• F.P.’s father who died at the age of ninety-six remained completely lucid and alert to the very end. She had visited him the day before, a Sunday, and they had talked about Christmas plans and the new house his son had bought. He wanted to see it “when the weather gets better.” Out of the blue, the old man asked her: “What do you know about double vision?” When she asked if he had some problem with his eyes, he said: “Not really, but this morning when I came into my room there was a woman sitting on my bed.” She asked him whether he knew the woman (there were no women in the wing of the seniors’ home where he lived) and he answered that she had had her back to the doorway. He turned to leave the room and, glancing back as he did so, noticed the woman “was gone.” F.P. felt intuitively that it had been the spirit-form “of my mother who died long ago.” When she went home, she told her husband she had a strange feeling her father’s death was not too far away. Although her father seemed normal for the rest of the day, after he went to bed that night his heart began to fail and he was rushed to the hospital for oxygen. A few hours later, he died. His daughter comments: “While his death came as a surprise, since he was normal when I left him, it wasn’t the shock it might have been because of what he told me he had seen. I can’t explain it, but I accept what happened as a real event.”
• S. J. writes: “One day I received a call and was told that my beloved grandmother, who was in the final stages of ALS, was near death. Earlier that day, I was told she had spoken about ‘going home’ repeatedly, an expression that I found unsettling as she had never used it before. She had turned against God and did not spend much time worrying about her eternal soul. Yet in the last three weeks of her life, she had spoken at length about seeing her long-dead mother, being surrounded by unknown children and conversing with people who had long since left this world. Late that night, I was alone with her. I climbed into the chair with her, placed her head into the crook of my arm and wrapped myself around her. I wanted to comfort her, to cradle her; I thought that even catatonic as she was, she would feel me there and be comforted by it. I did not close my eyes, and was just being still, when everything changed. My vision blurred and I felt energy all around me, an energy so great it caused a visual disturbance in the room. My entire body felt electrified and, although I had never felt it before, it was so purely alive, so strong, that I knew what I was feeling was a different energy, another form of life, in the room. In my arms, Nan seemed to still and settle and I knew, as well, that in that moment her soul had gone forward and away from me. She died six minutes later—her breath just sputtered, and then stopped. It was so peaceful and natural that it changed every opinion I had ever formed about life and death. I was only left to wonder where she had gone, and wait for the day when that wonderful energy comes for me.”
• M.H. begins her letter with the terse statement “I doubt a lot. I’m not superstitious; I’m fairly intelligent.” She then relates how on Mother’s Day a few years ago she was with her grandmother, holding her hand as the old lady was dying. She says she told her over and over, even though she seemed unconscious, that she would help her with dying and that she would soon see her mother and sister, to be with them as she had longed to be. “She died at about 4 P.M. After about ten minutes, while I was looking at her, not touching, I felt a sudden and very powerful aura in the room. It felt as though my grandmother was all around me, in the air of the room, and as though she was most intensely projecting her personality toward me. I have never felt anyone, ever, as strongly as then. It was one of the happiest moments of my life. I have tried to analyze it, tried to be objective, but those few minutes were so incredible, so very happy, and the world all around was brilliant, jubilant, everything in super-Technicolor. I can’t begin to explain how powerful it was.”
• J.D. was devastated at losing her father a few years ago. She writes: “He had a treasured pocket watch that, after he died, I kept on a shelf near where I watch TV. I wound it carefully each night and still do. Several times while I was looking through our album of his pictures or reading his letters from the past and feeling very sad, I would become aware that the watch was ticking more loudly than usual. These spells of enhanced ticking went on for about five months and I wavered between thinking my father was present and thinking something was wrong mechanically with the watch. It then stopped. This past Father’s Day, I was relaxing in the TV room, involved in a program. The watch began to tick loudly. Without thinking, I said: ‘Oh, are you here? Then please show me—flick the lights on and off or do something with the lights to show me you’re here,’—not my exact words but close. Nothing happened immediately and I really didn’t expect it to. I became interested in my program again. About two minutes later, I was stunned when the lamp that my daughter had given her grandfather flicked on. I sat frozen for a minute. I ran upstairs to tell my husband, then went back downstairs and turned it off. The lamp had a trilight bulb in it. By the time I had sat down, it flicked on again, flicked up to the strongest light level, then flicked off! I feel that something otherworldly happened, but my rational mind has trouble with this. I don’t know how it’s possible, but this light had never done this before or since. I have only told my family and a close friend about this since they know I’m not given to imaginings.”
• A.G. lost his wife five years ago. The day after her sudden death, he was alone in the house thinking how glad he was that her will, which they had often discussed, had been finally drawn up only a couple of days before she died. “I spoke her name and said I had fulfilled all her wishes. The room was suddenly filled with her perfume and looking up I saw a form all in white which gradually faded away. I knew then that she knew what I had said. I firmly believe that my wife’s spirit remained in the house for some time afterwards. This has been on my mind a lot and I am very glad to write to you about it because when I mentioned the above to anyone I got funny looks. But, I’m certain I did not just imagine it.”
• S.H. writes: “My grandmother, who died ten years ago, wore an uncommon type of perfume that had a way of completely enveloping one in a sense of calm, serenity and peace. Five years ago, my mother became terminally ill. During one of several heart-to-heart talks, she stated that it would be so good to see her mother (my grandmother) again because she had missed her terribly. She said my grandmother had told her that when it was my mother’s time to pass the veil, Grandmother would be waiting there to show her the way. When my mother neared the end, my sisters, brother and father were in her bedroom, telling her to let go, that we wanted her to be at peace and that we would promise to be there for each other as she had been for us. Suddenly the room became incredibly still and filled with the unmistakable aroma of my grandmother’s perfume. I had not smelled that smell in ten years, but never forgot it . . . that unmistakable aroma of love and peace. My mother died at that very instant, but I knew my grandmother had kept her promise. My father, brother and sisters all smelled the presence.”
• J.P. writes: “When other people close to me had died I quite often smelled something unusual, such as cigarette smoke, or natural gas, shortly after the time of their death. There was never any logical explanation for the scent. One night after my mother died I could smell the gas fireplace. I went downstairs to make sure everything was okay and lay down on the couch. I was just beginning to fall asleep when I was awakened by a light and an indescribable sensation. The light was amazingly brilliant and the feeling was one of complete love. I had the sensation of being held very close. Even that description seems grossly inadequate. Words cannot describe the experience. And my mother spoke to me. I don’t even know how to describe how she spoke to me. She was not in a human or physical form. But I could hear her voice and feel her embrace through the embrace of light.”
• R.B., an Anglican priest, who says he feels somewhat “ridiculous and exposed” in recounting several paranormal experiences of his own and of his immediate family, tells the following: