Beulah Hagan Norred, Annie Mae Norred, Robert Norred,
Dee Norred, Josephine Stonecyhpher Hagan
ca. 1907
My Southern Baptist heritage makes me resist the idea of reincarnation, but this next story makes me want to believe.
As a child, like most all little girls, I wanted a horse. We even lived across the street from a stable. As hard as I tried, I just couldn't convince my parents to get me a horse. Later, when I'd had a chance to actually be around horses just a bit, I realized I was afraid of them, especially their heads and noses. As a very young child, there was this time between wakefulness and sleep when I'd have an awake dream, sort of - I don't know how to describe it - of a horse head shaped thing that was wrapped in cloth. It would nudge at my face, but I don't remember this being scary. Just weird. Also, as a child, I was terribly afraid of drowning. I was especially afraid of riding down a road which would suddenly end at a river's edge. I'd have dreams of just that and the car not stopping ending up with us in the river, going under. Every time we went over a big bridge, I'd hold my breath. But I loved the water! As long as I could touch bottom I was fine. I'm still that way. I don't like being in deep water without some support, although I love being in the water.
As an adult, two or three years after Erin was born, I started having a dream every spring that either she or I was drowning. It was never Ricky or Philip. Just me or Erin. If it was me, I could feel myself taking water into my lungs. If it was her, the panic was horrible. We were going to the lake a lot during those years and I just passed it off as knowing lake season was right around the corner.
Some years later, while researching my mother's family, I came across this tidbit about my third great grandmother, Martha Ruth Camp Stonecypher:
As a child, like most all little girls, I wanted a horse. We even lived across the street from a stable. As hard as I tried, I just couldn't convince my parents to get me a horse. Later, when I'd had a chance to actually be around horses just a bit, I realized I was afraid of them, especially their heads and noses. As a very young child, there was this time between wakefulness and sleep when I'd have an awake dream, sort of - I don't know how to describe it - of a horse head shaped thing that was wrapped in cloth. It would nudge at my face, but I don't remember this being scary. Just weird. Also, as a child, I was terribly afraid of drowning. I was especially afraid of riding down a road which would suddenly end at a river's edge. I'd have dreams of just that and the car not stopping ending up with us in the river, going under. Every time we went over a big bridge, I'd hold my breath. But I loved the water! As long as I could touch bottom I was fine. I'm still that way. I don't like being in deep water without some support, although I love being in the water.
As an adult, two or three years after Erin was born, I started having a dream every spring that either she or I was drowning. It was never Ricky or Philip. Just me or Erin. If it was me, I could feel myself taking water into my lungs. If it was her, the panic was horrible. We were going to the lake a lot during those years and I just passed it off as knowing lake season was right around the corner.
Some years later, while researching my mother's family, I came across this tidbit about my third great grandmother, Martha Ruth Camp Stonecypher:
Did you get that? It happened in the spring. April. She and one of her children drowned. The child was only two years old. I often wonder if he was the youngest of the twins?
One more thing. If someone gets my name wrong, if they don't call me Rhonda, they call me Martha.
Marth Ruth Camp was the grandmother of Josephine Stonecypher Hagan in the above picture.
Now, maybe it's inherited memories or maybe it really is reincarnation or maybe just a huge coincidence. I don't know, but it sure sure amazed me when I first put all of that together.
There was another weird thing along those lines. I was mindlessly entering genealogical information in my database one balmy, summer night. I was probably close to being hypnotized when I had a flash, like a photograph in my mind. I was sitting on a old, wooden front porch, wearing a long, brown skirt, and had a big, wooden bowl in my lap. I was shelling peas and had the sense there were children in the yard playing. I was seeing all this through my eyes, not looking directly toward myself. I knew there were other people on the porch. I knew the house was a four room dog trot with a four square roof. I think that's what they call it. The roofs that come to a point at the center. That was it. A split second visual, but I'll never forget it. What in the world caused that? I wasn't thinking about anything like that. I've tried since and can't conjure up anything similar.
My uncle, the same one I visited the day he died, had a couple of similar experiences. His grandfather, my great grandfather, the husband of Beulah Hagan Norred pictured above, was shot in the chest and killed. Bobby always said he could actually feel being shot in the chest, just the way I knew how it felt to drown. He also had a vision of a church. He was trying to find the old home place and, as he was riding down the road, he "knew" as he turned a curve that there would be a white church with wooden picnic tables in the yard and a cemetery off to the side. He could even see people, women in long dresses, having a pot luck dinner "on the grounds". As he rounded the curve, the church and cemetery were there just as he had envisioned, but the tables were long gone.
Next installment: Ball of light at the cemetery
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By the time I'm through with these stories, you're all going to be convinced I'm really weird. I hope you won't stop being my friends! Maybe I need to shut up while I'm ahead.
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I didn't go to any sales this morning. It was raining and there's an estate sale locally tomorrow, so I'm saving up for that.
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