Let’s Talk Tuesday: The Ghost Story

If you would have asked me 10 years ago if I believed in ghosts and other paranormal activity, I would have laughed and just said, “No.” I’ve always been a skeptic and I still have never personally experienced anything in that realm. Yet, a number of people I’m close with have revealed some of their own experiences to me, in the last few years. And my blogger friend Mark wrote a guest post about his own encounter here.

The story I’m about to tell took place in September 2022. Allow me to set the stage: My mother-in-law had been suffering from Alzheimer’s since about 2011 and by 2018 had no idea who any of us were. She was living in a memory care unit when my husband got the call that she had become unresponsive and was taken to the ER. All five of her children as well as various grandchildren spent that day at the hospital, coming and going in different shifts, not knowing how serious her condition was. My husband and his brother are close, so they went together to visit her, but she never responded to their presence. However, just two hours later, my husband’s sister (the only sister he speaks with) called to say that Mom woke up and was cognizant of not only my sister-in-law’s (and her husband’s) presence, but seemed to recognize them and laugh along with some of their family stories. Hearing this, my husband and his brother decided to go back the next morning.

Sadly, my husband woke up the following morning to a text from his sister that Mom had passed away at 12:05 a.m. It was shocking but also not shocking, if you know what I mean. We spent the following week preparing for the funeral, burial, and repast.

Fast forward a month later. We got together in Ohio wine country with my husband’s brother and sister and their spouses and that’s when my brother-in-law dropped his bomb on us, so to speak. The night he and my husband visited their mother, he said he and his wife were in bed and he was awakened by the clicking sound that their bedroom door makes when being opened. They are empty nesters during the school year, so no one else was in the house. He said he sat up and saw a glowing orb of light walk between the dresser and the bed and go right up to his side of the bed and stop, hovering next to him. Then the orb glided back the other way and entered the master bathroom.

At this point, he gained his senses enough to wake up his wife and tell her what happened. They both got out of bed and began turning on all the lights in the house, including the basement. He said he checked every door lock and finding nothing disturbed, he turned the lights off and went back upstairs to their bedroom. That’s when he decided to look in the bathroom and although he saw nothing, he said that every hair on his arms and back of his neck stood up. His wife did not experience this and convinced him to just get back in bed and go to sleep. He looked at the clock and it was 12:15 a.m., about 10 minutes since he had awakened from the door click. And as you’ve already read, the exact time my mother-in-law died, which he learned in the morning.

To say that I was freaked out by this story is putting it mildly. First, because my brother-in-law is a scientist, an agnostic, and just about the last person I’d expect to witness a ghost. I think he was so disturbed that it took him a month to tell any of us. Secondly, I was a little concerned that my recently departed MIL might decide to pay my husband a visit. I was actually afraid to go to bed alone for about a week and spent a few nights pretty fearful. 

It’s been a year, so I’m hoping we are in the clear, but there are so many questions. Was my MIL checking on her son before she departed? And why that particular child out of the five? Or was my brother-in-law just dreaming even though he is 100% convinced he was wide awake? We all have differing opinions. I'm a believer, just from knowing my BIL, and hearing similar descriptions of the white, glowing orb that vaguely resembles a person walking.

Have you or a close friend/family member experienced a ghost?