After recently reading a similar submission, I have felt compelled to share this experience, now that I am aware that more people have experienced something as such than I originally realized. And not to mention it was also the first experience I have memory of that opened me up to the possibility that I have some level of extra-sensory capability.
It happened in late February 2002. My best friend Krista at the time had a younger brother, whose name was Michael. Michael was a sophomore in high school while Krista and I were in our senior year, and the three of us attended the same school. Krista and I were inseparable back then and had been since we met during our sophomore year, so I naturally spent a lot of time around Michael because I was always at their house. Although Michael and I were never particularly close because I always considered him more of an annoyance, I still grew to care about him as if he were my own younger brother.
Michael was pretty special and I don't believe he ever received the credit he was due. And there was also times when his family could be a bit of jerks to him (for lack of better words), teasing him at times because he was technically deemed mentally challenged by the state, even though one could not notice any such mental or physical traits when interacting with Michael. I personally always thought it was a load of bull poopy, but it was never my place to make such a statement and I unfortunately always made the decision to keep quiet about it. I also thought Michael was special because he was extremely diabetic, and considering I had never spent much time around someone who was diabetic like he, I came to look up to him in some ways for his strength of having to go through the daily struggles that accompanied his condition. He hid it fairly well. I'm sure those who didn't know him well wouldn't know he struggled with his diabetes.
A few days before Michael's 16th birthday, he accompanied me to the youth group I attended weekly. I came to find out that he was very deep into his relationship with God and I would like to think it was that day our bond grew stronger. Michael turned 16 on February 17th, 2002, I believe. It has been almost a decade that I have trouble remembering his exact birth date. I remember how I had given Michael a birthday card where inside I had written something along the lines of, "You're 16 now and legally old enough to drive. But don't get any ideas. Just because you can drive now doesn't mean I'm going to let you borrow my car, but I will take you cruising." I suppose remembering what I had written isn't entirely relevant but it was meant as a personal joke between him and I and I do remember that he had appreciated it.
Shortly after his birthday, a week maybe, Michael became ill. I was spending a usual evening at Krista's house to help her make a homemade birthday card for her cousin's birthday the following day and Michael was in his room with his half brother and they were listening to my favorite music group. Only they were listening to the same song over and over and over and being entirely obnoxious about it, and so I finally excused myself from Krista's room to go knock on Michael's door and kindly ask him to either turn the CD to a different song or at least turn it down, all the while trying to explain that I loved the song, but not on constant replay that kept going and going and going like it was the darn Energizer Bunny. I also told them, very much like I was indeed his older sister, that it was annoying the crap out of me and Krista and if they didn't do as I requested, I was going to steal the CD player and break the CD, or something along those lines. All I remember about that is that they got a good laugh about it; I wasn't as annoyed as I originally thought I was, and they were kind enough to at least switch songs.
A couple days later, Michael started to not go to school. At least two days in a row he was absent from school and I found myself wondering what was wrong with him. I was driving home one day after school and had stopped at a stop light when Michael randomly entered my mind. I sat at that stop light the entire duration it was red with a sudden overwhelming urge that I needed to go see Michael, to check up on him and just to say I was thinking about him and that I hoped he was feeling better. But, being the teenager I was, I was very impatient (as I still can be at times to this very day) and was tired from my day at school. All I wanted was to go straight home and I thought it was more important to do so than to visit Michael. I continued on my way and pushed aside the overwhelming feeling. I must apologize, because I don't remember the exact time line, but a day or two later Krista and I were sitting in our Ceramics class. It was our last class of the day, which was always a fun class to attend despite the fact that our teacher was somewhat on the psychotic side. Half way through the class, Mr. Clark, our principal, quietly came into the classroom and told Krista that she needed to come with him. At first I didn't think anything of it because she wasn't told to bring her belongings with her. So I turned to continue on with my pottery work... Until the classroom door clicked shut and an awful dread hit me in the pit of my stomach. I froze and looked back towards the doorway as the dread grew and immediately Michael entered my mind. I tried explaining it away as my overactive imagination kicking into overdrive, but when Mr. Clark returned a short time later, I felt my heart break.
"Mr. Clark, what's going on?" I asked him, but he wouldn't answer me as he went to gather Krista's belongings. "Mr. Clark, is Krista ok? Do I need to go with you to see her?" He turned to me, nodded, and I quickly gathered Krista's belongings before following him out into the hallway. "Mr. Clark," I started again. "Please tell me what happened."Mr. Clark turned to me at that moment, and with tears in his eyes he informed me, "Michael went to sleep on his living room floor this morning and he never woke up."
I tore my attention away from him and it was as if time turned agonizingly slow while we walked down the hallway until we reached the office. I wanted to cry, the tears burned at the back of my eyes and I could hardly breathe. I was taken to the room they had Krista in and the second she saw me, she was up out of her seat and in my arms and we stood there crying together. The devastation was surreal and I had lost people in my life before that occurred, but I had personal reasons why it hit even harder, because I had just started forming a stronger relationship with Michael and I had ignored the gut feeling I'd gotten days before.
Krista was never the same after the death of her brother and in some ways I think that was the beginning to the demise of our friendship, among other irreconcilable differences. Her personality changed in different aspects and it was almost as if my best friend had died right along with Michael. We were close for years after, but it was never the same. However, a year or so after Michael's death, Krista and her family began the search for a new house. Krista was excited for the change and I was excited for her. A while after she let me know that they were looking, I had a peculiar dream that I know will stay with me for the remainder of my life.
The dream started normal, far normal than most of my dreams. I was accompanying Krista and her family to a prospective house they were considering moving into. For whatever reason, I was extremely exhausted in the dream and after walking into what I suspected was the living room (it was a giant open empty room with high ceilings), I noticed a single chair positioned in the middle of the room. It was a simple chair, but nonetheless appeared inviting and I told Krista and her family that I was just going to sit down in the chair and rest while they walked through the rest of the house. The moment I sat down in the chair, I fell asleep (yes, I had a dream within a dream... First and only time that has happened and it was weird). Shortly after falling asleep, I began to have a dream within my original dream and staring at the door we entered through, I watched as Michael walked into the room. I couldn't believe what I was seeing and as soon as he neared me, I was out of the chair, pulling him into my arms for a hug and telling him how happy I was to see him. The conversation between Michael and I wasn't very long and I don't remember it in its entirety, but one statement of his stood out, the only one I thought and still think was the most important.
Michael pulled back from me. "I'm ok now," he assured me. "You need to tell Krista I'm ok."
The second dream was over and I awoke in my original dream still sitting in the chair. Krista and her family returned to the room seconds later and I told Krista what had happened. Finally waking into reality though, I contemplated telling Krista what I had experienced. She was still devastated from the loss and missed her brother badly and I was afraid to tell her about what I experienced because I feared upsetting her more. Still, I couldn't get past what I had heard, seen, and felt in both dreams and I finally told Krista what Michael wanted me to tell his sister. She didn't yell at me, didn't tell me I was crazy... Krista cried and told me, "Thank you."
It was an enlightening, yet confusing experience that I suppose I still in some ways question to this day. But I know it was more than an act of my subconscious playing out what I was keeping buried inside. My dreams are never very clear, and 99.9% of the time I consider them gibberish because they never seem to make a bit of sense and most of the time they are highly unrealistic. My encounter with Michael was far more realistic and clear that I can still see it in my head when I think about it. He sounded like himself, he looked like himself, the smile was his...
My internal warning that something was horribly wrong with Michael days before his death was the start to what I call my occasional curse. I experienced the same thing with another friend of mine, Ron, who passed away a year or two after I graduated high school. Ron and I knew each other from childhood. He was always known to me as the boy who popped my balloon at his grandparents' 50th wedding anniversary, just to make and see me cry. He was always an honest friend to me and I more often than not thought he was just an annoyance. Yet, we somehow managed to grow apart and after years of not speaking to Ron, I suddenly began to think about him, think about how I needed to figure out a way to get a hold of him to see how he was doing and what he had been up to. I was born a procrastinator and that trait kept me from doing what I knew I was supposed to do. Then, on a random night during one of my normal hang outs with Krista, we got on the subject of Ron and I finally decided the next day I was going to search out what his number was and call him like I had been meaning to. The next day, another friend of mine told me that Ron had recently been involved in a horrible car accident with a friend of his. His friend had been drinking (I don't remember if Ron had been drinking too) and using drugs that night and was thrown from the vehicle when it struck the tree and walked away with mere scratches and bruises. Ron wasn't as lucky and passed away at the hospital.
A year ago, my ex boyfriend and I lost a mutual friend, whose name was Rachel, to a car accident. Two days before the accident occurred, I was on my way to work with plenty of time to spare. I'd stopped at a stop sign and sat there in my car far past a normal amount of time that was required, because I couldn't stop looking across the street at the health food store Rachel worked at. I hadn't seen her in a while and something in my head kept urging me, "Go see Rachel, now." It was an overwhelming urgency to stop and see how my friend was, but I felt too sheepish for even thinking about stopping to say "Hi" because she was more my ex's friend than she was mine. And so, I turned left past the stop sign and continued on my way to work. I missed yet another opportunity in my life for what I'm coming to believe were my chances for a last goodbye, as horrible as that may sound.
I've also had dreams of people I'm close to dying. Then a never predetermined amount of time later, someone I am connected to or "indirectly connected" to, passes away. Although it's never the people in my dreams. I get random dreadful feelings and at times have caught myself mumbling, "Someone is going to die soon..." or "There's going to be a death soon." The horrid thing about it is that I never know beforehand who it is and I often more times than not brush the feeling away.
It feels like a curse and I hate it, nor do I even understand it. I suppose that bit could be brought up on the psychic site, but it is in someways connected to my story about Michael and I felt it needed to be added. I apologize for the length. I never intended for this to be drawn out so long, but not very many people know this aspect of me and I felt it needed to be said. Any questions, comments, or advice is greatly appreciated.
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