True Ghost Stories & Crisis Apparitions: When Spirits Come to Say Goodbye

Have you ever felt the chilling presence of someone you love, only to later discover they passed at that exact moment?

These unsettling experiences are called crisis apparitions, where spirits, often at the brink of death, return one last time to say farewell.

These are the encounters that make even the most hardened skeptics question reality.

And stay with me until the end, where we’ll revisit the chilling Houdini pact—could the greatest escape artist of all time really communicate from beyond the grave?

 A Soldier’s Ghost in Gettysburg

Gettysburg is synonymous with hauntings, and one tale still chills me to the bone. During a paranormal investigation on the blood-soaked grounds, I was told about a Union Sergeant who saw one of his soldiers silently standing in a cabin doorway—despite knowing that man was stationed far from the battle line. The soldier stood, pale, and seemingly confused, then without a word, turned around and walked outside.

The Sergeant, followed the soldier outside and once outside- you guessed it- he was gone. Poof!

Hours later, news arrived: his soldier had fallen on the battlefield at the very moment of the encounter.

Is this simply folklore, or is Gettysburg still echoing the cries of the fallen?

The Silent Visitor of 1960s Ireland

This tidbit comes from Ireland. Another place steeping with ghost lore and superstition.  A neighbor once shared her family’s chilling tale: one stormy night, when she was a mere 8 years old, she awoke to find her adult brother sitting at the edge of her bed. He never spoke—just gazed at her, She claimed that by the time she sat up in her room (reportedly chillingly cold) and rubbed her eyes in an attempt to wake herself up- he had vanished.

She thought nothing of it, and in the midst of the cold night, she scrambled back under her covers and fell asleep. Two days passed and sadly the family had no idea where the eldest son was. It was as if he simply disappeared after attending visiting a pub in town.

Sadly, after 48 hours an neighbor found the young man dead in a ditch. He had been bit by a drink driver two days earlier and left to die. The very same time she had claimed to have seen him by her bedside.

Beyond Sight: Ghostly Signs and Scents

Crisis apparitions don’t always appear as phantoms in the dark. Sometimes, they reach out through personal objects or even familiar scents.

When I was a young child, my great aunt had given me a tiny gold heart pendant on a very thin chain. It was so delicate that my mother refused to let me wear it in fear of loosing it. By the time I was 16 I was given the necklace and guess what- you guessed it – I lost it one day at school. Like i said, the chain was very thin.

Years had passed and I gave it little to no thought. And sadly, I had also lost touch with my aunt (A family squabble) so I had not heard nor seen her in decades. The one day, as I pulled out a belt from my closet the necklace fell to my feet? Odd in that this was two houses later? But there it was, glinting on the floor in defiance of nature it seemed? Well. i picked it up and placed it on the table and went on my way. The next day I got a call from my mother telling me my great aunt had died. Did she come to visit?

Similarly, a friend once told me that at the exact moment her father died, a cloud of cigar smoke wafted through her kitchen. He had been a smoker all his life, but there were no cigars in the house that day. In fact, she didn’t allow smoking in her home at all.

Coincidence… or another unearthly connection?

 A Toddler’s Eerie Farewell

Sunset Child, a respected new age thinker, once shared this chilling experience. While babysitting her 18 month-old niece, the toddler raised her arms toward the ceiling and appeared fixated at a spot above her head/ Sunset, no stranger to the paranormal searched the room trying to find out what the child was obsessing over.

After a moment the child whispered, “Grandpa.”

Sunset knew that the child’s great grandfather had been in hospice, but wasn’t too familiar with the old man since he was from the other side of the family, so she didn’t give it much more thought. However, later that night, the family learned her great-grandfather had passed away in hospice care. Did the child possess an uncanny connection… or had Grandpa truly stopped by to say goodbye?

I will share sunset child’s FB page here if you are interested in learning more about her, or you can listen to her podcast here!

Historical Apparitions That Defy Explanation

💀 The Ghost of Abraham Lincoln

Mary Todd Lincoln’s life was entangled with paranormal encounters. On the night of Lincoln’s assassination in 1865, she claimed to see her husband’s apparition hours before his death. Several others close to the President reported feeling his presence—drifting between life and death before the fatal shot was fired.

Willie Lincoln’s Restless Spirit

Even more unsettling, after her son Willie succumbed to typhoid fever, Mary Todd reported multiple nighttime visits from her child’s spirit. He stood silently at the foot of her bed, his smile frozen in time.

Desperate for more contact, she held séances in the White House itself.

What lingers in the halls of power long after the living are gone?

Skepticism vs. The Paranormal

The Lord Brougham Pact

Is It All in the Mind? Or Proof of the Afterlife?
Skeptics argue that crisis apparitions are nothing more than psychological responses—our brains manifesting visions to ease the pain of loss.
But how do they explain cases where the “experiencer” had no idea their loved one had died?

The Ghost of Lord Brougham (1825)

One of the most famous documented cases appears in the book Historic Ghosts and Ghost Hunters by H. Addington Bruce.

In 1825, a young Henry Brougham (later Lord Brougham) was a well respected student who would later become a British statesman and play a prominent role in passing the Reform Act 1832 and Slavery Abolition Act 1833. No simple man by any means.

While in college, he and a close friend would often argue the existence of life after death and the paranormal, with Lord Brougham being the annoying skeptic. However he and his best friend made a pact: If there was an afterlife, either friend would visit the other to prove the afterlife existed.

Decades later, the friends lost touch- lets face it, social media was not available! But one night as Lord Brougham was taking a Bath he was shocked to see his old friend sitting in a chair. Shocked, he leaped out of the bathtub and fainted. Once he awoke he attributed the vision to nothing more than a dream.
Years later, while revisiting his old journals, he made a chilling discovery—the very night he saw his friend… was the exact day his friend had died.

The Houdini Pact: A Failed Escape from Death?

Perhaps the most famous paranormal pact involved Harry Houdini himself.

Before his untimely death, Houdini and his wife, Bess, agreed on a coded message to prove the afterlife’s reality. The code made sense to only the two and was reported to spell out the word “BELIEVE” . I’m not certain how it did , but the code was:

“Rosabelle, answer – tell – pray – answer – look – tell – answer – answer – tell.”

The couple chose this code so that no one else could falsify the message. And it was only valid for ten years- meaning that if a message was not received in ten years – that should be proof- the afterlife did not exist.

Sadly Houdini died first- suddenly, and the heart broken Bess tried desperately to connect with him through seances and mediums . But no spirit, no medium, no voice from beyond ever uttered the code. And after ten long years, Bess conceded: “Houdini did not come back.”

If Houdini couldn’t escape the chains of death, can anyone?

When Spirits Bring Humor from the Other Side

To end this chilling journey, here’s a reminder that even spirits may carry a spark of humor.

Maria, a talented medium, sat at the foot of her father’s deathbed , grieving while he was in hospice. Such as with many people who are blessed with the gift of communing with the dead, many are mocked for it. Such as I was, and such as Maria was, with her father bring one such critic.

When he finally did pass, Maria was there to witness it. Moments later and overwhelmed with emotion, she retreated to the bathroom to gather herself—only to look up, with her pants half pulled down, to see her father’s ghost standing there in the stall.

Caught off guard, and embarrassed, she shouted, “Dad?!”

His ethereal reply?
“I guess you really can do this.”

Even in the afterlife, spirits have a way of surprising us. And if you want to connect with maria, you can do so here!

Dare to Explore More?

If stories of haunted souls, restless spirits, and apparitions fascinate you, you won’t want to miss what’s coming next.

I invite you to step deeper into the darkness with me as I uncover even more true ghost stories, unsettling hauntings, and paranormal encounters in my upcoming book.

Because when the dead come knocking… will you answer?

Do You Believe in Crisis Apparitions?

What do you think? Are these real visitations, or is it all in the mind?

💬 Share your thoughts in the comments or on social media!

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🔮 Find me on:

• 🎙 Eye Opener Society Podcast on Podbean & YouTube
• 👻 Haunted and Waiting Facebook Group
• ✍️ My Blog: HauntedandWaiting.blog

Until next time… stay vigilant, keep your eyes open, and never ignore the unexplainable.Because you, too, might be Haunted and Waiting. 👁‍🗨👻