Before my eldest son died 9 years ago, I kind of believed in something I couldn’t put my finger on. I certainly didn’t believe we could communicate. I’ve since then been thoroughly convinced that not only is there a spirit world but they can and do communicate with us. We just don’t always recognize their communication. We may call it “a coincidence” or “serendipity” or people may call us “crazy”, depending on the scenario.
I’m not going to pretend that I’m an expert or that I know all the ways Spirit can communicate with us. I’m simply going to share my experiences and what I’ve learned. Maybe some of you will have had other experiences which I hope you’ll write in about so all of us can learn from each other.
After my son died, he began to communicate with me in ways I I could not have foreseen. He was showing me that the spirit world was real, that I could believe it with my whole heart and not just my head. At first, I found strings of coins, always in threes. It didn’t occur to me at first to read the dates but when I went back later, those coins had 1985 and 2015 on most of them. My son was born in 1985 and he died in 2015. He was making it clear that he placed those coins in my path.
Later, he began talking to me in my head. I thought it was my own wishful thinking at first. But then he began interrupting my thoughts. I tried to replicate that on my own but it didn’t work. If I interrupted a thought, the first thought stopped while the second thought took over. But when he interrupted my thought, my thought continued with his communication happening at the same time. I grew to have faith in the conversation.
Later still, he made things disappear and reappear in strange places or in places I had already looked. There are lots of these stories on older pages on this blog. It wasn’t just him doing this, there were other entities as well. And through them, I discovered that I could communicate with other spirits.
Not long after my son died, my father died. He communicated with me through smells and in my dreams. My son also communicated with me through smells. My son would create the smell of cigarette smoke, which I hate. When I complained, he would say, “But you always know it’s me.” Later, he would replace the cigarette smoke smell with the smell of bike tires. He was an avid cyclist in his lifetime. My dad liked me to smell coffee. Both of them communicated to me inside my head. My dad came to me in my dreams as did my son, at least shortly after they died.
A friend of mine had a different experience when her father died. He would communicate with her from outside her head. This happened to me today. A spirit spoke to me in my right ear. Since it hadn’t happened before, it was startling. Some spirits communicate inside your head, while others will talk to you so you hear them with your ears.
My mother died shortly after my father. Her communication style was so different that at first I thought she just wasn’t interested in me and so she wasn’t communicating at all. When I tried to talk with her, I would get the sense that I was speaking to the back of her head and that she wasn’t tuned in. But later, I realized she simply communicated differently. Her spirit would quasi-climb into my body and make me adopt her mannerisms and expressions. She had a way of shaking her hands that I started doing without even realizing it. Throughout my life, she would say, “Oy vey, all day.” After she died, I began saying, “Oy vey”. It was subconscious. I didn’t make an effort to copy her; it just happened. Later, I would find myself saying, “If I had another brain, it would die of loneliness.” Or “Heaven’s to Mergatroid!” These were her catchphrases. The latter is an expression from a cartoon from the 1940s.
After our cat, Cow, died, he demonstrated a completely different way of communicating. All my younger animals have communicated with me, often in images of how much fun they’re having in the spirit world. Cow had his own way. We only had Cow for 2.5 years because he developed a deadly illness at a young age. It was painful for him, but also for me because I was very fond of him. After he died, he would flit around in my peripheral vision, often in places and times that fit his life when he was here. I often see him in the kitchen in the morning when I am feeding our current cats. Or I’ll see him flit around in the bathroom where he would come to drink water and investigate the sink or the tub. He was a joy.
Spirits often communicate using energy or electricity. I have written numerous pages about this type of communication. Spirits can interfere with the functionality of your computer, phone, or radio. In my experience, if you acknowledge that it is spiritual and ask them to return it to functioning, they will oblige. Lights can become a method for their communication as well. Recently, my angel son has been turning a halogen light in my office off and on. I developed confidence that it was him when I asked him to turn in back on “before 3:00, please” because I leave my office at 3:00 in general. That day it was 2:45 p.m. and by 2:55 p.m. the light turned back on. Spirits are pretty understanding about our need to double-check the accuracy of our perceptions.
Some spirits, my son included, will communicate using the natural world. Historically he has sent birds to behave in unusual ways, bears who stand unusually close until I’ve had a good look before running away, and butterflies who allow me to nearly touch them. People often talk about birds or butterflies, particularly of a variety that is meaningful to their loved one, who appear after the loved one has died. This usually occurs at meaningful times of day or with a significant species to the person who is still living, or to the person who died. In my experience, these sightings occurred soon after my son died or on days when the grief became an overwhelming sadness. They send these animals as a message of hope.
Taken together, these examples show me the breadth and creativity of the spirit world’s ability to communicate with us physical beings. They know when we need it the most and will send us messages if we’re open to hearing them. They want us to know that they are there to help but they can’t help if we aren’t open and asking for it in some way. They aren’t allowed to choose for us. We have to ask. And we have to listen.