Maybe

Since my husband’s passing in January of this year (2026), there have been multiple ‘happenings’ that I cannot explain. This is a telling of one such happening.

I tend to be a skeptic and although I desperately wish there were a message from him from beyond the grave, my logical brain refuses to tie every coincidence to that desire. However, at some point I began to realize that those coincidences were starting to present a pattern and I made room for, well … maybe…
You see, I have these battery operated candles - I know what you’re thinking and I urge you to stop rolling your eyes.

I received 12 candles from my sister as a gift in October of 2025, they each use 2 AA batteries and they are operated by remote control. When you set the candle mode and turn them off, they stay in that same mode so that when you turn them back on, they are still in the mode you set. I prefer the light mode over the flicker mode, so that is where I keep them, and I never had any trouble with them.

A few weeks after my person died, some of them started turning on by them selves, but in flicker mode.
I resisted the urge to simply believe that it was a sign and I started researching how they work and what logical reason may be behind their spontaneous illumination.

I learned that low batteries may cause them to illuminate, so I put fresh batteries in them. It continued to happen.

These candles do not have a timer setting, but even if they did, the day and time they light up is not consistent.

I read that faulty wiring or circuit boards can cause this to happen, so I bought a new set of 12 from a different vendor and it continued to happen.

I even wondered if it could be the remote control, but the remote sits near the candle group and when triggered, all candles in that group light up together and in their previously set mode, not just one and not flickering.

I learned that rogue radio or microwaves may cause them to turn on so I started a semi-controlled experiment. I separated the candles to different locations in my home and began to notice that it happened almost exclusively to the three I kept on my fireplace mantle under the portrait I drew of him. Each time one came on, I moved it to a different location and replaced it with one that hadn’t been presenting the same phenomenon. After a few days, one of the three, including the replacement candle under the portrait would light up in flicker mode, but the one that had been moved to its new location no longer lit up.

From time to time I turn them on, and they come on in light mode, just the way I left them. It is worth repeating that it is only when they illuminate by themselves that they flicker.

As many grieving widows do, I talk to him. Sometimes I tell him mundane things about my day, sometimes I share a funny story, and sometimes I tell him how much I miss him.

One evening, while experiencing an especially grief heavy patch, one candle under his portrait came on. I manually turned it off, tested it, and traded it out for another one in the house that had not been misbehaving. After that I began noticing that the more I spoke to him, the more often a candle under his portrait on the mantle came on.

The human brain is incredibly good at seeing patterns and when that pattern reinforces what the heart wants to believe, we can convince ourselves of just about anything. I can’t definitively prove it is him, but I also can’t prove it’s not, so I have decided that I don’t need to know for sure, but …maybe…