re: Supernatural Experience. Ghost Or Something Unexplainable? Ever Have One?

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At that time, Atlanta did not have a hospital, but that would soon change with the bold vision of one man and the determination of four women who founded Atlanta Hospital (now Emory Saint Joseph’s). William Gross, the Catholic bishop of Savannah saw the need to create a hospital to serve the growing population of Atlanta, so at his request, four Sisters of Mercy traveled to the city in 1879.

Sisters Mary Cecilia Carroll, Mary Helena Sheehan, Mary Borgia Thomas and Mary Berchmans Young left their convent in Savannah with only 50 cents capital among them, but they also possessed the skills and experience to continue the mission of their Order, serving the poor and vulnerable with compassionate care.

Sister Mary Cecilia had been appointed by her superior in Savannah as the first administrator (CEO) of this new endeavor. She had many years of experience leading the former U.S. Marine Hospital (now Saint Joseph’s Hospital in Savannah) during a yellow-fever epidemic.

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Ain't that something? Four Mary's started the hospital where Sister Mary walks the halls visiting patients. I think I remember a statue near one of the entrances that looked like something you would see in a Catholic hospital but never really paid it any attention.

On this subject I mentioned this thread to my wife yesterday and she reminded me that while my BIL was in the hospital there was a prominent Atlanta and DC politician's wife on the same floor a couple of doors down from my BILs room. We spoke with members of that family often in the waiting area and, I had forgotten this, they had also seen Sister Mary walking the halls.

It is entirely possible that, given the emotions involved at such a time, that something in our shared experiences and DNA cause this sort of thing to be pretty common. There is way more unknown about the human brain and human emotion than is known. All I know for certain is that more than a few people were aware of Sister Mary and strangely enough no one really thought it was insane or spooky, it was just something that happened. When you think about what this story suggests, that a ghost is visiting people in the hospital, it is crazy, yet no one ever mentioned that, just that they had experienced.it.

Not to sound like a prick, but I can't imagine not calling my mom in the next day or so if this happened to me.

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Just a few weeks before she died one of my cousins went to visit. For about 10 minutes my grandmother came completely out of her "fog" and had a complete normal conversation - in which she said it was so frustrating to know what she was trying to say but that her body/mind wouldn't allow her to find the right words.

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my dad had it, and this is the exact same experience my sister had with him the day before he died

Makes sense. Again, didn't mean to sound dickish, that's just an alarming vision. I didn't know the dynamic and now I do.

Great thread. Some really good stories.

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I think what we consider paranormal is actually normal; we just don’t understand it yet. I don’t think we understand the workings of the universe as much as we think we do.

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I think this is correct, especially when someone is dying or has died. If you think about dreams and imagination, especially in children when they are too young to dismiss the wanderings of the mind, it is not impossible that the common stories surrounding the death of a loved on set off some sort of deeply rooted reaction in the mind that is common to every human who ever lived. For instance it is very common for folks to feel a "premonition" just before or after someone they knew well dies. It could be a premonition, but it could also be that the people we know well are ALWAYS on our minds, we just have those thoughts stored away while we do other things....the human mind is capable of doing thousands of things simultaneously. When we do hear that the person has died or is dying that "file" is brought out of storage and is our main focus. I don't know but its entirely possible


I told my story about the Skyway bridge collapse. I saw it happening very clearly in my child's mind including the detail about the greyhound bus. When I say clearly saw it I mean it was as if it had already happened I was so sure of it. I was a kid keep in mind. I do not think there was anything supernatural about this. I had lived in Brunswick, GA when another bridge, which looked like the Skyway to a kid, collapsed and killed several people. That made an impression - I stored that in a vault. I was also a kid and I liked building shite. I was no engineer but I knew, without being able to articulate it, that the higher you built something the more of a base it needed or it would eventually collapse. If you look at a bridge like the Skywar you only see part of it, you do not see the foundation. I was not aware of this....all I knew was if I tried to build anything close to that it would collapse pretty quick. Coupled with the experience of the other bridge collapsing its not hard to see how a child could expect all similar structures to collapse.

They greyhoud bus is the interesting aspect. I knew, again as if it had already happened, that when, not if, the bridge collapsed it would so with a greyhound bus on it at the time. This did indeed happen. It may be that I was prescient beyond the norm for human beings or, more likely, it was the result of a couple of factors.

First among these was my love for fishing when I was a kid. I pestered my stepfather to take me fishing every hour of every day and, living near the bridge, spent a lot of time fishing around and off the bridge. The bridge is a major route from Sarasota and Fort Meyers to Tampa. Lots of traffic. In that era busses like greyhound and trailways were very common. I probably saw a bunch of them on the bridge. I don't know this but it is not unlikely. My mother had also dated a driver for greyhound and I did not like him because I thought she was cheating on my father...typical kids stuff. It is not outside the realm of possibility that, as child, seeing busses on a bridge that looked like it would collapse, I imagined that man driving his bus off the bridge.

I do not think it was anything supernatural. If I had some sort of ability to see the future as clearly as I saw that bridge collapsing with a bus on it I would be a gazillionaire today LOL. I think we know almost nothing about how the mind collects and stores data and how that data will manifest itself in our lives. And I guess in a way that is kind of supernatural....

I have seen “the light” in Crossett, AR

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sleep paralysis demon

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This right here. Happened again just last week. Sleeping on my stomach, and something was holding my head down. You can't move and feels like you have to climb out of a deep hole to wake up. Very unsettling.

That story cuts deep ^