13 Men And Women Share What It’s Like To Receive A Message From Beyond The Grave
"My mother drowned at age 54 in 2004. I was 20 at the time. Over the next few years, I took it particularly the hardest. I had two older sisters who had husbands, and my younger sister was sent to live with family friends. I had no home as I lived in the dorms. My…
By Eric Redding
1. Father Shows His Presence At Daughter’s Wedding
My dad died in May of 2015. I got married in October of 2016 to my boyfriend of 4 years (started in 2012). My dad loved my husband and I. Right when we kissed as husband and wife, my father’s watch alarm went off. It had never done that before.
2. Instagram Contact
A close friend of mine died about a month ago. Several days after she died I got a notification on my phone saying that her Instagram account had started following my art account that isn’t linked to my name or any other social media. So even if someone else had been controlling her account there’s no way they would have found mine. I really don’t know what to make of it.
3. Dad Does Chores Even Though He’s Dead
I never had anything quite like this but my dad died in 2005. About 10 years later I was a family funeral and my cousin (my dad’s best friend) said he had a dream where they were sitting at his house and my dad told him the roof was leaking in a part of his house. My cousin told him there was no leak. But my dad insisted in the dream. The next morning he went to the place where my dad had told him where the leak was. There was a leak and he saved a lot of money for “catching it early.” I long for a dream or something from my dad but I’m not that lucky.
4. Mamaw Teaching Piano
When my daughter was around four she started playing “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” on a toy piano. I asked her how she learned to play that tune and she said, “Mamaw taught it to me.” I was speechless – Mam Maw is what I called my maternal grandmother who had died ten years earlier. The tears started flowing – my grandmother had a piano in her home that we would sit at and play simple tunes, so I certainly believe that she would do this with my daughter!
5. The Woman In The Corner Of The Room
My maternal grandma was diagnosed with a brain tumor in 1999 and basically told they could make her comfortable but not much else. So for the next two years we all just kind of sat around and tried to keep her comfortable as we watched her wither away…my mom was basically left to care for her alone with a 2-year-old and a newborn, both of whom had major surgeries in this time.
My grandma finally passed in January 01 in the home my mom grew up in. My mom was mowing the front lawn that spring and as she’s facing away from the house she feels like she’s being watched so she turns around and in the big picture window stood my grandma, looking just like she did when my mom was a teenager and she looked out the window to check on her when it was her summer to mow.
The next story is of said grandma’s mother. She outlived my grandma by roughly 13 years, but after her daughter’s passing and husbands within a year she started to slip into dementia. At the time she was still able to care for herself with family only checking in every so often, but one day she calls my mom. At this time I’m a nosy 6-year-old, and my great grandma literally never made calls, so I stick around. The call lasts about 2 minutes. My mom puts the phone down and immediately breaks. I haven’t seen her cry like this since we lost my grandma. She says my great grandma called in a panic, saying my grandma had called her, crying that she was calling our phone and couldn’t get ahold of my mom (we moved right after her death) and she was scared and thought we were hurt.
The last story is when I met the people who bought her house sometime after it was sold. I told them after my grandma passed my entire family had weird experiences in the house. She got wide eyes and told me her husband came home late one night during a thunderstorm and after heading across the house heard a crash in the kitchen. When he went back to investigate he didn’t see anything, but as he turned around a flash of lightning illuminated a woman in the corner of the room.
6. “We Pleaded With Her To Come Back”
My mother drowned at age 54 in 2004. I was 20 at the time. Over the next few years, I took it particularly the hardest. I had two older sisters who had husbands, and my younger sister was sent to live with family friends. I had no home as I lived in the dorms. My life was shattered.
A few weeks after her death I had a few dreams about her. I dreamt I was walking to my bedroom and as I rounded the corner, she was sitting on the stairs, about 15 years younger with the dog that I had grown up with that she had had to put down about five years before her death. She said hello, I answered hi. In that moment, my computer IRL made a beep sound and woke me. I was so angry, but that wasn’t the last I saw of her.
A week or so later I dreamt I was in the kitchen getting something to eat from the fridge. I closed the fridge and turned and she was walking toward me. We met and hugged and she told me she was watching over me, she could see me, and that she loved me.
I asked my sisters if they had had dreams about her. Apparently, they were only having nightmares about her that she was always angry with them…
I had one other dream a few months later that was basically that she came back and told the four of us that she was happy and was living in a huge mansion in a beautiful town. She transported us there and the environment was dazzling! Beautiful and clean! Vibrant green plants and the wood her house was made out of was gorgeous and intricately carved. We plead for her to come back but she wouldn’t because she was so happy where she was.
7. Grandpa Appears As A Young Man
My grandpa passed suddenly in 2015 after having his fourth heart attack. I didn’t get to say goodbye, but I could have since my family went to visit him the night before he passed, but I stayed home with a migraine. Yes, I couldn’t have known he would die, but it still tore me up.
I don’t usually have dreams, but the only vivid dream I remember having is two weeks after he died. In this dream, he walked into my grandparents’ house when I was there visiting, and he was radiant. He looked about ten years younger. I was sitting on the sofa and as he walked by he said these words: “don’t worry about me, don’t cry for me. I’ll be just fine.” He walked through the kitchen and through the garage door without looking back and disappeared.
I woke up the next morning and just started crying tears of relief. I remembered everything about the dream. During the dream, I felt him there with me, and I knew that it was him telling me not to grieve or feel ashamed that I did not see him. Since then I feel that my grieving has been much more bearable than it could have been because of that visitation. I’m at peace knowing that he is okay.
Not long after the dream I went and found the exact clothes he was wearing in his closet!! I have them hanging up in my own closet now and it is a constant reminder to me that he’s still around and that I will see him again someday.
8. Grandmother still visits all the time
Hasn’t happened to me. But my childhood neighbor, who grew up just as close to my grandmother as I did, had a dream about my grandmother the night she died. I had got to see my grandmother that night, but she hadn’t. She had known my grandmother was sick, but of course, none of us knew that was the night. When we told her she started crying and told us about the dream. She thinks my grandma came to say goodbye since she didn’t get to see her.
We have a lot of instances with this grandmother as well. My nephew was around two when she died and she loved him to bits. He was a very curious boy and liked to look at parts and gears and figure out how things worked. So one day, not too long after my grandmother’s death, he was looking at the grandfather clock my sister had inherited from grandma. He asked why it didn’t work. It was an old clock and hadn’t worked in a while and my sister said “Well, it was G.G.’s clock. Only G.G. could make it work.” So my nephew looks up at the clock and says “G.G make clock work.” And this freaking dinosaur of a clock chimed. Scared the bejeebers out of my sister. I almost wouldn’t believe it if he hadn’t done the same thing with my mom’s old clock with my mom and I both watching. This clock never worked my whole childhood. We just kept it around for decoration. But when my nephew was visiting, he and I were looking at it. I was telling him it didn’t work anymore, he said something along the lines of G.G making it work and the dang clock chimed. I looked at my mom, who was on the other side of the room working, just to make sure she’d heard it too. She had.
Before this grandmother died, my mom thought that my grandfather visited her. My grandmother lived with us the last years of her life. Now, before living with us she had moved straight from her parents’ house in with her husband when they got married as youngins. So there were a lot of things she always did and a lot of things he always did and some things she never learned to do, like work all the fancy remotes to the tv. Electronics was his thing, and of course most of her life they’d never had anything this fancy. So we’d taped over the buttons on all her remotes so she could only click the power button, channel button, and volume button. But she kept complaining about the electronics working weird at night. She had early stages of Alzheimers so my mom kinda thought maybe she was getting confused about something and decided to sit up with her one night until she fell asleep to help figure out the electronic issue. So my mom was sitting with her and as the night passes on suddenly all the electronics start turning themselves off and on. The DVD player is flickering on and off on it’s own. My mom still swears to this day she thinks it was her dad trying to work the electronics for his wife like he always did. But they never acted up again after that night.
I do have dreams about my grandmother, but only when I’m in that house. The only weird ones though are when my sister is there too and also experiences it. Like once when the lights flickered (we always jokingly blame the lights in that room flickering on grandma b/c it’s the same room the clock is in) she said it was my grandma, but her friend was over and got confused so she had to explain it to her. About that time I walk out – I had been asleep in a room on the other side of the house – and said “Oh, grammy! I was just dreaming about her!” She’d just been walking down the hallway in my dream and waved at me when she passed the room I was sleeping in to go out toward the room my sister was in.
9. Finding Forgiveness
My uncle passed away about 2 months ago. While I was shocked when I heard the news, it wasn’t like it was unexpected. He had been battling his personal demons for so long that such a fate seemed resigned for him. We tried to get him help numerous times, but nothing ever came of it. Most of my family eventually gave up on helping him long term, myself included. I said awful things about my deceased uncle. Things I can’t quite forgive myself for saying. Not especially since we used to be fairly close and I truly loved him.
But about 3 weeks ago, it was my Grandmother’s birthday. We had gone out to dinner to celebrate a week before her actual birthday. The reason for this is because on that Saturday, we were planning on having the funeral for my uncle and we didn’t want to stress my grandmother out more. I came home from classes that afternoon and decided to take a nap.
I cannot recall everything that happened in my dream, but the outline is clear. In my dream, I saw my uncle in an unclear place. The place looked very hand painted and only had the background as blue. When I saw my uncle, I walked over to him and hugged him. He hugged me back and I remember feeling so happy to see him. When I looked up from our hug, he was already looking at me and smiling. I ended up telling my grandmother that day and my grandmother said she felt very blessed that someone saw him on her birthday. I don’t think I’ll ever forget that nor do I want to.
10. A Knock At The Door
After my dad had passed, I always felt like I saw someone walk by or peek around the corner, but no one would be there. I would hear someone walking around when my mom and I would be in the same room. I was 12 and it would terrify me. One night my mom had a meeting to go to and I stayed home alone. I went out to the garage to grab a soda and I heard a heavy knock on the door leading to the basement in the way my dad would knock. He had one of those specific ways of knocking if that makes sense. I ran to my neighbors thinking someone was in my house and they came over to look, finding no one. After that, I was kind of convinced the stuff I was seeing was because of my dad. My mom thought it was ridiculous but put the house up for sale within a month. Years later, she mentioned she had heard the knocking too but didn’t want to scare me.
11. A Call From Jacki
A close friend of mine, we’ll call her Jacki, tragically took her life at 19. She was a bit older than me and was a wildly creative, mischievous type that loved to play pranks and had a constant sparkle in her eyes– I always looked up to her.
Ever since she passed, I would call her old phone number when I was having a rough time, just to “talk.” Every time I called, my phone just beeped until a prerecorded “this number is unavailable. goodbye,” came on the line, and I would hang up shortly after. Jacki’s mom had canceled her cell line very shortly after passing, and the message played for a few months after she died.
As time went on I called Jacki’s number less– I felt I needed a break so I could heal. One night though, I was in a tough spot and called her number around midnight or so. I got the same dial tone and prerecorded message as usual, but it still helped me feel like she was there with me.
I went to sleep shortly after and that was that. A few hours later, I half-woke up to the sound of my phone buzzing. I ignored it, barely consciously deciding I’d call whoever back in the morning.
When I woke up, my heart skipped a beat as my caller ID read: Missed call from Jacki (last name), with a time stamp of 3:12 AM. My first thought was that her number had been reassigned to someone else after being inactive for a few months. However, when I called back, I was still met with the same dial tone.
I felt a weird feeling come over me and figured I could call the phone company for some answers. Maybe her parents still had the sim card in the phone or something, and it got bumped? I knew it was unlikely, but I just wanted an answer– and I also didn’t want anyone getting upset by a missed call from her number too.
So I called ATT (I remember it was her service provider since she constantly complained about it), and while he told me he could not provide an exact record of the call made from Jacki’s phone (for privacy reasons), he could tell me that that number had not been reassigned and would not be for another 6 months.
Feeling stranger by the minute about the whole situation, I figured I would have to reach out to her older sister on facebook. I messaged her explaining I’d gotten a call from Jacki’s cell, and was wondering if there was any way her phone had been moved and triggered a call somehow.
She told me the last time her phone had been moved, it was moved to a small concrete box with some of her other favorite belongings, sealed, and placed on her grave.
I firmly believe it was Jacki playing one more prank from beyond the grave, calling back to check on me. I was far more happy than scared.
12. The Scent That Followed
My paternal grandfather passed away when I was 11. When I would sit in my room alone, aged 16 and up I would often get a strong smell of cigars. I’d look around my room, the window was shut, brother wasn’t home, nobody else could smell it.
I’m also on the second story so it doesn’t make sense that I could smell cigar smoke and not have a source for it. It would also follow me around the house. It happened repeatedly ~ twice a week for 15 minutes at a time until I turned 18. My Grandpa used to smoke a pipe which is what I think I was smelling. He died of Alzheimer’s, and I and my brother were the last things he properly remembered because the last time we visited him he said our names after he hadn’t spoken for months.
13. “Is This A Dream?”¡
Backstory- both of my parents have passed, my mom suddenly in 2003 and my dad also suddenly in 2011. When my mom passed away I dreamed about her, but they were definitely just “I miss my mom” dreams. My toddler niece did talk about her “friend”, who I was certain was my mom checking on her, but I didn’t have any personal experience. About two months after my dad passed away- around when I’d started to get used to him being gone instead of being completely heartbroken- I had a dream that I really think was him visiting me. I’d been having a normal, not very memorable dream, but then it started to fade out- sort of like when chalk starts to run in the rain.
I don’t remember the setting after that, just that everything was very bright. One moment I was sort of bewildered that the setting was changing, then next I was standing with my dad and he was wrapping me in a hug. We talked about a lot of things, and at one point I just stopped and asked him if this was just a dream or really him. He told me that I was asleep, but that it was actually him. We talked about a lot of things, but at one point he told me he could visit me one more time unless there was an emergency or something really important he needed to tell me. He also said that my mum sent her love, but that she was too far along now. She still watched out for me, but she’d been gone too long to come see me and she’d used up her energy protecting my niece and hoped I didn’t mind.
