We had a next door neighbour (literally next door), who was close to ninety. She was always out and about walking to the hospital nearby (a seven minute walk in dry conditions for a fast walker like me). She did however have known back and leg pains (important piece of information that!).
One day I returned home from school (aged 14). The night before I had had to stay at a friends that night as my parents had to be somewhere the next morning. During the night I had felt a presence which had felt calming in the room at about 1 in the morning. It had come and gone within a minute. When I returned home, I was shortly followed by my sister. A knock on the door interrupted my thoughts. My sister answered it and I asked who it was. She said one of the neighbours from across the road (literally across the road) had needed to see mom and dad. She said she had seemed worried. When mom and dad returned home with my brother from a guitar class, my mom went to find the "across the road" neighbour. She came back with sad news. The "next door" neighbour was dead.
A week later, a number of answer machines received the same message at the same time. The caller was an old lady, who mysteriously sounded like the next door neighbour who had died. The message said, "It's alright now. The pains in my back and legs are gone now. There's no need to worry..." That was it. Like the message was intended. All the people who had received the message had all been family members or good friends. Some had tried to trace the call back. All the tries had returned with a non-existent number message.
The questions are these: Could the prescence in the room have been my neighbour after she had just died?
And could the message have been a goodbye message for us all from her?
Joe
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I'm happy to receive that bit of tidings even from a website; third-hand, apocryphal, urban-legend or what have you,