Phantom Presses?

 In my 2018 post "It's Like Some Invisible Presence Is Pressing My TV Remotes," which you can read here, I documented quite a few cases in which my TV remote seemed to act as if some invisible presence had pressed a button on it. I have occasionally seemed to get such an effect during the years since 2018. 

In the past two days I seem to have got three new examples of such an effect.  Yesterday I was watching Netflix, in the middle of an episode, when suddenly Netflix disappeared, and my TV screen switched to a startup screen that I get when starting up my television, before choosing to watch Netflix. At the time I was alone in a room, with the TV remote inches away from my body. The exact same thing happened twenty minutes ago, with the TV remote an arm's length from my body. While watching Netflix, Netflix suddenly vanished, and my TV went back to its startup screen.  Then the exact same thing happened again for the second time today when I was writing this post. While watching Netflix, with the remote an arm's length away, Netflix suddenly vanished, and my TV went back to its startup screen.

This is the first time I can recall a spooky type of event happen when I was in the very process of writing a post about that type of spooky event. 

By experimenting, I figured out exactly which button on my TV remote can be pressed to produce this effect. It is the Home button, which has a little "House" icon on it. 

There is some possible metaphysical symbolism here. In near-death experiences people who report out-of-body experiences may have what seems like brief trips to some otherworldly realm. During such a sojourn a person will often report feeling that the visited realm is his or her "real home" or "true home." According to one theory, we all come from some nonearthly place that is our true home, and we lived in such a place before coming to Earth. 

So if some spirit from such a realm of existence were trying to signal someone on Earth, that spirit might choose some type of symbolism involving a Home symbol. 

Freaky Flip

 We see below two Corelle bowls in a dish container. While they were in a state looking very much like this, I saw one of them today mysteriously flip over and fall about 18 inches. No hand was nearby. 

Of course, the bowl did not shatter, crack or chip, even though it fell on a hard surface. Corelle bowls and dishes are pretty much indestructible, and I have used the Corelle bowls above steadily for 21 years. If I had to guess about any symbolic meaning to this spooky event, I might say that maybe we have some symbolizing of indestructibility related to the indestructibility of the soul. 

Postscript: The event seems to have a kind of "one left" motif that was matched by a dream I had three days later. I dreamed I was looking at my deceased father, who was wearing sunglasses that were missing one of their lenses.  So the dream had a "one left" motif, with only one of the two lenses remaining. Conceivably I may have received here two "one left" warnings that could symbolize the idea of one month left in my life, or one year left in my life. 

Haunted Holiday?

 Last night I was alone in the house where I live, its other normal residents all being away. On Friday night while cooking pasta I decided to try a little photographic test, to see whether I could capture photographically a type of spooky event I have seen four previous times (as recorded in posts such as here and here): a stove fan   mysteriously turning off while I cooked pasta. I simply made a video of the stove while I was cooking pasta. 

There was no dramatic mysteriously turning off of the fan as I have previously seen.  There was, however, a strange flicker in the light above the stove. This being a day in which power consumption was very high in the city where I live (because of a heat wave), I figured that there is no point publishing the video, as people would say it was just a power fluctuation caused by too many people using their air conditioners on that day. But while the test was mostly a bust, a very strange anomaly would soon unfold. 

That evening (Friday, July 3) I put out the trash and put out bags of recyclables, around 8:00 PM. At about 10 PM I suddenly thought to myself: maybe they won't even pick up such things tomorrow, because tomorrow is a holiday (July 4). I looked up online whether there was an interruption in the normal Saturday morning pickup. I found out there was, and that there would be no pickup of such items. I then went and retrieved from outside both the trash can I had put out in the back of the house, and the recyclables I had put out in the front of the house. Outside it was fully dark at this time. 

After having a nice sleep, I awoke and went upstairs. Alone in the house, I was very surprised to see that the overhead lights were on in the living room on the second floor (lights causing the entire floor to be illuminated).  I always make sure there are no lights on when leaving that floor, when I am alone in the house. As no one else was in the house, the event is baffling. 

To naturally explain this, you would have to imagine three different things:

(1) First, I would have had to have been so clumsy as to leave on lights when exiting a floor which I would always have left dark upon exiting the floor while alone in the house.  

(2) Then you would have to imagine me not noticing (when I reached the ground floor, where I sleep) that the lights were on in the floor above (even though the overhead lights strongly illuminate the whole second floor, in a way that is clearly visible from the hall of the first floor). 

(3) Then also you would have to imagine me not noticing (when I retrieved the garbage from the back of the house around 10:00 PM) that the lights were on in the second floor. The illumination from that floor would have been clearly visible when I returned from the back entrance, and entered the hall of the first floor, after I closed the furnace room door. As the second floor has windows on both its front and back,  I would also have noticed the second floor lights on while in the back of the house, retrieving the trash can.  

The combined likelihood of all three of these events seems negligible. So while I have a halfway-credible explanation for Friday's flickering of the lights, I would seem to have no credible natural explanation for finding on July 4 the second floor's overhead lights being on. 

As evidence of some mysterious invisible force, this incident is not as good as what I observed last Valentine's Day, when I very clearly saw (right in front of me) lights on the second floor mysteriously turning off and then quickly turning back on, when I was alone in the house. 

Postscript: There followed the next day (June 5)  a spooky event that I will not describe because of other blogging priorities. I will merely say that it had a strong "Other Side" motif to it. 

Spooky Serenity

 Today while New York City is baking in temperatures of about 100 degrees, I am making a rare use of my air conditioner. New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani has recently been ridiculed for asking people to set their air conditioners at 78 degrees, to save energy and reduce the chance of a blackout from excessive energy use by the public. Such ridicule makes no sense. If you wear shorts, a room is comfortable enough if you set the air conditioner to 78 degrees.

As I typically do in the morning and afternoon, I was enjoying the "Stingray Naturescape" channels on my LG Channels TV facility. It's a group of three contiguous channels (IP-757, IP-756 and IP-755)  that provide the most soothing visual and auditory content. You get visual footage such as scenes filmed by drones flying high over beaches and forests and mountains and natural parks and fields of flowers, and footage taken at vacant beaches or near waterfalls or in the middle of fields of flowers.  The background music is instrumental music designed to soothe, such as gentle piano music, gentle acoustic guitar music, gentle pan pipe music, or organ music with slow, long-lasting chords.  The effect is extremely soothing. These channels are great to play on your TV when you have work to do on your computer. The channels won't distract you from your work.

There are occasional commercial interruptions, which I evade by changing from one of the three contiguous channels to another, or by pressing the Mute button on my remote control. 

Today my remote control was an arm's length away, when suddenly I lose the channel I was on, and my TV goes to a startup screen showing lots of little squares representing viewing options. How did that happen? The only way for that to happen on my TV is for someone to press the Home button on my TV remote, which has a little House icon on it. But the button was untouched, and the TV remote was an arm's length away, with nothing else touching it.  

This was yet another example of what I have observed (and documented in posts at this site) innumerable times, at occasional intervals -- some result resembling what would occur if some invisible hand had pressed a button or flipped a switch. Today's anomaly may have had some possible metaphysical symbolism, related to the topic discussed in my post here. The "Home" motif is one that strongly occurs in near-death experiences.

Postscript: The next day I saw yet another example of an anomaly I have seen more 34 times. At 6:30 PM I noticed a rubber band on my floor, about 18 inches from the TV set, in a room I had been in alone for hours without noticing such an object on the floor. Such observations are baffling, given my long-standing policy to always pick up small objects I see on the floor of my living quarters, as soon as I see them, and given that no one else had been in the room that day. 

Post-postscript: On July 11, 2026 I saw yet another example of the type of anomaly mentioned in the previous paragraph. At 2:40 PM I was surprised to suddenly see a rubber band in the middle of the floor of the living room that I had occupied alone for most of the previous five hours. I have now seen this type of anomaly more than 35 times. 

Post-post-postscript: On July 15, 2026  I saw yet another example of the type of anomaly mentioned above. At about 5:00 PM I saw two feet to my left (very plainly visible in the middle of a blue sofa pillow) a pink rubber band I had failed to observe previously in the day, although I sat on that couch for most of the day.  I have now seen this type of anomaly more than 36 times.

Post-post-post-postscript: On July 19, 2026  I saw yet another example of the type of anomaly mentioned above. At about 4:15 PM I saw on the floor a few inches from the TV stand (in a very noticeable position) a pink rubber band. About 90 minutes earlier I had swept the floor with a broom to clean up little bits of dust, without seeing any such rubber band; and I hadn't done anything in the meantime involving any rubber band. No one else was in the room that day. I have now seen this type of anomaly more than 37 times.

Post-post-post-post-postscript: On August 29, 2026  I saw yet another example of the type of anomaly mentioned above. At about 3:20 PM I saw on the floor a few inches from the TV stand (in a very noticeable position) a blue rubber band. I had spent most of the day in the same room, without noticing any such rubber band.  I have now seen this type of anomaly more than 38 times.

Post-post-post-post-post-postscript: On September 5, 2026 I saw yet another example of the type of anomaly mentioned above. In the afternoon I suddenly saw 2 rubber bands on the floor of a room only I had occupied that day. I had been in the room for more than five hours, and had not knowingly touched any rubber bands.  The two rubber bands are shown below.   I have now seen this type of anomaly more than 39 times.

Post-post-post-post-post-post-postscript: The next day something basically identical happened, except that it involved only 1 rubber band.  I have now seen this type of anomaly more than 40 times.

As If Some Invisible Finger Pressed the Button

 Below we see the control panel of my sturdy reliable General Electric dryer. When you press the circular button on the top left, the arrow button below starts blinking. Pressing that arrow button will start the dryer, causing it to run the number of minutes shown on the top right. 

Once the dryer is finished drying some clothes, the lights shown above all turn off, and the top of the dryer looks like this (dark, with nothing lit up):

Less than two hours ago I finished drying my clothes. I checked the dryer to see it was finished. The dryer looked like the photo directly above -- nothing was lit up, and the control panel was all dark. I opened the dryer to take out my clothes. While removing the clothes from the dryer, I noticed something very strange. The dryer's control panel was now lit up, looking like the top photo above. The only way that can happen is if someone were to press the circular power button you see at the top left of the first photo. But I had not touched the power button. 

Speculating about how this could have happened to a dryer while I was right in front of it the whole time, I thought that maybe one of the clothes I had removed had brushed against the power button, accidentally turning it on. I tested that hypothesis, by taking a clothes item, and repeatedly brushing it over the power button. This did not cause the power button to turn on. Evidently the power button requires a firm press, and cannot be turned on by some clothes item merely brushing across it. 

The event was as if some invisible finger had pressed the circular power button while I stood in front of the dryer. I can speculate about a symbolic meaning of this anomaly. When the dryer looks as it does in the top photo, there is a 46 showing, which is a "time remaining" indicator. Maybe the inexplicable event was meant to symbolize the idea of "46 remaining." That could mean 46 days left in my life, or 46 days until some other big event. 

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

Postscript: There was  similar weirdness two days later. While my TV was on showing a particular channel, my PlayStation machine mysteriously turned on, as I sat two meters away from the machine and its controller, not touching any TV remote. 

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:

An Orange Orb

 Photo date: June 10, 2026. Photographer: Mark Mahin. 

Below we see a mysterious orb I photographed indoors. 

Postscript: The next day I was walking outdoors, and saw an empty can rolling rather rapidly across the street, about two meters away from me. I could see  no people, moving cars or animals nearby, and the wind was only 9 mph on a sunny day. The can (holding no food) had a plastic cover, and looking through that I could see the words "Another Level." Was this a symbolic hint of some "other level" of  existence awaiting us after death?

Mysterious Blue Indoor Orbs: A Retrospective (Part 17)

Below is Part 17 of a retrospective showing some of the better photos I have taken indoors of mysterious blue orbs photographed indoors. 

The photo below shows a mysterious transparent blue orb I photographed at Grand Central Terminal in New York.

The photo below shows a mysterious orb I photographed in Grand Central Terminal.

The photo below shows a mysterious orb I photographed near the top of Grand Central Terminal in New York.  We can see a smaller orb inside the orb, and the right edges of the orbs align with each other exactly.  The image almost suggests the idea of a pregnant orb about to give birth to a child orb.

My photo below shows a mysterious orb I photographed at Grand Central Terminal in New York. We see quite clearly the outer ring that often is visible in orbs. You can see many other examples here.

The photo below shows a mysterious blue orb I photographed in Grand Central Terminal in New York.

The photos below show two mysterious blue orbs I photographed in Grand Central Terminal in New York.

The photo below shows a mysterious orb I photographed in Grand Central Terminal in New York. We see the letter "Y" inside the orb.

Today (June 9, 2026) I observed another of frequent spooky-seeming events around my living quarters. A bottle containing about eight ounces of detergent mysteriously fell into my sink, at a time many minutes after anyone had touched anything near the sink. The bottle had been a few inches from the side of the sink, and I had not touched the bottle in a long time.  The sink is not near any open window, and at the time there was no noticeable wind. 

Mysteriously Displaced

 Below we see two photos of the same spot of my TV stand. The photos were taken about two hours apart on June 2, 2026. Both show a wooden comb on the right. The top photo is the earlier photo, and it shows a blue rubber band on the left. That rubber band is not seen in the lower photo, taken about two hours later. 

What is very strange is that I have no memory of doing anything to move the blue rubber band shown in the top photo. Instead, I was surprised this evening (June 2)  to see that blue rubber band on the middle of the floor, about two meters away from the spot shown above. This is the latest in a set of more than 33 mysterious observations I have made of rubber bands, which almost always involve me suddenly noticing a rubber band on the floor, while having no explanation of how it got there. 

My long-standing policy is to immediately pick up from the floor any small objects such as rubber bands, coins and pens, as soon as I see them. So how could the rubber band have got to the position I saw it at tonight, in the middle of the floor? No windows in the room were open, no fan was running, and no one else was in the room. Once again, I am baffled. I have now seen an effect like this more than 33 times. You can read about other baffling occurrences of this effect in my series of posts here.

Part of the EKG/ECG Formed My Initials

 I saw three strange things today. Probably the least strange thing was the appearance of my initials within an ECG/EKG reading. A while ago I bought the Kardia Mobile device which allows you to get an EKG reading (also called an ECG reading) by placing two fingers on a little metal pad that connects to your smartphone. You can use the device to get a 1-lead ECG/EKG reading. Supposedly the device alerts you if it detects atrial fibrillation. But luckily I have not got such a warning yet. 

Below is part of what came up today in the reading. We see an "MM" which matches my initials. 

Another thing that happened was even stranger. Standing six inches from a kitchen sink, I saw a pill (an orange Coenzyme Q10 pill) mysteriously fall from a cutting board to the left of the sink, falling into the sink, when both of my hands were at least six inches away from both the sink and the cutting board. I can speculate about a symbolic meaning of this strange event I can't explain, expounding from the fact that Coenzyme Q10 is mainly used for heart health. Maybe some strange heart-related warning was occurring. Or given that hearts are a symbol for love, maybe some love-related symbolism was going on, like the strange thing I witnessed last Valentine's Day. 

When I woke up, I saw something else very strange. I use a tube of white hydrocortisone to prevent night itching (it's pretty much the best thing there is to prevent itching, and you can buy it for little at any good drugstore). In the morning when I went into the bathroom there were two perfect circles of the white hydrocortisone lotion on the floor, near the sink, each about as big as a large coin. Now, it is easy to imagine me accidentally dripping some of this lotion on the floor, in a messy-looking drip, since I apply such lotion at night. But what is the chance that two perfect circles would be formed by such accidental dripping? Very low, it would seem. 

Trying to imagine some symbolic significance here, I can imagine that the two white circles symbolized circular orbs like those I sometimes photograph. Or maybe there was some time symbolism occurring. Two white circles might symbolize two full moons, or a period of 60 days. Maybe I was getting a warning about something dramatic or ominous that will occur in about 60 days.  

I continue to have dreams that seem to symbolize life after death, and I have recorded more than 555 such dreams in my frequently updated post here. In the latest such dream I dreamed of a person deep underwater, floating up through an underwater  passageway, heading towards the air and sunlight above the water.  The "floating up to the light" motif seemed to symbolize a soul floating up to the spiritual illumination of a heavenly afterlife.  

Below we see a mysterious orb I photographed indoors this evening. We see some streaks of green in an orb that is mainly white. 

Spooky Trifecta

 Tonight I was alone in the house where I normally enjoy the splendid company of my wife and one or more of my daughters. As I ate I enjoyed watching a youtube.com video entitled Twilight Zone (1959): 15 Weird Facts You Didn't Know. Before, during and after my watching of the video about the weird, spooky world of TV's Twilight Zone, I saw some weird, spooky things. Specifically:

(1) Upon walking up to the kitchen, I was surprised to see a light was on on the floor above the kitchen. No such light had been on when I had lunch using that kitchen, and no one else had entered the house since that time. 

(2) While I was cooking some spaghetti, the exhaust fan above the stove (and its green indicator light) mysteriously turned off. 

(3) Later in the evening a protective hat/helmet that was hanging very securely on a hook rack was mysteriously dislodged, with the hat/helmet crashing to the ground with a loud noise (while there was no change in the hook rack that had held the hat/helmet). No one was in the room where this occurred, and no one had been in it for quite a few minutes. I heard the sound of the hat/helmet crashing to the ground as I sat on a couch several meters away in the adjacent room. The hat/helmet had been hung on two hooks of the hook rack several hours earlier, and had not been touched for hours. 

All of these types of events I have seen before. As discussed here, I have seen three times before (in 2025 and 2024) the fan above the stove mysteriously turn off, always when I was cooking spaghetti. The hat/helmet has mysteriously crashed to the ground one previous time. I have seen many cases of lights mysteriously turning on or off, as you can read about in the series of 35+ posts here. 

Below we see what the hat/helmet looked like when it was on the hook rack that held it. 

And below we see what the hook rack looked like after the black hat/helmet had fallen to the ground. 

You can see from this side view how far out these hooks protrude, making a "just naturally fell off the hooks" explanation seemingly untenable. No breeze would have ever caused a heavy plastic hat/helmet to fall off hooks protruding out this far. 

I cannot imagine any natural explanation of what would have caused such a fall. No one was in the room that had the hook rack shown above. The room's door was closed, and its windows also closed. 

All I can do is chuckle, and say, "It's a Twilight Zone kind of evening."

I can think of one optimistic interpretation here. The mysteriously fallen hat/helmet symbolized protection. It's a hat/helmet like baseball first-base coaches wear to protect themselves from foul balls. I bought the hat a few months ago to protect my head from injury if I ever slip and fall to the ground while walking outside, as people my age sometimes do. So maybe an inexplicable mysterious event involving a symbol of protection is a supernatural sign that I have some degree of protection from a mysterious power, conceivably  some power rather like a guardian angel. 

Postscript: The event of a light above me seeming to have mysteriously turned on was repeated the next Tuesday. I left for a not very long walk in full daylight, locking the front door that is underneath a bright light inhabitants turn on only at night (using an indoor hallway switch). When I returned I was surprised to see that light was on. No one else was in the house. The light is sufficiently bright that failing to notice it being on when you lock the door is all-but-impossible, even during daytime. 

A Skeptic Would Say, "It Must Have Just Fallen Out of Your Deep Pocket"

 A few minutes ago I had a fond thought of my late father. A few seconds later I went into the bathroom. Standing, I was surprised to hear the sound of a pen falling to my left, landing on the ground.

How to explain this strange event? I had used the pen earlier to mark on a calendar that I had taken a pill. After I do that, I normally put the pen back in my pen holder cup on the living room table. Conceivably I could have failed to follow my normal habit, and left the pen in my pocket. And conceivably the pen could have fallen out of my deep jeans pocket that is about six inches deep, the same size as the six-inch pen.

But what is the chance of both of those things happening? I'm reminded of when I was questioned as a young boy for walking in the halls during classes without a hall pass you were supposed to get before doing such walking. I claimed that I had got such a pass, but that it "must have fallen out of my pocket."  Some school authority made a skeptical face, saying something like, "Come on -- things don't just fall out of your pocket." 

An alternate explanation here is a Potential Spiritual Manifestation involving some power with the ability to make mysterious movements of matter, with the event being related to the thought of my late father. 

None of Us Seeded or Planted These Purple Flowers

 My late mother's favorite color was purple, and she was very fond of wearing purple clothes. The last conversation I had with the first born of my sisters (occurring quite a few years ago, shortly before she died) was one involving the paranormal and a purple flower. I asked my sister whether she had ever experienced something paranormal or something she could not explain. She told me she had some experience involving a purple flower she could not explain. It seems that after my mother's death there were some purple flowers that had appeared  unexpectedly in my sister's garden, and a purple flower that had survived way longer than expected. I cannot recall precisely all the details, but I remember my sister saying that a purple flower from her garden had survived for years in her refrigerator. My sister seemed to think that such things may have been some supernatural or paranormal sign related to my mother.

On June 1, 2022 I had the 67th dream I have had of my mother since mid-November 2020, when I started recording my dreams.  (By now I have had 167 dreams of her.) The dream was a realistic one. In the dream I was in a store, talking to some woman named Yolande. In the dream, after pointing to some Christmas decorations, I accurately described my mother's Christmas decoration habits, which were to fill the house with Christmas decorations during the time from Thanksgiving to New Year's Day.  How very strange that the name "Yolande" should appear in my dream. Prior to the dream, I had (as best I can recall) never spoken that name, and could not identify anyone (fictional or real) who had that name. Not knowing what the name meant, I looked up the meaning of the name Yolande, and found that it is a name meaning "violet flower."  

I thought it strange that again we should have an association between my mother and purple flowers. On July 11, 2022 I had another dream about my mother. I dreamed that I found unlocked both the front door and front gate of the house where I now live. In the dream I looked around and found my mother kneeling in the back yard, as if she was gardening. Remembering the previous association with purple flowers and my mother, I made in my mind around that time a prediction. I predicted that purple flowers would mysteriously appear in my back yard, even though no one had planted any flowers in the back yard. 

Purple flowers did mysteriously start growing in my back yard, which is all concrete, except for two planters on one side. In 2022 the flowers started to appear on the left edge of the back yard. You can see photos of the flowers in my post here from 2022 and my post here from 2025. It was an astonishing affair of purple flowers kind of "rising up through the little concrete crack." 

This year I see no such purple flowers on the left edge of my concrete back yard. But the two planters on the right side of the yard are now entirely filled with little purple flowers -- purple flowers that arose mysteriously, and were not  planted or seeded by any of the house's residents.  We see some of the flowers below.  The planters have a total area of about 12 square feet. 

I can imagine how unplanted purple flowers might naturally arise in the soil of someone's backyard. Maybe somehow purple flower seeds might get blown by the wind, across the yard, from somewhere else. But in this case we have two planter surfaces that are about a meter above the ground. It would seem very, very difficult for purple flower seeds to rise up so high and land in both of two separated planters. 

Below from my previous posts are some of the purple flowers that I got in previous years in my back yard. None of them were planted or seeded by any of the house's residents. In the first photo we see an amaranth plant. Since ancient times the amaranth plant has been a symbol of immortality. This symbolism arose because the plant was famous for maintaining a vibrant color for very long after it had been cut from the ground. 

Postscript: The two photos directly above were taken before 2026. Below is another example taken in August, 2026.

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.