A Farewell Visitor

For a long while now, I have believed that our family members can become our protectors when they pass. I am aware that even if they don’t fully stay behind, a part of them does that, and they want to see how their loved ones fare in life and be sure to meet us on the other side to help us when we pass.

I never knew my real grandfather on my mother's side very well. He had estranged himself from my family in many ways, although he began to connect more with my mother once he knew he was dying. I never had any contact with him during that time. I had decided that since he had had so little interest in me when he was well, I didn’t want to put the energy into him at the end of his life. It was just what felt right to me at the time.

This is my story about what I experienced when my grandfather Edward died.

At the time of his passing, I had been doing a lot of study into psychic awareness and meditation. I know I had been drawn to study this on my own because it is a big part of my life, but I also think I was being drawn more to deep contemplation on this because of my grandfather. One day, after meditating, I began to get a strange sense that I needed to prepare myself to see an actual spirit. This was such a weird awareness as I wasn't normally focused on things like that, but I noted that intuition while meditating one morning. I had never actually seen a ghost and wondered if I wouldn’t just pass out from fright if I ever did. I had this sense of something telling me I needed to practice the idea of staying calm if I saw a ghost with my own eyes, and I innately knew that the more excited or scared I got, the harder it would be to keep seeing something like that.

A few nights later, I was lying in bed, almost asleep. My then-husband had stayed up to watch one of his Netflix shows, and I had gone to bed early. I was just about to drift off when I had the distinct sense of someone in the room. I opened my eyes and saw in the dim light that a tall man was approaching my side of the bed. There was just enough light in the room to show the outline and the shape of this person. At first, I assumed it was my husband coming to kiss me goodnight because I felt a sense of warmth and familiarity from him. My husband was 6'6 and hard to mistake. But just before he reached me, I had the strangest feeling, and I reached over to the other side of the bed. To my amazement and confusion, my husband was already in bed, asleep next to me. As I kept my eye on the figure in front of me, realizing there was a strange man in my room, I watched him dissolve into nothingness right in front of my eyes. I lay there for a long time, wide-eyed and reiterating to myself that I had not been asleep, what had happened, and that I had indeed watched this person disappear right in front of my eyes. I wondered what it was that had allowed me to see him and what had been the cause of him disappearing. I had thought that maybe being between sleeping and waking had made me more receptive to seeing this, but once I realized it wasn't a physical person, my mind couldn't handle it.

I'm still not sure. But as strange as that was, it got even weirder a few days later…

Now, I always recommend recording what you experience, even if it makes no sense, and always be open to finding more to the story.
A lot of paranormal experiences I've had have ended up having synchronicities connected to them that tell me more about what they are for or why they are happening to me.

Back to the story……I was over at my mom's house, and she had just returned from handling my grandfather's affairs with her brother up in Oregon. She had brought back some items, and included among them was a box of old photos. I had met my grandfather Edward once when I was fourteen. At that time, he was already an old man. I found a photo of a group of people standing on the front porch of a house. I noticed a tall, lean man who reminded me instantly of my now ex-husband. The similarities in their features were very noticeable. That's when I felt the chills creep up my spine. I realized it was a photo of my grandfather in his forties.
I would never have recognized him as the old man I'd met as a teenager. The pieces of the puzzle fell into place in my mind. This was the man I had seen approach me in my room a few nights before.

Of course, I could be wrong, but the timing was a bit uncanny, and I know what I saw and felt. This person had come to 'say goodbye', which I interpreted as the intention to 'say goodnight.' I could feel the energy of protective love coming from him. It was very, very strange.

One thing I have learned since, as this was my first experience with losing a grandparent or family member, is that, for me, there is always an element of paranormal activity that happens when a family member passes. My boyfriend Chris has experienced the same thing, and there is another story I will submit that talks about a shared experience of such family-related paranormal activity. What I notice is that when a family member is either close to death or recently passed, it's as if the veil between the living and the dead gets thin. This is because spirits, often other family members who have passed, come to help us when we pass or are getting ready to pass. If you are sensitive like my family and me, those spirits may also visit you.

Years later, when the grandfather I had been close to had passed, my mother and I both noticed an increase in strange and unexplainable paranormal activity in our house.
My mom heard three loud knocks at the back door and found no one there. She questioned the neighbor and my siblings, who live on the same property, and they said no one had done it.

I stood out in the yard watering the plants with my dog, Butter, a sweet and sassy little French bulldog.
I heard my brother's voice say my dog's name quietly and in a silly voice like only he could. I walked around the corner, asking him what he was doing at the house so early, only to find I was talking to space. I immediately said out loud, ‘Who's here? Who said that?’ I knew I was asking a spirit, not a person. There was no way it could have been my brother, as he was at home with his family when that happened, and no one else was around. I never got an answer, but I marked that moment in my mind as an authentic paranormal experience.

Even though I wasn’t scared, thinking about the disembodied voice still gives me the chills.

I don’t know what either of those experiences mean, just that my mother and I both were being visited by paranormal activity just after my grandfather passed. I already had the experience with my grandpa Edward to draw on, so perhaps I was a bit more ready this time


These experiences have taught me a lot about the idea of familiar spirits and the interest that the dead of our bloodlines, or those we have strong connections with before they die, keep in us after they die. Many hauntings are about the spirits wanting to protect or connect with someone they once knew or maybe someone who reminds them of someone they once knew. I have now recorded multiple experiences related to family members passing, and with each experience, I am filled with wonder, joy, and encouragement that death is not the end and that we are not left alone when we pass to the other side.