A sign? Way or No Way?

[easysurfer]

I attended a wake for my friend's brother today. Do you believe in strange/odd things happening shortly after someone's death?

Last night (while I was asleep, around 3 am) my friend was on the computer. She swears she saw her glass of ice tea rise up and make a quarter turn all by itself before resting back down on the table. I tried to be understanding, didn't deny what she saw, but did ask maybe she dreamed it?

So, just a short time ago, the power in her place (I did experience this), went totally off/ then back on about 3 times in a row. That never happened before...The circuit breakers didn't trip, just power out/on.

When my brother's MIL passed years ago, she told him and his then wife that when she goes she'll give a sign with the lights...Of course, when she died, the lights at their place when on/off a few times too.

Coincidence..or something more?

Anyone else have these or other odd happenings shortly after someone's passing?

 

[Khan]

No.

 

[simple girl]

After my sister passed, two strange things happened. We were all sitting outside around a campfire way out in the country (think dirt roads). A car drove past (unusual, especially since it was a remote area and like 2 a.m.), and stopped several hundred feet down the road. Next thing we hear is the car's speakers playing "You Are My Sunshine" extremely loud. My niece then freaked out b/c her mom (my sister) used to sing that song to her all the time when she was little.

Also, a week or so later I was walking along with DH and his friend on a golf course. I suddenly had the feeling that my sister was with me or watching over me. I mentioned it, and DH's friend stopped in his tracks and said "Wow, this is the exact same spot on the golf course where we were when you called to tell DH about your sister's passing."

Of course, both could be just very unusual, strange coincidences. Either way, the incidents were comforting. Who knows.

 

[easysurfer]

When my mom passed several years ago. I was over at a brothers' house. My mom loved her grandkids (like all grandmas, I suppose). Anyhow, at my brother's house a lot of her smaller grandkids (those learning to crawl and barely walking) were there. So as we are talking, my SIL goes to us, "Did any of you place the comforter at the bottom of the steps?" None of us remembered doing that. We thought, maybe it's a sign, or a way of my mom to make sure none of the grandkids got hurt falling down the steps. Who knows?

 

[W2R]

I think that there are a lot of occurrences that have yet to be explained by any scientific inquiry. Which doesn't mean that they never will be, but really there is much that we do not know yet, or even have the slightest clue about at this time. Were I in your position, I would not rule out any comforting possibility.

 

[easysurfer]

After deaths of my Dad, Mom and brother each time I've had dreams that they talked to me from beyond. I guess this is a common occurance. Whether that is just a way of those left behind comforting ourselves or a real event of communication from beyond is left for debate.

The OP was about real concrete instances (such as the lights, or like Simple Girl mentioned, the song from the car), yet the dreams offer comfort too.

 

[Moemg]

After my husband died I was cleaning out a drawer and there was a love letter from him to me that I never saw before . Plus there were times when I felt he was in the house . Before these things happened I would never believed in these things happening .

 

[Rambler]

One morning when I was home from college and doing a summer job at the local dairy, I got this 'oh no' feeling in my heart followed by a sadness that something was wrong with my grandpa. Since they lived just a few miles from us, I decided to go check on him at lunch, stopping at home to make a sandwich. When I got home, my brother told me that grandpa had passed. I asked when, and it was just about the same time that those strange feelings had hit me. To make this more interesting, grandpa died the day after the conclusion of a family reunion held in honor of him and grandma, at our farm, and with every single one of his kids, grandkids, and great grandkids in attendance. This was in the summer of '83. Grandma passed 6 months later.

R

 

[Khan]

Our brains supply us with all sorts of crap memories.

 

[Moemg]

Our brains supply us with all sorts of crap memories.

but they are comforting memories !

 

[ERD50]

One morning when I was home from college and doing a summer job at the local dairy, I got this 'oh no' feeling in my heart followed by a sadness that something was wrong with my grandpa...

R

I think these generally fall in the category of selective memory. If you had that feeling, and the next day nothing happened, you forget about it. Or hear a song on the radio, and a connection is made - yet that song has been played many other times. etc, etc.

In the same way, I never notice a certain model of car on the road until I think about buying one. Then all the sudden, I see them (notice them that is) all over. So are we to believe those cars didn't exist until I noticed them? Or I learn a new word, then I suddenly seem to see it pop up here and there.

Now, losing a loved one is much more emotional and has far deeper ties than one model of car over another or a vocabulary lesson - so we amplify these things and they seem so much more 'real' to us.


-ERD50

 

[FIREd]

I have about 20 pictures of family members hanging on the wall above my desk. Shortly after my grandmother passed, one of my cats climbed on the desk and sat right in front of my grandmother's picture. She looked straight at the picture and started howling. The whole scene lasted a few minutes. It was just bizarre.

 

[Sue J]

One of our friends from college died suddenly, much too early, he was only 35. I went to his funeral with a few other friends. It was held out of town so we drove together. We had just left the cemetery after the burial and the car radio kept cutting out. It would play and then go quiet and then come back on. This happened a few times. The driver said he'd never had trouble with the radio before. One of the people in the car was an ex-longtime GF of the man who had died and she just giggled, saying that it's him doing that to the radio.

What's so funny is that we were all atheists, including the man who had died. You'd think that we would have been much too cynical to have this mean anything but really it was quite comforting. It's likely that the radio was unrelated to our friend's death but it's nice to leave it open as a possibility.

 

[haha]

I have had these sort of experiences, and I would like to share them with many members, but they are too important to expose to some other people.

Ha

 

[Alan]

Do you believe in strange/odd things happening shortly after someone's death?

Yes.

The funniest of those was after my mother's father died. My dad and one of my uncles were laying out the body in the bedroom and while my Dad was kneeling by the side of the bed adjusting something when Grandad's hand slipped off the chest and hit him on the back of the head. "Did you do that on purpose, you old bugger?" he said. (Dad was great friends with his FIL). At that point one of the chains holding the bedroom light fixture snapped, so Uncle Jim said, "Was that you as well?". A second chain snapped and they both ran from the room.

 

[easysurfer]

I suppose it might go down to does one believe in an existence (a soul, energy, self, spirit) that survives the physical in this world. Furthermore, if one does, than can it influence physical objects in this word?

The alternative is believing that once one goes, that person goes to nothing.

In that situation about the lights turning on/off which I witnessed. If I was to bet my FIRE savings, I'd say the event was purely coincidence. Yet at the same time, I have to admit that what happened was a bit odd. The circuit breaker didn't trip. There wasn't a storm. The lights turning off/on hasn't happened again since then. They didn't flicker. It was more of turned off, pause for a couple of seconds, turn back on...three times in succession

 

[rescueme]

Anyone else have these or other odd happenings shortly after someone's passing?

Nope...

Of course, I also don't believe in an afterlife. Maybe in both instances, we are "living our expectations".

 

[Nodak]

The day my Mother passed (I was 25 at the time) I had been nervous and worried about her all day. When the phone rang I knew before picking it up that it would be my Dad asking me to come home.

 

[sheehs1]

I've had several "occurrences" of these things after both my Mom and Dad passed...particularly with my Mom. Almost too numerous to detail all of them.
The night she passed, I received a phone call from the person sitting with her at 2:00 a.m. My mom who had wanted to die in her home had changed her mind and wanted to go to the hospital. I call her doctor as I was in charge of her care. There was so much snow and ice none of the ambulances from the hospitals were running. The local first responders were...and 2 hours later...she made it to the ER. My sister...who had a vehicle that would make it in the snow and ice...and who lives near me...would not wait for me to get the call back from the doctor and left me behind as she went to be with my mom at the home (family dynamics are not the best). Had we not been able to get my mom to the ER ..I would not have been able to be there with her. The hospital is less than 2 miles from my home. Roads to my parents house were virtually impassable for my vehicle. She passed away about 2 hours after getting to the ER and I was able to get there. But the strange thing..is that the sitter who called me..insisted she had dialed my sisters number and not mine and insisted it was "divine intervention".
The night before this and early in the morning when we thought she was going to pass away that night, I got a call from my dad. We all made it to the family home. As the sun was coming up...all the birds ...in the general area...came looking thru the glass walls of the sun room...with all the snow on the ground. It was like they converged on it. We were all a bit awe struck. The birds seem to visit me at my house for a long time afterward....which was odd...since there are 3 outdoor cats.
After she passed and for many weeks...I felt "something" pressing on my bed...down by my feet. Just 2 or 3 pushes...pushing down on the mattress. I came to look forward to these pushes (I know...sounds strange huh?). Equally strange...when I told my Dad that Mom was visiting me....it stopped.
As we sat in the church during my Dads service...as soon as the Minister said his name, the lights above him....flickered...almost as if they twinkled..

 

[travelover]

Has a similar experience. My first wife and I were very close to her grandmother. We were away in Florida on vacation and I suddenly felt a sense of pleasant inner warmth. She asked me if I was thinking of her grandmother. I said that I was and she said she was, as well. When we got back we found that her grandmother had died just about the time we sensed her presence.

Another time, first wife was at work and one of our small pets had a kind of fit and was dying. She called to ask what was wrong. She never called from work, so it was very unusual.

 

[WhoDaresWins]

After my husband died I was cleaning out a drawer and there was a love letter from him to me that I never saw before . Plus there were times when I felt he was in the house . Before these things happened I would never believed in these things happening .

Something similar happened to me. My husband died of a massive first heart attack so there is no way he could have planned anything.

I moved six months after his death, and as I was unpacking a box of books, I came upon a book I had never seen before (some friends had done most of the packing up for me). It was called "Make the Connection" by Bob Greene and Oprah Winfrey. I saw a sheet of paper stuck in the book and when I unfolded it, I saw my husband's familiar terrible handwriting. He had jotted down thoughts from the book, numbering them as he went. Stuff like "make each day a little better, try not to make things worse", and "live in the moment! don't always say tomorrow or next week", and "try to find a few moments of happiness and joy in each day", and "be good to yourself" and "take responsibility for yourself, don't blame others for events in your life". I know he wrote these things for himself, but in away, finding them seemed to me like these were thoughts that he wanted to pass along to me at a very difficult time. I get choked up just recounting this.

The other thing that happened was that the night before he died, I heard him get up and go to the bathroom. The house was very quiet and I heard him say very distinctly "Oh, there you are.". He came back to bed and went to sleep. In the morning as he was shaving, I walked in with a cup of coffee for him and I said "I heard you talking to yourself in the bathroom last night and you said 'Oh, there you are', what was that all about?" He looked a little bewildered and replied, "I saw someone standing in a corner and I thought it was you". I told him he better quit with the late night salami sandwiches.

I am not a believer in New Age or psychic stuff but the bathroom incident has really stuck with me, in a good way. Possibly when it is our time, someone we know comes for us. It is a very comforting thought to me, but I hope I don't see any familiar long dead faces in the middle of the night anytime soon. Maybe in thirty years.

 

[GregLee]

I suppose it might go down to does one believe in an existence (a soul, energy, self, spirit) that survives the physical in this world. Furthermore, if one does, than can it influence physical objects in this word?

I am drawn to what Bulwer Lytton proposes in his classic ghost story "The Haunters and the Haunted": nothing survives death, but apparitions are produced always through the medium of the living.

 

[Martha]

My grade school teacher told me to take the bus home with my cousins one day. As we were wildly running around on the bus, just before it got to my cousin's house, I suddenly and with certainty knew that my mother was dead. She in fact had died that day. For several years I felt that this was a premonition. However, I agree with Kahn that our minds play amazing tricks on us. If I consider the circumstances the feeling I had was not surprising at all. My mother was in the hospital having had a heart attack a few days before. I am sure my teacher unintentionally telegraphed to me that something was really wrong. Plus, it was highly irregular to go home with my cousins. No wonder I felt that my mother had died. Now if my mother had not died I probably would have forgot about the premonition. Memories are fluid and faulty. And sometimes comforting.

 

[braumeister]

These sorts of things happen all the time, but they are only seen as significant or coincidental if we experience them close in time to an especially meaningful event such as the death of a loved one.

Humans are pattern-seeking, story-telling creatures who are predisposed to look for meaning and explanations for the natural events we experience. That's pretty much it, IMHO.

 

[Martha]

These sorts of things happen all the time, but they are only seen as significant or coincidental if we experience them close in time to an especially meaningful event such as the death of a loved one.

Humans are pattern-seeking, story-telling creatures who are predisposed to look for meaning and explanations for the natural events we experience. That's pretty much it, IMHO.

I was just thinking about this when Fedex just stopped by with a box from Amazon. It was empty. If something bad happened today I could see the ease of ascribing meaning to the empty box.

Instead, I did a chat with Amazon and said they sent me my box and not my order.