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More Tales From My Guests

Ok now things are tantalizing again.

[I need to give you a quick refresher on my past encounters with the uncanny. A long series of events after the death of my brother included an encounter with a homeless man who bore his face. I'll find a link to the story to add here later. Secondly the journal/notebook I had handed to the guest includes some sketches including a christ like image that appears to be a self portrait of my brother ]

The guest continued to provide nothing of note. He's currently away for the day so I was telling the tale to one of my regulars and abandoned the idea the pen thing was communication from the dead through the guest or otherwise, in favor of emphasizing synchronicity, timing and meaningful coincidence as merely suggesting there's more to this world.

She's left the room, and I've just picked up my phone.

Every other day the phones photo app spontaneously prompts me to look at similarly themed images randomly chosen from it's long memory. It did so just after this conversation. This ( a montage i had made for comparison) from June 2018 is what it chose to dig up unprompted just now...
Screenshot_20240320-105949~2.png


( Re-Edited here to obscure homeless man's identity)
 
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Just repeated the above incident to my siblings on WhatsApp . Mu eldest brother has replied he's sitting in a cafe , turned around and there is a poster bearing ...well I can't say. But it's the post mortem code message I've alluded to.
 
Sometimes you just have to listen:). Perhaps your brother is trying to connect with you. Or you are really feeling his absence.

Considering that we can only understand this realm, even when two people make a plan to try to reach out after death, it is a plan that is based on how we understand our world and how things function.

If someone was able to connect from another realm, the things we can do here such as manipulate items, speak words etc may not be possible in other realms. In essence, the original plan would not work. So hypothetically, the person in the other realm who is trying to connect can only do what is achievable in their realm. Leaving them hoping that we recognize what is being done as coming from them.

With this possibility, it is pretty much unprovable to our satisfaction or understanding.

Which is why proof of an afterlife is virtually impossible. Those who believe, believe. Those who don't, don't.
 
I've decided when he gets back I'll not tell the guest about the above incidents as he'll leap on them with distracting enthusiasm.

It occured to me that there's another thing I previously decided to hold back from him. During the initial conversation he had thrown in hearing movement upstairs when in bed ....dismissing the fact there was another guest in the next room who was definitely moving about!...and wanted to know if I ever hear phantom footsteps up there . I said no. But..of course ..as I posted on here somewhere, I actually did , a couple of weeks ago!
 
gattino said:
I've decided when he gets back I'll not tell the guest about the above incidents as he'll leap on them with distracting enthusiasm.

It occured to me that there's another thing I previously decided to hold back from him. During the initial conversation he had thrown in hearing movement upstairs when in bed ....dismissing the fact there was another guest in the next room who was definitely moving about!...and wanted to know if I ever hear phantom footsteps up there . I said no. But..of course ..as I posted on here somewhere, I actually did , a couple of weeks ago!
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Has he started to go a bit Most Haunted? :Givingup:
 
Well I'll be neutral and just say we have different perceptions.

If you strip it all away , from my perspective there's a number of suggestive "coincidences" of a kind I have a long experience of... and he's played a key part in the circumstances of retrieving the pen that forms part of that coincidence . And that's his contribution...so far.. to anything unusual thats happening currently.


From his perspective, however ..or it seems to me....he has been lead here and is instrumental and central to a puzzle box of a message he has to solve ...and almost everything is a clue or potentially so.

As Ive seen nothing to justify that perception save the original pen coincidence his conviction seems well meant but not, I feel, justified. I may still be proven wrong. But it gets uncomfortable responding in the negative over and over again to someone's questions or suggestions.
 
gattino said:
Well I'll be neutral and just say we have different perceptions.

If you strip it all away , from my perspective there's a number of suggestive "coincidences" of a kind I have a long experience of... and he's played a key part in the circumstances of retrieving the pen that forms part of that coincidence . And that's his contribution...so far.. to anything unusual thats happening currently.


From his perspective, however ..or it seems to me....he has been lead here and is instrumental and central to a puzzle box of a message he has to solve ...and almost everything is a clue or potentially so.

As Ive seen nothing to justify that perception save the original pen coincidence his conviction seems well meant but not, I feel, justified. I may still be proven wrong. But it gets uncomfortable responding in the negative over and over again to someone's questions or suggestions.
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Have you heard of the cross-correspondences? There's a nice Wiki page on it.

Your posts about your brother remind me of it because the messages and coincidences are unintelligible to outsiders. Only you can make sense of them.

(Here's another - I read about the cross-correspondences years ago and remember specific examples, such as the reference to Berenice and the lock of hair.
Looked it up while listening to a video on YouTube, wherein the narrator referred to evidence in a murder case being found in the form of hair.)
 
gattino said:
His enthusiasm and sense of excitement is also such that he has - to my more linear and practical mindset - an unhelpful habit of seeing every last comment, remark or piece of information as significant or profound and part of the puzzle. It's difficult to say anything without him declaring in disbelief that he had been thinking or feeling that very thing or something relatable to it earlier.
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This description fits one of my neighbors, who has beautiful intentions, but very bad boundaries, and almost zero self-awareness, and goes from passionate crusading, to transgressing boundaries, to self-flagellation in a matter of seconds. Very difficult to have an informative conversation with, yet insists on communicating "very important" information about stuff that really isn't her business. Potentially a very accomplished person, but what a mess she can leave in her wake!
 
So now what do I do.

He's done it. He "identified" the secret message agreed with my brother.

For 8 years I've never told anyone what it is, only my surviving siblings know. I never even say what it consisted of except words.

So why aren't I shouting this miracle from the roof tops? Why do I still feel so reluctant to openly reveal the "code"?

Because I had always imagined the way this would work ...if it ever did/could... Is that a stranger in the street or a stage medium would just blurt out the unguessable words and I would be shocked and amazed knowing he's speaking through them.

Instead my guest renewed and intensified his interest in a physical object that's the subject of the message and did so because of interpreting signs and portents he observed last night.

So he got it. And I had to tell him he had got it. And then shrugged and went about my day.

I don't doubt a remarkable thing has happened. But should I accept THE remarkable thing has happened?
 
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gattino said:
So now what do I do.

He's done it. He "identified" the secret message agreed with my brother.

For 8 years I've never told anyone what it is, only my surviving siblings know. I never even say what it consisted of except words.

So why aren't I shouting this miracle from the roof tops? Why do I still feel so reluctant to openly reveal the "code"?

Because I had always imagined the way this would work ...if it ever did/could... Is that a stranger in the street or a stage medium would just blurt out the unguessable words and I would be shocked and amazed knowing he's speaking through them.

Instead my guest renewed and intensified his interest in a physical object that's the subject of the message and did do because of interpreting signs and portents he observed last night.

So he got it. And I had to tell him he had got it. And then shrugged a d went about my day.

I don't doubt a remarkable thing has happened. But should I accept THE remarkable thing has happened?
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I think there is some kind of law or rule, that any paranormal communication should be ambiguous and allow doubt (I think there was some kind of mention of this in one of the Scole books) - and this fits that idea perfectly.
 
gattino said:
So now what do I do.

He's done it. He "identified" the secret message agreed with my brother.

For 8 years I've never told anyone what it is, only my surviving siblings know. I never even say what it consisted of except words.

So why aren't I shouting this miracle from the roof tops? Why do I still feel so reluctant to openly reveal the "code"?

Because I had always imagined the way this would work ...if it ever did/could... Is that a stranger in the street or a stage medium would just blurt out the unguessable words and I would be shocked and amazed knowing he's speaking through them.

Instead my guest renewed and intensified his interest in a physical object that's the subject of the message and did do because of interpreting signs and portents he observed last night.

So he got it. And I had to tell him he had got it. And then shrugged a d went about my day.

I don't doubt a remarkable thing has happened. But should I accept THE remarkable thing has happened?
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No one expects you to reveal the code because it is personal to you. Keep it. Reflect on what it really means to you.

Your experience may be akin to people who have had NDEs. I knew one person who told me that she never spoke of her NDE for quite awhile after it happened because she had to explore her own understanding of what had happened and how it affected what she believed.

Anything that challenges our beliefs takes time for us to digest.

You may just need time. You may not want to openly explore for a while, or ever. That's ok.
 
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After a few days thought i realise part of my sense of anticlimax is that the failure to announce "he says the message is...." leaves me hanging. My desire to retain it as a secret in the hope some future wizened old lady in a market square may approach me with the words one day means im unable to announce my guest's possible "achievement" and get the feedback of others like yourselves as to where they do, and I ought to, place it on a scale of paranormal impressiveness.

So I've decided i can tell you the story in all its important details (im anonymous after all and you've never been in my home) by simply substituting the "target" with a fictional replacement for the purpose of the story.

So I can reveal for the first time that what was agreed between my brother and myself as his post mortem proof of ID was a very specific object with a distinct name.

I was away on a weekend break when he took ill and was hospitalised, and only told on my return. A day or so later he moved in here and the subject of arranging an afterlife coded message was the first conversation he had with me. Thinking the topic had moved on I retrieved and showed him a souvenir of my trip. He misunderstood and thought i was suggesting this souvenir object should be the "code".

For the purpose of this tale lets now pretend that the object was an ornamental elephant (I again emphasise its nothing of the kind, but conceptually it works for recounting what the guest did/said). It sits , distinct but not attention grabbing, in the house. No one else has ever commented on it.

In the first week, when the guest was so deeply into the idea that he was communing with my brother and trying to piece the attempted communication together, and was either offering nothing or throwing failed suggestions of allegedly meaningful things or descriptions my way, he drew attention to this "elephant". (He was looking away so didn't see my eyebrows raise). 10 minutes later looking at something else nearby, he again felt compelled to say there was something about this elephant. But in his usual way he moved on. Nothing of use was mentioned again and after another few days away myself this last weekend, i gave up pursuing the subject. I was sitting trying to decipher my brother's totally illegible notebook, when the guest - at the back of the room and having his coffee - suddenly said "what's the significance of that elephant?"

He obviously got my attention. I told him it was a holiday souvenir. He said "But it has meaning to you and your brother?". I said...it does. You have my interest. Why are you asking about the elephant?

In his telling he was in the back garden smoking late the night before, again asking my brother to spell out the intended communication, when he heard a very unusual sound. It got him interested enough that he went to his room and googled a category of sounds and identified what he had heard as (obviously this makes no sense here but remember I'm using a substitute for the story) the sound of a baby elephant. He came down again and entered the living room. It was the night of the full moon and a beam of moonlight was coming through the window falling directly onto the elephant.

Hence his conviction the object was significant and by implication my deceased sibling was drawing his attention to it. At that point, short of simply verbalising its name and saying "this is what your brother's coded message was" I couldn't hold out for him to do/say any more and acknowledged he'd "got it".

And that's it.

Anticipating speculative questions:

Does the real object stand out and grab the attention? - Its distinct but not extraordinary. No one asks or talks about it. It's not oversized. I don't and didn't at any point draw any attention to it.

Is it the only such object in the room, or surrounded by others? - its not a room full of bric a brac or ornaments. But there are little things dotted here and there, some more distinct.

Did the guest know, or did I ever hint, that the "message/code" was a physical object or present in the house? - No, never. Not a word, not a hint.

Was it the only object he drew attention to? - On the first day of his attempts to communicate (when i use that term my understanding, perhaps incorrect, is he would have a monologue in his head with the target person and interpret spontaneous thoughts or notions as possible replies) he asked about different people in some photos, took a great interest in a small icon of the virgin mary tucked behind a photo (his interest of course has its own origin in his earlier story in all likelihood) and asked a question about another object that was sitting on the window sill. He never mentioned it again.

So, Forteans, you tell me what you think. I'll answer any questions. On the believer side I'll advise you to put this account into the context of the earlier business that started it all of the pen down the sofa.
 
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If you're searching for an alternate theory, perhaps the answer came not from your brother, but from you. Hear me out: a few days ago, you posted that another one of your brothers was at a cafe and behind him was a poster with the agreed message. This was revealed to you over whatsapp. So there's 2 possibilities: either guest had a root around your phone and saw the whatsapp message or he picked up on the message from your thoughts through telepathy.
 
Well the way to address those ideas is to break it down.

Rooting around my phone didn't and couldn't happen. It never leaves my hand and requires my thumbprint to open.

A more practical alternative on the "he saw it written down" scenario is to wonder if the note/sketch book of my brother's i've referred to...and which i previously said i handed to the guest to see if he picked up anything from it.....might contain a written reference to the target. He certainly had access to it. But as i say its barely legible/decipherable....and consists of random pen sketches, song lyrics, quotes and a few paragraphs of "journal" about his feelings. If there's any mention of the target, or even our conversation itself, in there, i certainly haven't found it.

The telepathy issue is of course the eternal fly in the ointment and one ive always thought about it....even if a medium told me the words i wanted to hear, how can i know they didn't come from my mind? Welll there's nothing we can do about that. All we can say in regard to the events laid out here is to observe that the guest didn't, ultimately, hone in on the target because of an internal thought (which you would expect is what we mean when we think of telepathy) but rather because of external pokes and prods (the mysterious sound and the Indiana Jones like beam of light). These seem to fall under the category of synchronicity or even directed "signs", correctly interpreted. (You might even speculate that the deceased had used such event manipulating methods precisely in order to overcome the telepathy objection!)

But again i think - despite me seeming to defend the paranormal hypothesis - this is another reason i feel so underwhelmed. The mysterious events which would inspire a sense of awe and wonder were experienced by him and not by me. I'm just a witness to the conclusion , not the strangeness that lead him to it.
 
gattino said:
The telepathy issue is of course the eternal fly in the ointment and one ive always thought about it....even if a medium told me the words i wanted to hear, how can i know they didn't come from my mind? Welll there's nothing we can do about that. All we can say in regard to the events laid out here is to observe that the guest didn't, ultimately, hone in on the target because of an internal thought (which you would expect is what we mean when we think of telepathy) but rather because of external pokes and prods (the mysterious sound and the Indiana Jones like beam of light). These seem to fall under the category of synchronicity or even directed "signs", correctly interpreted. (You might even speculate that the deceased had used such event manipulating methods precisely in order to overcome the telepathy objection!)
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I don't think these "signs" actually rule out telepathy per se. If he received the information telepathically, it doesn't rule out that he took these signs or coincidences to reinforce the message. As we all do.

We always try to look for signs that reinforce our beliefs/hopes. I do not think we can do this. Humans are superstitious and illogical despite what we try to do to counter this.

That is part of the problem(?) with trying to explore and/or prove paranormal, specifically spiritual/otherworldly events. We cannot separate our subjective interpretations from them. We try.
 
As has happened with previous sagas of potentially post mortem coincidences, whenever one talks about it , it seems to trigger another related coincidence.

It's so difficult to convey the sense of amusement or wonder or impressiveness when im still desperately avoiding naming the object in question. So typical vagueness here, but going to the cinema with a mate last night i was telling him the tale on the street (without naming the item/target). Literally within 2 minutes of this, being a little early, we went into the nearest pub..one ive not been in before and newly designed on a particular theme. Standing at the bar i turned around and found i was looking at an unlikely picture on the wall deeply connected to the object in question. I mean, shy of being a photo of the actual object, it really couldn't be more relevant.
 
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