Phenomena

By Fabiano Viana Oliveira

Is there life after death? Joseph Tammerson seems to think that this question is irrelevant. A young American has direct contact with paranormal experience after the death of his older brother in Vietnam and since then his life has been driven through a complex path of spectacular experiences in his search for knowledge about the other side.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Clube de Autores
• Release date: Feb 7, 2019

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Phenomena

Fabiano Oliveira

Fabiano V. Oliveira

Phenomena

(book registered at the National Library)

Translation: José Augusto Pitta Santos

I

The first time I lived through a paranormal phenomenon was at my home in Boston, back in 1970. It was on TV. We were all sitting in front of it, as usual, watching the news on the war, like always; but one thing was making of us get much sadder than the usual... We had just received a telegram from the Pentagon that day.

The mailman, who for twenty years had been bringing us our mail, was coming down the street. His professional hands were all sweaty... He knew us very well. We always invited him over for Christmas and Thanksgiving. He always declined. Yet, he was always happy to service us by bringing us the news from far away relatives and friends... However, there was one thing that, Mr. Langue, the postman, was very familiar with: delivering official telegrams from the Pentagon. That had become a very ordinary thing amongst American mailmen during the years of the Vietnam war. n the American mailmen’s life during those years of Vietnam War. Mr. Langue got very sad every time he had to deliver one of those; especially when it had to do with the life of a young man whom he saw growing up and whose family was always so kind with him. His footsteps seemed heavier as he approached our house. The noble postman couldn’t read the content of the telegram, but he knew very well what it was about… My older brother had died in combat in a Vietnamese province near Laos, away from all of us…

My mother and my sister were sitting on the couch hugging each other, while my father would remain standing, looking at the TV, as if he was trying to maintain his image of a strong figure instead of breaking down in tears. He was a fifty-year old man raised in a time when self-discipline was the word of order and it was unconceivable for a man to cry... And I believe he was the one who missed my brother, Donny, Donald Tammerson Junior, the most. He was his firstborn child, the one that was brought up to be very successful. When Donny graduated from the U.S. Point, he started out as a lieutenant and went to Vietnam. Indeed, that was one of the few times I really saw my father happy. That never bothered me much, because dad would always pay attention to me as well. Nevertheless, Donny outnumbered me by five years of dealing with our dad, which added to the other sixteen years. So, they ended up having twenty-one years of a love story that was very well expressed on my father’s face, which always used to be so firm and strong. And I…

I was sixteen years old and the concepts of death and loss were still a lot vague to me. That doesn’t mean I was completely alienated regarding these things; but I was still thinking of myself as a kid who worried about girls, what her hair cut to get and cheered for the Boston Celtics; at least, until that day... I was sit at this arm-chair in front of the TV. I was keeping one eye on the screen and the other on my family’s reactions to what the reporter was saying. It was very curious the way they reacted to each word the newscaster would say: For instance, when he said soldier, my mom and Anne, my nineteen-year old sister, would cry even louder. When he said infantry, my father would gently punch the living room table, when he was close by it. And there were other reactions that seemed to both cover up as well as show feelings. And that was when, all of a sudden, while I was looking at TV, it happened... As the reporter was talking, I saw soldiers marching behind him, and that was when I noticed that one of the soldiers stopped and waived at the camera. I didn’t pay a lot of attention to that at first; yet, as I began to look closer at that soldier I realized… that it was Donny, my brother. I got up as fast as lightening and said, as I was pointing to the screen:

- Mom, dad... it’s Donny! - And their reaction was:

- I know, honey... he always will be with us.

- No, mom... Can’t you see him? He’s on TV!

- Shut up, kid. There’s enough pain in this house already... Your brother would never be on the headlines.

- But dad, it’s not it. He’s waiving at us. - Dad came up to me, pushed me back onto the armchair and said:

- Be quiet, kiddo... This isn’t time for jokes.

- But dad...

- I said, keep your mouth shut! - And I did just that. I didn’t think it would be the moment to have an argument. In fact, I think my father needed to push somebody, to explode a little, and it had better with me than with my mom... She continued crying. As for my sister, she was looking at me with a lot of interest. She knew I would not toy with something like that. I turned around and looked at the TV again and Donny was still there, looking at me; and he wouldn’t stop waiving good-bye... Then, as I discreetly observed my family all around me, I waived back at him and finally, apparently in response to my nodding, he stopped... He gently smiled at me and left the disappeared from the TV screen. That was magical! Up until that moment, I hadn’t really felt my brother’s loss. But now he was saying goodbye to me. And he only left after he had done just that. I know that now, more than twenty years later. Ever since that day, I started to pursue and research each paranormal phenomenon that I found out about... Having seen my brother on the TV screen had woken me up...

My sister came into my room late at night. I was still up and wondered what she was up to...

- Don’t even mention it. College girls never go out with high school boys... Don’t worry. What happened yesterday was uncalled for. I am never going to show up on campus again, at least not until I start going to school there myself. get into there, as a student... - She cynically smiled and looked at me. How I was wrong...

- I want to know what you saw on TV earlier on. You are a little silly, but you are neither stupid nor a liar. You’d never say that in front of dad if it wasn’t serious. I think that had been the first serious thing I had done at home and my sister could already tell the difference. I wonder if she really knew what she was talking about...

- Come on, tell me everything... - And so I did... I don’t know whether or not she believed I had really seen Donny, but she took the fact that I said that seriously whether it had been a lie, a dream or a product of my imagination. I also told her I intended to major in parapsychology. She became extremely shocked at that…

- Ha! Ha! - She left my bedroom right after that. She said she might help me now I had some goal in life.

- Oh! There’s one more thing: you stop by the campus whenever you feel like it. A lot of girls kept asking who was that unpolished diamond, hat had appeared from nowhere and then left... I looked at her without buying much into what she was saying, but what did I have to lose? I would go there anyway. And now I had a very special interest...

II

It was the day of my high school graduation. The class of 1972 had blessed us with a beautiful afternoon. My family was there and I just knew my brother was too. Most of my friends used to make fun of me because I told them I saw Donny on the TV screen, two years ago; but, I that didn’t bother me. I saw what I saw and, even though such phenomenon didn’t happen again, I knew where my life was leading me, unlike all of them. Anyway, ever since the day I saw Donny on TV, I didn’t experience any other phenomenon that would affect me; at least, not up to that moment...

They were calling out our names so we could go get our high school diplomas. The were calling out those whose last names started with the letter c, like Angelo Carmine, the son of the butcher. He was so big that he could hang from one of his father’s meat hooks in the butcher shop. My surname started with a t, as in Tammerson; and I knew it would take forever before I got to go up there. I began to observe the audience. My mother wouldn’t stop smiling... After we lost Donny, I became her only begotten son, therefore... My father looked at me with a little more respect. I had become less boyish in his eyes. And my sister shared attention span between myself and the fiancé, who was sitting next to her. He was too good of a good fellow for law school graduate... Everyone was there, even Mr. Langue, the mail carrier. However, that was not specifically because of me, but because of all those faces he became so familiar with all throughout the time he had been delivering their mail at their homes. I started to look around and saw my friends, the school that I was leaving behind, some of the girls whom I had gone out with in the last four years... so on and so forth. Actually, they were only three and one of them was my third degree cousin. I looked at the sky and the trees that surrounded us and them all seemed to congratulate us on our graduating... And it was then that saw: about thirty yards from our ceremony, another row of seniors and above them a strip that said Class of 1923. I got a little confused at first. Then I looked at the people that were graduating with me, but no one else seemed to have seen that. So I got a little closer and saw another row with a banner right above them that read class of 1929. After that, there was yet another one, the class of 1932. And then, all of a sudden, there were lots of high school graduation ceremonies taking place right there all at the same time. The one that was closest to us in time was the class of 1943, and there were a lot of people there. I looked at my sister and she immediately picked up on the strange vibe coming from my eyes. She tried to see what I was seeing through my eyesight, but she saw nothing beyond the landscape. She, then, realized it was happening again. In these past two years, she watched my interest in paranormal issues grow and, for the second time, she witnessed my reaction before a phenomenon... I kept looking at all the other classes, as mine was moving on in the alphabetical order, calling out people who would get up there, get their diplomas, and then vanish into the horizon.