The history of the paranormal and psychic phenomena include many reports of experiences in which someone got the impression that there may have been communication or a signaling effect between the deceased and the living. Based on such reports and various types of seemingly inexplicable phenomena, I can make a list of twelve possible ways that the deceased might signal or communicate with the living. By a signal I mean what might be some non-verbal indication in which a deceased person merely gives a sign that he or she still exists.
1. Mysterious Raps
The occurrence of inexplicable rap sounds was massively reported in the nineteenth century, with a host of witnesses (many of them very trustworthy people) reporting such an effect. I have been describing in great detail many of these reports in my "Spookiest Years" series of posts here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here. The evidence for this phenomenon was very good even at the very beginning of the phenomenon, for reasons I explain in my post here. It was not merely that great numbers of reliable witnesses reported mysterious rap sounds they could not explain. It was also that the sounds corresponded to intelligible communication. Very early in the phenomenon, witnesses developed a habit of reciting the alphabet while attempting to get intelligible communication from mysterious raps. The tedious technique involved calling out the letters of the alphabet in sequential order, and writing down whenever a mysterious rap occurred just after a letter was recited. Very many witnesses reported that intelligible communication would result from such a technique, with the letters written down after a rap forming into intelligible sentences and paragraphs.
2. A Mysterious Sense of Presence or Mysterious Figures, Voices, or Touches
In the past fifty years it has been very widely reported by some people that they experience a "sense of presence" that the person may feel comes from some deceased person. For example, at some random time or significant event, a widow may report a feeling that her deceased husband is there with her for a while, even though there is no corresponding vision or image matching such a feeling. Other times a person may report a mysterious figure, voice or touch identified as arising from a deceased person.
Some relevant studies are below (I extracted all the numbers below from the original source materials):
- In Arcangel's study of 827 people, 596 (72%) responded that they had had an "afterlife encounter." We read, "69% of respondents listed some form of visual encounter (Question 4), 19% were Visual only, 13% were a combination of Visual/Auditory, 8% Visual/Sense of Presence and 8% Visual/Auditory/Sense of Presence."
- Erlendur Haraldsson surveyed 902 people in Iceland in 1974, finding that 31% reported seeing an apparition or having an encounter with a dead person. He did another survey in Iceland in 2007 with a similar sample size, finding that 42% reported seeing an apparition or having an encounter with a dead person, with 21% reporting a "visual experience of a dead person," along with 21% reporting an out-of-body experience.
- A large survey included some questions about paranormal experience, such as asking whether they had ever "felt as though you were really in touch with someone who had died." According to Table 1 of the paper here, the number answering "Yes" to this question was 24% in France, 34% in Italy, 30% in the United States, and 25% in Europe overall. 54% of those in the US reported having an experience with telepathy.
- A 1973 survey of 434 persons in Los Angeles, USA found that 44% reported encounters with the deceased, and that 25% of those 44% (in other words, 11% of the 434) said that a dead person "actually visited or was seen at a seance."
- As reported in the 1894 edition of the Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research (Volume X, Part XXVI), an 1890's "Census of Hallucinations" conducted by the Society for Psychical Research asked, "Have you ever, when believing yourself to be completely awake, lad a vivid impression of seeing or being touched by a living being or inanimate object, or of hearing a voice ; which impression, so far as you could discover, was not due to any external physical cause?" As reported in Table 1 here (page 39), the number answering "Yes" was about 10%. Because the question did not specifically refer to the dead, ghosts or apparitions, the wording of the question may have greatly reduced the number of "yes" answers from people experiencing what seemed to be an apparition of the dead or a sense of the presence of the dead.
- In the March-April 1948 edition of the Journal of the Society for Psychical Research, page 187, there appeared the result of a survey asking the same question asked in 1894: "Have you ever, when believing yourself to be completely awake, had a vivid impression of seeing or being touched by a living being or inanimate object, or of hearing a voice ; which impression, so far as you could discover, was not due to any external physical cause?" According to page 191, 217 out of 1519 answered "Yes." This was a 14% "yes" rate higher than the rate of about 10% reported in 1894.
- A 1980 telephone survey of 368 participants found that 29% reported "post-death communication."
- The British Medical Journal published in 1971 a study by Rees that involved almost 300 subjects, one entitled "The Hallucinations of Widowhood." Rees reported that 39% in his survey reported a sense of presence from a deceased person and 14% reported seeing the deceased, along with 13% hearing the deceased.
- A 2015 Pew Research poll found that 18% of Americans said they've seen or been in the presence of a ghost, and that 29% said that they've felt in touch with someone who died.
- A Groupon survey of 2000 people found that more than 60% claim to have seen a ghost.
- A 1976 survey of 1467 people in the US asked people if they had ever "felt as though you were really in touch with someone who had died?" 27% answered "Yes." The same survey found that large percentages of the population reported experiences such as ESP or clairvoyance, as you can see in the answers below.
From the work here
A 2021 study surveyed about 1000 widows or widowers. The 2021 study found 34% reported a sense of presence from a deceased person and a higher percentage (46%) reporting a visual experience involving the deceased, along with 43% reporting an auditory experience. The 2021 study has this interesting quote, using the term "ADC" for "after-death communication":
"Surprisingly, 36.4% of our respondents reported that they were not alone at the time of their ADC, and of these, 21.0% asserted that the ADC was witnessed by their companions. Also related to the perceived evidentiality of the experiences, 24.4% of respondents stated that they had received information that was previously unknown to them (often concerning circumstances of the deceased's passing.)"
Below is a quote from the abstract of a paper entitled "Alleged Encounters With the Dead: The Importance Of Violent Death In 337 New Cases" by Haraldsson:
"Personal encounters with the dead are reported by 25% of Western Europeans and 30% of Americans. Three hundred thirty-seven Icelanders reporting such experiences were interviewed at length. Ninety percent of them reported sensory experiences (apparitions) of a deceased person; 69% were visual, 28% auditory, 13% tactile, and 4% olfactory. Fewer than half of the experiences occurred in twilight or darkness. In half of the cases the experiencer was actively engaged or working. Disproportionately prominent were apparitions of those who died violently and crisis apparitions observed close to the time of death of the person who was perceived, although in the majority of cases, the percipient did not know that the person had died."
There is a strong reason for suspecting that all of the survey numbers above underestimate the occurrence of such observations. The reason is that self-censorship by survey respondents probably reduces the reported occurrences very substantially. We must remember that authorities in our culture have a long history of shaming, abusing, misrepresenting, gaslighting and attempting to pathologize people who report experiences of the paranormal. For many decades and centuries such authorities (including professors, skeptics and clergy) have attempted to portray people reporting paranormal experiences as deluded, psychotic, liars, fakes, or fools. Consequently we should assume that there is a significant degree of self-censorship in which people who had paranormal experiences do not report them, for fear of "getting in trouble" or being embarrassed, shamed, slandered, criticized or gaslighted.
3. Communication Via Mental Mediums
Following the beginning of the mysterious rap phenomena that began in 1848, there arose different types of persons calling themselves mediums. There were mediums such as Daniel Dunglas Home, who were classified as physical mediums, because the mysterious effects reported around them were mainly physical effects such as musical instruments playing by themselves, and levitations of tables (or perhaps even a levitation of the medium himself). There were also mediums classified as mental mediums, who were involved with mysterious mental effects. A mental medium might claim to be able to contact the deceased by means of mental techniques long practiced by the medium, or by means of entering into a trance. Many of the mental mediums have used methods similar to methods that have been called "channeling" in recent decades.
Some mental mediums held up very well to prolonged examination by scientists. The most successful mental medium was the American medium Leonora Piper. A long account of her case is given in my post here. Leonora Piper held up very well to many years of very close and careful examination by members of the Society for Psychical Research. The main person examining her case was a person (Richard Hodgson) who was very skeptical at first, but later became convinced that Piper was actually communicating with the deceased. Innumerable times Leonora Piper seemed to display detailed knowledge of things that were known to her visitors, but should have been unknown to her, with the most impressive cases coming when Leonora did not even know the identity of her visitor. Such knowledge often seemed to include knowing about obscure events or little-known persons known to her visitors, which she should have known nothing about. This occurred around years such as 1897, where it was impossible to easily gather obscure information by techniques such as using the Internet.
A British medium of the early twentieth century (Gladys Osborne Leonard) seemed to produce equally impressive results, results so impressive she was often called "the British Leonora Piper." The most impressive existing record of the results of Gladys Osborne Leonard is the 1916 book Raymond, or Life After Death by Sir Oliver Lodge, which can be read online for free here. The book is a meticulous account of interactions Lodge had with mediums after the death of his son Raymond. The book has transcripts of quite a few sessions Lodge had with mediums such as Leonard. The results seem impressive, although very careful readership is required.
In more recent times scientists such as Gary Schwartz PhD and Julie Beischel PhD have done controlled scientific studies of mediums in which they scored far better than non-mediums when trying to gather information about the deceased relatives of unidentified individuals. Julie Beischel seems to have some good experimental results, but unfortunately she is not very skillful at communicating such results in a way that the average person will find easy to understand, and she has a tendency to write results in a jargon-heavy professorial style that is hard for the non-scientist to penetrate.
4. Apparitions of Those Who Recently Died
A wraith is defined as "a ghost or ghostlike image of someone, especially one seen shortly before or after their death." In a large fraction of these cases, the person reporting the apparition did not even know that the person corresponding to the apparition was very sick or near death. I have cited many of those cases in the series of posts you can read below:
An Apparition Was Their Death Notice
25 Who Were "Ghost-Told" of a Death
25 More Who Were "Ghost-Told" of a Death
In an article in the Journal of the Society for Psychical Research , on page 427, we have the interesting diagram below, one suggesting apparition sightings occur most frequently about the time of someone's death, but with quite a few sightings occurring well after someone dies:
5. Deathbed Apparitions
Some examples can be found here and here and here. The first major reference to this phenomenon that I can find in the literature of parapsychology is the fascinating 1906 paper "Apparitions of Deceased Persons at Death-Beds" in pages 67-100 of the February 1906 Annals of Psychical Research, (Volume 3), which can be read here. The main work on this topic (one finding a strong effect) is the work "At The Hour of Death" by Osis and Haraldsson, which can be read here. A survey of family members of deceased Japanese found that 21% reported deathbed visions. A study of 103 subjects in India reports this: "Thirty of these dying persons displayed behavior consistent with deathbed visions-interacting or speaking with deceased relatives, mostly their dead parents." A study of 102 families in the Republic of Moldava found that "37 cases demonstrated classic features of deathbed visions--reports of seeing dead relatives or friends communicating to the dying person." We read the following on a page of the Psi Encylopedia:
"In 2017, Una MacConville carried out a study with Irish health care professionals. The carers reported that 45% of their patients spoke of visions of deceased relatives, often joyful experiences that bring a sense of peace and comfort."
"It is a commonplace truth, observed by many physicians and clergymen, that a dying person, when conscious near the moment of death, acts or speaks as if he saw standing near loved ones who have already died. Dr. Russell Conwell told Bruce Barton in the interview quoted earlier in another connection, that he had witnessed this phenomenon 'literally hundreds of times.' "
6. Apparitions of Those Who Died Long Ago
Apparitions of the dead seem to occur most commonly close to the death of the person corresponding to the apparition. But it is not all that rare for someone to see an apparition of someone who died long ago. I discussed some cases of this type in these previous posts:
When Apparitions Are Seen of Those Who Died Long Ago (Part 1)
When Apparitions Are Seen of Those Who Died Long Ago (Part 2)
When Apparitions Are Seen of Those Who Died Long Ago (Part 3)
When Apparitions Are Seen of Those Who Died Long Ago (Part 4)
There is no credibility in attempts to explain the more dramatic of such accounts as hallucinations that occur for the sake of comfort. While there can occur a kind of "see what you want to see" effect called pareidolia in which people interpret vague random fluctuating data in comforting but biased ways, there is no robust evidence that people have complex hallucinations to comfort themselves. For example:
- As shown on the TV show American Greed, there are very many people who have been swindled out of their life savings, losing decades of their savings. But none of these people ever had a “comforting hallucination” in which they saw something like a stack of cash on their dining room table to make themselves feel better.
- We have many historical experiences of people who put their hearts and souls into a war, only to be bitterly disappointed when their country lost the war, and was occupied by a foreign power. There are no cases of any such people having a “comforting hallucination” in which they learned that it was a mistake, and their side really won the war.
- There are many people who learn they have cancer, and begin to suffer from it. None of them have “comforting hallucinations” in which they see a doctor telling them their cancer has been cured.
7. Visions of the Deceased During Near-Death Experiences
It is very common during near-death experiences for people to report going to some strange mystical environment and encountering deceased loved ones. Often the report will be that a deceased person told the person having the near-death encounter that he or she must "go back" and continue with his or her earthly life. The Greyson Scale listing features of near-death experiences includes "saw deceased or religious spirits" as one of the characteristics of the near-death experiences, and surveys find an occurrence of such encounters in reported near-death experiences ranging from about 25% to as high as about 40%, with the number varying quite a bit from survey to survey.
8. Dream Appearances of the Deceased
Dream appearances of the deceased are extremely common. In some cases such appearances might occur because of telepathic communication between the deceased and the living. Since November 2020 I have been logging all of my dreams during the night and early morning, as soon as I could recall them. The result is an extremely long post first published in early 2021 but updated almost daily since then: my post "I Keep Dreaming of Danger, Death and Life After Death." I log every single case of a dream involving a deceased person, and also many dreams that do not involve such people. The two people who have appeared most often in my dreams are my father and my mother, both of whom died before 2020. Each has appeared more than 100 times in my dreams. In the case of the dreams of my father there has been a recurrent theme that makes me suspect that something more than mere chance is involved.
9. Inexplicable Physical Signs
People often report inexplicable or extremely improbable events that they think may be signs from some deceased person. Such events are often interpreted as some kind of vague indication from some deceased person of his continued existence after death. The response of skeptics to such claims is very lame. A skeptic will typically evoke the claim that there is zero evidence that physical events on Earth can be caused by spiritual intelligences outside of Earth. But in the nineteenth century there seemed to be a very great abundance of evidence suggesting that physical events on Earth can be caused by spiritual intelligences from beyond this Earth. I am in the process of summarizing such evidence in my long series of "Spookiest Years" posts on another blog. You can read the posts I have published so far in this series here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here. I myself have experienced quite a few seemingly inexplicable physical events that seemed to suggest (with varying levels of strength) mysterious signs from beyond the grave. You can read about some of them in my posts here, here, here, here and here.
10. Sudden Hard-to-Explain Very Old Recollections of the Deceased
Normally recollections appear through a process of association. You may be thinking about topic x, which may you lead you to recall related topic y, which may lead you to recall related topic z. But sometimes a person may recall some very distant recollection of the deceased, in a way that seems so hard to explain that the person may wonder whether some ESP is occurring.
I will give a very recent example. I awoke this week after having a dream of sitting on a sofa with an unknown woman, while using some magical-seeming newspaper that seemed to have a built-in video player. While pondering this dream, I suddenly "out of nowhere" had an unrelated memory of an incident that had occurred nearly sixty years earlier, an incident I had not recalled in many years. The incident involved me as a young boy pushing a shopping cart too fast and accidentally cracking a display case in a supermarket. Seeing what happened, my mother paid a store clerk $20 to cover the damage (then worth about $50), and we kept on shopping. She did not get angry or even scold me. It was a wonderful memory of my late mother at her best. But why would a memory so distant suddenly have appeared? There seem to have occurred nothing in my thoughts that could explain the recall of a memory so very distant. When such things occur, we may wonder whether some deceased relative is telepathically communicating with us.
11. Voice Manifestations
I have no direct experience with ever hearing any mysterious voice sounding like the voice of a deceased person. But it seems quite a few people of normal sound mind report such a thing. The famous astronomer Carl Sagan said this: “Probably a dozen times since their deaths I've heard my mother or father, in an ordinary, conversational tone of voice, call my name.” Did Sagan accept this as evidence of the paranormal? No, he created a ridiculous hypothesis to explain it away, the hypothesis that he was spontaneously re-experiencing a previous sensation. He said, “I still miss them so much that it doesn't seem strange to me that my brain occasionally will retrieve a kind of lucid recollection of their voices.” This is a good example of the seemingly boundless ability of professors of physical science to invent absurd excuses for not paying attention to important evidence they should be paying attention to.
There are quite a few accounts of warning voices from a deceased relative. In some, a person will report something like this: while driving a car, the person heard the voice of a deceased relative urging that the person pull off the road or switch lanes. After doing that, the person reportedly found that the quick action caused him or her to avert some doom that lay ahead on the road, such as a crashed truck.
12. Paranormal Luminosities, Including Mysterious Orbs
In my post "Paranormal Luminosities" I cite quite a few cases of people reporting mysterious lights, often ones that seem to be connected with someone's death. In a similar vein, there are numerous reports of people seeing mysterious orbs with the naked eye. You can read some of these reports here:
