Does anyone have experiences that have made them believe in life after death?

[Magicpaintbrush]

My DH died in April. He had bowel cancer and was only 46 years old and not ready to die. I made the mistake today of picking up the photo album I made full of photos of him and I am having a really tough morning, my heart is absolutely broken. The only thing that gets me through the days is talking aloud to him and hoping that he is somewhere 'else' and can hear me or see me, but then I have moments where I think I am kidding myself and I am just a sad, grieving woman talking to thin air. I don't know what to believe, I hover between the two. But today I absolutely cannot and do not want to believe that there is nothing after death, I can't cope with the thought that he exists nowhere at all anywhere. He was so strong and had so much personality, it makes no sense. Does anybody have any personal experiences or know of any true stories that have led them to believe there is 'something' after we die? I would find it really comforting to hear from people that believe and have a reason why they believe. To those who believe we are just dust after death, you may be right, but today I can't hear that, and I don't need to be told that as I already know that is possible - which is why I haven't posted this in AIBU as I know the first 30 replies would be people rushing to tell me I'm deluding myself by hoping there is something more than darkness after we die. If anybody has anything to share that would bring some comfort today I am very ready to listen x

After Mum died, both Dad and I were aware of her presence in the house. Dad was very straight up and down but even he agreed when I said this to him.

Two days before her funeral, I had an incredibly vivid dream that Mum came to me. She looked about 23 and was fully healthy.

The following day, Mum was gone from the house. I waited to see if Dad mentioned it and by lunchtime he noticed and said that she has moved on and had I noticed. I told him about the dream and how beautiful she looked.

The funeral was much easier on us both as she had shed her diseased body and was free.

Dad had been gone some years and my ex had left for an OW. I bought him out of the house but it was falling down and needed serious money and effort.

I was in the pits of despair one January night. It was bitter cold and I was sitting on my bed in tears and asked Dad what I should do. Sell up or find a way to pay for the work needed. I didn't have the strength for any of it at that point.

Despite it being the middle of winter, a fresh green leaf dropped into my lap from nowhere. I took this as a sign from my Dad to keep going. Things would improve and they did. I met my now DH the following year and we took the house down and rebuilt it.

I'm so sorry for your loss. Please do keep talking to your husband. I don't have any firm answers or beliefs in the particular subject, but what I do know for certain is that there is something so much more to the world, and to life, than we can possibly comprehend with our living brains. I do wonder if everything will make sense after we die.

Like many others on this thread, shortly before my grandma died, she looked up, and asked the person in the room with her at the time, 'can you see them?'. She looked happy. That was comforting.

I'm so sorry for your loss, @Magicpaintbrush . You described your dh so vividly and with so much love that it brought tears to my eyes.

I completely believe that this life isn't all there is, and that our consciousness, our spirit I guess, lives on. After my mother died, myself and both my siblings had vivid experiences. In my case, a letter that she'd sent me, which had been in a dresser drawer, appeared randomly in the centre of the floor for no reason. My dh didn't put it there and neither had I.

A few days later, an item moved by itself in my bedroom. I heard a noise, looked over, and watched this item on the bedside table slowly come to a stop. I said out loud, 'Mum, if that was you, do something else so that I'm sure.' And immediately, something else on the bedside table moved. (I know how bonkers this sounds, but it happened!) My siblings both had similar experiences around the same time.

Also, I can't even count the number of times I've turned on the car radio and a particular song is playing which was meaningful to my father and myself (my dad died when I was 20).

I believe you'll see your dh again, OP. I hope you can find some comfort in these stories, and wish I could give you a hug.

I posted further upthread and I’m following new posts with interest.

I feel very envious, and somewhat depressed about this thread.

Robins along with wrens are about the most numerous bird in this country. They are everywhere all year round (they don’t migrate), so when I see one I’m not comforted.

Nor am I comforted by feathers. Birds are everywhere. Feathers are also in puffer jackets, pillows and duvets.

I’m not even comforted by songs playing at key moments: algorithms in tech are extremely clever.

I went to three separate ‘demonstrations of mediumship’ and was appalled, amused and, tbh, depressed at the obvious frantic phishing and guesswork that was going on.

I need comfort; I would love to believe my dear husband isn’t really so far away after all. But I don’t (often) find it. What’s wrong with me? Am I just too science-y / sceptical to be comforted by the things that comfort other people?

I did have the usual dreams that he was alive and came back, in the weeks and months after he died, but I believe this is common to everyone in the aftermath of a very close and abrupt bereavement.

Im 18 months along now and although the shock has worn off a bit, my devastation has not.

I believe you will see your DH again. Lost my own DH nine years ago …..when I first set eyes on him a strong sensation came into my mind from nowhere….. “ah, there you are”. The rest is history and 40 years of happy marriage until his death. I recognised him in that moment from somewhere I can’t explain. DH had no such feeling or recognition. I fully expect to encounter him again somewhere. Only one other “ experience” to support this belief regarding my late father. One night a dream but not a dream…. I was awake and aware, but I knew I was asleep in my bed DH beside me. Crawling along an asphalt road with a heavy load on my back, I was aware of a presence at my side that I could not see. I became aware it was my late father. I never saw him and he never spoke. The load was lifted from my back. I stood up and he walked with me for a short time. the experience then ended. I am confident I will see him again as well.

At my husband's funeral a couple of months ago, just as the curtains were closing in front of the coffin a white feather floated down. Apparently in some cultures it is a sign from the person who died to reassure us they are at peace and happy. I hope it's true.

I lost my daughter she was 16 to suicide and there is not a week goes by that I don’t feel her with me. We went on holiday and as we walked into the supermarket her funeral song came on in aldi in lanzerote. I

Not me but a friend (yes really!)
She had a lengthy affair with a married man but finished with him. He was devastated, but she stood firm.
One night she was in bed and’s in the early hour woke to hear him getting into bed with her. She sat up shocked that he had let himself into her house with a key she had given him previously and not bothered to take back.
No-one there went downstairs to check so clocked the time/ so she assumed just a dream.
A few days later she was informed by a mutual friend that he had died in the night around the time she was woken.

Firstly, my heart goes out to you. I am so sorry for your loss..I lost my mum in 2014 to dementia.. There isn't a day go by that I don't think of her. I had a bad time in work recently, watching a film about dementia and I got really upset. When I walked back into the classroom a random date was on the board- Her birthdate! Also when I watched the film again, later the date the film was made was 2014. Coincidence ? I don't think so. I think they know when we are upset and confort us in their own way.
I hope you find some signs from your dear husband and it gets a little easier. XxxX

OP I can feel the weight of your loss so keenly from your posts. Your DH sounds like an incredible man and I’m so sorry. I am 100% a believer that a soul cannot just disappear when someone dies. Humans are so much more than the particles that make up their physical being.
I definitely have moments when I believe loved ones I’ve lost are close by - a significant song playing at just the right moment, a feather, butterfly, robin appearing and bringing a feeling of immediate comfort. I can’t say I’ve ever asked for signs, and I don’t think it’s a sign whenever I see a feather, for example. But sometimes it’s SO significant - I can’t explain any further than that. Sometimes I just know it’s someone wanting to show they’re there.

Firstly I am ever so sorry for your loss, your DH was far too young and life can be very cruel.

It was nighttime in hospital and I was with someone very young not long after they died. From the corner of the room little grey lights appeared that turned into grey people, was not scary, they looked happy. One at the front I recognised of someone who had passed years ago, but this was a happier and healthier version. They came over to the body and whisped away. I hadn’t expected it or “asked” for this, I just sat in amazement and wonder, I’m a nervy person and yet I felt no anxiety or fear. I’ve told no one as felt no one would believe me. The nicest thing for me is that I feel a bit more at peace, although I grieve in the deepest way still.
If you speak to nurses they have usually had a few experiences.

Wishing you peace where and when you can feel it.

I am so sorry for the loss of your wonderful husband. Life is just cruel and when someone is taken so young and full of life it just unimaginable.

just to share my experience my dad died in April after a long battle with a neurological illness. He had lived with it for many years and in his mind wasn’t ready to die. On my way up to be with him when he died I met a woman on the train who said she was a medium. Before this I wasn’t sure what to believe but we talked about death a lot and she gave me a new perspective. I was with him the next day when he went and honestly I felt an energy in the room. The lights started blinking on and off briefly a few minutes later. My sister felt this too. My dad was religious and the vicar came and sat with us a while before. He talked about gods house of many rooms and I really believe my dad is somewhere else. I truly feel him with me and talk to him as well.

take care of yourself as much as you can, take it day by day and hour by hour. It’s so early for you xx

I am so sorry about your loss 😞 @Magicpaintbrush unfortunately I have no experience of any kind of afterlife. I refuse to believe that there's nothing left though when we die. It isn't possible for there to be nothing of that person left, even if someone is cremated, whether it's their gasses or what not, there is SOMETHING of them that goes SOMEWHERE. People's thoughts, memories and expeirences can't just... Go.
This is coming from someone who is strictly atheist and very sceptic about anything and everything. But I do believe there is SOMETHING. You are keeping him alive by talking to him and remembering him, and I do believe that you'll be reunited one day.
My cat recently passed who I absolutely adored, last night at 4am on the dot one of our silly shein cat portraits fell off the wall and into my trainer. Coincidence, may be, but I think to think it's my Bengal boy popping in to say hello from across the rainbow bridge.
I've been with my dad recently who lost his partner (my step mum) and my partner who lost his mum, there have been little things here and there, butterflies following my dad everywhere, my partner having vivid dreams of his mum despite never remembering dreams.
This isn't it, I'm sure of it.
I don't have the experience of how this must feel for you, but it will feel better someday. Just take each day as it comes.
Sorry if that's a load of waffle!
Thinking of you, lots of love & healing hugs xx

This thread has been very comforting and what I needed to hear.

Some things that happened before and after my DH passed. He was in bed resting and ill - halfway between sleeping and waking - and he said a man came into the room from his right (which is impossible as that is a wall/window beyond which is a drop onto the street outside), placed his hands on DH's shoulders and said hello and my DH's name, but nothing else. He said the hands were massive, much bigger than a normal man's, and when the hands placed on his shoulders he felt something travel through his body, like energy or something. He said he couldn't be sure if it was real or a dream, but either way he found it comforting. It felt like a visit from somebody who was watching over him.

We have a good friend who does Angelic Reiki. She did an energy attunement to both of us, my DH first and then me. My DH was very spiritually switched on (more than me) and said he physically felt something during the process. When I had my turn - I have to say, I am actually quite cynical and I expected to feel nothing whatsoever, but I did. I felt something actually make contact with my body. I can't explain that. It felt like a wave of energy actually hitting me with a gentle thud. I had another attunement after he passed though and I didn't get the same feeling the second time.

My friend who does the Angelic Reiki was phoned by my DD the morning after my DH's death, but she already knew and said so before my DD could tell her. She said she felt him pass. Which is strange because DH passed very quickly in the end, we thought he had weeks more but he caught pneumonia in the hospice and it took him within two days, so she can't have been expecting it because even the doctors thought he had longer and were shocked he went so quickly. Two days later she left me a voice note to say that she had felt a message from him to say he was safe and at peace - she initially was reluctant to pass it on as she felt it was too soon but she sensed he was absolutely insistent that we were told. This is exactly what I would have expected from DH. Prior to his death he said himself that this particular friend would be important. I know absolutely if he could make contact in some way he would have gone directly through her without hesitation. I do have a feeling that if contact is possible then maybe it is more possible in the immediate days following the death, because the person is inbetween here and wherever is next?

I have these things which comfort me, but when I'm in despair I find myself doubting and thinking I'm foolish and wishing thinking. Perhaps I need to trust the evidence of my experiences more.

So sorry for your loss, it feels overwhelming at times. Here is my experience:
My dad died of lung cancer. He slept in his last few days due to pain and drugs. I sat with him a while after work and when I went to leave I stroked his cheek and said night night. To my surprise he answered 'night night Ju'. Not only had he heard he didn't mix me up with my sister!!

About 6 months after his death and yes, he was still a priority in my thoughts, I was asleep on the sofa. I got a sudden awakening by a very very strong feeling of someone stroking my cheek!!

There was no one else around and it felt very real. I do like to think it was dad looking over us.

Crying for you as I type! And my dad!

What a lovely post.💐

Firstly, you're not a sad grieving woman. You are grieving and -feeling- sad. Grief has no expiration date and it manifests in all different forms and emptions. My Nan died over 20 years ago and she mostly brought me up - I still talk to her every day and I even say goodnight to her when it’s time for bed. Her and my Grandfather. I even look back at the one or two photo's of her and talk to them. It's good you made a big album, because years ago it wasn't so easy to do that. I have 2 photos taken with an analogue camera you would need to have photos printed from. See it as a silver lining that the present age has enabled you to create a big photo album of memories.

That's where I believe the souls of our loved ones return to. They return to the photos, to the memories, to the past events where they were happiest - We are all there in those memories, so they will never be alone in the Afterlife. They go to their own, personal paradise, somewhere they loved the most where they can find recurrent scenes where we are all with them..where traces of us are reliving that memory with them.

I do hope you are sharing your grief with friends and family, or even a grief counsellor. Don't suffer in silence. Cry and talk as much as you need.

Two other things, I have remembered, but not to do with DH as such.

In the days following the death of my MIL I experienced a very strong feeling that she was standing with me in the kitchen - could easily have been my imagination, but nevertheless that's what I felt at the time. Later that day I went upstairs and I was standing in my DD's bedroom and I turned around to face the doorway and saw in the hallway, which was very gloomy as it was a cloudy dull day, some lights and colours briefly in the air. Soft pinks, blues, greens, yellows, moving around together, for like 3 seconds, then gone. There was nothing physical that could have caused it. So I have always wondered if it was MIL. One thing I do know for absolutely certain is that she would have been absolutely fuming that she died, she would have been so pissed off and not accepting of the situation at all, so it wouldn't surprise me if she hung around for a bit.

One other thing. My lovely grandad passed away, very quickly and unexpectedly, in 2009. A few weeks later we decided it would do my Nan good to get out of the house so we decided to take her to a National Trust (Scotney Castle) for some fresh air and company. As we were getting ready to leave my Nan opened a cupboard and a single photo of her and my Grandad together at Scotney Castle fell out onto the floor in front of us. I found that really very coincidental to the point of it being more than a coincidence. Maybe it's just what I want to believe. But it is weird.

I'm so sorry for the heartbreak that you're dealing with.

Yes I do believe there is "somewhere else".
I attempted suicide in 2019 and I "dreamt" for want of a better word, that I was in a field and my daughter was there with my Nanna (who I was extremely close to and who died when I was 16 and had never met my daughter) and she wouldn't let me come any closer and asked me to "go home".

Years later in 2022, I was staying at a hotel with my sister and I had a really vivid dream and again it was my Nanna and daughter and in the dream Nanna was stressing to me that she really wanted me to see a doctor asap and she was full of concern.
I'd been feeling a bit out of sorts for a while and I grudgingly booked a GP appointment because I couldn't shake the dream (my sister had woken that morning to see me sat in a chair in the hotel room and said that I looked like I was in a trance).

I ended up being rushed straight from the surgery, by ambulance on my GP's insistence and he hadn't let me leave his room until the ambulance arrived and having an emergency blood transfusion and then booked in for an iron infusion - according to the doctors, I would have been dead within a week but if it hadn't have been for that dream in the hotel, I wouldn't have entertained making a GP appointment as I just presumed I was tired and stressed due to all of the overtime I was working.

Look up Dr Raymond Moody, he has collated thousands of near death and shared death experiences.

I'm so sorry for your loss.

Personally I do believe there's an after life. When i think of my dad i like to think he came into my thoughts because he's close by.

You must do what comforts you. It doesn't matter what other people believe. You're not kidding yourself . You are grieving. You need any comfort you can get allow yourself that comfort.💐

My mum died at home. She had advanced Alzheimer’s but from time to time she could speak a little. Just before she died she said ‘my mum and dad are coming for me, is it ok if I go with them?’ I told her that as soon as she saw them she had to go with them.

My brother is autistic and has LDs. When mum died he was unaffected by her death and didn’t mourn her, just accepted she was dead. Two years on he had a stroke and was in hospital. It was pretty serious. When he was starting to recover he said ‘you’ll never guess who came to see me? Mum was here!’ It was really lovely. He hadn’t spoken of her before and hasn’t mentioned her since.

My Grandma was a few hours from passing when she smiled and said her late husband’s name like he was in the room coming to greet her. I take comfort in that. Having a belief is what gets a lot of people through the day there is nothing wrong with that.

I too am very sorry for your loss, OP.

My beloved baby brother died in a freak sports accident.

I was consumed with grief. I hoped more than anything that his essence was continuing somewhere but didn’t have definitive signs. One evening I, an agnostic, implored any gods that may be to show me a sign.

Now, at the risk of TMI, I had had haemorrhoids for years. Not painful, but a fair amount of daily blood.

From the next morning, I have had no more blood. It has been years. BTW, my brother hated blood.