A final good-bye

My family is very superstitious. We believe in things that don’t have any form of scientific proof and follow our heart over our mind. For the most part, we are on the overtly religious end of the superstitious spectrum. My brother-in-law is a pastor and the whole family regularly attends church. This ‘religious trait’ is prominent in most members of the family, other than my Nan.

Something you need to know about her is that she is not my real, biological grandmother. She was married before and has six children of her own and met my grandfather after my grandma past away. So this story involves her biological family and has spread over onto my side, used as a story to creep us out.

One night she heard a rattling in the kitchen and Nan woke up. She thought that someone might be trying to break in so she got up out of bed and went to investigate. To her relief, there at the table sat her son, Jim. She asked him what he was doing there at such a late hour and he said that he just stopped in for a minute to say good-bye, but he had to hurry because he had to go see Marie. Nan sat down with him and talked for a little while and he kept on repeating that he had to go. Nan thought this was weird, if he had to go then he should just leave, and she had no idea who this Marie was, but she let it go and talked to him for a few minutes before he said he really had to leave. An eerie feeling came over her as she bid him good-night and she knew that something strange was going on… but she brushed it off and went back to bed.

The next morning Nan got a phone call telling her that Jim had died at around midnight the night before- two hours before he had visited.

Nan, being superstitious, automatically assumed that she had seen her son’s ghost, who’d wanted to say his final good-bye before heading off into the unknown. But she couldn’t get who this Marie he’d been talking about and why he was in such a hurry to leave. Nan had never known of a Marie. My grandfather told her that it was just a weird dream, and she reluctantly started to believe him.

A few days later at the funeral, Nan was approached by a woman who said that her name was Marie. She warned Nan and told her that what she was about to tell her might sound really weird but she had to know if she had been dreaming. She told Nan that she had been Jim’s girlfriend and that she thought she had seen him the night of his death, a few hours after he had died. She said that he claimed he’d just come from his mother’s house and was in a hurry to leave. Awestruck, Nan had confirmed that she thought she had seen Jim the night of this death as well. The two women instantly knew that it was no coincidence. And at that moment, Nan knew that she and Marie had both seen the ghost of her son; wanting to say his final good-byes to the people he loved.