I’ve always had a fascination with death; it was through my father that I learned to appreciate the Egyptian afterlife. Despite a religious upbringing, this was really how I began to question my own mortality and what happens to us after death. It explains my interest in the supernatural, including communicating with the dead.

Some years ago, when I was living with my parents, I encountered something either really weird or something ‘other-worldly’. One day, while I was home alone, the front doorbell rang. I answered the door and nobody was there. I soon forgot about it, until it began to happen during the night. Again nobody was there. It would continue at random, thus waking me up, but it had no effect upon my parents. They would sleep through it all and know nothing about it. Of-course by now I was beginning to think I was going crazy, until one night before we all went to bed the doorbell rang. This time is was persistent, like someone had their finger stuck to the button. Nobody was at the door and nobody up or down the street. On this particular night I was so relieved my parents had heard it as well, finally making my dad pull out the connecting wires. After that event, this never happened again.  Common sense told me there was a fault in the wiring, but I often wondered if it was a message from someone on the other side. Wishful thinking perhaps?

Since that time there have been some other incidences that have made me wonder about the dead communicating with the living. Shortly after the death of my father some years ago, I am convinced I felt his presence one night as I slept.  I did not feel any fear, only surprise and then complete calm, knowing that he had come to say goodbye. My mother-in-law passed away recently during the very early hours of the morning.  Shortly after her passing, my husband was making his breakfast in the kitchen when he could smell smoke. After looking around for the cause he could find nothing, but the smell continued. He believed it was his mother and told himself that she had gone. Shortly thereafter, the smell also disappeared. She had died of a severe case of emphysema caused by smoking.

Within my stories, some of my characters encounter their own experiences with the supernatural.  Here are some of the other ways that the dead can communicate with the living:-

• Moving objects
• Flickering lights
• Through nature
• Meditation
• Dreams
• Visiting a professional medium

Of-course there is also Ouija boards and séances, yet they can invite bad spirits, which is something we don’t want in real life (I think I’ll leave these for my fiction)!

Have you ever communicated with the dead? Did the dead ever try to communicate with you? Have you ever encountered something that you just can’t explain?

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