I received an interesting testimonial from commenter GregL, who previously contributed a post composed soon after his mother's passing. At the time, struggling with his own skepticism, he wrote, "Like a flame dancing in the wind I now move between despair and hope, a dichotomy of opposing beliefs. Probably never to be resolved until my own passing. I hope I see her there."
It appears he received some additional evidence that pushed the needle at least somewhat in the direction of belief.
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Mom Communicates
“When you begin to doubt your own experience, you are one step inside the madhouse” –Dean Radin (paraphrased)
Mom was gone. The house seemed preternaturally “empty.” We were trying to adjust to a life without her in it. The little room she loved was, as yet, untouched. The little red walker stood in the corner; her black cane leaned against the wall. The rosary she prayed on each night was still hanging gently from her bedpost. The intercom monitor sat on the nightstand, still turned on in case she needed us. But she would never need us again. The bed bars remained on her bed as if to hold some unseen little lady safely as she slept.
We found it hard to watch television in the den adjacent to her bedroom. The loveseat that she always sat in was hauntingly empty to our right. There was a silence that, somehow, spoke loudly of her absence. Yet we knew we had to try, and we had to succeed. It was a heavy damp fog of grief, and we struggled within it.
Then, on July 3rd, the noises started. As we were lying in bed, in our room, which was directly above mom’s room, we heard a noise. It started as a slight knocking noise, as if someone was knocking on the wall. At first, I thought, it must be the furnace, but it could not be the furnace, we were in the middle of summer. I then thought it certainly must have something to do with the air-conditioning. I shut it off. The knocking continued.
The next night the knocking grew in intensity. It now sounded exactly as if someone was pushing that little red walker, and was having trouble getting out of the bedroom, knocking impatiently against the wall and the doorway in an attempt to exit the room. My wife and I spoke about it in bed. I tried to sound nonchalant: “Sounds like something going on in mom’s room tonight.” Cathy just responded with a “yes, I hear it.” Then it stopped for the night. The next morning, I went down and checked that little room to see if the walker was moved. I saw that nothing was moved. Everything in mom’s room was exactly as we had left it, the walker still sat silently in its corner, and every other item remained in its correct place.
Sleeping was still difficult and on the afternoon of July 5th, I decided to lie down and take a nap. The intercom that we used to listen for my mother at night was still turned on, although it had remained silent since mom’s passing. I don’t know why I kept it turned on. I guess the act of turning off that intercom had a symbolic “finality” to it that I could not yet accept. It was a good thing that I left it on. As I lay in my bed, right next to the little intercom on my nightstand, it crackled to life. Here is the notation I made in my journal right after it happened:
7/5 I hear a voice on the intercom. It sounds like a woman, but crackly, distorted. It tries one word and “crackles” off.
I jumped out of bed and searched for Cathy. I told her of the incredible thing that just happened. I promptly began to try and figure out how this could be. My skepticism got the best of me and I managed to explain it away. I thought that a “stray” radio signal might have been picked up and “broadcast” over the intercom, although this had never happened in the year and a half that we had used it. I thought it would surely not happen again. But it did! Here is what I wrote the next morning.
7/6 Morning. The voice again! About 6 AM the intercom crackles, then one word. Unintelligible. It sounds more like a woman’s voice now!
Okay. Two days in a row. The sound that I called a “crackle” was the sound of the intercom suddenly projecting a loud static-like interference. It erupted from dead silence to emit a short stream of static. Within the static was a woman’s voice, sounding like she was attempting to talk through a bad telephone connection. All she could get out was one word, and then the “connection” appeared to be lost. I could not make out the word.
Unfortunately, Cathy was not there for the first incident and sound asleep by my side during the second. She believed me, but I did not believe myself. I still made every excuse as to why this must be a natural occurrence. Perhaps, somehow, that little intercom was picking up some radio interference, or, since I was the only one who heard it, maybe it was all happening in my mind. Was I losing it?
The knockings and bumping in the night continued, coming and going, day to day. There would be a day or two without noise and then a night when, for an hour or so, there would be a banging and knocking heard coming from my mom’s little room. I would go down the stairs, fully expecting to see her coming out of her bedroom door. Nothing would be there, nothing would be amiss, and the knockings would never happen when I was in her room.
Then all would go quiet. No more pounding and movement in the downstairs bedroom. The intercom on my nightstand was silent. It stayed like this for a few days. Then the movement and rustling and knocking coming from my mother’s bedroom would start again. Next it would be silent for a few days and then begin all over again. I would constantly go down the stairs to see what was happening. Every time I did, my mom’s room would go silent. All of her things were in their proper place. Nothing was out of order.
The funny thing was that the disturbances and noises would only begin after we had gone to bed for the night. There was never a disturbance or knocking or any other noise coming from my mother’s room while we were awake and watching television in the very next room. It would begin only after we had gone upstairs. I kept the monitor on just in case the voice might come through again.
We became acclimated to the noises. Lying in bed we would hear the knocking and the pounding and one of us would say to the other, “It sounds like mom is visiting us tonight.”
I attempted levity by saying that she was “the only ghost that we are not afraid of.” The intercom, however, remained silent. It was as if my mother had given up trying to initiate a voice communication with us.
Then it happened. On July 27. We had gone to sleep for the night. It was about 10:30 PM when the noise started to come from that room. There were loud knocks and bangs. Once again it sounded exactly like my mother was struggling with her walker, banging into the door and the doorway, trying to get out of that room and get to the bathroom. I listened intently. This may sound strange, but like several times before, I decided to ignore the noise and get some sleep. I rolled over on my side and said to my wife, “We have a lot of activity happening down there tonight.” “We sure do,” Cathy responded. Immediately after we spoke, the intercom began to hiss and crackle. It got louder and, clearly, within the static came a woman’s voice, once again only one word, but this time it was “Cathy!” It was clear! We both heard it clearly!
Chills ran up and down my spine. “Did you hear that?” I almost shouted to my wife. “I did, and I’ve got goosebumps all over my whole body,” she responded. So did I. The voice was clear, and it said my wife’s name. My mom, when she was alive, would regularly call Cathy on that intercom. It seemed like she had managed to do it again. It seemed like she had answered the request that I made to her in the hospital. She had come back to let us know that she still survived. Just like in life, she never quit trying. She tried until we both heard her voice and could verify to each other that she was there.
What do we make of this? What do the skeptics say? An errant broadcast that somehow spoke my wife’s name? Just at the same time that noises were coming from my mom’s room? Was there someone outside our bedroom window speaking my wife’s name?
A mutual delusion? The sceptic in me pondered all these possibilities and more. All I know is that this time we both heard the voice. This time the evidence for its reality was twice as strong as when I was the only one who heard it.
Unfortunately, after we both verified that we heard it, the voice never spoke through that intercom again. The noises coming from mom’s room also stopped. I must say that I miss hearing that voice and those noises. It is as if my mother realized that she got through, and realizing that she accomplished her mission, she could go on her way.
As I pondered the effect that this had on my feelings about a life after death, I ran across the quote from Dean Radin that opened this essay. “When you begin to doubt your own experience, you are one step inside the madhouse.” Yet I still have some doubts. Less than before, but still doubts remain. Perhaps I will never reach certainty until I get there myself.
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Postscript. In an email, GregL adds, "One thing I can say is we never had any 'rapping' before or since those few weeks after my mom’s passing, and no intercom EVP either. The world is a strange place and truly filled with mystery."
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