My aunt has told us about the “case of the lost necklace” that occurred around the first occurrence of the perfume. She has a necklace that she wears all the time, and only takes off at night when getting ready for bed. One day, she realized that she hadn’t put it on, and went to her dresser to get it. It wasn’t there, nor was it anywhere in the house as she frantically went searching, hoping it hadn’t fallen off while she was out somewhere (shopping). She was about to give up when she felt a tugging around her neck. She looked down and, voila!, the necklace was around her neck. But not just around her neck, it was being pulled outward from her neck as if someone (mom?) was standing in front of her holding it out so that she could see it. Now, those of you who wear glasses, and it has happened to me many times, can probably regale us with stories of looking for lost glasses only to discover them residing still on your nose. However, on the occasions when that has happened to me, I usually realized my error by putting my hands up around my eyes only to discover they were there all along. However, I’ve never had glasses jump off my nose or be gently taken off by some unseen force and held up in front of my face so I could see where they’ve been all along.
My father has also started experiencing some non-olfactory phenomena. Once when he entered the bedroom he and my mother shared, the touch lamp by her side of the bed (which he never, ever used) was on. On another occasion about 8 months ago, he decided to take a nap around 5pm. Now it is important to know that he turned 90 this year, and his hearing, which has been poor throughout his life, hasn’t gotten better with age. Well he was fast asleep when a loud crash abruptly woke him up. He thought that there must have been an accident outside in front of his house. He went to look and nothing was amiss...outside. However, when he returned to the bedroom, he discovered that a framed picture (of my mom and my oldest son), a religious icon, and a Christian cross were lying three feet away from the night table that is at the side of the bed. The lamp, telephone, and clock remained on the table undisturbed. It appeared as if someone had swept the other items onto the floor, a good three feet away from the table. Now, the hard-nosed skeptics would argue that maybe a slight earthquake or a truck rumbled by toppling the less weighty items. But, three feet away??? None of the other items (which were of an impersonal nature) were disturbed or in any disarray. My father cannot extend his arms that far...especially from lying down and across the full-sized bed. And nothing else in the room was disturbed -- except for my father’s sleep.
These are the types of events that keep us thinking that there is more to our existence than our physical lives here on Earth. Science is not going to explain it, the hardcore skeptics will always come up with some practical possibility (as improbable as it may be) and the non-believers will always turn their noses up at it and shrug their shoulders. For those of us that believe that the afterlife does exist, these are just a few more little nudges to keep us smiling.
Submitted by Dr. D.
