Given the task definition and input, reply with output. Read the given story and classify it as 'imagined', 'recalled', or 'retold'. If a story is imagined, the person who wrote the story is making it up, pretending they experienced it. If a story is recalled, the person who wrote the story really experienced it and is recalling it from memory. If a story is retold, it is a real memory like the 'recalled' stories, but written down much later after previously writing a 'recalled' story about the same events. So, recalled stories and retold stories will be fairly similar, in that they both were real experiences for the writer. Imagined stories have a more linear flow and contain more commonsense knowledge, whereas recalled stories are less connected and contain more specific concrete events. Additionally, higher levels of self reference are found in imagined stories. Between recalled and retold stories, retold stories flow significantly more linearly than recalled stories, and retold stories are significantly higher in scores for cognitive processes and positive tone.

A couple of months ago, I participated in a session with a medium that allowed me to communicate with a dear friend that I had lost. At the start of the session, I admit I was skeptical. The only reason I was doing it is because it was gifted to me; it wasn't something I would have sought out myself. While I've always been a person who believe in spirits and energy living beyond death, someone actually communicating in real time with someone I'd lost was not something I fully believed in. I have to admit that going into the session, my expectations were fairly low. However, it didn't take more than 10 minutes for my entire outlook to change. After telling the medium who it was I wanted to speak to, they kicked off the process to communicate with them. Without going into too much detail, I can say that within the first few minutes of the conversation, I was sure I was speaking to my friend. One thing that the medium said caused me to burst into tears—my friend knew of the symbol we had created for her after her death. I was also finally given some sort of confirmation that my friend was happier where she was. She said that I didn't need to worry about her, and I was told that she spends time with me sometimes. It's been 3 years since she died, but nothing gave me more relief than this session did. It doesn't make the pain of the death go away, but it absolutely helped with the healing process. I regret now that I waited for so long to take the session out of fear of what I'd hear, because after the fact, I feel that it was the best decision I could have made. I'm so grateful that I even had the opportunity to something like that. I got a sense of closure that many aren't lucky enough to have, and it made a profound difference on my general outlook.

retold