Apollonia
Here's my near to Halloween spooky experience that happened this morning.
Some background: I have one of those inexpensive “anniversary” style chiming clocks with the rotating ball type pendulum that can either play “Westminster,” “Ave Maria,” or be silent. I've had it since 1983, and after about the first day I switched it permanently to the silent mode, as it played every quarter hour and was driving me nuts.
So one day a few years ago, my husband was puttering around in our kitchen very early in the morning. When I got up, he told me that out of the blue, he had heard music, and it was coming from my office in the next room. He went in and found that the clock was playing “Ave Maria.” This happened a few days in a row, at random, always when my husband was the only one around.
It took me a while to put it together, but I finally came to the conclusion that this was a message from my brother, who had died a few years earlier, as there were some other things related to him that were happening around the house around this same time. The connection with the tune was that he was the only one of us four siblings who had converted to Catholicism.
The clock would do that once in a while thereafter, always "Ave Maria," never the other tune. Whenever it did, I always said, “Hi bro,” and that was that. Some time after we moved to a new location, I moved the clock from my office where it had always been, to our family room, where we don't spend as much time.
So this morning I was running around decluttering. My husband was out walking the dogs. Suddenly I heard a woman's voice, quite loud and declamatory, coming from our bedroom upstairs. I kind of tiptoed up, and as I went, I could hear what she was saying: “Hail Mary, mother of God, blessed art thou among women...” and she went on to complete the entire prayer. I hesitantly, with goosebumps all over, went into the bedroom, and found that our clock radio's alarm had gone off, and it was blaring a religious radio program.
But the odd thing is that I had not turned the alarm on, and although the station I was hearing was clearly Christian programming, the radio showed that it was tuned to our usual public radio station, and this was most definitely not a part of the story they had been broadcasting just a few minutes earlier when I was listening on a different radio.
So then I went to good old Wikipedia and entered “Hail Mary” because I wanted to find out what the word “hail” really meant in this context, and I read “The Hail Mary, also commonly called the Ave Maria...”
I figure since the clock is now in a room that we don't hang around in very much, my brother chose a different way to get my attention.
And I found that the word “hail” in this connotation means “rejoice” or “be glad.” The rest of the story: my sister and I just found out last night that my brother's widow had recently remarried. Her name is Mary. So I think my brother was letting us know that she had his blessing.
Fun, huh?
Some background: I have one of those inexpensive “anniversary” style chiming clocks with the rotating ball type pendulum that can either play “Westminster,” “Ave Maria,” or be silent. I've had it since 1983, and after about the first day I switched it permanently to the silent mode, as it played every quarter hour and was driving me nuts.
So one day a few years ago, my husband was puttering around in our kitchen very early in the morning. When I got up, he told me that out of the blue, he had heard music, and it was coming from my office in the next room. He went in and found that the clock was playing “Ave Maria.” This happened a few days in a row, at random, always when my husband was the only one around.
It took me a while to put it together, but I finally came to the conclusion that this was a message from my brother, who had died a few years earlier, as there were some other things related to him that were happening around the house around this same time. The connection with the tune was that he was the only one of us four siblings who had converted to Catholicism.
The clock would do that once in a while thereafter, always "Ave Maria," never the other tune. Whenever it did, I always said, “Hi bro,” and that was that. Some time after we moved to a new location, I moved the clock from my office where it had always been, to our family room, where we don't spend as much time.
So this morning I was running around decluttering. My husband was out walking the dogs. Suddenly I heard a woman's voice, quite loud and declamatory, coming from our bedroom upstairs. I kind of tiptoed up, and as I went, I could hear what she was saying: “Hail Mary, mother of God, blessed art thou among women...” and she went on to complete the entire prayer. I hesitantly, with goosebumps all over, went into the bedroom, and found that our clock radio's alarm had gone off, and it was blaring a religious radio program.
But the odd thing is that I had not turned the alarm on, and although the station I was hearing was clearly Christian programming, the radio showed that it was tuned to our usual public radio station, and this was most definitely not a part of the story they had been broadcasting just a few minutes earlier when I was listening on a different radio.
So then I went to good old Wikipedia and entered “Hail Mary” because I wanted to find out what the word “hail” really meant in this context, and I read “The Hail Mary, also commonly called the Ave Maria...”
I figure since the clock is now in a room that we don't hang around in very much, my brother chose a different way to get my attention.
And I found that the word “hail” in this connotation means “rejoice” or “be glad.” The rest of the story: my sister and I just found out last night that my brother's widow had recently remarried. Her name is Mary. So I think my brother was letting us know that she had his blessing.
Fun, huh?
