Unexplainable Personal Experiences of a Paranormal Nature

Posted On October 31, 2025 / Written by Dr. Linda Gadbois

It can be a bit difficult to give a name or title to experiences that reside outside our normal everyday awareness and belief system, because they seem to defy a logical explanation. Unexplainable experiences are typically referred to as paranormal, though this term, like most, has been greatly distorted through Hollywood movies, fantasy-oriented storytelling, and religious fanaticism. Part of the problem in talking about or trying to describe paranormal experiences comes in realizing words are designed to describe the material realm and are often not appropriate for describing the spiritual world that underlies and gives rise to the material world.

Words are only approximations and require visualizing as an experience in order to be properly understood. There is no rational or conventional way of explaining or describing paranormal experiences because they seem to defy what we currently belief we know about the nature of what we call reality. I’m going to describe what I experienced in a very direct and intimate manner without providing a scientific explanation, which would simply rob it of its beauty, mystery, and magic. We can only know the spiritual world through direct experience, and while we also produce our own experiences through various forms of mental projection, some experiences transpire completely outside of our ability to mentally create them. So, I’m not going to try and describe my experiences in detail, but simply give a brief description of what transpired and how they occurred.

I’ve had many experiences that can be classified as paranormal, all of which came in a completely natural and unexpected way, but the ones I’m going to describe here are a few that were personal and saved my life or prevented events that would have drastically changed the course of my life. A few came as a state of mind that took over in moments when I was traumatized and beside myself, not knowing what to do, while others occurred through what can only be explained as divine intervention. I’m not going to describe premonitions or prophecies, which fall into a different category altogether, but rather events or happenings that transpired of their own accord without my participation or willed action. These experiences resulted from what I later came to call divine providence, where my higher will took over in situations that would have ultimately diverted me from my life’s course.

The first one I remember clearly came when I was around 6 or 7 years old. I had 3 older brothers, and a younger sister who was mentally retarded, and we lived in a two-bedroom house, where all five of us kids slept in the same bedroom. I shared a double bed with one of my brothers, and my mom decided I was getting to old to sleep with my brothers, and because she couldn’t trust them, she decided to put me in a room in the basement, which was unfinished and had a backdoor that faced an alley with a hook-lock on it. I was terrified of being alone in the dark and spent the better part of the night wrapping myself in blankets so nothing would get me, while having constant nightmares. After a short time of being alone in what seemed like a dungeon, a woman started appearing who sat on the edge of my bed, caressing my forehead, singing lullabies and telling me she was watching over me so there was nothing to be afraid of. This wasn’t a childhood fantasy, and I was never told that there was such a thing as guardian angels, she simply appeared, vivid and clear, with the sole purpose of protecting and comforting me. After a year or so, I was walking into my room one day, when suddenly I heard a voice call my name. It wasn’t like a voice in my head, it was an actual voice, and it scared me. I ran upstairs, afraid to go back down, and that was the last time she came to me.

Another time, we were at the beach in California, I was around 7 or 8 years old, and we were all out swimming, when the lifeguards started calling everyone back because tidal waves were forming. I heard them on their loudspeaker, but one of my brothers was out so far, I didn’t think he could hear them, because he continued to swim out further, so I decided to swim out and get him. We used to dive under the waves so we wouldn’t be thrown around by them, and as I was swimming out, I kept looking back at the shore and saw the lifeguard up on his platform and there was no one else anywhere near me, everyone was getting out of the water and on the beach. A large wave was coming at me, so I dove under it, and instead of popping out the other side, was tossed around and I started spinning in circles, losing my bearings. When I stabilized myself, the water was murky and dark with sand, and I couldn’t tell which way was up or down. No matter which way I went, I couldn’t find the surface. I reached a point where I couldn’t hold my breath anymore, and was about to inhale water, when suddenly two guys grabbed my arms, one on each side, and lifted me straight out of the water. I was shocked and relieved and couldn’t figure out how they got there that fast.  

This same guardian spirit began assisting me when I started running away from home and was alone on the streets at 12 years old. One event occurred without me being aware that it was happening – where I was walking down the street late at night, and a group of guys were passing by on the opposite side of the street. I tried to be as unnoticeable as I could, keeping my blond hair tuck up under my hat, and they kept starring at me, talking amongst themselves, but kept going. The next day a friend of mine asked me who the guys were that were walking down the street with me. I asked him what he was talking about, because I was alone, and he said there were two big guys, one walking on each side of me. I had no idea what he was talking about, but as soon as he said it, it made perfect sense as to why the guys kept staring at me yet didn’t do anything and kept walking.

Another time, I used to stop on my way home from college and walk around a small lake that had ducks and swans, feeding them bread and seeds that I kept in my jeep. One side of the lake backed up to a large park area, where I walked through a bushy, treed area. It was just starting to get dark and as I walked through the area, when suddenly a voice, clear as day, yelled . . . Linda run! Run! I freaked out and started running as fast as I could, and the voice yelled . . faster! Run faster! I ran and got in my jeep and drove away as fast as I could. It wasn’t until I was several blocks away before I stopped to think about what had happened. I knew that something really bad was about to happen to me, and I was warned.

When I was around 16 or 17, I was diving off a large rock outcropping into a large bend in a river, and as I dove in, I was caught in an undercurrent that started dragging me backwards down the river, fully submerged under the water while being seriously battered by large rocks, one of which almost knocked me out. I was trying desperately to reach the surface for air, but couldn’t, when a voice suddenly said . . . put your left arm out and grab the bar, as I extended my left arm, I hit a bar sticking straight up out of the water. I grabbed the bar, wrapped my arm around it and used it to pull myself out. I was backwards going down the rapids under water and had no idea the bar was there. It saved me moments before I would have drowned.

I had an extremely interesting experience, which to this day I still can’t explain, when I was 19 and was driving with my boyfriend and his mom and brother back to New York to attend a funeral. We lived in Colorado Springs at the time, so it was a long drive, and we were driving straight through, while taking turns driving. I took over driving somewhere around 10 or 11 o’clock at night, while everyone else was sleeping. We had to go through a large city that was a few hours away, and my boyfriend told me to wake him up before I got there so he could show me which turn offs to take. I had never driven that highway or been through those states before. I remember rolling down the windows to let the cool air in to keep me awake while avoiding starring at the white lines on the road, when next thing I knew, my boyfriend was asking me where we were, and why I didn’t wake him up. I felt like I was waking up from a dream and as I looked around I realized the sun was coming up. I didn’t know where we were or how far I had driven and had to wait for a highway sign. When we finally saw a highway sign, I realized I had driven almost 500 miles, through two major cities, and had absolutely no recollection of it. If I had fallen asleep, which is the most obvious explanation, something or someone else . . . drove the car. I never said anything or told my boyfriend what had actually happened, because I didn’t think he would believe me, and I felt completely disoriented because of the experience. I was completely confused about what had happened.

Another surreal event, which my husband, who was the one driving the truck also experienced, occurred when I was around 32 or 33 years old, as we were casually driving down a back road in our pickup truck. We saw a friend of ours riding his bike just as we were about to go around a hairpin turn in the road, and my husband waved saying something to him, and when we turned back to look at the road, another car was coming around the curve in the opposite direction, and overshooting the curve, the hood of both of our cars literally passed through each other. I saw it and when I looked at him, he had a shocked look on his face and said “did you see that?”. I knew he had seen the same thing. We were stunned and left speechless. We didn’t even know how to talk about it. It was mysterious and magical. I knew in that moment that the reason it happened was because we weren’t meant to be in a head-on collision, and some form of higher power prevented it. There was absolutely no way to logically explain what or how it happened.

While a few of these experiences, especially when I was young, may be chalked up to mental phenomenon associated with my own higher mind, the later events completely defy explanation. Most of them came as a means of saving my life or preventing a tragedy that wasn’t meant to happen, or that would have drastically changed my life path. This brought me face to face with the idea of divine providence, karma, and the true meaning of divine intervention, and what our “higher will” is referring to. These were experiences where something or someone stepped in and “took over” to prevent something from happening that wasn’t meant to happen. I had many experiences that came as a vision or premonition around a future event that I recognized and tried to work with consciously to change, only to have it transpire in a different way, but those come as a different type of experience. The experiences I described here occurred more as a form of divine intervention that transpired outside of my awareness and served to protect me, warn me, and prevent events that were not meant to happen.

While I can’t explain any of this in a rational manner, I did experience it in a very direct and intimate manner, and each time it caused me to venture deeper into psychic phenomena, where I began contemplating possibilities and researching it to try and find an explanation. But there wasn’t much written about paranormal experiences when I was a kid, and all my research was done at the library, where one source simply gave clues that led to another source, and it formed a path into the unknown that resembled an investigation or treasure hunt. Every time I tried to talk to someone about what I had experienced, they either thought I was crazy or just making stuff up, so I simply quit talking about it, while continuing to pursue it on my own.

Dr. Linda Gadbois     

Transpersonal Psychologist, Personal Transformation Coach, and Spiritual Teacher