A Warning of Death

The following is a true story told to me by my mother. First I should mention that I am very close to my mom, and there are times that I can tell she is not kidding around. This was one of those times.

The actual experience happened about twenty years ago, when my mom was pregnant with her first girl. She had previously had two boys, so she was very excited to finally be having a daughter. This was before I was born.

It was the day before Christmas, very early in the morning. My mom had woken up before the rest of the family, as usual. It was just barely starting to get light out when she went over to the dining room window and looked out. We have huge fields behind our house, followed by woods. At the edge of the backyard, my mom saw a man standing. He was pretty much at the edge of the property line, just looking out at the fields. There was snow on the ground, and it was pretty cold out, so it was unusual for the man to be wearing what he was - almost nothing. He had on raggedy old clothes and a straw hat. My mom later said that he reminded her of our neighbor, only much older. The rags that he was wearing were torn and he had no jacket or shoes. She didn't recognize him, and she had no idea why he was on our property wearing what he was. My mom got scared, so she ran into her bedroom where my dad was still sleeping and woke him up. He immediately ran to their bedroom window, which is on the same side of the house as the dining room window, and looked out with my mom. The man was gone. They were extremely confused, as there was no way he could have gone anywhere in the short time it took for her to run to my dad's room (right down the hall).

As I mentioned before, there are fields behind our backyard and pretty much nothing else both ways. It's a very open area.

My dad decided to go out and see if the man (wherever he was) needed any help. He went out to the backyard and looked around. The man was nowhere to be found. He came back inside a few minutes later, looking frightened and a little pale. When my mom asked him what was wrong, he replied that there were no tracks in the snow where the man was standing. Nothing. They were confused and a little shaken, but there was really nothing they could do, so they went on with life.

The next day, (Christmas Day) my mom went to the hospital for a checkup on the baby. (Remember that she was pregnant.) She came home crying with the news that the baby was dead. She would have a C-section to have the body removed later on. We still don't know who the man was, or if he was some kind of messenger of death.

To this day, I am always kind of afraid to look out the dining room window, afraid that I will see the man with the news that one of my loved ones will die.