The Phone Call by Joy Preble

I've told this story before in a variety of blogging situations, but as Halloween approaches and my mind turns to the odd, the spooky, the paranormal (ooh wait! I write paranormal; my brain is always there! Oops!) -- I always come back to this one tale, my own personal brush with the paranormal. Believe it or not as you choose.

Let me preface by saying that I've always had weird, vivid dreams. I do believe - at least a teeny bit -- that we all have some form of sixth sense. Deja vu, premonitions, the hair that prickles on the back of your neck, a sure and positive feeling that something is about to occur... Maybe there's a scientific explanation. Maybe it's just something we can never explain.

When my mom died - suddenly of a heart attack, with no prior warning of heart disease, and on my son's birthday no less! -- we were all shocked and devestated. But it was when I came back home after the funeral that something occurred which made me believe that there is more in this world than I can see.

Mom and I had had a routine. Every afternoon around 5 PM, one of us would call the other. We wouldn't talk long, just a few minutes, but I was usually home from school by then, making dinner, helping with homework... it was a good time. And we rarely missed.

Maybe it was because she died abruptly. I don't claim to understand, even now, some years later. But the week after the funeral, every single day for about two weeks, my landline rang about 5 PM. When I would pick it up, no one was there. It wasn't a dial tone or a wrong number. Just dead air until I hung up.

Was she just not ready to go? Was it a coincidence? Two weeks of phone malfunction? I won't ever know.

But when someone asks me -- as my pals at Teen Shiver did this week -- to tell a spooky story, this is always the story I tell.

How about you? Anyone else have a spooky story to share? Comment and let me know!

And happy almost Halloween!

ps -- I have purposely used an old-fashioned landline phone for the picture. Cause that pic of an iPhone? Really not scary at all. (My Blackberry is mildly sinister, but not much)