Ghost Stories & Paranormal Encounters

I am afraid to find Laura

I am forty seven years old and I have spent most of my life as a fisherman and hunter on the lonely mountains where I live. The story I am going to relate to you is true in every aspect. I have spent literally thousands of nights out alone and never, not for one second, did I ever even think for a second that I saw something that was not of this world or, could not be explained, nothing.

I’ve always been a vivid dreamer and I know there is an actual term for this but I have long forgotten it :it’s when you experience what is in effect a “waking” or more correct “half waking dream.” These are very common and can be quite a fascinating experience for they are almost reality and the dreamer can actively take part in and influence the proceedings. Then of course you’re up and what has gone before is but a vague memory. I might well have had ten or twelve of such dreams during my life, but “two” which occurred seven years ago changed my whole view of these dreams and of dreams in general  and even now I give these two dreams a tremendous amount of thought. This is how it started.

I live along in a old wooden house a mile or so from the foot of Rogers Mountain, traffic volume is low and fades away altogether as evening draws in. It had  been a hard day. I had been helping my neighbor Ben since early morning round up his sheep, it was snowing and as more was forecast the animals had to be brought to shelter. We settled them in Bens barn and then after a few beers and Bens thanks I wandered slowly home. Tomorrow I had my own work to do, restoring an old motorcycle, the engine was almost finished and I was really looking forward to hearing the big old bike come back to life after spending more that thirty years lying unloved in someone’s shed.

Even though it was late April, the spring had not yet come to this mountainy place and so far the only sign of spring at all was a little bloom of wild flowers in the little meadow near the river, but that had been two months ago now and they were all long. I was tired and soon I was relaxing in the big old bed. I felt something in the room was not quite right, not as it should be. I was trying to figure out what it might be when I must have drifted off to sleep. It was a deep sleep for when I awake I had to shake the stiffness from my bones to rise myself in the bed. I could tell too that I was having one of my occasional “half waking dream.” The first time had been frightening – now they had become fascinating.

With half closed eyes I could see human shapes moving about the darkened room, this was usual, somehow I would always tell myself in the morning that I had simply imagined these shapes, they were products of my imagination. As I blinked around the room like a drunk in a pub sometimes strange began to happen. The dark mists that floated across the room began to part in the middle and slowly a figure approached my bed. I had never seen any details on the faces of the others who visited these strange dreams, but now a young girl of about twenty wearing a summer dress approached my bed slowly her hands behind her back, from she took a little bunch of spring flowers. She sat on the edge of the bed and took my hand in hers, she held it for a few minutes and then she got up and walked slowly into the mist which was now swirling and was gone. I snatched like a mad man for the light switch and there I lay a sweating wreck after a silly dream. That dream bothered me for most of the rest day but, by evening it was slipping to the back of my mind and I simply put it down to an unusual  experience.

The day passed as before, cold and snowy. That night I began to make the bed and it was while throwing the big old bed spread around to make it more comfortable, that something falling to the floor caught my eye. It looked a moth of some kind, if only it had been. It was the head of a little freshly plucked wildflower, which should have been withered and gone two months ago. But this one could have been plucked that very day. Where in Gods name had it come from. I thought of course of the girl in my dream but this made no sense… somehow this flower had found it’s way into my room two months after the last of them had gone from the meadow… no explanation end of story. I pressed the flower in the old family bible where it still is today and got on with life.

Finally the spring did come, almost overnight it seemed and then followed a scorching summer. The dust and sun were unbearable during the day and trying to sleep at night was simply rolling over and over in sweat. My last encounter took place one night towards the end of August, when the spell was at it’s hottest and rumors of a break in the weather were everywhere. I finally slept, but when I woke up it was in a whole different place. It was still night, but I was frozen, colder than I had ever been before… The girl sat beside me with her full winter outfit on, her hand linked me under the arm. In front of us was a frozen pond where children were skating and laughing although I could tell by the moon that it was well after midnight. I knew I was dreaming, but it had never been so vivid before, had I died and gone here? I tried to ask the girl her name or where were we but the sound would simply not come out. She spoke though, “wasn’t the music recital great last night?” I couldn’t answer and next she hauled me by the arm and we walked along a little snowy path… I could barely move with the cold and then an old couple passed us on the path. The man lifted his hat and said Laura and the lady just smiled politely… neither looked at me.

Laura  had let my hand go and she was now a little ahead of me seemingly unaffected by the intense cold. She moved along the edge of the pond where thick mist was now beginning to rise. I tried to follow but the cold had frozen my very bones. I fell to my knees and in an instant I was lying on my bedroom floor, frozen to the bone, in the middle of an August heat wave. That was seven years ago now and while I still don’t believe in ghosts or spirits I do give some credence to the possibility of there being other places which we can visit from time to time. Maybe there is someway of reaching these other places through the power of dreams… and there is always the possibility that Laura was not in my dreams… maybe I was in hers?

Anytime I feel like I’m on a fools errand and I open the old bible and look on that pressed spring flower… a flower that now I’m sure came from a girl who either entered my dream or I somehow entered hers.

Sent in by Tim Mc Caffrey, Copyright 2009