A recent article on Thomas Edison’s ambition to create a so-called ‘spirit phone’ contained another snippet of info I found interesting.
“[Edison] even made a pact with an engineer working with him, William Walter Dinwiddie, that the first who died ‘would try to send a message to the survivor from beyond,’ Baudouin said.”
That reminded me of one of Alvin Schwartz’s Scary Stories. This one was called “The Bad News.”
You’re Up
The story goes like this: Two friends who loved baseball made an agreement, just like Edison up there, that whoever died first would try his best to come back and let the other know if they played baseball in Heaven. Well, one of them eventually died, and he did come back.
The good news was that, yes, they played baseball in Heaven. The bad news? His friend was scheduled to pitch tomorrow.
Houdini made the same agreement with his wife. Not about baseball, but he promised her that, if possible, he’d find a way back.
The Ghost Pact
It makes me wonder how many of us have made such pacts.
It seems quite common, actually. Just a day ago, someone posted a question on Reddit’s r/paranormal asking if anyone had done so with friends or relatives. A simple agreement that whoever passed first would try to contact the other from beyond the grave to “prove” there was another side. Some of the responses were interesting, and included tales of prescient dreams, eerie coincidences, and what would seem to be subtle communication from the dead.
Someone also shared a link to this thread from two months ago. Reddit user dance211 recounted the “ghost pact” she’d made with her father, that, if possible, he would cause the street lights to flicker as a sign from beyond.
One day, after her father died and she was feeling particularly sad, she found herself sitting outside of an ice skating rink. When she looked up, she saw a nearby street light “blinking in a slow, steady pattern.” And then it stopped, and the light remained on.
“My fiancé told me it is him, without a doubt,” she wrote, “This part was the most convincing to me – at the exact moment right after he said that, the light suddenly got twice as bright.”
