Has anyone else ever had this happen?? I have had this happen twice.
I first seriously heard of this phenomenon back on the nineth grade. We were discussing strange supernatural happenings and our teacher told us a story of this happening when a family member of his passed away. As a 13 yo boy that sounded like a good story and I never forgot it. I also remembered back seven years earlier to my time in early primary school when we learned the kids song "My grandfather's clock" which is exactly about that phenomenon. Back in the second grade I thought it was just a song....
Fast forward to 2002 and Mrs 9 Lives mother is in her final days in Belfast. Back then I still had 2 kids in high school so Mrs 9 went back to spend the last days with her mum. Her mum died in the wee hours of a Thursday morning in Belfast or about 11 am our time. Back then I made my living singing in RSL and Sports clubs. I found that the clubs did not like to have clocks visable as this might cause someone to notice the time and realize that they should be getting home to the family instead of playing the pokies. I always thought that it was not a good look in front of the audience to be staring at my wrist watch to see if it was time for a break so I had an old watch with no band that I had been using for a few years which I rested on my mixing desk...that way I could fake a volume adjustment whilst checking the time...
I had a gig on the Wednesday night before the death of Mrs 9's mum and I got my watch out and noticed it had stopped. The next morning the news came of course but I had another gig on the Thursday night. I checked the watch again and found that at some point in the last 24 hours it had started and ran for four more hours and had stopped at the time of death (in Belfast time). That watch never ran again.
Of course I did take note of this occurrence and did mention it to several people but part of me thought it could be coincidence as the battery must have been getting old. Also I realized that we all have so many clocks around the place these days. If you start to do a tally there are clocks on the microwave, the computer in the car etc. So having a clock stop at this time was a coincidence but not one of infinitely small odds.....but then it happened again this year.....
In February this year my 83 yo father passed away. He had been really sick for a very long time. So many times over the previous decade he had been at the brink and we thought he was gone for all money but the old boy was a fighter and he came back time after time...we reached a point where we did not believe it would happen. He had been in a nursing home for a few months but they had moved him to palliative care as he had gone downhill...but the hope was that they would dry him out and alter his medication and get him back on track as he had so many times before. But I got a call on the Monday that I wasn't expecting. They said he was slipping away and would probably last 2 days. I took mum and we raced up and spent the afternoon and into the evening with him. It was a split second decision to go and one of the great regrets of my life is that I was not more prepared so that I could have stayed with him overnight but we came home late that night as mum is elderly and not well either. The next morning I got up at 6am. I walked out into the lounge room and saw that our wall clock, which had not missed a beat in 6 years save for a battery change had stopped at 5.40. I immediately got that sick adrenaline feeling in my stomach because I knew what the clock was telling me. Mrs 9 emerged from the bedroom about 2 minutes later and saw the clock and said out loud what I dared not say. My sisters and mother were already on their way to the hospital to sit with him and the plan was that I would relieve them at 3pm and spend the night... but at just before 10am I got a call telling me to get there asap and 2 minutes later another call telling me he was gone.
We thought the clock may just have a dead battery and that this was some sort of synchronicity but out of respect we decided to leave the clock untouched until after the funeral. The next 36 hours was hectic as we made the funeral arrangements. Just as we were making the last of the arrangements with the local parish priest at 3pm the next day the clock sprang back into life by itself, It then ran for 5 days and and one hour without losing a second at which time, as the kid's song says, it stopped, short, never to go again....I tried several new batteries, I shook it, I rattled it but it wouldn't go. I have included a picture of the clock below (I don't know why but I thought it was important that you see the clock).... But it didn't end there...the morning after dad died I woke up frazzled and fried so I decided to go for run to clear out the cobwebs. I had an MP3 player that I used when running and I tried to turn it on and it too was on the fritz. I should note that it too has a clock in it that I used to use make sure I was back from my runs before the stock market opened. I still have it and the power light comes on and nothing more.....but there is still even more to this story.
I have a much younger brother who does weights with me who is the sporty go getting plumbing contactor type who doesn't get into thinking too deeply about psychic phenomenon or the like. While we were doing weights the day after the funeral I was telling him about the clock and the MP3 player. He got a look on his face that I had never seen before. He honestly believed that I had been playing some sort of joke on him in order to freak him out because from the day dad died his clock radio started coming on a full beep beep beep volume at 12 midnight...he thought I had geed him up and done something to his clock. It too had to be replaced......
So all of this got me really intrigued so I started googling. What I found was this one hour lecture by a psychiatist by the name of Doctor Peter Fenwick who had made a scientific study about the processes that occur at the time of death. It is a fascinating lecture so watch it if you will...or not. clealy he is not idiot as he is a senior lecturer in psychiatry at Kings College in London. The stopping of clocks and blowing up of other miscellaneous electronic equipment is extremely common but only a small part in the processes and weird happenings in the lead up to death. Upon watching the video I recognized other processes the old man had gone though on his great wind down. Dad was a fierce proud man and not given to belief in any sort of after life but his mother, to whom he was devoted, had been a staunch Roman Catholic. In the months leading up to his death he kept talking about his mother coming to him and giving him an earful about saying his prayers. This too is all part of journey into death according to Fenwick:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CcogQBGK-Zo
I have no good explanation for why this happens. The palliative care unit where dad died is 60 klms from my home. Is there some sort or immense subtle energy or psychic energy released at the time of death?? or is this sychronicity as defined by Carl Jung ?? Is everything everywhere somehow connected such that the clock was always destined from the beginning to stop at the same time that my father passed away??
