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: “My maternal grandfather died in 1965. My mother often thought of him and wondered ‘how he was.’ About 1968–69, she answered the telephone one day only to hear his voice faintly at the other end, as through static. She was deeply traumatized and asked: ‘Dad, where are you?’ He replied: ‘You know where I am. I’m OK.’ Then the phone went dead. It was years before I heard that story because, of course, my mother thought everyone would think she was crazy. My eldest sister was greatly relieved, however, because, as she explained to us, she ‘knew’ she had seen my grandfather about 1971 but had been afraid to speak of it to anyone else.”
• G.C. writes: “My father was in the palliative unit, dying. The room was lit by the light on the wall, over the head of his bed, shining toward the ceiling. I was standing close to his head when there appeared a spiral of ‘smoke’ from his head. I looked to the others in the room for confirmation that this was happening, but no one else was registering the surprise and excitement that I was feeling. The ribbon of ‘smoke’ was pure white and dense and absolutely exquisite. It was 1.5 to 2 inches wide, and moved slowly in a spiral, disappearing about 15 inches from where it began. After about half a minute it wasn’t there anymore. Dad died about 45 minutes later. My niece and I are both trained in Radiance Technique, a therapy similar to Reike, which helps people reveal and neutralize difficult energy life patterns. As a point of interest, about a half hour before the smoke occurred, we were gently touching Dad’s abdomen while doing Radiance.”
• H.B. describes a “vision” she had the night after her mother died: “My mother stood before me, smiling, and told me not to grieve for her, that we would eventually be together again. Even before I woke from it, I was surprised that I had had no difficulty recognizing her. She appeared to be about seventeen or eighteen. She was wearing a long garment of a beautiful mulberry shade, and she had a radiance as if, as I thought later, she had seen God. My mother was forty-one when I was born so I never knew her except as a middle-aged and then elderly woman. Her favourite colour was a shade of mulberry, but I had never seen her wear it. Then, as now, it is a most difficult dye to achieve. I told my husband about the experience and, while he was very kind and sympathetic, he thought I had become unstrung by grief and was raving. Until now, I have never told anyone else about it but remain convinced that it was what it seemed to be: a genuine message from my mother who had gone on to a higher life. The memory has not faded but remains as vivid as when I experienced it some thirty years ago.”
• D.W. lived in Owen Sound, Ontario, and his mother was quite ill in hospital in London, over 150 kilometres away. He was driving down to visit her and stopped overnight at his aunt’s home in Goderich. In the middle of the night he was awakened to see his mother as a younger woman standing at the foot of the bed. She told him she had come to say good-bye. In the morning, when he got up, his aunt informed him that his mother had died during the night. He knew that “it hadn’t been a dream; it had really been her.”
• R.M. writes: “My son passed away in August of 2001. In November of that year my husband and I many times both heard the phone ring once and then stop. When we would answer there was no one there. My husband heard the door-bell ring several times and again there was no one there. He even walked all around the outside of the house to make sure it wasn’t just neighbour children playing a prank. Then around 3 A.M. one morning I again heard the phone ring and then stop. I lay pondering the realization that perhaps it really wasn’t the phone when I clearly heard my son’s voice say “Hi!” We heard this ring many times after and it was reassuring to know that he could be with us wherever we went. One morning I was awakened by the ring and as my bed faces out into the hallway I was surprised and intrigued to see what I can describe best as a small ‘dance of fire’ taking place in front of the door to my son’s bedroom. This only lasted about one minute and then disappeared. The surest and most amazing sign of his presence happened last summer on the anniversary of his death. I went to his room and talked to him for a short time and then was looking in his closet for some photographs which I had stored there. I couldn’t see well and was just thinking to myself I should turn the light on, when suddenly the light on his desk turned on. It was amazing how that changed my mood from feeling very sad to feeling much better. I had to run downstairs to find my husband and tell him. We have also had some strange coincidences happen—one being that his budgie bird died last year on his birthday.”
• A baptist minister, T.B., was away at college in Evanston, Illinois, when he got word that his father had died. He came back to Canada for the funeral feeling very badly that he had been away and had not seen his father in over a year. “We had always been close in a quiet, empathetic way.” Life went on, and that summer he and his wife were vacationing at a small lake in Wisconsin. T.B. got up at six o’clock one morning and wandered down to the deserted shore. “As I stood gazing across the water, I suddenly became aware of my father’s presence. I simply cannot describe the sensation. There was nothing visual or auditory—just a ‘spirit’ awareness that he was there. I never moved a muscle. It lasted for maybe five minutes and left as quickly as it came. I believe God allowed Dad’s spirit to return to communicate with me since I had been away at the time of his death . . . I have never had a similar experience nor sought one. Whatever the explanation, I know beyond all doubt that my father was there with me.”
• J.W. writes: “I live in an apartment on a very busy and noisy street, but I always slept soundly through the noise. Recently, I was awakened by an unusual swishing sound. For a while I lay listening, trying to identify it and it seemed to me that it was in my bedroom. Just as I realized this, the sound stopped and I felt a nudge and a warm, solid body slid in behind me. I felt the weight of his arm over my shoulder. I knew of a certainty it was my first husband who had died thirty-one years ago! For a moment he put his cheek against mine (and I felt the after-shave stubble) then he rested his head beside mine. I cannot describe the happiness I felt for around twelve to fifteen seconds before I felt his arm grow lighter as did his body and I was alone. I looked at the clock, it was 11:50 P.M., and I went back to sleep.
