This is another good story from the book Ghost Stories of Texas by Jo-Anne Christensen.
The story is titled I Was a Ghost, but I’m calling this Life after Death.
This is one of the best descriptions that I have read about what it’s like when our soul leaves our body, if your soul is light enough. Not all souls are light, some are heavy. In this case it’s a child and it’s a very light soul that finds freedom once it sheds its human shell. This is why it’s best to be a good person while on this very difficult Earth. This story was published in 2001.
Mai Beaird of Denton Texas was only 15 years old when she experienced the most astounding event of her life. More than 50 years later, she would finally write about it. The time she returned from the other side of the grave.
It was the summer of 1917, and Mai had contracted what her family doctor described simply as ‘’the fever’’. Her temperature rose until she was burning hot to the touch, and her head pounded in agony. On the third day of her illness, the doctor warned Mai’s parents nobody ever lives with this high a temperature. He was right. Within the hour, the physician could detect no pulse and declared Mai dead. What was incredible was that Mai would later recall seeing him do it. (Declare her dead.)
Though her physical being had expired, The teenager realized that her spirit had been set free. as she watched her parents grieve over the wasted body in the bed, Mai marveled at her new form. She later recalled:
‘’Now I could be wherever I chose to be. the walls of the room seemed to vanish. I was free, weightless, completely happy. And what energy! I’d never known such energy while I was encased in that body.’’
That body, in fact, looked to May like a pain-filled prison from which she had escaped. it repelled her and she rejoiced in her new expansive state. There was only one problem: Mai could not stand to see her beloved parents devastated by grief. She had to let them know she was alright.
Mai crossed the little bedroom and embraced her father. ‘’I’m happy and free!’’ she told him. ‘’I’ll never be sick again!’’ but the man’s hands never left his face. May spoke more loudly as she hugged her mother, ‘’can’t you see me’’? she implored, but the woman continued to weep uncontrollably. It was clear to Mai that she could never communicate with her mother and father as a free spirit, and she loved them too much to allow them to suffer. She would have returned to her body.
As Mai made her decision, two men arrived from the funeral home and lifted her corpse onto a stretcher. At that instant, Mai wrote, my love for my parents drew me back to my body like a rubber-band snaps. She felt herself being carried down the hall and outside to the waiting hearse.
The energy and joy the girl had been filled with only moments before had vanished. Mai was back in a pain wracked body, unable to move or even breathe. Paralyzed beneath the sheet, she was gripped suddenly by a new horror. Oh God! Mai thought, now I’m going to be buried alive!
With tremendous effort, she managed to let one limp hand slide off the stretcher. One of the men noticed it, but simply balanced the stretcher on his knee while he tucked her arm back underneath the sheet. Again, Mai let her hand drop. Again, the young fellow placed it back where it belonged. With the last bit of strength the girl could summon, she let her hand dangle off the stretcher one more time. this time the older, more experienced, mortician noticed.
‘’My God, she’s still alive’’! he screamed. The two shocked men dropped the stretcher on the floor. Mai’s head hit the smooth, hard tiled, and darkness descended.
For five days, Mai remained unconscious. When she awoke, she was surrounded by friends and family and the doctor was monitoring her pulse. When Mai opened her eyes the doctor placed a thermometer in her mouth. After a few seconds, he read the results and spoke. she has passed the crisis. She’ll be all right with a few days of rest.
Mai felt well but was weak. In a whisper, she asked her father to have everyone else leave the room. Once they had, she told her father every detail of what had taken place in the room while she had been dead. ‘’Am I right’’? she asked. Is that the way everything happened? The shocked man verified her story. Mai then explained to him that she knew these things because her disembodied spirit had been in the room the entire time. Her father was accepting but offered one piece of advice. ‘’For God’s sake and your sake, don’t ever tell anybody about it. no one will ever believe you.’’
Mai promised and, for more than half a century, kept that promise. Eventually, though, it was something she felt she had to share. She wanted others to know about this profound experience which, particularly in her senior years, had brought her great measure of comfort. ‘’I really have no fear about what lies beyond the grave’’, she wrote. ‘’After all, I’ve been there and back’’!
