Sleeping with a Friend; After Death Visitations

By Robin M. Strom

It was my mother’s birthday celebration at the Assisted Living Facility where she resides.  The home puts on a surf and turf meal for everyone having a birthday in that particular month, complete with cake and singing.  The birthday folks can invite one family member to attend the celebration, so I found myself at the table with my mother on a Thursday at lunch time.

Seated at the table with us for the event was a woman neither of us knew. According to my mother she was a newer resident.  Trying to make conversation, I asked after the woman’s family. She told me that she and her husband had several grown children including a set of twins, one of which had died at birth.  Something in the way she spoke seemed to indicate that her husband was alive. He was a truck driver she had told me. They had owned a house together.  She seemed happy and at peace.  But said husband was not at the birthday celebration, otherwise he would have been invited to the table with us.

I thought perhaps he was now living alone and couldn’t drive. I inquired after her husband. Did he live in the area? Did he also live at the home with her?

“Oh no,” she replied, “he died several years ago.”

“Oh, from the way you spoke I thought he was still with us,” I said.  I didn’t want to pry too deeply as this is often a sorrowful subject, especially if the marriage had been a happy one as she seemed to indicate. “I’m very sorry for your loss,” I finished inadequately.

“That’s O.K.,” she replied, he’s with me every night."

Now I was confused...but intrigued. As a paranormal investigator, obviously contact with departed loved ones is always of interest. But of course, If he was deceased how was he making contact with her nightly was the burning question? 

“Do you have dreams of him?” I asked. My own mother reports fairly frequent, lucid dreams especially as she is aging, which feature my late father, but also long deceased family members, especially a grandfather who had died when she was a child. Often of late she reports dreams of herself and her grandfather sitting on a park bench together.

This is not inconsistent with the literature on death and dying.  Infrequent visits from loved ones, often in lucid dreams, are reported by a large number of the population. There are also a host of other phenomena outside of dreaming that are often reported such as smelling a scent associated with a loved one or hearing a song that was dear to the departed, witnessing a symbolic representation of the departed such as a type of bird or insect. Auditory hallucinations are also common. My mother once reported that she heard my father call her name from another room. She told him to come to bed and then realized he was dead. Witnessing a departed loved one is of the rarest type of experience reported, although it does occur.

According to an article in OMEGA; The Journal of Death and Dying, 30-34% of the population across societies will likely experience at least one or more ADC (After Death Communication) in their lifetimes.  Actually, this is a highly conservative number. The same article noted a recent Pew Research Center survey which reported among 53% of U.S. adults being visited by a dead family member. The same study found that those who were married or in a civil partnership were among the segment of the population most likely to report such a visit (50.6%). 

Depending on the experiencer personal perceptions, such “visits” can be a powerful balm to the grieving process. 

“People usually find ADC to be beneficial, using descriptive words like pleasant, positive, mystical, serene, elating, helpful, comforting, healing, spiritual, and a good experience. Most ADCrs report that, as a result of the ADC, they feel reassured and comforted that The deceased continues to exist—and in a state of wellbeing and happiness, and the relational bond of love between the ADCr and the deceased continues—albeit in a different form.” (Baethge, et al. 2002)

Still, most of these reported visits that I have researched were infrequent and sporadic.

So, I pressed gently. “Do you dream of him nightly?”

“No,” she said, “He’s with me every night.”

“With you how?” I asked.

“When I get into bed I see him standing in the room. And then he comes over and gets into bed with me.”

“Ah,” I said stymied, looking over at my mother quickly and glad that she was hard of hearing.  Hearing voices and/or seeing people that are not there is a good way to get a person moved to the “Memory Ward” at the home.   Such is the deep empathy of modern science with the aging population.

This woman was pleasant and seemingly in her right mind. She didn’t appear to be irrational or highly emotional.  I rationalized that seeing her departed husband nightly had seemingly had a calming effect. She was well adjusted despite living alone among strangers. She wasn’t openly grieving. In fact, she spoke of him as if he was still living.  I just hoped she kept her husband’s nightly visits to herself. The ADC is a gift that can make impossible grief possible to bear.

I’m curious if anyone else has had a loved one report anything similar. If you have a story to share, please contact the team at delawareparanormal@gmail.com

Resources: 

Baethge, C. (2002). Grief hallucinations: True or pseudo? Serious or not? Psychopathology, 35, 296–302. https://doi.org/10.1159/000067067

Penberthy, J. et al. (2023) Description and Impact of Encounters with Deceased Partners or Spouses.” OMEGA – Journal of Death and Dying Vol. 0(0) 1-18.