Some people, having lost loved ones, continue to hear, feel, see and even smell them.
If Inga and her friend did not spend the night together, then he always sent her an SMS before going to bed. One evening, the girl did not receive an SMS and became worried. And when she barely managed to fall asleep, she had a terrible dream: a human body lying on the road, in the field of vision - only legs. Inga was sure that this was her friend. Later that night she was woken up by the phone: the guy really died in an accident.
Inga was crushed. In the months that followed, her only consolation was that she often spoke to him.
“I love you,” said Inga.
“I love you,” a friend answered her.
"We will be together forever?"
"Yes".
"Do you promise?"
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"Yes".
She insists that these answers were not thoughts in her head, but his words, which she actually heard. Two years after the tragedy, this conversation sometimes took place between lovers - “what we used to say to each other,” Inga recalls, always following the same scenario. It seemed to Inge that they seemed to be together again.
To some, Inga's story may seem very unusual. Someone will say that she may not be all right with her head. But, according to Jacqueline Hayes, professor of counseling psychology at Rohampton University in London, such cases are actually quite common. According to research, 30 to 60 percent of widows and widowers see, feel, hear, smell their deceased wife or husband.
But spouses and lovers are not the only ones who talk about this phenomenon; dead grandparents can visit grandchildren, parents can feel the presence of a deceased child and even friends sometimes make themselves felt from the other world.
“They may not have a body, but in those moments they are alive,” says Hayes. "At least in our minds."
The variety of such episodes is great, and includes cases of continued presence, cases of hallucinations after the loss of loved ones, spiritual perception and continuing connections. Some experts prefer not to use the term "hallucination" to describe the phenomenon, because the one experiencing it realizes that the dead person is not really here, despite the sensations. Thus, the term 'hallucination' can give an unnecessarily unhealthy tone to what is happening,”says Hayes.
Like classification, specific cases can also be very diverse. Some see the deceased in his favorite chair, some hear him pronounce their name or smell his perfume. One man tasted the dishes his grandmother used to prepare. “These amazing cases are unlimited in their variety,” says Hayes. “But more often than not, I was faced with the continuation of a relationship that a person needs at a given time.
Cases of continued presence usually occur shortly after the death of a loved one, and can last for months or even years. As a rule, visits are fleeting and almost always the deceased behaves as in life. “If you had a close, nurturing relationship with this person, it’s unlikely that he will begin to offend you,” says Hayes. Of course, in most cases, when exchanging remarks, the departed offers words of comfort or advice. However, Hayes has heard of a couple of opposite cases. For example, an abusive father appeared to his son after death during an army qualification course to continue to taunt. "You're a loser, don't even try to continue."
For something so general and universal - after all, each of us lost loved ones - this phenomenon is relatively little understood. Some experts insist that cases of continued presence are pathologies, in which the brain under stress triggers abnormalities in reality. Others argue that this experience is completely positive: it helps the person fill in the empty space after the loss of a loved one. Hayes considers this phenomenon to be "highly paradoxical," carrying both healing and destructive potential. “A person has just been here with you, and now he has disappeared again,” she reasons. "It can be sweet and gratifying, but at the same time it underscores the tragedy of loss."
In some cases, people, especially those of Western culture, after having such experiences, worry about their normalcy. But usually the visits themselves are not alarming. “It happens quite naturally, as if some kind of signal invites a person to come on stage,” says Hayes.
The mechanisms that trigger these signals have been studied even less than the main characteristics of the phenomenon. Armando D'Agostino, a psychiatrist at the São Paulo Hospital in Milan, believes that the same processes that create flashbacks and visual images in people with post-traumatic stress are at play here. Loss of the brain's ability to separate the level of sensations from the level of memory storage, which also happens with post-traumatic stress, may also contribute. “I would say this is a loss of the brain's ability to separate two functions - the perception of something and the retention of it in memory, - says the doctor. "PTSD patients may experience strong primary dissociation at the time of injury, and grief and loss may be seen as a form of trauma."
D'Agostino believes that more attention should be paid to the study of this hypothesis, not only because the answers can be intriguing in themselves, but also because they can influence the upcoming debate about how these mental symptoms differ from normal perception. … “Studying these phenomena is useful for better understanding true pathology because we can see how the brain creates an alternative perception that is not an obvious hallucination,” he says. "We are now at the beginning of the road to understanding what it can be."
Evgeniya Yakovleva