 Stories and content in Weird Darkness can be disturbing for some listeners and is intended for mature audiences only. Parental discretion is strongly advised. A woman wrote, When I was eight months pregnant with my daughter, I was so tired and disappointed in my two-year-old son. His behavior was different than other kids. Later on, at four years, he was diagnosed with ADHD with neurological impairedness and defiant behavior. But back then, I did not know what was wrong with him. I was so scared that my other child would be the same way. I was so tired because my son hardly ever slept at night and I had a husband I could not count on. I felt like a failure. At around 7 am, I heard a knocking at the door too early for anybody to visit. I got up but my door was opening already. I got scared because the only two people with keys were my then husband and the landlord. My husband was working and my landlord would not dare do that. But who did I see? My grandfather, walking up the stairs, smiling. I screamed in happiness. How did you make the trip? I asked. Who brought you here? Why didn't you call me? The last I knew, my grandfather was sick in bed and that was some days before. He then told me that he came to visit me for a moment. I was upset at that. He then asked where was your son? I told him he was finally asleep. I told him how I felt so alone and disappointed at motherhood and scared. He stopped me with a hug and told me to make some coffee. He told me now it is time for me to leave. I came to bless your son and it is done. When I went to bed he tucked me in and looked at me with so much love and then he said, you'll have a girl and she'll be fine and you'll be fine. I smiled and then he said, come and give me a hug. I love you so much. I did but then I noticed I was hugging the air. Nobody was with me. My first thought was that my grandpa passed away and I called my grandma crying. I told grandma what had happened but she kept insisting grandpa was alive and fine. I asked her to check in on him. She even put him on the phone. So who came to visit me that morning? Why did he look like grandpa? Numerous books and various websites on the subject of angels are all full of anecdotes like this and many even more incredible. Do angels exist? Do they sometimes come to the aid and comfort of humans in need? Why do they appear to and help some people and not others? Do you have a guardian angel of your own? A recent poll published in Time magazine revealed that 69% of Americans believe in angels and 46% of that group believe they have a personal guardian angel. There is no scientific evidence for angels of course. The only evidence we have for their existence is the long religious tradition stories from the Bible and the many anecdotes like the one I just shared from people who believe these spiritual beings have affected their lives. Ultimately, just like ghosts, aliens and even bigfoot, angels are a matter of faith. And many believers have offered their opinions on what an angel's role can be in a person's life and even how you can enlist their help. I'm Darren Marlar and this is Weird Darkness. Welcome, Weirdos. I'm Darren Marlar and this is Weird Darkness. Here you'll find stories of the paranormal, supernatural, legends, lore, crime, conspiracy, mysterious, macabre, unsolved and unexplained. While you're listening you might want to check out the Weird Darkness website. At WeirdDarkness.com you can find paranormal and horror audiobooks I've narrated, 24x7 streaming video of horror hosts and classic horror movies, shop the Weird Darkness store for Weirdo merchandise, plus you can visit the Hope in the Darkness page if you're struggling with depression, anxiety or thoughts of suicide. You can find all of that and more at WeirdDarkness.com. Coming up in this episode of Weird Darkness, if you ever missed death by an inch and you believe you had a little help, you may be one of many people with guardian angel stories. Even for nonbelievers a brush with real guardian angels is an encounter with the uncanny, proof of entities in the world beyond your line of sight. That's why real guardian angel stories such as the ones I'll share in this episode are so creepy. Even if it ends as a positive experience it leaves you with a lot of lingering questions. Many people believe real guardian angels protect people from harm, but that doesn't make them less unnerving. After all, if angels truly are real, then so are the demonic forces they seek to protect people from. Now, bolt your doors, lock your windows, turn off your lights and come with me into the Weird Darkness. People from all over the world have reported encounters with mysterious beings. They appear to bring important messages or lend much-needed assistance, then vanish without a trace. Could they be angels or even guardian angels? Some of the most fascinating and uplifting stories of the unexplained are those that people perceive as being miraculous in nature. Sometimes they take the form of answered prayers or are interpreted as the actions of guardian angels. These remarkable events and encounters lend comfort, strengthen faith and even save lives. They almost always seem to happen when they are needed most. Are they literally from heaven or are they the result of the interaction of our consciousness with a profoundly mysterious universe? Even those who believe in the existence of angels concede that they rarely make a physical appearance. However, there are other ways guardian angels can make their presence known. They say some people say that they hear angelic sounds totally beyond human description according to the article Angels at Future 365. Others have a feeling of sudden warmth or comfort or in times of sadness or grief a gentle cloak of feathered wings wrapping softly around them. Sometimes angel energy may feel entirely different like a sudden rush of air created by the passing of an angel on a mission at the speed of light. This is often noticed at times of impending disaster. At other times, simply an inexplicable presence is felt. Often the angel encounter comes with just a voice as this man's story indicates. We were moving from Southern Washington to Northern Washington, me and my old pickup and my wife and son in our other car following. The fuel pump on the pickup gives out and I pull over just past an on-ramp off the highway. I send my wife and son to buy a new fuel pump and start to remove the old pump. I'm standing on the traffic side of the truck at least 10 feet off the highway not really concerned that I'd get hit when a voice sounds close to my ear, you're going to get hit. I've heard that voice often enough to know not to disregard it and moved to the other side of the truck at least 50 feet away. Sure enough, not more than two minutes later another pickup comes down the on-ramp at 50 plus miles per hour, broadsides my truck from the back bumper to the front. If I had stayed working on the pump, I'd have been turned into a jelly smear on the side of my truck. Redditor Lightenergy wrote, When I was in my 20s, I spent four years traveling the world. I was in South Africa just outside Durban and a friend had taken me on his motorbike to his favorite waterfall. We'd both been swimming but I got cold and went to sit on a patch of green grass. To get there, I had to step from the sand I was on over a log then across a bit to the grass. I was walking medium speed and lifted one foot to step over the log when a very loud booming masculine voice shouted, Stop! Except a shout wasn't heard with my ears, it was inside my head. Hard to explain. Also there was nobody else around except Tim and I and he was still happily swimming. I stopped wondering what had just happened. I still had my foot in the air above the log. I looked around and spotted what I thought was a leaf waving about six inches from my big toe. It took me a few seconds to realize that it wasn't a leaf but a snake, a black mamba. He had his head raised and was licking the air right near my toe. He was waiting to see what my next move was to be and he had seen me long before I saw him. I slowly backed up and walked very carefully backwards to where Tim was. I have no explanation for the voice that I heard except that it was so loud and was inside my head rather than heard with my ears and it came at a time when I didn't feel in any danger at all. In fact I was very calm and happy. I feel that it was my guardian angel who shouted at me to stop as I would have stepped right on the snake. My guardian angel saved my life. A man named Rob Jacobs tells this story. One day toward the end of 1999 I asked my father if he'd like one of my angel art pieces to hang on the wall above his bed in his retirement home. He enthusiastically said yes and chose angel number five. And then the following words came out of my mouth, this angel will protect you. I believe this was truly a spiritually evoked statement because about six months later this angelic premonition came to pass which literally saved my father's life. When I visited my father who resided at a retirement home in Westwood, California the ritual was to call him first, planning our visit together which I did every time without exception. Heading home from my studio one day the thought see your father flashed in my head. It was so strongly pronounced that I immediately turned around and headed for Westwood. I had not called him or planned to see him that day but see your father kept pounding in my head. My heart was racing by the time I got to his room on the seventh floor. I banged on the door but all I could hear was the television blaring. I ran down to the office, got the staff to open the door and found him lying on the floor unconscious. It took the paramedics only a few minutes to reach us and they were able to revive him from insulin shock. With paramedics help he would have been gone. I knew then without a doubt that the angel hanging over his bed had protected him by acting as a messenger to me. Another redditor chalks up hearing a voice in his head to the help of an angel. Once I was with a small group of four stuck in very, very difficult circumstances without food. We would no doubt be rescued within 24 hours but a lot could happen before that. One guy pulled out a box of six beautiful Belgian chocolate truffles from his jacket and offered them around. Chocolate. I almost was reaching for one when I heard this voice screaming inside me, don't touch that. So I didn't. They were laced with LSD and we were trapped in a Central American conflict zone in the middle of the night. Nothing in my consciousness could have ever suggested to me that someone would do something so stupid under such circumstances. Trisha writes, When I was a child I used to have a lot of nightmares. My mother told me to pray to God when I had these nightmares and he would take them away. But sometimes these dreams were so frightening that I couldn't go back to sleep because I was afraid I would have it again. One day my mom put a picture of Jesus up on my bedroom wall and she said that he would protect me. I was comforted by that picture and my mom's gesture. When I would have a bad dream I would pray to God and when I fell asleep the dream would be gone. One night I was awoke to a breeze in my room and when I opened my eyes there was a beautiful woman standing next to me. She wore a white gown and had a beautiful light to her. She never spoke but I could feel that she was there to protect me. And after that night I had no more nightmares. Thanks to my guardian angel. Redditor Ariel125 shared this story. About 20 years ago my family was getting ready to move across the country for my dad's job and my grandmother was worried sick. She was not elderly back then and in perfect health. She was in church, worried and praying we would be safe being so far away. Suddenly a booming voice echoed through the whole church, I will take care of your family. Echoing. She shot up, looked around, no one else had heard it. No one. She knows it was God or her guardian angel telling her we would be okay. TL shares his story. In March of 1995 the angels told me that I was going to be involved in a serious head-on car accident and that they would protect me and I would be alright. This was the first time I had direct experience of the angels. They assured me I would not be hurt and told me not to worry. Despite their loving presence and assurance I deliberately pulled over to delay my travel for 20 minutes thinking that if I did this I could change my fate and avoid the accident. As I was driving along at 55mph on the freeway a man came across the divider and hit my car crashing into the driver's side door. As my car slid across the freeway the accident continued to worsen and caused a 5 car pile-up. Some of the cars flipped over and several people died due to the severity of impact. However, all the while I was not afraid. I knew the angels were taking care of everything and I felt completely at peace. There were a few military reserve people involved in the accident and they helped me out of the wreckage of my car as the three ambulances and highway patrol officers were arriving on the scene. Later, as I was standing next to my car, an officer said, How terrible! The driver of this car must have been killed. I replied, Oh no, I was the driver. He shook his head, no. Looked at the car again to inspect the damage on the driver's side and insisted that the driver would have definitely been killed. Even the tow truck driver, when we were arranging to remove the vehicle, offered the consoling words, I am so sorry for the loss in your family. He had never seen a wreck like that where the driver had survived. Despite the obvious conclusion that I should be dead from such a horrible accident, I came through the accident without even a single cut. I felt a few slivers of glass in my hair later when I washed it and glass was embedded in the car seat when I returned to look at it, but I was completely unscathed. I would never have reacted in the peaceful way I did without that guidance. I believe in angels and know without a doubt that they are watching over me. It appears angels and automobiles go hand in hand quite often, as this man explains. My friend and I were sitting in a traffic light very late one night when his car just stalled. He tried and tried to get it to restart, but we couldn't get it going. We jumped out to push it into the parking lot of the gas station that was next to where the car died. We were having trouble getting it up an incline when, out of nowhere, this guy came jogging up from the direction of the gas station. He got on the other side of the car and helped me push it up the incline, out of the street and into the lot. We thanked him for his help, and he took off. Just then, a car came speeding around a curve and blew through the intersection where the car was just a minute before. My butt and I were shocked because if that guy didn't show up when he did, we would have been hit by that car. We turned back around to thank the guy again, but he was gone, just disappeared into a thin air. I truly believe he was an angel sent to protect us that night. This encounter might be an urban legend as I've heard many versions of it, or it could very well be that angels just seemed to work this way more often than we realized. Here's the story from Redditor Lightstep. A friend of mine told me about an experience his grandmother had when she was home alone once. In the middle of the day, someone knocked on her door. When she went to answer it, she was greeted by a man with a knife, ready to kill her and loot the place, but when he saw her, he went pale and ran. He was later caught and questioned about why he ran, and his response was, when the door opened, I saw two large and strong men standing behind her. And to this day, my friend swears that it must have been two angels sent to protect her. Another miraculous save from an angel comes from this Redditor. My aunt had an experience when she rolled her jeep as a teenager. Mid-roll, she was taken out of the jeep and sort of floated or hovered over the road until she was placed feet first on the ground. She later noticed that she had bruises resembling handprints on both of her biceps. No other bruises or scars from the incident. A Redditor told this story told to her by her mother. A few months back, at a family gathering, after a few glasses of wine, my mom shared this story from when she was a kid. She and a childhood friend were walking home from school one day, and about to cross a country road that was normally deserted. They had been warned to be careful around that road before, but being kids never thought much about it. On one occasion, she said they got to the road and she was overcome with a sense of dread. She felt rooted to the spot as if something was literally holding her in place. Her friend started crossing without her, and a guy in a truck happened to be speeding along not paying attention and ran over her friend. The girl later died in the hospital. My mom sincerely believes that her guardian angel saved her life that day, but that makes me wonder about the other little girl. Her angel was taking a smoke break or something? A man who gave his name as Houdat wrote, I've never seen an angel, but I've always had a feeling of being watched over or protected. I've been incredibly lucky in my life. For instance, I'm epileptic, and the first time I had a grand mal seizure as opposed to a petite mal seizure was when I was 15. I had it in the shower one morning while getting ready for school. I hit my head on the faucet so hard that I knocked it loose but came away from it with a mild concussion. That's happened several times and each time I just barely missed serious injury. When my insurance company and pharmacy gave me a generic medication instead of the name brand that I needed, I had a seizure. This time I was driving in front of the big box retailer that I work for. This place is always busy, not Walmart, and somehow I managed to not hit anyone and only hit a small tree. Someone dropped the ball in the ER and didn't report the accident to the DMV and I didn't lose my license. Years later, I made the mistake of driving after a few beers, and when a car stopped in the middle of making a turn, I lightly tapped them and went to jail. I learned my lesson and would never do it again, but that lesson could have been so much worse. There are other things, mostly small but meaningful events that could have and should have been so much worse than they were, but things seem to work out for the best and lessons are learned. I'm not sure I believe in a God, but I do believe that there is something that for some reason has protected me and now my family. This person's story has a nice little twist in the end. I was traveling west on a divided four-lane highway. There were openings for turns about every quarter mile. It was 6.30 am and raining just enough to tick you off, misting, spinning. I won't bend t-bones beyond the back driver's side fender. I spin and come to rest in the median, all grass and mud from the rain. Out of nowhere, a guy shows up to my driver's side window. He has a large cowboy hat on and he says, you're going to be okay, and he holds my hand. I ask him his name and he looks away like he doesn't want to tell me and then he says, Bill Hill. I smiled and said thank you. Another motorist who stopped calls 911 and ambulance is dispatched. When they arrive, he moves out of the way for the EMTs to get me out of the car. Car is totaled, no glass left. Get checked out and I get to go home with broken ribs and a shattered kneecap. A few days later my mom takes me to see the car. What a wreck. I told her to help get some personal items from the car. When I looked in the back seat, there is the dude's cowboy hat. I told my mom about him and we both proceeded to try and find him to thank him for being so kind. He never existed and we lived in a small town of only a few thousand at the time. We checked with police and the churches and everywhere. How did his hat get in my back seat? He wore it the whole time he held my hand and had the hat on when he got out of the way for the EMTs. I think he was an angel. Why would I have his hat? Well, that story had an angel cowboy. Angels come in all shapes and sizes. They could look like anything or anyone, it would seem. An angel might even look exactly like you as we hear from this woman. This is my mother's story. When I was little, we used to live in an old house that was probably close to a hundred years old. Anyways, I was around three or four years old at the time and very sick. My room and my mother's room were right next to each other and my parents had split up that year so it was just my mom, my sister and I in the house. She said that while everyone was asleep, she woke up to someone standing right in front of her around eye level with her while she was laying in bed, so around two and a half feet I suppose. She said it looked like me, exactly like me and I was glowing white but transparent and still. The someone had long brown hair which is what I did have and was wearing a nightgown. The night that she saw this, I had been very, very sick and I wasn't turning around. After she blinked a few times, the someone dissolved and she got up to check on me. I had a fever with shivers and was coughing and almost choking on my own mucus. She took me to the hospital right then and the doctor said that if she hadn't, I probably would have died from choking in my sleep or from how close I was to catching pneumonia. My mom loves telling this story and truly believes it was my guardian angel telling her it wasn't my time yet and that I needed her help. Sometimes angels have no qualms in letting you know that they are on God's side and sometimes they'll give you a dose of truth as this Redditor tells. My dad recently told me this story and I was just amazed. When I was young, about three or so, I was hospitalized and near death. I had a fever that just would not break and was passed out for most of the hospitalization. My dad, who has always been religious, wanted the hospital's priest to come say a prayer for me. So the priest comes to pray for me but something's not right about the guy. He never gives his name and has no Bible. He says the entire prayer in Latin and blesses me. But now my parents aren't married yet and since the priest is there they ask why they haven't been able to have another child yet. They've been trying for about a year with no luck. The priest tells them that they won't have another child until they're married. The priest leaves after that and an hour later my fever breaks. The next day the hospital's priest comes to my room to say a prayer for me. My dad's confused and tells the man that someone had already come the day before. To which the man replies that no priests were on duty the day before. He checked with all of the hospital staff and their visitation book and everything. Nothing turned up. No priest was in the previous day. He searched for years to find this priest that prayed for me and he never found a single trace of him anywhere. A month after my mom and dad got married, my mom got pregnant with my brother. So we'll never know who the mysterious man was but I like to think he's my guardian angel. To this day my dad still has found no record of him, not even someone who looks like him. Someone was looking out for me that day though. Just wish I knew who. D.L. is convinced of his encounter. I just driven hundreds of miles from New York to a rural part of Vermont and it really was a dark and stormy night. The rain was coming down in sheets. There were no lights to be seen anywhere and suddenly my car engine failed. I immediately asked for help from the angels but there didn't seem to be anyone at hand. But as my car was coasting to a stop at the side of the road, I saw headlights coming over a hill. Before I even came to a complete stop, this car had pulled over behind me. It was a first responder in his family on their way home. He offered to give me a ride to where I was staying. The next morning when I returned to my vehicle, I discovered that it had broken down less than a quarter mile from the only place that could fix the problem and it was the only place within a hundred miles. I often call upon angels for help and immediately appreciated their presence and help with what otherwise could have been a difficult and frightening experience. Redditor Readkeeper had a harrowing experience while rock climbing. I was free climbing a 30-foot cliff face once. The face was mostly shale rock with plenty of hand holds and I was young and dumb. Two-thirds of the way up my left hand hold broke free as I was reaching with my right and started to fall. You know that feeling when you're tilting back in a chair and you tilt just a little too far? That's exactly what I felt. I started to fall backwards and everything got real slow. I knew I was going to die or at best be crippled. I felt a hand gently press against my back, right between my shoulder blades. It felt like a perfectly normal right hand and it pushes me back against the rock face. I took a moment to steady myself. I was pretty shaken up. Then I climbed down to safety. I'm inclined to believe that it was a guardian angel but that's solely based on my religious background and I don't know where said guardian angel was when I got hit by a car. I suppose it could have been a hallucination but I don't use drugs and I wasn't on any medications. I'll probably never know what happened but I am very thankful that I didn't fall. When Weird Darkness returns I'll have more true stories of people experiencing angels. This is a fascinating topic but there's also a lot of questions about angels, if they're real and especially if we all have a guardian angel, a single heavenly entity assigned to each one of us to watch over and protect us. To go deeper into that aspect of it, you might want to listen to the Church of the Undead podcast episode entitled Do I Have a Guardian Angel? I've placed a link to it in the show notes. Central Massachusetts is a land of oddities and apparitions. Stories of the strange and paranormal have been passed down from generation to generation and only the local populace has any idea of just how vast and deep their superstitions run. The world around you is much more than you can touch, taste, smell, see and hear. Some of the stories are funny, some are sad but all of them give you a taste of what it's like to be from the oddest part of the United States. You can't have a region of the country that has been settled for centuries without getting a few odd tales out of it. Open up a whole new world of fact and fiction that'll leave you with a deep appreciation for the strange and bizarre ghosts and heroes await and the only thing they need to live on is you, slightly odd Fitchburg by Ed Sweeney, now available on Kindle, Paperback and audiobook versions on the audiobook page at WeirdDarkness.com. Are angels real? Are they truly around us? We often don't hear about angels and when we do, the stories are often secularized or commercialized. The truth is angels still walk among us and each story of a true encounter with one is quite unique and amazing. Here are a few more true stories of real angel encounters. Lily Leonardi's story may seem unbelievable to some, but the former FBI officer who retired after suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder linked to her role in the aftermath of the September 11th terror attacks is adamant about what she witnessed. Leonardi said she saw legions of angels guarding the Pennsylvania site where United Airlines Flight 93 crashed. When she arrived at the site just three hours after the crash, she was struck by numerous elements. She was so startled, she kept it to herself out of fear that her coworkers would think she lost her mind. I started seeing shimmering lights and it was kind of misty and that's when I first saw angels there, Leonardi said. And I didn't say anything to the guys because you can imagine if I would have said I just saw angels on the crash site, they'd have called the office and they'd have said she lost her mind and tell her to go home. They were dressed as if they were in warrior garb, like a Roman centurion, she said. They were so many of them you couldn't see their faces. She continued to see flickers of light, each angel guarding the crash site. Her hope in sharing her story is that people would know that God was present. 11. Pastor John Boston was driving down the road when another car crossed the center line and came barreling toward him. The pastor swerved to miss the vehicle and struck a utility pole, sending a live transformer crashing onto his car. Immediately the metal and glass began to buckle from the intense heat from thousands of volts of electricity. His four-year-old daughter who was with him was trapped inside the burning car. The seatbelt was stuck and the door wouldn't open. That's when a scruffy-looking stranger came out of nowhere and easily opened the smashed door. The man removed him from the car and walked him 20 feet away from the vehicle to safety before the car exploded in flames. He said, my name is Johnny, the police are almost here and I can't be here when they get here but you're going to be okay, said Pastor Boston. And then the man was gone. He said the people who tried to rationalize the situation thought the circuit breaker simply tripped and Johnny fled because of a sketchy past. However, firefighters say there are some aspects of what happened that define logic, reason, and science. Pastor Boston is convinced he encountered an angel that day. Margaret Jones from Lancashire, UK claims she had a very specific experience with angels, one which purportedly unfolded at her church 20 years ago while she was singing in a choir. She felt the pressure of what seemed like a human hand touching her own hand. As she was standing on the edge of the choir, she assumed that the lady, Deborah, who had been playing the organ, had come over to join them, so she thought nothing of it. The hand then left hers and a few moments later she opened her eyes and was surprised to see that Deborah was still sitting at the organ and wasn't beside her. It was after the service that a fellow congregant told Jones that an angel was next to her and touched her hand. He was just seven years old when his five-year-old cousin Chetty was sick with cancer and later passed away. At the time, his family didn't want to talk about the death. They told him to keep quiet despite the situation devastating him. Whenever his family went to Chetty's home for visits, he'd always asked to play on the swing with him. After Chetty died, he went to his house for a visit. In his loneliness, he decided to go outside and sit on the swing they had always played on. As he sat there, thinking about how things used to be, Chetty walked up to him and an angel was holding his hand. The angel had beautiful blonde hair and was dressed in a long white gown, never saying a word, just smiling. Chetty looked at him and said, I'm not in pain no more. He and the angel turned and walked until they simply faded away. Annabelle Beam was only nine years old when she miraculously survived a 30-foot fall. While she was playing with her sisters outside their Texas home, she plummeted inside a hollowed-out cottonwood tree. An emergency helicopter rushed her to a hospital in Fort Worth where brain and spinal injury teams prepped for Annabelle's arrival, but astonishingly, Annabelle was unscathed. After the accident, Annabelle began describing religious visions she had while she was unconscious. She says that she met a guardian angel during the incident. I started to wake up in the tree and I could hear the fireman's voices, and I saw an angel that looked very small like a fairy. The angel then winked and he told her I'm going to leave you now and everything is going to be okay. The angel stayed with her the entire time, shining a light so she could see until she was rescued. Jackie B believes that her guardian angel came to her aid on two occasions to help her avoid serious injury. According to her testimony, she actually physically felt and heard this protective force. Both encounters happened when she was a child of kindergarten age. The first experience took place at a popular sledding hill where Jackie was enjoying the day with her family. The young girl decided to try sledding down the steepest part of the hill. She closed her eyes and started down. I apparently hit someone going down and I was spinning out of control. I was heading for the metal guardrail. I didn't know what to do, says Jackie. I suddenly felt someone push my chest down. I came within less than a half inch of the rail but didn't hit it. I could have lost my nose. Jackie's second experience occurred during her birthday celebration at school. She had run across the playground to place her crown on a bench while running back to her friends, three boys tripped her. The playground was filled with metal objects and woodchips. Jackie went flying and something hit her just below the eye. But I felt something pull me back when I fell, Jackie says. The teachers said that they saw me sort of fly forward then fly back at the same time. As they hurried me to the nurse's office, I heard an unfamiliar voice keep telling me, don't worry, I'm here. God doesn't want anything to happen to his baby. It's remarkable how many stories of angels come out of hospital experiences. It may not be so hard to understand why when we remind ourselves that they are places of sharply focused emotions, prayers and hope. Dee Baylor entered the hospital in 1994 with acute pain from a fibroid tumor the size of a grapefruit in her uterus. The surgery was successful but more complicated than expected and her troubles weren't over. Dee recalls that she was in horrible pain. She had an allergic reaction to the morphine she was given and the doctors tried to counteract it with other medications. This made a bad experience even worse. She had just had a major surgery and now she was dealing with the pain of an acute drug reaction. After receiving more pain medication, she was able to sleep for a few hours. I awoke in the middle of the night, according to the wall clock it was 2.45. I heard someone speaking and realized someone was at my bedside, she says. It was a young woman with short brown hair and wearing a white hospital staff uniform. She was sitting and reading aloud from the Bible. I said to her, am I alright, why are you here with me? The woman visiting Dee stopped reading but did not look up. She simply said, I was sent here to make sure you'd be alright, you're going to be fine, now you should get some rest and go back to sleep. She began to read again and I drifted off back to sleep. The next morning, she explained the experience to her doctor, who checked and said that no staff had visited her overnight. She asked all the nurses and no one knew of this visitor. To this day, she says, I believe that I was visited by my guardian angel that night. She was sent to comfort me and assure me that I would be okay. Coincidentally, the time on that clock that night, 2.45 am, is the exact time recorded on my birth certificate that I was born. There are many stories of people receiving much needed money from mysterious unknown sources. Ellie has such a story that she recalls from the summer of January 1994 when she was living in Melbourne, Australia. It was late afternoon and Ellie was outside gathering the family laundry from the clothesline. There was a sudden small willy-willy in Australian term for a swirling wind funnel of dust and leaves. As it raced past me, I saw something blue whirling in the middle of the dust and leaves and managed to grab hold of it, she says. I was surprised and very pleased to see it was a $10 note. A few days later, Ellie was at the back of the yard checking on her garden tomatoes when she spotted something lying in the grass. She was astonished to find it was a $20 note. Not long afterward, in another part of the garden, she found a $5 note and yet another $20 note nestled among the leaves of the daylilies. By this time, I told my family of the angel money, she tells us. None of them had put money there, not with the possibility of it blowing away in the often high winds of summer. All was quiet for a few days, then one of my sons came in with an ear-to-ear grin and a $20 note that he had just found on top of the compost heap. Most of us would say this was not angel money at all, but money that someone had lost and had simply blown into Ellie's yard. But Ellie is not quite convinced of that explanation. That is because a week or so later, she had another amazing find, this time in her house. I was cleaning out under the bed and pulled out a pair of slippers and there nestling in the toe of one like a little grace note was a $0.50 coin. Perhaps more painful than an injury or illness is the feeling of utter hopelessness, the despair of the soul that leads one to thoughts of suicide. Dean S. experienced this pain as he was going through a divorce at the age of 26. The thought of being apart from his two young daughters was almost more than he could bear. But on one night of stormy darkness, Dean was given renewed hope. At the time, he was working as a derrick man on a drill rig. That night, he was having serious thoughts of taking his life as he looked down from the 128-foot derrick. My family and I have strong beliefs in Jesus, but it was hard not to contemplate suicide, recalls Dean. In the worst thunderstorm I had ever seen, I climbed the derrick to take my position to pull pipe out of the hole we were drilling. His co-workers urged him not to climb the derrick, saying they would rather have downtime than risk someone's life. Dean ignored this and began to climb. Lightning flashed all around me, thunder boomed. I cried to God to take me. If I couldn't have my family, I didn't want to live. But I couldn't take my own life and suicide. God spared me. I don't know how I survived that night, but I did. A couple weeks later, I bought a small bible and traveled to the Peace River Hills where my family has lived for so long. I sat down on top of one of the green hills and started to read. I had such a warm feeling enter into me as the sun parted through the clouds and shone on me. It was raining all around me, but I was dry and warm in my small spot on top of that hill. Dean says that these moments changed his life for the better. He met his new wife and fell in love. They started a family together that includes his two daughters. He says, Thank you, Lord Jesus, and the angels you sent that day to touch my soul. In 1998, Luke was diagnosed with bone cancer at the tender age of eight. As sometimes happens, he came down with an infection, which meant he had to go to the hospital. He was there for about two weeks, and that's when something remarkable happened. One evening, Luke's mother was sitting in his bedside, quietly praying as he slept. A nurse came into the room to check Luke's temperature, but his mother noted something rather peculiar about her. The nurse was wearing an old-fashioned uniform of the type that would have been common 30 years earlier in the 1960s. The nurse noticed that Luke's mother had a Bible by the side of his bed. She said that she was a Christian too, and said that she would pray for Luke's healing. Luke's family had never seen this odd nurse before, and they never saw her again in Luke's remaining time at the hospital. I came out of the hospital fully healed of my infection, says Luke, who was 19 when he told his story. Remarkably, he is now completely free of cancer. My mom believes this nurse could have been a guardian angel coming down to give my mom some hope, Luke says. If she wasn't an angel, why would she be wearing 1960s old-fashioned nurse clothing? Back in 1980, Deb was a single mother with two infants living in San Bernardino County, California. She occasionally needed reliable babysitters. Fortunately, her parents lived only 30 miles away in Altuloma. Deb would usually drop off the children at her parents' house, go do what she needed to do, then pick them up in the evening. One night, Deb had retrieved her babies from her parents' place and was heading home. It was relatively late about 11.30 p.m. Deb was driving her old clunker. Among the car's many deficiencies, the gas gauge was broken requiring her to guess when the old thing needed fuel. Occasionally, her guessing was off. Halfway home, the car started to putter, Deb remembers, and I realized I was on empty. I pulled off the first off-ramp I could and it just happened to be one that was slightly uphill. Almost at the top of the exit, my car died and there was absolutely nothing around except empty fields and distant lights at a truck stop about a quarter of a mile down the road. With no cars in sight, Deb didn't know what to do. The kids were asleep and walking miles while carrying two kids in the middle of the night was not a good option. This was before cell phones, so she could not call for help. I put my head on the steering wheel while saying a short and panicky prayer, she says. I hadn't even finished when I heard a few taps on my window. When she looked up, she saw a clean-cut young man standing there who Deb estimated to be about 21 years old. Emotioned for her to roll down her window. I remember I was surprised, Deb says, but I wasn't even the slightest bit afraid, even though I normally would have been terrified. The young man was dressed well and had a faint smell of soap. He didn't ask if she needed help, instead he told her to put her car in neutral and he would help her over that last small hill toward a place where she could get gas. I thanked him and followed his instructions. The car started moving. I steered it toward the lights at the truck stop and turned around to yell thank you again to him, Deb says. He was so nice. My car kept moving, but the young man was nowhere in sight. I mean, this area was completely remote. There was absolutely nowhere he could have gone that quickly, even if there was somewhere to go. I don't even know where he came from to begin with. Deb's car continued to roll down the hill until it reached the truck stop. She was able to get the gas she needed and the kids remained sound asleep. I've always trusted in God to take care of us, but in relating that story many times to my children who are now 30 and 32, they know for a fact that angels do exist and are sent to us if we just believe. I always thought it was so amazing that we were sent someone who I would trust instinctively without question. Since that incident I have come to believe that we probably encounter angels all the time and take for granted who they really are. I think they come in all shapes and sizes, young and old, and sometimes when we least expect them. Do angels warn of future events? One live about user goes by the name of Heffen believes it is possible. Perhaps you will too after hearing the story. One night, at about four in the morning, Heffen's sister called her. Her voice was trembling and she was nearly crying. Since her sister lived across the country and it was so early, Heffen was obviously worried. She told me she had a vision of me being in a car accident. She didn't say whether or not I was killed in it, but the sound of her voice made me think she did believe this but was afraid to tell me, Heffen writes. She told me to pray and she said that she would pray for me too. She told me to be careful to take another route to work anything I could do. I told her I believed her and would call our mother and ask her to pray with us. When Heffen left for work, she was terrified but strengthened in the spirit. She worked at a hospital and had patience to attend to. As she was leaving a room, she was called over by a gentleman in a wheelchair. I went to him expecting that he had a complaint against the hospital. He told me God had given him a message that I would be in a car accident. He said someone not paying attention would hit me. I was so shocked I almost fainted. He said he would pray for me and that God loved me. I felt weak in the knees as I left the hospital. I drove like a little old lady as I observed every intersection, stop sign and stop light. When I got home, I called my mom and sister and told them I was fine. A saved relationship can be just as important as a saved life. A redditor calling herself Smidgenk relates how a little miracle might have rescued her troubled marriage. At the time she was making every effort to mend her rocky relationship with her husband, she had planned a long romantic weekend in Bermuda. When things started to go wrong, it seemed her plans were ruined until fate intervened. Smidgenk's husband was reluctant to go on the trip. When they arrived in Philadelphia, they were notified that weather was causing planes to back up, so they were stuck in a holding pattern for some time. By the time they landed, their flight to Bermuda was boarding. As many passengers have experienced, it was a mad dash to the next gate. They were devastated to find the gate door was just closing when they arrived. The attendant told them that they could get to Bermuda but it would require two or more connection flights and an additional 10 hours. My husband said, that's it, I'm not putting up with this anymore and started to walk out of the area and, I just knew, out of the marriage. I was truly devastated, recalls Smidgenk. As my husband was walking away, the attendant saw on the counter and I swear it had not been there when we checked in a packet. She was obviously upset that it was still there. It turned out to be the landing papers packet that the pilot must have on board to land in a different country. She quickly called the plane to return. The plane had been on the runway ready to start powering up the engines. It returned to the gate for the papers and they allowed us and others to get on. Smidgenk says that the time with her husband in Bermuda was wonderful. They were able to work out the problems they were having and stay together. Though they may have been through some tough times since then, they always remember that moment at the airport. I felt as if my world had collapsed and was given a miracle that helped us keep a marriage and a family together. Some researchers think there might be a connection between UFOs and angel sightings. They say the angels and heavenly figures encountered in the Bible might actually have been extraterrestrials. After his experience in the 1980s with the most beautiful thing he ever saw, Louis L might agree with that assessment. It was a Saturday morning in Mariposa, California and Louis had to work that day. The air was fresh from a cool rain the night before and the morning sky was bright with a few scattered clouds. I was heading out to my car in the back parking lot of the apartment complex where I lived when I noticed someone kneeling next to my car, Louis says. This person saw me and quickly stood up holding a crowbar. The young man was quite obviously startled by Louis' interruption and although Louis sensed the boy was up to no good, it hadn't yet hit him what he was doing. Then Louis looked through the passenger window of his car and saw that the steering wheel column had been stripped of its cover. He realized the young man was trying to steal his car. I asked him what the heck he was doing, Louis recalls. He gave me a lame story about his friend's car being stolen last night and that my car looked like his friends and so on. I didn't want to hear it. I told him I was going to call the police, which I did on my cell phone. Louis dialed 911 and gave the dispatcher the address. He told the would-be thief that the police were on their way and warned him not to leave. The boy said he would wait for the police but Louis could tell he was just waiting for the right moment to make a run for it. If he did, I wasn't going to try to stop him because his adrenaline was pumping and he had that crowbar, Louis says. As Louis was grilling the young man trying to detain him, he began to notice three rather large clouds in a single file formation that were almost overhead. Then I saw it, he says, a shiny object exiting from the first cloud and entering the next and then coming out of that one. It was shiny like brightly polished chrome and moving at a good speed. I couldn't make out the shape. By this time Louis was so distracted by the UFO that the punk saw his chance and took off. That's when the object entered the last cloud. From there it was nothing but open sky. When it emerged, my life changed, Louis says. There against the richness of the blue sky was a silvery shape that seemed to have arms and legs. It was so beautiful to look at. At the same time, it had the appearance of metal. It looked like some kind of ship with a strange design. The best way I can describe it is it looked like silverware in the design of the stickman children draw. It was huge, moving fast and made no noise. As it sailed overhead, some of the limbs would move up and down giving the impression of being alive, a living entity. It made a couple of rolls reflecting the sun in every direction, just beautiful. Oh my God, beautiful. As it started to fade away from my view, I found myself short of breath and with tears running down my cheeks. It had that much of an effect on me. I began thinking, maybe that's what an angel looks like. Maybe not. Angels have obviously been experienced by thousands of people, perhaps even millions in a variety of ways, saving lives in miraculous ways, bringing comfort to those who are injured, warning of imminent danger, even the occasional unexpected and much needed financial blessing when all hope seems lost. There is another time and place people see angels, and that's at a person's deathbed. We'll look into that a bit more when Weird Darkness returns. Remember staying up late on a Friday or Saturday night, either at home or at a friend's house, and watching your local TV stations, horror hosts presenting a terrible B-movie with aliens, monsters, ghosts, alien monster ghosts, vampires, werewolves, and all other kinds of crazy creepy characters. Those were fun nights, weren't they? Well, that's what the Weirdo Watch Party page at WeirdDarkness.com has to offer, all day, every day. Thanks to our friends at the Monster Channel, you can visit WeirdDarkness.com slash Watch Party right after listening to this episode and immediately be entertained by a horror host and horrible movie, or should I say horror-ribble movie. And not only can you watch the B-movies and horror hosts streaming there 24-7, but once a month we all gather together to watch a movie and talk about it in the chat room on that same page. Get your frights and funnies on the Weirdo Watch Party page at WeirdDarkness.com Many people worldwide have said shortly before their deaths that they have experienced visions of angels appearing to help them make the transition to heaven. Doctors, nurses and loved ones report witnessing signs of deathbed visions as well, such as seeing dying people talking to and interacting with invisible presences in the air, heavenly lights, or even visible angels. While some people explain the angel deathbed phenomenon away as hallucinations from medications, the visions still occur when patients are not medicated, and when the dying talk about meeting angels, they are fully conscious. So believers say that such meetings are miraculous evidence that God does send angelic messengers for the souls of dying people. It's common for angels to visit people who are preparing to die. While angels can and do help people when they die suddenly, such as in a car accident or from a heart attack, they have more time to comfort and encourage people whose dying process is more prolonged, such as terminally ill patients. Angels come to help anyone who is dying, men, women and children alike, to ease their fear of death and help them work through issues to find peace. Deathbed visions have been recorded since antiquity and share common characteristics, regardless of racial, cultural, religious, educational, age or socio-economic factors, writes Rosemary Ellen Giley in her book The Encyclopedia of Angels. The primary purpose of these apparitions is to beckon or command the dying to come with them. The dying person usually is happy and willing to go, especially if the individual believes in an afterlife. If the person has been in great pain or depression, a complete turnaround of mood is observed and pain vanishes. The dying one literally seems to light up with radiance. Retired hospice nurse Trudy Harris writes in her book Glimpses of Heaven, True Stories of Hope and Peace at the end of life's journey, that angelic visions are frequent experiences for those who are dying. Renowned Christian leader Billy Graham writes in his book Angels, Ringing Assurance That We Are Not Alone, that God always sends angels to welcome people who have relationships with Jesus Christ to heaven when they die. The Bible guarantees every believer an escorted journey into the presence of Christ by the holy angels. The angelic emissaries of the Lord are often sent not only to catch away the redeemed of the Lord at death, but also to give hope and joy to those who remain and to sustain them in their loss, says Graham. The visions of angels that dying people describe are incredibly beautiful. Sometimes they involve simply seeing angels in a person's environment, such as at a hospital or in a bedroom at home. At other times they involve glimpses of heaven itself with angels and other heavenly residents, such as the souls of the person's loved ones who have already passed away, reaching out from heavenly dimensions into earthly ones. Whenever angels show up in their heavenly glory as beings of light, they are radiantly beautiful. Visions of heaven add to that beauty, describing gorgeous places in addition to magnificent angels. Approximately one-third of deathbed visions involve total visions in which the patient sees another world, heaven or a heavenly place, guileless rites and encyclopedia of angels. Sometimes these places are filled with angels or glowing souls of the undead. Such visions are resplendent with intense and vivid colors and bright light. They either unfold before the patient or the patient feels transported out of body to them. Harris recalls in glimpses of heaven that many of her former patients told me about seeing angels in their rooms, being visited by loved ones who had died before them, or hearing beautiful choirs or smelling fragrant flowers when they were not around. She adds, When they spoke of angels, which many did, the angels were always described as more beautiful than they had ever imagined, eight feet tall, male and wearing a shade of white for which there is no word. Luminescent is what each one said like nothing they had ever seen before. The music they spoke of was far more exquisite than any symphony they had ever heard, and over and over again they mentioned colors that they said were too beautiful to describe. The scenes of great beauty that characterize deathbed visions of angels and heaven also give dying people feelings of comfort and peace, writes James R. Lewis and Evelyn Dorothy Oliver in their book, Angels A to Z. As the deathbed vision accelerates, many have shared that the light they encounter radiates a warmth or a security that draws them ever closer to the original source. With the light, also comes a vision of beautiful gardens or open fields that adds to the sense of beauty and security. Graham writes in Angels that, I believe death can be beautiful. I have stood at the side of many people who have died with expressions of triumph on their faces. No wonder the Bible says precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints. Psalm 116 verse 15. When deathbed visions of angels are complete, the dying people who see them are able to die with confidence, having made peace with God and realizing that the family and friends they leave behind will be okay without them. Patients often die soon after they see angels on their deathbeds, Giley writes in The Encyclopedia of Angels, summarizing the results of several large research studies on such visions. The visions usually appear just minutes before death. Approximately 76% of the patients studied died within 10 minutes of their vision, and nearly all of the rest died within one or several hours. Iris writes that she has seen many patients grow confident after experiencing deathbed visions of angels. They take that final step into the eternity that God has promised them, since the beginning of time, totally unafraid and at peace. If you want to learn more about angels, you can listen to The Church of the Undead episode Do I Have a Guardian Angel, which I have linked to in the show notes. If you made it this far, welcome to the Weirdo Family. Please share a link to this episode in your social media to help spread the word about the podcast, and if you could, please recommend Weird Darkness to your friends, family and co-workers who love the paranormal, horror stories or true crime. Maybe they'll become a Weirdo family member too. Do you have a dark tale to tell of your own? Fact or fiction, click on Tell Your Story at WeirdDarkness.com and I might use it in a future episode. All stories in Weird Darkness are purported to be true unless stated otherwise and you can find source links or links to the authors in the show notes. Weird Darkness Theme by Alibi Music Weird Darkness is a registered trademark and now that we are coming out of the dark, I'll leave you with a little light. 2 John 1 verse 6, And this is love that we walk in obedience to his commands. As you've heard from the beginning, his command is that you walk in love. And a final thought, do not pray for an easy life. Pray for the strength to endure a difficult one. Bruce Lee I'm Darren Marlar. Thanks for joining me in the Weird Darkness.