This is a very very interesting series Abi! :D
OBE sounds terrifying! I have never experienced anything like this, but I have spooky stories my grandma has told me and dreams that proved to be premonitions, especially one that terrified me and made me really worried of going to bed.
Allow me to explain in short: Almost a year after my grandfather's sudden death (pulmonary oedema and heart failure) I have a dream of him dressed in his suit and standing outside his sister's house (her two children lived next door on a two-storey building, her son on the ground floor and her daughter on the first floor). It all happens at night time. So my grandpa is standing outside, his nephew (his sister's son) is sitting on the balcony (on the ground floor) and a big wardrobe-box thing is blocking the window on the first floor, but there is a bright light beaming around the crack that marked that wardrobe's outline. I then hear a phone ringing, I find myself on the balcony where my grandpa's nephew was sitting and the moment the nephew stands up to go answer the phone I wake up because it was actually our phone ringing in the middle of the night. That was the wife of my grandpa's nephew informing us that her husband had just died of a heart attack. For a few months I was afraid to dream because of that (I was about 13-14 at the time). I still experience such dreams, they don't make sense, but they leave me with a weird feeling that something upsetting will happen on that day. I try not to worry about things I cannot control, but they do disturb me sometimes and I am in a bad mood for the rest of the day, which I think sounds reasonable.
I don't know how I came to dream of that, I think I had heard my mother say that my (now late) uncle had been in hospital for a check-up, because he had high blood pressure, but I cannot be 100% sure after so many years.
Other than this spooky story of mine, I have some of my grandmother's weird stories: Once my grandpa was hospitalized (prostate cancer, very very severe case with few chances of him surviving). My grandmother would stay in hospital with him day and night, worried, stressed and tired. At some point she was desperate, sitting outside his room in the hallway. Then she sees a woman (I can't remember if she was dressed in black or white), the woman touches grandma and tells her: "Don't worry, he will be allright" and then she goes away. My grandfather did get over his cancer, despite the odds being against him, he lived 18 more years after that, but my grandma never knew who that woman was.
Now, what can you call this? Hallucination? Oracle? Wishful thinking that made her see that woman? And was it out of pure luck that my grandpa was cured? I don't know, I am just thankful he made it and I got to know him for my first 13 years of my life.
And one last dream incident my mother has recently had (I'm not sure I should share this, but it was a strong and unexplained experience): She dreamed of her mother-in-law (my father's mother), who passed away in 2015 (cancer). She saw my late grandmother holding a baby girl, calling her with a name (which I will not share out of respect) and telling the baby how much she missed her and how happy she was that she could hold her again. When my mom woke up on that day she asked my father whether he ever had a sister and he replied that he did have a sister with the name my mum heard in her dream, who passed away when she was a baby. My mother never knew about it until that day.
This one could be explained if you consider scattered words in the family or rumors she might have heard and the fact that my mum could have guessed the baby's name because she knew my father's family tree and in Greece it is natural to name a baby after the grandparents.
I hope I did not bore you with all this "spookiness" from my family. And I will admit I am not sure I'd want to see spooky being totally demystified and explained in terms of chemistry and biology. Sometimes mysteries should remain mysteries, they allow us to believe, hope and wander.
I am looking forward to the next parts!! 😘💖
😳 And this is when I run out of material to support any scientific explanations for situations within this realm of experiences! I never had any premonitory experience, but I do understand why you would be upset about certain dreams and concerned for the day! It turns out premonition accounts are more common than I had initially imagined. This is the third one I have read on this feed! Very interesting ....
Now, this one gave goosbumps!
If I had to answer this question - under my limited knowledge - yes, I would say it was a visual hallucination. As a consequence of grandma's emotional state. How to explain granddad getting better? Well, I am afraid to say I don't have a better answer than coincidence :/
Oh! As sad as the dream of your mum holding the baby is; it is also a very touching story! 💖
You never bore me Ruth! And, as always, of course, you never fail to deliver your beautiful insights. This is both profound and poetic:
... and a notion that I respect very much!
Thank you for participating in our discussion with these most incredible and spooky family stories :)
Lots of love to you always!