A Good Soul with a Dark Past...#10 of my spooky stories series

Can our loved ones who have passed send us signs? Is there a way for them to give us just a little reminder that they are still around us? Or maybe it's all just coincidence and these occurances feed off of our need to believe our loved ones are near. Regardless, the death of a friend is a profound loss, particularly through the eyes of a child.

Here is a story submitted by Obilon, a fellow blogger.

It was the 1970s (as if that were not spooky enough) and my parents were divorced. My mother had some single friends that were like a second family to me, and we spent a lot of time with them. "Mary" was one of my mother's closest friends.

Mary had found a boyfriend she really loved, "Gary." They dated for a few months and things were going well. I met him a few times and I thought he was a cool guy. He had this fascination with seagulls. He bought Mary a framed poster of seagulls flying and it read,"They can.. Because they think they can." She hung it in her apartment, and it had special meaning to both of them. Gary always said that when he died he'd come back as a bird.

Things were going well with Mary and Gary. However he had been harboring a secret life. He was a criminal. One night Mary got a the worst phone call of her life - Gary had died. He had robbed a local store at gunpoint and was shot by the police. He died that night. Mary was completely devastated.

A few weeks later, my mother and Mary were at Gary's apartment getting some things that she wanted and some of her belongings. The entire time they carried boxes from the apartment, a little white bird sat not too far away perched on the building, watching them intently. The bird just sat there watching them like a tennis spectator as they went in and out of the house. They tried to shoo the bird away but it refused to go.

It's stubborness convinced Mary the bird was Gary visiting her one last time.

It doesn't stop there. Not long after Gary's death, I was walking down the hallway to my bedroom, and I was looking at myself in the full-length mirror at the end of the hall. Suddenly my vision got very blurry and a misty white glow appeared between myself and the mirror, clouding my view. It was oval shaped and had a "vibration" to it. I stood frozen in fear, and I dared not move until the mist disappeared. I was pretty frightened immediately afterwards, but then I thought that maybe it had been Gary's spirit.

I think that Gary, despite his criminal life, was in essence a good person. Perhaps he was visiting me to say one last goodbye or just checking in to see if I was OK.

I very rarely think of my experience even when other people tell their ghost stories, since it was so long ago. I don't ever offer that experience up. Something made me think to write that down and share it.