Today’s article comes to us from Teresa Frith of Alien Eight. Be sure to check out their site!

Fluttering sounds fill the air as the exotically beautiful, black butterfly flits nearer to the sleeping figure on the bed. It lands softly on his head for a few moments, and then silently flies away. The next day, the man in the bed is discovered dead with no noticeable cause.

Could this be an odd twist of fate or was it a nocturnal stopover by a velvety courier of death?

Many places, such as Brazil and Columbia, have legends that speak of black butterflies appearing just before a death or some sort of impending doom.  In one of those legends, the Celts told stories of black butterflies at night signifying death would be there soon to claim a victim and a legend from the Samoans says if you catch and kill a butterfly, you will shortly be killed yourself.

While black is the dominate color of these mysterious butterfly tales, some stories favor the white butterfly as death’s messenger. A custom in Maryland says that if you find a butterfly that’s white flying around in your home, that someone will die soon, and in Maine, if the spring season’s earliest butterfly seen is white, death is going to deal a blow somewhere close by.

Even in recent months, butterflies played a part in what could have been a major tragedy – the Chilean mine collapse. Yet, in this case, a little white butterfly was a good omen, not a bearer of death.

Two of the 33 Chilean miners told a story about a strange incident that happened to them moments before the incident that trapped them and 31 others in a shaft for 68 days.  While driving down into the mine they stopped about 100 meters down because suddenly a little white butterfly appeared before them. It startled them for a minute because they wondered how it had gotten so far underground.

Then, all of a sudden, rocks and debris started falling as the mine started to collapse. After it ended, the two were covered in dirt and debris, but managed to get to the area where the other victims of the collapse were on one of the other levels.

After they were rescued, one of them related a tale told to him by his grandfather, that if someone sees a white animal while they are traveling in the dark it stands for good luck. He added that the little white butterfly must have been an angel because if they had not stopped to look at it, they would surely have driven straight into the avalanche of rocks.

Butterflies are said to mean a form of transformation since they themselves transform mysteriously from a caterpillar to a beauty winged creature. Therefore, maybe the idea that a butterfly can predict if someone is going to die just means that it represents our transformation from life into death, as death can be thought of as a transition of the soul.

There are many mysteries in the world of the paranormal, so, if you see a beautiful butterfly, it may spark your imagination and you may well wonder if it is a messenger of life, death or just another one of God’s little creatures flying by.