Tornado Ghost

Short Story - 520 Words

This story is entered in "The Writer's Cramp"  for February 16, 2020.

This is the prompt:

"Write a STORY or POEM about the spirit of a loved one paying a visit."


Tornado Ghost

This is a true story.

One spring day in the late 1990's a violent tornado came to call in the small town of Stoneville, North Carolina. At that time, my aunt, Ivy, one of my Dad's five surviving sisters was living there. That day she was home alone in her small house when she heard a sound like a freight train.

My aunt had a strong belief in God and she felt that God told her to stand under a door frame for safety, and so she did. She stood there, held on and prayed. My Dad had been dead a year or so at the time that the tornado hit, so she asked him for help too. She asked everyone she could think of to help her in that short period of time. There were a lot of people to ask as they came from a family of ten children.

Photographs after the tornado showed that it came through between Aunt Ivy's house and the house next door, so while my aunt's house was mostly spared, the tornado cut a destructive and deadly path through the town of Stoneville.

Indeed, a firehouse was destroyed and people were killed, blocks from where my aunt lived. The tornado was so violent that it made the national news at the time.

In the aftermath, my aunt was thankful for her deliverance and said she felt a presence protecting her. A local news photographer took a picture of the devastation between my aunt's house and the house next door, within a half hour of the tornado.

Trees were twisted in two and car ports where blown aside. In the background, you could clearly see a figure that looked so much like my late father's profile that my aunt felt compelled to show it to me.

"See," she said, "my brother protected me from the storm. Your Dad is with you every day, just like he was with me."

There was a presence in the picture and it helped me believe that when I call on my Dad he will be there for me. I hope sharing this story helps others to know that there is something that we cannot explain about the spirits of those we love. There was someone there who looked an awful lot like my Daddy.

I miss my Dad every day, but thanks to my Aunt Ivy sharing this with me, I feel his presence in my life even more than I did before this happened.

He brought me and my Aunts Ivy and Catherine together after his death, too. No one could ask for better friends than I had in my aunts. We suffered losses later and my Aunt Ivy even survived another tornado before she passed away gently, as did Aunt Catherine before her.

My feeling is that my Dad took her hand and led her into heaven with a laugh and a smile. You can't ask for better than that in a spirit.

I believe in them and that we catch them at times when they are lingering in our vicinity, watching over us with love.