Paranormal Encounter or Coincidence - My Personal Experience

I'll open this with the morning of Friday, November 30th. I went outside to feed my two puppies around 5:45 am. I live on the outskirts of a very small, rural town and that early in the morning, you can hear everything. That morning, as I was keeping my puppies from going to the other's bowl, I hear sirens. I didn't think much about it and went back inside to get ready for work. When my wife and I leave, I made the turn off of my road and about a mile ahead I saw tons of lights. Those of police, fire trucks, and ambulances. When I got up to them all, there were so many that I had to drive halfway into the ditch on the other side of the road to avoid hitting a fire truck. I looked to the right and a well known resident's house that sits a few hundred yards off the road was engulfed in flames.

By the time I got to work, my dad had already spoken to my old neighbor - who is a volunteer fire fighter and the first to arrive on the scene - and it turns out that the man who lived there had set fire to his house and walked outside. When my neighbor showed up, he (my old neighbor) was running into the house to see if anyone was inside and he saw the owner walking outside. He stopped and asked if there was anyone else in the house. The owner said no, then proceeded to put his dog in his truck. As that happened, the FF was putting all of his gear on and as he pulled his gear up, he turned to ask the owner a question, but as soon as he looked at him, the owner had a pistol to his head and shot himself. He was very well known and always full of laughs but being a small town, rumors spread like wildfire so if you don't get the story directly from the source, you probably aren't getting the real story. And even then you might get fluff.

Since we know the background of that part, I'll leave it alone from there and continue with the experience I had yesterday. My wife and I were coming home from work and the sun had disappeared behind the trees as it set, around 5:00 pm. There's a new sense of creep factor now as you drive by this place. Burned out house, pickup truck still sitting in the detached carport, etc. But this time, it looked like his neighbor across the street had some leaves or something burning in his yard and the wind was blowing the smoke across the road. I had classic Christmas music playing on Sirius XM - signal strength is always fantastic - and the instant I entered that haze of smoke, my satellite started cutting out and popping and got extremely static. My initial thought was "What the heck? My radio never does this" but when I looked to the right, that guy had no leaves, no wood, nothing burning, but my wife and I could both smell it and it smelled just like burning wood. When I got out of the haze, say, 3 to 4 seconds later, the radio cleared up and the smoke smell was gone. My wife looked back and I looked in the rear view and the haze cleared up right before our eyes.

I know this sounds crazy, I know it, but as sure as I sit here typing this, it 110% truly happened. Could this have been a coincidence? Paranormal experience? I get the chills telling this. Especially when my super skeptical wife experienced the same exact thing. As she was watching that haze disappear, she was side-eyeing me with that WTF look and says "Where the hell did that smoke go?"

Yea? Nay? This hasn't happened to anyone before?

I would say that you had a definite paranormal experience. Makes me wonder why his spirit wanted to get a message of some sort out to you.

You say it looked like the neighbor across the street was burning leaves...did you SEE any leaves burning or any flames, or did you just assume it because of the smoke/haze and the smell? I guess im asking whT made you immediately think "leaves burning?"

What kind of relationship did you have with the now deceased?

Do they have any indication of why he killed himself?

originally posted by: Fools
I would say that you had a definite paranormal experience. Makes me wonder why his spirit wanted to get a message of some sort out to you.

I left a couple of things out of my OP because I didn't feel it was necessary to get into, UNLESS, we delved off into it throughout the thread.

The morning he killed himself, he didn't die instantly. When the fireman ran up to him, he was still alive and gurgling as he trembled and tried to say something to the fireman just before he died. That came straight from the fireman himself.

originally posted by: KansasGirl
You say it looked like the neighbor across the street was burning leaves...did you SEE any leaves burning or any flames, or did you just assume it because of the smoke/haze and the smell? I guess im asking whT made you immediately think "leaves burning?"

What kind of relationship did you have with the now deceased?

Do they have any indication of why he killed himself?

It's a normal occurrence for that neighbor to burn leaves, he always has something burning. The road is long and spacious so you can see something like that from a good way away. I looked in his yard when I drove by and he had nothing burning and there was nothing around that would have provided a source for the smoke. No smoke coming from his yard at all, just coming directly across the driveway of the house where the guy shot himself.

I've known him since I was young. He was a ladies man and as a cop there in that small town, he donked around with several of the younger girls when he was a Deputy, and by younger, I mean he was early 20's and the girls were 15 and up. A few were friends of my sister's so if I was with her and her friends, I'd usually run into him. We've always spoke to each other over the years. So I'd say the relationship was nothing more than two small town guys that spoke when they saw each other. I'm 39 and he was around 55 or 56 so we didn't ever hang out or anything.

What I've heard, and has been confirmed, is that his wife finally caught him messing around and filed for divorce earlier that week. He was arrested for DWI that Thursday night and his daughter bailed him out. She dropped him off at home around 5:00 or 5:15 Friday morning. That's the only reason we can figure out that he may have decided to kill himself. That's not confirmed, as we'll never know since no notes were left behind. Also not confirmed, is that he burned his house down so his wife - who had just filed for divorce - wouldn't get it, and that the suicide would void his life insurance.

He may have had suicide already thought out and had things in the house nobody needed to see, which is why he decided to burn it. My sister's friend, who has remained very very close to him all these years, told my sister years ago that he would mess around with his nephew. I was told in secrecy and my wife doesn't even know that part. But since we're anonymous here, I figure it can't hurt to share. But why I say that is because he may had things of his nephew's in there, or notes/pictures that he didn't want anyone to find as that would ruin his nephew and probably a lot of family members.

What a sad story... What a terrible thing for the firefighter to have to witness too.

Is smoke known to sometimes interfere with XM radio? Is it possible it was fog (which sometimes dissipates quickly as the sun is rising) and the smell of smoke was from elsewhere?

Thanks for sharing the story. You may never know what, exactly, that was...

originally posted by: VegHead
What a sad story... What a terrible thing for the firefighter to have to witness too.

Is smoke known to sometimes interfere with XM radio? Is it possible it was fog (which sometimes dissipates quickly as the sun is rising) and the smell of smoke was from elsewhere?

Thanks for sharing the story. You may never know what, exactly, that was...

He was having trouble coping because every time he closed his eyes he saw that man shooting himself. The pistol was under his chin when he pulled the trigger.

I don't know, I've driven through rain, snow, thunderstorms, smoke, and dense fog with no problems though, and no fog yesterday.

Here are some snips I took from Google Maps since I don't have any pictures of the scenery.

This about where I was when I started to notice the smoke. I've circled the house and put lines where the smoke was. You'll notice a mobile home in front of the house, this map is from 2014 but the mobile home is gone now. That was his daughter's.




This is a shot from the driveway.




This is an overhead shot of the house and the house across the street. A rough estimate of where the smoke began and ended. I would have had a better estimate if I'd known this was going to happen.





Here are the thumbnails so you can get the bigger picture.