The evening advanced. The shadows lengthened. The waters of the lake grew pitchy black. The gliding of the ghostly swans became rare and more rare.

Wilke Collins

Snowy Owl in the Cemetery: Animal Visions and Messengers

I believe that animals and birds and even things in nature, like wind or flowers, can bring messages from the spirit world. Last year, on my birthday, there was a friendly rabbit in my back yard when I left the house, and another one, or maybe the same one, in the yard when I got home at the end of the day. I usually only see one or two rabbits in my yard a month, and I’m very fond of rabbits, so I interpreted the rabbit stopping by as a birthday greeting. That same day, my rose bush, which had bloomed only a few times that summer, had a single, intense pink bloom—very unusual, since my birthday is in the middle of October.

It’s been my experience that birds especially bring messages related to spiritual or significant life matters. This makes sense to me, since birds are associated with the element of air that, like the spirit world, is invisible but real. I have found that when I dream about owls, ghost owls in particular, I need to pay attention to the dream’s message.

My first owl dream occurred shortly after my husband, John, and I split up. In it, I dreamt that I was in my front yard in Hudson. There were three birds in one of the three tall boulevard elms that were actually in my yard before we lost them to Dutch elm disease in the 1980s. I was aware in my dream that John and I were no longer together, and that I had the rest of my life ahead of me. The three birds—an owl, a bald eagle, and a tiny bird that was so young it was unidentifiable—represented choices, and I was to decide which one to focus on first, knowing the others would be there when I was ready for them. I figured that the eagle represented freedom, the owl wisdom or education, and the baby bird was an unknown and as yet possibly unformed path. I felt drawn to the owl, and as soon as I chose it in my mind, the owl lifted up off the tree branch and gently flew down to me. I was surprised but stuck my arm out, and the owl landed on it. (I looked up the dream owl later and identified it as a great horned owl.) He felt amazingly heavy, and as I waited to see what would happen next, the owl looked me in the eye—then, still hanging on to my arm, fell forward and hung upside down. That’s when I woke up, feeling a buzzy, hypercharged energy that told me the dream was more than a dream. I felt this dream confirmed my decision to stay in college and get my degree even though it would be quite a challenge financially and otherwise. (I was in the middle of my freshman year at the College of St. Catherine when John and I split up.)

The angel statue in my front yard.

The second owl dream I had was that a ghost owl flew in through the big picture window of my house. Once again, the owl paused and looked me right in the eye before it turned and flew down the hall to my bedroom. Even in my dream, a chill went through me when I saw the wisdom and awareness in the owl’s eyes. According to Ted Andrews in Animal Speak, my favorite book for deciphering animal signs, the ghost owl is “an old symbol of spirit and ghostly contact.” And, “It is an owl whose medicine can connect you to old haunts and spirits of properties and homes that may still be lingering about.” This dream came at a time when I was undergoing significant changes in my spiritual beliefs, and like the first dream, I woke up with a sense that something important had happened. I believe this dream was a confirmation of the rightness of the spiritual path I was taking.

In the third owl dream, I was back in our house in Hudson, years after we’d moved away. I went down to the laundry room and discovered piles and stacks of dirty clothes everywhere: on the floor, in the sink, on top of the washer and dryer. I started to gather up all the dirty laundry to sort it out, then realized none of it was mine. Even so, I decided to take the wet clothes out of the washing machine and put them in the dryer, at least. When I reached in the washer, I was shocked to discover a ghost owl inside, wet, shivering, and barely alive. I knew I was responsible for the owl, and I picked it up gently and held it against my body, trying to warm it up. I could feel its damp feathers, its bones, and its heart beating rapidly. I also sensed the owl’s gratitude at being saved. I carried the shivering bird carefully up the basement steps and walked past a powerful wizard who was sitting at my kitchen table. The wizard nodded his approval, then I stepped outside and opened my arms, and the ghost owl flew away. I believe the message of this dream was that I was trying to take on too much of other people’s problems, and doing so was taking a big toll on my soul—and, therefore, my own power.

Another time birds have played a messenger role in my life was when Levi and I first started going out. We had gone on a Sunday drive on some winding, wooded back roads in Wisconsin when I noticed a huge bird’s shadow that appeared to be flying on the road in front of us. The shadow was so big that it seemed like it must be an optical illusion. I gasped and pointed. Levi saw it too. Then we looked up and saw a hawk, which Levi told me is one of the birds he most admires. A few minutes later, we stopped by a shallow, clear creek and got out to walk around. We heard some sort of kerfluffle up in the treetops, then saw the shadow of another large bird, this time flying across the water. I only saw its shadow, but Levi spotted the bird and said it was an owl. I said, “That’s funny, because owls are my totem bird.” We thought the sightings were a good omen for our relationship.

Sometimes, I believe real or spirit realm totem animals make an appearance to offer protection. I used to clean houses for a living while writing freelance stories. Because I only cleaned for families whose vibe I liked, and I spent many quiet hours in my customers’ homes, I became attuned to the energy of their households. Some of my customers were home while I worked, and we’d often have long discussions about everything from family matters to world politics. One of my customers, Lydia, was a homeopathic practitioner, which is a healer who uses natural remedies to spur healing on an energetic level. I had two unusual experiences at Lydia’s house. The first was when she had a houseguest, a friend from California, staying with her. Every time her friend came into the room where I was working, I jumped. Once I came around the corner into the family room and nearly walked into him, which also startled me, as usually I am pretty good at tuning in to people. My inability to sense him at all was odd, and I mentioned it to Lydia the next time I cleaned for her after he had gone home. Lydia speculated that perhaps I couldn’t tune in to him because his vibe was really refined from practicing meditation on a regular basis for more than twenty-five years.

The other event at Lydia’s was more dramatic. One afternoon, while I was alone cleaning, I opened the mud room door to put a mop and bucket in the attached garage. There, in the garage, in the middle of a perfectly ordinary afternoon, I saw a wolf. It was sitting on a riding lawn mower amidst the bikes and rakes and miscellaneous yard stuff. I know it sounds like a funny visual, but the wolf’s vibe was actually powerful and dignified. The wolf looked at me calmly, and I got a sense of its serenity and strength. I knew I was seeing a spirit or astral being, because the wolf looked like a photographic negative and was partially transparent. I blinked a few times, but the wolf was still there. I nodded at the wolf, feeling that there was something important about it that needed to be acknowledged. Then I went back in the house, but curiosity got the better of me. Had the wolf been some sort of optical illusion? I opened the door again. The wolf was still in the same place. I got goose bumps on my skin and thanked the universe for the experience of seeing this vision. Then the wolf faded away.

I told Lydia about it when she got back. She was very interested and wanted to know, almost in an urgent way, if there was anything else I could tell her about the experience. She had a number of serious health problems, and she told me that she had been near death a few times in her life. Wolves were her totem animals, and in the past she had seen them when her life was in danger. Once, when she spent weeks in bed recovering from a serious illness, she said she often saw two wolves lying calmly at the foot of her bed, watching her. Lydia was going through a very stressful time in her life when I cleaned for her, but she did not have any health crises in the remaining months that I worked for her. Sadly, I did learn that Lydia died unexpectedly a few years after I had stopped cleaning to start working full-time as a writer. When I think of the many health struggles in Lydia’s life, I always envision her totem wolf’s strength and peacefulness, and it brings me some consolation.

My great-aunt Norah was a much-loved member of our family, who, along with her husband, Victor, hosted the family Thanksgiving and Easter galas, as well as innumerable other family parties for more than four decades, starting in the 1950s. A week before Norah died, I had a dream in which my friend Anastasia told me she had talked to Grandma Dorrie’s spirit, and my grandma had told her that something important was going to happen in one week. I wrote about the experience in my first book. In the dream, Anastasia had seemed positive and peaceful as she relayed the news. One of my main concerns, after waking up, was that something was going to happen to one of my kids. At work the next day, I asked Anastasia for her opinion of the dream. She said to trust the dream’s vibe and appreciate my grandma sending a message to me. Norah passed away one week after I had this dream, so I feel it was my grandma letting me know that, as sad as it would be for us to lose Norah, her husband Victor and the Irish relatives would be waiting for her on the other side. Norah was the last of Great-Grandma Maggie’s children still living, and it was hard to imagine what our family celebrations would be like with Dorrie, Nellie, and now Norah gone.

On the day of Norah’s funeral, my mom, dad, and I received messages from the other side, which we took as signs that Norah was with the rest of the family in spirit and doing fine. Norah passed away in the wintertime, and on our way to the Fort Snelling cemetery where the interment was going to take place, I saw a pure white owl sitting in a bare tree near the cemetery. Molly and I were riding to the cemetery with my parents, and I yelped in surprise and pointed at the owl. I’ve lived in this area for nearly forty years and, although I know there are owls around, I had never encountered one before. (The owl- and hawk-spotting day with Levi was still in the future at this time.) It was the middle of the day, and the owl was in a tree that was very close to a busy freeway and the Minneapolis/St. Paul international airport. My parents didn’t look quickly enough to see the owl, but Molly did. We wondered if it was a sign of some sort. Then my mom told me that on their way to the funeral that morning, she and my dad had seen two beautiful white swans in a cornfield, which was really unusual too. At work the next day, I went online to identify the white owl I had seen and verified that it was a snowy owl. I consulted Animal Speak and learned that one of the things owls symbolize is the ability to see things that are hidden and to discover secrets. I felt the white color represented spiritual matters and hope, so the snowy owl seemed like a perfectly fitting omen for the day. I also discovered that swans represent both lasting love and the ability to link different worlds and dimensions, so they, too, served as a powerful message of reassurance.

My young cousin Alexandra died last fall. Alexandra and her newborn baby Shea lived with me for a short time about seven years ago, and I wrote about the experience in my first book. At the time she stayed with me, Alexandra was trying to make the difficult decision of whether or not to place Shea for adoption. I felt the Irish family spirits around us, helping out with everything from offering love and support to picking up one of the baby’s bottles and putting it in the sink.

There were a lot of signs in the month or so leading up to Alexandra’s passing, but I didn’t start putting them together until the day before she died. The first unusual thing happened in September, when my mom and I saw an eagle fly up to the picture window at my parents’ house while my mom and I were at the dining room table talking. We both remarked on it, because it was so strange to see an eagle come within twenty or twenty-five feet of the house. Usually, the eagles stayed off in the distance, flying over the fields and pine woods.

The next thing to happen was that Molly, who was staying at my house, woke up on my birthday at 5:21 in the morning because she could hear a woman crying and saying, “That’s so sad! That’s just so sad!” After the initial exclamations, the woman was silent. Molly thought it was me talking on the phone, and she figured someone must have died. Then she realized the house was completely dark and that no one in the house was talking or even awake. After listening for another moment or two, Molly concluded one of the ghosts was back. Molly told me about it the next morning. I asked her if the voice sounded familiar, and she said no. So we figured it was a voice from the past. This was also the day that I saw two rabbits and the bloom on my rose plant, so all in all, I felt that nothing was amiss. In my house, haunting activity tends to escalate in the dark months of the year, generally peaking in October and winding down after Christmas.

In the week before Alexandra’s death, I had three experiences with birds that signified something was awry. The first sign was that I noticed a goldfinch watching me from right outside the window. I sometimes see birds in the birdbath or by the feeders for a bit before they fly away, but this was different. This goldfinch was on the sill of the bathroom window, looking in. I was at the sink brushing my teeth when I became aware if it. The bird didn’t fly away when I turned to look at it, which sent an odd little ripple through my energy field. This happened on a Saturday.

The second bird event occurred four days later, on Wednesday. A bird got in our back screened porch and was killed by one of the cats. We were very sad when we discovered the bird’s body and figured it must have come in through a gap under the door. I’ve lived in my house for fifteen years, and we’ve only had one bird get in the porch before (and he flew out when we opened the door).

The third sign happened on the day before Alexandra passed away. I was out decorating the clothesline pole with Indian corn when a goldfinch came flying around the house and almost ran into my forehead. It turned sharply and flew back the way it came. I saw my parents later that day and told them that something was up. My mom and dad and I discussed it briefly but really couldn’t come up with an explanation of what the unusual bird behavior meant. I love goldfinches, but in my life they usually signify endings. The next morning, I got the call about Alexandra.

I only made one phone call to let a family member know what had happened, as many people had already been called with the news. When I called my aunt Diana, she said she knew by the sound of my voice that someone had died. (It was Diana’s husband Jerry who dreamt of Grandma Dorrie leading someone away shortly before Alexandra passed away.) When I told her it was Alexandra, she gasped and said, “That’s so sad! That’s just so sad!” As soon as I heard those words, Molly’s precognitive experience of waking up and hearing the crying woman came back to me.

At the funeral service, Alexandra’s mom and stepdad brought a framed eagle picture to add to the photograph boards. They said that Alexandra had absolutely loved eagles, which I hadn’t known. I thought of the eagle that my mom and I had seen fly up to the window a month earlier and wondered if that had been the first sign.

Alexandra, who was fiercely proud of her Irish ancestry and family history, was laid to rest at the same cemetery as our other Irish relatives, on the sunny hillside where Great-Aunt Mimi, Great-Grandma Maggie, and Great-Grandpa Thomas were buried. It was a beautiful, sunny late fall afternoon when we said goodbye to Alexandra, and as I looked out at the rolling hills and blue sky, the familiar Irish blessing came to mind: May the road rise up to meet you and the wind be always at your back.

I walked back to my car with Jackie, the wonderful woman who, with her husband, Bill, had adopted Alexandra’s daughter Shea seven years earlier. They have created a strong, loving family for Shea and also keep in touch with our family, getting together for a visit once or twice a year. Jackie and I were talking about Alexandra and her life when, seemingly out of nowhere, a little wild breeze kicked up. The breeze was strong enough that I had to grab my hair and hold it in a ponytail to keep it out of my face as I unlocked my car. Jackie asked me what I thought of the sudden wind. I told her I thought it was kind of crazy.

Then she said, “Do you think Alexandra sent it? Like the Irish poem?”

And I laughed and said, “That’s exactly what I think!” because Alexandra had a definite flair for drama. (When I called Alexandra’s mom, Margie, to ask permission to include this story, she said, “Oh, yes! She’d get a kick out of it.”) Sending us all on our way with a wild Irish wind was a fitting farewell from Alexandra.

may the road rise up to meet you.
May the wind be always at your back.
May the sun shine warm upon your face,
the rains fall soft upon your fields, and until we meet again,
may God hold you in the palm of his hand.