I guess it started off with my mum. She told me that early in her pregnancy, she believed that she was having a boy. She had picked out the name Sean-Patrick if I had been born a boy, and Danielle, if I was a girl. Late in her pregnancy she dreamed that she was walking down an old country road. It was a beautiful autumn day, and the leaves were falling around here. Soon, she noticed a scrap of paper floating down amongst the leaves, and she noticed that a name was written on it. The name Gabrielle was scrawled across the scrap of paper in a child's handwriting. She knew at that moment that I'd be born a girl, and that my name was supposed to be Gabrielle. She told me many years later that old souls announced their arrival, and she thought I had been an old soul. Though I don't know why I would have named myself Gabrielle since I hate the name. Yes, I have issues with being called "Gabby Gator" early on in life. Whenever I complained about it, my mum would laugh and tell me that I only had myself to blame. Oh well.

I always remembered having very vivid dreams. Sometimes my dreams seemed too real to be a dream. I considered that maybe I suffered from waking hallucinations. Not quite awake, but not quite asleep. I've actually woken myself up by the sound of my own voice. Chattering away with someone I had been speaking to in my dreams. Sleepwalking, yes. I had that too. It wasn't until later on that the dreams started affecting me.

I had a dream one morning that my neighbours house was on fire. I woke up thinking that it was an odd dream, and it troubled me greatly during school. I came home and my stepfather announced that our neighbour had nearly burned her house down by causing a fire in the kitchen. Maybe it was this event that bothered me, or maybe it was something else at work when I had another dream about a house fire. Only this one wasn't at the neighbours house. It was mine. The dream bothered me so much, that even during the days I was happy to come home and see the house still standing.

I began obsessing about it and started thinking about things that I wanted to save, should anything happen to the house while I was gone. One morning, this feeling was so strong, that I ran back into the house, pulled out my new leather jacket, and sprinted to catch the bus.

During mid-term exams, my teacher got a call and sent me to the office, where I was informed that my house was on fire. Of course, the house burnt to the ground. I could only think about the dream I had and my obsession with saving something important.

I didn't have too many dreams that bothered me until I was pregnant with my first child. During my first ultrasound, the tech told me that she couldn't be 100% sure, but she thought I'd be having a girl. I was pretty sure that the tech was right. Until I had the dream. In my dream, I was talking on the phone, and a small toddler had wrapped himself around my leg. I looked down and saw this little boy with curly hair and a devilish smile on his face. He looked up at me and said "Hi mommy!". I woke up thinking "Oh no! I'm having a boy and he's going to be nothing but trouble!" I did indeed have a boy.

One day, when he was about 3 years old, I was on the phone. The curly haired little guy wrapped himself around my leg, looked up at me with a devilish smile and said "Hi mommy!". I nearly had a heart attack. Yes, he's been trouble ever since!

During my second pregnancy, I wanted a girl very badly. My husband wouldn't allow me to find out what the sex was through the ultrasound, and I was so curious to find out, I actually called a phone psychic (which was totally stupid, but when you are 7 months pregnant and you cant sleep, EVERYTHING sounds good on those 2am info-mercials). Anyway, I asked the psychic and she said the spirits wouldn't divulge the secret. At that point, I yelled at my husband and told him that even the spirits were on his side. But I knew deep down that it wasn't any spirit keeping the secret to themselves. It was because the lady was a total fraud.

A few nights later, I was laying in bed, wondering about it, and drifted off to sleep. I had a dream that I was at a carnival and I met a gypsy. I asked her what I was having, but she wouldn't tell me, but she smiled and begun hanging pink ribbons everywhere. Soon I noticed that all the trees were hung with pink ribbons, and the baby bassinet was hung with pink ribbons. From that moment on, I knew I was having a girl.

A few years after that, I began having dreams about another boy. My daughter was nearly two years old, and my son was nearly three. I dreamt I was standing in a card shop looking at birthday cards, and my son, who was standing at my side, asked me if he had a brother. I told him "No, the little boy belongs with his father". I woke up from the dream and couldn't shake the feeling that I had another boy. I was so confused by it, that I even wondered where this third child was. All I knew at the time was that I didn't want another child of my own. I was up to my ears in toddlers, and figured another would just cause me to go insane.

A few months later, I became convinced that I needed to do a surrogacy. Dont ask me why. My husband even had his doubts about this crazy new idea of mine. I found a couple that was local, and we went about preparing for a gestational surrogacy (the kid was in no way mine. I just carried it for nine months). It really was a miracle that the surrogacy went through on the very first try. I had no doubts that it wouldn't, but the parents knew all the statistics better than I, and since they were both over 40, it made it that much more likely that they thought it would never work at all. During the amnio, I noticed how worried they were and I told them that the baby was going to be fine, and that it would be a boy. I never told them why I knew this, but I had a feeling that the baby had already announced himself to me and I kinda got the hint that everything would be fine. Sure enough, we got the results of the amnio back and it showed that HE was fine.

After his birth, I was never plagued by the feeling of having another boy around me.

Later, we moved into a new apartment. The second night I slept there, I had a dream that I looked at the walls and they were covered in little patches of black dots. Upon further examination, I found that the walls were covered in ants! I hate bugs. Really. There is nothing I hate more than crawly little things that are small enough to fit into any open orifice on one's body. Yuck. I woke up and felt disgusted, but glad it was only a dream. A week later, I was working in the bedroom when my son came to get me. "BUGS!" he squealed. "Come on mom, come and see!" My daughter grabbed my other hand and they dragged me into the living room. There, on the wall, was a swirling pattern of ANTS! They came out of nowhere! I looked at where they were coming from and there was no hole. They weren't coming out of the floor, or out of a window. They came from the middle of the wall, and they came right out of nowhere. They squeezed right through the wall itself. I was so stunned and repulsed by them, that I called my husband and made him come right home (only after getting a few cans of bug spray on the way home).

Since then, the only dream I seem to be plagued with is one about another little girl. Only, this one is mine. I think there is an old soul out there, knocking on my door and waiting to be born. Well, it'll be a while. I'm just waiting for my other two to get old enough to help change the diapers! :)

Boy, do I have alot of odd stories to tell, but I figured the dreams were bad enough, so I'd start off with those.

I'm a firm believer when it comes to paranormal phenomenon. A firm believer that 93% of all paranormal phenomenon can be explained away. I say this because, yeah, I see cat's out of the corner of my eye, where no cats are. Usually it's because I'm so used to seeing any one of my three (very much alive) cats in their usual places and when they aren't there, I still think I see them there. I also see shadows on the wall, but when I calmly think about it, I can see that they are nothing more than optical illusions. When I smell cigarette smoke where none should be, I realise that I am smelling something similar and my nose is sending mixed signals to my brain, and interpreting it as smoke. Strange whispering in my ears at night? It's due to the fact that my blood vessels are close to the surface of my skin, and I can hear the blood flow when everything else is silent. I'm also somewhat of an Atheist. I believe in souls, but I don't believe in anything else. So, that means I don't believe in entities of good or evil, just entities. However, there are things I cannot account for. There are dreams, scratch marks, and a case of slipping through time. These are things I cannot account for.

I guess I'll start with the scratch marks since I've already written about the dreams.

When I was a little kid, my mum moved us from apartment to apartment. The first house we lived in was on Bell Mountain in Scranton PA. Lots of strange things happened there and it's where I overheard my mum saying that the previous owner told her that she felt Spirits in the room that became my bedroom. I never actually felt anything, or saw anything. I was just a kid and whatever didn't bother me, I didn't bother it.

The strangest thing that I saw in the whole house was the knife in the ceiling in the basement. No one else could see it but me. That really got me ticked off because I always hated (even as a kid) to be called a liar.

When we moved from Scranton to Vestal NY, we lived in an apartment. We were on the first floor, and not long after living there, I noticed scratch marks beneath my window. We counted ten claw marks that were only seen below my window and no where else. None of the neighbours houses had any scratch marks. Mum and I figured it was the neighbourhood cat sharpening it's claws on my window. Why? I don't know. Maybe it's because the darned cat hated me (scratched my face and nearly took out my eyeball one time! Stupid cat). We moved into my grandparents house after that, while my stepfather built a new house on some property he bought up by the airport. Well, even at my grandparents house, I heard scratching outside of the window. They had skunks around, so I didn't bother looking outside because I didn't want to startle them, and smell them all night long.

When we moved into the new house, I noticed that I began having claw marks show up on the siding beneath my window. If it was only claw marks, that was fine by me. Didn't bother me in the least. After that house burned down, and the new house was built on the same foundation, our bedrooms were on the third floor. I chose a bedroom overlooking the field in back of the house, and I was three floors up now, so I figured that was the last I'd see of the claw marks.

Sure enough, that summer we were switching out the storm windows for the screens and I looked out and saw the claw marks. My mum looked down and saw them and we figured they must have come from birds. We went from window to window, looking out and saw no other claw marks beneath any other window but mine.

Actually I have to say that the original house, before it burnt down was considered to be haunted (actually, the second one built on the foundation was also considered haunted too). If it was haunted, it targeted my mum more than anyone else. Except for the time I was sitting in my bedroom while my parents were out. I was sitting at my desk which was facing a blank wall, and I saw a large shadow creep up from behind me. I really thought it was an optical illusion, just like any other strange shadow I encountered. I watched it as it went up my wall and I thought, "Gee, that would make a pretty big person,eh?" Suddenly, I was whacked upside the back of my head so hard, I saw stars. I wasn't scared. I was seriously angry. I grabbed my riding crop and searched the house. Upon finding nothing, I was so furious that I locked myself in the bathroom (cursing and complaining bitterly the whole time) and waited until my parents came home. Stupid shadow!

Though there were a few other odd things going on, I'm only going to add one more thing that I really, to this day cannot explain away. No matter how hard I try to find a way to dissect the experience and poke holes in my own account of it. I'm sure some of you out there will find this hilarious, but it bothered me!

The first house built on the property had a finished basement with awful carpeting down there. I mean, it was awful. If you were laying down on it and you had dry skin, or a broken fingernail, you could get it snagged in the carpeting. Very rough, terrible stuff, but it was cool down there and I only watched TV on the big screen in the basement when it was hot upstairs.

I was lying on the floor, in my ugly pink robe, watching The Highlander. It was on HBO at the time and I was alone down there while my mum was upstairs in her room. I really liked the show but I suddenly was overcome by a dizziness that made me sick to my stomach. I had this terrible feeling of dread. Something bad was going to happen. Suddenly, there I was in a different room, watching the same movie. There was different carpeting, an I was watching The Highlander on a different TV. I was sobbing even though I don't know why. I felt everything and it was all real. I felt myself yank back into my body and there I was, back there on the crummy carpeting watching the big screen, and crying my eyes out because I felt something terrible was going to happen. I ran up the stairs to my mum and couldn't tell her why I was so upset.

After the house burned down and the new one was rebuilt, I completely forgot about that experience. I didn't like the basement, but still, it was the coolest place to go when the rest of the house was hot. I was watching TV and saw that FOX was showing the network premier of The Highlander. I loved the movie, so I went to lay down on the floor and watch it. I felt something crawl down my face. I put my hand up and noticed it was wet. I was crying! I had no idea why. Suddenly, I felt that same dizziness overtake me and there I was, back in the old house. I could see my disgusting old pink robe, I could feel my fingernails snag the crummy carpeting. I was looking at the old big screen TV. That's when it hit me that the bad feeling I had was the house burning down. That's the bad thing that was going to happen. I was terrified of the weirdness in it all, and I yanked myself back again and ran up to my mum again. A little wiser this time, but completely upset. I had dreams about the fire. I obsessed about it, but I wasn't prepared for this experience.

Now, I'll tell you that I've never once actually laid eyes on a ghost. Not in the first house, second house, third house, fourth house, any apartments, or even when I lived in a house where a man was brutally murdered with a hammer. I've never met anything evil either. I don't consider myself psychic in the least, though there are things I just don't understand. But I still think the scariest thing you can meet in the dark is not the Dead, but the Living. If anyone has any similar experience to that time-slip thing, please email me. I'd like to know that I'm not the only one to have that happen.

MORSE CODE AFTER DEATH

My Uncle died on mother's day in May of 1984. I was 11 years old at the time. He had died in a one car accident after skidding off a gravel road and hitting a large tree head on. He never wore his seat belt. He felt it was an invasion of his privacy by the lawmakers who required everyone to wear seat belts in the state. Unfortunately for him, had he been wearing his seat belt, he'd still be alive today.

My Uncle was an avid Ham Radio operator(or Home-Amature radio operator). The night he died, he had been traveling to his camp where a few fellow Ham Radio Operators shared a mountain top, an antenna, and a repeater. My uncle was brilliant when it came to anything electronic or morse code. I remember spending hours sitting next to him in his "ham shack" in my grandparent's basement. The ham shack was really a bedroom that he had converted into wall- to-wall radios and electronic equipment of all sorts with a small bed in the corner of the room. He'd stay up all night sometimes, just talking to friends he'd met from every corner of the world. My uncle taught me a few lines of code and would even let me listen to the "Russian Woodpecker" while it was still aloft. I frequently stayed with him, so the sounds were etched in my mind. I remember he'd sit back and listen to the endless dashes and dots and laugh or shake his head. He'd tell me what they were sending, but it was so fast I never believed him unless he turned on his teletype machine and I read it all for myself in print copy.

When I spent the night with my grandparents, it was comforting in a way to hear the code drifting up from the basement. I never felt afraid being in the house knowing my big, strong, smart, uncle was down there and usually awake. After my Uncle died, however, it was a while before I could bring myself to stay with my grandparents again.

The first night I spent at my grandparents house after my uncle's death, I still heard the morse code. It was the familiar sound of dashes and dots that I knew pretty well from listening to my uncle. Every now and then, I could pick up a "CQ" or an "I". At that time, I could also pick out "88's". Yeah, sure... it was nice to hear the code again, but I no longer found it comforting. As a matter of fact, it was too bizarre for my taste. I started making up excuses not to have to spend the night with my grandparents for fear of having to listen to the morse code all night long. Even after my uncle's antenna had been removed, and his equipment had been distributed, and his room had been cleaned out, and the walls had been knocked down, the code persisted for quite some time. I thought I was the only nutty one who heard it, until I spoke with my mother about it. She had also heard the code. Not only had my mother heard it, but she told me that she talked to my grandmother about it and my grandmother said she would get up at night and sit at her kitchen table and listen to it. I imagine my grandfather also heard it, but never said anything about it. It was much too loud to ignore. The sound of morse code is unmistakable. Without an antenna or equipment, neither my mother nor I ever figured out where the sound was coming from. A few years after my Uncle's death everything just stopped. The morse code was never heard again. Although it was unmistakable, we tried to pass it off as wind in the pipes, vibrations of the water heater, or some overlooked piece of equipment that was still picking up other local operators.

My mother, being much better at code than I, caught more of the conversations than I could. She was convinced that my uncle was still broadcasting from his little room in the basement.

The only thing I know for sure, is that I'm sure it was morse code, and I know I wasn't the only one who heard it. What I'm not sure of, is where it all came from.

Thanks for reading.

Contact me here: yumyum@nc.rr.com