The Chimes

Issue date: 10/29/09 Section: Opinion

Halloween has been my favorite holiday since I can remember - a huge family event. My grandma would buy me elaborate costumes from magazines and catalogues, my mom would spend hours working on difficult pumpkin carvings with us, and my dad would drag us to endless haunted houses, but one of my favorite Halloween memories comes from my great-grandma, who would tell me "family" ghost stories.

Most were lame attempts at frightening me, but one really stuck with me: My great-aunt Mary Lelle had recently lost her husband and was planning the funeral.

The couple had purchased a plot together years before, but she was still wrought with anxiety over the burial. The night after the service, Aunt Mary Lelle had a dream; in it, her husband came to her, soaking wet, in pain and discomfort, begging for help.

For weeks after the burial, she had the same disconcerting dream: her husband would come to her dripping, dragging from the weight of the water, complaining he was uncomfortable, that he couldn't move on, that his afterlife was miserable.

After a couple months of the ceaseless dream, Aunt Mary Lelle went back to the cemetery and demanded that her husband be exhumed... something was seriously wrong.

She fought a great deal with the cemetery (they of course thought she was crazy and just couldn't move on from the loss), but finally they gave in.

The body didn't need to be exhumed. Before the ditch-diggers could even hit the coffin water swelled around them.

My great-uncle had been buried near an old water pipe, which had burst and flooded his plot. Everything was soaking wet.

The cemetery solved the problem and fixed the pipes; my Aunt Mary Lelle never had the dream again. Call it ghosts, call it intuition... call it the power of love... who knows... but the sheer coincidence of it all is eerie.

By Anamarie Miller
Chief copy editor
amiller6@capital.edu

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