Theresa Lewis

Back in 1963, about a month after my twentieth birthday, there was a plane crash. TCA flight 831 crashed about twenty miles north of Montreal, in the St. Therese de Blainville area, at 18:33 hours. I lived with my family about thirty miles from the crash site, and had been in a dead sleep at the time.

Suddenly, my sleep was abruptly terminated by the extreme vibration of the impact as the plane hit the ground coupled with the enormous flash of the fireball that lit up my bedroom. I shot off the bed and stood shaking with fear. My heart was pounding out of my chest. I held my head in my hands and that’s when I saw the mind boggling size of the debris field, but all was silent and still. It was like staring at a black and white photograph of a disaster area. The only movement I saw was smoke plumes billowing up from the debris.

As soon as I was able to gather my wits, I ran downstairs to see my parents who were engrossed in conversation. I interrupted them and demanded to know what had just happened. Both parents looked askance at each other then they looked blankly at me. I was surprised when they said nothing had happened. I couldn’t understand how they had neither heard the blast that seemed to shake the whole house, nor had they seen the flash of light.

I told them of the blinding fiery flash that lit up my room as well as the earth shattering vibration that blew me out of bed. They could see that I was traumatized, but they didn’t seem to believe me when I told them about seeing the huge debris field. At that moment, I wasn’t aware that there had been a plane crash. I just didn’t know what had happened.

As I sat discussing the event with my parents, I kept getting flash images of my boyfriend in an open Jeep with other people in it. I didn’t know what it all meant. After some time, my mother convinced me to go back to bed. I knew that whatever had happened, they hadn’t heard a thing. Maybe they were right and it was just a nightmare after all. 

The next morning, I called my boyfriend to ask him what happened the night before, but there was no answer.

I finally heard from him late the next night. He told me about the plane crash. I asked him if he was there. He said he, his sister and two friends drove up to the sight in the friend’s Jeep. By the time they reached the vicinity of the crash, police were there and had cordoned of the area to keep people from getting close to the crash site. That validated everything I had seen and experienced.

What really troubled me was that what I had seen, hadn’t happened until the next afternoon. I was also  troubled by the fact that I was privileged to have had that experience. Little did I know that this was going to be what my life would be like from then on .

THE END