Bogeyman Weather

Conversation tends, particularly on long winter evenings like these, to drift toward matters of the supernatural. My hockey team and I were gathered around the fireplace in the locker room enjoying our post-game brandy and smoking our pipes while debating whether a soul was capable of remaining on this Earth after departing the body. Many of us answered staunchly in the negative, while some conceded the possibility, however unlikely, but it was Ashburdle who had this to say: "Gentleman, you will not find a less superstitious person than I, and yet, the incredible events I am about to relate are not superstition, but fact!" We continued listening as we were wont to do when one of our number was speaking. "Years ago, on a night much like this, except the air was full of thunder and lightning, rather than snow, for it was summertime, you see, I found myself driven by the storm to seek shelter at a lonely inn well out in the country. The food was terrible and not l

I remember the accident clearly: the screeching of the brakes, the smash of the windshield, the steering column crushing through my chest, through my spine, and out my back, the release of my bowels. Then nothing... ...Nothing until I found myself in an operating room with a high pitched tone shrilling in my ears. Strangely, I was standing amongst the doctors and nurses, looking down on a patient who bore an uncanny resemblance to me. Why, in fact, it was me! I had just realized this when the doctor pronounced me dead. Dead? I, who was standing right next to him, the way a living person would? "But doctor!" said I, "There must be a mistake! I've never felt better in my life! Look at that gaping chest wound, the grizzly soup of organs and vertebrae, and yet I here I stand! Surely, the sign of a healthy, living person!" But the doctor seemed not to hear me. In fact, no one in that room acted as though they could hear me, which seemed frightfully rude, if not downr