You know, this is really very comforting.
A national opinion poll of nearly 1500 Americans in 1973 showed that 27% of them had had some sort of direct communication with someone who had died. A similar survey in Iceland reported 31%.
A GP in Wales, Dewi Reeves found that 50% of the 66 widowers he interviewed had sensed the presence of their dead spouse in one way or another. Some will see them and be told they are alright. Others will hear them, some will smell them. That might not be a bonus, but I think they mean their perfume.
With over 500,000 people dying in the year in the UK, you can see that there is likely to be a tremendous amount of communication going on! And yet, people keep it quiet..
I have my own experience of this. I was just going to sleep one night. My brain, my filter, was shutting down. Not surprisingly, this is a state in which many such communications are reported. One study of Mediums showed lower brain activity while they were communicating. It seems they were getting their brains out of the way. Many mediums will tell you this is what they try and do: relax, day-dream, defocus. All these things make sense if you look at the brain as a filter.
My communication happened in a split second. Instantly I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt who it was. It was immediate and unequivocal recognition. It wasn’t the content of the message that was so fascinating, but the experience. My response had gone without having any time to think about it. You normally edit in some way what you are going to say. What was communicated was exactly what I felt: my instant reaction.
In no way was this an hallucination. It was a type of communication apart from our normal senses. I received words, yet didn't hear them in the normal sense, and my response went before my brain had a chance to filter it. Fascinating!