My Witchy Oma: Fun Stories About Intuitive Abilities

My witchy Oma as a young lady. You can sense her intuitive abilities in her gaze.

“There.”  The young girl pointed to a spot on the ground where she knew they would find water for the well they were digging.

This witchy young girl was my Oma, my German grandmother.  She always knew where to find water underground, and she often knew what was going to happen before it happened.  Sounds great, right?  But my Oma called it “the curse”.  People thought she was strange, including her own mother, who used to spank her whenever she said something that she shouldn’t have been able to see or know.  But the spanking couldn’t “cure” my witchy Oma of her intuitive abilities.  

The burning apartment

While my Oma was still a young girl, she had a vision that the apartment building where they lived in Germany was going to burn down in a war; she could see every detail of the burned-down building.  But there was no war in sight, and her mother ignored her.  My Oma eventually repressed the vision.  But a few years later, the vision returned with such force that her mother, who by that time had accepted my Oma’s gift of intuition, sold their apartment building and bought a house in the suburbs.  When Hitler came to power and World War II was upon them, their former apartment building burned down just as my Oma had seen it happening.  Their new home was spared.

The derailed train

Fast-forward to when my Oma married my Opa.  He quickly learned to appreciate her intuitive gifts.  My Oma was not a worrier, but one day, on the morning of a business trip my Opa had to take, my Oma was overcome with worry.  She told him that he could not go on this trip – something bad was going to happen.  My Opa listened to her.  Good thing!  The train he would have been on derailed into a river, and a few hundred people died.   

The seducer

I never spoke directly with my Oma about her intuitive abilities; it was my mom who told me these stories.  My mom’s favorite story, I think, is about a boy that my mom had the hots for.  Typically, my Oma welcomed any friends or strangers and was happy to have my mom go out with them, but when this boy came to pick my mom up for a date, my Oma took one look at him and said that my mom was sick and couldn’t go out with him.  My mom was shocked by such a blatant lie!  She was not sick, only smitten by the young man and ready to be seduced.  In the end, he got another girl pregnant.

The future son-in-law

My favorite story is about a dream-like vision my Oma had.  Her teenage son, my mom’s older brother, had just died of kidney failure.  My Oma was inconsolable.  One night when she was sitting up in bed, full of grief, her son appeared in a light fog.  He was utterly peaceful.  Then another person slowly entered the fog.  Her son seemed to introduce him without words, more as if in a dance.  As the stranger came into focus, her son slowly disappeared.  The next day, my Oma put on colorful clothes and returned to her usual cheer.  My Oma described this experience to my Opa, including a detailed description of this man, who had quite distinct features and was easy to recognize.  They speculated that he was to join their family in some way – perhaps he would be the man to marry their older daughter, my aunt.  Several months later, my aunt brought this exact man home.  My Opa saw him first and hurried over to my Oma just in time to catch her as she fainted.  My aunt did marry this man, and he became an integral part of the family. 

How do you react when you hear stories like these about intuitive abilities? 

Sure, some cases could be dismissed as a coincidence, a lucky guess, plain good sense, or even a mistake.  Maybe the boy who was trying to take my mom out on a date reminded my Oma of someone with a bad reputation.  Maybe both my Oma and Opa were simply mistaken about the man from my Oma’s vision being the spitting image of the man their daughter, my aunt, ended up marrying – they were both, after all, grief-stricken at the time.  Anyone who doesn’t believe that it’s possible to know things through intuition or other similar witchy abilities is going to be able to find a way to dismiss these kinds of stories, even if the evidence is overwhelming.  Personally, though, I am intrigued by them.    

The painted wife

I also love this story about my aunt (the one who married the man from my Oma’s dream-vision).  She was very fond of her uncle, who was shell-shocked from WW1 and a confirmed bachelor.  My aunt felt sorry for him living alone, so she painted him a colorful oil portrait of a make-believe wife and hung it in his home.  Not too long after, a friend visited his home and wondered about the portrait of this woman.  “I know her,” he said.  Long story short, the friend introduced her to my uncle, and they ended up marrying.  They had five children in rapid succession and a long-lasting, if not always entirely harmonious, marriage.  My mom met this woman and confirms that she was the spitting image of the woman in the portrait painted by my aunt. 

I wish I had some interesting witchy stories to tell about my mom, but that’s not the path her life took.  Though sometimes I wonder, because she seems to know more than she lets on…  But I’m grateful that my mom shared my Oma’s witchy stories with me.  They made great stories for me growing up, and they still haven’t lost their appeal for me now, as I ponder more deeply why my Oma hated her intuitive abilities, why some people react negatively to such stories, and why I am so interested in them.