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We all have ridiculous conversations with our mates, but negotiating a ghost pact with my friend as she lay on her deathbed was, without question, my most surreal.
The pact itself was simple. After my friend Ruth Francis departed this world, she was to give me a sign from beyond the grave.
It had to be obvious, and it had to be funny. A phallic symbol in the clouds, for example, some boobs in tea leaves or – if it was possible – kicking a can down the road.
Bowel cancer stole Ruth’s life in her 40s, leaving her husband to raise their two young children, but it never claimed her humour.
In a cruel twist of fate – courtesy of the US-Israel war on Iran – there wasn’t time to travel from Western Australia to Ruth’s London bedside after the kangaroo route dissolved into a logistical nightmare.
So the ground rules of our gone-but-not-ghosted pact had to be furiously nutted out via text message and voice memos during the last week of her life.
Now, I want to be clear – I don’t believe in ghosts. Never have. This was comic relief from a bleak reality.
But psychologists, sociologists and funeral directors all say the same thing: searching for signs from the dead is not just a quirk of the mystically inclined.
Unexplained coincidences – such as a clock stopping, a garden withering, or the sudden appearance of a familiar smell or sound – are common. University of Sydney sociologist Alex Broom describes it as attunement to the unknown – a way of staying connected to those who have died.
“We have kind of removed what we might call the existential realm from everyday life and it really confronts us when our family, partners, parents or friends die, because we still feel them around us,” Broom says.
“What happens is suddenly our surrounds are once again seen as filled with meaning. So as opposed to [the idea that] suddenly magic appears, it is probably more accurate to say that suddenly we see the magic.”
In earlier societies, ancestors, spirits and unseen forces were woven into everyday life. Today, the modern world is dominated by productivity, schedules and measurable outcomes, leaving little room for the uncanny or the existential, Broom says.
Professor Lauren Breen, a psychologist at Curtin University, says the instinct to seek comfort in coincidence and signs makes profound sense.
“When someone dies, the relationship changes, but it doesn’t end,” Breen says.
She describes a range of ways people deliberately try to maintain connection with the dead, such as visiting significant places or holding on to keepsakes. But she argues that the passive signs – the ones that seem to arrive uninvited – carry their own unique power.
“If it’s giving them a smile, or a giggle, or a sense of connection, then it’s actually very adaptive,” she says.
Part of what fuels the phenomenon is a psychological pattern similar to the Baader-Meinhof effect, where something you’ve just noticed suddenly seems to appear everywhere.
Experts say our brains filter vast amounts of sensory input. Once something is emotionally salient, it jumps to the front of our awareness to help us prioritise threats, opportunities or important social information.
The Baader-Meinhof effect becomes particularly strong during grief, because our brains are wired to prioritise emotionally significant information.
A butterfly might always have been destined to land on that windowsill, but now, seeing it carries new weight.
“We’re thinking about that person, even if we’re not realising we’re thinking about them,” Breen explains.
The question, she says, is not whether such signs are “real” in a verifiable sense, but whether the person experiencing them finds them comforting.
Bernardine Brierty is a social worker who has spent nearly three decades as a funeral director for Bowra & O’Dea, meaning she is rarely far from the dead or the stories the living tell about them.
In her experience, mourners are quick to credit the departed with things happening out of the ordinary, such as the wrong song blaring at the end of a service, a picture frame toppling off a coffin, or a sudden chill in an otherwise still room.
“I think it is more common than you think and I wonder if as humans we are turning coincidence into something that is going to give us comfort? For example, it can be at a funeral and they play the wrong piece of music at the end and they say ‘Dad’s having the last laugh’,” Brierty says.
It is a theory borne out not just in chapels but in living rooms and cars, where grief tends to ambush people unannounced.
Of the hundreds of people Geniene Mairata has supported as a grief counsellor for bereavement and trauma support charity Miners’ Promise, she cannot think of one who hasn’t experienced feeling a connection or sign from beyond the grave.
“It is such a powerful comfort to people’s healing,” Mairata says. “We are continuing the bond with that person and through the signs, it is a tangible way to do that in a physical world.”
In grief, life draws the eye towards life and Mairata says people most often see the signs in music, numbers, nature and animals.
“There is often an animal and a connection with nature, because I think that [represents] new life.”
Broom also describes the role of culture and symbolism in shaping how grief is experienced. Gardens, nature and sensory cues often activate a memory or emotion and may reflect a deeper human need to connect and understand the world.
“When we talk about Australia, acknowledgment of country for instance, we are talking about acknowledging our interconnectedness, among many other things with land, water, people and ancestors,” Broom says.
Breen says it is important for people to come to their own conclusions about what is happening when a magpie tilts its head at just the right moment, or a favourite song comes on the radio at the precise second someone needs to hear it.
But she cautions that grieving people can be vulnerable to exploitation and should be wary of psychics, mediums and various online operators working to monetise a longing for connection.
Ruth passed on 24 March, but before she died, we agreed that “Daddy Long” should be our code word should a clairvoyant ever come into my orbit. I can reveal the code here as I am not one to seek such services.
But what I do know is that when I am in the ocean surfing, I will glance to the sky and if something rude appears in the clouds, I’ll assume she’s keeping her end of the deal.
