Heavenly Homeless

[gattino]

One of the frustrations of reporting my own experiences of the Fortean is that they so often tie into, or seem addenda to, previous incidents in some constantly rewoven pattern. I never know when to start a new thread or resurrect an old one. What I'm about to report was an isolated event for all of an hour, but ive just realised how it interconnects with a long and frequently updated saga.


As I rent out my spare rooms to visitors and also have time on my hands, I've been checking out public transport routes to various non central attractions . So I thought today would be an appropriate one to cross off the city's best regarded park, for symbolic reasons. My brother's ashes were scattered there and today was his birthday. .his "death day" was two days ago.

Once in the park though I didn't really give him or the date a second thought.

I got the bus back to the city centre and walked through town to my bus stop for home.

On the corner outside Iceland and the travel centre was a homeless man sitting on the pavement. He was sitting upright but with his eyes closed. As I walked past I couldn't take my eyes off him. I was walking forward with my head turned back staring at him..I went from a casual "he looks a bit like..." to the absolute conviction he was the DOUBLE of my brother, his doppleganger, even actually his face. By the time I turned the corner my heart was pounding. Let me not exaggerate. The world didn't freeze and i didn't think it WAS him, it was more a case of mounting bewilderment as I expected the perception of resemblance to diminish the more I looked but it didn't. It grew.

At the bus stop I was fighting the urge to go back and find some way to take a photo. But it felt too rude.

I'm not suggesting he was anyone but a gaunt grey bearded man who resembled my late brother. But given the date, and where I'd just been i did wonder.

The meditating holy man pose added to the sense of eeriness.

And here the story would end. A minor strangeness entry perhaps. Except as I say an additional revelation has just hit me.

I've often reported and added to the saga i call the Sign of The Cross. I won't go over it all again but the essence of it was a repeated motif of a cross and/or holy medal mysteriously disappearing and reappearing and the same story being repeated elsewhere and coming to my attention. Those who remember the tale may recall one bewildering aspect was an inexplicible link to the Exorcist author William Peter Blatty. He wrote a book detailing supposed communication through eerie coincidences from his dead son. One such incident was identical to my cross story. But there was another incident he reported which i had reason to recall. It now takes on even more significance.

Blatty's wife is out with a friend and is drawn to a homeless man on the sidewalk who she says reminds her of the dead son. She blanches when out of nowhere the man holds out his hand and exclaims "My birthday is May 17th!". That you see was the birthday of the dead boy.

And my brother's birthday.

Today.

 

[catseye]

It's also the birthday of my youngest daughter and my grandson.

Sprry for your loss, Gattino.

 

[Ghost In The Machine]

One of the frustrations of reporting my own experiences of the Fortean is that they so often tie into, or seem addenda to, previous incidents in some constantly rewoven pattern. I never know when to start a new thread or resurrect an old one. What I'm about to report was an isolated event for all of an hour, but ive just realised how it interconnects with a long and frequently updated saga.


As I rent out my spare rooms to visitors and also have time on my hands, I've been checking out public transport routes to various non central attractions . So I thought today would be an appropriate one to cross off the city's best regarded park, for symbolic reasons. My brother's ashes were scattered there and today was his birthday. .his "death day" was two days ago.

Once in the park though I didn't really give him or the date a second thought.

I got the bus back to the city centre and walked through town to my bus stop for home.

On the corner outside Iceland and the travel centre was a homeless man sitting on the pavement. He was sitting upright but with his eyes closed. As I walked past I couldn't take my eyes off him. I was walking forward with my head turned back staring at him..I went from a casual "he looks a bit like..." to the absolute conviction he was the DOUBLE of my brother, his doppleganger, even actually his face. By the time I turned the corner my heart was pounding. Let me not exaggerate. The world didn't freeze and i didn't think it WAS him, it was more a case of mounting bewilderment as I expected the perception of resemblance to diminish the more I looked but it didn't. It grew.

At the bus stop I was fighting the urge to go back and find some way to take a photo. But it felt too rude.

I'm not suggesting he was anyone but a gaunt grey bearded man who resembled my late brother. But given the date, and where I'd just been i did wonder.

The meditating holy man pose added to the sense of eeriness.

And here the story would end. A minor strangeness entry perhaps. Except as I say an additional revelation has just hit me.

I've often reported and added to the saga i call the Sign of The Cross. I won't go over it all again but the essence of it was a repeated motif of a cross and/or holy medal mysteriously disappearing and reappearing and the same story being repeated elsewhere and coming to my attention. Those who remember the tale may recall one bewildering aspect was an inexplicible link to the Exorcist author William Peter Blatty. He wrote a book detailing supposed communication through eerie coincidences from his dead son. One such incident was identical to my cross story. But there was another incident he reported which i had reason to recall. It now takes on even more significance.

Blatty's wife is out with a friend and is drawn to a homeless man on the sidewalk who she says reminds her of the dead son. She blanches when out of nowhere the man holds out his hand and exclaims "My birthday is May 17th!". That you see was the birthday of the dead boy.

And my brother's birthday.

Today.

My brother's birthday too!

Fascinating post.

 

[gattino]

And on the saga goes, ever twisting and intertwining with another.

I've summarised the business with the cross. But a seemingly separate saga involving books occurred in the months following my brothers death. In particular and inexplicably Kalil Gibran's The Prophet kept recurring as a theme. You can read the whole saga in several posts in this thread:

http://forum.forteantimes.com/index.php?threads/is-this-what-youre-looking-for.61377/

Interestingly one twist in that developing story was that it overlapped at one point with the cross saga as you will see if you re-read the full account.

So: once you've refreshed your memory, here are some new developments and perhaps the first hint of meaning.....

Update 1) Two days ago I posted my account of the homeless man and the correlation with William Peter Blatty and the date of May 17th etc on the comments section of a paranormal blog.

A regular commentator on there first addresses me saying it was a great example of synchronicity. He then immediately writes a longer separate post directed at someone else, arguing for reincarnation by quoting at length, and later highly recommending to anyone who hasn't read it, Kahlil Gibran's the Prophet! That f****** book again!

Here are the additional book ends to this: two weekends ago, in the days before the anniversary of my brother's death etc, the airbnb app informed me to expect a visit from a guest with my brother's not too common name. THIS weekend I'm expecting a chap from Hong Kong. All the young Chinese , i've discovered, adopt a western first name. This chap's choice is more unusual than most. He calls himself.....Kalil.

Update 2) I saw the homeless man again this morning. Shamefully but of necessity I sneaked a pic so I could look at him properly in the photo and assure myself it wasn't my imagination. The resemblance in the photo remains striking but he's of course a flesh and blood human being so there are differences. So I Facebook searched my brother's name for any later life pics of him to make a side by side comparison. What popped up was a photo of him never seen before smiling on a canal boat, taken by a friend I don't know when my brother (Ged to his mates, but not his first name) was suffering in pain but not yet knowing he had cancer, it explained. This stranger posted it on the 15th may ( the death anniversary) last year and his long commentary ends with this....

So what did I mean by the first hint of meaning? The Prophet turned up this time in the words of a man arguing for reincarnation. The key passage has the eponymous wise man telling the people of the town that he will come back to them...just a little rest and then a new body, another woman shall bear him....

Could this be the point? If we imagine some surviving part of my deceased brother is communicating through this weirdness could that be the message...he'll be back? Note the symbolism of the day of his birth coming after the day of his death....

Just a thought