A friend of mine told me this and I think it might have been in the news too. It happened a long time ago, maybe about 10-15 years ago. This happened to a friend of my friend’s mother.

I don’t remember the friend’s name but lets call her Caroline. Caroline has been afraid to fly since she was a little girl. She never ever flew in a plane in all her life. She lived in Los Angeles and one day she received news that her mother had passed on. Consequently, she has to go back to her parents’ place for the funeral. The thing is, her parents lived in New York and it would take her ages to get there if she drives. So, for the first time in her life, she had to take a flight.

After some convincing and persuasion, Caroline finally got on the flight. I can’t remember the flight number or the airlines though. Anyway, she was sitting on the wrong seat, which was a window seat in first class. The flight attendant came by afterwards with a man who was supposed to sit in that seat. He offered that seat to Caroline. She was about to accept until she glanced at the flight attendant. She shook her head indicating ‘no’. So Caroline declined.

The flight went smoothly. Everything seemed fine. Caroline started to feel much better. Nevertheless, she still wondered why the Attendant didn’t want her to sit on the window-seat. She was puzzled but what the heck, it was nothing important anyway. As she sat comfortably in her First Class seat, enjoying the great service she was getting, a man in uniform walked up towards her. She thought it must be the pilot and he told her it was a lot safer to have her seatbelt on when she’s sitting because they were going to encounter some turbulence. She put on the seatbelt and thanked the man. She told the man sitting next to her how nice the captain was. The man, who was confused, said he never see the pilot in the cabin throughout the flight or even any man in uniform, as a matter of fact.

Confused, Caroline got up and went to the bathroom. She heard the captain announced that they were heading towards some turbulence and asked everyone to return to their seats. She rushed to her seat and fastened her seatbelt. Once again, she consulted the man next to her about the announcement and told him to put his seatbelt on. The man said there was no announcement from the captain and pointed out that there were still people walking around the cabin. Then, she saw the same flight attendant again. In her mind, Caroline could hear the woman telling her to tighten her seatbelt. She did just that and sat down quietly wondering what was going on.

Suddenly, there was a loud explosion and she saw bright lights. It turned out that there was a hole right next to her. The man next to Caroline was sucked right out of the hole together with about ten other passengers. Caroline, with her seatbelt tightly fastened, survived. She could have been the one to be sucked out of that window if it weren’t for her ‘guardian angels’.

Did she really hear the captain and the flight attendant telling her to put on her seatbelt? Who are the pilot and flight attendant? Or, who sent them to help Caroline? Her dead mother did? Nobody knows but it’s a pretty weird experience.