A gift from a ghost

This one is kinda creepy, but also kinda comforting. This story was told to me by my grandmother, who is a no-nonsense kinda broad, so I believe every word of it.

My grandma had a neighbor/friend who unfortunately lost her husband when she was young, about 40 or so years ago. It was a sudden death, cardiac arrest or something like that. So this woman was so upset, because for a couple years after his death, she couldn’t dream of her husband. For some reason it really bothered her that she couldn’t experience a dream with him in it. It’s almost like she wanted it for the comfort.

Anyway some time passes, and this woman is preparing to sell her house and move closer to her kids (they lived a state over). Suddenly, she gets her wish. She starts dreaming, and her husband is in them. She has multiple of these dreams, and in every one her husband wakes her up, sits down on the bed, and starts speaking to her. However, his speech horrifies her. It was described to me as “backwards” or “garbled”. I imagine it to be something similar to the way Twin Peaks characters speak in the Black Lodge. So yeah, pretty goddamn creepy. She can’t make a single word out.

A few days before she’s about to move out for good, she goes to bed and dreams of him again. The dream is the same – except she understands ONE word he says. He grabs her in the dream and repeatedly says “rafters” – almost seeming panicked. She wakes up rattled, but returns to sleep.

The next day, as she’s finishing up packing in the basement, she looks up and sees the rafters. She remembers the dream, and is compelled to reach into them. She does, and pulls out thousands of dollars worth of WW2 bonds her husband had purchased without her knowledge. She swears he never told her about them. So he appeared in her dream to tell her so she wouldn’t leave all those bonds behind when she sold the house.

Story still gives me chills today.