Mystery Appearance of a Missing Screw
Mary Ellen
East Meadow, Long Island, New York, USA

I was cleaning my 9 year old daughter's room the other day, when I noticed that a drawer on some furniture in her room was missing a screw needed to hold a bracket and handle in place. Since the handle is needed to open and close the drawers, I knew I needed to find the missing screw. I searched everywhere in the room for it (on the floor, under the bed, under the furniture, in the closet), with no luck. It was nowhere to be found.

I went into the kitchen to see if I could find any extra screws, but found there weren't any there. Feeling frustrated, I walked back into my daughter's bedroom, and boy, imagine the shock and surprise I felt when I saw the screw just laying there so obviously on the bare floor right in front of the drawer!!!! I screamed with delight! I SWEAR the screw was NOT there just moments earlier! I knew right away it was my beloved departed loved ones who put it there for me. I felt their tremendous love for me! What a wonderful feeling that was knowing they cared for me. So I got a screwdriver and happily screwed the screw back in to hold the bracket and handle in place. Now my daughter's room looks beautiful!


TB Recovery
Cheryl
Trinity, North Carolina

When I was about four years old, my father had been staying in a tuberculosis hospital in Oteen, North Carolina, just outside of Asheville for two years. This place was better for tuberculosis patients in the late 1940's, because it had "clean mountain air". I had not seen my daddy for the two years he'd been in the hospital, because the doctors would not let children near the patients, for fear of spreading the disease.

One night soon after Daddy was told he had only six months more to live, he woke up to see his beloved father (who had passed away about five years before) and his paternal grandfather (who had passed away about eight years before) -- both standing at the foot of his bed. Now, Daddy was a U.S. Marine Sergeant who had spent four years in the Solomon Islands in big battles like Guadalcanal and Tulagi, and he never told me a lie or sugar-coated anything. He said that his grandfather turned to his daddy and said, "Wil, we've got to help this boy."

In less than three months, Daddy was pronounced cured, and came home to us. He had started studying Christian Science a few weeks before. Whatever the reason, I was able to grow up with the best father anybody ever had.


Shifting the Keys
Cheryl
Trinity, North Carolina

I was a very fortunate only-great-grandchild. My father's passing away in 1972 was a terrible blow to me, but I tried to handle it the way he would have wanted me to.

On the day of the funeral, I decided as I was going out the front door of my house that I did not need my coat, so I threw it across the chair by the front door. As I did so, I heard the large ring of keys in my coat's pocket hit the chair. The keys were so heavy that they almost made the coat fall into the seat of the chair, instead of allowing it to stay draped over the chair's back. I know the keys were in that coat's pocket.

After the funeral, we all (some 30 of us) came back to my parents' home (the home I grew up in), and found we were locked out. My mother had not taken the keys with her, and we did not have anyone stay in the house. My father had carefully installed locks on the windows back in the early 1950's when the house was built. There were deadbolts on the solid-core doors, and even a screwdriver in a hole at the base of the kitchen door on the inside. There was no way to get into the house without breaking through a window and wooden panels.

After we all walked around the house, trying to find a way through the locks, my uncle (a Christian Scientist for many years) told me to check the pockets of the suit I was wearing. I told him that I only had that one set of keys, and I'd left them in my coat in my living room ten miles away. He suggested that I check again. I did... and there in my pocket were my keys.

I have no idea exactly how they got there, because I know they were in that coat, but something happened that day that transcended what we usually take to be reality. It was a lesson I certainly needed to learn, especially on that day.


Magical Flute Solo
Elizabeth
Victoria, B.C.
http://www.onwordsupwords.com

A few years ago I played flute for a symphony orchestra in Toronto. I had been given a rather exposed and tricky flute solo to play in a forthcoming concert, which I practiced for weeks so I would feel confident of being able to play it without any errors. On the evening of the concert when it came time for me to play the solo I had been rehearsing, I noticed that the conductor slowed the tempo down to about half the speed, so I was able to play the difficult solo in a relaxed and effortless way. As soon as the solo was over, the conductor brought the tempo back up to speed. After the piece of music and applause was over, I turned to the 2nd flute player and asked her, "Why did the conductor slow down for my solo?". She replied, "What are you talking about - he didn't slow down and you played it beautifully".


Oh, what a Night...
Matthew
http://www.geocities.com/athens/ithaca/4111/
Mayfield, Ky

There is a well-known saying people use when requested to retell the story of something extraordinary that happened to them long ago. Usually you'll hear a slight sigh and then "Oh, what a night it was," often followed by either "I'll never forget it", or "definitely a night to remember." For me, one night in particular was all these things and so much more.

The night began simply enough, as several of my friends were graduating from high school. I and several other fellow classmen and friends attended the ceremony. A rather close female friend and I had spent the day running through creeks. We walked to my car (a 2-door black 1986-87 Grand-Am) after the graduation ceremony had been completed and the festivities had ended, and casually discussed how it went. We then proceeded to exit the premises by antagonizing all the "good people" of the county by playing some Megadeath and some Doors rather loudly. We then exited the parking lot amidst the traffic and proceeded down a back road out.

Now this is where things got rather precarious. I pulled up to an intersection and looked both ways at least 5 times, checking and double checking myself. I tend to be highly, if not overly cautious. But here's the catch -- the intersection crossed atop a hill where to my right there was a visible straight-way of adequate proportions and my left a hill that sloped downwards slightly allowing some visibility. After my scan of the traffic I saw it was clear, and thus proceeded to cross. Everyone else interviewed claimed the same thing -- no traffic was visible in either direction for miles, everything was clear. Yet when I pulled out still in the lane of traffic from the left lights appeared on my right and my brakes were quickly applied, I never crossed the median by my own force. An s-10 pick-up soon slammed into my passenger side with my friend taking the brunt of it. Moments before she had had her arm hung out the door, she then jerked it inward and recalls slamming her head into the grill of the truck. The truck never even applied it's brakes, it was speeding we do know that much, but how it got to where I was and on the wrong side of the road we don't know. In that split second though, all I know is I reacted in a way some people claim is physically impossible. I jerked the wheel avoiding a telephone pole, I can recall with clarity every flashing image and sound, as it happened.

I even recall clearly painfully pulling myself to consciousness and screaming out my friends name as she was not moving or breathing, and then swinging my arm over, hitting her in the abdomen. She soon began screaming as I slid from the car unable to breathe after throwing the door open. People first on the scene rushed to me and all of them recall the same as I do that, all I said was "Get her, forget me I'll be fine, get her." Her fiance had entrusted me with her safety, and I do not take an oath lightly.

Every witness claimed the same thing, a truck had appeared out of nowhere and hit me. It was impossible such an event could have happened as I told everyone, and thusly it was decided that I by default, was the cause. Kentucky state law had condemned me before it ever begun. My car was literally squashed into a "U" shape, yet no one died or received serious injury. Experts say that it was impossible for us to have lived through such an impact, to have reacted as we did, or for the accident to happen as we know it did. Yet time seemed to slow in that moment, and I felt everything happen before it did. Even my friend has told the same story and written an English paper on it -- however, her teacher and classmates refuse to believe her story on the grounds, "it is not possible".

Perhaps it is all just fantasy, or perhaps it's a reality only we experienced. Who really knows for sure? All I know is that time itself, along with many other things, seem altered and inconsistent about me. Some say I have an over-active imagination, others I've been touched by some higher power. I leave it to you to believe what you wish. I live my life and walk my own path. But, I myself, can at least say, "Oh, what a night it was".

White Van - Part I
Glenda
North Syracuse, NY

I was driving down highway 81, headed home from the hospital and driving south in the middle lane. I decided to move over into the lane to my right, so I looked to the right. There were no cars signaling, and I was about ready to move over into the right hand lane, when out of the corner of my right eye appeared a white van from nowhere. I jumped and said, "Oh my God! Where did he come from?" to myself, because it was so close... then I looked again just a moment later, and the van was gone.



White Van - Part II
Laura
North Syracuse, NY

My mother was driving both of us back from the hospital on highway 81. As we drove down the highway in the middle lane, a white van merged toward us, but was supposed to yield and didn't. My mother had her right signal light on to get into the right lane, but the van merged into the middle lane as it merged onto the highway. As I watched the van, I noticed the wheels were right in my window, coming closer and closer. I looked at my mother and said, "You better move NOW, we are going to get hit!" She moved off to the far left lane, and the van continued as if we were never there. We were the only two vehicles on the highway at the time. If he had hit us, nobody would have seen it.


What was strange about this was: Glenda and I were both thinking about this at the same time to tell one another about how strange it was that we were the ONLY people on the highway at the time, both vans were white, both of us were feeling how strange it was that she saw the white van then it was gone, and my mother and I saw the white van and it seemed we didn't exist to him, both happened on the same highway, and the same day, coming from the same hospital.