by Karen Frazier, Managing Editor
Paranormal Underground e-Magazine

My first personal paranormal experience occurred when I was 21. You can read about my “haunted” apartment here. I had to wait nearly 20 years to have another.

A few years ago, my 98 year-old grandfather died. I was pretty devastated even though it was not unexpected. He had been saying he was ready to die for quite some time, in spite of being in amazing health for a 98 year-old man. He was my last grandparent.

The day after he died, we started having issues with the lights in our back hallway. I was standing at one end of the hallway next to one of the rocker light switches, looking down to the other end of the hallway. I heard a distinctive “click” and the lights in the hallway came on. I hadn’t touched the switch, but there is a switch at the other end of the hallway. I started to walk towards the other switch and there was another click. The lights went off.

This happened a few times over the next few days. Jim said it was most likely some kind of a circuit thing, but it had never happened before.

I also started finding pennies in weird places. The kids were a few years younger then, so it is entirely possible they were their pennies, although I found them in my closet, on my bed, on the piano keyboard.

I was upset, because I hadn’t dreamed of my grandfather yet – usually I dream about people who have died pretty quickly. One night a few weeks later, I dreamed of my grandfather. It was one of those vivid dreams that felt very real.

In the dream, I asked him if the lights and the pennies were him. He said yes, that he just wanted me to know he was okay.

After that, the lights didn’t turn on and off themselves anymore – it is not something I have observed since those days following my grandfather’s death; however, since then, we have had a weird thing with the light switches where if they aren’t set to the right position on both ends of the hallway, the lights won’t go on. I also stopped noticing finding pennies in weird places anymore.

Could the pennies have only seemed significant because I was grieving and I wanted to continue to feel some connection to my grandfather? Absolutely. Could the issue with the hallway lights have been the beginning of our current issue with the switches that I felt a need to interpret in a way that would give me comfort? Definitely.

Here’s my point – and I do have one. I wanted those things to be signs from my grandfather – because I was sad, because I loved him and because there was comfort in believing that a connection went on after death. Does that mean that those things weren’t paranormal? Certainly not – but at the same time, I had a need to believe in something at that time, and so my observations and critical thinking were not likely sound.

To this day, I still want to believe it was him.

We talk about the psychology of the paranormal in our May issue of Paranormal Underground e-Magazine. Certainly this falls under the psychology of paranormal belief. When we have a powerful desire or need for comfort, then we are at risk of misinterpreting the things that we experience in order to support our current need.

When investigating the experiences of others, I believe there is a need for assessment of factors that led up to the observed events. Was there a death in the family? Is there a need that witnesses need to fulfill? I say this from my own experience. I needed something. I looked for evidence to support what I needed.