IAN HOLLOWAY has claimed he had a ghostly encounter which caused him to think his late father visited him from beyond the grave.
The former Blackpool and Crystal Palace manager insists that his dad would mess with his car by “moving the dials” and playing songs by Mariah Carey.
Holloway, 60, says that the incident with his old man Bill happened during his playing days when he was at QPR in the 1990s.
He told the Life Lessons podcast: “My dad was an old-fashioned sort of, ‘Oh yeah, I don’t know if you pass you go somewhere else,’ or what have you. ‘I don’t believe in any of that, when your time’s up, your time’s up.’
“They actually resuscitated him three times, he was having massive heart attacks and they brought him back. And every time he came back they’d allow us back round his bed to see him.
“And on two out of the three occasions he said, ‘What are you doing? I was going to the light. I don’t need to be here. I’ve got to go, it’s my time to go.’ Honestly, and that’s so unlike him.
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“So I still have to drive up and down to QPR, you know, I wanted to try and better myself, and unfortunately being from Bristol, and our clubs not getting to the level I wanted them to, I had to leave my home town and drive however far up to London to play in the top flight.
“I had this digital music player in my car. I looked at it, and there was something on the steering wheel but I didn’t touch it because my hands were nowhere near it, and the light that came in the car – it totally filled the car up.
“And I looked outside and it was sunny outside, so I thought, ‘That’s weird.’ And then Mariah Carey and the song [One Sweet Day] was on and ‘shining down on me from Heaven’ got louder and louder and louder until it was completely top notch.”
Holloway revealed that he was left “shaking” and believing that it was his dad sending him a message from the other side.
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“I saw it go from 10 up to about 35 and it was deafening. And the minute the song finished that went right back down to normal.
“And I was looking at myself going, ‘Oh my…’ I was shaking. I thought, ‘Has that really happened or what? Or is that me wishing that?’ Do you get what I mean? And I swear he came and showed me that, ‘Don’t worry son, you’ll be fine.’ Right?
“Now, I would never have believed that, I wouldn’t have thought for one minute that he would have ever have done that because he said it was all a load of garbage.
“So the truth is, I don’t know. And did I feel it? Did I want to feel it? Was it really there? I cannot honestly tell you. But I swear to you, I saw the dial move on its own.”
The former Premier League boss also claimed that his white witch wife Kim was also visited by his dad in her dreams.
He also admitted that he was again visited by his dad on the day that he died while driving to a match.
He added: “I left the night he died. I couldn’t stand his long drawn-out breath, they call it the death rattle. It’s awful and anyone who’s lost someone they love, it’s absolutely horrendous. You’re waiting for them to take their last breath.
“I had to go. It was half seven in the morning. We’d been there all night and I was playing that very night. So I went home, laid down, tried to have a sleep. My family came in and told me he’d passed, then I had a sleep, then I got up and drove to the game.
“And as I was driving, I swear to you, I felt all weird again, you know, and I looked and I swear, there was an indentation in the seat – it looked like his ass was sat on the seat.
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“And that day I played, right? I told [manager] Gerry [Francis] what happened. My team-mates didn’t know. And we won, I think it was 4-0, and I score and I completely broke down after the game, completely and utterly.
“And Gerry, he never told you ‘well done’ normally, but he actually said how proud he was of me and he told the lads that my dad Bill had passed away. But I swear to you, everything was going wrong for me in my life, but I felt he was in my boots that day.”
Source: Soccer - thesun.co.uk
