Sid Hopkins died from injuries he sustained after falling out of a tree. He awoke on the other side in the parlor of the home where he and his wife first lived as newlyweds where he saw his wife pouring him a cup of tea. He didn't remember, at first, that she had been dead for 12 years. After a while, someone enters the room whom he had forgotten about: his son who had died in infancy. Now, however, he was a healthy young man around 19 or 20. When his son takes him out into the garden, an old furry friend comes up to greet him.

 

Quicktime

 

Text of Sid Hopkin's seance

All I know is I woke up and I was sitting in the parlor of nice little place, and there was my wife and she was pouring me out a cup of tea. May sound funny now, but that's what happened.

She says, "I suppose you could do with that." She says, "Well, you're all right." . . . "You know you're dead, don't you" just like that you know. She had a nice way of talking about me. I guess I don't call that love. I said "What did you say?" She said, "Dead.”

“Dead!? Dead!?" I said, "Don't be so silly. I'm not dead." She said, "Well you must be dead. You're here with me. You know I died 15 years ago."

It suddenly struck me odd, I don't know what to think. Of course she had died, but she was wrong about the time. Actually it was only about 12 years ago. I thought, well, I'll never get this, you know, for crying out loud. I'm dead. She's sitting there. But she was so real, you know. And she looked like she used to look when she was, oh, in her early twenties, after we first been married.

And I looked around the room and I realized the room was, well, it was a room that was ever so familiar to me when we were first married. Just the same, the same furniture, same crockery on the sideboard, curtains, everything was all familiar. I suppose the old familiarity you might say the whole set up, you know, it was so natural, it was so real that I didn't think for a minute that I was dead. I didn't even feel nothing, I didn't even realize that I was dead.

But of course when she said, "You know, I died," well I thought "Good Lord. What's happening here? And I thought, "This is all some dream and I should wake up presently." She said, "You know, you're dead." I said, "I can't be dead." I said, "How could I be dead? Look at you, and the room and everything." I said, "It's just not right, you know, this is all a dream."

She says, "This is no dream." She says, "You're dead, you see." So I said, "No, no." She said "Well, anyway, don't worry about it. Just relax," she says, "Be quiet, and we'll just rest for a few moments. Drink your cup of tea. Don't worry." It's all so funny she's talking to me about drinking tea. I've never heard of them drinking tea up in heaven.

So I thought, no, this is just a dream and I'll wake up, you know. Anyway, we sat there and the next thing I knew was, there was a young fellow came in, oh I think he was, about, looked about 19 or 20, tall, fair, you know, nice looking boy. I thought, "All right, you know, I don't know you mate." He came in, and he came up to me and put his arm around me and says, "Hello Dad." Well, of course that was the last straw. I says, "Dad, What do you mean Dad? I ain't got no son, never had no sons."

And my wife says to me, she says, "You know we did." She says, "You know, he died in infancy. This is Paul." I says, "What?" "Paul," she says, "Don't you remember that little boy that we had that died very soon after, a few days after." I said, “Ah, how could that be?" I said, "In any case, look at him, he's tall and grown up." She says, "Yes, he's grown up over here."

I said, "I don't understand all this." He says, "Dad, never mind," he says, "You will know. You just sit down and we'll look after you. Don't worry.” You know that sort of talk he was giving me, I thought well, when he said I'm dead I had to sit down, you know. I'll just wake up. It's all a dream.

He says to me, he says, "Come," he says, "Let's go outside." So, I thought, we'll take a little walk. It was a nice little garden, a Swedish garden. I always wanted a nice garden. When we were early married, we did have a nice little place. We were lucky, you might say, we had a little bit of money, not a lot. But I did get some from my parents. This was a nice garden. In my early years I used to work around in the garden. Anyway it was all beautifully laid out, beautiful flowers, oh, marvelous, and perfume.

There was an old tree, and I remembered that tree because we had that same selfsame tree in our garden. It smelled so sweet in our garden. We sat down there and the birds was coming and we seen, then I saw a dog, a little dog. Well, that really was the last straw, really. I thought, “Well I don't know, that's old Jimmy, our Jimmy," so I says to him "Jimmy," like that, "Jimmy." The dog came up to me and he sat and put his paw up on my lap.

 

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