Clip & Redeem: Coupon Messages From The Dead

Poweshiek: Muriel Heckman, age 42, waits in a rattan chair in an enclosed front porch of this nondescript Ottawa City house. In her hand she holds a pair of dog food coupons.

     To some it might appear as if she is waiting for a friend to go shopping but her staring expression and jittery way she pats the chair's arm tells an all too different story. She has come to see Mrs. Anna Smith, an 81 year old widow, who reads messages from the dead in grocery store coupons.

     "The first time it happened was right after my Arlen crossed over back in '79," Mrs. Smith explains. "I was sorting through coupons, throwing out the ones that were no good anymore and I found one for pasta. But instead of just saying 'Expires 5/15', this one said 'I'm okay Anna & I love you.' I thought I'd had a stroke."

     Believing she was overwrought from her loss, she ignored the message, but over the next six weeks, the phenomena persisted. Friends stopping by to visit her said they saw nothing unusual about the coupons she asked them to examine. Mrs. Smith grew more worried until on Memorial Day that year, she read an orange juice coupon in the newspaper that said "Call Police at 9 PM!---Arlen"

     "Well, I didn't know what to think. Every coupons I saw that morning had the same warning. Even when I went to the store and looked through the ones in the exchange bin; all of them said 'Call Police at 9 PM!---Arlen' Now, Lord knows I tried to put it out of my mind, but something that weird is just too much. So at 9 PM I decided to call the police and tell them I had heard a prowler outside. Well, I had scarcely hung up the phone when I heard glass breaking and the kitchen door open! Two teenagers had broken into my house. Both of them wore dungarees and one of them had his hair up into one of those mohawks like those skateboard delinquents on the Ped Mall in Iowa City. He pushed me on the floor and yelled for my money. I informed him he might get a cookie if he asked nicely. That's when the police stormed in and arrested them. Since then, I've never doubted what I've read on a coupon."

     Mrs. Smith soon discovered she could read coupon messages from others Beyond the Veil when their loved one brought her a coupon they themselves had clipped out. Mrs. Heckman heard of Mrs. Smith not long after losing her husband Russell in a manure spreader accident this past fall. After nearly two months of uneasy skepticism, she brought a cake mix coupon for Mrs. Smith to examine. Her husband Russell's message was still sweet as ever: "I love you".

     But lately, Mrs. Smith's readings of Russell's messages to his wife have greatly disturbed Mrs. Heckman. While the two dog food coupons she brought to show Mrs. Smith have no expiration date, Mrs. Smith, however, contends she can clearly read "Expiration Date: July 31, 1998".

     When Mrs. Smith asks her if her dog is ill, Mrs. Heckman responds in alarm, "I don't have a dog!"