Reader Submission: The Neighbor at the Gate
“For the past few weeks, my mother had been looking after an elderly neighbor called Tom Evans. He was bed ridden, so she stopped by each day to spoon feed him and make sure he was okay.
One night after I got off work, I saw Tom standing at the gate and smoking a woodbine. I said “Are you alright Tom?” and he replied “Never better, Garry.” As he stood talking to me, I got a strange feeling in the pit of my stomach. When I went inside and told my mother what had happened, she said “Rubbish. Tom can’t get out of bed.”
She went over to investigate, and a few minutes later she came rushing through the front door saying, “Quick! Tom’s on the bedroom floor!” So my father and I went over to see, and Tom was facedown on the floor, dead. His body was quite swollen as though it had been there for some hours. Yet I had only talked to him some 30 minutes before.
This was 30 years ago, and it still haunts me to this day. Was it a spirit I was talking to and was that why I had the strange feeling in the pit in my stomach? For some reason when I was talking to him, I knew he was dead.”
spooky! I would be freaked out!
Well, the ghost is right – he wasn’t bedridden anymore, so he was ‘never better’. Guess one could say Garry met him while Tom was passing on. While definitely eery, in a certain perspective it’s comforting to know Tom wasn’t suffering like he was; perhaps this could be a sign he’s moving on to the next?
I’m sure he had nightmares for a long time, I can relate, but I did not see anything like this person did, I think I would pass out. I did read somewhere of people who are walking on a busy street, and they see what they think is a real live being, when all of a sudden, they disapear in front of them.