There are times when no other person or ritualistic action is involved, no paranormal investigation, seance, etc. but rather a time when a person is in an emotional state of sadness or sorrow from the passing of a family relative or friend, and that mourning person is the object of an attempt at communication by the recently deceased, at a time and place of their choosing, not ours.
There is an entire categorical range of descriptive types of contact being alleged from beyond. From sensing a presence, finding objects, hearing voices and partial and full apparitional manifestations, these contacts come to all ages and places of occurrence. Something unsolicited sometimes happens that defies rational explanation.
When it comes to the paranormal, instead of retelling second-hand stories, I prefer to rely on first-person narratives and analyze possible patterns that emerge from them. I will now relate two such ADC experiences shared to me in my interview with a trusted, unnamed source (I'll call her "Katy"), who I personally know as honest and with integrity beyond reproach.
This concerns the death of Katy's sister's husband. This person (I'll call him 'Grant') was the perfect example of "when it's your time, it's your time." He was on his motorcycle when he was T-boned & instantly killed by an automobile. This man had seen action as a helicopter gunner in combat in Vietnam, certainly cheating death at times along the way, only to be involved in a senseless, fatal automobile accident.
Time setting... morning of the day of the church service:
"I was staying with my sister who had just lost her husband in a terrible motorcycle accident. Having the thought of the tragedy on my mind before the viewing to come, I was in the bathroom applying some makeup in the mirror. Something above me distracted my attention causing me to look up. To my shock there was a small, white feather gently floating and passing down right in front of me." NOTE: It is commonly accepted that the appearance of a white feather after the death of a loved one is a message from them. What exactly that message is can be subjective to the experiencer. Is it just to say they are alright? Is it to acknowledge a last goodbye? Or can it be an attempt to transgress the cosmic rules that don't allow specific communcation from the dead? I say this because "Katy" had a second related experience after the feather appeared.
At this point it would be a good moment to entertain a discussion of whether the dead actually know they are dead. Does this knowing come in a shocking awareness in the case of sudden, unexpected death or just an afterthought and casual acknowledgement upon moving on? You decide for yourself, however the following may be considered related evidence to answering that question. I will be quoting here from the continued witness interview of Katy:
Time setting... a day or two after the funeral:
"My sister started talking about the fact she was going to give Grant's old truck for her son to drive. He was still in high school at the time, and so he was going to have that truck. We had been talking about how Grant loved that truck. My sister said, "let's go outside and look at it." We went outside through the garage and as I walked up to the truck I got a really bad feeling the closer I got. I was looking in the driver's side window. It wasn't as if I actually saw someone sitting there. It flashed in my mind this image of Grant sitting there and he was looking at me. He was so horribly angry! It startled me and I looked down from the truck. The look on his face was like pure hate, pure anger... I don't even know how to describe it. His eyes looked wild and he just stared at me. Even though I know he wasn't actually sitting in that truck at the driver's wheel, I knew he was there. I couldn't even look back at the truck. I looked down. The whole time I was out there, I backed away, looked in the back cargo area, but never again looked inside the truck because I knew he was in there. He was really, really angry because he had died and I could feel that."
NOTE: Grant loved working in his garage and spent a good amount of time in there. After Grant's death, the family dog would be often seen sitting in the house facing and staring at the door of the garage. Katy also stated she didn't like the negative feeling in the garage, even though there was no bad feelings concerning her brother-in-law, whom she and countless others thought the world of.
Not all after death experiences are of a personal relationship nature. Here is the story of an EMT, training to be a paramedic at the time, whom we will call "Bill," was on a cardiac arrest call in a nursing home. According to Bill:
"The gentleman in question had collapsed in the restroom. Being a technician, I was in charge of doing chest compressions & bagging to help the victim breathe as the paramedic with me set up drugs & so on. As I am working away, doing chest compressions, bagging the victim, chest compressions and so on, I happened to look up, just to the left of the patient. The patient I was working on was sitting on the chair watching me, completely solid, to the point where I let out a four-letter word out of me. My colleague said, you act like you've seen a ghost. Are you alright? I said, I don't know what the hell I've just seen, but it's freaking me out. (At this point it had disappeared after only a few seconds. What I had seen was him sitting back, watching with his arms folded, like someone watching TV.) Within five minutes we had to 'call' the death."
It is easy to dismiss occurrences such as these as coincidences or hallucinations induced by personal grief. What makes them compelling is that such events are reported to occur by countless others as well. Most important of all, unlike ghost hunting experiences, they carry the deepest context that touches the experiencer to their innermost being, a place of love, friendship and remembrance that is never forgotten.
If you care to, please share your ADC experience.
- MoonJoey