Bide One’s Time: Willard David Firestone and the River Ghost
Willard David Firestone (1909 – 1979) was my Uncle. He educated me in the subjects of ancient religions, paranormal, occult, magick, and the supernatural as I was growing up. He gave me a sound, solid approach to what and who Jesus Christ was, and what the message of Jesus was. That Jesus’ message was influenced by Vedantic tradition did not fully become evident to me until I was older. A composer and stride jazz pianist, Uncle Willard was in his own right a gifted clairvoyant. Being clairvoyant was his secret side which I knew, and respected.
Uncle Willard and his mother, Archie Blythe Firestone, owned a cabin near the river located not far from Turner’s Station, Missouri. This was not many miles from the city of Springfield. He taught me how to fish, use of the bow and arrow, and how to shoot a rifle and handgun at his cabin. I recall the old wood plank swing that was tied to the limb of a huge gnarled tree, and the times I enjoyed swinging on it, my hands clutched tightly on the ropes of each side of the plank, Uncle Willard’s gentle pushes never too hard or too high! I remember the soft summer wind whispering in my ears as I went ever higher. Those and other precious memories remain intact with me. In many ways, my uncle was both father and mother to me, treating me as his own son. During his lifetime, he remained devoted to his childhood sweetheart, but he never married her. He always joked he was married to his music!
Uncle Willard first told me about the river ghost when I was fourteen years old. As the cabin he owned looked almost directly over the river, it was a short walk down to the water. On the twentieth day of each month, around noon, a figure in a long wood boat would come paddling down the river only to vanish approximately 350 yards past his cabin docking area. Uncle Willard said he saw the ghost several times over the years and came to know the day and time it would pass then vanish. The man paddling the boat wore the clothes of a farmer, had a black beard, and wore a wide-brimmed white hat and white shirt. Uncle Willard believed the man had drowned in a river accident near the cabin but was not able to locate any data on the matter. He told me that one day the boat and man paddling it never came, and he never saw them again on the river.
“Ghosts and the waves of time compliment each other,” Uncle Willard once told me. Looking back on this incident reminds me of how truewhat he was saying is. He also told me: “Reincarnation is the continuation of the dream because the soul is immortal and never dies.”
