Monday 5 October 2009

Words from the grave

While reading Memoirs of Moving On by Dorothy McRae-McMahon, I found this passage incredible. It is rare to find such an unambiguous example of the super-natural.

Dorothy had a son Christopher who, at two years of age, went into autistic withdrawal and stopped speaking entirely. The cause was undiagnosed until much later, when Dorothy's sister Thais died in a car accident.

Three days after Thais died, before we had the funeral, I was walking to the local shops with Robert [her second son] in the pram and Christopher alongside me. Christopher threw himself down on the ground and was screaming and banging his head. I stood and said to myself "Oh God, what will I do?" Thais's voice came to me as clear as a bell and said "Dearth, take Christopher to see Laura Nesbitt in Collins St." (Dearth is my family nickname derived from the young David calling me Dearthra because he couldn't say Dorothy.) I looked around to try to see her because it was all so real. I went home and looked up Laura Nesbitt in the phone book and, sure enough, there was such a person listed in Melbourne's Collins St. I tentatively rang the number and the phone was answered by Laura herself. I said, "I feel a bit silly asking, but what sort of doctor are you?" She replied "I am an allergist. Are you, by any chance, Thais Worner's sister?" I told her that I was and she said, "The presence of you sister came to me this morning and told me you would ring."

It's pretty hard to put that down to co-incidence, wishful thinking or any naturalistic explanation!

(After tests, the doctors discovered brain damage caused by an allergic reaction to a polio vaccine.)

1 comment:

Phil said...

One Minute After You Die by Erwin Lutzer talks of how supernatural beings can fool people into thinking that a person has spoken from the grave.