Have you ever been visited by a deceased loved one?

I'd like to hear some stories about it and how you knew for sure it wasn't a hallucination or just in your head. Oh yeah, and even if it's not a loved one and you think you saw a ghost/spirit tell me about your experience too! I'm trying to understand that side of view...not going to argue with you whether it exists or not but I'm going to play a little devil advocate here:

How do you argue the scientist's explanation for this?
www.scientificamerican.com...

Science and Ghosts
news.bbc.co.uk...

reply to post by chelle21689


Without going into to much detail...

When i was younger, perhaps 11 or 12, I was spending the night at my grandparents very soon after my grandfather had passed away.

I slept in the guest room where my grandfather spent most of his final days as he was ill for some time. In the room was a television that had a VCR built into it. I fell asleep that night sad that my grand father was gone, but was awoken by static on the TV very early in the morning, probably 2 or 3am though i cant no remember exactly.

So i awoke to the tv with static and stayed in bed to scared to move and to shut it off, then i heard a sound as if the TV was accepting a video tape and a home movie started playing. This was strange in it of itself, but what happened next has stayed with my until this day. The tape fast forwarded to a part where my grand father was sitting in his favourite lazy boy chair in which he usually occupied when the family was over.

There was no sound, but the video played for about 10-15 seconds of my grand father and then the tape stopped and the tv shut off. I screamed for my parents and I made it through the night with little to no sleep.

My evidence that i did not dream or hallucinate the occurance was that the tape was confirmed to have been left in TV and it was a family tape that my grand mother had left in it some days before.

I had no clue the tape actually was present in the VCR prior to the incident.

Anyways, the exact details of the experience are hazy, but the experience remains somewhat fresh in my memory.

I am not saying this was a visit by a deceased love one, but it was certainly a strange coincidence.

reply to post by chelle21689


Does seeing a dead family member in your dreams before knowing they are dead count? How about family members you don't even know and have never seen before the dream?

Many times in my dreams I have had this experience: I'm dreaming I'm in my home, doing everyday household things. There is a knock at the door. I crack the door open and a person (sometimes someone I know, sometimes someone I've never seen) is standing on the porch wearing what looks like their Sunday best. The person steps forward and grabs me, giving me a huge bear hug, then they smile and fade away. Every time this happens I wake up to the phone ringing and am informed of the death of a family member. It is always the person from my dream, as when I have gone to other family member's houses and they show me a picture of the deceased or if I go to the funeral and see them for myself it is the person from the dream.

In the cases where I know the family member it is nice to know that they came "to say goodbye" but in the cases when I haven't known them it has scared the crapola out of me in the past. Apparently this runs in the family, because when I finally decided to discuss it with my mother she told me "I know, it scares the s@#%& out of me too!

I'm kind of jealous of those who had "paranormal" experiences so I can see for myself but at the same time I do not want to experience it because I'm a huge scaredy cat afraid to be home alone at night lol.

By the way, no one has replied to my question about the scientific arguments.

Yes.

My nephew died suddenly at age 22 in 2007 from a perscription drug-overdose, all were perscribed but they didn't mix well.

We always had a strong connection though our love of music and books.

It was an unexpected and very tragic death and I have felt him/seen him several times since usually in October because that's when he left us....

It's always in the evening and usually he sits on the side of my bed as if to have a normal chat.

He seems sad but at peace.

I have never questioned this and honestly would think it strange if he did NOT try to maintain a connection to those of us who loved him.

Originally posted by chelle21689
By the way, no one has replied to my question about the scientific arguments.

Post your views and i will see if i can answer it denver22

Originally posted by chelle21689
By the way, no one has replied to my question about the scientific arguments.

Okay, I'll bite. I believe in a lot of cases the "grief hallucination" theory makes sense, and I can also somewhat agree with the fact that external "spooky" conditions can contribute to believing one is experiencing something paranormal when in fact the conditions are explainable. But those particular scenarios cannot explain all "ghostly visitations" nor all paranormal experiences. There are many exceptions to each of these theories that cannot be explained by any scientific or sociological tests or theories.

I might have had an experience but I don't know if it was just a mechanical malfunction sort of thing. When I went to the Philippines with my mom and stayed with relatives in the house they let me knew that there was a ghost and they've had a couple of weird experiences. I've never experienced any ghosts but I've always been scared of seeing/feeling something from them. Anyways, I always took a bath in their bathroom and they used this hose like thing to spray yourself off whatever it is called. Out of the two weeks I've been there as I was washing myself with the water OFF because I used only hot boiled water combined with the cold water sprayed into there (Philippines had cold water) as I was washing myself the thing started to shake as if someone was shaking it vigorously when there was no water running. My eyes went big and I just froze...and slowly put my hand over it to stop and pretend it didn't happen. When I was done bathing I hurried up and got dressed and left the room LOL

Can someone tell me if hoses tend to do that? Could it be left over water pressure or something? I know hoses move but I have never seen hoses shake like that.

For myself personally, I have only had 2 people come back and say goodbye, or one did, the other, well, that is still an ongoing experience.

My friend Maryann died at the age of 32, and about 5 years later she came back to me in a dream. She told me where she was staying and why, and then I tucked her back into bed and left the house she was to hang out in until as she put it, "Goes someplace better"
Here is how I know it was not a dream.
When I left her house, there was a blond haired blue eyed baby crying in the ditch in front of her house. I stopped and wondered how someone could leave a baby alone crying like that and the baby looked me in the eyes and smiled and stopped crying. About 2 years later, my second son was born, and was a blue eyed blond haired boy. (both my wife at the time and I have dark hair, my other two boys have dark hair and brown eyes.)I had an instant dream recall when I saw him for the first time. It was spirit verification that it really happened.

Originally posted by irishchic
Yes.

My nephew died suddenly at age 22 in 2007 from a perscription drug-overdose, all were perscribed but they didn't mix well.

We always had a strong connection though our love of music and books.

It was an unexpected and very tragic death and I have felt him/seen him several times since usually in October because that's when he left us....

It's always in the evening and usually he sits on the side of my bed as if to have a normal chat.

He seems sad but at peace.

I have never questioned this and honestly would think it strange if he did NOT try to maintain a connection to those of us who loved him.

Wow did you sue the doctor?! That's messed up...

reply to post by chelle21689


I read both your links as to a "scientific" explanation, and it appears that the explanation is pure conjecture, nothing more. To say that somebody is merely experiencing a "grief hallucination", or that psychics are simply more attuned to the physical environment is just a guess.

Science falls woefully short when it comes to ESP, ghosts, etc., because there is no way to tell when it's going to happen, so how can the standard scientific experiment hope to catch lightning in a bottle?

I have had a myriad of experiences concerning those who have passed on, and these experiences lead me to believe that the visitations were real. Science cannot explain them.

Instance #1: My father was in a horrible car accident which eventually claimed his life. While he was in a coma, I was house hunting. The day before the real estate agent was to take us around to show us some country properties, I had a dream that I was in a house I had never been in before, and there was a knock at the door. It was my father, looking as he did when I was little. He didn't say anything, but his eyes were made of amber, and embedded in the amber were fossils.

This was before I ever had a computer, so I could not have known about the houses we were to be shown. The real estate agent showed us a bunch of houses, and we didn't really like any of them. He said, "Well, there's one more, it's a bit farther out than what you might like, but if you want to see it, I'll take you there." We said yes, and he took us to an area we'd never been to before, and when I walked inside the house, it was the house from my dream the night before, down to the last detail. My hair stood on end and I knew we were meant to be there, so we bought it. I have no explanation for it.

Instance #2: Three days after my father passed, around midnight, a phone that was by a painting he had done in the dining room kept ringing. We had 4 phones in the house, and only that one rang. It would ring three times, and then stop. This went on for an hour. I kept feeling that my father was trying to say something. I picked up one of the other phones, and got a dial tone while the one phone was ringing.. My then husband went out to where the phone was, and a super-bright flash of light exploded in his face. The light was blue-white, and sort of like a flash bulb. We checked the lights, which had not been turned on, and they were fine. I felt anger coming from that light, for some reason. Five years later, my husband did such awful things to our family, I cannot help but feel that was a warning from dad.

I called Southern Bell, the manufacturer of the phone, and tried to get a solid explanation, but they said their phones don't do that, and the guy on the phone said he'd never heard of any phone doing that.

Instance #3: My older daughter's father was murdered. My daughter was an absolute wreck. In order to gather my thoughts, I went to an old country cemetery just to sit and think. I heard the deceased voice say, "I'm fine, really I am. I'll prove it to you. Go to where the light is." It had been foggy, but a small patch of light shown through an area of the graveyard where a fresh grave had been dug. I went to the grave, and it had the first and middle name of the deceased. This was a fresh burial (within a few days), there was no way I could know. I never got the paper, didn't have the internet, so I had no idea.

I have many more, but I think these suffice to make my point: Science cannot explain the supernatural, but that doesn't mean that it doesn't exist. It does, and we need to be open to experiencing that which we cannot explain.

Only in a dream.

But it was unlike any dream I have ever had, and still haven't had one that matched the feeling of that dream.

People can say it was just a dream, but it's not just a dream to me.

reply to post by chelle21689


He was my sister/ in brother in law's only son...and the "last of the line" andI think the grief and shock truly took the place of any finger-pointing although I do believe this sort of medical-mixup this is not un-common these days sad to say.

They are however doing well as a couple and have moved forward with their lives: I think that the quest for peace for both him and us overcame anything else that might have been considered at the time?

It was casually mentioned by our family but I don't think his parents were strong enough to pursue...

Always tragic when anyone so young goes.

I haven't, but my mother did. My aunt (mother's sister) had been ill, but I don;t think so ill that everyone was waiting for her to die. My mother had a dream where her suster appeared and said, "I just thought I'd say goodbye."

The next day my mother was told that my aunt had died the night before.

My mother had kind of a history of this sort of stuff. When she was in a nursing home before she passed away herself (She actually wound up dying at home. The nursing home was, thank God, a temporary stay). I went to visit her and on a hunch I asked her if she had seen her father (long dead since 1947.) She said, "Oh, yes." and I asked her, "What did he say?" trying not to lead her any more than I already had.

She said, "He said he would help me any way he could." I said, "Where did you see him?" She said, "He came down those stairs right over there." Almost needless to say, there were no stairs in this nrsing home room, just a corner with a single chair.

Periodically I will get a strong whiff of my wife's favourite perfume (she called it her "Honeymoon perfume", because she'd first used it on our honeymoon.) It happens once or twice a year, most recent was a couple of weeks ago. I live alone (apart from Oscar the dog ) and, while I do still have a bottle of this perfume, it is tightly closed in a cabinet in another part of the house, and the scent is always short lived and localized to the room that I'm in.

I've never seen her, but I've "felt her" every once in a while. One example, again, a couple of weeks ago, I'm sitting alone in a church at 10AM, and I suddenly got the impression that I needed to "move over" (I was sitting at the end of the pew.) I did, and almost immediately, I "felt" her sit down and lean her head on my shoulder. Didn't physically feel it, just had the impression that she was there and doing that.

About eight hours later, I was sent a video from one of my brother-in-laws (married to one of my wife's sisters) who is a musician, and wanted me to hear a new song of his. For a visual, he'd put in some pictures of my wife, and figured prominently was the only picture I know of that is of her leaning her head on my shoulder.

reply to post by adjensen

These are exactly the types of verification that people need to be aware of.
Once a spirit comes to you, such as a loved one, they will verify it.
Without verification, it could just be wishful thinking or flights of fantasy, verification is very important.
I am sure you already know that,
but other people might not, so I wanted to throw that out there

My old teacher from high school came to visit me this year (He died a couple of years ago) and I was doubting it was real, and then, his fb account shared a picture I had posted on fb of a baby wearing a St Patrick's outfit.

It was verification.
Even if someone else had been in his account,they would not of known I was thinking about him.

He still laughs at me when I start to feel bummed and makes me smile

My mom always told me that she couldn't wait to see what kind of house I would grow up to design and live in. She also always said that when she died she would come back and pull my toes.

When she died I had my plans in hand that she never got to see, and I built the house a few months shortly after. One Saturday afternoon I had stopped to take a nap on the couch and was awakened from a dead sleep by someone pulling my big toe.

There is a lot more to the story than this, but this is the gist of it. One thing I recall is that when I was younger and taking prednisone for crohn's disease Mom learned to wake me by keeping her distance, or pulling my toes, so as to not take the chance of being swung at. I eventually overcame the Crohn's which is a miracle in itself.

So, she visited me then and has visited me many times since.

Originally posted by chelle21689
I'm kind of jealous of those who had "paranormal" experiences so I can see for myself but at the same time I do not want to experience it because I'm a huge scaredy cat afraid to be home alone at night lol.

This may be something of a blocking point for you. I remember reading something a while back, to the extent that "you know that it's a good and valid experience if there is no fear -- no one who loves you would want to come back and scare you", so if you're easily scared, it's possible that no experience will ever occur, because those that love you will not scare you.

My paternal grandmother, whom I was very close with, passed away in 1994. I have had numerous, maybe once a month, dreams of her since. It almost always takes place in the home she lived in while alive. The family no longer owns the home, but it is as if there is something important about it. I have yet to decipher what it is. Next time I see her I hope I can try to ask. It must be important if she keeps coming to me.