Rose: How Did She Know?

photo by Luann Zambanini

by Craig Bennett*

Since my retirement, I’ve had a considerable amount of time at my disposal to pursue an interest in the paranormal to a much greater extent than I was able to previously. One of the ways in which I’ve done this is to attend various discussion groups, which time and distance would not allow while I was working every day. It was in one such group that I became acquainted with a woman who happened to live not far from where I had recently moved into a new house. She was a practicing psychic, or medium, as I was to stand corrected, since her specialty was establishing contact with the deceased. She had a moderately substantial following in the area and was familiar with many practices that one finds available at holistic exhibitions and other events that feature practitioners of reiki, clairvoyance, aura reading, and so-forth. Since I lived nearby and even passed very close to her residence on my way to and from the discussion group’s meetings, I became her transportation for that event, replacing the friend who had been traveling well out of her way to provide it up to that point.

The group had not been in existence for very long before the woman in charge decided that we should sponsor a gallery for Rose, the only working medium in the group. At that point, I was still unacquainted with Rose and had never even had any conversation with her; so I was curious as to what she might have to offer in a reading for me, since she knew me only as someone who attended the discussion group.

A “gallery,” in this context, is an occasion where the medium appears before an assembly (or gallery) of interested people and offers brief readings to those in attendance. In this instance, those wishing to participate (including not only members of the discussion group, but also those from the general public) bought a ticket with numbers at each end. When we showed our ticket at the admissions table, it was torn in half. One half with a number on it was returned; the other half, with the same number, was placed into a hat. When the gallery began, Rose appeared seated on a stage at the front of the modest-sized hall with the hat on a small table aside of her. She would pull out a ticket stub at random and ask, “Who is number twenty-seven?” or “Who is number nineteen?” The person holding the other end of that ticket would respond. I sat and listened to the proceedings with growing curiosity and anticipation.

When my number was called, Rose hesitated for a moment after I identified myself as the holder of that number and then said something like, “Ah! Your mother came right through… Very strong personality.” Well, I thought, she’s certainly got my mother pegged. Then a puzzled expression appeared on her face, as if she couldn’t quite figure out what she was perceiving. “Two graves…” she said, frowning slightly. “Something about two graves. Your father bought two different grave sites, and she was afraid he’d have her buried in the one where she didn’t want to be buried…” This was delivered more as a question than a statement, as if she still wasn’t quite sure how to understand what she was “hearing.”

But she was right. My mother had died of cancer in 1989, but my father had passed away rather recently. It was only in going through his papers after he was buried that I was reminded of the episode to which Rose was referring.

When I was still a young teen-ager, a new cemetery opened up for business not far from where we lived. They must have been having some sort of introductory sale on grave sites, as that was one of the few sorts of things that would have induced my father to spend an appreciable amount of money for something that shouldn’t become necessary for many years. I can remember only dimly, if at all, my mother’s reaction to the purchase; but the apparent upshot of it was that he then purchased an additional four graves (one for himself, my mother, my sister, and me) at an older cemetery nearby where some of his family were buried.

Since I was only a kid, this was all far from any concern that I might have had at that point in my life, and I had completely forgotten about the whole business, probably within a short time. More importantly, I never knew that he had not sold the grave sites that he originally purchased, located in the newer cemetery where my mother didn’t want to be buried. All I knew until I discovered the deeds to the first set of graves was that my mother had been buried in the older, more acceptable (to her) cemetery, and there were three graves remaining for Dad, my sister, and me.

By the evening of the gallery, however, I’d had no occasion to mention any of this to anyone except my sister, and I had done little more than to inform her that she and I now owned some additional grave sites besides the ones we were already aware of. So, how could Rose possibly have known about them? Although I was participating in a few different discussion groups at the time, I was not one to socialize much with other participants, and especially not one to discuss something like the extra grave sites in casual conversation. The more I thought about Rose’s coming up with this, the more intrigued—and impressed—I became.

*(excerpted from More Things in Heaven and Earth, by Craig H. Bennett)

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