THE QUESTION LIBRARY MIND & MORTALITY
Many grieving people feel, hear or even see someone they have lost, and studies suggest it is common, usually comforting and usually not a sign that something is wrong.
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Yes. Feeling that someone who died is still with you is very common. In a 2023 Pew survey, 34% of U.S. adults said they had felt the presence of a dead relative in the past year. Studies of widowed people have found such experiences in 30% to 60% of them. Most people find these moments comforting, and they are usually not a sign of mental illness. Whether the person is truly there is a question science cannot answer.
The Empty Chair, a watercolor by Luke Fildes. Fildes was illustrating Charles Dickens’s novel The Mystery of Edwin Drood when Dickens died suddenly on 9 June 1870. While staying with the grieving family, he painted the writer’s empty chair in his study at Gad’s Hill.
WHERE THE EVIDENCE STANDS
WHAT WE DON’T KNOW YET
Researchers do not know why some grieving people have these experiences and others do not. They are still working out when an experience of the dead goes with healthy grief and when it goes with grief that has become stuck.
WHAT WOULD CHANGE THIS ANSWER
Large studies that follow random samples of bereaved people over time, with the same questions, could change the numbers here and show more clearly who is comforted and who is troubled. Whether the person is truly present would stay beyond science unless someone found an agreed way to test it.
You might catch a familiar scent in an empty room. You might hear a voice call your name as you drift off to sleep, or feel a hand on your shoulder. Or you might simply have a strong sense that the person you lost is near. If this has happened to you, you may wonder whether it is normal, or whether you should tell anyone. It is normal, and you are far from alone.
Surveys and studies agree that these moments are common. In a 2023 Pew Research Center survey, 34% of U.S. adults said they had felt the presence of a dead family member in the past 12 months. Over the same 12 months, 28% said they had told a dead relative about events in their life. Back in 1971, a study in the British Medical Journal interviewed 293 widowed people in mid-Wales. Almost half had sensed, seen or heard their husband or wife after the death. Few had told anyone, even close friends.
Researchers have a long name for this: sensory and quasi-sensory experiences of the deceased. It means you sense the person with one of your senses, or you just feel that they are there. A 2020 review by an international team of researchers concluded that the vast majority of these experiences are harmless. Most people find them comforting. In general, the reviewers say, they are unlikely to be a sign of mental illness. The U.S. National Cancer Institute even lists dreams and hallucinations of the person who died among the normal reactions to grief.
What these moments mean is a different question. Many people see them as real contact with someone who lives on, often in the light of their faith or spiritual beliefs. Others, including some believers, see them as the mind and the bonds of love at work. Some people hold both views at once. Science can describe the experience and who has it. It cannot tell you whether the person is truly there. We label that question Beyond science, and every answer to it is welcome here.
Very common. In late March and early April 2023, the Pew Research Center surveyed 5,079 U.S. adults about their dead relatives. Just over half (53%) said a dead family member had visited them in a dream or in some other form: 46% in a dream and 31% in another way. In the past 12 months alone, 34% had felt the presence of a dead relative, 28% had told one about events in their life, and 15% said a dead relative had communicated with them.
These experiences cross religious lines. About two-thirds of Catholics (66%) and of members of the historically Black Protestant tradition (67%) reported a visit at some point, compared with 42% of evangelical Protestants. Among people with no religion, 58% of those whose religion is “nothing in particular” said so, as did 34% of agnostics and 26% of atheists.
Studies of widowed people agree. In a 1971 study in the British Medical Journal, W. Dewi Rees interviewed 293 widowed people in mid-Wales, 80.7% of all the widowed people living in the area. Almost half had experienced their husband or wife after the death. A 2020 review lists his figures: 39% felt the spouse’s presence, 14% saw them and 13% heard them. The experiences often lasted for years, and they were more common after long and happy marriages. It was unusual for people to have told anyone about them. Rees considered them a normal and helpful part of widowhood.
A Swedish study followed 50 people in their early seventies through the first year after a spouse died. Half felt the spouse’s presence, and about a third reported seeing, hearing and talking to them. A 2015 review put the rate among widowed people at 30% to 60%, while warning that the studies of bereaved people were small and used different methods.
For most people, it appears to be part of ordinary grief. The U.S. National Cancer Institute lists “dreams, illusions, and hallucinations of the deceased” among normal grief reactions. In a 2020 review, a working group of the International Consortium for Hallucination Research concluded that the vast majority of these experiences are benign, meaning harmless, and that they are comforting or reassuring to most people most of the time. Research suggests people usually still know the person has died.
A study published in 2021 surveyed 1,004 people in English, French and Spanish. The most common experiences came during sleep, and people usually found them deeply meaningful and comforting. People said their sense of spirituality grew afterward, though their religiousness did not. Its participants were recruited on purpose rather than at random, so the results may not represent everyone.
The picture is not all comfort. The 2020 review notes that research in Western countries points to a significant minority of experiences being mixed, and some even negative. A comforting visit can leave a painful sense of absence afterward. Some people see the person crying or hear a harsh voice, and some experiences carry on a difficult relationship. Studies also link these experiences with more grief-related distress, such as anxiety, depression and loneliness, though the reviewers say more research is needed to understand that link. Their overall view: because the experiences are so common and so varied, they are unlikely, in general, to signal a mental disorder.
Researchers offer several explanations, and none is settled. One comes from attachment theory, the study of our deepest bonds. In this view, after we lose someone we depend on, we search for them, and for a moment the person is found. This fits signs that the experiences may be more common after close relationships and in the first months. But, the 2020 review notes, it does not explain experiences that come years later.
Another idea is called continuing bonds. For much of the 20th century, the leading view held that the job of grief was to cut ties with the dead so the living could move on. A 1996 book, Continuing Bonds, edited by Dennis Klass, Phyllis Silverman and Steven Nickman, challenged that view. Its publisher describes how survivors find places for the dead in their ongoing lives, and says such bonds are not denial.
The evidence on bonds is mixed, though. A 2005 review by Stroebe and Schut concluded that neither keeping nor letting go of bonds can be called helpful in general. The open question is how, and for whom, each one helps. In a 2010 study of 502 bereaved people, bonds felt as illusions or hallucinations were linked with violent deaths and with feeling responsible for the death. Bonds carried on the inside, with the person as an inner source of security, were linked with personal growth.
The 2020 review also contrasts grief experiences with the presence people feel during sleep paralysis. That presence is often threatening and nameless. In grief, the presence is usually someone the person knew.
A skeptic might say these are products of a grieving brain and nothing more. The attachment explanation needs no outside cause, and a lab study described on our sleep paralysis page made healthy volunteers feel that someone was nearby.
A believer might answer that the experiences often arrive unexpectedly and feel like real contact. The 2021 study found that people understood them as a continuing bond with the person who died. The 2020 review notes a long tradition of research that stays open to survival after death. It has examined cases with several witnesses, and cases where the bereaved person said they received true information from the one who died. The review calls this view controversial in mainstream research, and says it is debatable what would count as evidence for survival, or whether such evidence can be had.
Faith traditions speak in their own terms. The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches a communion with the dead. The Church honors their memory and prays for them, and it teaches that this prayer can also make their intercession for us effective. As practised by Indigenous communities in Mexico, the Day of the Dead, listed by UNESCO, marks the temporary return of loved ones who have died. Families welcome them with candles, flower petals and their favorite dishes. The 2020 review adds that in some Catholic Mexican-American families, the dead may be seen as a guardian angel. Whether a loved one is truly present is Beyond science. See Is there life after death? What can science say?
“It means I’m losing my mind.” In general, no. The 2020 review warns clinicians about the risk of misdiagnosis, since the vast majority of these experiences are benign. Rees found that the experiences were not related to known depressive illness.
“Healthy grief means letting go completely.” That was the older view. Many people keep a bond with the person who died. Research suggests this helps some people more than others, so there is no single right way.
“No one I know has felt this.” About a third of U.S. adults said they had felt a dead relative’s presence in the past year. The 2020 review notes a reluctance to share these experiences among grieving people in some Western countries.
When should you talk to someone? If the experiences frighten or distress you, or if you already live with a mental health condition and things seem to be getting worse, talk with a doctor or counselor you trust. The 2020 review notes that distressing experiences can sometimes be linked to existing mental health problems. If your grief as a whole stays intense and gets in the way of life, see When does grief need more help?
The answer stays the same after all this detail. Feeling that someone who died is still with you is common and, for most people, comforting. Science can describe it, and what it finally means is for each person to answer. If grief feels heavy right now, Why does grief hurt so much, even physically? and our care page may help.
THREE THINGS TO REMEMBER
Next on the path “When someone has died, or you’re afraid”
Is it possible to make peace with the idea of dying?
Yes, many people do, though nobody can promise it, and it looks different for each person.
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CONTINUE THE THREAD
Mind & MortalityAnswer
Many people who come close to death describe light, peace or leaving their bodies, so here is what research has found, what might explain it, and what science cannot say.
Mind & MortalityAnswer
Why death can feel frightening: loss, separation, uncertainty and the dying process, with clear limits on psychological explanations.
Mind & MortalityAnswer
Brain recordings from dying patients and animals show a rough order of events, from quiet, to a brief burst, to a slow final wave, and they leave some deep questions open.
Labels describe the evidence for a claim, not the people who hold it.
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