Lighting up our lives
We’d never believed in the paranormal until our daughter found a way to brighten our days from Heaven. By Faye Mervyn, 43
My daughter, Cara, lay on the sofa and I stroked her hair, trying to ignore the panic rising inside me. For a while now, Cara, 10, had been having dizzy spells which we’d put down to tiredness. But, as my husband Kieran filled me in on what had happened earlier that day, I sensed it was something more than that...
‘Cara and I were doing yoga together but she couldn’t lie on her back without feeling woozy,’ Kieran said, worried.
‘I think we’d better get you to a doctor,’ I nodded.
Cara was no stranger to the hospital. Born at just 29 weeks, she’d had a tracheostomy fitted for the first four years of her life to help her breathe.
Even years later it had left me on tenterhooks, fretting every time she caught a cold.
But she’d grown into a bubbly girly girl, who adored unicorns and playing with her younger brother Finn.
Cara was referred for tests and we got the shock of our lives when scans showed a dark mass growing around her brain stem.
‘We need to do a biopsy,’ explained a consultant gravely. ‘But it’s a high-risk procedure.’
I thought I was going to be sick as, in August 2018, Cara was wheeled away to theatre at Leeds General Infirmary, her life hanging in the balance.
For hours Kieran and I paced the hospital corridors.
Thankfully our girl pulled through, and when she opened her eyes she told us something that took our breath away.
‘I dreamt I’d died and was hovering above you and Dad as you walked up and down the corridor.’
I stared at Kieran in shock. Cara even told us she’d seen her own pink coffin.
She was diagnosed with a glioma brain stem tumour.
Kieran and I didn’t believe in the paranormal. But what if Cara had had a premonition?
As the tumour was so slow growing, the doctors decided to just watch and wait. Trying to remove it, could kill Cara.
So for 18 months Cara got on with her life and started secondary school. One day, about a year after her diagnosis, she came home from school with a story she’d written about a little girl who had died and her ghost stayed in the family home.
‘It’s so detailed,’ marvelled Kieran as we read it that night.
Strange things started happening around the house shortly after the funeral… car keys would be misplaced and the bed would unmake itself… she’d written.
In December 2019 we enjoyed another family Christmas, grateful that Cara was still with us.
Both she and Finn had the usual Winter sniffles and in the days after Christmas Cara was a little subdued.
One evening we all went to bed as normal. Then at around 5am the next morning Kieran got up to go to the loo and popped his head around Cara’s door to check on her. Her room was icy cold and a shaft of moonlight across her bed illuminated her feet sticking out from under her duvet. Kieran touched her leg and realised she was cold and still.
‘Faye, quick, Cara’s not breathing!’ he screamed.
I rushed in and stared in horror.
We dialled 999 and the call handler talked us through CPR until the ambulance arrived.
‘Open your eyes,’ we begged Cara, taking it in turns to do chest compressions.
Just then, Finn came tottering into the room in his PJs, woken by the commotion.
‘Go back to bed darling,’ I called, not wanting him to see his sister like this.
But he stood at the bottom of Cara’s bed and uttered a sentence that turned my blood to ice. ‘Mummy, Cara’s gone to Heaven.’
Finn was right, of course. Our beautiful girl had gone. Me and Kieran spent most of the day in the hospital mortuary, holding Cara’s hands and staring in disbelief at our perfect girl. How could she be gone aged just 11?
A couple of evenings later, after taking a walk in the park with Finn to get some air, he gasped ‘Look Mummy!’ pointing to a twinkling white light playing along the living room wall.
‘What is it?’ I hissed to Kieran. Suddenly there were two lights, then three, then dozens
Cara had seen her own pink coffin
of them, twinkling and sparkling as they danced and swirled around the room.
Finn giggled as he chased about in the middle of them, trying to catch them.
Then one flew towards
Kieran and seemed to pass straight through his body.
Me and Kieran looked at each other in amazement. It couldn’t be… could it? Cara?
The next morning we wondered if it had all been a dream. After all, we’d been utterly exhausted and our hearts were broken.
But that day, as we began to talk about Cara’s funeral, lights flickered all around the house. Kieran even managed to catch some of the orbs on camera.
And when I went upstairs to Cara’s bedroom, I swore I could see the shape of a ghostly face on her curtain.
‘I think we might have brought her spirit home with us,’ Kieran suggested.
We’d never set any store by the supernatural, but now it seemed so real.
And… well… natural. It was all so hard to take in.
The church was packed at Cara’s funeral.
After laying her body to rest we wondered if the activity at home would calm down, but instead Cara appeared daily.
I began looking forward to feeling her reassuring presence.
Kieran was raised Catholic and he told our local priest what was going on.
In August 2020 he offered to come and do a blessing in our house just to double check it was Cara and she was at peace.
We showed the priest into our living room and it was like walking into a swarm of flickering lights.
‘Look at that,’ Kieran breathed, pointing to the shadow of an angelic white figure rising up in the corner.
‘It’s Cara,’ agreed the priest. ‘There’s no need to be afraid, she’s just here to reassure you that she’s OK and is watching over you.’
I watched in awe as Kieran opened his arms. The white figure floated towards him and then melted into his body in a spiritual embrace.
Cara’s spirit was in our living room. And what’s more she had given Kieran a hug!
After the priest’s blessing things quietened down a bit, but Cara still puts in regular appearances.
Finn, now five, loves playing with the lights and orbs when they appear.
We know when she’s going to visit because we feel the atmosphere in the house change. There’s a subtle shift and then we’ll spot orbs floating, twinkling lights up the walls or sparkling angelic figures hovering in the air.
We’ve not changed Cara’s bedroom since she passed and if I want to talk to her I’ll go and sit on her bed.
I tell her about my day and watch as ghostly white faces begin to appear in her curtains. I know she’s listening.
And a couple of weeks ago Kieran and I were in bed, fast asleep, when we were woken by the sound of a child’s footsteps.
I felt the bed shift as a weight got in. Sleepily assuming Finn had come to join us, I rolled over to make some room and fell back to sleep with the child’s body tucked cosily in between me and Kieran.
But when we woke the next morning, Finn was in his room.
‘Did you come in to see me and Daddy last night?’ I asked him over breakfast. He shook his head. ‘It must have been Cara,’ Kieran smiled. ‘Coming for a cuddle.’
So now we really do believe in ghosts. The spirit of our daughter is haunting our home, and we wouldn’t have it any other way.
Finn loves playing with the orbs