Police have reported hearing a woman’s voice guiding them to a car crashed into a river, but is this the only instance of help from beyond the grave?
It was the cries of a desperate mother that guided police to the car in the water.
An overturned red Dodge saloon was upside down in the freezing Spanish Fork River in Utah, USA, and a female voice shouted: “Help me! We’re in here.”
But inside the car, upside down in her baby seat, only toddler Lily Groesbeck was found alive on Monday.
Mother Lynn Jennifer, 25, had been dead for several hours.
Police at the scene could draw only one conclusion – that the voice came from beyond the grave.
“I’m not really religious, but that’s what you think of,” said Officer Tyler Beddoes.
This eerie, astonishing story is from a long tradition of ghostly help…
Cured by an angel
Colleen Banton was devastated. Her daughter, born five weeks prematurely, had spent her life in and out of hospital fighting health problem after health problem.
In 2008, aged 14, Chelsea was back in her local North Carolina hospital and she was suffering more than ever before.
She had spent two months in intensive care and was now close to death after developing pneumonia.
Doctors told Colleen there was no hope at all and she made the heartbreaking decision to switch off Chelsea’s life support machine.
The doctors flipped the switch, but as just as Chelsea was about to take her last breath, something happened and she started to pull through.
It was then they saw an image on the hospital’s security monitor showing a glowing figure at
the doors by Chelsea’s bed.
Colleen says: “They called me in there and when I saw it, I said it had to be an angel because you could see the wings, you could see the whole outline.”
To the doctors’ amazement, and against all medical reason, the teenage girl then started to improve and she was later allowed to go home.
Led out of the storm
Trapped by a blizzard in an isolated crevice of the Rocky Mountains, skier Greg Bernado was lost and beginning to lose hope fast.
He was surrounded by thick fog, the snow was pelting down and he had no shelter, no food and no idea which way to go.
Then, convinced he was about to die, Greg, 40, suddenly saw a hazy figure of a woman walking towards him through the snow.
With a smile, she introduced herself as Irene and comforted Greg, 40, telling him how to build
a snow cave where he could shelter from the storm.
For the next three days she remained by his side, urging him on, telling him not to stop despite being hungry and exhausted.
After 72 hours, Greg caught sight of a rescue team sent out to find him. But when he turned to tell Irene, she was gone, vanished into the darkness.
It was then he realised there was only one explanation… she was a ghost.
After his rescue in March 1993, Greg was determined to find out more and delved into the history of the mountains.
That’s when he came across the story of the ill-fated Donner Party, migrants crossing the Rockies on their way to California in the winter of 1846 who became trapped in the deep snow of a mountain pass.
Starving and desperate, they turned to cannibalism before dying off one by one.
Their makeshift camp – the scene of their eventual graves – was just 12 miles east of the canyon where Greg got lost.
Although he can never be sure, he’s convinced Irene was one of that ill-fated group.
A brother in arms
On a frosty night in 1917, Corporal William Bird was asleep in a muddy trench in France when he was woken from his slumber by someone gently shaking him.
The 26-year-old Canadian expected it to be one of his fellow soldiers – but his eyes blinked open to see his brother Steve standing over him.
William would later recall: “He pointed to the sleepers in the bivvy and to my rifle, saying ‘Get your gear.’ ”
His brother led him through the trenches to a small bolthole before turning a corner and vanishing.
Exhausted from battle, William curled up and went back to sleep.
In the morning, somewhat disorientated, he stumbled back to find his comrades, only to see that their trench was now just a smouldering crater.
It had been totally destroyed by an enemy shell and all the men inside were dead.
His brother had saved his life. Except Steve had been killed in action two years earlier…
A daughter’s love
He was the hard man of rock who rivalled bandmate Tommy Lee for life in the fast lane.
But when Motley Crue star Vince Neil lost his four-year-old daughter Skylar to cancer in 1995 it was more than he could bear.
As he struggled with his grief, Vince, now 54, began downing drink and prescription drugs to numb the pain.
For the next two years, he was in and out of rehab nine times. But whatever he did, his mind was dominated by one thought – suicide.
“I felt she was waiting for me and the only place I wanted to go was to her,” he confessed.
Then one night he was lying in bed, clutching the blanket she used to love, when he was woken by someone there. When he opened his eyes, he saw his daughter standing over him.
Vince said: “There was a little tug on the blanket. I woke up and opened my eyes. I was scared, I didn’t know what was going on. But it was her.”
He claims Skylar’s ghost visited him every night for the next two weeks. It was then he realised his daughter was encouraging him to live out his life.
Not only did the paranormal experience help him turn his life around, it also inspired him to set up the Skylar Neil Foundation to raise funds to combat cancer, AIDS and other deadly diseases.
Plucked from a river
Irene Nierman could only look on in horror as her five-year-old son Willem fell from the deck of the family barge and was swept away by the strong current of the River Maas in Holland back in 1985.
No one else was on board and she was eight months pregnant with her second child. This meant she had an impossible Sophie’s Choice-style dilemma.
Should she jump in and risk the life of her unborn child. Or stay on the boat, condemning Willem to die?
She said: “I was certain there was nothing anyone could do. No one could reach my son in time and it seemed inevitable that Willem would drown.”
Then suddenly she spotted a tall, dark haired man in blue overalls heading towards Willem and grabbing him, pulling him to safety.
By the time she steered her boat to shore, the hero had vanished, but her son was safe.
Desperate to thank Willem’s rescuer, she asked about the mystery man at the docks the next day.
An elderly dock worker told her: “You have given an exact description of someone called Johan Udink.”
“Where can I find him?” Irene asked. “I would like to thank him.”
But the dock worker told her it was impossible.
“Johan is in the town cemetery,” he said.
“He was drowned at the spot you said you saw him. He was trying to rescue his own son, who sadly died with him.
“Johan Udink was a good man. It seems in death he is trying to do what he tragically couldn’t
do in life.”
Mum who found help
Christine Skubish had just qualified as a paralegal and was moving to California with her three-year-old son Nick to begin her new career.
But driving through the bleak Sierra Nevada Mountains, she fell asleep at the wheel, and her car careered off a 40ft cliff, crashing into a hidden ravine.
Christine was killed instantly but little Nick survived the horrific crash.
Five days later, Deborah Hoyt and her husband were driving along the same stretch of road and were astonished to see the seemingly dead body of a dark-haired naked young woman on the highway.
This was in 1994, before mobile phones were in common use, so they drove on to the nearest filling station to call the police.
When officers arrived at the scene there was no trace of the woman, either dead or alive.
El Dorado County Sheriff Lieutenant Howard Wilson said: “There was nothing else there to indicate an accident, no skid marks or anything.”
But while searching the area, officers found one child’s shoe nearby and another down an embankment.
They scoured the woods below – and found the mangled car wreck, with Nick miraculously still alive.
His family believe that as a last act of love for her son, Christine came back from the dead to lead help to him.
