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Grief and the Side-Effects Construed to be Paranormal (Personal Observations).

Axxman300 said:
My mother died in late March after a long decline from dementia. It's been rough on every level. I'm alone having to deal with hospitals, coroner's office, and unscrupulous mortuaries. Took a while but things are straightened out. And while the end was inevitable the truth is you're never ready to get that phone call, I don't care who you are.

To the point:

This kind of grief is new to me. It can be overwhelming at times, and it hangs with you like a bad odor from clothes you can't remove. I'm aware that in that first two-week span I was half consciously present, and half deep in my head. The result of this has been a handful of incidents that someone without my background as a paranormal investigator would deem "Contact from the Other Side". Twice I've heard my name called. One was male voice during the day time. I suspect it came from outside the house (homes are close together here), and was likely a coincidence. The second time was my mother's voice, but it was around 06:00, and I was in twilight sleep. The past four years I've been hardwired for light sleeping to respond to my mother's calls for assistance. I suspect this was nothing more than a dream.

The idea that grief rips a hole into that part of the brain where vivid memories are stored which allows things to involuntarily bubble up unannounced makes sense. In the non-weird parts of this event those memories flood my head as I clean out mom's stuff from the dresser, and shelves. I'm not a doctor, and have no education in psychology or psychiatry, so these are just my observations as an experienced, now skeptical ghost hunter. In my head I heard both voices clear as day, but each source was different with the second being generated by my mind.

And I'll end with a funny note. After mom died I canceled the satellite TV service, and unplugged the TV set to save on the electric bill. For a while I'd occasionally hear the TV on, and I'd check to find it still unplugged. Turns out that since I'm now the only one in the house, and without the TV things are much quieter than before. This means I am hearing new sounds which were once drowned out by the TV noise. In this specific case the sound of the TV was actually my digestive system at work, and this still makes me smile.

Just think this might be useful to someone else.
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Firstly, my condolences. I found it hard enough to lose my parents and Dad's death still hurts sometimes, two years later.

Secondly what you say makes sense.
 
PitPat, my deep condolences on your dad's, and mother's passing. I was touched to hear you were at your dad's bedside and you and your mom held his hand, when he passed. And I was touched to hear that you were with your mom when she passed. My thoughts are with you.
 
Vixen, I'm glad you had a touching memory of seeing two beautiful whooper swans fly overhead was you walked with your stepfather, on a crisp and clear October day, the day after your mother passed. My deep condolences on your mother's, and stepfather's passing. My thoughts are with you.
 
8enotto, my condolences for your loss of your father. I'm not sure how close you were with your father, but no matter what, my thoughts are with you.
 
Darat said:
I’ve always said this is one of the reasons people “see” ghosts.

And it is very easy to attribute coincidence to agency. My mother died last Saturday at home in her bed. (Her body had been picked up.) That evening I went into her room and for more light switched on her bedside lamp and the bulb blew. We all laughed and said it was obviously a sign. No we don’t think it was any kind of sign but if you were that way inclined it would be easy to enfold that into some story of spirits and the like.
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My sympathies to you as well
 
PitPat said:
Damn dude, my sympathies as well. I was with my mom when she passed in home hospice (lung cancer). She had hallucinations about many of the the things that were going on her head she was talking about, which was mostly about people she grew up with. I had to cut up the bags of drip fentanyl she was on as I was her home caregiver at the time - put them in the garbage disposal, My sister was an opioid addict and she was kind of pissed at me for getting rid of it.

I was vegetarian at the time and went out to get Arby's for my sister and her two best friends after it was final. First time I ate meat in about 5 years and it was delicious.

Maybe not a great story, eating Arby's about three feet from your dead mom before funeral home employees arrived to take her away, but that's what happened.
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That sounds hard.

The human condition sucks sometimes
 
Thanks jimbob. While I was taking care of her, a neighbor couple of hers came over to see how she was doing. This was after me and my mom met with her attorney about estate issues. Still seemed to have it together then.

They were born-agains and stood over her hospital bed in the living room asking if she has accepted Jesus into her heart. She just smiled and gave a thumbs up, which curbed my desire to ask them out politely. She knew the game and just wanted to get it over with. Still not sure her what her real religious beliefs were. I tried to to talk about it with her during her final days, but she brushed aside and I didn't want to push it.
 
PitPat said:
Thanks jimbob. While I was taking care of her, a neighbor couple of hers came over to see how she was doing. This was after me and my mom met with her attorney about estate issues. Still seemed to have it together then.

They were born-agains and stood over her hospital bed in the living room asking if she has accepted Jesus into her heart. She just smiled and gave a thumbs up, which curbed my desire to ask them out politely. She knew the game and just wanted to get it over with. Still not sure her what her real religious beliefs were. I tried to to talk about it with her during her final days, but she brushed aside and I didn't want to push it.
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Mum's death turned Dad from a CofE mildly Christian to an atheist. Both were fully themselves to the end. Dad even managed to walk up the stairs on his penultimate night and get out of bed on his last day, with me and my brother with him until he went to sleep and didn't wake, so as good a death as could be hoped for. Although he had said that he would have preferred to have been detonating a Semtex belt whilst embracing Putin.
 
It's strange how coincidences work. After my dad died, I took a day off of work to meet with the funeral home. My mom saw his embalmed body and fell to her knees. It was pretty damn creepy for me too.

Anyway, as I was leaving, the owner of my company came in at the same time, making arrangements for her father's funeral - just kind of happened around the same time.
 
Axxman300 said:
My mother died in late March after a long decline from dementia. It's been rough on every level. I'm alone having to deal with hospitals, coroner's office, and unscrupulous mortuaries. Took a while but things are straightened out. And while the end was inevitable the truth is you're never ready to get that phone call, I don't care who you are.

To the point:

This kind of grief is new to me. It can be overwhelming at times, and it hangs with you like a bad odor from clothes you can't remove. I'm aware that in that first two-week span I was half consciously present, and half deep in my head. The result of this has been a handful of incidents that someone without my background as a paranormal investigator would deem "Contact from the Other Side". Twice I've heard my name called. One was male voice during the day time. I suspect it came from outside the house (homes are close together here), and was likely a coincidence. The second time was my mother's voice, but it was around 06:00, and I was in twilight sleep. The past four years I've been hardwired for light sleeping to respond to my mother's calls for assistance. I suspect this was nothing more than a dream.

The idea that grief rips a hole into that part of the brain where vivid memories are stored which allows things to involuntarily bubble up unannounced makes sense. In the non-weird parts of this event those memories flood my head as I clean out mom's stuff from the dresser, and shelves. I'm not a doctor, and have no education in psychology or psychiatry, so these are just my observations as an experienced, now skeptical ghost hunter. In my head I heard both voices clear as day, but each source was different with the second being generated by my mind.

And I'll end with a funny note. After mom died I canceled the satellite TV service, and unplugged the TV set to save on the electric bill. For a while I'd occasionally hear the TV on, and I'd check to find it still unplugged. Turns out that since I'm now the only one in the house, and without the TV things are much quieter than before. This means I am hearing new sounds which were once drowned out by the TV noise. In this specific case the sound of the TV was actually my digestive system at work, and this still makes me smile.

Just think this might be useful to someone else.
Click to expand...
My condolences on the death of your mother. Losing a loved one is always hard.

In relation to hearing voices, a good few years ago I was at home alone for a week, the parents were off caravanning and I'd taken the week off work to do a whole load of nothing.

One night I was woken up out of my sleep thinking I heard our (half-stray) cat meowing my name in distress. It was the weirdest experience I had. A combination of just waking up brain fog and me being in the house alone caused me to dream of somebody calling out for me and combined it with the cat meowing outside the back door.
 
Ernie M said:
Vixen, I'm glad you had a touching memory of seeing two beautiful whooper swans fly overhead was you walked with your stepfather, on a crisp and clear October day, the day after your mother passed. My deep condolences on your mother's, and stepfather's passing. My thoughts are with you.
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Ernie M, thank you for your kind words.



.
 
For what it's worth, my very best friend was a practical joker. He passed away in 2021 after a long bout with illness. We would often look out my back window across the way to a mountain with a castle on top and discuss politics, one favorite being the Spanish Civil War and the Abraham Lincoln Brigade. I miss him dearly.

I trust enough time has passed for you to enjoy a lighter side to the tricks our minds play. If so:
When Russia attacked Ukraine in 2022, mindful of the example of the Brigade, I embarked on research leading to solutions that might be of use in the conflict. It's been a long, hard slog, but anytime I wished to abandon course, somehow, this jerk friend of mine, now taunting me from the ether, managed to get this video into my YouTube feed. Over and over, for years. Things go poorly for a minute, and up it pops. OMG! The video is so him, the ◊◊◊◊◊◊◊. Miss him every day still. I have his ashes, and we take care of his dog, ours now.
Ghosts have their reasons for being. My take is to enjoy, and cherish, them.
 
Gulliver Foyle said:
My condolences on the death of your mother. Losing a loved one is always hard.

In relation to hearing voices, a good few years ago I was at home alone for a week, the parents were off caravanning and I'd taken the week off work to do a whole load of nothing.

One night I was woken up out of my sleep thinking I heard our (half-stray) cat meowing my name in distress. It was the weirdest experience I had. A combination of just waking up brain fog and me being in the house alone caused me to dream of somebody calling out for me and combined it with the cat meowing outside the back door.
Click to expand...
This has been an eye-opening experience for me. There's no way to simulate grief. And those in the throws of the emotion aren't keen to be studied. I feel I have a better footing as a paranormal research hobbyist for understanding this end of the ghost phenomenon. No further incidents to report. I've grown used to the new silence in the house, and the noises that were probably always there.
 
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