OCCULT VIEW

On June 24 Lillian was out to buy her weekly lottery tickets.  Lillian is an elderly mom living in Chicago.  She was going to cash in a Lotto ticket worth $3 and buy her weekly $5 worth of Mega Millions and Lotto. 

While she was at the convenience store, she heard a voice that said “Play 7 9 0”.  She looked around and there was nobody near her.  The voice was not in her head, but clearly audible as if someone was talking next to her.  She thought it very strange.

At the cashier, she bought $5 worth of tickets.  But instead of playing her usual lottery, she asked to play the Pick-3 game, where three numbers are chosen.  She bought 5 Pick-3 tickets, all with 790 played straight.  The cashier asked if she was sure she wanted all 5 tickets with the same number, since that was apparently unusual.  Yes, Lillian wanted all the same number.

These tickets were for the mid-day drawing, and she was shocked when later the winning numbers were 7-9-0.  Each ticket was now worth $500!  Wow.  The odds of winning are 1,000 to one, but what are the odds of picking 5 tickets with all the same number based on a tip from a disembodied voice?

Lillian decided to give all 5 winning tickets to her adult children.  With the bad economy some of her sons and daughters were in some financial trouble.  They needed the money more then a long retired mom, which was not exactly true, but what gives a mom more joy then being a blessing to their children? 

My good friend Ted told me this story Friday night, the first time I heard of it.  He said he argued with his mom on the phone, that he didn’t want the ticket and she should keep it for herself.  But Lillian insisted.  All of her five children were getting one of the tickets.  It made Ted’s mom happy to be able to help her kids.

I discussed this event with Ted and his wife.  What did Lillian think about what happened?  Ted said she was as baffled as everybody else.  She had not clue how or why this occurred.  Ted had asked her mom if the disembodied voice was male or female.  She said it was neither.  Which is intriguing, since angels are said to be genderless. 

Ted’s mom had incidences in her past where she sensed a family member was in trouble or dying.  He said Lillian seems sensitive to these things.  Was this disembodied voice her own psychic intuition speaking to her?  Or could it really have been an angel whispering in her ear, giving her a gift?  The fact that she gave away all of her winnings might be a clue.  Had she decided to keep the money for herself, this disembodied voice might not have given this suggestion to begin with.  But because it was for her family’s benefit, perhaps this was really a blessing from an angel, for reasons and purposes we can’t comprehend.  It really is a mystery.

A blog about the paranormal and the occult comes in handy when socializing.  I’m on the lookout for people’s personal stories concerning encounters with the unusual.  When I mention blogs, I find many aren’t familiar or interested with the blogosphere, or just roll their eyes at my topic.  Yet, I also get stories from people who had unusual experiences.  Here is one such story about a teenager and his strange dream.

Rick is a 15-year-old who related a special dream to me.  Dreams in themselves are usually just that, dreams.  However Rick’s dream had some intriguing elements.  Rick’s dream occurred when he was 10-years-old.  He said it was so vivid he can remember the details clearly today.  Most dreams are not like this.  The details of a dream tend to fade away even if we happen to remember one.  These clear, memorable dreams are one clue a dream may be more then just a dream.

Rick’s dream was of his grandfather.  His grandfather died nearly a year before he was ten.  Rick’s grandparents originally came to America from Italy long ago.  However, Rick actually hadn’t seen his grandfather very often as his grandparents lived quite far away from his family. 

In his dream Rick’s grandfather spoke to him in his native Italian.  Rick does not speak any Italian, yet he understood every word his grandfather spoke to him.  And Rick somehow spoke back in Italian.  He could not explain that.  In the dream as they talked to each other, his grandfather put his hand over his chest, looked pale and staggered, falling face down on a street curb.  Rick saw him sprawled out with his arms and legs in a particular position. 

Rick awoke with this strange dream clear in his mind.  As a boy he did not tell his dream to anyone, until two years later at the age of 12.  He told his father his dream, and his father listened very carefully.  His father asked him about the exact position of the grandfather’s arms and legs.  When Rick related precisely what he remembered, his father was stunned.  Rick’s grandfather had indeed died on a street from a heart attack, and from a photo of the scene the father had seen, the position of the limbs Rick described was exactly what was on the photo.  Rick had never been previously aware of any of these details.

Speaking and understanding an unknown language and having knowledge of events that were unknown are certainly curious.  Did Rick’s grandfather visit him in a dream?  Or was this a clairvoyant dream, where Rick saw events as they transpired in the past?  Or both?

Here is another story about a clairvoyant dream I posted:

http://occultview.com/2009/06/01/world-series-baseball-premonition/

An element both stories share is the clarity of the dream, how it sticks in the mind, and how it seems as if the dreamer is actually present witnessing the event.  Curious indeed.

World War II

My grandparents were born and lived in Lithuania before World War II.  In 1940 communist Russia occupied Lithuania, and then Nazi Germany took it over.  Near the end of WW II the Russians came back and reoccupied the nation.  There was a lot of fighting between the Russians and the Germans with Lithuanian collaborators on both sides. 

Eventually my grandparents with their children fled Lithuania, never to return.  My grandmother had a strange story from those days, the time before they became refugees.  She considered it divine intervention by a guardian angel.

When there was fighting in the local area it was obvious by the sound of gunfire in the distance.  The family would go into the basement of the simple house where they lived.  The basement was more a hole in then what we’d think of as a basement.  But when things were quiet again, everybody would return upstairs.

One quiet day grandma was sitting in the house chatting with some family and neighbors.  According to grandma, she was sitting on a couch by herself when she suddenly felt something invisible nudge her, pushing her on her right side.  There was nobody there, but she got up anyway and moved over a seat on the couch.  Literally seconds later, there was the sound of gunfire in the distance, and a stray bullet broke through the window and landed in the couch seat right where grandmother sat just seconds before.

Everyone was startled.  They checked to see if grandmother was ok and she was fine.  Had she not moved, that bullet would have ended up in her midsection.  Back in those days, there were no emergency room to run to. She would have died.  They checked the couch and found the rifle bullet embedded in it. 

Guardian Angel

She thought this incident was very strange and for many years kept that bullet as a good luck token.  Since she was a deeply religious person, she believed it was an angel that saved her by pushing her to move out of the way of a random stray bullet.  God saved her life.

Did a guardian angel save her life?  Or did grandma have a life saving premonition?

I have a problem with the idea of God directly intervening in a person’s life.  It is the problem of divine favoritism.  In a war, many people suffer and die unjustly.  Why would God favor one person to live over another?  Is that fair?  Why would God spare my grandmother’s life but not countless others?  The answer from some would be God works in mysterious ways.  Perhaps so.

There is another possibility that removes the problem of favoritism.  We are our own guardian angel. 

There is a belief in esoteric thought that we all consist of different levels of existence: physical, mental, astral, and spiritual.  This spiritual aspect of our existence exists outside of time and space as part of the universal Divine.  We have no direct contact with this version of our self.  If we encountered this aspect of our self, it would seem as if it were a separate entity.

Yet this guardian angel, our higher self, does interact and communicate with us through our intuition.  Insights, premonitions, answers to problems, the correct path to take are often available from our higher self if we listen to our intuition.   Everyday our higher self tries to guide us if we are open its messages.

Grandma’s life may have been saved by a premonition, which she acted on.  It was her choice to move.  Life changing intuition happens to many people many times. If divine intervention is essentially in our own hands, then life is fair.  We can’t blame God anymore.  We have to listen to the quiet voice inside us all.

My dad and I picked up my mom’s ashes from the funeral home yesterday.  My dad chose a nice urn, a box patterned with flowers.  He put it on a space beneath a painting of the Madonna my mom had painted many years ago (pictured above).

My mom and dad were married in 1953.  Back then when they were dating, my mother lived with her grandmother, while my dad rented a tiny apartment elsewhere.  They had dated for about a year when one evening  my dad was lying down in his bedroom.   He was startled to see my mom’s grandmother in the open bedroom doorway.  She stopped at the door, looked at my dad with a sad look on her face, then left.  Mom’s grandma was not in my dad’s apartment.  My dad saw some sort of apparition.  Three days after his experience, my mom’s grandmother died in her sleep of old age.  My mom discovered her grandma dead and was in a panic attack.  My mom and dad married shortly after her grandmother’s passing.
 
Did my father experience an apparition premonition in 1953?   I’ve heard a number of such stories first-hand.  Maybe it was an actual apparition, or a mental premonition of something that just happened or is soon to occur.

Over the decades my parents had their up and downs in their relationship like everybody else, but they stuck together through the good times and the bad times.  When my mom was diagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer a few weeks ago, it was the worst of times.  My father’s concern was that my mother would not suffer.  I have now seen terminal cancer’s terrible consequences in my family, and it is an awful experience.  I have personal sympathy with all who has gone through this ordeal.

Two nights after my mom passed away, my dad way lying in bed asleep, when something awoke him.  He said it felt like someone was touching, holding his hand, which was laid out on the bed.  He suddenly awoke and was startled by the physical sensation, as if someone had physically moved his fingers.
  
He thought maybe mom visited him one last time, to let him know she was ok.  I think that is what happened.  Mom wanted dad to know everything was fine, don’t worry about her anymore.  We don’t have to worry about the dead they are at peace.  Worry is only for the living and those who remain.

Friday April 21, 1967 was a bad day for the Chicago area.   At 5:30 P.M. a F-4 tornado struck Chicago’s southern suburbs and continued on a 16-mile path thru the south side of Chicago before passing into lake Michigan as a waterspout.  This massive tornado’s base was estimated to be a city block in width and traveled at a ground speed of an incredible 65 mph, out racing any vehicle.  Thirty-three people died.   Over a thousand people were injured.  Sixteen of the deaths occurred in the Chicago suburb of Oak Lawn when the tornado touched down at the intersection of 95th street and Southwest Highway.  This intersection was the epicenter of the tornado’s carnage.  Buildings were leveled to the ground.  Most of the deaths resulting at this fateful intersection involved vehicles at the wrong place at the wrong time.  Half of the 33 people killed were motorists waiting in traffic.

Here are some historical images recorded on the NOAA (National Oceanic And Atmospheric Administration) site.: http://www.crh.noaa.gov/lot/?n=OakLawn_tornado_pics

A YouTube video sums up the event, titled “Terror in Oak Lawn”.

In 1967 I was six years old.  Our famly had a Friday ritual.  When dad came home from work on Friday, the family would go out for dinner at a restaurant.  It was the only day of the week we dined out.  Back then Friday was “payday” when employers actually paid weekly with a paper check.  It was a time to celebrate the end a week’s labors.

Every Friday after dad came home we immediately got in the car and drove to the same restaurant.  My mom and dad’s favorite restaurant was the Sherwood Forest Restaurant in Oak Lawn.  After dinner, we’d drive to the bank so my father could cash his check.  Sometimes it took nearly half an hour waiting in line to get that done on a busy Friday.  Back then they did not have drive thru tellers.  Or direct deposit checking.  How primitive!

As usual, Friday April 21 we got in the car and drove off to have dinner.  Traveling down Southwest Highway we arrived at the intersection of 95th street where our favorite Sherwood Forest Restaurant was located.  I recall the sky was very dark.  At the horizon was daylight, but the dark clouds above us were nearly pitch black.  Yet oddly, I recall there was no rain.

1967 Sun-Times scan: Tornado's Path

Instead of turning left and entering the restaurant’s parking lot, my dad said, “Let’s go the bank first, then we’ll come back to eat.”  It was a spontaneous decision. He never went to the bank before dinning.  He made a right turn down 95th street.

In minutes of making the turn, my mother heard something and looked behind.  She was startled and yelled at my dad, “There is a tornado behind us!”   My father looked in his rear view mirror and saw garbage cars flying around.  A huge dark mass was quickly approaching our car!   He slammed on the accelerator and took off driving right through a red light.  This swirling maelstrom was approaching to his left.   My mom jumped in the back seat and pushed me down covering me with her body.  I wanted to see what was going on but she yelled at me to stay down.  The air was roaring with the sound of a freight train.

Dad did not know if he was driving away from the tornado or actually into it.  He saw a brick building with an underground garage.  He made a desperate right turn down the embankment.  The garage door was closed, but even so he had a brick wall to his right and the car was lower then ground level.  He told my mom to open the windows to equalize the pressure.

The car began to shake.  My father said it felt like the car was about to be lifted off the ground.  He looked out the car’s rear window and in the distance saw full grown trees being plucked out of the ground and vanishing into the sky. 

Then it was over.  IT had passed us by.

Slowly he pulled out of the drive and saw the street was filled with debris.  The wreckage was everywhere. He couldn’t drive back the way he came and had to drive a distance around to return home. 

The Sherwood Forest Restaurant was directly hit by this F4 tornado, demolished, leveled to the ground.  Had we made that fateful left turn and entered the parking lot of the Sherwood Forest Restaurant, we might have perished.    We would have been in the restaurant’s lot preparing to leave the car when the tornado would have overtaken us with a ground speed of 65-miles an hour.  16 people died at Southwest Highway and 95th street, many in cars. 

I asked my dad what made him decide at the last minute to go to the bank instead of the restaurant, to turn right instead of left.  He said he did not know…it was just a feeling.  He could not explain it.  He said maybe it was a premonition.  Afterwards he kept the newspaper accounts of the event.  They are now yellowed and fragile, but he still has them. 

We probably would not be here today if he made a fateful left turn.  Is there such a thing as fate or destiny?  Do we have a date when we are all destined to die?  Should we worry about whenever we’ll die, if there is nothing we can do about it? 

History is full of convincing premonitions.  It is said the Titanic carried far less passengers on its voyage into disaster, with stories of canceled reservations due to premonitions.  If we all have a date we are destined to perish, perhaps it is still possible to sometimes cheat death if we listen to our intuition.   We should listen to our inner voice.  Which road will we take, the left road or the right road?

1967 Tribune's Tornado Special

Here is a story a good friend told me, and I asked if it would be ok to write about it.  Many people have paranormal experiences, but they are rare, perhaps once or twice in lifetime.  Which makes each one of these experiences precious and worth recording.  They reveal there is more to the universe then we understand. 

The year is 1985.  My friend Ed was a young man newly married and starting a family.  One autumn night he abruptly awoke from his sleep and sat up in his bed.  He had a vivid dream.  It was a baseball game. 

At the time the World Series was playing, the St. Louis Cardinals against the Kansas City Royals.  St. Louis was ahead 3 games to 1.  St. Louis was one game away from winning the World Series; all they needed was that 4th game out of 7.

Ed sat up in his bed.  He dreamt he was watching the winning celebration of the World Series as if he were present in the ballpark.  He saw all the players running onto the field.  They were ecstatic, winners of the World Series.  And the players’ uniforms were blue.  Ed spoke to himself out loud in his bed…”Kansas City is going to win.”  He understood what the blue uniforms meant. 

I asked Ed if it was like watching the game on TV.  He said no, in the dream he was actually at the stadium, in the stands right at ground level, as if he were really there. 

The next day he told his co-workers that the Kansas City Royals were going to win the World Series.  He had a dream.  Since the Cardinals were ahead 3 to1 they told him he was full of shit.  Ed was so convinced that the Royals were going to win he made a wager.  He’d wager anyone a case of beer the Royals would win the World Series. Ed took on any and all co-workers with this wager, and his coworkers were only too happy to take him up on his fool’s bet.   Ed said perhaps ten people took his wager.  He’d better plan on buying beer.  Truly a fool’s bet.

However…the Kansas City Royals won the next three games in a row to win the World Series.  It was unprecedented.  People at work were shocked. As Ed collected his cases of beer, they would say to each other, “Don’t bet against him when he has a dream.” 

I asked Ed about the dream experience hoping to learn something about the nature of dreaming premonitions.  He said it was the only time he had such an experience.  What was interesting was that he awoke from his sleep startled, and the firsthand nature of the dream.  Obviously something about this dream was extraordinary, not a typical dream.

Some famous dreaming premonitions include Abraham Lincolns dreaming about his own death, and premonitions of the Titanic.  Even today there are stories of people who stayed away from the Twin Towers before 9/11 because of a premonition. 

What are the implications of genuine premonitions?  It means we don’t understand the true nature of time and space.   These premonitions are real if rare and uncontrolled.  They can’t be measured, tested or subject to the scientific method.  But they are real nevertheless.  Science might develop new insights to the mysteries of the universe if they accepted the possibility of the paranormal into their equations.  Einstein created the theory or relativity using his imagination.  New insights could use such “outside the box” thinking.