Many people believe that the dead can return from the afterlife. Not quite, of course, for a while … And even communicate with the living. Or at least show them up. Why does this happen and how?
Phantom Chess Players
Quite recently, I was told a completely real story that happened to a woman. The woman's father (let's call her Valentina) died. And not long before that, a close friend of his father died. During his lifetime, Valentina's father loved to play chess with this friend. And somehow Valentina decided for some need to go into the apartment of her deceased parent … Opening the door with the key, she immediately felt that there was someone inside. I went into the room and saw there … the deceased father and his friend! The dead were sitting at the chessboard and enthusiastically playing the game. Valentina called out to them, but both paid no attention to her. They seemed to be talking among themselves, but she heard only an indistinct muttering.
Then Valentina came up and tried to mix chess on the board, hoping by this to attract the attention of the dead. After that, the ghosts, along with the board, began to melt and soon disappeared without a trace.
Talking to your late boyfriend
And here is Inga's story. If she and her boyfriend did not spend the night together, then he always sent her SMS before bed. But once the usual message never came … Inga went to bed, and she had a nightmare: a human body lies on the road, but you can't see the face - only legs are visible. Despite this, the girl was sure that this was her friend. Later, the phone rang: it was reported that her boyfriend had died in a car accident.
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In the following months, Inge more than once thought that she was talking with her deceased lover. He confessed his love to her and insisted that they would always be together … The same words they often uttered during the life of a young man.
"Otherworldly" visits
Jacqueline Hayes, professor of counseling psychology at the University of London's Rohampton University, argues that people can often not only "telepathically" communicate with the dead, but also see them, hear their voices and even smell them. This happens with about 30-60% of those who have lost a loved one. “They may not have a body, but in these moments they are alive, - says Hayes. "At least in our minds."
So, one man said that after the death of his grandmother, he felt the taste of the dishes that she was preparing.
"Visits from the other world" can last for months or even years. The deceased almost always behaves in the same way as during life - for example, sitting in his favorite chair. Usually the living receive advice or consolation from the deceased. But it also happens otherwise. In one case, the late father, who during his lifetime was cruel to his son, during such a "visit" began to mock him, calling him a failure.
Armando D'Agostino, a psychiatrist at the São Paulo Hospital in Milan, believes that ghosts are a product of our brain that allows it to cope with post-traumatic stress. We need and receive communication with a loved one who has passed away. "I would say it is a loss of the brain's ability to separate two functions - the perception of something and the storage of it in memory," - he says.
Disappearing passengers
But then how to explain the cases when people see the ghosts of complete strangers, and not at all expecting to see them? For example, the Japanese newspaper Asahi published an article by Yuke Kudo, a researcher at Tohoku University, who, in the process of collecting material for her dissertation, talked with taxi drivers working in the Sendaya area on the island of Honshu, and collected interesting facts.
It turned out that some of the taxi drivers got into a situation where their passengers mysteriously disappeared without paying for the trip. And it looks like it was not a commonplace "divorce".
All episodes took place after Japan in March 2011 suffered a devastating earthquake accompanied by a tsunami. The Sendaya area suffered more than others - a giant wave simply washed away all houses within a radius of more than a kilometer.
One of these cases occurred about a year after the cataclysm. Near Ishinomaki Station, one of the taxi drivers put a woman dressed in a coat in a car and asked to take her to the Minamihama area. “I asked her if she knew that the area was practically uninhabited after the tsunami? - the narrator recalls. - To this the woman exclaimed in a trembling voice: "Am I really dead ?!" The man turned around - but there was no one in the back seat …
A young man of about twenty sat down next to the other driver. He named the destination - the mountainous region of Hiyoriyama. The car drove without stopping, but in the middle of the way, the driver suddenly discovered that the passenger had disappeared somewhere.
An important fact is that in all such cases, when a ghost passenger landed, the counter was automatically turned on. As a result, taxi drivers had to pay for the trip out of their own pockets. It turns out that ghosts could not be just a figment of the imagination of the drivers!
Guests from the "lower layer"
The famous parapsychologist Robert Monroe in his book "Distant Travels" tells that our world is surrounded by energy layers inhabited by the souls of people who previously incarnated in a physical body. On the first layer there are souls who cannot yet wean themselves from their bodily existence. Sometimes they try to lead the old life, or return to their dead body … Some of them even pursue living people, especially those with a shattered psyche, feeding on their energy … This continues until they realize that they have already died. Then they rise "up" and go a certain way until the next earthly incarnation.
If ghosts can appear to people, then these are exclusively the inhabitants of the "lowest" layer - those who are not yet aware of their death. However, you should not take this idea as the ultimate truth - this is just an assumption. But it is necessary to understand that there is nothing out of the ordinary in such phenomena and no one is immune from meeting with the inhabitants of the "other world" …