BLOG3: SAVANNAH HARDING & JAKE HAHN

Savannah Harding was on the bus route I had going to school every morning for about 8 years. From the time I was about 7-8 to middle school when she stopped taking the bus. We rode on one bus together for many years. She lived across the road from the house I grew up inside.

This was when we were growing up from 2010-2016 or so. Once I had decided to change schools one April, my path and hers diverged.

We saw each other regularly in passing each other nearly every day of the week getting on and off the bus across the road from each other.

I knew she was a personality. Driven by something. At first I mistook this drive for intolerance. It was actually her filter. Like she had been through the kind of hard events that challenge a person beyond casual perceptions.

She was an intuitive protector. Empathic. A big sister energy. When I was lonesome on the route sitting by myself and listening to music while being harassed by some of the littler kids, Savannah stepped in to get them off of me. I appreciated that gesture. I felt that she understood. This was a time in my life where I felt vulnerable. Especially because it demonstrated her spirit to me and that she would do that for someone she didn't need to. It told me a lot about who she genuinely was.

She was also a really funny girl. Laid back. Enjoyed having fun. I remembered all sorts of moments she was a riot to be around. She was in love with her life and at ease over the rest of it. She knew she could release what she couldn't control, similar to myself. I feel she learned to do that sooner before I did because she ultimately sacrificed, I did not.

She was one of if not the first person I ever added on SnapChat when I had a new one in 8th grade. It felt cool to grow. I appreciated connecting with my neighbors in the way I never knew was possible before trying and questioning my surroundings. That was a way for me to break the matrix in two. Part of that felt like the ultimate loss of her life. The heavy, palpable grief I felt for months afterwards. Grief.

In the meantime I was fighting multiple demons of my ownin 2024, the thick of it. I appreciated her moments of support and kindness as a kid and didn't realize how much I valued it. The loss forced me to reexamine my home life there. I really didn't know what to expect returning to their family home and I was more intimidated by Savannah than anything, because I knew she was fierce. I didn't know why, but I do now.

I was afraid of binding energies and attaching spirits. Not wanting baggage. This kept us at a distance from one another in an unhealthy way.

To know I would be older than she was on my 23rd birthday, that she'd be forever 22 -- left me feeling tremendously guilty.

I never had the fortune of knowing Jake Hahn personally. I was happy for them when I saw they had plans to become married. It seemed like Savannah was settling into a life of her own, a chance at peace finally. Her family believed in the both of them and their love for each other. One would not have lived without the other, by the accounts I have heard. They went together to watch their son grow alone. They protect him as guides in spirit. Real guides. Guides don't play around.

I remembered she was intensely resilient. And personally driven. She went on after we diverged to go through a nursing program and graduate high school. Some time after that, she met Jake and they had plans for a baby soon. Their one and only was named Beckett. Beckett was not with the both of them the night of the crash.

However, that December night was a cataclysm for the little boy.

The loving parents he knew for 9 months were lost in a fiery crash.

The night I learned what happened, I went out to the stars and talked to them. It was what I always did talking to the dead. I talked to the stars.

When I left my old life behind, I talked to their spirits. Spirit responded. I told Savannah and Jake that their boy would be looked after. I stood in the fridgid air, grief stricken and delirious, as I watched three small, large, medium shooting stars individually cross paths right where I was looking at the sky. The exact spot. I knew it was a sign from the divine. Not only that they were okay, but a comforting blanket of warmth in knowing it was part of the universe's story. Part of my own story. A part of the apocalypse faced in loss and grieving friends met with a little bit of relief in that God planned all of this to happen, the good and the bad. My faith showed me the path forward in rectification.

The repeating generational trauma that comes with being orphaned young. The pride that comes with being a beloved son of two young, late family members and parents. Only to grow up with them in spirit.

The day after I learned what happened, I went and visited their home. I knocked on the door and was met with her step father. I let them know I was there to give my condolences and to speak to her mother. When I walked in and got to talk to her stepfather, brother, and sister for a brief moment, I was quickly rushed by a tiny little baby who grabbed me by the hand and walked me straight through the kitchen into the foyer where her mother sat looking at photos. I didn't want to disturb them. It was difficult to confront the fact that Savannah was taken. And that I had been foisted into it by myself and a toddler.

I could feel the heaviness in the home. Like a blanket of dreary sadness. It was understandable and strangely comforting, knowing I could feel the pain as much as any of them. I was feeling it.

She wasn't gone. She didn't leave. She didn't go on her own. She was taken. Taken by a devil's agent in the form of a person.

The devil made Savannah a target because I think she met me along with many others who were marked locally. I didn't know at the time my blood curse still ran locally. She ran into something neither one of us knew the power of. One of my missing family members related to my father's own orphaning and my upbringing without 2/4 biological grandparents.

The result was a missing family member of mine took the life of Savannah and Jake in a freak accident where the driver survived and the two of them did not. It was a drunk lady who didn't care and now she's serving the time for it. I was perplexed and grief stricken by yet another death hex in my life following the death of my grandpa. The devil was trying to get my attention through taking my friends one by one until it called me right back home -- to the house across the street. The underworld had a bounty on my head.

One I couldn't have known was there as a kid.

It made unmistakable calls to me once it called me back home.

My father was orphaned. I knew the pain and strife that came with that particular generational wound. To hear that little Beckett would not know his mother or father broke my soul for a few years. My friend was here, then she wasn't. A part of her existence still lives on in her son who embody her and his father equally. It reminded me of the infinite scale of the universe.

It knew I was happy for them as a couple to have a child, and it caused a wreck where my happiness was tarnished along with the lives of multiple generations forever. This loss was not one that could be easily unwritten.

I have a feeling my friend's loss may have been the devil calling me back home from distraction.

Savannah was killed with her fiancé Jake Hahn in front of one of my elementary schools known as Lemoyne Elementary. The building is an art gallery now but it was once where I was taught as a preschooler in 2006-07.

It was another landmark of significance to me personally, marked by the devil. My home.

Who was the devil in this case? Samantha Hammons, Savannah and Jake's killer.

Hammons is serving a 15 year sentence for her role in the drink/drive accident in December 2023. This crash changed everybody's lives. And she gets to see the light of day when she's 75. The kid will grow up an orphan and she doesn't care.

The luck to lose both parents felt uncanny. Primarily because I knew what it was like a generation later to have lost parents and known the deficits left behind. It changes the way a person operates in their resources. Now the child of my neighbor had been left one himself.

The family was left with grief. I was too. A lot of time spent to put these broken pieces back in their place. Part of what gave me comfort was hearing from the stars in the moment I needed confirmation. Spirit gave back.

This was part of what strengthened my faith again. That God was good and did exist because of what He had done for me personally after the devil created a great time of loss. Back to back losses.

I could feel the spirits of Savannah and Jake when I saw those shooting stars. They were on cue when I asked for a sign. Spirit reflected my faith back in the stars of various size and direction.

It was a sign. From the divine itself. I followed that path. I wish Savannah got to as well. But I hear from her guides in the afterlife.

I have had the name "Savannah" appear in my readings multiple times. We weren't connected by family that I was aware of, but I without question knew and saw her spirit before she left and I recognized it when her guides comforted my grief. It was real.

Even in spiritual terms, I miss her presence. I miss knowing she walked the earth and did good for others in her life. It pains me she was lost with her partner so soon.

Rest In Peace Savannah Harding & Jacob Hahn

Source: WTOL "Community shows support for infant whose parents were killed in Wood County crash Saturday"