by Bob Thomson

On Halloween 2007, Bob Thomson received a short uninvited vision: Lady Death appeared, transformed, and departed. He had not been seeking her — he was simply thinking about whether to do something spiritually oriented for the occasion, when she arrived without invitation.

Thomson wrote regularly on alt.religion.shamanism from roughly 2002 to 2010. A French-speaking European practitioner, he documented his spirit encounters with a kind of careful delight — attentive to texture, to shape-shifting, to the personality of the beings he met. This piece is characteristic: brief, precise, slightly amused, and genuinely strange.

The account is notable for what it does not do: it does not explain, moralize, or place the vision within a theoretical framework. It simply reports. Lady Death likes beer. She finds red-haired women particularly fragrant. She will not stop being funny.

Today, I was peacefully thinking about Halloween, wondering if I should do something specifically spiritually oriented, when I got this short vision.

Lady Death appeared to me as the Great Banshee, a very tall lady wearing a long, straight, dark coat with metal buttons. She had the appearance of a very beautiful woman (the type that we call "falsely slim women" in French) at this very moment. She was wearing a funny hat made up of black feathers, of a peculiar kind that looked nearly as if they were made up of some thick, slack wool threads — the shaft being very supple and the barbs, very short.

I understood the meaning of those black feathers on her hat when she transformed into a black crow while I was watching her.

I dared to ask her what she liked the most in Ireland, the land to which this celebration is now linked. Her answer was direct and quick. "Beer", she first said. Then she changed into a skeleton with thick bones and a frighteningly well grinded scythe, obviously still liking the old trick very much.

But it was not all. She then showed me how she liked to frighten young men, especially the most emotional ones. Hum, it looked like I was not so sure about the way she would (voraciously) enjoy them.

The last image that she gave me was a young woman with light red hair and wearing a green loden type coat. Lady Death said she especially appreciated the body odour of redhead ladies. The young woman was dancing in the open, among heather, under the vivid light of the moon, with only a few very light clouds in the sky, which reflected the light of the moon. I then understood that the young woman was a witch.

Happy Halloween, Lady Death!

Colophon

Written by Bob Thomson and posted to alt.religion.shamanism on October 31, 2007. Thomson was a French-speaking European shaman who contributed regularly to the group from approximately 2002 to 2010, documenting a sustained engagement with spirit guides, past lives, and the World Above with precision and occasional humor. This post is among the shortest and most vivid in his archive — a Halloween vision unsought and unrepeated.

Preserved from the Usenet archive for the Good Work Library by the New Tianmu Anglican Church, 2026. Original Message-ID: [email protected].

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