Dreams of ghosts and demons yet to be?

[gattino]

Well it was his funeral yesterday and , notwithstanding the occasional minor coincidence (death, funerals, seances appearing to be in everything I watch on tv.. I'll put that down to me just noticing it more), I've not personally noted anything eerie or uncanny (barring the book business on the first day). However one of my remaining two brothers claims to.......

He's been regularly reporting the kind of thing which is only convincing when it happens to yourself - eg feeling the back of his head being touched when there's no one there, or electrical items playing up in ways he interprets as odd and meaningful. Happening at a distance and sounding more minor to the audience than to the teller of the tale I'm inclined to privately think he may be just too keen to find meaning where none really exists. Until now....

He reports that just over half an hour ago my sister replied to a text from his phone. She had tried ringing him and when in lieu of picking up she recieved the text "Can I call you later?" she responded "yeah, no problem, its nothing important".

Except for one very important detail. My brother swears he never wrote such a text. It's come from his phone..but was not typed by his fingers. And the phone, he asserts, was in his trouser pocket the whole time, as he was busy with the lawnmower in the garden. This impossible written exchange apparently occured at 2 minutes past 12 today.

 

[Swifty]

Well it was his funeral yesterday and , notwithstanding the occasional minor coincidence (death, funerals, seances appearing to be in everything I watch on tv.. I'll put that down to me just noticing it more), I've not personally noted anything eerie or uncanny (barring the book business on the first day). However one of my remaining two brothers claims to.......

He's been regularly reporting the kind of thing which is only convincing when it happens to yourself - eg feeling the back of his head being touched when there's no one there, or electrical items playing up in ways he interprets as odd and meaningful. Happening at a distance and sounding more minor to the audience than to the teller of the tale I'm inclined to privately think he may be just too keen to find meaning where none really exists. Until now....

He reports that just over half an hour ago my sister replied to a text from his phone. She had tried ringing him and when in lieu of picking up she recieved the text "Can I call you later?" she responded "yeah, no problem, its nothing important".

Except for one very important detail. My brother swears he never wrote such a text. It's come from his phone..but was not typed by his fingers. And the phone, he asserts, was in his trouser pocket the whole time, as he was busy with the lawnmower in the garden. This impossible written exchange apparently occured at 2 minutes past 12 today.

I hope you don't mind me commenting Gatino, on a technical level, the longest delay I've experienced receiving a text is two day (I'm on the Virgin network btw) but never as long a time gap as since your loss to today .. my only other slightly similar experience (or one I watched unfold) of someone who had passed away was in '85 when Steve in my year at school had a fatal bike accident .. a few days later, his girlfriend received a phone call from someone claiming to be Steve and was very distressed about it the next day. A small posse of lads were trying to find out who had made the phone call in case it was just a sick prank but no one ever owned up to it if it was. Your family's experience is harder to explain though .. big love to you again btw ..

 

[gattino]

the longest delay I've experienced receiving a text is two day (I'm on the Virgin network btw) but never as long a time gap as since your loss to today

I'm a bit confused. There was no time delay in this story. I hope I haven't given the impression this was about the dead brother's phone!

It's about one of my still living brothers. She phoned him, he's busy and/or didn't hear the call, and she gets a message by text from his phone saying can I call you later? (Implication, I can't pick up right now, can I call you back later). So she replies no worries. Both his text and her reply appear on my (living) brother's phone but he insists he didn't type his part of it. The implication is that someone or something did so on his behalf, despite the phone being on my brother's person the whole time.

The most obvious "rational" explanation one would likely be offered is that busy in the garden, he texted the sister while on automatic pilot and simply forgot he'd done so (same explanation as my book experience). But given he says hte message was sent at 12.02 and he was telling me about it on the phone at around 12.25 it strikes there's simply not enough of a time gap for his own action to realistically slip from his memory.

 

[Swifty]

I'm a bit confused. There was no time delay in this story. I hope I haven't given the impression this was about the dead brother's phone!

It's about one of my still living brothers. She phoned him, he's busy and/or didn't hear the call, and she gets a message by text from his phone saying can I call you later? (Implication, I can't pick up right now, can I call you back later). So she replies no worries. Both his text and her reply appear on my (living) brother's phone but he insists he didn't type his part of it. The implication is that someone or something did so on his behalf, despite the phone being on my brother's person the whole time.

The most obvious "rational" explanation one would likely be offered is that busy in the garden, he texted the sister while on automatic pilot and simply forgot he'd done so (same explanation as my book experience). But given he says hte message was sent at 12.02 and he was telling me about it on the phone at around 12.25 it strikes there's simply not enough of a time gap for his own action to realistically slip from his memory.

Sorry Gattino, I was trying to be sensitive and not use the word dead so that might be where the confusion was .. so my other thought was that it could be your dead brother who was using the one phone somehow to text the other so you made yourself clear in that post. I agree it does sound very strange but hopefully reassuring for you all .. X

 

[gattino]

Aw, thanks for being thoughtful. But no you can say dead as much as you like.

Yes, that's clearly the inference being drawn..that the deceased brother is the agent of this oddness.

It's tricky for me, as you may recall from past accounts on here I've had plenty of experience to suggest strange events are "signs" from specific dead people...to the point where non paranormal explanations seem untenable...but it always leave me more perplexed than ever. If we take such things at face value and the deceased have such a power over the physical world around us as these stories suggest, why is it always so damn coded, not plain direct and clear? It comes across like a celestial Give Us A Clue.

 

[Swifty]

Aw, thanks for being thoughtful. But no you can say dead as much as you like.

Yes, that's clearly the inference being drawn..that the deceased brother is the agent of this oddness.

It's tricky for me, as you may recall from past accounts on here I've had plenty of experience to suggest strange events are "signs" from specific dead people...to the point where non paranormal explanations seem untenable...but it always leave me more perplexed than ever. If we take such things at face value and the deceased have such a power over the physical world around us as these stories suggest, why is it always so damn coded, not plain direct and clear? It comes across like a celestial Give Us A Clue.

I'm very relieved I didn't hurt you in any way Gattino, I went to work today worrying that I might have done so thanks for putting my mind at rest ..

Not specifically related to you, your family or your brother who's just died but for these sort of experiences in general .. we've both discussed in this thread that we've considered possible technical faults and that they don't seem likely or even explainable in a normal sense (Unless the receiver of the text misread the details of the sender somehow) ... A really out there theory could account for the incident in that after we die, time works completely differently so it was a delayed message from your brother or perhaps even one from the future that he's knowingly or unknowingly sent back to be captured on that phone .. or again, it's just somehow a technical fault? ..

 

[gattino]

Someone else has mentioned privately the tendency of messages to sometimes vanish and be delayed in transit. It's only in the repetition that I get what it is that is being suggested as a possibility.

But first to avoid confusion over these overlapping uses of the word brother I'll designated my siblings by their initials from now on. I have sister (S) and 3 brothers, P, C and G. C is the deceased. G is the one one whose phone was involved in the current incident.

So, if I interpret correctly I think the hypothesis suggested is that G sent the message hours or days ago in an unrelated context, but thanks to the flaws in cyberspace it only reached its destination (S) today at noon, creating the false impression it was current and in response to her missed call. And that this delay was enough for G to have potentially forgotten even sending it.

He's coming later and will show me hte message for myself so its possible there's an unseen hole in his story, but based on the information I have at present this delayed arrival theory doesn't work, as far as I can see.

Because the false appearance that the message had been sent at noon today would only occur on the recipient's phone - my sister's - not the SENDER's phone. Wouldn't it? Because surely the chat history as it appears on his phone will always date and time HIS OWN message at the point he pressed send, regardless of how long it took to reach S. In other words if HIS phone says he wrote "Can I call you later" at 12.02 today then that is the only time he could possibly have written and sent it. And he is adamant 15 minutes later that he did nothing of the kind.

I shouldn't be certain of all this until I see it for myself later and ask more questions,but that's the story so far.

 

[Gashead]

Hi gatinno
I've been following your thread for a while and I'm very sorry for ur brothers passing.
I've wanted to share this tale before but don't mix in the sort of circles that would have accepted it, but it all felt real to me. I'm not even sure if this is the right place to comment.
Last year my best friend died at the age of 39, far too young and i still find it hard to believe. After his funeral I came home and sat in the front room and tried to take in the last few weeks. I had to go into into the back room to get some stuff sorted for work the next day ( life goes on!) and my gaze fell on a photo of him i had on the table, at the exact time a picture fell off the wall! Easily explained as coincidence but it felt strangely comforting. I did ask him not to do it again though!
A week later I dreamt I was a prison officer doing the rounds and checking each cell, I opened a door to find my friend looking sheepish as he was obviously trying to escape. I told him to carry on and that I hadn't seen anything. I shut then reopened the door and he was gone. This made me feel empty as I realised I wouldn't see him again.
Sorry if a ramble as this is my first post

 

[ramonmercado]

My brother passed away last night. It will seem to some, perhaps, odd or cold that I'm writing this update in a casual tone on the day it happened. But as per the dream I find myself, for the moment, oddly unemotional. Perhaps it will sink in later as the dream suggested.

I update it now to express some thoughts and observations while fresh about the expected - and failed to arrive - fortean aspects of his passing.

What the future may bring, who knows. And we have the secret "sign" we agreed upon. But anticipating his death, and given both my interest in all we discuss here and his conviction about survival, I expected more. I actively anticipated I would at least have a vivid dream before his parting. There was none. That my sleep would be disturbed, that a farewell visitation of which I've read so much from others, would occur at the moment it happened. Nothing. At the very least that our mother, thanks to dementia unaware and uncomprehending that she has lost a son, would in the morning act strangely or say something aptly odd that would pull me up in my tracks. That never came to pass. The day is ordinary and his passing heralded only by a morning phone call from my sister.

And there is in that silence a certain loss of faith, if you can call what I had faith. Surely, some part of me thinks, if all these tales I read are true, here's where it would manifest for me and remove all fear of death. The newly dead are doubtless busy...but as we hear they are not always so, then why him, why now?

Maybe a sign will come in due course. But I'd have liked a clear goodbye. That would have settled it for me forever. Maybe.

I'm only reading this now.

My condolences,

Take care.

 

[gattino]

Again thanks for all condolences.

So he came here last night before I went out for the evening I saw the correspondence for myself.

Sure enough, 12:00 a sent message from him "Can I call you later?" and my sister's reply at 12.02. It was , and he confirmed on asking, the normal built in text/sms function of his iphone, not an app like whatsapp. He also confirmed he does not have to his knowledge and has never used any kind of message template, and he did not send that message to my sister or any other person in recent days or, to his recollection, ever. In other words some kind of delayed send or accidental copy/paste from another conversation function are seemingly ruled out as options.

However ive now consulted a phone geek friend who says that message does exist on iphones, and that it can be sent accidentally in your pocket. If you go to settings, phone, respond with text.."Can I call you later" is one of three options. He suggests that my sister calling him would have brought his phone screen to life in his pocket and a casual chance pressing of the screen against his leg or pocket lining jiggling about would have accidentally sent that particular response. (With great Fortean irony I myself have had 3 letters published in the FT over the years, one of which was giving an identical explanation to a previous reader for why his phone had "mysteriously" called his wife!)


However not all the magic is gone from our tale... as I said I went out last night and heading home early but at a perfectly random time around 12.25 I equally randomly chose to go right rather than left in pursuit of a taxi on a less busy road, turned a corner and right into..my deceased brother's son, who of course I'd seen only the day before at the funeral. This may not impress you, but it does me..because I have never seen him outside of this house in his or my entire life. I was able to tell him about the (then,seemingly)phantom text. You might romantically speculate I was meant to.

 

[gattino]

my gaze fell on a photo of him i had on the table, at the exact time a picture fell off the wall!

I think that's really interesting as the picture falling off the wall as a sign of a presence is almost a cliche in haunted house movies. It would be interesting to know how often it features in "real life" accounts.

 

[gattino]

Last night, around 1am, I had one of those dreams again. Perhaps because its the freshest I want to claim it was the most terrifying...or better still perhaps because it seemed the most real, tying in with my false awakening dreams.

I heard my (now deceased) brother leaving the bedroom next to mine (in real life he was staying there in his final months, and I've just emptied and cleared it out to redecorate and get a carpet down tomorrow) and saying loudly that he was going downstairs..and he mentioned something about being haunted, I think.

Well all I know is that in my perception I was awake, in bed in exactly the same position and surroundings as I was in reality, and an invisible ghost of some kind was holding me down. I was screaming the whole exorcist type lines again "In the name of Christ go! I command you to leave!" etc etc (Intriguingly there was somethign exorcist themed in my previous two nights dream recordings, but the details had faded completely). I tried this time relaxing and accepting the experience to see if it would help. I could glance down enough to see my my lower half, eg my the shape of my feet beneath the duvet, in the dark struggling to move, and eventually I came out of it...or rather I "woke up". Because in fact my eyes were closed and covered and I couldn't have possibly seen anything, which confirmed that what had all the quality of being awake must in fact have been a dream.

False awakenings are something I've experienced - and reported here - half a dozen times in the last couple of years and there's really no way to do them justice. It is ONLY the fact of waking the second time that allows you to conclude what just happened wasn't itself a wide awake experience.

As for what it all means, God knows.

Or the Devil does.

 

[skinny]

standing down

 

[gattino]

Most of your message seems to be missing, Skinny. At least on my screen. All it says is "standing down" in italics.

 

[skinny]

I redacted it. Not a helpful message for the thread. As you were.