What just happened?! I don't know what to make of this.

[Believers]

I've had the strangest experience tonight and I don't know how to explain it.

I volunteer with a charity, and tonight myself and 3 others from there went out to a pub I've never been to before for a pre-Christmas drink.

At one point I went to the toilet and as I was on my way out a woman was on her way in. We exchanged pleasantries and went on our separate ways.

About 5 minutes after I'd joined my friends, this same woman came up to us, and sat next to me on the banquette thing. She took my hand and said she had to tell me something.

It was all a bit odd, but I figured she'd maybe had a drink, and I had no objection to her joining us. But then she said to me that she had xxx with her and he wanted me to know that he was happy, that he loved me and that it was time I moved on. She was crying as she said this and I started crying too because xxx was the name of my late dh.

I have no idea how she could've known any of this. None of us knew her, I'd never been to that pub before, dh's name isn't wildly unusual but not that common either, why did she come and find me after our brief encounter in the toilet etc.

I can't get my head around it! Any ideas?!

I've written books for psychics. For work, I've gone to spiritualist churches, 'haunted' pubs and houses, accompanied those with the 'gift' to many of their shows and events. I've had too many readings to count, past life regression, absolutely everything (again, for work). There's nothing in it at all, absolutely nothing.

If you were coming out of the loo and she was going in (having seen you go in), likely that your friends said something she heard, just 'It must be so hard for Believers being without x at this time of the year.'

I'm very sorry for your loss and, even with my experiences, if it brings you comfort, then there's no real harm.

@TheOtherHotstepper thank you very much for explaining. 🙂

I don’t know why people so often say, Oh, they must have found out X or Y on social media. The incidents that happened to my niece were before social media was common, and one concerned a very elderly great-aunt (recently deceased) who’d lived hundreds of miles away in a rural part of the W coast of Scotland, and had never visited niece’s relatively new area.

One thing she told niece was something that had happened shortly before the great-aunt died. Niece hadn’t a clue about it, but DSiS, who’d been there with the GA, was seriously spooked when she heard - she had thought the GA was unconscious and wouldn’t have been aware. And no, it wasn’t something that could apply to just anybody.

Not sure if my reply posted earlier.

I’m as sceptical as they come though I’d like to believe. Most spooky stuff has happened to my DM though not me.

I think she either knows of you or your work or something and has made a lucky guess. If it gives you comfort then that’s great but for me I’d probably be a bit because not every bereaved person wants to hear from the departed via a medium.

I probably wouldn’t give it much more thought to be honest. Apart from thinking fondly of your DH. Maybe bereavement counselling would help if you did want to move on.

Be careful. She’s a very clever and manipulative and probably tries this frequently with a view to playing the long game.
Think of those scam emails. They send millions in the hope of roping in one vulnerable person.

The world is smaller than you think. When I'm anywhere near my home town, I have people I don't even recognise approach me to remember my dead brother and/or grandfather.

This woman was either trying to comfort you in a remarkably awkward way, or was a grief vampire.

I'm highly cynical and I would suggest she knew you vaguely, from somewhere other than that particular pub. It's not a very nice thing to do to someone bereaved.

How does a medium know whether someone believes- or wants to believe- though?
I’m sorry for your loss.

But (for example) dogs sense things that ‘aren’t there’ so it surely isn’t too much of a leap to think that some humans might sense things that you can’t.

Well, if they’re being paid it’s going to be largely self selecting (and it won’t be hard to detect the non-verbal clues from those who’ve been dragged there but think it’s bollocks). If they’re not being paid - that time - what does it really matter if they get told to fuck off? Sooner or later they’ll hit on someone who ‘wants to believe’. Most people are bereaved.

Snap. An old friends brother completed suicide when we were barely adults and he wasn't. I dreamt about him occasionally, nothing detail wise just him being there. Saw a medium, had a message about how being 22 had been so hard for me ( she wouldn't have known my age). And a few other bits then said she had a message for someone else, did X mean anything to me. I immediately knew who. I did message the old friend eventually, in a "I haven I idea if this is helpful or if you'll hate me but please trust that this is coming from a place of me caring about you". She acknowledged it and I have no idea what she thought. Saw her randomly a few years later and obv we didn't bring it up. But I hope it gave her some comfort

Following, nothing to add myself but a very interesting thread. Hope you’re ok OP.

But sign language is not ' a lot of gestures'. Anyone who has seen people communicating in sign language can instantly tell it is a language and not gestures.
From that description you would think the person she described had a quite severe learning disability, not that they were deaf.

So sorry, that one does say ' scammer' to me.

The experiences I've had - not with a medium- are pre social media too.

but in this day and age, and with the OP situation, that, or prior knowledge, are the likeliest things.

I think it's a beautiful message from a genuine medium, they do exist. I have had lots of wonderful experiences over the years and I'd hate to be so cynical that I didn't recognise a lovely message like this.
She didn't ask you for anything in return so what's not to like. Be happy.

I recently went to Blackpool on a work trip. Never been before and had only been there around an hour. I was walking down the street towards my hotel and an elderly lady stopped me and told me I looked sad, She then went on to say "Barry is worried about the cats"

My Grandad, Barry, died a few months ago and his cats came to live with me.

Been unable to stop thinking about it since.

OP I have not read the whole thread but I have read your replies.
I hope whatever the explanation you found it comforting
In the meantime

• are you on social media of any type
• are any of your family/children/relatives on social media
• were you and/or your DH in the newspapers at any point, in particular around the time your DH passed away
• did you ever go to that pub you were in at any time in the past (i.e. years and years ago)
• was your DH involved in any local groups / organisations where this woman might have known him / known of him where for example she might have seen a photo of you or a family member (especially if you look similar etc)

And finally, please confirm whether this woman gave you her own name or contact details any way as part of her communication with her? Did you ask her how she knew about your DH? Surely you tried to engage her in a conversation of some sort before your meeting with her ended.

The odds of a lucky guess with a reasonably common name must be astronomical.

Much as I think most of that stuff is woo, there are things we don't know or understand

Also sometimes (although it shouldn't happen of course because of professional confidence) there are records/photos including group or family photos etc stored in record keeping which people see (eg solicitors offices ref wills/estates, gp surgeries, hospitals, even churches or other organisations like rotary or round table etc) where people see pictures and remember them for many different reasons.

There was a time when I would have found this kind of thing unbelievable, but I had a friend over from California, and this same thing randomly happened in a restaurant. The lady knew very very specific details about his father's death and circumstances around it. There was no way it could have been a random guess and he had literally just arrived in the country for the first time. I would take such comfort in what she told me.

I'm sorry for your loss OP, and for what must have been a very disconcerting experience.

I think one approach would be to consider what didn't happen: this woman didn't receive a message from your late husband. I've only skimmed this thread and can see there are the usual kinds of messages from believers, but... really, come on, we know it's not true.

So all that leaves is... she recognised you, knew a friend of a friend, saw a news report, overhead something... any number of quite prosaic explanations. Or it really was just pure luck. (Statistically improbable things do happen.)

Add in confirmation bias (if she'd got it wrong, you wouldn't have posted this thread for us all to read in the first place) and there's a semblance of an explanation.

Incidentally, this is a very interesting story on 'knowing' vs 'unknowing' frauds (particularly for the "something nobody could possibly know!" crowd).

This seems very real to me.

I don't think a common name can be a lucky guess, but if OP has lived in the area a while, I think that's the answer.

The odds of a lucky guess with a reasonably common name must be astronomical.

The odds of winning the lottery are astronomical, yet people win it on a weekly basis.

But (for example) dogs sense things that ‘aren’t there’ so it surely isn’t too much of a leap to think that some humans might sense things that you can’t.

A dog has a sense of smell greater than mine, meaning it could know something or someone was in the vicinity that I was unaware of biut all of this is well within human knowledge, dogs have never, to my knowledge been aware of something outside human understanding.

It is worth remembering that even we humans have senses beyond the five tradtional ones we all know about, senses such as proprioception which give us an understanding of our physical sense of place is easy to understand once you learn about it but consider one's sense of interoception which is the person's sense of what is going on within their own body. Many people think that vague feeling of unease that leads them to seek medical advice, and it turns out they may indeed have some seious illness, it can and is often said that it was a supernatural sense which led them to seek medical advice but we do in fact know it is a bodily function or ability that exists though most people have never heard of it.

Hi @millymog11 , to answer your questions:

1. No, none.
2. Yes
3. No
4. No, never
5. No
6. No, no details

I did ask her how on earth she knew that, and she said something like she could just see things sometimes. She said it doesn't happen to her often, and she doesn't know why it happens when it does.