My precious 14 year-old son died from suicide five years ago. I am a school psychologist and, because of my training, and despite having been brought up in a fundamentally religious family, did not believe in an afterlife.  So, after I heard the shot and found him in his bedroom, I thought his existence had ended.  But since then, so many things have happened to prove my beliefs wrong, I know that there is an afterlife.

The occurrences that I'm going to relate weren't the first, but they were the most frequent.  I had lived in my house for 32 years before my son died, and this had never happened before.  One morning, fifteen months after his death, I was shaving when suddenly the globe from a swag lamp two feet away from me fell to the counter.  I said, "Merritt, if you want to say 'hello', there are less startling ways to do it!"  I had to unscrew the set screws to get the globe to fit back in the fixture.  Two months later, again shaving, the same globe fell out again.  This time I turned the screws as tight as I could.  A month and a half later, shaving, the globe fell out of the other fixture. (By this time, I had put towels on the counter to avoid breakage, which never happened.)  A year went by.  Sitting on the toilet one day, staring ahead, the first globe fell out again.  Nine months later, I was having a real tough day.  Crying at the cemetery, crying in the car, even crying while watching a DVD at home.  I went to use the bathroom at 3 A.M., turned the light on, and the globe from the second fixture fell out.  Needless to say, it was a very comforting occurrence! 

On September 22, 2011, I was feeling uncertain about the validity of these experiences.  I was sure that they were real communications from my son, with whom I was very close, but I didn't want to be disappointed by some logical or mechanical explanation. (Although I couldn't figure out how tightened set screws could loosen without any movement, and this had never happened in the 32 years before his death.)  So, I unscrewed the globe from the second fixture, replaced it and made sure it fit flush, then tightened the screws.  Then I gently shook the fixture to see if I could loosen it.  Nothing.  The very next day, September 23, sitting on the toilet again, the globe I had the day before secured fell out of its fixture!  That was almost a year and a half ago, and it hasn't happened since.  I don't try to put grand interpretations on what has happened since my son's death.  I know that with my disbelief in an afterlife, auditory or visual experiences would have been attributed to my utter grief.  But with the variety of physical movement of objects that have occurred, I now KNOW that existence must continue after physical death.  As far as the swag light globes are concerned, my interpretation is that after he proved it was real a year ago last September, he no longer needs to communicate in that manner.

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If I may, I'd like to relate the first experience that convinced me something was happening:

After his mother left when he was 4, my son slept in my bed for a few years.  He didn't like my snoring, and would poke me.  I'd say, "Merritt, you don't have to poke me, just touch me on the face". At about that time, I bought a package of "BreatheRite" strips, but after trying them one time, I didn't like the way they felt, and I put the entire package in the drawer of the night stand next to my bed.

Ten years later, which was about nine months after my son's death, I was watching an article about sleep apnea and its dangers on the PBS Nightly News, and I thought that maybe I should be doing something about my snoring. (I should say here that my son had a lot of anxiety when he was alive, and he worried about our health.)  The next morning after watching that article on TV, I awoke to find the instructions for the BreatheRite strips in the middle of the pillow where my son used to lay his head.

I had worked with a clinical psychologist every week since my son's death, to not go crazy, and we could not think of a logical explanation for what had happened.  We had both had a materialistic view of existence which included no possibility of an afterlife.  But when I saw him a couple of years later, he said that my experiences had changed his outlook as well.

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At times, some of the experiences seem to be merely coincidental. But then, there seems to be such a close interval between "stimulus" and "response", that it is difficult, upon later reflection, to not ascribe some significance to the experience.  For example, about a year after my son's death, I was in the teacher's workroom at the elementary school where I was the psychologist.  The early childhood special education teacher was cutting letters out of sandpaper, using a diecut machine, to use as a multisensory approach with her students.  But, she said, she was running out of sandpaper and didn't think there was enough to complete the task.  I suggested that she ask the high school shop teacher(the entire district is under one roof) for more, which she did, and the following day told me that she had enough to finish.  In the meantime, I went to St.Paul(MN) fifty miles away to shop for used books at thrift stores(I sell books in an antique mall).  At 8:50 that evening, just as the Goodwill store that I was in was about to close, I was looking in the children's book section.  I reached up to pull a book from the top shelf, and, instead, grabbed an unopened package of sandpaper!  The following day, I gave the sandpaper to the teacher, who by now didn't need it, and kept the package.

Coincidence? Cognitive magnet?  All I knew was that the teacher needed sandpaper and 6 hours later I pulled an unopened package of it from the shelves in the children's book section.

The last ADC experience of which I'm quite sure occurred on November 9, 2011, the date of my son's death.  Every year, on that date, I place a memorial to him in the Obituaries section of the St.Paul paper.  I include a photograph.  For three weeks prior to that date, I had been looking in my cluttered house for a specific picture, but without success.  Finally, I substituted another.  On the evening of that sad date, I came home, switched on the kitchen light, and there in front of me was a stack of photographs with the one I had been looking for on the top of the pile!

That was the last ADC experience of which I'm certain, and I have to admit that I'm missing them.  The books talk about the spirit "moving toward the light" or whatever.  All I know is that I miss him enough that I'd like him to stick around.

One more thing.  Although all of my experiences have involved the physical movement of objects, I'm quite sure I had one "lucid" dream.  At least, it has never occurred before or after that time.  About fifteen months after he died, I talked with my son in a dream.  I asked him, "Why did you do it?"  He couldn't think of an answer.   Finally, I asked, "Did you just have to get off the bus?".  He replied, "Yeah, Dad, those are the exact words!"  Then I asked if he ever gets to visit.  He said, "Yeah, but it has be at least after a year."  (By this time it had already been 15 months.)  Finally, I asked, "Do you ever see God up there?" (We had had discussions regarding God's existence prior to his death, and just four weeks before he died, he had said, "Dad, I don't know if I even believe in God".  I should also note that he also had a wry sense of humor.)  To that last question, he said, "Well, every once in a while, I see a bright flash out of the corner of my eye, and, other times, it's just an old guy in a white tee shirt".

I've had other dreams in which my son was present, but nothing like the realness of the one I just related.