Case 1: Dead friend stopped by her salon 

Some people claim that loved ones have contacted them after death. Paranormal investigators call these events "crisis apparitions" and say they take many forms. Some witnesses say apparitions appear lifelike, and that the images are reassuring. 

Woman who encountered apparition: "He needed to say goodbye"

“Nina, I can’t stay long,” he said, pausing in the doorway. “I just wanted to stop by and say thank you for everything.”

They chatted a bit more before Michael left and De Santo went home. On Sunday she received a strange call from a salon employee. Michael’s body had been found the previous morning – at least nine hours before she talked to him at her shop. He had committed suicide.

If Michael was dead, who, or what, did she talk to that night?

“It was very bizarre,” she said of the 2001 encounter. “I went through a period of disbelief. How can you tell someone that you saw this man, solid as ever, walk in and talk to you, but he’s dead?”

Today, De Santo has a name for what happened that night: “crisis apparition.” She stumbled onto the term while reading about paranormal activities after the incident. According to paranormal investigators, a crisis apparition is the spirit of a recently deceased person who visits someone they had a close emotional connection with, usually to say goodbye.

De Santo, the former New Jersey hair salon owner, has taken the same self-inventory. The experience affected her so much she later joined the Eastern Pennsylvania Paranormal Society, which investigates the paranormal. She said she checked with Michael’s relatives and poured through a coroner’s report to confirm the time of his death, which was put at Friday night – almost 24 hours before she saw him at her salon on Saturday night.

She said Michael’s body had been discovered by his cousin around 11 Saturday morning. Michael was slumped over his kitchen table, dead from a self-inflicted gunshot. De Santo was baffled at first, but now she has a theory. Michael started off as a customer, but she became his confidant. Once, after one of her pep talks, Michael told her, “You make me feel as if I can conquer the world.”

Maybe Michael had to settle affairs in this world before he could move on to the next, De Santo said.

“A lot of times when a person dies tragically, there’s a certain amount of guilt or turmoil,” she said. “I don’t think they leave this Earth. They stay here. I think he kind of felt he had unfinished business. He needed to say goodbye.” And so he did, she said. This is how she described their last conversation:

As they chatted face to face in the doorway of her shop, De Santo said they never touched, never even shook hands. But she didn’t remember anything unusual about him – no disembodied voice, no translucent body, no “I see dead people” vibe as in the movie “The Sixth Sense.”

“I’m in a really good place now,” she recalled him saying.

There were, however, two odd details she noticed at the time but couldn’t put together until later, she said.

When she first opened the door to greet Michael, she said she felt an unsettling chill. Then she noticed his face – it was grayish and pale.

And when she held the door open for him, he refused to come in. He just chatted before finally saying, “Thanks again, Nina.”

Michael then smiled at her, turned and walked away into the winter’s night.

Reports of these eerie encounters are materializing in online discussion groups, books such as “Messages” – which features stories of people making contact with loved ones lost on September 11 – and local ghost hunting groups that have sprung up across the country amid a surge of interest in the paranormal.

Although such encounters are chilling, they can also be comforting, witnesses and paranormal investigators say. These encounters suggest the bond that exists between loved ones is not erased by death.

“We don’t know what to do with these stories. Some people say that they are proof that there’s life after death,” said Steve Volk, author of “Fringe-ology,” a book on paranormal experiences such as telepathy, psychics and house hauntings.

Scientific research on crisis apparitions is scant, but theories abound.

One theory: A person in crisis – someone who is critically ill or dying – telepathically transmits an image of themselves to someone they have a close relationship with, but they’re usually unaware they’re sending a message.

Others suggest crisis apparitions are guardian angels sent to comfort the grieving. Another theory says it’s all a trick of the brain – that people in mourning unconsciously produce apparitions to console themselves after losing a loved one.

A telepathic link between loved ones

Whatever the source for these apparitions, they often leave people shaken.

Nor are apparitions limited to visions. The spirit of a dead person can communicate with a loved one through something as subtle as the sudden whiff of a favorite perfume, Volk says.

“Sometimes you just sense the presence of someone close to you, and it seemingly comes out of nowhere,” Volk said. “And afterward, you find out that person was in some kind of crisis at the time of the vision.”

Many people who don’t even believe in ghosts still experience a mini-version of a crisis-apparition encounter, paranormal investigators say.

Did you ever hear a story of a mother who somehow knows before anyone told her that something awful has happened to her child? Have you ever met a set of twins who seem to be able to read each other’s minds?

People who are extremely close develop a virtual telepathic link that exists in, and beyond, this world, said Jeff Belanger, a journalist who collected ghost stories for his book, “Our Haunted Lives: True Life Ghost Encounters.”

“People have these experiences all the time,” Belanger said. “There’s an interconnectedness between people. Do you know how you’re close to someone, and you just know they’re sick or something is wrong?”

Case 2: An eerie phone call at night

Simma Lieberman said she’s experienced that ominous feeling and has never forgotten it – though it took place more than 40 years ago.

Today, Lieberman is a workplace diversity consultant based in Albany, California. In the late 1960s though, she was a young woman in love.

Her boyfriend, Johnny, was a mellow hippie “who loved everybody,” a guy so nice that friends called him a pushover, she said. She loved Johnny, and they purchased an apartment together and decided to marry.

Then one night, while Lieberman was at her mother’s home in the Bronx, the phone rang and she answered. Johnny was on the line, sounding rushed and far away. Static crackled.

“I just want you to know that I love you, and I’ll never be mean to anybody again,” he said.

There was more static, and then the line went dead. Lieberman was left with just a dial tone.

She tried to call him back to no avail. When she awoke the next morning, an unsettled feeling came over her. She said it’s hard to put into words, but she could no longer feel Johnny’s presence.

Then she found out why.

“Several hours later, I got a call from his mother that he had been murdered the night before,” she said.

Johnny was shot in the head as he sat in a car that night. Lieberman thinks Johnny somehow contacted her after his death – a crisis apparition reaching out not through a vision or a whiff of perfume, but across telephone lines.

She’s sorted through the alternatives over the years. Could he have called before or during his murder? Lieberman doesn’t think so.

This was the era before cell phones. She said the murderer wasn’t likely to let him use a pay phone, and he couldn’t have called after he was shot because he died instantly.

Only years later, when she read an article about other static-filled calls people claimed to have received from beyond the grave, did it make sense, she said.

Johnny was calling to say goodbye.

“The whole thing was so bizarre,” she said. “I could never understand it.”

Case 3: He had a ‘whitish glow’

Josh Harris’ experience baffled him as well. It involved his grandfather, Raymond Harris.

Josh was Raymond’s first grandchild. They spent countless hours together fishing and doing yardwork in their hometown of Hackleburg, Alabama. You saw one, you saw the other.

Those days came to an end in 1997 when Raymond Harris was diagnosed with lung cancer. The doctors gave him weeks to live. Josh, 12 at the time, visited his grandfather’s house one night to keep vigil as his “pa-pa” weakened, but his family ordered him to return home, about two miles away.

Josh said he was asleep on the couch in his home around 2 a.m. when he snapped awake. He looked up. His grandfather was standing over him.

“At first, it kind of took me by surprise,” said Harris, a maintenance worker with a gravelly Southern accent. “I wondered why he was standing in the hallway and not in his house with everyone else.”

His grandfather then spoke, Harris said.

“He just looked at me, smiled and said, ‘Everything will be OK.’ “

His grandfather then turned around and started walking toward the kitchen. Harris rose to follow but spun around when the phone rang. An aunt who was in another room answered.

“When I turned back around to look, he was gone,” Harris said.

As if on cue, his aunt came out of the room crying, “Josh, your pa-pa is gone.”

“No, he was just here,” Harris told his aunt, insisting that his grandfather had just stopped by to say everything was OK. He said it took him a day to accept that his grandfather had died.

“Honestly, before that, I never believed in the paranormal,” he said. “I thought it was all fake and made up. But I just woke up and I saw him. It couldn’t be my mind playing a trick. He looked solid.”

Fourteen years after his grandfather’s death, there’s another detail from that night that’s still lodged in Harris’ memory.

As he watched his grandfather walk to the kitchen, he said he noticed something unusual.

“It looked like there was a whitish glow around him.”

Case 4: ’Can you come out and play?’

Childhood is supposed to be a time of innocence, a time when thoughts of death are far away. But crisis apparition stories aren’t confined to adults and teens.

Donna Stewart was 6 years old and growing up in Coos Bay, Oregon. One of her best friends was Danny. One day, Danny had to go to the hospital to have his tonsils removed. Stewart played with him on the morning of the surgery before saying goodbye.

She said she was in her bedroom the next day when she looked up and saw Danny standing there. He wanted to know if she wanted to go out and play.

Stewart trotted to her mother’s bedroom to ask her if she could play with Danny. Her mother froze.

“She went white,” Stewart said. “She told me that wasn’t possible.”

Her mother broke the news. Danny had an allergic reaction during surgery and died, Stewart said.

“When I went back to my room, he was gone,” she said.

Stewart, now an Oregon homemaker and a member of PSI of Oregon, a paranormal investigative team, said the encounter changed the way she looked at death.

“These experiences have made me believe that those we love are really not that far away at all and know when we are not doing as well as we could,” she said. “Just as they did in life, they offer comfort during crisis.”

Still, Stewart often replays the encounter in her mind. She asks the same questions others who’ve had such encounters ask: Did my mind play tricks on me? Could he have been alive? Did it all really happen after he died?

Maybe Michael had to settle affairs in this world before he could move on to the next, De Santo said.

“A lot of times when a person dies tragically, there’s a certain amount of guilt or turmoil,” she said. “I don’t think they leave this Earth. They stay here. I think he kind of felt he had unfinished business. He needed to say goodbye.”

And so he did, she said. This is how she described their last conversation:

As they chatted face to face in the doorway of her shop, De Santo said they never touched, never even shook hands. But she didn’t remember anything unusual about him – no disembodied voice, no translucent body, no “I see dead people” vibe as in the movie “The Sixth Sense.”

“I’m in a really good place now,” she recalled him saying.

There were, however, two odd details she noticed at the time but couldn’t put together until later, she said.

When she first opened the door to greet Michael, she said she felt an unsettling chill. Then she noticed his face – it was grayish and pale.

And when she held the door open for him, he refused to come in. He just chatted before finally saying, “Thanks again, Nina.”

Michael then smiled at her, turned and walked away into the winter’s night.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2011/09/23/living/crisis-apparitions/

And while she always wore a hat and coat, as a young child, it was Mr Strictly who really grabbed my attention. No matter the weather, he always dressed with stiffly starched and studded collar, waistcoat, jacket, hat, smart trousers and shoes.

I never saw him without his hat and, while we never spoke, he would always touch it as a greeting.

One morning, when I was a 24-year-old teacher, I raced out to my car and saw Mr Strictly standing by the gate. I stopped in my tracks because, for the first time ever, he didn’t have his hat on.

Instead, he had a mass of wild, white hair — I remember noticing the individual strands which were blowing in the breeze. That sense of frivolity seemed to match his mood because, as he turned and smiled at me, I saw a happiness that I’d never seen before.

He looked at me as if to say ‘I’m free’ — the sense of release was almost palpable — and I noticed his shirt-sleeves were rolled up, his studded collar had been removed and his shirt and waistcoat were unbuttoned.

What’s more, his hands were casually in his pockets, which I’d never seen before. I almost chuckled to myself at the thought of what his wife would say.

I was so struck by this that when I bumped into another neighbour, Claire, the next morning I mentioned it to her. She asked me if I was sure, then ran to fetch the local paper from inside. It contained an obituary notice for Mr Strictly, who had died ten days earlier.

I know that I saw his ghost — and he looked so happy and robust that he was finally free to dress exactly how he liked.

Source: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2634427/Each-time-one-relatives-died-clock-stopped-Just-one-haunting-stories-Mail-readers-tell-experiences-ghostly-events-surrounding-deaths-families.html

So, after his death five years ago from kidney cancer aged 72, I was bereft and the long, cold nights were particularly lonely and empty.

Then one night, two years later, as I got back into bed shivering after a trip to the bathroom in the early hours, I suddenly felt the mattress behind me dip down, as if Ted was climbing in beside me.

I was terrified, and I moved in shock. As I shifted, the weight on the bed beside me disappeared.

Trembling, I said: ‘Is that you Ted? If you come back tomorrow, I promise I won’t move.’

I was so scared and unnerved that I couldn’t sleep for hours.

But when I woke in the morning, the bed moved beside me again, as if Ted was taking his familiar place. It started to happen quite regularly — and once I actually felt the warm sensation of my hand on his, reaching over his fingers.

Another time I heard his cough behind me. On another occasion, I even walked into the bedroom and saw him lying on the bed, smiling, looking just as he had aged 30, healthy and happy.

He’s since stopped visiting but it was such a comfort to know he hasn’t left me for ever. It’s as if he wanted me to see he was all right — and make sure I was, too. 

Source: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2634427/Each-time-one-relatives-died-clock-stopped-Just-one-haunting-stories-Mail-readers-tell-experiences-ghostly-events-surrounding-deaths-families.html

I looked at her open-mouthed as she continued: ‘I cried and said I didn’t want him to leave but he told me to be strong because Nana and Mummy and the rest of the family will need to be looked after. Then I felt him hug me and he told me not to be sad because he would always be with me’.

Nicola then threw her arms around me, comforting me just like her granddad had requested.

On the morning of his funeral, I was lying in bed, wide awake, wondering how on earth I was going to get through the day.

Blinking back tears I suddenly saw my father at the foot of my bed, as if he was behind a huge wreath of brightly-coloured flowers, shaped like a window frame.

He was dressed in a brown suit — as a builder it was the only one he owned — that he’d worn for my wedding and had a lovely smile on his lips.

I didn’t dare blink or speak in case this vision disappeared but, after a minute, his image faded away.

He was only 64 when he died and I believe he was letting his family know he was there, supporting us.

The feelings of love and peace that radiated from Dad that day morning with me for a long time after.

Source: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2634427/Each-time-one-relatives-died-clock-stopped-Just-one-haunting-stories-Mail-readers-tell-experiences-ghostly-events-surrounding-deaths-families.html

The librarian, June, knew Dad as a regular.

I drove to return the books with a heavy heart, and found June there.

She almost gave a start when she saw me and blurted out: ‘Oh Pam, the most funny thing just happened. Your Dad was wandering around the shelves looking for something to read, but when I looked away for a second, he totally vanished.

‘I don’t know what happened to him — and I’m worried.’

The colour drained from her face when I told her Dad had passed nearly a week before. She was utterly insistent she’d seen him.

Driving home, it was snowing heavily and I was concentrating hard when suddenly I saw Dad in the car from the corner of my eye. I heard him say: ‘I didn’t mean to scare June — I just needed something to read.’

Then, in an instant, he was gone.

Whenever I look at Dad’s book collection — sitting proudly on my own shelves — I think of his final visit to that library.

Source: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2634427/Each-time-one-relatives-died-clock-stopped-Just-one-haunting-stories-Mail-readers-tell-experiences-ghostly-events-surrounding-deaths-families.html

Woman who doesn't believe in ghosts reveals two encounters with her late friend

A woman has revealed how she believes her late best friend communicated with her twice from beyond the grave in an eerie story that's difficult to explain away with logic. Laura, from Devon, spoke to BBC Radio 4 podcast Uncanny about how she saw a vision of her friend Anna in a park, moments before learning she had lost her battle with cancer. 

Laura, now in her early 40s, met Anna in the early Nineties after leaving home at the age of '15 or 16'. She moved into a shared house with strangers, including Anna, who was then in her 20s. The pair became best friends. 

'Anna didn't look like anybody else,' Laura continued. 'She was very Rubenesque and she had clouds of red hair that didn't grow down, it grew out. It seemed to defy gravity. She generally had a cigarette on the go and great big glasses. 

'She was the best person I had ever met at that point of my life. She was someone who would always look out for me. Make sure that the worst didn't happen to me.' 

Three years after they met, Anna, then in her early 30s and already a cancer survivor, found a lump. 'She had it checked out and the cancer was back,' Laura said. 

Anna received treatment and spent time in a hospice but was sent home for her final days. Laura, by then living apart from Anna, went to visit shortly before her death.

'She was in bed and she was hooked up to morphine for pain relief but she asked me to pass her a cigarette,' Laura recalled. 'We chatted, it became time for me to leave and I said "I will see you in a few days, I love you". 

'And Anna said, "keep partying Laura Bear". And that was the sort of thing she said all the time. She always called me "Laura Bear". Everybody she was fond of she put "Bear" on the end of their names. So it wasn't an extraordinary thing to say, it was an Anna thing to say. That was our last exchange.' 

Days later Laura was walking home from work through a park when she had her first paranormal experience.    

'I finished work, I was walking home, the sun was getting quite low, shining through the trees,' she continued. 'It's not a very big park and there's a very steep hill. I looked up to my right and Anna was stood on that hill on a pathway near the trees... She was smoking.' 

Laura knew logically that her friend was terminally ill in bed, and unable to go out. And yet she was certain it was the figure of Anna she could see on the hill.  

Laura continued: 'How she was holding the cigarette and she had a way of flicking her hair constantly. I could see the sunlight on her glasses. Anna didn't look like anybody else. It was Anna.' 

Deciding not to approach the figure, Laura continued to her flat. As she walked in, her phone was ringing. 

'I picked it up and it was Anna's dad phoning to say Anna had passed away,' she said. 'Whatever I did see was a visual representation of Anna. Not someone who looked like her. Anna.' 

I'm an atheist. I don't believe there is life after death. If there was, why would your loved ones choose to speak to you in public through a stranger

Six years later Laura, by that time a parent in her mid-20s, joined some colleagues at an audience with a medium in a nearby town. 

The event was held in a hall. The medium came on stage, decked out in costume jewellery, and began to tell members of the audience about the spirits she was 'seeing'. 

'I was thinking it's a load of rubbish,' Laura said. 'I'm an atheist. I don't believe there is life after death. If there was, why would your loved ones choose to speak to you in public through a stranger.'

At the end of the night Laura's friends joined a smaller group who had gathered around the medium while she went to scope out the nearest pub. 

When she came back to hurry her friends along, the medium turned to her with a very specific message. 

Laura recalled she said: '"I'm really glad you came back because there was a woman with red hair here for you but she told me not to reach out to you during the show because you would have rejected it. But she told me to tell you, "keep partying Laura Bear".'

But the message was 'totally unwelcome'. 'I was absolutely furious. I didn't say anything. I didn't say a word.'

She continued: 'I don't know what the explanation is because I don't believe in ghosts, I don't believe in mediums. But I do believe I saw Anna. I don't know what I believe about this medium but I do know that it happened. And I don't believe any of the friends I was with stitched me up.' 

Speaking on the programme sceptic psychologist Chris French and Ashley Darkwood, a paranormal investigator and psychic medium, shared their conflicting views on what Laura had experienced. 

Chris believed the first encounter could simply have been with a woman Laura had mistaken for Anna, or that she had dreamed about seeing Anna in a park and created a false memory. 

Ashley spoke of how spiritualists like himself believe the soul can spend some time 'visiting loved ones' before 'going to the next place', adding: 'I would argue at that point before she new, she probably wouldn't have suffered sufficient shock to have hallucinated.'

Ashley added that there is also a belief in spiritualism that 'departed souls' can communicate from beyond the grave, which could, he believes, account for the medium's highly specific message. 

'There is the belief that souls of the departed can use what people might understand as a form of telepathy to speak mind-to-mind with the medium... 

'It could also be something called claircognisance, where you just know something. Or it could even be that the medium somehow went into a trance and it was Anna who spoke through the medium.'

However Chris pointed out that some so-called mediums are little more than con artists looking to deceive people dealing with grief. Others really do believe they are communicating with the dead, but often this is nothing more than a ruse. 

He added: 'I think it's possible that one of those friends did misjudge Laura and maybe thought she would find it comforting to get some kind of message from this beloved friend who had passed away... It can't be explained away easily, but that doesn't mean it can't be explained away at all.'

Source: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-10186723/Woman-doesnt-believe-ghosts-reveals-TWO-encounters-late-friend.html