My dreams feel like another reality/dimension. With the sheer size of space, maybe alien contact/visitation or experiencing another dimension is something that happens when we go inward, like dreams or psychedelics…
Reckon if you spend enough time looking at the sky you will eventually see something at odds with your notions of reality.
We had such an experience in the mid-90's while at a state park taking long-exposure photos of comet Hale Bopp outside of Dayton, OH. And we weren't the only ones. Hundreds pulled off the road to gawk at the rows of bright lights very similar to the Phoenix Lights that were being seen at close to the same time.
Likewise my family -sober, rational folks had several experiences including a very clear saucer hovering in Indianapolis in late '68.
I had a dream I was sitting in my parents kitchen looking out the glass slider door. It was foggy outside, so foggy that I couldn’t see past the patio. A light appeared from within the fog, and the next thing I know, a woman in a white dress, flowing with this fantastic, ghost-like white light came out from the fog. She slowly opened up the door and approached me. As she neared she began trying to kiss me, at which point it felt like my soul was being sucked out of my body and I woke up thinking, “I’m dying!” And feeling then I knew with absolute certainty what dying feels like.
I have very good memory when it comes to movie dialogues, names and references I read in books, etc. But when it comes to my own life, everything is a blur. Ask me what I did during my 18th birthday and I haven't the foggiest.
However, one 'memory' I still retain very vividly happened when I was very young. I call it a memory although perhaps it was only dream; what I remember is that it was dark, and I was seeing *myself* lying on my little bed, as if watching from above.
But what made this particular dream memorable is the feeling that somehow got associated to it, which was very powerful:
I felt as if I was being held by the Hand of God.
It wasn't a feeling of ecstasy or bliss, as it is often reported in mystical experiences. Rather, it was a feeling of reassurance, that someone or something somewhere was keeping watch over me.
I don't remember much about my life, but happily that dream/memory (OBE? I think it's very possible) has remained with me ever since.
As for more recent experiences, the first time I became lucid in a dream was momentous (thank you, Carlos Castañeda!). I've also experienced what is often referenced as 'downloads' in New Age circles (whirling concentric figures than suddenly transform into incomprehensible symbols rushing toward you). And I've tried to repeat that early OBE several times, but I've only been successful a couple of times (last time was truly something, as if my consciousness got dislodged from my body and coalesced into a sphere of awareness that floated away into another place. Looked like a dream but it was definitely more vivid).
When I was a kid, I once saw three lights moving around each other in the night sky’s. One light would go in between the other two and then the next one would go and so on. I was in my dad’s car riding home from the Rosemont Horizon near the OHare airport in Chicago. I thought the lights were weird but i didn’t feel compelled to point it out to my Dad or brothers. Years later I saw a documentary about UFO’s and they showed footage from the Chicago area of those lights. Around the same time I would have seen them.
In 2008 I was cleaning the inside of my car, which I always kept pretty tidy. The car itself had been in my possession for about a year or so. Under the driver's seat I found an index card with three things written on it:
liberty church
old bank building
fried chicken
It was in my handwriting, but I had no recollection of the card and couldn't figure out what it meant. I spent a good while googling "liberty church" around where I lived.
Never figured this one out, and I've since joked it's either a message from my future self that will make sense to me at a later date, or perhaps the index card slipped through a crack in some parallel universe.
Okay maybe this one isn't that freaky, but who doesn't love fried chicken?
I never saw anything. Under plant medicine, I’ve felt that we are all connected, I felt the presence of dead relatives and stuff like that, but nothing I could be sure wasn’t part of my brain under plants.
I had a near-death, out-of-body-experience when I was five years old and involved in a life-threatening accident. What happened was that I was set on fire by my daddy at a family barbecue in Tennessee. Obviously, this was a horrific, traumatic experience and also one of the most redneck things that ever happened to anyone. Alcohol was definitely involved. Several times while in route to the hospital my consciousness left my body and I observed what was happening from another perspective. In the hospital, I again left my body and saw myself lying in the bed near death. I was able to confirm this years later in a conversation with my mother where I recalled several specific details that she remembered. She was visibly stunned by my recollections because she was certain that I was unconscious. My body was certainly unconscious, but “I” whatever that is was not.
The community I grew up in, Puerto Rico, is set at the foot of a mountain. From the houses that are set at a higher level, you can see another set of mountains to the East. These are a good 40 to 50-minute drive between where I grew up and those mountains. One day hanging out at a friend's house, located in the highest part of the community, we saw (on the other mountains) what seemed to be a giant reflector/mirror flying in a rectangular pattern. Even our friend's mom saw it. It stayed in that pattern for a few minutes, and then it stopped; it went up super quick (fucking movie style) and disappeared.
In mid 1999 I had a Minmin light experience while driving at night between the Northern Territory and North Queensland -- about 3,000km-- a light in the distance suddenly caught up with me at a ,literally hair raising speed and just sat / hovered on the back of my car before disappearing after about 10 minutes. I was petrified and slept in an outback hotel that night .Six month later ,on the return journey ,I had another experience which was quite different ,...experienced this time with curiosity rather than fear.....two lights approached from behind at a regular speed and it was only when one crossed in front of the other that I realized ....what they were .....they never got closer than about 30 yards and would disappear then reappear for about an hour ...of late night driving on a deserted highway .They would flicker and change color.
Sounds totally bonkers but,such encounters have been documented over many years in outback Queensland and the Territory Territory .
The stronger the emotive degree associated with an experience ,the stronger the memory and this is still strong and vivid for me ...and still...totally inexplicable ....without doubt these lights can and do react to vehicles / people .....which they can and will follow ---j keegan
My mom and dad always wanted a baby boy for their first child. When they went in for the first ultrasound, their wishes did not come true. The baby shower was pink themed, for ‘Heather Marie Anderson’. When I was younger, my mom would say “did you know you were supposed to be a girl?” Huh? “I can’t tell you till you’re older” she would say. When I turned 18, mom told me the rest of the story. She said, “Your dad really wanted a boy when I was pregnant with you. I remember your dad swearing ‘damnit’, when we found out it was a girl. I didn’t care, I was going to love you all the same.
She said, “one night, an angel came to me in a dream and asked, “if you want a son, I will give him to you, but you will lose him before he turns 18, losing him to a larger cause”. My mom agreed to the proposition.
During the next ultrasound, the nurse responded, “he’s coming along just fine!”. My parents were shocked, especially mom. “We’re having a boy?”
They had a 2nd baby shower. This time for a boy, Taylor.
I came out just fine several months later. Nothing ever happened to me, and I was never taken before age 18. But it’s a pretty surreal story. And I still have that pink balloon.
My partner has been diving quite deep in to this subject and has been tagging me along the whole ride.
I saw a UAP that looked exactly like the Calvine, Scotland photograph. I was just starting to ride my bicycle around town with my best friend when we both saw a blueish/dark diamond shape sitting in the air near SEL (software engineering company).
My best friend and I must have been somewhere around the age of 10 - 12. I remember seeing my friend just standing at the top of the street, staring out towards the edge of town near SEL. I was still pushing my bike up the hill so I wasn’t there yet, but I remember asking him what he was looking at and he didn’t say anything.
As I got to the top of the street/hill there was a yield sign that I stood on the left side of, while my friend stood on the right side. I stopped and stared at this very strange, clearly out of place object in the sky. Keeping my eyes on it, I began to move from the left side of the sign/pole to the right side, where my friend was.
I watched as the pole of the sign obscured my sight of the UAP for maybe… half a second? By the time I got to the other side of the pole it had vanished — no sound, no trail. Like it just blipped out of existence.
I asked my friend what happened to it and he just said “….. it just.. disappeared, I don’t know.”
After a few seconds, and growing up in the type of home I did, I kind of brushed it off as some… phenomenon that maybe my friend were experiencing from riding our bikes or maybe the heat of the day (yes, it was broad daylight as well when we saw this, not a cloud in the sky).
But then we heard a guy across the street yell out to us “DID YOU GUYS JUST SEE THAT FUCKING THING?!” He had been packing the back of his red car with some stuff, and saw what we saw too.
Apparently WSU Campus has a nuclear reactor?
Not sure what I saw…. but it gives me chills to remember it sometimes. I also had very strange bouts of sleep paralysis when I was a kid, experiencing “shadow people”, and had a couple bouts of “missing time.”
First of all, Go Vandals by proxy, go Cougs. Second of all, I haven’t heard of a nuke reactor at WSU, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the military did testing out there. The Palouse is so vast and underpopulated
Interesting experience you've had. Sleep paralysis is something I've experienced a lot of. I've not really had anyone to discuss it with and has been quite an isolating experience. I don't really see it as a paranormal experience, insofar as the 'beings' or 'presences' of the experience being aliens or what not. I have had some truly terrifying ordeals though. 9/10 my experience will involve waking up in terror with an impending sense of dread, like something awful is about to happen. I then realise I can't move, and try not not to panic while I try to wiggle my extremities to 'break free'. As I'm doing this, I begin to sense a highly imposing, intimidating and sinister "presence" approaching the corner of my bed - exacerbating the panic and the need to "break free", but ironically making it harder to do so. This being is a "shadow presence" - it feels like it is embodied by physical shadow, but feels very real. It feels male and sinister, with a sexual and violent dimension to its presence. I sometimes then literally feel a hand running up my leg, over my butt, that sort of thing. It's very scary. By this point I'm basically thrashing inside of my head trying to "break free" whilst also trying to remind myself it's sleep paralysis and I know it's not real, but the intensity and dread of it all makes it impossible to relax. Sometimes makes me wonder if I was abused as a kid and have repressed it or something - it's been a consistent thing in my life on and off since I was a teenager. Don't often open up about this, but there you go.
I’m glad you felt comfortable enough to open up about it! If you feel like you are a bit isolated in your experience, I can only really suggest the work of John Mack (Macke?). He took quite a bit of time to try and understand what the experiences people were having could be indicating, and the books just show that — while still not common — these experiences you’ve shared are more prevalent than your aloneness may have you believe!
I was under the impression I had suffered abuse when I was a child, but after reconnecting with my mom after 25 years I learned I just had a highly dysfunctional childhood home. That being said, I agree with Chris that this phenomenon you experience doesn’t necessarily mean you have been abused — at least in my case it appears to have no correlation.
I've had this experience a bunch of times. From what I've read, it doesn't mean any abuse, necessarily. It's a chemical released when we sleep that stops us from hurting ourselves with sudden movement. When we get a consciousness glitch where we're aware of our bodies but can't move them, we experience this. Kind of like a deja vu situation where crossed wires result in a novel experience.
Thankfully, I have not had Sleep Paralysis for quite a while now; waking up and feeling like I was drowning/running out of breath as a shadow person approached me from the hallway was the last time.
Pretty sure I have Sleep Apnea though, as sometimes I shoot awake in a panic gasping for air — definitely need to get it checked out.
I have been folloiwng reseerach on past lives for decades and recently wrote a preface for a special issue of the Journal of Humanistic Psychology on the topic. The American Psycholgical Association just published a book DEATH AS AN ALTERED STATE OF CONSCIOUSNESS. which deals with past life reports, mediumship, near death experiences, and the like. My most recent weird experiences have been the appearace of "apports" in my apartment, objects that appear out of nowhere. They include crystals, an angel statuette, an Argentine drinking gourd, and a necklace with a Libra medallion on it, my "birth sign."
I wish you could have a chat with the people studying so-called UFO metamaterials, since I suspect they have more to do with apports in seances than space technology.
oh man... so many times. Some very pleasant experiences. Others much less. Once we were in the middle of the woods, and a friend of mine experienced something that looked like a scene from the Exorcist... lasted for hours. Scary as hell.
Around the time when my daughter was about 4, she was complaining that she was beginning to forget her mother's face and voice (her mom died was she was a little over a year old). A few nights later she woke me up in the middle of the night telling me she felt someone's hand touching her. I told her she was having a nightmare. She replied she still felt it even now that she was awake. I thought it was weird and brought her to sleep close to me. The next morning, before I have a chance to say anything, my mother tells me "I had a very weird dream. Elizabeth (my late wife) showed up and I told her she needed to visit her daughter. She replied she didn't want to scare her but I told her not to worry, to just go to her and let her know she was there. Wasn't that a weird dream?"
This is the type of stuff that makes me convinced that dreams are our communion with the spirit realm (or whatever you want to call it). People who can lucid dream are often also gifted in being mediums for the dead. Though, this doesn’t explain why we see the living in our dreams. So maybe I’m not convinced but reasonably invested in wanting it to be true 😆
Idk if this is similar but I read the Tibetan Book of the Dead then I happened to find Dr. Raymond Moodys studies of 120 people who flatlined. Not sure validity, i know theres some skepticism on him on the internet but I think his method of studying flatliners is maybe the closest scientific method you can get to studying the after life. Anyways all 120 said similar things happened to them… then the Tibetan Book of the Dead essentially says that beginning phase of the death cycle is very similar to what the flat liners were all saying! So i thought that was cool. Haha. Would love to hear Stanley Krippners thoughts. Love you Chris + Anya
My dreams feel like another reality/dimension. With the sheer size of space, maybe alien contact/visitation or experiencing another dimension is something that happens when we go inward, like dreams or psychedelics…
Reckon if you spend enough time looking at the sky you will eventually see something at odds with your notions of reality.
We had such an experience in the mid-90's while at a state park taking long-exposure photos of comet Hale Bopp outside of Dayton, OH. And we weren't the only ones. Hundreds pulled off the road to gawk at the rows of bright lights very similar to the Phoenix Lights that were being seen at close to the same time.
Likewise my family -sober, rational folks had several experiences including a very clear saucer hovering in Indianapolis in late '68.
I had a dream I was sitting in my parents kitchen looking out the glass slider door. It was foggy outside, so foggy that I couldn’t see past the patio. A light appeared from within the fog, and the next thing I know, a woman in a white dress, flowing with this fantastic, ghost-like white light came out from the fog. She slowly opened up the door and approached me. As she neared she began trying to kiss me, at which point it felt like my soul was being sucked out of my body and I woke up thinking, “I’m dying!” And feeling then I knew with absolute certainty what dying feels like.
Then there was the time I saw a floating beam of light that was spinning like a lighthouse in the night sky somewhere near Missoula.
I have very good memory when it comes to movie dialogues, names and references I read in books, etc. But when it comes to my own life, everything is a blur. Ask me what I did during my 18th birthday and I haven't the foggiest.
However, one 'memory' I still retain very vividly happened when I was very young. I call it a memory although perhaps it was only dream; what I remember is that it was dark, and I was seeing *myself* lying on my little bed, as if watching from above.
But what made this particular dream memorable is the feeling that somehow got associated to it, which was very powerful:
I felt as if I was being held by the Hand of God.
It wasn't a feeling of ecstasy or bliss, as it is often reported in mystical experiences. Rather, it was a feeling of reassurance, that someone or something somewhere was keeping watch over me.
I don't remember much about my life, but happily that dream/memory (OBE? I think it's very possible) has remained with me ever since.
As for more recent experiences, the first time I became lucid in a dream was momentous (thank you, Carlos Castañeda!). I've also experienced what is often referenced as 'downloads' in New Age circles (whirling concentric figures than suddenly transform into incomprehensible symbols rushing toward you). And I've tried to repeat that early OBE several times, but I've only been successful a couple of times (last time was truly something, as if my consciousness got dislodged from my body and coalesced into a sphere of awareness that floated away into another place. Looked like a dream but it was definitely more vivid).
When I was a kid, I once saw three lights moving around each other in the night sky’s. One light would go in between the other two and then the next one would go and so on. I was in my dad’s car riding home from the Rosemont Horizon near the OHare airport in Chicago. I thought the lights were weird but i didn’t feel compelled to point it out to my Dad or brothers. Years later I saw a documentary about UFO’s and they showed footage from the Chicago area of those lights. Around the same time I would have seen them.
In 2008 I was cleaning the inside of my car, which I always kept pretty tidy. The car itself had been in my possession for about a year or so. Under the driver's seat I found an index card with three things written on it:
liberty church
old bank building
fried chicken
It was in my handwriting, but I had no recollection of the card and couldn't figure out what it meant. I spent a good while googling "liberty church" around where I lived.
Never figured this one out, and I've since joked it's either a message from my future self that will make sense to me at a later date, or perhaps the index card slipped through a crack in some parallel universe.
Okay maybe this one isn't that freaky, but who doesn't love fried chicken?
I never saw anything. Under plant medicine, I’ve felt that we are all connected, I felt the presence of dead relatives and stuff like that, but nothing I could be sure wasn’t part of my brain under plants.
I had a near-death, out-of-body-experience when I was five years old and involved in a life-threatening accident. What happened was that I was set on fire by my daddy at a family barbecue in Tennessee. Obviously, this was a horrific, traumatic experience and also one of the most redneck things that ever happened to anyone. Alcohol was definitely involved. Several times while in route to the hospital my consciousness left my body and I observed what was happening from another perspective. In the hospital, I again left my body and saw myself lying in the bed near death. I was able to confirm this years later in a conversation with my mother where I recalled several specific details that she remembered. She was visibly stunned by my recollections because she was certain that I was unconscious. My body was certainly unconscious, but “I” whatever that is was not.
Wow, that's awful and interesting
The community I grew up in, Puerto Rico, is set at the foot of a mountain. From the houses that are set at a higher level, you can see another set of mountains to the East. These are a good 40 to 50-minute drive between where I grew up and those mountains. One day hanging out at a friend's house, located in the highest part of the community, we saw (on the other mountains) what seemed to be a giant reflector/mirror flying in a rectangular pattern. Even our friend's mom saw it. It stayed in that pattern for a few minutes, and then it stopped; it went up super quick (fucking movie style) and disappeared.
In mid 1999 I had a Minmin light experience while driving at night between the Northern Territory and North Queensland -- about 3,000km-- a light in the distance suddenly caught up with me at a ,literally hair raising speed and just sat / hovered on the back of my car before disappearing after about 10 minutes. I was petrified and slept in an outback hotel that night .Six month later ,on the return journey ,I had another experience which was quite different ,...experienced this time with curiosity rather than fear.....two lights approached from behind at a regular speed and it was only when one crossed in front of the other that I realized ....what they were .....they never got closer than about 30 yards and would disappear then reappear for about an hour ...of late night driving on a deserted highway .They would flicker and change color.
Sounds totally bonkers but,such encounters have been documented over many years in outback Queensland and the Territory Territory .
The stronger the emotive degree associated with an experience ,the stronger the memory and this is still strong and vivid for me ...and still...totally inexplicable ....without doubt these lights can and do react to vehicles / people .....which they can and will follow ---j keegan
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IpvwbDaR3eU&ab_channel=JimSullivan-Topic
Here's a perfect tune to soundtrack this thread ^^
And some context below
https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/searching-for-sullivan/
My mom and dad always wanted a baby boy for their first child. When they went in for the first ultrasound, their wishes did not come true. The baby shower was pink themed, for ‘Heather Marie Anderson’. When I was younger, my mom would say “did you know you were supposed to be a girl?” Huh? “I can’t tell you till you’re older” she would say. When I turned 18, mom told me the rest of the story. She said, “Your dad really wanted a boy when I was pregnant with you. I remember your dad swearing ‘damnit’, when we found out it was a girl. I didn’t care, I was going to love you all the same.
She said, “one night, an angel came to me in a dream and asked, “if you want a son, I will give him to you, but you will lose him before he turns 18, losing him to a larger cause”. My mom agreed to the proposition.
During the next ultrasound, the nurse responded, “he’s coming along just fine!”. My parents were shocked, especially mom. “We’re having a boy?”
They had a 2nd baby shower. This time for a boy, Taylor.
I came out just fine several months later. Nothing ever happened to me, and I was never taken before age 18. But it’s a pretty surreal story. And I still have that pink balloon.
Omg. Have you spoken about it with your dad?
My partner has been diving quite deep in to this subject and has been tagging me along the whole ride.
I saw a UAP that looked exactly like the Calvine, Scotland photograph. I was just starting to ride my bicycle around town with my best friend when we both saw a blueish/dark diamond shape sitting in the air near SEL (software engineering company).
My best friend and I must have been somewhere around the age of 10 - 12. I remember seeing my friend just standing at the top of the street, staring out towards the edge of town near SEL. I was still pushing my bike up the hill so I wasn’t there yet, but I remember asking him what he was looking at and he didn’t say anything.
As I got to the top of the street/hill there was a yield sign that I stood on the left side of, while my friend stood on the right side. I stopped and stared at this very strange, clearly out of place object in the sky. Keeping my eyes on it, I began to move from the left side of the sign/pole to the right side, where my friend was.
I watched as the pole of the sign obscured my sight of the UAP for maybe… half a second? By the time I got to the other side of the pole it had vanished — no sound, no trail. Like it just blipped out of existence.
I asked my friend what happened to it and he just said “….. it just.. disappeared, I don’t know.”
After a few seconds, and growing up in the type of home I did, I kind of brushed it off as some… phenomenon that maybe my friend were experiencing from riding our bikes or maybe the heat of the day (yes, it was broad daylight as well when we saw this, not a cloud in the sky).
But then we heard a guy across the street yell out to us “DID YOU GUYS JUST SEE THAT FUCKING THING?!” He had been packing the back of his red car with some stuff, and saw what we saw too.
Apparently WSU Campus has a nuclear reactor?
Not sure what I saw…. but it gives me chills to remember it sometimes. I also had very strange bouts of sleep paralysis when I was a kid, experiencing “shadow people”, and had a couple bouts of “missing time.”
First of all, Go Vandals by proxy, go Cougs. Second of all, I haven’t heard of a nuke reactor at WSU, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the military did testing out there. The Palouse is so vast and underpopulated
Interesting experience you've had. Sleep paralysis is something I've experienced a lot of. I've not really had anyone to discuss it with and has been quite an isolating experience. I don't really see it as a paranormal experience, insofar as the 'beings' or 'presences' of the experience being aliens or what not. I have had some truly terrifying ordeals though. 9/10 my experience will involve waking up in terror with an impending sense of dread, like something awful is about to happen. I then realise I can't move, and try not not to panic while I try to wiggle my extremities to 'break free'. As I'm doing this, I begin to sense a highly imposing, intimidating and sinister "presence" approaching the corner of my bed - exacerbating the panic and the need to "break free", but ironically making it harder to do so. This being is a "shadow presence" - it feels like it is embodied by physical shadow, but feels very real. It feels male and sinister, with a sexual and violent dimension to its presence. I sometimes then literally feel a hand running up my leg, over my butt, that sort of thing. It's very scary. By this point I'm basically thrashing inside of my head trying to "break free" whilst also trying to remind myself it's sleep paralysis and I know it's not real, but the intensity and dread of it all makes it impossible to relax. Sometimes makes me wonder if I was abused as a kid and have repressed it or something - it's been a consistent thing in my life on and off since I was a teenager. Don't often open up about this, but there you go.
I’m glad you felt comfortable enough to open up about it! If you feel like you are a bit isolated in your experience, I can only really suggest the work of John Mack (Macke?). He took quite a bit of time to try and understand what the experiences people were having could be indicating, and the books just show that — while still not common — these experiences you’ve shared are more prevalent than your aloneness may have you believe!
I was under the impression I had suffered abuse when I was a child, but after reconnecting with my mom after 25 years I learned I just had a highly dysfunctional childhood home. That being said, I agree with Chris that this phenomenon you experience doesn’t necessarily mean you have been abused — at least in my case it appears to have no correlation.
I've had this experience a bunch of times. From what I've read, it doesn't mean any abuse, necessarily. It's a chemical released when we sleep that stops us from hurting ourselves with sudden movement. When we get a consciousness glitch where we're aware of our bodies but can't move them, we experience this. Kind of like a deja vu situation where crossed wires result in a novel experience.
Thankfully, I have not had Sleep Paralysis for quite a while now; waking up and feeling like I was drowning/running out of breath as a shadow person approached me from the hallway was the last time.
Pretty sure I have Sleep Apnea though, as sometimes I shoot awake in a panic gasping for air — definitely need to get it checked out.
I have been folloiwng reseerach on past lives for decades and recently wrote a preface for a special issue of the Journal of Humanistic Psychology on the topic. The American Psycholgical Association just published a book DEATH AS AN ALTERED STATE OF CONSCIOUSNESS. which deals with past life reports, mediumship, near death experiences, and the like. My most recent weird experiences have been the appearace of "apports" in my apartment, objects that appear out of nowhere. They include crystals, an angel statuette, an Argentine drinking gourd, and a necklace with a Libra medallion on it, my "birth sign."
Can you touch the apports or do they dissipate?
I wish you could have a chat with the people studying so-called UFO metamaterials, since I suspect they have more to do with apports in seances than space technology.
oh man... so many times. Some very pleasant experiences. Others much less. Once we were in the middle of the woods, and a friend of mine experienced something that looked like a scene from the Exorcist... lasted for hours. Scary as hell.
Around the time when my daughter was about 4, she was complaining that she was beginning to forget her mother's face and voice (her mom died was she was a little over a year old). A few nights later she woke me up in the middle of the night telling me she felt someone's hand touching her. I told her she was having a nightmare. She replied she still felt it even now that she was awake. I thought it was weird and brought her to sleep close to me. The next morning, before I have a chance to say anything, my mother tells me "I had a very weird dream. Elizabeth (my late wife) showed up and I told her she needed to visit her daughter. She replied she didn't want to scare her but I told her not to worry, to just go to her and let her know she was there. Wasn't that a weird dream?"
This is the type of stuff that makes me convinced that dreams are our communion with the spirit realm (or whatever you want to call it). People who can lucid dream are often also gifted in being mediums for the dead. Though, this doesn’t explain why we see the living in our dreams. So maybe I’m not convinced but reasonably invested in wanting it to be true 😆
Idk if this is similar but I read the Tibetan Book of the Dead then I happened to find Dr. Raymond Moodys studies of 120 people who flatlined. Not sure validity, i know theres some skepticism on him on the internet but I think his method of studying flatliners is maybe the closest scientific method you can get to studying the after life. Anyways all 120 said similar things happened to them… then the Tibetan Book of the Dead essentially says that beginning phase of the death cycle is very similar to what the flat liners were all saying! So i thought that was cool. Haha. Would love to hear Stanley Krippners thoughts. Love you Chris + Anya