My son, his mother and I had driven to the mountains to hike and run the Pacific Crest Trail. I was training for a 50-km race. His mother was training for the 10 mile part of the event. Our son wasn't doing the race but was also a runner and came along to be with us. We left the parking lot around 8 in the morning. His mother planned to hike for an hour or so, but I wanted to run for 3 hours. Our son was tired from a week of college exams, so he decided to run with me for 20 minutes, then return to the car and wait for us.
When he and I got to his turn-around, I gave him the keys to our car. I continued up the trail to my turn-around, then started back. When I was 3 miles from the parking lot, a very dark, ominous feeling came over me. I didn't hear a voice but something inside me wanted to get back to my wife and son quickly. It was frightening and urgent—not something I could dismiss as imagination or indigestion.
When I got near the parking lot, my wife was walking around calling for our son—not loud enough for me to hear her when I had been 3 miles away, but there was an urgency in her voice. We searched the forest and the road leading up to the trail head for an hour but never found him. Exhausted, I ran down to a nearby restaurant and called the police. The search party found our son late that evening but the detectives never found his killer.
Before that tragic day, I was too busy with life to pay any attention to death. My nose was to the grindstone, my elbow was in the grease, my head was in my career, and my heart was in my family and friends. That morning, I woke up to a new world—a world more ugly, dangerous and terrifying than the one I had known.
What I heard has never been in doubt. The message was as plain as if somebody had shouted words in my ears. What I have wondered all these years is who sent the message? Was it my son—telepathically while he was being killed? Or supernaturally after he was dead? Or was it my wife communicating telepathically as she searched frantically for him?
My wife and I shared the burden of his death and the search for answers to questions like those for many years. When she died, I expected to receive something from her but that didn't happen so I was left to ponder the questions and the answers on my own.