Spooky Goings On?

Is there an afterlife? The whole thing fascinates me. I'd like to say I'm open minded but I'm so sceptical. I want proof. I'm not a religious person, but aside from religion there are so many unexplained things.

There's been a few things over the years that have made me wonder. Firstly I swear (well kinda) that Hayes House is inhabited by a little boy. You know when your kids are hovering and you know they're there? You just sense them. I'll turn around to speak to Sam or demand to know why he's out of bed, and there's nobody there. It's always a little boy. So many visitors think they see a little boy and just assume it's Sam, but this kid feels younger than that, and he has a teddy bear. Don't ask me how I know that, because I've never actually seen him! It's so bizarre this feeling; like you can picture who it is behind you or who's just walked passed the doorway, but there's nobody there. I do understand that there's a huge possibility that I'm losing my mind.

I saw my Nana the night she died. I was 14 and even then I was very sceptical. I was sleeping in her house in 'my' room, where I always slept when I stayed with her. She was in the hospice and we knew she didn't have very long so it was obviously on my mind. She was only 56 and she was dying of cancer. I saw her at the foot of my bed in the doorway. She just stood there and smiled. She didn't say anything but it was like I could feel what she wanted to tell me; that we would all be OK and she was at peace. Of course the other possibility is that she hotfooted it home in the middle of the night to freak the living crap out of me, but sadly this was most unlikely. Then phone was ringing all the time with relatives calling for news, but as soon as the phone started ringing for the first time at 8am the following morning, I knew instantly that it was the hospice calling with the news that she'd died.

To this day I'm not sure if it was real. For years I told myself it was a dream. It didn't feel like a dream but I guess if it was on my mind that she was dying then chances are, that's what I'd dream about. At first I thought that if it had been real, it was unlikely and unfair because if she was going to go visiting anyone, it should have been my mum or my uncles.

Nana had spoken to me earlier that afternoon. Everyone else had taken the younger kids to lunch and I was sitting with her. She was mostly sedated and only stirred every now and again. But she woke while I was there. She looked me square in the eyes and smiled a very weak smile. She tried to lift her head and muttered 'Hello sweetheart'. I put my arms gently around her and kissed her head, then she sunk back down and closed her eyes. It was a two second moment. Maybe that moment made me dream about her but I didn't know it was the last time I would speak to her.

When I was growing up, my Nana had an amethyst ring that she used to wear on her little finger. When she came to stay with us I would always wear it if went out for meals etc. She always told me it would be mine one day. Years after she died, when I was 18, I wasn't in touch with my parents but my younger brother still visited me when they were in town. He turned up one day and gave me the ring. I couldn't understand why my mother would suddenly part with it. I spoke to her and she told me that she had been to see a medium who had been very accurate in the things she had said. The medium told my mum that my Nana (mum's mum) was cross with her because she had something that didn't belong to her. My mum had no idea what she was talking about and at the end of the session the medium asked my mum to leave her number. She called the following day saying that she had 'had a good chat with your mum' (lol) and the item in question was a ring. My mother twigged instantly and that's why she sent the ring to me with my brother.

That ring was one of the main reasons my mother and I started talking again. If you knew my Nana, that is SO her. She was a real matriarch. She held four generations of her family together even when we were kicking and screaming. Woe betide if we all weren't at her house over Christmas every second year. I don't know, my mother is very no-nonsense, I was gobsmacked that she'd even been to a medium.

I think the human brain is amazing and we don't understand half of what it can do. It's like when you're in a deep sleep but you're dying for the loo and you're too tired to wake up, you will dream that you've already been. Your brain can lie to you to give you what you need. I'd like to believe but even after the weird goings on, the jury's still out for me. The only reason I allow it to be a possibility in my mind is that I'm a sceptic, I don't really believe in this stuff so I'm not the sort to accept anything without question. Something has to be pretty difficult to rationalise before I'll consider the non-logical explanation. But then, I don't usually go round imagining things either, it's actually a more scary prospect that it's all in our heads. I just wish I could SEE these things, then I would believe...Maybe.