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MESSAGES FROM THE SPIRITUAL WORLD by Mary Margaret Dougherty Campbell  Current society has a fascination with the paranormal. Flipping through the TV channels, one is not surprised to find shows about ghost hunters, mediums, haunted houses, and haunted battlegrounds . Some people even go to great lengths to contact the dead, spirits in the “other world.” They sit in the dark around a Ouija Board hoping to get a message spelled out, or they attend a séance holding hands with fellow communication seekers hoping to hear a familiar voice, or they seek out mediums who claim to bridge the real world and the spiritual world, again hoping for some sort of contact. While these people actively seek communication with the dead, others have the communication simply happen to them. My grandfather Francis Xavier Dougherty was 75% Irish and 100% Catholic. Catholics, in particular Irish Catholics, seem to have a propensity for communication with the spiritual world. My grandfather’s niece Rachel Bluntzer Hebert wrote a book of biographical sketches of the San Patricio Irish entitled The Forgotten Colony: San Patricio de Hibernia, in which she devotes one chapter to legends and lore, including “ghost stories.” In the book’s foreword , she begs the question, “How can one write about the Irish and not include tales of the supernatural which abound in this region?”1 An explanation comes from a Church official: “A Vatican theologian Fr. Gino Concetti stated in the Vatican newspaper Osservatore Romano, ‘According to modern catechism, God allows our dear departed persons who live in an ultra-terrestrial dimension to send messages to guide us in certain difficult moments of our lives.’ ”2 Through research into such communication in the Dougherty-Sullivan family, I categorize the “messages” into four types of communication: voices, dreams, actions, and visions. Family stories involving voices from the dead span four generations , beginning with my great-grandmother Rachel Sullivan Dougherty, whose story is recounted in The Forgotten Colony. 183 According to the account titled “Voices in the Night,” one September night the widow Dougherty lay in bed trying to sleep but feeling uneasy, restless. Even praying the rosary for a second time that night did not quiet her “feeling of apprehension, a waiting for something to happen.”3 At midnight, “A voice from the far corner of the room cried, ‘Rach! Rach!’ ” She immediately recognized it. It was her dead sister, Millie. The voice seemed to come nearer with each word, and when as if it hung above the foot of the bed, it appealed to her urgently, “Phene is in trouble. She needs you.” Phene was her sister, Josephine Sullivan, who was at the time in Beeville taking care of Millie’s fragile daughter Ida Wood. Rachel “was as sure that she had heard Millie’s voice as she ever was of anything in her life.” She “sat bolt upright in bed and said, ‘Mill! Mill!’ but there was no answer.”4 Even though it was midnight on the night of the year’s first norther, the frail widow drove her buggy as fast as she could to Beeville. Some time after 3:00 a.m., Rachel arrived at the home where Phene held vigil at Ida’s bedside. Phene said, “O Rach, I’m glad you’re here. I knew you were coming.” When Rachel asked how she knew, Phene told her that at midnight “Ida was restless and spent. I was standing by her bed when suddenly I heard a voice cry—your voice—cry ‘Mill! Mill!’ It seemed to come from the foot of the stairs.” Even Ida heard the voice, as Phene recounted to Rachel: “Ida sat up in bed and said, ‘I heard Aunt Rachel calling Mother.’”5 Rachel then explained hearing Millie’s voice at Round Lake at the same time Phene and Ida heard Rachel’s response in Beeville.6 So, Millie had summoned Rachel to go to Phene and Ida. One cousin, who wishes to be known simply as “One of the Beeville Cousins” (whom I will refer to as “Our Beeville Cousin”), also recounts this story, with a few variations. For example, in her version, Rachel’s response to Millie’s appeal for help was “I’ll come, Phene.” Either way, both versions depict the departed Millie ’s communicating with her sisters. This version emphasizes the distance and what it took for Rachel to make the journey. “Aunt Rachel set out alone for Beeville, some thirty miles away, a journey 184 Superstitions, Strange...

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