"I had a strange dream one night – but I knew it was something more. Guy appeared to me one night - whilst I was asleep! He was an old school friend who had died in his early 20’s from cancer, a tragic death at any age. He was a family friend, but to be honest we weren’t particularly close friends. I was amazed then to have him materialize very clearly one night, several years after his death.

During this visitation, I found myself sitting in a room which was bare except for two chairs. I was sitting on one of these chairs when Guy walked into the room. I was aware that he was dead and rushed over to throw my arms around him and ask him how he was – I was genuinely shocked, but very pleased to see him again. Did he have important messages for me to pass on to his family and friends? Was he visiting me to give me important information of his experience of life after death? Sadly no, and he calmly explained that he had chosen to visit at this time because ‘he could’. It was if the spiritual skill of ‘dream incubation’ was something that he had recently learnt and I was being ‘practiced upon’!

I was a willing subject and the dream came to a natural conclusion a few minutes later after a short chat – nothing of which I later remembered. Even so, the dream had an enormous impact on me and I woke up immediately afterwards and wrote it down. I did actually feel as if I’d received a spiritual visit from my friend."

Did Guy come to visit me from the spirit realms? I know what I think, but I decided further investigation was required.

Losing someone you love can be a shocking experience. If the person who dies is a lead actor in our real life play of life, then the effects on the remaining cast members is catastrophic. The numbing shock of grief is very hard, and some people never get over the loss, spending their remaining years in deep sorrow.

How would it be then, if we received communication directly from the very person who has died? Is it really possible? Can a loved one just pop by to say ‘hi there, I’m fine – see you soon’? I started asking around my immediate family and friends initially, and then later expanding my search around the world for information on after death communication. By sharing my own experience, people started talking to me about their own encounters. I was amazed to discover how often this phenomenon occurs!

What saddened me the most was that these fascinating stories of life after death expriences and communications were being kept a ‘secret’! Received as they often are in personal moments of deep grief, the people I spoke to felt that others may believed they were making things up, or perhaps receiving information during grief as a sort of wishful thinking. Others felt that these moments were too special to share and were uncomfortable with the idea of having to explain themselves or prove that this extraordinary moment was anything less than real. Even so, I started collecting many examples, from all around the World, from individuals who were happy to share their extraordinary encounters.

A very simple example came to me from a colleague. We had been chatting about the possibility of the spirit surviving physical death, when she confided that her partner had experienced a similar visitation to my own. He simply said to her one morning:

‘My Gran came to visit me last night!’

Interestingly, the Grandmother also appeared to another family member within days – also in the dream state, even though the Grandmother had been dead for many years. Had she too learnt the spiritual ‘art’ of dream visitation?

Often the visit takes place outside of a dream, and seems to happen during that half awake/half asleep time

I saw him floating outside my 2nd story bedroom window…

Sheri McGrath, is 44 years old and lives in Texas, USA. She’s had two visitations from recently deceased relatives whilst fully awake. She told me:

"When I was 9 years old my grandfather died at home. My sister and I were living with my grandparents at the time. The night after he died I saw him floating outside my 2nd story bedroom window, looking in! I had just gone to bed and was wide awake. It kind of scared me at first, but then I felt a sort of peace and calm afterwards as if he was telling us that he's still around and he's ok. He looked just as he did when he died except healthier. I didn't tell anyone about it until recently, not even my sister. She couldn't see the window from her bed, so wouldn’t have been able to see him herself."

Years later the second incident occurred:

"The night after my dad died 3 years ago, I saw him walk from the bedroom into the living room, moving towards me. He disappeared as he got closer, although it lasted about 3 or 4 seconds altogether.

He died in the bedroom. I was on the living room sofa reading and my mom was in the bedroom sleeping. It didn't startle me this time because I was more aware of what death entails. He also looked just as he did before death except he looked healthier. I did share the experience with my mom this time, and she believed me which was good."

Here is another anecdote, where the visit was received whilst awake. This story is from a lady in the UK:

"The night of Dads funeral, I was having a restless night. I sat up in bed and saw my fathers body float through the bedroom wall! I was astonished and woke up my husband to share the experience with him. Unfortunately he dismissed the incidence as a dream, but I knew that it was my Dad saying goodbye. I never told anyone else, as I thought they too would think it was just a dream."

I felt my Grandmother draw close to me

Sometimes the visitation is not visual at all, and in this next example the deceased person came as a voice and a sense. I met this lady whilst sitting in the spa at my local gym! I started explaining to her my interest in after death communication. She just quietly nodded her head and explained a happy memory of her own.

"I used to visit my elderly Grandmother on a regular basis, although sadly she was often confused, and some days our visits were better than others. However, she always gave me some ‘pocket money,’ which I would pay into my savings account, as I was saving up for a car. It was something we often talked about. Sadly my Grandmother died before I bought the car, and I remember thinking how sad it was that she didn’t get to see how I had spent the money.

Yet she did get to see the car, because the day I bought it, I was kneeling down polishing the wing when I felt my Grandmother draw close to me. I could feel her right down besides me – I just knew it was her, and I heard her say ‘it’s really nice!’ I’ve never had an experience like it before, and I can’t really explain it any better than that – I could just hear her words in my head."

This woman had told no one else of her encounter except her own mother, and made it very clear to me that she wasn’t in the habit of having psychic things happen to her.

With the enormous leaps in medical knowledge, more and more people are being brought back from the very brink of death. Many of us are familiar with the classic Near Death Experience (NDE) which people often go through at this time. The recently revived bring back tales of travelling down a tunnel with a bright light at the end. But it is the stories of being met by relatives on the other side which interest me here. Nurses who work with the terminally ill will tell you similar stories about the people in their care. It must be comforting (if not a little scary) for patients to talk with ‘unseen family and friends’ in the days and weeks before death! Our loved ones seem to appear to escort us on our way – a very reassuring thought indeed.

Steph Childs from New Zealand sent me this story:

"Last October I was caring for my father who had terminal cancer. I had the ‘night shift’ alone as no-one seemed to feel comfortable with doing this. The night before he passed on was a very intense time for my father. The medication he was on was not even touching his suffering. It seemed there was nothing left that I could do to comfort him.

The only sound for hours had been my father’s laboured breathing, the incessant loud tick of his treasured train clock 

and the rhythmic swoosh of his medication pump. But now the room began to fill more and more with what I presumed were angels! The room had an intense atmosphere of love. If I could use a colour to describe this I think I would use rose. We felt no longer as if it were just the two of us in that room.

Father suddenly lay down, which he had been unable to do for hours, and sunk into a peaceful sleep. Yet before doing so, he told me his mother was in the room with us, even though she had long since passed on! He also told me that that he was ‘almost there’, which I took to mean that he was in his final moments. It was a beautiful time - he was in transition and freeing himself from his painful body. I knew he was fine. The angels were there to help him on his way."

The ghosts of TV and film seem to bear little resemblance to these loving messages received often in times of grief and distress. Does the dramatisation of Hollywood images stop people sharing their tales for fear of ridicule? If we try and look at this from a scientific point of view, the difficulty we have of using these experiences as proof of Life after Death or after death communications is that they are not measurable in any scientific way. We don’t have scientific instruments handy at the appropriate moment! Their very mystical and unpredictable nature, make them unavailable for experiment and study. Although, to the people involved, no further explanation would make these contacts more real than they already are.

I can do no better than to share with you a strange experience of my own.

"The day of my Grandmothers death brought sadness, as one would expect, but I couldn’t help but be comforted when my 2 year old daughter (who has proved to be very psychic) pointed to the ceiling in obvious delight and said, ‘look Mummy… a fairy-man!"

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