I remember the day clearly. Too clearly. My long Wednesday Addams’ plaits. The antiquated brown cotton dress. The happy tiredness of a day spent among thirty other squealing, giggling Brownies. But as I stared lazily out of the coach window on the journey home, something felt wrong. Time seemed to stop as my stomach tensed and I felt a nervous pang. Nausea briefly overwhelmed me, and I was suddenly in a silent world of my own, disembodied.
As quickly as the feeling materialised, it vanished. Sounds and colours invaded my senses again, and I realised that we were nearly home.
Kindly neighbours were waiting at the bus stop, waiting to break the news that my beloved grandad had passed away suddenly. It was only decades later, having locked this memory away, that I realised he must have died just at the time I had had the strange, out of body experience on the coach; I had experienced a version of the crisis apparition.
Crisis apparitions are just one of eight categories of ghosts, listed as a taxonomy in Roger Clarke’s seminal work ‘A Natural History of Ghosts: 500 Years of Haunting for Proof’ (p. 18). He also gives them the lesser-known name of ‘Death-survival Apparitions’:
Crisis, or Death-survival Apparitions have a long history, and people often see or experience someone with whom they have a close bond at the moment of their death, or at the moment they are experiencing a life-threatening ordeal. These ghosts are common in wartime.
Roger Clarke, ‘A Natural History of Ghosts’
In a lesser phenomenon, but similar to that of the blossoming of Spiritualism in the Victorian era, there appears to have been a spike in crisis apparitions during World War One. A particularly heartbreaking first-hand account of a wartime crisis apparition was recorded by Harold Owen, brother of the celebrated war poet Wilfred Owen. In his book ‘Journey from Obscurity: Memoirs of the Owen Family’ (p. 204) he describes his experience whilst serving in the Navy in 1918:
I had gone down to my cabin thinking to write some letters. I drew aside the door curtain and stepped inside and to my amazement, I saw Wilfred sitting in my chair. I felt shock running through me with appalling force, and with it I could feel the blood draining away from my face.
Harold Owen, ‘Journey from Obscurity’
As with all crisis apparitions, communication with the spirit was one-sided:
‘I spoke quietly: “Wilfred, how did you get here?” He did not rise and I saw that he was involuntarily immobile…but when I spoke his whole face broke into his sweetest and most endearing dark smile. I felt not fear…I knew with absolute certainty that Wilfred was dead.’
Owen had indeed been killed in action, tragically just a week before the armistice was declared.
In an unusual twist, it appears that there is a family of note in Ireland who have experienced crisis apparitions not only on more than one occasion, but also of different members of the family. The magnificent Castle Leslie in County Monaghan played host to another wartime soldier’s apparition in 1914.
Son of the family Norman Leslie was spotted on the terrace by estate workers; the news was met with great joy by the family, as he wasn’t expected to be on home leave. Shortly afterward, the family received a telegram reporting the tragic news that Leslie had died on the battlefield a week earlier. He was sighted again a few weeks later in the Red Room when he appeared surrounded by a cloud of light, reading through a pile of letters. When questioned, just as with the ghost of Wilfred Owen, Leslie smiled and faded away.
Norman Leslie’s sister-in-law, Lady Marjorie Leslie has also been seen twice as a crisis apparition. It is said that at the moment she died in 1951, she appeared to her grandson who at the time was just a child, dying of a poisoned mastoid. A gust of wind travelled along the corridor, touching the boy as he muttered, “Pain gone.” It is said that he was instantly cured. At about the same time, others saw a vision of Lady Marjorie pointing across a lake to an image of a palace, glowing in the sky, as she proclaimed it the place she was going to live.
Crisis apparitions commonly occur to unsuspecting family members in their dreams, where they may be thought of as prophetic. In his book ‘Extraordinary Experiences: Personal Accounts of the Paranormal’ John Robert Colombo (p. 76) relates a tale recorded in 1898 of a lady who foresaw her brother’s tragic death:
‘That night my sister while sleeping, saw him drowning. The awful sight aroused her from slumber, and she sprang out of bed screaming with fright…she said she felt sure she would never behold him alive again. On Monday the following telegram was received: “The Columbia foundered on Saturday night and your brother Levi is drowned.”’
As we enter the colder months of the year, and the nights draw in with their cool, crisp air, let us not forget those that have passed. With the thinning of the veil, ritual work feels more powerful and intuition can become all-enveloping. Although I would not wish a crisis apparition upon anyone, for me it was an ethereal experience that I will never forget, and serves as a permanent reminder to always trust my intuition – a lesson for us all.
Spirited Lucy 
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