The first night we slept in my father’s bedroom. Early morning I woke up; there was an incessant chirping of a few house sparrows just outside the window. And I got a flash: my father was content and in peaceful rest, and that I should also feel happy, not to depress the atmosphere further. It came instantly before I had any chance of interpreting the chirping, and it did have a soothing impact on my mental health for the rest of the period.
(You can find a very similar territory in my thriller The Astral Limbo! No harm if you'd like to take a look!)
There was also a very painful prelude to the demise of my father-in-law: he had not been well for some time, but since he didn’t confide in anybody about his condition and we failed to take it seriously enough his condition worsened, and finally when we decided upon the journey he was literally on his death bed. For our peace of mind my wife and I decided to shift him to the nearest city for intensive treatment; we were desperate to do something for him, however futile or too late it were. Those 2/3 nights we spent in my in-laws’ house were terrifyingly disturbing for me. Every night I felt: the spirits of all his ancestors descending on me, not allowing me to fall asleep. I interpreted it thus: the ancestors came down and wanted to take possession of his soul in peace, because the end was inevitable and they did not want him to suffer more at the hospital beds and labs; they seemed to be angry at our efforts to linger it further. However, my father-in-law, kind soul as his was, understood his daughter’s feelings and allowed us to transport him for one last attempt to save him.
And, as it happened, he came back home again after almost a tortuous month to pass away in peace a few days later. Meanwhile, I had to go to my workplace for an emergency, and returned as soon as my wife gave me the sad news of his passing away. During the next few days of rituals leading to the aadya shraddha on the 11th day I had a few supernatural experiences which, in final analysis, were only a communication or messaging from his soul.
Once around noontime, when I was alone in the room normally allotted to me on our visits, somehow I had an urge of sitting on the old wooden chair with arm-rests preserved there which was the favorite chair of my wife’s grandfather. As I moved towards it something inexplicable happened: the chair seemed to have jerked sideways which froze me on my track. I deciphered it thus: it was due to the profound respect the grandfather was given in that household, and that my father-in-law who lost his father very early in life wanted me to adhere to it.
One night as we were sleeping I woke up suddenly to a peculiar sound. It was a sound of laboured breathing that seemed to emanate from within the bed. It was so loud and clear that the bed almost shivered and shuddered. I put my ears near to my soundly-sleeping wife—no, it wasn’t coming from her. I examined the bed all around, but failed to identify the source of the sound. My efforts woke my wife up. I told her about it, she advised me not to think much about it. So we went back to sleep.
Very late in the night another time I woke up without understanding why. There was a pin-drop silence and it was pitch dark in the room—the period being a waxing moon fortnight. Suddenly I beheld a patch or a circle of bright white light floating at the ceiling, then moving all around us. It continued its movement for more than a minute, as if watching us, surveying us. My mind immediately started exploring the possible source for an infiltrating light. There was no chance. The curtained two windows on one side of the longish room were completely sealed in by the tin-roofed pandal constructed in the courtyard for the shraddhaceremony; heavy curtains were also fully drawn across the two windows on the other side and from that walled-in side there was no possibility of any light; the lone street light in the driveway had not been working for a few days. I confirmed every facet the next morning and found no justification for an infiltrating light.
There could have been only one messaging in those occurrences: that the spirit of my father-in-law wanted to assure us again and again that he was with us all the time and would be watching over us for some time. It is also interesting to note that my wife never expressed surprise or shock at my accounts, because, as I came to know later, she was also having similar communications those days.
Hark! Such messages keep on coming and are all around you! You only need to respect those and try to decipher to your own benefit. If you deem it to be superstition you’re most welcome to ignore this piece, apart from the messages!
