Loved ones who spoke to us from be yond the grave
Don’t believe in the spirit world? Read these spine-tingling stories from Mail readers and see if you’re still a sceptic
SCOFF at seances and ghost stories? Novelist Jane Merrill Forrest did, until — as she related in last Saturday’s Daily Mail — a mysterious encounter with her dead brother changed her mind. We asked you to share your own experiences, and you responded in droves . . .
AFTER a long and happy marriage, my darling husband died. Five months later, I was sitting in my kitchen with the door to the hall open when the temperature in the bungalow suddenly dropped (it was a lovely, sunny day).
When I looked up, I could see an outline similar in size to my husband.
I spoke to him and told him how I loved him and missed him. After a short time, he put out his arms towards me . . . and then he disappeared, and the temperature in my home returned to normal.
I have never dismissed the thought of an afterlife, nor have I really believed in it, but I do know now that my beloved is waiting for me, so I have no fear of dying.
Yvonne Moreman. MY HUSBAND Noel and I are both police officers in Northern Ireland. Noel used to be an engineer and is the most pragmatic, realistic man you could ever meet.
On July 31 last year, he came in from his shift after midnight and put his car keys on the bedside cabinet. At 3am, the keys flew across the room, waking us both, and I accused him of swiping them with his hand. He just said it wasn’t him, and that was that.
We were flying to London later that day. As I was driving to the airport, he kept telling me to watch my speed, mind that car, and was generally being irritating. Then he said: ‘We are going to be in a car crash today.’ At the airport, I gloated that I’d managed to get us there in one piece.
We landed at Heathrow at 5pm and got picked up by a friend. As I got into the middle of the back seat, I couldn’t find the belt buckle so I wasn’t going to bother. Noel insisted I dig it out and gave me ‘The Glare’.
Five minutes later, I shouted: ‘That guy hasn’t seen us!’ as another vehicle sped across the lanes.
The impact was fairly substantial. I dislocated my neck and pulled the cruciate ligament in my left knee. Noel fractured his sternum and three ribs. The Fire Brigade said that if I hadn’t been wearing my seatbelt, I would have been out through the windscreen.
Later on, in A&E, I asked Noel how he had known what would happen.
He told me that his recently deceased cousin Shane had thrown the keys, and that he was there with their grandmother. They had told him not to go to London as he would be in terrible pain. When I asked why he had still gone, Noel said that if he hadn’t, then I wouldn’t have worn a seatbelt and would probably have been killed.
If anyone else but Noel had come out with this story, then I would have laughed at it.
Catherine Kearney. MY UNCLE Don was a lovely, caring man, and, like most of the family, a Manchester United supporter.
When he died it was the week before Remembrance Day, and I visited the chapel of rest to say a last goodbye. Uncle Don was dressed in a black suit and tie with a white shirt, and it struck me how drab it all looked.
So I took the poppy I was wearing and pinned it to Uncle Don’s lapel. That looked much better. Then I kissed him on the cheek and left.
Fast forward two years and I was sitting watching Manchester United playing in a Champions League match on TV. There was only me in the room, but my son was upstairs watching the game.
The door to the hall was open and
out of the corner of my eye I thought I saw my son standing there. I turned to speak but there was no one there — just a glow of light on the door.
This happened about four times over the next 20 minutes or so, until eventually I got up and shouted up to my son, asking him if he’d been down. He said he hadn’t. I returned to the lounge and continued to watch the game, still aware of the glow on the door.
There was a huge vase of silk poppies — my favourite flower — in the room. Suddenly, one of the poppy heads fell off the flowers and onto the floor. I was quite shocked as I was the only person in the room and I had not moved.
I rang my sister’s friend, who is a psychic medium, and she asked me whose anniversary was around that time. I said: ‘Uncle Don’s.’
Then she asked what I had given him in the chapel of rest. I was stunned, as it had been a poppy!
I ended the conversation and said: ‘Come in, Uncle Don, and watch the game.’ A few minutes later, when I turned round, the glow had gone from the door.
Susan Jones. MANY years ago, my first wife and I had finished decorating our small flat in Greenwich, South London. The only item we were still searching for was a bedspread.
One Saturday morning, we visited the Harrods bedding department. Right there as we walked in was the absolute perfect bedspread at a cost of £80. This was 30 years ago, so heaven knows what the cost would be today.
A foreign sales assistant, possibly Italian, was so helpful in explaining what a lovely item it was, although she agreed ‘it was a lot of money’. She suggested that we go and have coffee upstairs and think about it, which we did.
We made the decision to purchase the bedspread but the assistant was nowhere to be seen. As she had been so helpful, we decided to return to the store a little later to give the same assistant the sale, in case she had been on commission.
On our return, there were two other sales assistants standing by the till in conversation. My wife and I asked them if ‘the Italian sales lady was available’.
To our astonishment, the reply was: ‘I’m really sorry to tell you, but she passed away a year ago to the day . . . and we were just talking about her.’
We never said anything but we did purchase the bedspread, which looked fabulous in our room.
The bedspread is long gone now. However, before it was disposed of a small piece was cut from the end and framed as a reminder of what happened.
I still have the item in my possession.
Paul Carugati. MY MOTHER passed away in November 1999. In December 2014, I went to a medium.
He asked me if I had lost my mother and who was the Gemini (which was her birth sign). He even named her — Jean.
Then he told me she had to get something off her chest that she was sorry she never told me, and it was about my other sibling.
I am 61 and an only child, but he was adamant that she said there was another sibling.
Two days later, I contacted a cousin whom my mother lived with during the War. I asked if, when Mum lived with her family, did she have a miscarriage, an abortion or even a baby.
The next words nearly blew me away. My cousin said how sad she was for my mum, and that she had given birth to a baby girl when she was about 19 years old, in 1942!
I stood in my dining room, so stunned and shocked. My cousin had seen the baby lying on a settee in her house. She had just come home with her brother from being evacuated and was told they were looking after it for someone.
A few days later, they took the baby to a house in Southampton where my mother handed the baby over. On their return, my mother was very distressed. My cousin said this is how she knew it was my mum’s child.
I looked on the internet and found a child born in 1942 with my mother’s maiden name, and went to my local register office to obtain a birth certificate. I was told the child had been adopted, which would have been true. There was no father named.
I have tried to trace this person, but have come to a dead end at the moment.
How could this medium know about this if my mother had not told him?
Pauline Holmes. MY LATE husband Mike and I adored each other. We’d been together since I was 16 and he was 19, so imagine how devastated we were to learn he had mesothelioma (asbestos-related cancer).
Mike had worked as a ship’s draughtsman after his apprenticeship in the Fifties, when asbestos was everywhere on the ships.
I nursed Mike single- handed throughout his illness as I couldn’t bear the thought of being parted from him. He died very peacefully sitting next to me, holding my hand, in his favourite chair, four days after his 60th birthday.
I was heartbroken and, as I stroked his hair as he took his last breath, I said: ‘ Promise you’ll always be with me, Mike.’ Today, I’m positive that he is.
A week after he died, I was trying to stick four tiles to the wall in the downstairs bathroom, because they’d fallen off. Often my eldest son, Steve, would call in to see me on his way to business meetings for a quick coffee and chat.
This particular morning, I was getting distressed as I couldn’t get the tiles to stick. I suddenly cried out loud: ‘Oh Mike, if only you were here you’d know what to do — and you’d be making me a cup of tea, wouldn’t you?’
Within a couple of minutes, I heard the sound of the kettle in the kitchen. I waited (still in the bathroom) until I heard it click off, then called out to my son: ‘ Steve, will you make the tea and coffee please?’, thinking he had called in. There was no reply, so I got off my knees and went to the kitchen — but there was no one around and the back door was locked. I went over to the kettle, which was still steaming and scalding hot! The last time the kettle was used was for my breakfast at 7.30am — and it was now 11.15am.
I froze, but then a lovely warm feeling came over me. I said: ‘Is that you, Mike?’ and I bawled my eyes out. So yes, there is life after death. I’m so relieved because I know that I will see my beloved Mike again.
Ann Ash. IN 2013, I was sitting at my computer wondering which of two properties to buy. One was overlooking a canal with a balcony, the other was totally different, but they were both nice.
As I was sitting there pondering, all of a sudden I heard an almighty crash behind me. Startled, I jumped up and looked behind me.
A large picture, which had been on the wall for ten years, had come crashing down. But it was intact and there was not a mark on it.
As I picked it up, I saw something written on it in small letters. It said: ‘On the balcony.’
I had bought this picture for my mum, who had lived with us but passed away in 2007. The picture was of two ladies on a balcony looking over a Parisian street.
That was good enough for me. I was definitely going to take the flat with the balcony. Thank you, Mum.
And after a couple of days unpacking, we put the picture on the wall right near the balcony.
I couldn’t believe it, the top of the balcony in the picture was the same colour and shape as the balcony outside my new flat.
All my family say it was definitely the best move I could have made.
Patricia Foster. MY MUM sadly passed away in 2006. I rang my daughters that evening and told them the news.
The next morning my eldest daughter texted me to say that my grandson, who was three at the time, had come into the room that morning, not knowing that Grey Nanny (his name for her) had died. He called me Nanny Bells.
He said: ‘Grey Nanny said that you must tell Nanny Bells that she isn’t to worry, as she is home now!’
Susie Roberts.