this time.

So, as it was a legitimate business trip - straight from the office to the customer and back - their was drinking, etc..

When I made it home, I greeted my mother and my (only) sister her were there at the time.

Having some dirty laundry in my suitcase, I took it downstairs to the laundry room in the basement.

Now, the laundry room was (and still is) set off from the rest of the basement by the stairway and a couple of concrete walls. I headed around the corner to the right of the stairway.

I began to empty my suitcase, and had that feeling you get when are not alone in the same room. The feeling that you get that someone else is there with you...

I had not heard my mother, my sister, nor anyone else come down the stairwell, which I would have expected if someone else decided to join me in that basement at the time. I had (and still have) extraordinarily good hearing, and should have heard anyone clambering down those stairs...

I dropped my laundry and went to investigate the rest of the basement. I went this time to the left of the stairwell. There, in the middle of the day, in the dimly lit northwest area of the basement floated a decapitated, disembodied spectral head in the air. This spectral head was clearly looking through and searching for something in the handmade architectural-framed shelves that my father (not deceased) had erected on that wall.

The head must have sensed that I was to its left and it slowly turned around in midair to face me.

I stood there completely motionless and silent (it took all of my courage and my strength to do so) and looked directly at the head where its eyes should have been.

With the small hairs standing on the back of my neck, I examined (I am, by profession, a scientist) floating head while it examined me.

I could see that the head was quite grisly and it appeared to be in a severe state of decay and decomposition. What should have been (?) eyes, appeared to be round, whitish, amorphous white globes. The head was covered with what appeared to be whitish, decayed, decomposed flesh. It also appeared to have long white hair. It appeared to be quite ancient, and appeared to have no color at all. Its color was the same as the misty white mass (ectoplasm?) that it was made of.

It made some sort of expression when it saw that I was not leaving and was determined to examine it. Slowly, the floating spectral head turned around 180 degrees from me and floated away and dematerialized (?) or disappeared through the east wall of the basement.

With the spirit head now gone, I struggled to pull myself together. Stunned into silence by this, I slowly moved up the stairwell into the main body of the house and found my mother and my sister blissfully unaware of what had just happened. I asked them - just as a precaution, in case I was hallucinating, or something - if either of them had just been in the basement at the same time I was. They both just shook their heads no. I think they were silent at this point because there was probably something noticeably - perhaps profoundly - disturbed about my appearance.

I informed that I had just seen a ghost in the basement. Both of them just looked at me without question. I moved off and continued with my business for that day.

Neither of them ever mentioned this to myself - or, I suspect, to anyone.

To this day, I have never seen this ghost again. Although, I did have a nightmare about this later. In this nightmare, the ghost appeared to me as a full-bodied specter and revealed that her name was Wieso Langso. I have no idea what or who this name means or might be. I do know that we have lived in the house ever since it was brand new and that their had been no deaths in it up until this year.

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WAS IT A VISION OF CHRIST?

This is my next vision. To be continued later?

- G.K. 6/29/06

WAS IT A VISION OF CHRIST?

Some years ago - after much revelry and debauchery - I awoke in my bed with head at the foot of the bed and my feet at the opposite end.

There before me, surrounded by a "diffuse" white light was the figure of Jesus Christ. He was sitting on a rock pile and was clothed in what appeared to be a seamless robe of neutral color. The robe covered him from his shoulders to his ankles - or more - as I do not recall seeing his feet.

I did however see his face and it appeared to be a Caucasian face and had virtually no expression. He was just, merely looking down on me. His hair was long and brown and he had the traditional brown mustache and beard. His face appeared to be unmarked and wore nothing on his head. I do not recall seeing his hands. His robe was plain, neutral or white in color, and aside from being seamless, was unremarkable.

I reached out to touch this vision of Himself and upon "touching" this vision, He vanished from my sight. And I was left laying on my bed looking about my room for Him.

Some years later, when I had moved to a small town in Georgia. I recalled having one of those sagrado ("sacred") candles with the paper lamination of picture of Christ and His Sacred Heart on the glass of the candle. I usually kept this candle on a shelf type window just over my kitchen sink.

One Saturday night I was home in my kitchen looking at this candle when I realized that there were beads of moisture collecting around the face of His image on the candle. For a moment, thinking that I might have accidentally splashed sink water or tap water on this candle, I picked it up and started to wipe away the moisture saying "Forgive me Lord...". Then I stopped dead in my tracks, realizing that I had not been using the sink for water. The sink and the area around it were dry. Was the image of Himself on the sagrado candle crying? I could not tell.

It is interesting to note, that that same Saturday night, I had just happened to win several hundred dollars on the weekly Saturday night Georgia lottery drawing. Was it luck? Coincidence? Or a miracle? Heaven knows...

To be continued? 7/3/2006