Recently a childhood friend posted something on social media that caught my eye. It was a screenshot of her cellphone that showed she had received an incoming call from “Dad’s Cellphone”. The call was brief, 1 second really. She had never answered the call because it had barely rung before it ended. It connected just enough to register on her incoming call list that her Dad had reached out to her. What I found so fascinating about this was that her father passed away last fall. That’s right, he is deceased.

In her post she says “SOMEHOW” (all caps are her usage) she had received this call and “apparently someone has my dad’s old cell number.” I thought about that for a moment. That statement itself lends you to believe that she knows the phone has either been deactivated or removed from the cellphone account. How else would the number have been reassigned to a new phone? It would only be reassigned if the number had been deleted from an existing account. Her statement of the number being given to someone else proves she knows her father’s phone is no longer active in any way. If there was a possibility that the phone may still be active then her explanation for what had just happened may have been more like maybe her mother turned it on and called her by accident. But she didn’t think that and she didn’t say that. Instead her logical explanation for this event is that the number has been reassigned.

For the sake of this discussion lets go with her assumption that the number has been assigned to someone else. Ok Dad’s Cellphone number now belongs to a new person. So now this new person, somewhere in Maine, amongst the million or so cellphones that have a 207 area code, somehow accidentally dials HER phone number. A number that this new person does not know, does not have saved as a contact because it’s a new phone right? Her number that is also one of a million or so cellphone numbers in Maine with a 207 area code, plus an undetermined number of still remaining land line phone numbers with area code 207. Somehow this new person dialed her number out of all of those million plus phone numbers. This new person just randomly, accidentally, completely without purpose, dials HER number. Possible? Mathematically, maybe . Probable? Highly unlikely in my opinion.

Her post reminded me of when I lost my step dad, Tommy, two years ago. He passed away in the morning and I rushed to be with my mother. The decision was made that I would stay that first night with Mom. My husband Craig would stay at home but just to be safe asked me if I would call him the next morning at 6:00 to make sure he got up. Knowing myself, and that I wake up at 5:00 every single morning, I agreed because I knew I would be awake anyway. The very next morning I was awakened by the alarm on my cellphone going off at 6:05!! I had somehow managed to over sleep!! As the sleepiness and morning fog began to clear out of my brain it occurred to me that I had NOT set an alarm on my cellphone. I never set an alarm because I ALWAYS wake up at 5:00. I went back in and looked and sure enough there were no alarms or reminders set for that morning or any other morning for that matter!! Not to mention, if I had promised Craig that I would call at 6:00 to make sure he was up, I would not have set an alarm for 6:05! I knew immediately that it was my stepdad Tommy. He knew my husband, how hard of a worker my husband is, his work is his life. Tommy would not have wanted his passing to mess up Craig’s schedule. Tommy would not want to be an inconvenience in our lives. He sure as heck was not going to let me oversleep and not be able to call Craig. Tommy was doing what so many of those that are recently passed do. They reach out to us and grab our attention but they do it in ways that are so subtle that we second guess what we are experiencing.

What I loved most about my friend’s post was that she said seeing “Dad’s Cellphone” pop up on her screen “brought a tear and a smile to my face at the same time” and “this was a precious gift.” She said those things in the same post where she tried to explain, in some concrete way, why this had happened. This told me that her heart believed it was truly her Dad reaching out to her. But her mind, conditioned as we all are by our society, told her there had to be another more reasonable explanation. What if the reasonable explanation is that her father was truly reaching out to her! What if at that very moment he was thinking of her, from where ever he is now, and he wanted her to know that!

My journey, as I wrote “The Gathering Room” and now as I share it with more and more people every day, has broadened my knowledge a bit on just exactly how many people have supernatural experiences. Oh I’m not talking about seeing ghosts or doors that shut by themselves, etc. No what I mean are truly remarkable yet unexplainable things that bring comfort to you or cause you to pause and realize something is happening! Things like Dad’s Cellphone calling his daughter. I’ve said it many times, before I started writing a book about a ghost I was not a paranormal expert. Didn’t pay any attention to ghosts really. The same can be said for anything supernatural. I never gave much thought to mediumship, crystals, or any of those things that the “mainstream” (whoever those people are!) would call fringe. But now….things are different. Not only have I had my own experiences, I’ve also met hundreds of other people who tell me of their experiences! It’s incredible!

Everyone I meet uses different words to describe what they have experienced based on their own upbringing, their own cultural norms, their own education, their own societal standards, their own journey etc, I’ve heard so many words, all of them different, but the person talking to me is using them to describe an experience they had that someone else told me something similar the week before, but used a different word! Words like God, Universe, Energy, Karma, Intuition, Knowledge, Manifesting, Prayers, Angels, Spirit Guides, Soul Circle, Prayer Group, etc etc The list could literally go on and on. But what it all boils down to is simply this. So many people, truly a lot of people, are all experiencing something that they cannot rationally explain. It appears to me that the more open to it that you are, the more it seems to happen to you. Does that mean these people are more Spiritual? More Religious? More Mystical? Again….just words. Take the words out and it all means the same thing. People are experiencing something, from their own perspective, within their own understanding, in a way that is right for them. And I am beyond blown away by exactly how many people that is!