EVP and things that go bump in the night

I spent several days wondering whether to write this or not and when you read it, you’ll probably know why. It’s been over two years now since my mother died and I miss her just as much as I did then.  However unusually as it might sound to some people I get the feeling that my mother is still around, almost on a daily basis. It must be said that my mother and I both shared an interest in paranormal events to begin with as did her own mother and she was an avid reader of articles both good and more trashy that wrote about such possibilities.

This weekend saw the first hard scientific evidence by university hospitals in England that patients who were clinically dead but later made a recovery were able to accurately record the events that were going on around them.   By even remembering the beeps of different machines that only occur several minutes into various situations, scientists were able to see how some people seem to know exactly what was going on around them even when clinically dead.

This would not have been a surprise to my mother or indeed to myself having long since believed in it and to my own satisfaction had proof of such events even before the passing of my dear mother. I know that one or two members of the family have experienced strange things happening with electrical appliances and the like but none seem to have a steady run of these things happening on a weekly and almost daily basis. I’m not sure why I seem to be singled out but I am glad that I am.

Perhaps it is because I was the only close family member who didn’t get the chance to say good-bye properly. The first instance relating to my mother was actually 2 or 3 days before she died.  I was walking in the park as I did every time that morning having just lost my job some days before.  I had a strong sense that for some reason my mother was going to die.  She had been undergoing repeated treatments for cancer and was reported to be making a strong recovery and practically about to be given the all-clear.

I often get these feelings about various things and various people from light-hearted events to these more important feelings.  I tried to put it aside and ignore it as it seemed to go against the real-world events and besides if I contacted people every-time something was going to happen to someone, I’d never get anything done.  Anyway I besides that feeling, I also had a feeling that everything was going to be ok and it wasn’t a bad feeling as strange as that sounds. My mother used to frequently make me sandwiches to take to work for lunch, it was her way of treating her number one son and to be honest they were seriously delicious.

However the week before she died I suddenly took a dislike to them, in fact I was unable to eat them no matter how I tried.  I wondered how I would break this to my mother, that I no longer liked her sandwiches after so many years.  It didn’t take me many days to work out that maybe this was someone’s way of maybe helping me not miss them as I surely would have done. When the call came in that my mother had died, for some reason I wasn’t that surprised.  I was sad that it had happened but I wasn’t surprised and as soon the phone rang I just knew what it was going to be about.

The day before my mother’s funeral, I went to the Chapel of Rest to see my mother just one last time.  I went in first and said my goodbyes and then my uncle came in for a few minutes after which I left him to spend a few minutes alone.  Whilst he was in with me, I gave my mother a letter that I had written her and I gently reached down and touched her hand one last time.  At that precise moment that our hands touched,  the four lights in the room flicked off for a second and then back on for a split second and then off for another second and as I let go the lights came back on.  I thought I may have imagined it but I hadn’t as thankfully my uncle witnessed the entire event just as I had.

Whilst my uncle was inside I chatted to the receptionist and asked the receptionist if there were often problems with the lights in that room.  She was quite surprised at what I told her and insisted there were no problems with the lights or electrics and that no-one had ever mentioned it to her before and she had worked there for years. Hmmm, it might have been a shock to some people but to me it was just one of those things and I knew that it was my mother telling me that she was still around which gave me a lot of comfort. For about 2 weeks after the funeral the beads that my wife hangs from a light would gently sway for a few minutes after we got into bed.

My wife isn’t one for paranormal events whatsoever and quite frankly it rather scared her so I told my mother that we were okay and there was no need to do that anymore as we knew it was her.  They had never moved before and have never moved again. The amount of strange electrical events that have happened in the last 2 years have been unreal.  Things switching on and off by themselves, everything from portable radios to televisions.  On the first birthday after my mother had died our central heating went into overdrive whilst we were still in bed and the same thing happened a few days later on the anniversary of her death.

We are also often find white feathers around our house even though all our doors and windows are closed and we aren’t the type of people to have lots of cushions laying about the place. Sometimes they appear within the space of a few seconds when one of us leaves the sofa to go to the kitchen and then come back, there is a big white feather sitting there. I told some of these events to a friend who is also on the ‘psychic’ side of life and she too didn’t seem very perturbed by it and instead strong emphasised what a strong and loving bond my mother and I still share.  She also said that my mother was a cross between a bodyguard and a fixer, quietly going around sorting things out for me and in a way being more helpful now than she could have been before.

So these strange and re-assuring events have been happening the last 2 years though not always as dramatic as the lights going off in the chapel and then on thursday even by my standards something incredible happened.  I was out on a walk with a friend, vaguely working on a novel I am writing whilst investigating some of the local history.  For several minutes my friend had said she could hear a woman’s voice giggling.  I could hear nothing at all which my friend thought funny as minutes earlier I had heard a horse approaching down a lane 2 or 3 minutes before it came into view.

I knew there could be no-one here as we were in the middle of nowhere, whats more in the sort of area not many people would visit even if they knew where it was. For a few minutes I left my friend alone and wondered off exploring a few hundred feet away.  As many young ladies do, she took a selfie video of herself twirling around in a circle amongst the greenery.  That was all there was to it as far as we knew.   A few minutes later, twice my iPad fell out of its protective case.  The first time it was ok but the next time it shattered.

Over lunch I contacted Apple and was told they couldn’t repair the iPad but could replace it at a much reduced price of £260. After lunch, my friend and I went our separate ways but I had barely got home before I got a series of excited and slightly panicky messages.  My friend had replayed her selfie video and incredibly in the middle of the quiet countryside and with her mouth not moving at all, there was a giggle on the soundtrack and then a voice saying “Steve”.  The image of my friend simultaneously turned grey as the word comes out and then a second or two later the voice disappears and the colours return to normal.

We knew it had to be my mother and the fact that my friend and I had been messing around on our walk must have been amusing to her as the giggle on the video was almost exactly as my friend had heard a few minutes earlier. I never video myself or anyone else so maybe my mother took this opportunity to say ‘Hi’. We showed the video to some family and friends and the reaction was broadly the same, no-one doubted what they had seen and heard, even those who didn’t believe in such things. It instantly made a believe of my wife who previously though knew my mother kept popping up, somehow didn’t generally believe herself. Only one person in the world called me “Steve” and that was my mother.  Everyone else calls me Stephen or more ruder words!

As I showed the video to my wife at home and we talked about it, our modern  digital television starting flickering on and off for about 6 seconds in a way it has never done before in the last 5 years, it was rather like how the old black and white televisions would flicker when the portable antennae wasn’t working well.  I said to my wife to stop talking and to look at the television, we both did so and a few seconds after I got my wife to look at it, the TV returned to normal. Overnight I received a tour booking out of the blue with no preceding inquiry.  The value of it… £260 exactly the price of the iPad repairs.

Even just now when writing this post my new desktop lamp I received at Christmas made some noises which it hasn’t done before.  I guess it is my mother just reminding me she is here. I know lots of people will think this is possibly the most nonsensical post I have written but it is also the most truthful. I would put up the video on my blog but as it was filmed on my friends phone and features her prominently both in flesh and grey colour varieties I didn’t think it was fair.  However I’ve videoed my monitor screen cutting out my friend so you can hear the audio at least… or at least that’s the theory.  It isn’t quite as loud as the original and the giggle is a bit hard to here but I thought I’d give it a try.

https://plus.google.com/u/0/108306617277256679108/posts/UCokoeh3CWy?pid=6147633086884180498&oid=108306617277256679108

Obviously some people might think it is a hoax and a few more might think I’m a bit crazy but I think it is one of the most amazing things I’ve ever seen and heard. If anyone reading this have had their own unusual encounters then it would be great to hear of them! PS Just before I posted this, I went to clean the inside of my car as I have a tour tomorrow and there underneath the heavy rubber mat on the floor of the drivers compartment was a big white feather.  I’m not sure how it got there but I know who put it there.