Angela Collette was 17 years old when she had a car accident less than a mile from her house that would end her life. I knew her through my boyfriend. He was her cousin and was living with his aunt and her family. including Collette. I had known Collette for about a year and a half before she died. I wasn’t exactly that close with Collette. Although we were very close to the same age, she was a few months younger, we weren’t into the same things. I talked to her often, but not as much as I would have liked, now looking back. My fondest memory of her will be the New Year’s Eve 2006. I had a party, she came and spent the night. We had a lot of fun that night and I am grateful that I got to spend that time with her. She died 4 months later.

The strange things started happening as soon as she passed away. Because she hit a utility pole, the power had gone out in the surrounding homes for a few seconds. Her brother was asleep. He awoke to find his alarm clock blinking about the time of the crash, a little after midnight. It isn’t so unusual that the his power went out because the crash was only about a mile away. What is unusual is that he woke up about the time of the crash to see that the power had gone out. He had a cold and had taken NyQuil to get to sleep. Anyone who has ever taken this stuff knows that you don’t wake up for any reason once your asleep! At the time of the crash, my boyfriend and I were at my house about 20 miles away from where Collette lived. All of the sudden, the power faded out and then back in. Because I lived so far away, the crash would not have affected my power at all. The strange thing was is that it didn’t just cut off. I had never had a power failure like that or since then. The lights actually dimmed as if on a dimmer switch, which they were not. My boyfriend and I joked at the time that there must be a fire or something somewhere in my apartment building. I still don’t know what it was. Maybe it was some electrical thing, but what I believe is that Collette was saying goodbye to us.

There have been other things that have happened as well. Her mother and sisters have seen some strange things. One day Collette’s mother and sister were talking about how they used to look up at the sky and find shapes in the clouds, like rabbits or cats. They looked up and saw the shapes of the letters of Collette’s name spelled out in sky. Collette isn’t a name easily found in the sky. Don’t you agree?

The thing that brought the most amazement to me about the things that were going on, was a little boy. He was another of Collette’s cousins. I think he was 8 years old. I was at the house of Collette’s family during the Christmas holidays. We were talking about her. I don’t know how it came up, but Collette’s aunt was telling us that her son could see Angels. He saw them all the time. When asked if he could see Collette that day, he responded “Do you even have to ask?!!” As if saying “of course, why wouldn’t she be here.” This touched me the most. His mother said that she can tell when he sees them.. his eyes get big and bright, and he stops paying attention to everything else. She said that she has absolutely no doubt about it. I wanted so badly to take this little boy aside and ask him about all that he has seen. But I think that it would have frightened him. Besides that, I didn’t feel like I was close enough with him to share his stories with me. It seemed very personal to him. Unfortunately, I have moved and I will probably never get to talk with him about it. But I would love to hear your stories if you would be willing to share them!!