Ten Signs that Spirits Send Us

Are Your Deceased Loved Ones Trying to Tell You Something?

Bob Olson is the host of Afterlife TV, author of two books, Answers About The Afterlife and The Magic Mala, and creator of the reputable directory of psychics and mediums, BestPsychicDirectory.com.

Photo by Nick Fewings on Unsplash

If you’ve never been to a medium and have no plans to visit one, your loved ones in spirit must find other ways to communicate with you. They want you to know they’re around you and that they’re okay. Sometimes, they also have other messages for you.

It’s also important to our loved ones in spirit to help us with our grief, as it pains them to see us suffer due to their loss. Consequently, they send us signs in our everyday lives that comfort our grief and reassure us that they’re okay.

Most signs from spirit leave a lot to interpretation, meaning unless you’re aware of the possibility that a loved one in spirit might be saying hello or attempting to acknowledge a discussion you’re having at that very moment, most signs from spirit could easily be missed or ignored due to lack of awareness or skepticism.

In this article, I discuss the most common signs from loved ones in spirit. Your awareness of these signs will help you to recognize them when they show up, and I’ll explain how to know when it’s genuinely your loved one sending signals versus just a random sign that anyone might get.

The signs that spirits send us are often called after-death communications (ADCs), a term coined by Bill and Judy Guggenheim, who wrote a groundbreaking book titled Hello from Heaven. Sadly, Bill passed away on May 20th at the age of 84.

I interviewed Bill on Afterlife TV, which covers a few less ordinary signs I’ll omit here because I believe they’re more confusing than helpful. In this article, I’ll cover the most common signs from spirits that have shown up in my 26-year investigation of life after death.

After-death communications (ADCs) are defined as a spiritual experience that occurs when one is contacted directly and spontaneously by a deceased family member or friend without using mediums, rituals, or devices.

To learn about ADCs from my own life, I wrote about my first personal experience with after-death communications in my article titled: Skeptical Son Gets Unmistakable After-Death Communications from Deceased Father.

We can’t simply choose to have an after-death communication and it happens. My experience is that ADCs happen randomly, although more often than some people realize. The biggest challenge to identifying them is simply noticing them. If you want to experience more ADCs in your life, the best way to do this is by learning the possibilities for ADCs and then remaining aware so that you notice them when they occur.

It is possible to request a sign from your loved ones in spirit (promising that you’ll stay alert for them), but what’s even better is just noticing them, acknowledging them out loud, and thanking your loved one for sending them. The more you notice them, the more signs they’ll send.

Here are the ten most common signs from spirit. These are not in any particular order.

Number One: Sensing a Presence

One of the most common after-death communications is feeling the presence of your departed loved one. You don’t see or hear them but feel they are near. You know they are in the room.

We do this with the living, too. We might be lying on the couch with our eyes closed and listening to music on our iPhones when we suddenly know someone has entered the room. Sometimes, we know exactly who it is. Other times, we know someone is there but don’t know who it is. Well, this is also how it works when a spirit is present. We know they’re there. We commonly know who it is. And we do this by feeling their energy near us.

Number Two: Hearing a Voice

Many people say they’ve heard their loved one’s voice. They often heard their loved one in spirit calling their name. In these ADCs, people are not always physically hearing the voice with their ears, but rather, hearing it in their mind (telepathically). Either way, it’s a sign that your loved one is present. This experience is comforting rather than scary because you recognize the voice as coming from your deceased family member or friend.

There’s something wonderfully healing about hearing your deceased loved one’s voice. On a side note, I once found a cassette tape from an old telephone answering machine with my father’s voice on it. Chills ran throughout my body. It was so healing to hear his voice that I kept playing the message over and over.

Number Three: Sensing a Touch

Many people have felt the touch of their deceased loved one. Some say they felt it as a slight brush of their hand, a caressing touch on their neck, or even a kiss on the cheek. Others have felt an outright hug.

One woman told me how she was thinking about an old boyfriend who had passed when she felt his presence walk into the living room from the kitchen. She then felt him approach her and then kiss her on the forehead. She felt the kiss on her skin. Once he kissed her, she sensed his presence walking back into the kitchen.

This type of ADC is difficult to dismiss. You either take her word for it or you don’t. For this woman, this was an incredibly personal experience that convinced her that life after death is real. As with many personal experiences of this nature, this single experience provided this woman with a knowing that resulted in her not caring if anyone believed her story or not. It was sacred to her. She knew it wasn’t her imagination, and it was an experience that she would treasure for the rest of her life.

Number Four: Smelling a Fragrance

Smelling a fragrance is possibly the most common after-death communication. If you’ve ever been in a room and the scent of your late father’s cologne suddenly fills the air, it’s probably an ADC if there’s no logical reason for smelling it. This is his way of letting you know he's around, especially if you were thinking about your father or talking about him when you smelled his cologne.

The range of scents is unlimited. You might smell the scent of your deceased grandfather’s pipe or the scent of banana bread, which might remind you of your late aunt. You might smell your deceased mother’s favorite flower or the smell of tar if your departed brother worked for a driveway-paving company.

The most compelling scented ADCs are when there’s no logical way to account for the smell, so you know it’s a signal from your deceased loved one.

Number Five: Seeing a Spirit

Some people have seen visions of their loved ones in spirit. The most common vision occurs when people wake up from sleep (or are drifting off to sleep). This drowsy state of mind (like a deep meditation) is the best time to see a spirit.

In many cases, people see a vision of their loved ones at the end of their bed. But I’ve heard stories from people who have seen them floating up by the ceiling or anywhere else in the room. It’s not uncommon that people have also heard their loved ones in spirit talk to them while they’re seeing them. Some have even carried on conversations with them.

Visions don’t have to occur in the bedroom or when you’re half asleep. One young man told me that he saw the apparition of his sister standing beside the gravestone at her burial. Other folks have seen them in different rooms of their home or even while driving their car. The key is not to be frightened. There’s nothing scary about seeing a loved one’s spirit. Most describe it as a beautiful and sacred experience.

It's best not to interpret why you saw your loved one’s spirit. Seeing a vision of a departed loved one is usually just their way of saying hello. It’s not meant to have a deeper, cryptic meaning. Letting you know that they exist and are around you is meaningful enough.

Number Six: Dream Visitation

The next best thing to seeing a vision of your loved one is having them show up to say hello in your dream. Thousands of people have experienced a dream visitation. In most cases, the dream is exceptionally vivid and feels like you are in the presence of your loved one, which you are. And you often feel a heightened sense of emotion due to the reunion. While most dreams usually seem disjointed and filled with fantasy, dream visitations seem authentic, as if your spirit and your loved one’s spirit have met in person.

It is easier for our loved ones to visit us in our dreams because our attention is withdrawn from our conscious, logical mind; therefore, it’s not possible to be skeptical or scared. While sleeping, our minds are in the unconscious (subconscious) state, which is our connection to the spiritual realm. Those in spirit can meet with us in this middle space between the physical and spiritual realms.

Those who have experienced a dream visitation say they remember the dream's details with intense clarity many years later. They often remember the dream as if they had it the prior evening, even if the dream visitation was 20 years earlier. They also say that it was unlike most symbolic or metaphorical dreams; their dream visitation was straightforward and clear—their loved one in spirit wanted to comfort them.

The most common dream visitation scenario is that a loved one in spirit suddenly appears in a dream, and it’s like you are with one another again. Sometimes, you’ll be talking with your mouth, but occasionally, you’ll notice that you’re communicating telepathically. Nonetheless, the conversation is usually brief and focused. Those in spirit generally want you to know that they still exist, that they are happy, healthy, and at peace, and that you don’t need to worry about them. In some cases, you might be able to ask them a question and get an answer, but in most cases, they will leave after they have delivered what they want to say.

Number Seven: Telephone ADCs

These could be categorized under another label (like Electrical), but they are common enough to deserve their own category. I’ve heard several stories over the years related to telephones. For example, I’ve been told a few stories about people getting a phone call where the caller ID indicated the call was coming from the deceased person’s phone, yet the phone was no longer in use. When the call's recipient answers it, there’s never anyone there.

These stories are not easily disputed beyond claiming a technological glitch. One could classify it as a strong ADC, even if it were a technical glitch. After all, we don’t get calls from living people whose phones have been disconnected. We’ve probably all been butt-dialed, but that was with a living person whose phone was turned on.

This particular category of ADC was in the news in 2021 when the grandson of a couple living in Florida received sixteen phone calls from his grandparents following the collapse of their apartment building. When he answered the calls, he only heard static. No one could explain the phone calls after numerous news reporters followed the story, including the police and phone company. Tragically, they never recovered the grandparents’ bodies when the news stories broke, but emergency personnel assumed they didn’t survive.

Number Eight: Electrical/Mechanical ADCs

Several ADCs are less direct than scents, visions, and touches. Our loved ones in spirit often use electricity and electrical appliances to get our attention and make their presence known.

It’s easier for spirits to affect electricity and electronics like radios, televisions, clocks, and lights. Now, I’ll be the first person to say that a flickering light is often just a flickering light, but if you’re at the dinner table with your family and you happen to be talking about your deceased loved one when the lights go off and then come back on again, that’s a strong coincidence if the lights don’t typically flicker in your house.

On the mechanical side, I’ve heard a few stories of wind-up music boxes playing independently without being wound or opened (turned on). In every case, the music box played during profound grief while thinking about the loved one who had died.

My car radio went haywire in my first after-death communication after my father died. It kept changing from station to station, and the nobs and buttons on the radio stopped working. Once I intuitively knew these were signs from my father (and I acknowledged it aloud), the radio began working again and the song that had been playing came back on.

Number Nine: Symbolic ADCs

Just like smelling your deceased father’s cologne, you might see an object in your path that makes you think of him. Often, this comes in the form of a feather, coin, bird, or animal. When there’s a direct link between the ADC and the person in spirit, it gives the sign from spirit more weight.

The best after-death communications are not easily dismissed. For example, suppose the object that crosses your path is rare, such as finding screwdrivers or wrenches in odd and unusual places because your late father was a mechanic. In that case, that will be more compelling than cardinals and pennies, which are more common to find and probably unrelated to your loved one. If it’s something obscure like finding antique clock keys because your grandfather was a clockmaker, that’s a compelling sign.

Likewise, if your grandmother loved cardinals and you tend to see them whenever you think of her or talk about her with someone, that’s more convincing than if she didn’t love cardinals. Or if your brother collected 1963 pennies because that was the year he was born, it’s a strong sign from spirit if a 1963 penny crosses your path.

Some people tell their loved ones before they die what signs they’ll send following their passing. If not, you can tell your loved one in spirit what item you assign them. If you like feathers, you can ask your deceased loved one to send you feathers when they want to say hello. If you’re more of a butterfly person, tell them to send you butterflies or make it Monarch butterflies to narrow it down.

Number Ten: Songs

Most of us have songs that become synonymous with particular people. For instance, if you’ve ever been to a funeral or memorial service where a song was played in honor of the deceased, that’s a song you’ll likely never forget. If one day you’re thinking about your friend and the song played at his service comes on the radio, that’s a pretty strong coincidence.

If you aren’t thinking about your friend when the song plays, it will probably remind you of that friend, but this doesn’t necessarily qualify as a sign from spirit.

In the article I mentioned earlier about my first ADCs, I heard the song “Free Bird,” played at a few funerals in my youth, followed by the song “Stairway to Heaven.” For me, both of those songs were associated with the afterlife, so they were signs that someone in spirit was trying to get my attention.

Likewise, we played the song “Can’t Take My Eyes Off You,” performed by Frankie Valli, at my father’s funeral (his request), so whenever I hear that song, it reminds me of him. More powerfully, however, if I’m talking or writing about my father and that song comes on the radio, I interpret it as his acknowledgment of it. He’s acknowledging that he knows I’m thinking about him.

Final Thoughts

In my observation, what indicates an ADC as a genuine communication from spirit is the coincidence of it in reference to the spirit. For example, I know a man who lost his wife in her 40s. They had a daughter who was in her late teens at the time. One day, months after the woman passed, he and his daughter were arguing quite loudly when his wife’s favorite candlestick busted in half on the dining room table. It had never broken before and showed no signs of damage. It just broke in half in the middle of their shouting match. They stopped arguing immediately, taking it as a sign that the wife/mother wasn’t pleased with their behavior.

Many assume that every cardinal or butterfly that passes their sight is a sign or signal from their deceased loved one. Perhaps, but what emphasizes the ADC in my mind is when you’re thinking of that person or talking about them, and the cardinal or butterfly lands in front of you (or on you).

Most ADCs, like finding coins or feathers, are soft evidence at best. At least these events are easy to write off, which doesn’t make them false by any stretch. There is certainly no harm in believing that every feather that crosses your path is a sign from your loved one in spirit. Who am I to question it? My point is that after-death communications of these types are not the most compelling evidence of the survival of consciousness. Yet, coupled with coincidence, ADCs are comforting and offer a sense of connection with the other side during everyday living. I should note that my own loved ones in spirit have expressed gratitude for my noticing a few ADCs they sent when later getting readings with mediums.

The last thing I’ll say about after-death communications is that the signals we get from our loved ones in spirit are always positive and meant to be joyful. If you interpret them as scary or negative in any way or respond by feeling increased grief instead of comfort and reassurance, then they will stop letting you know that they are around. The purpose of ADCs is to make us feel good, not bad. So be grateful for the signs you get, and acknowledge them with joy by saying, “Hi, Mom. It’s nice to hear from you. Thanks for stopping in today. Stick around for a while and enjoy the party.”

I hope this got you thinking about the possibilities for ADCs in your life. I’d love to hear about your favorite one in the comment section.

With love,
Bob

Bob Olson is the host of Afterlife TV, author of two books, Answers About The Afterlife and The Magic Mala, and creator of the reputable directory of psychics and mediums, BestPsychicDirectory.com. His newest venture is Bob Olson Connect, where you can read Bob’s articles before they become books.

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