Not Strangers To Me Anymore
Nana, Guilford, Surrey, UK
August 2009
My name is Nana and I have always been interested in ghost stories. There is something about the paranormal which scares me and thrills me at the same time. Today I am 21 years old and I'm about to finish university. I still have mixed feelings about the experience I want to share with you.
It happened four years ago, when I was a fresher in a university that teaches translation. I'll always feel deeply grateful to my French teacher who gave me the first job I ever got as a translator. I was so excited when she called and told me that she had some papers, containing medical information, for me to translate, that started working on them the day after that call. All the examinations, the remarks of the doctors and the prescriptions were written in French. The patients were two children, a boy and a girl. I still recall the sadness that washed over me, the fact that they were both so young (6 and 8 years old, if I'm not mistaken.)
Each word I had to look up - mostly medical terms I was not familiar with - was worse than the previous. The children were in a really bad condition, suffering from severe seizures and epileptic dementia. Needless to say, I had the translation ready the very next day, because I didn't want to delay the parents' knowledge about their children's condition. That night I told my mother I would go visit those two unknown, yet so familiar little patients first thing in the morning(they were in a hospital near the city where I used to live in back then). I managed to fall asleep after a few hours full of thoughts concerning the children and how painful this whole experience must be for them.
It was about 4 o'clock in the morning when I had a strange feeling that made me wake up. I'm sure I haven't opened my eyes yet, but somehow I could see through my shut eyes a weird light right next to the window there was over my bed. I opened my eyes and saw two small figures washed in light coming towards me. I didn't feel scared. Not for a single moment. When they reached my bed, they both bent and kissed me on the forehead. Then they waved like saying goodbye and vanished into thin air.
I wasn't able to sleep after that. I stayed up all night wondering what this all meant. When my phone rang at 8 o' clock and my teacher told me that the children died early that morning, my heart broke. I am almost sure that they came to say hello... and goodbye.
I talked about it with my best friend Thanasis and we both understood that the children somehow knew that I felt that I was really worried about them and came to me before I managed to get to them. They are not strangers to me after that day. I feel like I know them and hope they are in a better place now.