Paranormal Story Archives
May 2002 – Page 4

Disturbing Premonitions
by Catherine R.

When I was 14 in 1993, my friend "Adrien" stayed over at my house on a weekend. I'd just gotten a Ouija board and so, of course, we played around with it. She grew tired as it got late and so I sat up one last time, "playing" with the board. I am a creative person, but such morbid thoughts wouldn't have occurred to me when I was 14. The words sort of just came to me as a story might, and I found myself telling my friend, while my hand pointed to letters on the board, that she'd had a male cousin who'd drowned at a young age, and that he'd been adopted. She knew nothing of any such thing ever occurring, and so I put the board away and we went to bed. 

The next morning we called her mother. Just telling her of what happened, Adrien told her mother and her mother went silent for a moment on the phone, then asked where she'd heard that. The story was true and had been kept from the younger people of the family since it'd happened before Adrien had been born. Needless to say, we were both very frightened and I never used the board again. I put it away. 

In 1994, I was 15, sitting watching a Disney movie while writing to my first boyfriend when an odd feeling bleached over me. It was the anxious feeling, like the kind you get as a child, the night of Christmas Eve or the morning you're going to some fair that comes around once a year. A sort of jittery feeling, as though your stomach were cold and shaking, constricting your muscles from your abdomen up to your jaw. I'd never really sensed this feeling before, but it was upsetting and I just knew something was wrong. Only 10 minutes after the feeling, my phone rang: hundreds of miles away, in another state, my cousin had burned himself while playing with a lighter at a friend's house. I wasn't quite sure as to how I knew something was wrong, and wrote it off as coincidence or intuition; after all, he is family. 

Time went by for me - nothing abnormal, except for the feeling I should be moving. We'd been military, moving every three years, and this (November 1995) was year three in a house, our family's first. I was anxious for a week and so finally my mother suggested that I pack up my room, repaint and we could get carpet for our rooms (my sister and I). I was excited. I didn't want to repaint my room; I liked it the way it was, but I had wood floors and wanted carpet, so this was cool. On November 22, 1995, I woke up and showered, getting ready to go pick out my carpet. As I dried off, this awful thought just sprung into my mind as though lightning were hitting me. I quite nearly made me nauseated as I thought of it. One of my grandparents could die. It was something I NEVER thought of - NEVER wanted to think of. Yet here I'd just thought of it. I shoved it out of my mind and went on with my day as planned. That night, as my family sat eating dinner (I still remember what we had for some reason and I have a terrible memory otherwise), the phone rang. It was my grandpa, and he said that my "Grannie" (we called her that to distinguish her from our other grandmother) had died. That it happened at a mall after she'd gotten her nails done and was drinking coffee. I was more in shock that I'd known than I was at her passing at first. I didn't know what to say. The event haunts me to this day. 

In recent times, I've had more of these events. The day that would go down in history, September 11, 2001, was a terrible day indeed. But just hours before all of that, I'd been trying to fall to sleep. I am a night owl, spending the majority of my time online at night. It's never uncommon for me to go to bed at 4 a.m. On Sept 11, 2001, I'd gone to bed at 2:30 a.m. and at about 2:45, a feeling of dread washed over me. I felt death for sure. I began to cry and couldn't stop. I knew someone was going to die... however, at that moment I believed it to be an elderly man whom I worked with. By about 3:15 a.m., I realized that the feeling was worse and I couldn't help myself, but lay there and blubber like a child. I felt a fool of course. My husband was out on one of the nuclear air craft carriers that was on its way home and I missed him dreadfully. I passed the emotions and feelings off as this and only this, though still, that feeling of death loomed and grew, like a black veil being pulled around my room. I finally cried myself to sleep by about 4 a.m., and woke to my phone ringing at 8 a.m. I was so annoyed. Only four hours of sleep. It was my sister and she was warning me that my mother would be calling and would be frantic, something about the World Trade Center being bombed. Not that I'm cold and heartless, but at that moment, I didn't care. So many bombings in the US, what was another? Of course, I'd mourn the deaths of those who'd died as everyone else did, and be angry at those who were responsible, but I didn't have the time to think of this. I was trying to get comfortable on my pillow again. Another ringing phone. My mother this time, ordering me to get up and out of bed and go turn on the news. Of course, we all know what happened from there on. At this point in time, I was too tired to make any kind of connection... nor did I want to admit one. But my friends online helped me realize that I'd had more of these feelings and that this just couldn't be a coincidence. 

I began thinking back to those moments when tragic situations occurred that effected me and began to realize that I'd always felt anxious for one reason or another before the situation. And so with this being seen I began to pay attention. When one opens their eyes for the first time, things are very blurry. The slightest feeling starts you wondering if something will happen or if you just had too much chili dip for lunch. I've had several smaller events, less crucial and non-impact causing, happen since then. Snow storms, broken car windows, sick friends... and I've thought to myself, I don't know how many times "Why me? Why must I feel these things?" The truth is, I don't want to feel it when a friend's lung is collapsing, or a young boy I mentor is hospitalized from an allergic reaction. It's torment enough to hear them on the phone, let alone know something will happen a day - a week even - in advance. But that's my story so far... and whether people choose to see the connections as coincidence or premonition, that's their choice. But for you out there who feel the same feelings, get the same foreknowledge that the formidable will occur... you're not alone and I'm just as confused and upset as you.

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