Supernatural and Paranormal Experiences, 5 Typical and Related Families Clarence Parker

The idea for this book started over 25 years ago while one of the authors (Clarence Parker) was attending a Parker family reunion. As they started to discuss the supernatural and paranormal happenings within their family, they were surprised to find that many had these types of experiences.

Our book has two main themes. One is clearly supernatural while the other is paranormal and is not as clearly defined as supernatural.

The dictionary defines supernatural as, existing or occurring outside the normal experiences or knowledge of man; not explainable by the known forces or laws of nature; of involving or attributed to God or a god; of involving or attributed to ghosts, spirits, the occult, etc; exceeding normal bounds. The dictionary defines paranormal as, designating or of psychic or mental phenomena or outside the range of the normal.

Most of the people that we interviewed tended to think only of spiritual experiences. They hadn’t really searched their lives for experiences of the non-spiritual or the paranormal. Even we as the authors, as well as many whom we’ve interviewed, had difficulty remembering all of the many unusual experiences that had happened. The more that we reviewed our lives, the more surprised we were at how many experiences we actually had. We are convinced that there are many more supernatural and paranormal experiences out there but not all people understand or recognize these.

Our exploration of the supernatural and paranormal has caused us moments of wonder, as we have had to stop and consider how these experiences have affected our lives. Although no one person can fully understand them, the writing of this book has certainly brought us closer to a greater awareness of the existence of the supernatural and the paranormal.

This book contains the deepest and innermost spiritual experiences from individual persons, from groups of 2 or more individuals and from a few young children. Also, in our book, many experiences are déjà vu (having seen a future event that has not yet happened before it actually does happen). In addition, there are many unusual experiences that cannot be scientifically explained and in our opinion are considered paranormal. These experiences have an aspect of spiritual control, almost like our lives may be planned or someone may be watching over us (maybe a guardian angel).

We as humans may question where we have come from or why we are here. Also, where might we be going next in this life or in a life of the spiritual kind? For life really is fascinating and as we take you on our journey, may you experience the supernatural and the paranormal along with us and find this to be an exciting and fascinating part of your life.

We believe that most of you will identify certain aspects of your personal experiences with those of this book. While reading our book and as you discover your own experiences, may you come to appreciate and understand the experiences of others who have the gift of understanding the supernatural and are blessed by the protection of paranormal forces.

In planning to write this book, it was important to determine who to include and how effective the information would be to others who might be questioning their own personal experiences. Often individuals who do have supernatural or paranormal experiences may not want to even talk to their own family members about them, as they might be thought to be a little bit crazy.

Just presenting experiences at random from selected people would not have been very meaningful. There are many people who have these and there is no way to judge whether they are telling the truth or distorting what actually happened to them. Therefore it was important for us to include 5 typical and related families. We feel that our families are like all families and we’re sure that all families would find similar family related experiences should they take the time to explore these.

In selecting the families for this book, the objective was to set some boundaries. We started with the Parker family, as this was the first family interviewed many years ago and the family of the author Clarence Parker.

We continued with the second family, the Pépin family, as this is the family of the co-author Hélène Pépin Thomas. Hélène is the sister-in-law of Clarence Parker.

The Thomas family was selected as the third family as Clarence’s wife is a Thomas and Hélène’s husband is also a Thomas.

To give more scope to the book, a few very special experiences were obtained from the related families of the Halls and the Achesons. Clarence Parker’s mother was a Hall and Clarence’s grandmother was an Acheson. Because of time and location limitations, only a few members of these families were contacted. The selected experiences include only those of special significance showing the potential that exists in any given family.

Our selected families include people of all types, having different backgrounds, religions and age groups. We think that we have a good cross-sectional representation of the general public. This book contains aproximately 170 experiences, featuring some 70 people from 5 typical and related families. Total family members are from 150 to 200 including parents, children and grandchildren. Approximately 50% of the experiences are of the supernatural and 50% are of the paranormal.

There are many great grandchildren and this book offers only a few of their stories. We did not pursue the experiences of the younger members. Some of these were obtained because the parents included their child’s story along with their own experiences. One younger member however was very enthusiastic about sharing his experience all on his own.

One of the difficulties in getting responses was that many people did not fully understand the meaning of supernatural or paranormal. The first reaction from most people was, “Oh ghost stories”! The supernatural is much more than this. Others thought that they’re experiences were too personal and did not want to share them. We understood and appreciated this. However we feel that this is something that would occur in all families. It is sometimes difficult to recognize that what is occurring in our lives is actually not of the normal and very likely not to have happened by chance.

This book is not meant to prove anything. It is simply a statement of what various people believe to be true. When you have read all of the experiences, you may want to draw your own conclusions.

In the final chapter, we as the authors share some of our personal thoughts on this matter. Some of the thoughts expressed by various contributors to this book are also summarized.

We want to thank all of our contributors. Without you, our book would not have been, and with your help we feel that we have an excellent gift to offer you, your families and the public in general.

My mother had just been home from the hospital for a short time after giving birth to my older brother Chick. The baby awakened her as he was crying very loudly. Mother said that she had been too tired to get up and she figured if she just let the baby cry that he would go back to sleep, so she ignored his cries. Suddenly she looked up and her mother was standing at the foot of the bed. She was crying but making no noise. Mother tried to poke Father to wake him but she couldn’t move her hand. Then when her mother disappeared she was able to move her hand and she woke Father up. She then got up and went to check on Chick. She found that a pin had come loose from his diaper and was sticking in him.

Growing up on our farm in Lincoln brings back memories, some good and some not so good. I remember our upstairs bedroom that I shared with my sister Rosanne. I’m not so sure if it was the bedroom, the house or what was in the house that terrified me at night. I remember how terrified I was as a teenager. As I entered the house late at night I would run as fast as my legs would carry me from the outdoors to my bedroom. The fear was so great that I would dive under the covers with all of my clothes on, even my shoes. I would cover my head and listen to the creaks and the footsteps on the stairway. As they approached my bedroom, I would lie very quietly and pretend that I wasn’t there. This happened each late night that I came home until I could stand it no longer. I couldn’t continue to live in fear, so one night I made up my mind that I would face whatever was out there.

I often visit with my sister Cathy at her house in Oromocto, N.B. While there, I have seen and felt strange things happen. Several times I have felt the faint movement of air passing by me even though all the windows in the house were closed. It was like someone had just walked by me. Also I often slept in the parlor and once I saw someone looking at me through the window. It was wintertime and when I got up to check, there were no footprints in the snow. This really freaked me out.

I once saw the ghost of a customs officer who had passed away three days before, after having been hit by a car. I often went through customs and I usually chatted with him or waved when I was passing through. One day while I was going through customs, he was in the booth along with a second customs officer. When I passed through, he did not seem to respond to my smiles and waves like he always had before. He just stared straight ahead. I remember thinking that it was odd that there were two officers in the booth as I had always seen only one in the booth. I read in the paper the very next day that he had died three days before.

I have another very unusual driving incident that happens to me. Often, when I am not sure of how to get to where I need to go, a car will turn in front of me with my initials on it’s license plate. If I follow that car, I will then be led in the right direction. Many times when I am not lost, I will look for license plates with my initials on them and never see any.

In 1978 I went to work for N.B. Power as Cost Engineer on the Dalhousie 2 Project. I often traveled back and forth to the site with my boss Norm Grandy. He was the Project Manager. I became Cost Engineer for the Point Lepreau Nuclear Plant in 1979. Two weeks after I was transferred to my new position at Point Lepreau, the Project Manager and all of his senior staff were killed in a plane crash. If I had not received the transfer, I would have been in the plane as well. It is also interesting to note that a few weeks before my transfer, Norm and I had been talking about life insurance. He said that if he got killed while at N.B. Power, that the best way to be killed would be in a plane crash because there would be an extra $60,000 insurance over and above the 9 times his salary.

When I was twelve years old and living at the D’Youville Orphanage in Gifard Québec, I was badly abused, very unhappy and on top of all this my hands became covered with ugly warts. As I was a person of great faith and believed in miracles, I began reciting a Novena to Our Lady Of Purity. She was a saint whom I had great faith in.

Each morning I would go to the orphanage chapel to recite my Novena, while rubbing the warts with a medallion of Our Lady Of Purity. This medallion had been blessed with holy water. Soon something wonderful started to happen! One of my warts dropped to the floor of the chapel. There was no pain, scarring or bleeding. This was very unusual, as I knew that warts had deep roots. Each day as I returned to the chapel another wart would drop to the floor. This happened each day until all of my warts were gone. Imagine how happy I felt to be rid of these. Someone was certainly looking after me and hearing my prayers.

In 1970-1971, I was dating Arthur Thomas who is now my husband. I was babysitting for his sister, Jean Rowan. One day, Jean’s mother came to visit her. She and Jean got in the front seat of Arthur’s car and I got in the back seat. They were taking me home as I was done babysitting for the day. Jean then introduced me to her mother. I hadn’t any idea what she would look like as I had never met her or even seen a picture of her. When she turned to look at me, I was astonished. She looked exactly as I knew that she would. She even sounded like I knew that she would sound. It was as if I had known her all of my life. I remember saying to her, “You look exactly like I thought that you would.” I asked her if we had met before and she said no.

The only experience that I can recall is one that I had one evening about 10 years ago. I had a very vivid dream and in the dream a girl was chasing me and wanted to kill me. The next day, I was sitting in the bus downtown and I was waiting for it to start up and take me home. I looked out the window and I saw the same girl from my dream. I had never seen her before but she was definitely the girl in my dream. I still have a strong image of this girl in my mind and the only time that I saw her was this one time after the dream. A native friend of mind told me that very often when there has been an unstable relationship in your past life, the person that you had the unstable relationship with will make an appearance to you in this life.

I often have déjà vu’s that usually come to be. Suddenly something will pop into my head out of nowhere and for one reason or another it will come to be. One déjà vu that happened very recently concerned my car. I knew that my car was due for a timing belt and I didn’t like to ask anyone from my family to do the job for me. One day I got brave and asked my brother if he would do it on his days off. He thought that his snow mobile was more important than my car because the season is so short. My father then called me and said that he would do it for me but I would have to wait a few weeks. I was satisfied with that but hadn’t really wanted to ask my father, as he is always so busy.

A couple of months before I had the timing belt put in my car I had a dream that I thought was very weird at the time. I dreamt that I was driving my car when all of a sudden all of the instruments in the car started to spin. The horn was blowing, the wipers were going back and forth, lights were going on and off, etc. I didn’t mention this to anyone as I thought that it was a pretty silly dream.

After my father finished working on my car I thanked him and drove it home. The next day my husband and children were in the car with me when all of a sudden everything in the car went just like in my dream. The kids couldn’t believe what was happening. Neither could we. It was like something from the movies. It was very unnerving at the time but later we thought it quite funny. No one could come up with an explanation for what had happened. It hasn’t happened since.

Just before the planes crashed into the Twin Towers in New York City, I had a couple of dreams. In the first dream, I was looking down onto obliterated buildings. There was gray ashy rubble, burned trucks and the figure of a man crossing before me. The next night in my dream, I saw a plane climbing higher and higher and going towards a bright light. I had a bad feeling about my dreams. The next day while watching TV, I saw the two planes crashing into the Twin Towers and the collapse of the buildings.

Helen had noted that there were a lot of unusual timings related to the deaths of various members of her and Tom’s families. When Tom’s mother died (1935), it was 20 years from when Helen’s mother died (1955). Twenty years after Tom’s father died (1943), Helen’s father died (1963) and Tom died 20 years after that in 1983. While the deaths did not occur on the same day, they were always very close to the same day or at least in the same month.

The subject of the paranormal and the supernatural and really what life is all about, has been of interest to both of us for most of our lives. We as the authors are reasonably convinced that no one knows for certain what lies beyond this life and no one knows exactly where they were or what they were prior to being here. While our book offers food for thought, it does not have definitive answers.

In writing this book our personal feelings have solidified, in that we know that there is definitely something of a spiritual nature surrounding our physical world. We may not know exactly what it is or who they are but we cannot dismiss the similarity of events that have occurred between our related families. We are convinced that as other families read our book and start to research their families’ experiences, that they will also discover similar events.

“I have always had feelings about people and events that I know couldn’t have happened in this lifetime. I am sure though that they did happen to me at some time. When I hear of someone being stabbed, I can almost feel it myself. One of the spirits told me that I was once a forty-five year old man who had lived in Greece and had been killed with a sword. I feel that I don’t have a Canadian culture but I do have a strong sense of culture. I feel that this comes from my past lives. I am much more aware of culture now that I live on an Indian Reserve. My family does not understand my sense of lack of culture, as they don’t feel this themselves.”

A very interesting observation made by Lianne is that the appearance of ghosts in hospitals and nursing care homes is very common knowledge among her profession. She has talked with other nurses in other hospitals and nursing homes who have had similar experiences.