How to Make a Five-Star Report of the Spooky or Paranormal

 It is very common for humans to report seeing or hearing something that seems to be paranormal. But reports of such observations vary in quality. How can you can judge the quality of a report? Below is an informal system in which an observation report is assigned a number of stars that can vary between 0 and 6. A six-star observation report is one that has the most weight as evidence. 

Add 1 star if we have first-hand testimony or testimony exactly quoting what a witness said he saw

People can make mistakes when reporting what someone else saw. They may misinterpret or poorly remember what someone said.  It's much better to have a first-person account spoken or written by the person who claimed to have seen something.  One of the lowest quality reports of the paranormal we can imagine is someone saying something like, "Long ago my friend said that she saw something she thought was a ghost," without giving an exact quotation.  Similarly, a newspaper report saying "Mrs. Wilson says she saw a UFO" is offering a bit of evidence inferior to an exact quotation from Mrs. Wilson about what she saw. 

Add 1 star if we have a named and reliable witness 

You often read online and in books or magazines reports of unnamed single witnesses claiming to see amazing things. Such reports tend to have less value as evidence than reports coming from named witnesses.  The reason is partially that an unnamed witness may feel that he is free to lie without any consequences.  So, for example, if I read a stunning UFO story told by someone with an anonymous user name such as metssuperfan, it has relatively little weight as evidence. It also has lesser weight as evidence when a writer tells us that Mr. B. saw such and such a thing, without listing a full name. It also has little weight when a named witness with a record of lying reports seeing something. But it has much more weight if a named and reliable witness reports seeing something. 

Add 1 star if a written or videotaped dated eyewitness report was made very soon after the observation occurred, with the report being quoted, or the account being such a report

The longer a gap has passed between an observation and someone's recollection of the observation, the greater the chance that the recollection may be inaccurate.  So your mother's story about a ghost she says she saw twenty years ago does not have nearly as much evidence weight as your mother's written account of what she saw on that night, written on the same night as the observation. Credibility is increased when we have someone's report of what that person saw  when an observation was fresh in his memory. 

Add 1 star if the observation report was published very soon after the observation occurred

Dated written reports are a good thing to have, but it is even better if such reports are published soon after the claimed observation. Such a thing helps to prove that the claim of an observation was made very soon after the claimed observation date. If someone has a written dated page saying that he saw the ghost of his mother, with the date being two days after his mother's death, that suggests (but does not prove) that such a claim of seeing a ghost occurred at the reported date. There is no proof because the person could have written the report at a much later time, and put an earlier date on the report. But if the report is published soon after the claimed observation, then we have proof that the observation claim did occur by a particular date. The publication of a report also lends credibility by putting the witness "on public record" of having seen a particular thing. 

When you have a short time gap between the date when an event occurred and the publication of the report describing the event, that minimizes the risk that some embellishment or exaggeration gradually occurred to compromise the reliability of the report. 

Add 1 star if the observation report was made by multiple witnesses who agree with each other

It is rather obvious that the more witnesses we have of something occurring, the more credible is the observation report. 

Add 1 star if the observation report is backed up by physical evidence such as a photo or video

The fact that people are sentenced to prison very frequently based solely on eyewitness testimony shows that physical evidence is not a necessity for a credible observational report.  But when physical evidence such as a photo or video exists, it provides additional strength to the credibility of an observational report. 

Let's give some examples of using this system:

Example #1: Reddit user georgiaguy23 says he remembers his mother Ida long ago saying that she saw a UFO. Rating: 0 stars. 

Example #1: Joe Smithson says he remembers his mother Ida long ago saying that she saw a UFO. Rating: 1 star, but only if Ida is a trustworthy person.  If Ida is a shady character, the rating is 0 stars. 

Example #2: Joe Smithson quotes a letter written by his mother Ida on June 8, 2023, saying she saw a ghost about twenty years ago. in  2003.  Rating: 2 stars, if Ida is a trustworthy person.  

Example #3: Joe Smithson quotes a letter written by his mother Ida on June 9, 1993, saying she saw a ghost on June 8, 1993.  Rating: 3 stars, if Ida is a trustworthy person.  The short gap of only one day between the report and the claimed observation event merits an additional star in the rating. 

Example #4: David Honderstram publishes a report on June 12, 2024 saying that he saw a ghost ten years ago. Rating: 3 stars, if David is a trustworthy witness. 

Example #5: David Honderstram publishes a report on June 12, 2024 saying that he saw a ghost the previous day (June 11, 2024). Rating: 4 stars, if David is a trustworthy witness.   

Example #6: David Honderstram publishes a report on June 12, 2024 saying that he saw a ghost the previous day (June 11, 2024), and quotes his brother as saying that he also saw the ghost. Rating: 5 stars, if David is a trustworthy witness.

Example #7: David Honderstram publishes a report on June 12, 2024 saying that he saw a ghost the previous day (June 11, 2024), and quotes his brother as saying that he also saw the ghost. David also has a photo showing what he says is the ghost he saw. Rating: 6 stars, if David is a trustworthy witness, and the photo holds up to scrutiny.

Some reports of the paranormal do not qualify as 5-star reports using the system above. An example is the very interesting tale of hypnotic clairvoyance told on page 248 of The Psychology of the Future by Emile Boirac. Boirac quotes a report of a subject who reportedly displayed the most astounding clairvoyance, describing what was going on as a man met with two others very far away. In the account the very specific details given are soon verified as correct. But there are some reasons why the account fails to qualify as five-star evidence using the system above. First, Boirac does not give us the full name of the person who gave the account, merely saying it was provided by Jean B.  Secondly, Boirac's book dates from 1918, but the account is of events that supposedly occurred in 1892, with the account not published before Boirac's 1918 book. So sadly the report only earns one of the five stars mentioned above. 

But very many reports of the paranormal qualify as 5-star reports following the system above. In the 1870's very many people holding seances were very good at publishing very detailed reports of their  observations, with the reports very often published very soon after the observation event. Examples of such reports are quoted in my posts here and here. In those posts are actually some examples of reports of the paranormal which should be rated 5 or 6 stars using the rating system above. The observations claiming materializations of Katie King during the seances of Florence Cook were reported in  many different extremely detailed eyewitness accounts by very many reliable witnesses, typically giving their full names and often giving their addresses, over years of observation, with the reports very often being published soon after the day of observation, and with photographs being published as corroboration. The reports appeared in the Spiritualist newspaper during 1872 and 1874. Examples of such reports are quoted in my posts here, here and here.

Here is an example of a report that must be rated highly. Using the system above, we can rate is as 4 stars or 5 stars. The report appeared in the December 10, 1938 edition of the Psychic Observer publication here. We have three witnesses testifying on November 21, 1938 to phenomena they say occurred quite recently, on October 12, 1938.  The one-month gap might be a justification for granting only 4 stars rather than 5. 

See page 5 of the document here for more testimony in favor of such wonders. 

The advice above also applies to anyone witnessing a crime or witnessing something that might be the center of a lawsuit. 

Let us now look at a case of a report of the paranormal which should be rated as a 5-star report according to the system above. It is a report by seven named witnesses of seeing on Monday, March 23, 1901 an apparition of the deceased Julia Murray while near a coffin which contained Julia's dead body. The report was published in a newspaper on Friday, March 27, 1901. The image below shows part of the newspaper report:

You can read the full newspaper account here:

https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83030193/1901-03-27/ed-1/seq-3/

We have seven named witnesses who all say they saw an apparition of the late Julia Murray on Monday, March 23, 1901. We even have the addresses of the witnesses. The accounts include these:

• Giving firsthand testimony, Mrs. Mary Corbalis states she a vision of Julia Murray came from behind a picture on the wall, becoming an apparition surrounded by "white, filmy clouds." She says the room lit up dramatically, and that Julia wore a wreath of roses.  
• Giving firsthand testimony and using an old word for ghost ("shade"), Rose Kearns tells of seeing the same thing, saying, "The shade of Julia Murray appeared there. I saw it." Rose says the apparition "appeared to have something on the head," saying that some said it was a wreath.  (The article has apparently used a section header misstating Kearns' first name as Kate.) 
• Giving firsthand testimony, Rose McGowan says, "I looked and saw Julia in white and a wreath of roses at her head, the most beautiful thing I ever saw." She says Julia bowed her head slowly, and put her hands together in prayer. 
• Giving firsthand testimony, and using the old word "shade" meaning a ghost or apparition, Mary Regan says, "I saw the shade of the young girl who was dead," saying "her features were plainly distinguishable."
• Giving firsthand testimony in a separate newspaper account dated one day later (March 28, 1901), Katie Kane states she saw a brilliant light on the wall, and saw Julia with a wreath of flowers around her head, and also clouds around her head. 

The same apparition sighting is described in the news report here and here. The New York Times reported the same apparition sighting on the front page of its edition of March 27, 1901. The beginning of its article is here:

Now, let me get what the title of this post promises to tell you. Below are some tips on how to make a five-star report of the paranormal or spooky. The tips will be useful if you have been lucky enough to see something paranormal or spooky.

Tip #1: Try to get photographic evidence of anything spooky you saw

Nowadays this is very easy. You can just use your smartphone to take a picture or a video of the spooky thing you saw. Try to do that, even if you think you will never publish such a photo or video. When you describe the event, it will be helpful to have the photo or video, to make sure your description is correct.   

Tip #2: Write down (or video-record) a dated and timestamped account of the spooky event as soon as possible after you see it. 

The longer a gap has passed between an observation and someone's recollection of the observation, the greater the chance that the recollection may be inaccurate.  So your brother's story about a near-death experience he says he had thirty years ago does not have nearly as much evidence weight as your brother's written account of what he experienced on the day of that experience, written on the same day as the observation. 

Even if you do not think you will ever publish an account of the spooky thing you saw, make an account of the event as soon as possible. A simple way to do this is to write down your account on a piece of paper, signing the paper, and recording the date and time. An alternate technique is to make a video of yourself describing the incident, while stating the date and time. If you saw something particularly notable, you can make the video recording in front of a TV set showing today's news, which will help to prove that you are stating the correct date. 

Tip #3: Try to avoid things that may tarnish your credibility

One of the stars in my system of awarding stars is simply that the witness be a named and reliable witness. Your report won't earn that star if you have done things to tarnish your credibility as a witness, such as lying about something you saw, or engaging in drug use or heavy alcohol use that might tarnish your credibility as a witness. 

Check any report you are about to publish for accuracy and consistency. Any inconsistency in the report will damage its credibility.

Tip #4: If any other person saw the spooky event, try to get their testimony as soon as possible after the event 

If someone else saw the spooky event you saw, that can be a very important factor in increasing the evidence value of your report. If someone else saw the spooky event you saw, try to get that person's testimony as soon as possible. There are several ways to do this:

(1) Get an anonymous written statement from the other person describing the spooky event 

(2) Make a video of the other person describing the event, either as a fully anonymous video (in which the witness is heard but not seen), a semi-anonymous video (in which the person is seen but not identified), or a non-anonymous video in which the person is both seen and identified. 

Depending on how spooky the event was, a witness other than yourself may be reluctant to be identified. The more the witness is identified, the stronger the evidence. But you may need to start out by getting testimony delivered in an anonymous way. Later if the person changes his mind about anonymity, the person could be identified in a longer video in which you named that witness.  Videos can be combined using tools such as ffmpeg, and there are tools allowing a longer video to include a shorter video within it 

Tip #5: Publish (or communicate by writing to others) an objective-sounding account of the spooky thing you saw, very soon after you saw it, ideally one identifying yourself (if you feel OK about doing that)

Here we have a situation in which what is best for you may conflict with what is best from an evidence standpoint. Without question, from the standpoint of producing the best and most reliable evidence, what is best is for you to publish as soon as possible your report of the spooky thing you saw, using your full name. But that may not be the best course of action if you feel that publishing a report might cause harm to you. We must remember that we live in a society sadly dominated by the false ideas of materialism. In such a society you may be damaged by publishing a report of the paranormal. For example, someone who identifies you with the report may become less likely to hire you or promote you.  You may be less worried about that type of damage if you are retired or self-employed. 

One way to reduce potential damage from publishing a report of the paranormal (one in which you identify yourself) is to report the bare minimum of what you saw, without drawing any conclusions or implications. For example, if you saw a strange thing in the sky that you can't explain, don't publish a report with a title such as "The Night I Saw a UFO" or "The Day I Saw a Spooky Spaceship." Instead use a more modest-sounding title such as "I Can't Explain This Sky Anomaly I Saw." And if you have a report of  seeing an apparition, you might avoid using a title such as "The Night I Saw a Ghost," but instead use something sounding more non-committal such, as "It Seemed as Real as Someone Standing Near Me."  The less dogmatic you sound, the smaller the chance you will suffer harm from making the report. 

When reporting on the spooky, I suggest saying little about your inner feelings upon witnessing the spooky things. The more emotional-sounding your report is, the less credible it will seem to others. If you have testimony from witnesses other than yourself, it is important to include such testimony; but only identify witnesses who gave their permission to be identified. 

An alternative to publishing an account online is to send by writing to others (such as friends or relatives) a written report describing the spooky thing you saw. You can include your name, while requesting that the report not be published without your permission. Later should some investigator investigate your claim of seeing something paranormal, you can refer the investigator to the private notification you sent to a small group of your friends or relatives. 

Much of the advice above also applies to anyone witnessing a crime or witnessing something that might be the center of a lawsuit. Below is how the New York Times reported the extremely interesting case of James Sutton. Sutton was found dead at the US Naval Academy in Annapolis. His death was reported a suicide. But his mother claimed that the apparition of his son had appeared after his death, saying that his death was not a suicide  but something like a murder or manslaughter. The mother claimed the apparition persisted for four days. The mother made every effort to officially clear her son's name, but the official record was not changed. If she had done a better job of recording exactly what she saw on the day or days she saw it, and telling others of what she saw as soon as possible, the mother might have prevailed in her efforts. 

Smoke Alarm Acts Spooky Just When I Think of Deceased Parents

 Last night something spooky happened, something I have never seen before. To explain the anomaly, I must first explain the behavior of my Google Nest smoke detector as I have observed it for every night prior to last night, for four years. 

The Google Nest smoke detector in my bedroom has a ring-shaped dim light and a motion detector. Whenever I get up from my bed to go to the bathroom, the dim light of the smoke detector lights up. When I return to my bed, the dim light of the smoke detector goes off within a few seconds of me returning to the bed. I presume that this is some feature designed to provide a little light for anyone trying to exit a room at night, when there is a fire. I think a better design might have been to only show the dim light when the smoke detector goes off.  The light of the smoke detector does not show during daytime, unless the alarm goes off. Below we see the Google Nest smoke detector. The first photo shows the dim light on, and the second photo shows the light off. 

Last night I awoke around 2:00, and began to have some vivid thoughts of my deceased parents. Just then I noticed something very strange, that I had never seen before. While lying in bed motionless, I noticed that the light on the smoke detector was still on for quite some time. Lying completely motionless in bed, I counted slowly from 1 to 120. During this whole two minutes, the smoke detector's light was on. I had never seen this behavior before from this smoke detector, not once in four years. Prior to today, its dim light always went off a few seconds after some motion caused it to turn on.  This Google Nest smoke detector is powered by a direct electrical current, and has no dependency on a battery. 

Wondering whether some insect might have caused this unprecedented behavior from the smoke detector, I turned on the regular light in the room, and looked for an insect. I saw none.  I then went back to sleep. 

Later around 4:00 AM I woke up again, and observed something similar. While lying motionless in bed, I noticed the anomaly that the smoke detector's light was on. I lay motionless in bed for five minutes, slowly counting from 1 to 300. During this whole time, the smoke detector's light was on. 

Again, I got up, turned on the regular light, and looked around for an insect that could conceivably have caused this unprecedented behavior from the smoke detector. I did not discover any such insect, and never felt or saw an insect that night. 

Why did the smoke detector act in this unprecedented way, which I have never seen in four previous years I have had this smoke detector in my bedroom? An interesting speculation is that the night's incidents were triggered by my vivid thoughts of my deceased parents. The unprecedented behavior of the smoke detector started while I was having such thoughts. See here for another spooky smoke alarm anomaly causing me to wonder whether some paranormal effect was involved. The 19th century provided very many reported anomalies (such as mysterious rap sounds and table levitations) in which people seemed to get signs from the Great Beyond. You can read about such anomalies here. 

I recorded on paper the main facts of the events above immediately after they happened, and my account above matches the hand-written account. 

It would make an interesting experiment for others with Google Nest smoke detectors to see whether they observe the same anomaly after having vivid thoughts of their deceased loved ones. 

Postscript: The next evening the Google Nest smoke detector in my bedroom returned to behaving as it had behaved for the past four years before this day, with its light always turning off a few seconds after the cessation of any recent motion nearby it. But there was on that evening the anomaly below, not looking like anything that showed up in the next photo of this window curtain from the exact same position.

Post-postscript: The next evening there was another strange, colorful line:

In Search of a Better Term Than "After-Death Communication"

 The term "after death communication" or ADC is widely used for a broad group of spooky phenomena that may be interpreted as communication with deceased spirits.  The term may be used for any of these type of events:

1. An apparition sighting in which the apparition seems to correspond to a known deceased individual. 
2. A deathbed vision in which a dying person may claim to see or hear a deceased relative. 
3. A dream someone may have of a deceased relative, particularly a vivid dream. 
4. A "sense of presence" experience in which someone may have a feeling that a deceased person is near, without the person hearing or seeing the deceased person. 
5. Various types of spooky events in which someone may experience a very hard-to-explain or very improbable sight, and interpret such an event as having been produced by a deceased individual who can interact with our physical reality. 

There is a problem with using the term "after death communication" to refer to all of these types of experiences. The problem is that the term is not an impartial-sounding term, but a term that seems to presuppose a particular type of supernatural explanation for an event. But events like the five types of events described above tend to be mysterious events in which the cause of the event is less than certain. 

On page 14 of the PhD thesis document here (entitled "A SYSTEMATIC REVIEW OF RESEARCH ON

AFTER-DEATH COMMUNICATION (ADC)") we have a list of various terms that have been used to describe such phenomena:

"In addition to the term hallucinations, authors have referred to encounters with the deceased as, in alphabetical order: after-death communication (Devers, 1997; Drewry, 2003; Guggenheim & Guggenheim, 1995; LaGrand, 1997, 1999; Wright, 2004, 2006); afterlife encounters (Arcangel, 2005); anomalous experiences (McClenon, 1988); apparitions (Haraldsson, Gudmundsdottir, Ragnarsson, Loftsson, & Jonsson, 1977; Kohr, 1980; Palmer, 1979); contact with the dead (Burton, 1982; Greeley, 1975, 1987; Haraldsson, 1985; Haraldsson & Houtkooper, 1991; MacDonald, 1992); encounters with the dead (Haraldsson, 1988); experiencing the deceased (Devers, 1994); extraordinary experiences (La Grand, 1997, 1999, 2005, 2006; Parker, 2005); idionecrophanies (MacDonald, 1992); illusions (Grimby, 1993, 1998; Parkes, 1965, 1970; Rees, 1971); near-life experiences (Wooten-Green, 2001); perceived presence (Datson & Marwit, 1997); post-death communication (Houck, 2005; Mack & Powell, 2005); post-death contact (Kalish & Reynolds, 1973; Klugman, 2006); sensing a presence (Conant, 1996; Hobson, 1964; Lindstrom, 1995; Marris, 1958; Parkes, 1965, 1970; Rees, 1971; Simon Butler, Christopherson, & Jones, 1988; Yamamoto, Okonogi, Iwasaki, & Yoshimura, 1969); and spiritual connections (Sormanti & August, 1997)."

I think most of these terms have one problem or another. The main problem with most of these terms is that they seem to involve a presumption about the cause of the event; and in so many of the cases of these mysterious events it seems best not to presume that the cause is understood. In very many of these cases, there seems to occur some mysterious movement of matter. But can we conclude with high confidence that such cases involve interaction with a spirit of the dead? It seems that usually we can have no high confidence, and that the cause of the event is mysterious. 

It is true that in some of these cases there may seem (at least on the day of their occurrence) to be a likelihood of a cause involving a spirit of the dead. For example, as described here, on the first hour of my late father's 100th birthday, a panel in front of my kitchen sink was violently dislodged, landing on the floor. I had predicted that some spooky event like this event would occur on that day, because an equally spooky event had occurred on my late father's 99th birthday (as described here). Similarly, as described here, within a few minutes after putting some coins next to a picture of my late mother (while alone in an apartment), I saw a penny mysteriously rolling up behind me, a coin rolling on its edge. Within 24 hours of the incident I made the diagram below describing the incident.  In both of these cases it seemed probable (at least at the time of the event) that there was some supernatural cause at work, involving some spirit of the dead or agency of the deceased. 

But in very many other cases I and others observe something very spooky and hard-to-explain, with the cause being so unknown or uncertain that no language presuming interaction with the dead seems justified. For example, consider the phenomenon of mysterious striped orbs, which I have photographed more than 800 times. There seems to be some very important unexplained phenomenon here, particularly given that such orbs so often show repeating patterns, as I document in my post here.  But are such orbs manifestations of the deceased? It is hard to say. The cause of such photographic mysteries seems highly uncertain. 

It would seem that what we need is some very broad term that suggests but does not presume that some spiritual manifestation is occurring. I propose the term Potential Spiritual Manifestation or PSM. The term has the same advantage of the astronomy term "potential biosignatures," used to describe unusual things seen in outer space which might be signs of extraterrestrial life. Both terms are similar in that they suggest an extraordinary cause, but do not presume such a cause.  Both terms are intellectually modest, because they include the term "potential," indicating a lack of certainty. 

They Said Apparitions Materialized Right in Front of Them

 I think it is very important to keep a list of surveys trying to determine how common are reports of paranormal experiences. Publishing such a list helps to show how common such experiences are, and helps to disprove false claims that only some tiny fraction of the population report such things. My list of such surveys appear as a bullet list in my post here. 

This afternoon I added a very interesting addition to that bullet list:

"A project entitled 'Investigation of the phenomenology and impact of perceived spontaneous and direct After-Death Communications (ADCs)' was conducted from February 2018 to January 2020, with results described here and here.  About 1000 people were surveyed. 460 of these people reported a 'visual ADC' which often corresponded to an apparition of the dead. We read, 'For 61.6% of our sample, the deceased seemed solid like a living being, for 12.5% the apparition was semitransparent, and 11.3% perceived a foggy silhouette.' We also read, 'For 59.8% the apparitions were already there when they perceived them and for 28.5% they were materializing right before their eyes. After a few seconds or a few minutes, they were fading away gradually (14.4%), dissolving instantly (28.1%), or not there anymore when respondents  blinked (18.0%). 79.8% claimed that the apparition conveyed a message, either in words, telepathically, or by expression of the face.' "

Just after adding this passage to my previous post, there was a strange synchronicity. In Season 4 of the very dry and down-to-earth TV series I was watching ("The Lincoln Lawyer" on Netflix) -- a season which thus far is something you might say is something that only a lawyer or a law student would love -- the main character suddenly starts talking to a ghost. It is the ghost of the father-figure character played by Elliot Gould, whose death we had been told about only a few minutes earlier. We soon learn it is a dream sequence. 

I thought this was a good moment to take a few photos of my TV, in hopes of getting an orb photo -- maybe something like the photo here in which I got an orange orb above the TV while my TV screen showed a depiction of fairy magic. So I took five photos of the main "Lincoln Lawyer" character talking to the ghost. My hope about the orb photo was not fulfilled. There was nothing unusual in the photos. 

But at the very instant I finished checking the photos on my camera, I kind of go, "What on Earth!" I notice that in a very noticeable spot about a meter from where I am sitting, right in front of me, is a yellow rubber band on the floor. I had worked at the same spot for 5+ hours that day, with only me in the room, and had not touched any rubber bands in that room previously that day. My strict policy is to pick up from my floor any and all out-of-place items I see on the floor (things like coins, pens and rubber bands), as soon as I see them. So how, I ask myself, could there be a rubber band right in right of me, one that went unnoticed by me in the previous five hours I was working from that spot, where the rubber band would have been very noticeable? 

It seemed rather as if the rubber band had teleported to the spot I saw it at, at the very moment I was taking a photo of the TV ghost. I have seen similar anomalies involving rubber bands more than 27 times, and I report some of them in my series of posts here. An interesting speculation is that an invisible power may leave hints of its presence by moving or teleporting very lightweight objects such as rubber bands or coins, perhaps with synchronicity involved. I know (as I reported here) that only a few minutes after audibly stating that it was my late mother's 100th birthday, I was spooked to see a quarter on top of a bedspread I had just laid out a few minutes before making the statement.   

Postscript: The next day there was another spooky event. Standing in front of a sink, I ate a few mini-marshmallows from a bag. A few minutes later I was very surprised to see one of the mini-marshmallows on the other side of the room, about 2.5 meters away, aligned to the wall. I asked myself: how could that have happened? I came up with an explanatory hypothesis: maybe I dropped one of the mini-marshmallows, and it rolled 2.5 meters. I tested the hypothesis by taking a mini-marshmallow, and rolling it on the ground, rather as you might roll a bowling ball. The hypothesis failed, because friction caused the rolling to stop after much less than a meter of rolling.  We have in this strange sighting some possible "Other Side" symbolism. 

Post-postscript: The next day I had a striking dream that may be relevant to what I report above. I dreamed that I had forgot what street I lived on, and that I remembered that I lived on "Numen street" (which is not the actual street I live on). Very strangely, in the dream I thought something like, "It is important that I remember this word numen, so to help me remember I will recall that it sounds the same  as the Newman character on the Seinfeld TV series." When I awoke I did not know what the word "numen" means, it being a word I had never used. After awaking I looked up the definition of the word, which is: "the spirit or divine power presiding over a thing or place."

Post-post-postscript: Rather striking sights followed in the next days after. I noticed a light on the other side of my front door was on, which I could not explain. As I walked by a refrigerator, a piece of paper on its top (above all the food) mysteriously fell to the ground. A large triangular formation of honking geese flew over me as I was on my walk. When I came back from the walk, I noticed nothing unusual in the door area. Shortly later, a package was delivered. When I went to get it, I discovered a 4-inch long feather between my outer and inner door. 

In a Dream, Precise and Completely Accurate Recall of Two Spooky Events

The dream I had this morning involved an unprecedented type of recall I have never experienced before in any dream: a correctly dated and precisely accurate recall of past events. 

In the dream I sat on a sofa next to one of my late sisters, the first born of my siblings. First, I narrated to my sister an event that happened on January 29, 2024. Mentioning the exact date correctly, I gave a narrative that was exactly accurate, saying something very close to these words:

"Let me tell you about a spooky thing that happened on January 29, 2024, which, as you know, was our father's birthday. As I lay in bed that morning thinking of our father, the circuit breaker in the bathroom mysteriously turned off." 

The dream statement was exactly accurate. I was describing events that really happened on  January 29, 2024, events that I discussed in my post of that date you can read here.  

Next in my dream I used words very close to these words:

"Then another spooky thing happened one year later on January 29, 2025. I was expecting that something spooky would happen on that day, and it did, in the first hour of that day."

The dream statement was exactly accurate. Without finishing the full story, I was correctly describing events of  January 29, 2025 that I discussed in my post of that date you can read here. That date was my late father's 100th birthday. In the first hour of that day, I heard a loud noise. Investigating, I found that a front panel of my kitchen had strangely fallen to the ground, as if some mighty force had ejected it. The kitchen had been entirely remodeled a few years earlier, and the falling of the panel was extremely surprising. Below is a photo from that post. 

In both of these events occurring on my late father's birthday there was something spooky involving a panel, with the 2024 incident involving a circuit breaker on a little GFCI panel.  

What is mind-boggling about today's dream was its unprecedented occurrence of precisely accurate recall of events that occurred in my life, with the exact dates correctly remembered, and with all the details mentioned being precisely accurate. I can never recall such a thing previously happening, even though I have been recording my dreams every night for quite a few years.  An equivalent thing would be if I were to have had a dream telling someone correctly, "I remember that on November 22, 1963 I was in a school bus and I heard that President Kennedy had been shot." But prior to today, I have never had any such dream that was correctly discussing an event in my life while also giving the correct date the event occurred. 

My dream this morning seems to accentuate the clue importance of the events that occurred on these dates (January 29, 2024 and January 29, 2025). I have a strong suspicion here of some causal involvement stemming from beyond my own mind and beyond my own brain. 

For a discussion of 500+ dreams I have had that seemed to suggest life after death, read my post here. 

Phantom Foot?

 I have in my bathroom one of those little waste baskets with a top lid and a little foot pedal at the bottom which you can press to lift the lid. It  is very convenient, because I can dispose of paper by just pressing the little pedal with my foot. That causes the lid to rise, and as soon as I take my foot off the pedal, the lid drops, making a little sound as it finishes dropping.

A few minutes ago I used my foot to open the lid of the waste basket, and dropped a piece of paper in it. I then walked a few feet away, facing in the opposite direction, to use the toilet.  Suddenly I heard a little noise from the direction of the waste basket. It was just exactly the sound that would have been made if someone had used his foot on the pedal to open the lid of the waste basket, and then taken his foot away. But there was no one else in the bathroom, and I was facing in the opposite direction, a few feet away. 

This anomaly I can never recall witnessing in the years I have lived at my current location; and the waste  basket has been in the bathroom the entire time. 

Postscript: The next morning (October 26) I was very surprised to see the sight we see below, which I did not arrange. It is a sheet of paper I had placed on my coffee table late on the previous night, having written a line on it.  Now the sheet was "standing up" on the floor, with only the bottom of the sheet touching the floor. What are the odds against that happening accidentally? Maybe the white sheet is some kind of ghost symbolism. Around Halloween ghosts are often depicted using white sheets of cotton. 

Post-postscript: On the same day I saw the anomaly shown above, I witnessed a stove fan turning off by itself while I was cooking some spaghetti, standing in front of the stove. I have seen this anomaly a few times before, and my post here describes something exactly the same occurring on March 22, 2025, when I was also cooking spaghetti. This mysterious turning off of the stove fan also occurred on March 16, 2024, as described here, when I was also cooking spaghetti.  My wife (who uses the stove much  more often than I do) was about five meters away. I asked whether she had ever seen the stove fan turn off by itself after she had turned it on. She said no, she had not. I cook grilled cheese sandwiches and salmon burgers just as often or more as I cook spaghetti. 

There are fancy digital programmable range hoods that allow someone to program a shut off after a specified interval. But the range hood I have seems to be a simpler affair offering no such possibility. Its only control buttons are the ones shown below.

An interesting speculation is that some of these hard-to-explain events are examples of after-death communication from my late father. In all of the last three cases I have recorded of the stove fan mysteriously switching off, while also recording what I was cooking, we have a turning off of a green light on a panel while I was cooking pasta (spaghetti being a type of pasta). And the spooky note found "standing up" involved paper.  Of course, those could all just be phonics coincidences. 

(The sense of the paragraph above may be lost to those reading a non-English translation of this page. In English the word "pa" means "father," and the words "panel," "pasta" and "paper" all begin with the same syllable, which by itself means "father." But in other languages that may be different.)

It Was Just As If They Teleported In Front of Me

 I will now give you a very fresh observational report of some spooky events I observed within the past hour (I started writing this account immediately after the events occurred).

After awaking, I showered and dressed, and walked into a living room (there was no one else on the floor). At first I noticed nothing unusual. But a minute or so later I noticed a pink rubber band on the floor, in front of the TV set. The rubber band had not been there when I went to bed last night. I am in general very careful to pick up from the floor any objects such as coins, rubber bands or pens that I see there, as soon as I notice them. 

Struck by this anomaly, I picked up a camera I keep on a little ledge in front of the TV. I raised my camera to photograph what I thought was a single rubber band on the floor. I was surprised to see there was now a second rubber band right next to the pink rubber band: a larger brown rubber band. It was as if the larger rubber band had been instantly teleported to the spot right in front of me. I had very clearly looked at the pink rubber band, and I am certain that when I first saw it there was only one rubber band on the floor area in front of the TV (the area shown in the photo below). 

A few seconds later I noticed there were now three rubber bands on the floor, right in front of the TV set. There was now a third rubber band about a foot to the left of the first two rubber bands. 

What I saw was like objects being instantly teleported from one spot to another, just as if the rubber bands I keep on the TV ledge were being teleported to the surface of the floor. As I reported in a series of posts labeled "rubber band anomalies," I have seen more than a dozen previous similar anomalies involving rubber bands. But none of the previous incidents seemed as dramatic as what I saw today. 

I speculated earlier that rubber bands may have a symbolic meaning. Being very expandable, rubber bands may symbolize some expansion of the mind that may occur in an afterlife. 

Below we see the rubber bands. What I saw was: (1) first no rubber band noticed on the floor; (2) then a single rubber band on the floor; (3) then a few seconds later two rubber bands on the floor; (3) then a few seconds later three rubber bands on the floor. This all happened in a period of maybe two minutes, during which I was alone in the room, and did not touch any rubber bands. I had not yet opened any window in the room, and there was no fan running, ruling out blowing air as an explanation. The area shown below is about 3 meters from the window, and today is not a windy day where I live. 

A conceivable hypothesis to explain these events is some invisible spirit or power quickly moving small objects around. 

Postscript: On October 5, 2025 there was another similar event. I woke up and noticed no rubber bands on the floor near the TV. About 30 minutes later I noticed a blue rubber band  on the floor, in front of the left edge of the TV, in front of the black leg shown in the photo above.  I had taken a photo the night before, which showed the same blue rubber band a meter away, in the middle of the ledge in front of the TV. How did that rubber band get half a meter lower, and also one meter to the left? I can't explain it. There was no one else in the room; the nearest open window was about 4 or 5 meters away, and the wind on this day was only 5 miles per hour where I live. 

Strange Saturday

 When I woke up this morning I picked up my smartphone, and was surprised by what I saw. There was displayed a message I had received months ago, some junk marketing message. Why, I asked, would that old message be displayed on the screen of my smartphone? Then I realized there was a connection between the message and the name of a deceased relative.  Was this just coincidence, I wondered? Or could it be that the deceased have some way to manipulate smartphones in a way that drops hints about their continued existence? I will "keep an eye open" for such an anomaly, but I cannot claim yet to have much in the way of evidence for it. 

Then there was the "ghost cat" that made a brief translucent appearance on my monitor. 

I had a dream this morning of one cat (either a living cat or a ghost cat) looking down at the body of a dead cat. I used Google's ImageFX to try and recreate what I saw in the dream. The resulting AI-generated image showed a cat with open eyes floating above a lying cat with closed eyes. The dream image rather hinted at the possibility that the soul of a cat may survive the death of a cat.  I posted the image on Facebook, saying that it was an AI representation of what I had dreamed. (I would post the image here, but a rule I have always followed is to never, ever publish AI work or art work on this site, with the exception of diagrams that are obviously diagrams.)  

My image was not quite what I wanted, because the "ghost cat" in my image did not look transparent. A few hours after publishing the AI representation of my dream on Facebook, I saw something weird on my screen. Somehow my screen was blending some post I was writing on a different topic, and the AI art of the floating ghost cat. But now somehow the "ghost cat" was translucent, which it was not before. I could see through the "ghost cat" to see text I was writing underneath it. Somehow, by some process I cannot explain, the intended image of a ghost cat had become translucent, as ghosts are often reported to be. I tried to reproduce the effect, but was absolutely unable to. 

Was this somehow some paranormal sign meant to suggest: yes, the soul of a cat really does survive its death? All I know is that I can't explain the translucency I saw. 

Postscript: As soon as I finished the post above, I walked outdoors to take a walk. Immediately (while still at the doorstep) I saw a large black-and-orange Monarch butterfly fly by me, no more than an arm's length away. This is the only time in the three and a half years I have lived at this location that I have seen such a Monarch butterfly at this location. I noted well the synchronicity between this symbol of life after death (the Monarch butterfly) and me just finishing a post mentioning life after death. Monarch butterflies are a symbol of life after death because caterpillars undergo a death-like transition before becoming butterflies that soar up into the sky.  Below is a quote from an earlier 2017 post of mine:

"A few days ago my wife's father died. This morning I had a dream that seemed to fuse together the symbol of the rainbow and the symbol of the butterfly. In my dream I saw a big butterfly in my apartment, one with a rainbow-like set of colors (I can never recall noticing colors so clearly in a dream). In my dream I simply opened the window of my apartment, and the butterfly flew out. I then awoke. It's the only dream I've ever had of a butterfly.

The symbolism of the dream seems striking: the rainbow theme, the butterfly theme, and the 'escaping from the prison' theme of the butterfly flying out of the apartment window. A metaphor for the soul escaping the prison of the body?"

To read about very, very many dreams I have had that seemed to symbolize life after death, and very many dreams I have had about the deceased, read my long post here. 

Also, upon returning from the walk I took just after writing the top part of this post, I noticed a small feather in the middle of the floor, in a very noticeable position in the center of a living room.  I cannot account for how the feather  appeared there, and there was no one else in the home during my walk. Some consider feathers as a life-after-death symbol, as angels are often depicted with feathers. About 2 hours before I noticed the feather, I took pictures of the area that the feather was found in; and the pictures showed no such feather.  The feather was found about 4 meters from a front door on a day not windy, leaving only the slimmest chance that its appearance where I saw it could have been the result of a gust of wind when I opened the door. I noticed no wind on my walk. 

Post-postscript: "Strange Saturday" turned into "Spooky Sunday." This weekend I am alone in a house until my wife returns mid-week. Last night in the middle of the night I was surprised to see an internet router device was lit up, one that I always turn off and make lightless before going to bed. After awaking in the morning I then walked up to the second floor of the house, and found the ceiling lights of the main living room were on, lights sufficient to light up the whole large room. I had (to the best of my remembrance) turned off the lights before leaving that room last night, at a time it was dark outside.  The physical arrangement of the stairs and room is such that accidentally leaving on the overhead lights at night is extremely improbable.  

Spooky Displacement

Yesterday I unexpectedly saw on the coffee table in front of me a strip of paper stating something like "This book was written by my grandfather." It was a strip of paper I had long ago affixed to a small volume written by my late grandfather. I had put it there so that if the volume was discovered after my death, my family might remember to keep the volume or read the volume. The volume was stored behind a cabinet door about two meters from the coffee table. I saw another family member doing a little tidying up near where the volume was stored, but I did not see the cabinet door being opened; and I can think of no reason why anyone would have moved the piece of paper from its location affixed to the book behind the cabinet door to the coffee table in front of me. 

Trying to explain this in a paranormal way, you might explain it as a kind of suggestion from my late grandfather, a suggestion to read his book. 

Something else involving what seemed like an inexplicable displacement went on in the middle of the night, also with what seemed like a connection to a deceased family member. But for a private reason I will not describe what occurred. 

Postscript: Today I picked up the book written by my grandfather, and read one of his stories, a whimsical tale about a doctor who dies and goes to Heaven. The doctor is dismayed that everyone in Heaven is healthy and pain-free, and feels that this leaves him with no doctor work to do. He decides his skills would best be used elsewhere, so he journeys to a kind of Hades where there's significant suffering for him to alleviate. Eventually in the story the doctor goes back to Heaven. 

As I Expected, There Was a Spooky Disturbance on My Late Father's Birthday

 Having witnessed a very spooky disturbance on my late father's birthday in 2024, I expected that there would be a similar spooky event on his birthday, today. It did not take long for my expectation to be fulfilled, with the event occurring in the first hour of my father's birthday. 

At about 12:50 AM I lay awake in bed, and heard a loud noise. I went into the living room to investigate. I found the front panel of my kitchen lying on the floor.  The photo below shows exactly what I saw, before I had touched the panel.

The kitchen and the room were remodeled a few years ago, and the panel had been firmly glued into place for about three years.  If the panel had just fallen naturally from its normal position (shown at the top of the photo), it should have landed on the opposite side of the side shown above, a side that had lots of glue on it. We may have some metaphysical symbolism in this aspect of the event: the panel landed not on its expected side, but on the other side, the Other Side. 

There is an interesting partial match between the name of the fallen unit and a word meaning "father." The English word for the fallen unit is "panel," a word that begins with the syllable of "pa," which in English is a causal word meaning "father."

I had expected an event like this to occur because on my father's birthday last year something similar had happened, as described here. On that day last year I had a dream about a papaya. While lying in bed wondering whether that dream had symbolized my father (because "papaya" starts with the word "papa"), a GFCI circuit breaker in the bathroom mysteriously went off (turning off the power in the bathroom), without any imaginable natural cause. That circuit breaker is in a little panel on the wall.  The same panel has a green light that has mysteriously turned off and on more than 40 times in the middle of about 40 nights, as I describe here. 

The spooky observation reported in this post may be causally related to the spooky observation reported in my post here. 

I predict (with only a little more than 50% confidence) that next year on my father's birthday (January 29, 2026), there will occur some other spooky disturbance or spooky manifestation. 

Postscript: Astonishingly, on January 3, 2025 I had a dream in which I described the beginning of this event to my deceased sister, and in the dream I stated the date of January 29, 2025 correctly. You can read about that dream here. The dream served to accentuate that the event described above was an important clue. 

My prediction above (about January 29, 2026) seems to have been fulfilled. To read about the details, see my post here. 

A Smoke Alarm Triggered From the Great Beyond?

 Less than an hour ago a very strange thing happened in the house where I live. The house's state-of-the-art Google Nest smoke alarm system went off, causing smoke alarms to go off all over the house. I and another occupant of the house looked in every room, and found no trace of any smoke or mist. No one was cooking at the time. The last person to cook was myself. I had taken a few minutes to make an omelet about 25 minutes before the smoke alarm went off, but I had used the ventilator fan, and had turned off the gas. The electrically powered smoke alarms of the house are all on the ceiling, 9 feet or higher than the floor below them.  There was no electricity anomaly. 

We have the mystery of what caused the smoke alarm to go off. There was no sign of any smoke or mist in any room of the house when the alarm went off; there was no odd smell anywhere;  and all occupants are non-smokers.  The whole house was clean, and no one in the house or its yard had been doing anything this day to raise dust, or anything unusual  The Google Nest system (which gives audible messages) said the alarm came from "the den."  There is no room in the house we call a den. Conceivably someone setting up the system may have labeled one of the house's rooms as "the den." 

I have an interesting speculation that could conceivably explain the event. Maybe the event was caused by communication from the Great Beyond. My late father's name was Dean. Imagine that you are some invisible power that has the ability to make a fleeting manifestation in our world. You might choose some type of manifestation that has a  resemblance to your name. So if I died and my soul survived and I wanted to leave some manifestation indicating I had survived death, I might perhaps leave a mysterious mark on the wall.  That mark might be a sign that some manifestation had come from Mark. (The English word "mark" meaning a variety of things including "a small area having a different color from its surrounding" has the same spelling as my name Mark.)

In this case the word  "den" resembles my late father's name: Dean. How would a deceased Dean try to leave a sign? Maybe by triggering a smoke alarm in a way that would cause it  to speak a word ("den") close to the sound of his name, Dean. Of course, this hypothesis is highly speculative. Heightening the mystery here is that in the same clean room that the smoke detector went off without any smoke, mist or noticeable dust, there was another working smoke detector that did not make any sound. 

I do know that the same ceiling smoke detector mysteriously went off (when there was no smoke or mist in the house)  on the night a relative of mine died far away, as I reported here.  See my post here for something very spooky that happened where I live on my late father's birthday.

I get many mysterious-seeming events like this where I live, such as my PlayStation machine mysteriously turning on by itself ten times on ten different days, and a green light in the bathroom mysteriously turning off and on dozens of times. 

In the nineteenth century a huge number of people reported seeing dramatic signs they interpreted as manifestations from the dead. To read about the reports, read my "Spookiest Years" series here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here,  here, here and here.

 Postscript: A mind-boggling event occurred in the hour after I finished writing this post -- one of those things that makes you say, "If this was coincidence, the chance of it was 1 in a million." Because the event is closely related to the content of another post, it is described in a postscript to another post in my series of posts with a tag of "miscellaneous paranormal events" that you can read here and continue to read by pressing Older Posts at the bottom right.  

In the event described above, part of the oddness was that the smoke detector failed to turn off after a few presses of its button, which should have turned it off, even though there was no sign of smoke, mist, vapor  or dust anywhere. Only after several minutes would a button press turn off the alarm. Later in the same day (also with no smoke, mist, vapor or dust anywhere) the smoke detector again went off, but this time a single press of the button made it silent.  The alarm was silent throughout the next week. 

Post-postscript: On January 15 I got the orb below apparently next to the smoke alarm that was acting so strangely.

Puzzling Panel

Today just before eating dinner I was looking at my interesting post here discussing unusual deathbed phenomena such as the appearance of abnormal light or the appearing of what looks like an unusual mist. I found similar cases doing a Google search for "strange light at deathbed,"  and found the very interesting account below. As dinner ended I asked my wife whether she had ever seen anyone die. She told me she had been at her father's bedside at death. I asked her whether she remembered her father's last words. She said he was unable to speak in his last month. 

While asking these questions I went to wash a dish, and I noticed that while our microwave oven was not running, the panel on our microwave oven was acting strangely. It seemed to be cycling between three different numbers, none of which I could recognize. I had  not noticed the effect while twice passing by the same microwave oven a bit earlier, before I had asked the questions. I pressed a Clear button to stop the effect. Only later did I realize the possible synchronicity between this strange effect and the questions I had asked. 

It is interesting that the strange anomaly occurred on a panel of the microwave, and the first syllable of the word panel is "pa," a word meaning "father." The anomaly occurred just as me and my wife were discussing her father's death, something we almost never mention. Was this just a coincidence? 

Here I forgot to follow my own rule, which is whenever you see some effect that could be paranormal, try to make a video of it, before doing something to stop the effect.  But at least I am following another rule of mine, which is: whenever you see something spooky, write down what happened as soon as possible, while the incident is fresh in your memory.  I followed the same rule when I wrote the post here, also involving something spooky-seeming just after mentioning a deceased parent. 

Below is a very interesting account that appeared on page 148 of the July 1926 International Psychic Gazette, which you can read here. Among other wonders, we read of a room being filled with an unearthly light at the moment of someone's death. 

Postscript  The next day something else spooky happened in the same kitchen. At a moment when I was at the sink looking towards the dinner table, my wife was walking towards the dinner table, and a daughter was seated at the dinner table (all of us being at least two meters from a light switch), the main lights in our kitchen turned off. My wife may have switched off the switch for such lights a few seconds earlier, but if she did, there was a delay of maybe three seconds before the lights turned off for good (there may have been an off/on/off thing in rapid succession, with only the first caused by a human hand).   

His Mysterious Blue Orb Experience

The site www.adcrf.org is the site of an Afterdeath Communication Research Foundation organization. The site documents experiences that are often called "after-death communication." Such experiences include a wide variety of experiences in which someone may feel that there is some causal connection between the experience and a deceased person. These include things such as dreams of the deceased,  a feeling of presence involving a deceased person, or some synchronicity experience similar to the one I reported here and here. 

In a recent experience reported on the site, a person states this:

"I knew when Barbara died. She walked up to a pitch black wall and opened a door. Beyond the door was bright white light. Before she went through the door, she said 'see you later.' Very soon after that, I felt and saw a very strong bond of 100% commitment between us. It's an unbreakable bond. A day or so after that, I see her blue orb with her telepathic talking to me. I knew it was her. This was in the evening when I was watching TV."

An Apport?

Just after mentioning that today was the 100th birthday of my late mother, I found this quarter mysteriously lying on a bedspread I had laid out a few minutes earlier without seeing such a thing. Massachusetts was her home state; and there is an "Ma" at the beginning of .Massachusetts.

This is only one of innumerable spooky things I have seen regarding coins. You can read of many more at my post here. The incidents include a case in which I saw a coin roll up from behind me, rolling on its edge, when I was alone in an apartment.  

Records of seances include very many cases in which people seemed to see things that appeared "out of nowhere." The technical term for such things is: an apport. 

Speaking of spooky things happening on a deceased parent's birthday, see my post here for a description of something very spooky happening on my late father's most recent birthday. 

Postscript: There were two other spooky things on the same day, both involving electricity. In the second one, at the end of the day I saw a green light in a bathroom mysteriously turn off for a second or two before turning on again.  Today (April 7) I also saw something very weird. I ran my microwave oven for two minutes to heat up some pizza. It made a normal "microwave running" sound during this time. When I opened it up, I found the plate and the pizza were cold, just as if no heating had occurred. On the second try, the plate and pizza heated up as expected.  I can never recall getting such an effect. The microwave is a fairly recent model, one with no spinning plate. 

Post-postscript: On April 9 I saw something very weird that had a kind of "apport vibe" to it. On my first look out the window I noticed a bagel about 15 feet above the ground, on a tree right in front of the house where I live. A few minutes later the bagel was devoured by a squirrel.  Below are photos of what I saw. 

I can imagine a squirrel carrying a bagel high up a tree. But what are the odds that it would then leave the bagel up in a tree, without even taking a decent bite out of it when the bagel was first carried up into the tree?

Post-post-postscript: On October 3, 2024 I  had a re-occurrence of the microwave incident described above. I ran the microwave for two minutes to try to heat a soy burger. When I removed the soy burger, I found it was still cold. The next time I tried to heat it, the microwave worked normally. 

A Spooky Event on My Late Father's Birthday

Today I had a dream that seemed to be a symbolic reference to my deceased father. Very often I get more direct dreams in which my father appears unmistakably in the dream. I have had 129 such dreams since I started recording my dreams in November, 2020. This morning (about two hours ago) after having the dream that may have symbolically referred to my father, I lay in bed thinking about my father. At that instant something spooky happened. I heard a loud "click" sound. The GFCI outlet in my bathroom had suddenly turned off, although there was no one in the bathroom.  This can occur from contact with water or steam or by someone pressing the Test button on the outlet. Other than water at the bottom of the toilet, there was no water or steam in the empty bathroom, which had been unused for more than an hour.  Nothing was plugged in to the outlet. So how could the outlet have shut off?  It was as if some invisible presence had pressed the Test button, at the instant I was thinking about my late father.  After waking up I realized that today is my late father's birthday. 

When I pressed one of the buttons, the outlet turned back on. There was no disturbance in a nearby digital clock, so no power interruption hypothesis can seem to explain the strange event. In the nearly two years I have been living at my current location, I have never observed this outlet shutting off when no one was in the bathroom (although on only one previous day last year I inferred that such a thing had happened). 

Postscript: Astonishingly, on January 3, 2025 I had a dream in which I described the event described above to my deceased sister, and in the dream I stated the date of January 29, 2024 correctly. You can read about that dream here. The dream served to accentuate that the event described above was an important clue.