A couple of people were asking me to post again on supernatural/mystical/ prayer experiences I have had in my life so I am happy to do so. Like all Irish people I do love telling stories. Especially about the world beyond. Of course there is a little reluctance to talk about what scripture refers to as, 'The Secrets of the King', as they seem so private and personal. Also in that they might offend humility in giving a very false impression that I am in any way holy. But our Lady showed me that I should open up about such things when I started the forum, showing me that it would do much good. So indeed it has , I know that the fruits have been very good, from what I have seen and heard from round the world and on the web. For instance someone told me about going into a Junior School and California a few years back and the priest teaching the little children was reading them the story about me meeting Our Lady in prison. Delightful. So I will tell a few tales. This will not only be about the things of heaven, but things of the darker side concerning the devils and hell. I know some people will be put off by this but these are the Truths of our Faith that Satan and Hell and Purgatory exist. What can I say? Anyone else who would like to chime in I would dearly love to hear their stories as well. I adore such things. So pull up your chairs and lets all tell a few mystical tales of the other world
The Butterfly. When I was, I suppose about three or four years old I had a dream that I was walking through the most beautiful garden . I saw a beautiful large butterfly come towards me. It stung me and the pain was incredible, like a huge electric shock. This reminds me of a story that went the rounds on the internet a few years back. Parents has put a speaker system in their babies bed room so they could monitor if it was alright. They then heard their young son say to the baby, 'Tell me about heaven I am starting to forget'. Jeremiah 1:5 4Now the word of the LORD came to me saying, 5"Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, And before you were born I consecrated you; I have appointed you a prophet to the nations." 6Then I said, "Alas, Lord GOD! Behold, I do not know how to speak, Because I am a youth."… I am inclined to wonder sometimes if we may not have some memories of heaven from back from beyond we are born. I have often heard of reports of very,very young children speaking of memories of what seems to be heaven. But Psychologists tell us that around the age of seven something calling childhood amnesia sets in and people only recall events that are kind very, special and engraved on their minds. I also think that the devil is very active in wishing to attack even from a very young age. I think this urge to attack by demons can often explain unexpected fearful behaviour by children and babies. I remember reading of one country were evidence of demonic activity shot up and the exorcists reported that they believed this is due to the fact that priests had many years ago dropped the Rite of exorcism in baptism. A couple of years after this myself and my brothers were all down with the measles. Suddenly I felt myself covered in a huge wave of roaches and started screaming. I was so scared my mother told the doctor. The doctor though it might have been caused by my suffocating under the blanket. But like the butterfly , I think it was the devil. Exodus 23:20 "See, I am sending an angel ahead of you to guard you along the way and to bring you to the place I have prepared. Psalm 91:5 You will not fear the terror of night, nor the arrow that flies by day,
I share your thinking on things of this nature, I believe that there are many mysteries that will one day God willing make sense to us. I believe that there is a spiritual war all around us and that on rare occasions we might catch a glimpse of something that we simply can not explain or in our vanity think we have all the answers to. When I was a young child I had a dream that I was in heaven and I was descending to the earth. I was sad. As I began to descend downward I saw my body from outside of myself. I had a pronounced halo around my head, as I descended it began to grow further from me until it was no longer there. My mom sent me to church with our Jehovah Witness neighbors when I told her about it. lol. My mother, tells me that as a young child I had visitations by a man I called Sam. It became a problem actually between my parents because my father traveled for work and heard me talking about Sam on several occasions. My mother tells me that I said that Sam told me that everything was going to work out in the end. I recall many things from about the age of 2 onward. I thought that all people remembered their childhoods like this until many years ago my brother and I were talking and he could not recollect things that had happened in our childhood. I had no idea that he had no memories past about the age of 7 and even those were very sparse. My mother when I was very young was running around with a group of women that were all convinced that they were so called white hat witches. One night my mother gets a call from someone and says that she needs help. So, Mom throws myself and my then baby brother into the car and we go to this woman's home. On getting there, Mom tells me to stay in the car with my brother and she goes inside. This was rural Indiana back in the early 70's and I was about 3. I immediately felt frightened and headed for the front door. On climbing the steps to the house I see that the screen door is lying on the porch and the door looks like it had exploded. There are bits of wood and trim all over the place and huge claw marks in her door. The door was ajar, Mom finally notices me and we all head for our house. I snuck out of bed that night to hear mom and this woman talking. She had been casting a spell when she heard banging on her front door. To make a long story short apparently whatever she was doing was coming home to roost. She stayed with us for two days and all, and I do mean ALL of her hair fell out in that time. I saw it all and in fact brought it up to my mother a few years back. She looked at me in total horror when I brought it up and wanted to know what else I remembered. This is why I believe now that infant baptism is very important. I know this might sound odd, but I have seen light surrounding both the statues of the Blessed Virgin as well as Joseph in our Sanctuary. I was in Mass and it was distracting me. I kept wondering if there were lights installed behind the figures. When our Pastor arose to read the scripture I saw it around him as well. I didn't know what to make of this and it has been on my mind for some time. I have also smelled a very pleasant fragrant odor in the Sanctuary and the Parish office when meeting with our Pastor. I have nothing to compare it to that I can describe it with. It is the very same odor that I smelled many years ago, long before we came to the Faith in a recently departed persons home who's family was having an estate sale. They were very obviously Catholic by the pictures in their home. I asked my wife if she noticed it and she told me that she smelled nothing at all. I was surprised to be honest because it was very noticeable.
Great stories. I find as I get older looking back on the events of my life I can make a lot more sense out of things as you your self can clearly do Don. Things that were simply strange or mysteries tend to untangle themselves later on. Also I find as I get older that things I once was afraid of talking about for fear of what people might think of me don''t bother me anymore. As you get older you get more yourself , more confidence in yourself , your Faith and your beliefs. I think you hada very,very lucky escape from the witchcraft thing.
Very very interesting Don. I have sometimes smelled a wonderful aroma of roses in Church or around very holy people. It is such a grace isn't it. The light you see is probably always there but the rest of us can't perceive it. I have had wonderful experiences here and there over my lifetime not unlike yours. So glad you found your way to the faith. God bless.
Interesting Padraig. As a child I would be overcome with a feeling of homesickness which puzzled me because I was home with all my loved ones. I finally told my mother and she told me I was homesick for heaven. So perhaps we do retain those memories. I remember as a child having what I would now call spiritual attacks but I would dream of evil puppet like figures attacking me while I was desperately trying to pray. I never told anyone. But I went down to our church and got holy water and sprinkled my bed every night and it helped a lot. I was probably 7 or 8 at the time. There is a lot going on around children that children never speak of. We need to surround them with prayer.
Yes I think the devil can work out the future of people really well. He can see the possibilities of people. He cannot forcast the future as sure but he can make very good guesses. So if a person is going to kick his ass later on he can start to fight them early. You see this in the early dream of Padre Pio
I was born and raised a Catholic. When I was young my mother said I used to get terrible nightmares, which I still can get. Sometimes the nightmares are of a demonic nature or spiritual attacks etc. But I don't worry about them because I know God is with me and I am on the right path. The night of the 33 day consecration this week I had a nightmare, but I believe it was only stan trying to throw me off.
This is one of the reasons why I am always interested in babies reaction at Baptism. The Church did not put in the little mini Exorcism prayer in there for nothing. Also at Easter when we renounce Satan and all his works again all over. I just love this and think it is so important. If only! If only !! If only!! Oh if only they would bring back the prayer to St Michael the Arcangel at the end of mass!!
I've told this story once before on this forum but it was a long time ago. I went to Medjugorje some years ago with two friends. On the way back from the airport to our home town, we prayed all 15 mysteries of the Rosary. When I arrived home mid-evening, my wife started to prepare a meal but, as it was late I said that I would go out for some takeaway food. She said that I must be tired and so she would drive. We went together and parked near the takeaway in a dark spot beneath some trees, there was no-one around. She went to the shop about 20 yards away, I stayed in the car. I was listening to the radio and then thought that I should pray and so turned the radio off and started to say an Our Father. Immediately I did so, 'all hell broke loose'. What felt like hundreds of stones fell on the car from directly above and, just as I was recovering from that event, what looked like a very large white rock was heading directly at the windscreen from maybe 10 feet away, I ducked into the foot-well and heard a thud. I looked up to see that the windscreen was covered in some white substance and my wife was approaching from few yards away. I opened the door and shouted 'Get in, we're under attack' and she rushed to the car, cleared the windscreen and we drove off. I explained what had happened, and asked if she had seen anyone near the car, she said that there had been no-one about. It wasn't until we were nearly home that a possible supernatural explanation occurred to me. When we arrived home, I inspected the car expecting to see a lot of damage from the stones - nothing at all. The large rock had been an egg and the remains were real enough and took a lot of time to clean. We had been in Medj. for Easter and the smashed egg was maybe some sort of message about that. We lived in an area called Monkspath because there had been several monasteries in the area in the 1500's and the area was so-called because the monks used paths in the area when walking and saying their 'office' and it had been reported that some monks described being troubled by falling black stones while doing so. Just before going on that trip, I decided to make some notes about what I should do when I got there - 'Confession, Climb Krizevac etc. etc.' I was sitting in the lounge making my notes and my wife was watching TV. Suddenly there was a beautiful smell as though the room were full of roses and violets. I looked up to see my wife looking at me with her mouth wide open. 'Can you smell it?' She said. And then, just as suddenly as it started, is stopped.
Wow Steve. That is quite a story. It indicates I think how powerful the graces were that you received from the Blessed Mother. Something or someone was not pleased.
I will tell you of a story that has happened to me over ten years ago. My parish had renovated the interior of the church over ten years before that . They had painted a gold leafing like paint behind the tabernacle. Ever since doing that, some people began to see images of people in the paint behind the tabernacle. These images are very distinct sort of like a shadow image. I myself see them and still do to this day. My favorite is of what I say is the Blessed Mother holding the infant up close to her face with their cheeks touching each other. Anyways, over the years I would see new faces from time to time emerge and stay. And usually at some point I would receive a little confirmation some how as to who I believe this image was representing. Well one day I was at a funeral for one of our family's close friend. She was diagnosed with colon cancer and died within a month. While at the funeral, I was sitting in front of the tabernacle, and just out of the blue I saw this image of a friar that was hooded and he had a long white beard. It startled me because I had never had an image like that just suddenly appear. One minute I was looking at the tabernacle as usual and in the blink of an eye he was there. Threw me for a loop.He stayed for most of the mass. At one point I looked up and he was gone, never to be seen again to this day. I had no idea who this friar was. I was still in my "infant years" of my conversion. I spoke of this to some of my relatives, some thought I was nuts, some were intrigued. But I was beside myself trying to figure out who this friar was. It was not until a couple weeks later that I was getting the mail for my father when there was a packet of advertisement from catholic organization looking for donations, and in it was a picture of this very same friar exactly as I had seen behind the tabernacle. I had asked my father in such excitement who is this friar. He said it was Padre Pio. I had no clue who Padre Pio was. So in my quest to discover who he was I bought a couple of books to read about him and learned of his passion for hearing people's confession. I hadn't been to private confession in over twenty years and was terrified about returning as I had had some bad experiences in the past. Then it seemed everywhere I turned I just started seeing pictures of Padre Pio in magazines or in other books i would be reading he was just everywhere I turned. He really got to me. I just couldn't seem to shake that feeling that he was calling me. So I did it. I went to confession. It was the beginning of my journey home, back to the church the way it was meant to be, not this superficial lukewarm in name only catholic. I still get that feeling from time to time that he is getting to me. His picture or something about him will just out of the blue will be in my face everywhere I turn. I have taken it as a sign from him that I have gotten off track and I need to refocus.
It does not surprise me that were Our Lady is present the devil is always not far behind. I will tell one of my own strange stories from Medugorje. We got in on our bus very late, about 2am and were so excited myself and two of my friends began to walk down the main street towards St James Church. As we did so a car pulled up at speed and a number of men got out and began shouting and gesturing at us. They were speaking in a foreign language but my strong impression was that they were threatening and nasty ,even possibly violent and since the war was not long over that they might be armed and dangerous. Anyway we walked on dwon , but as I prayed for protection , looking up to the sky I saw 13 pillars in the sky surrounding the village with 13 Princes of Hell chained up to protect them from attacking the little village.
Padre Pio was a real, real biggie. He was necessary for the time in which he lived. I read a report somewhere that suggested he pretty well saved the Church in Italy single handed. But interestingly enough he had a net work of ladies he gave direction and counsel to and many of these were saints as well. But one of them interestingly he said was much closer to God than himself. I find this stunning.
The Little Friend One time , when I was about 4 or 5 years old I was pushing my red Sunburst bike up a hill in the city near my home. I remember that bike so well as it was my pride and joy. It had white tires and at the start had two little support wheels on the back which my dad had just removed and to my great pride I was able to ride on just two wheels. I got that bike for Christmas so I think this must have been about springtime. Anyway I riding along talking to someone who I thought of as my Little Friend in my head. Then it suddenly struck me. Who was this Little Friend who I had been talking away too since as long as I could recall, maybe since I was a baby? So of course I turned to the Firend and asked Him who He was. TO which the Little Friend replied, 'I am Jesus'. This reply actually surprised, astonished, me so much that I actually got off my bike to think about it. ' 'But how could you be Jesus?' , I asked Jesus is God?' 'I am here in your heart. It is me. I am God and I can do as I like. I am the one who always talked to you since you were a baby'. This is how I got to find out about the indwelling Jesus. I honestly thought everyone had the same thing. I am still surprised that many people do not have this Little Friend. Or at least do not hear it from babyhood onwards John 14:17 17 even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, for he dwells with you and will be7 in you.
The Blessed Sacrament I started school when I was four years old. So I would have been about 4 or five years old when the Birther who taught us explained Christ's Presence in the Blessed Sacrament. Round the corner from our school on my way home was Clonard Monastery so of course I was eager , now that I knew that Christ actually lived in the Tabernacle to go see for myself. I remember the very real sense of awe and wonder as I went into that huge Church and genuflected. I have always felt that sense of a warm wave of love , like a fire on walking into a Catholic Church. It reminds me of the Old Testament of the Old Testament were God physically showed His presence in the Ark of the Covenant . I suspect many Catholics also feel this presence . There have been so many reports of Protestant and Jewish people being converted just by entering into a Catholic Church. I would say though that in some Churches this Fire, the Presence seems stronger than others and in some it is overwhelming. For instance in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem and St Peters in Rome, also Clonard Monastery it is overwhelming.
This reminds me of an incident that happened a couple of years ago. I was in Germany on a summer course and we were brought on a day trip to Cologne, so of course we visited the Cathedral. One of the men in our group was from Nigeria and not a Catholic, I'm not sure if he was of any particular faith. When we entered the cathedral he was awe-struck, and not by the opulent surroundings and architecture, but by the sense of peace. He came close to tears and said he had never in his whole life felt anything like the peace he felt on entering that church. He watched myself and another woman bless ourselves with holy water and asked if he was allowed to do that as well, because he really wanted to. We laughed and said yes, of course, and showed him how to bless himself with holy water. It was lovely to see.
When so was a young child, I frequently had nightmares and would wake up in the night, and I could feel an evil presence in the room. I was raised in an atheist home, so I had never heard of such things, but I knew anyway. I also have many times had dreams and even visions while awake of things that later came true.
Yes. I can identify with this. We lived a block away from the parish Church and when I was very young I used make visits to the Blessed Sacrament and Our Lady. I loved that Church. Cool and dark with the sanctuary light gleaming and the blue glass candles on Mary's altar and red candles by St Joseph on the other side. I would kneel at the altar rail and just "be" there. Sometimes a Rosary but usually just visiting watching for the Blessed Mother to smile at me. Sometimes I really think she did. They trashed that beautiful little Church and remade it into something awful. The beautiful statue of Our Lady Of Grace was gone and St Joseph too. The Angel Guardians holding the altar lamps were gone. Frozen and sterile designed by some architect. Sometimes I dream about the old Church and always with a terrible sense of loss.
I know these stories of Padre Pio abound but I actually had a dream about him before I ever knew about him. And then some years later when my husband was deathly ill and nothing seemed to work to heal him we prayed The Sacred Heart novena together with a first class relic of PP laid upon his body. (A local prayer group had it)and my husband called me later that night from the hospital at 3 AM to tell me he experienced warmth go through his entire body and he knew he was healed. And the doctors were amazed because he really did show amazing signs of getting better. Padre Pio is the real deal!!!
