Do you ever feel someone deceased around you -- just get this feeling? You know how it felt when they were alive, and now, someway, somehow, it feels like that again?

Let us know your experiences. The atmosphere shifts. It seems to be quite common. Especially, it happens with family members. This we get from an interesting book by Glennyce S. Eckersley called Saved by the Angels. While mainly recounting ways people have been comforted or rescued (in real-life cases) by angelic intervention, it includes the encounter with deceased relatives.

For on occasion, the deceased are allowed to manifest to us. It can be to console. It can be to remind us to pray for them. It can be to pray for us. The Church teaches that we can even request deceased souls in purgatory to intercede! It can be to grant a message. Often, the deceased seem to send signs at important times in our lives.

"One day, having spent hours by his bedside, they returned home only to receive a phone call saying that [a woman named] Rosemary's father had died," Eckersley recounts in one instance -- one of many. "Rosemary later calculated that an extraordinary event had occurred at precisely the moment of her father's death. Sitting in warm sunshine, taking tea in a friend's garden, her daughter and her husband saw a huge bright light in front of them. No figure appeared, but they knew instantly that this was grandfather saying goodbye. The most amazing fact is that although he had died in Devon, England, Rosemary's daughter and husband were in a garden in Seattle on the northwest coast of the U.S.A." That's about 5,000 miles, if anyone is counting.

Rare is the person without an example of such an inkling. Did it ever feel like your deceased aunt, or husband, or grandmother suddenly was standing beside you? Did you ever dream about a dead relative so vividly that it went beyond a normal dream? Or suddenly come across a photo of her or him at a meaningful time?

We live forever, and sometimes (when God wills) there is a transference of information from one realm to another.

Just don't initiate such contact. We are not allowed to hold conversations with the dead. There can be deception. In prayer, we receive what the Holy Spirit deigns fit. But neither are we to neglect the reality that souls go on forever and that when we pray for a soul, or are at a critical juncture in life, the veil seems to lift.

There was the woman named Deborah whose grandmother had cancer. Her husband -- Deborah's grandfather -- was deceased. When he and the grandmother had first met, they had agreed to go swimming in the ocean. So long ago!

Now, as the grandmother was dying, according to Eckersley, an event occurred that reflected on that first date. "At this moment Deborah was surprised to see a bright, white light pierce the dull day and shine through the window directly upon the [dying] grandmother," she writes. "It was quite unlike any light she had ever witnessed before. Stronger and far brighter than sunbeams, it rested on her grandmother's face as accurately as a spotlight. To add to this amazing event, and most poignant of all, the air was suddenly filled with the smell of the sea.

"Looking at her grandmother, Deborah realized that she had in fact just died, but had the most wonderful expression on her face of happiness and peace."

There are so many similar reports -- consistent in tremendous ways -- it leaves no doubt that we live forever, that we see loved ones again, that they often come to take us to Heaven, and that we should never fear death (unless we have strayed from Jesus).

When we die, we'll not only be reunited with close relatives, but also ancestors. We must recognize that our family lines go back for many centuries (and we should pray for everyone going back to Eve). What a joy to know we are part of a team!

As a man named John recounts about the death of his wife Deanna: "I felt a great wave of peacefulness envelop me. I was totally calm. In front of my eyes there then appeared several golden specks of light. These traveled towards me, increasing in number, until eventually my entire field of vision was filled with them.

"Growing in size, they became large, beautiful orbs of golden light, shimmering and literally splashing against my eyes. I began to accept the phenomenon and became totally absorbed by the beauty of the event. There was by now a multitude of lights, merging and changing into a huge golden aura.

"Suddenly within this aura of light, a single gray shape emerged and disappeared. This was repeated with ever-increasing numbers of gray shapes, vibrating against the now still backdrops of gold light. The shapes were featureless, but strangely I instinctively knew them to be my family and close relatives who had previously died. They radiated waves of pure love."

On the verge of drowning on the bottom of a pool, another man suddenly saw a mist and recognized the form of his beloved grandmother in it! At that moment, he was rescued. And so we discern...

As for angels, there was a fellow named Stephen who was attacked by muggers in a park and blacked out as they threw him down a steep slope towards a lake. "An amazing sequence of events followed, and they remain crystal-clear in Stephen's memory today, some four years later," reports Glennyce. "He regained consciousness aware of a cooling breeze blowing on his forehead. Gentle fingers touched the spot above his injured right eye. A voice told him not to be afraid and then there was the sensation of a swift, soft kiss on his temple. 'You are completely safe,' said the voice.

"Opening his eyes wide, Stephen looked up and saw a most awesome sight. There was a figure floating approximately a foot above him and it appeared to taper into a white mist.

"The figure was all white, even the hair. Stephen felt that this figure was completely androgynous and that it radiated love and comfort."

[resources: The Other Side]

[Let us know your experiences]