gattino
Justified & Ancient
- Joined
- Jul 30, 2003
- Messages
- 2,523
A few days ago I started/updated a minor IHTM about the sense of being touched more than once by an invisible someone. Whether of interest as evidence of a nascent haunting, or of the pyschology of spooking oneself, it felt worth reporting. The third and final incident reported, on Monday 18th, included me saying there was more but that I didn't want to mention it as I'd only be convincing myself. That "more" was more relevant than I suspected. Yesterday, Tuesday 19th May (such details are relevant), a couple of thing happened which brought not only that mystery to a conclusion but tied in/wrapped up a number of events reported by me on here over the years. I can't begin to locate the various threads of this tale now so must recount them all in summary as best I can from memory.
Still, summary or not, it may be long. So in the hope of maintaining some clarity I'll break it up, keep my sentences simple and my paragraphs short.
So to begin at the very begining..a very good place to start....
PART 1. The Funeral.
May 2010. The only personally meaningful individual other than my father and one grandparent to have ever upped and died on me did so. He was a young man called Matteo..more than an acquaintance, less than a close friend. We'd never socialised alone together and I didn't know his family or proper/close friends. But I knew him well enough to be shocked, to care, and to attend his funeral.
From the pulpit I learnt he'd been some kind of child genius, a genuine prodigy. His sister entertained the mourners with embarrassing anecdotes such as him dressing up as Mary Poppins as a small child. After the service balloons were set free into the summer sky, one drifting faster and further than the others caught my imagination as symbolic of his spirit flying off like Mary Poppins on her brolly. I subsequently mocked up a photoshop cartoon of him, beard and all, as Mary Poppins flying off holding balloons. All that follows, follows from these things.
PART 2. Balloonacy.
Jan 2013. I had been involved in and reporting a whole series of strange events, coincidences, sychronicity, dream recordings, telepathic experiments on here. In the last sequence of these one theme kept coming up. It started in a dream and was turning up everywhere in real life over several days. The theme was of flying off holding on to balloons. I recounted all of this on here...and starting to wonder if "someone up there" was trying to tell me something it eventually dawned on me that all of these reported balloon themed incidents had an association. I finally remembered Matteo's funeral. And I began to wonder. I went to the deceased's still existing facebook page, curious whether these incidents were coinciding with his birthday or some such and my eyes immediately fell upon a "note" he had posted at some point, a bizarre psychedelic rant that began "Ghosts! Imagine. Actual ghosts standing in front of you singing a merry tune! Ghosts! Can you imagine? Ghosts. "....
Part 3. Josh.
May 2013. The third anniversary of his death had just passed. These still recent balloon themed coincidences remained in my thoughts...if the dead really was trying to get in touch, why? It made no sense. Maybe I was meant to tell one of his friends about it. I went to his Facebook again to see if I can spot anyone who might be interested to hear. Strikingly I found what turned out to be his best friend, Josh, had been posting..around the time of my "experiences", direct chatty messages to the dead referencing the fact he'd been "seeing him everywhere" but wanting to know what he was trying to say. So I tentatively privately messaged this Josh. What he told me was...surprising.
Before I told him a thing about my experiences he said that in the months prior to his death Matt had been researching meditation, lucid dreaming, spirituality, life after death and death itself. He'd often said he wasn't going to be alive much longer. Since his death, he, Josh, had been "continuing with some of the things he'd been researching, to find out what he was getting up to." He felt his presence every day, weird coincidences etc...He was determined to one day be able to communicate freely with him...
During this conversation the balloon theme immediately started turning up everywhere again. A month later an extraordinary incident happend to Josh which I'll save space by not repeating here, but during it....
Part 4 Balloon girl
During this latter conversation with J, a friend of mine , Jackson,who also knew Matteo, but who knew nothing of this whole tale posted a picture of the Banksy image "balloon girl"...a young girl reaching out for a heart shaped balloon. Beneath it he typed a quote. "They say you die twice. One time when you stop breathing and a second time, a bit later, when somebody says your name for the last time." The eerieness, the timing, the relevance of this was striking. I wrote to Jackson and told him the whole story. He in turn explained his motives for posting it. The Banksy image had become a personal symbol and motif for himself as he apparently kept finding it everywhere. It started for him on new year's eve...the very night of the dream which started my own sequence of events.
Part 5 Little Prods
May 2045 . Communication with Josh - who I've still never met- became intermittent at best with not much to report. The balloon thing had run its useful course..beyond showing up, if this was the dead talking (if such things are possible) it was all a bit repetitive and pointless. And its not really showed up since. It was the anniversary of his death again and Josh had posted a message publically to Matteo asking him to get in touch. I didn't comment but had been having spooky notions while watching a certain tv show the next night, and a sense of cold, I indulged in the fantasy, closed my eyes and "asked" Matteo for a clear message to pass on to his friend. "A strange sensation came over my head, like a wave, and a sense of panic or anticipation that something was about to happen and...nothing". When I went to bed however I had during hte night an experience I've had a few times of photographic still images passed at great speed like a slide show through my minds eye. It's an odd experience, but this differed from all previous ones in that the images were all on the same theme.."museum type ancient artifacts, tutenkham type mask, statuettes, ornamental plates etc." Nothing spooky, but intriguing so, more out of curiosity I messaged Josh for the first time in months and asked without explanation if M had had a particular interest in Egyptian stuff. To my startlement he replied yes..that he had ****ing loved Egyptian history. Was he being serious? Yes of course, he replied. I never got to find out more.
February 2015. I was searching for something entirely unrelated in my facebook message history and my word search brough me instead to the whole subject of the Matteo saga, balloons et al, which I reread fully for the first time in nearly two years. When I finished reading it and went back to my normal newsfeed I was startled to see the top stories were new postings on Matteo's facebook wall. It turned out it was his birthday.
CONTINUED BELOW...
Still, summary or not, it may be long. So in the hope of maintaining some clarity I'll break it up, keep my sentences simple and my paragraphs short.
So to begin at the very begining..a very good place to start....
PART 1. The Funeral.
May 2010. The only personally meaningful individual other than my father and one grandparent to have ever upped and died on me did so. He was a young man called Matteo..more than an acquaintance, less than a close friend. We'd never socialised alone together and I didn't know his family or proper/close friends. But I knew him well enough to be shocked, to care, and to attend his funeral.
From the pulpit I learnt he'd been some kind of child genius, a genuine prodigy. His sister entertained the mourners with embarrassing anecdotes such as him dressing up as Mary Poppins as a small child. After the service balloons were set free into the summer sky, one drifting faster and further than the others caught my imagination as symbolic of his spirit flying off like Mary Poppins on her brolly. I subsequently mocked up a photoshop cartoon of him, beard and all, as Mary Poppins flying off holding balloons. All that follows, follows from these things.
PART 2. Balloonacy.
Jan 2013. I had been involved in and reporting a whole series of strange events, coincidences, sychronicity, dream recordings, telepathic experiments on here. In the last sequence of these one theme kept coming up. It started in a dream and was turning up everywhere in real life over several days. The theme was of flying off holding on to balloons. I recounted all of this on here...and starting to wonder if "someone up there" was trying to tell me something it eventually dawned on me that all of these reported balloon themed incidents had an association. I finally remembered Matteo's funeral. And I began to wonder. I went to the deceased's still existing facebook page, curious whether these incidents were coinciding with his birthday or some such and my eyes immediately fell upon a "note" he had posted at some point, a bizarre psychedelic rant that began "Ghosts! Imagine. Actual ghosts standing in front of you singing a merry tune! Ghosts! Can you imagine? Ghosts. "....
Part 3. Josh.
May 2013. The third anniversary of his death had just passed. These still recent balloon themed coincidences remained in my thoughts...if the dead really was trying to get in touch, why? It made no sense. Maybe I was meant to tell one of his friends about it. I went to his Facebook again to see if I can spot anyone who might be interested to hear. Strikingly I found what turned out to be his best friend, Josh, had been posting..around the time of my "experiences", direct chatty messages to the dead referencing the fact he'd been "seeing him everywhere" but wanting to know what he was trying to say. So I tentatively privately messaged this Josh. What he told me was...surprising.
Before I told him a thing about my experiences he said that in the months prior to his death Matt had been researching meditation, lucid dreaming, spirituality, life after death and death itself. He'd often said he wasn't going to be alive much longer. Since his death, he, Josh, had been "continuing with some of the things he'd been researching, to find out what he was getting up to." He felt his presence every day, weird coincidences etc...He was determined to one day be able to communicate freely with him...
During this conversation the balloon theme immediately started turning up everywhere again. A month later an extraordinary incident happend to Josh which I'll save space by not repeating here, but during it....
Part 4 Balloon girl
During this latter conversation with J, a friend of mine , Jackson,who also knew Matteo, but who knew nothing of this whole tale posted a picture of the Banksy image "balloon girl"...a young girl reaching out for a heart shaped balloon. Beneath it he typed a quote. "They say you die twice. One time when you stop breathing and a second time, a bit later, when somebody says your name for the last time." The eerieness, the timing, the relevance of this was striking. I wrote to Jackson and told him the whole story. He in turn explained his motives for posting it. The Banksy image had become a personal symbol and motif for himself as he apparently kept finding it everywhere. It started for him on new year's eve...the very night of the dream which started my own sequence of events.
Part 5 Little Prods
May 2045 . Communication with Josh - who I've still never met- became intermittent at best with not much to report. The balloon thing had run its useful course..beyond showing up, if this was the dead talking (if such things are possible) it was all a bit repetitive and pointless. And its not really showed up since. It was the anniversary of his death again and Josh had posted a message publically to Matteo asking him to get in touch. I didn't comment but had been having spooky notions while watching a certain tv show the next night, and a sense of cold, I indulged in the fantasy, closed my eyes and "asked" Matteo for a clear message to pass on to his friend. "A strange sensation came over my head, like a wave, and a sense of panic or anticipation that something was about to happen and...nothing". When I went to bed however I had during hte night an experience I've had a few times of photographic still images passed at great speed like a slide show through my minds eye. It's an odd experience, but this differed from all previous ones in that the images were all on the same theme.."museum type ancient artifacts, tutenkham type mask, statuettes, ornamental plates etc." Nothing spooky, but intriguing so, more out of curiosity I messaged Josh for the first time in months and asked without explanation if M had had a particular interest in Egyptian stuff. To my startlement he replied yes..that he had ****ing loved Egyptian history. Was he being serious? Yes of course, he replied. I never got to find out more.
February 2015. I was searching for something entirely unrelated in my facebook message history and my word search brough me instead to the whole subject of the Matteo saga, balloons et al, which I reread fully for the first time in nearly two years. When I finished reading it and went back to my normal newsfeed I was startled to see the top stories were new postings on Matteo's facebook wall. It turned out it was his birthday.
CONTINUED BELOW...
