Butterfly People
Children are really quite amazing and very creative. They play in imaginary lands, talk to imaginary people and experience a whole world that we adults care not to experience anymore. And despite once experiencing the realities of imaginaries, we adults pay no attention to the things that children see that we cannot, and most often blame their imagination. We say that their brain does not yet know how to explain what it is experiencing and manifests false experiences with Boogie Men, monsters, ghosts, aliens and other such oddities that can be considered a reality to the child. As likely as this is true, is it not possible that the imagination is not always responsible for these experiences and that they are indeed sometimes real?
Last May’s tornado season was exceptional seeing 180 tornadoes in the span of a week. On May 22nd, Joplin, Missouri witnessed the most deadly tornado in the US since 1947. The tornado took 161 lives and over 900 homes, but it left some amazing stories from many of the surviving children. Stories of Butterfly People.
I’m sure I already lost most of my audience and have to quickly interject that these children came from many different homes with different backgrounds, different religions , different ages … but yet shared very similar stories. And these stories don’t necessarily come from the children, but from the therapists helping them deal with their trauma, who did not believe the stories at first but due to the overwhelming amount of them from such a diverse group of children, were left questioning things themselves…
A 2½ year-old girl and her father were stuck in a car during the tornado. When the girl was asked to share her experience, she said that her, her father and the butterfly people were in the car. Her father corrected her saying that it was just the two of them in the vehicle. “No, Daddy… There were butterfly people in the car with us!”
A man and his two sons were trapped in winds that ripped the soles from his shoes. The two boys saw butterfly people hovering over them offering protection. The father did not.
One mother and her daughter were caught outside and while trying to find cover, the mother sees the wind hurtle a car at them. She braces for impact, but the car never hit them. “Weren’t they pretty?” the daughter asks. When seeing her mother’s confusion, the daughter inquires, “Didn’t you see the butterfly people?” The mother didn’t see any butterfly people, but admits to feeling protected. (This story has variations of the daughter saying that the butterfly people were also ferrying men and women into the sky)
Individually, it is quite easy to question the validity and reality of a child seeing butterfly people. But let’s listen to some of the other stories that don’t involve the Butterfly People and notice what word is used instead…
A father was in his car with his son as it was being tossed around by the wind. The father looked up as a car was flying at them. The boy described the incident as two big angels held the car back and that they never got hit. The father did not seeing the angels, but witnessed the miracle.
Immediately after the storm, a deputy spotted a 4 year-old boy alone in the middle of a field. When questioned, the unharmed boy said he was picked up by the storm 6 miles away! And that “The angels brought me and set me down here.”
There’s another story of a child ending up unscathed by being completely wrapped in a carpet “like a burrito”. The family had no idea of where the carpet was from. The boy recalled seeing a man with brown hair while he was wrapped in the carpet. This story spread as divine intervention. The mother fears that the boy saw the dead body of their neighbor, and that that is where the carpet must have come from.
But not only children had stories of unimaginable proportions. One woman was trapped in her vehicle wrapped around a pole. A man in the backseat said that he would get her out. The man managed to exit the vehicle and pulled the woman out of the wreckage. It was only until after the man walked away to help someone else did the woman realize that there never should have been a man in the backseat.
One story involved a large group trapped in the basement of a church that had all 4 walls collapse on top of them. Six large men arrived to their rescue and lifted the 4 walls of the church allowing them to exit. Once everyone climbed out of the basement, the six men left saying that they had to go dig others out. Rescuers arrived later and were in disbelief of the story that they heard as there was no way that 6 men could lift the weight of the 4 walls.
Now the Butterfly People stories do not stop here, and there are many significant butterfly “coincidences” to go along with them. One of these coincidences was that the city of Joplin hired an artist to paint a mural on a wall, and one of the citizens suggested a Butterfly People theme. The artist didn’t like the idea and still says that the Butterfly People stories had absolutely no influence on his art. I’m left wondering if maybe the Butterfly People had more influence on his mural than he did…
(you’ll have to look closely by clicking on the picture, and then clicking on the picture in the new window that opens up, but there is an abundance of butterflies, and even a butterfly person!)
Of course you can easily argue each of these stories from the safe recluse of wherever you are (somewhere behind this screen in front of me…), but in reality (a.k.a. from my perspective) there are only two explanations… A bunch of miracles happened that day, or there’s no such thing as miracles and that the city of Joplin has an immense population of liars and crazies. Which is really the more likely scenario?
by DJ Mikey Bones on Jan.15, 2012
I am impressed that the butterfly people, or angels or fairies have chosen to be seen in such abundance to validate that miracles occur, that there is magic in the air and there is hope. I enjoyed this, good writing too. My rhetorical question is how come we don’t hear about this on the common media? Do you have citations as to your reports? Keep the stories coming.