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1. Title: Visitation
2. Date of the Dream: 2010 (mailed Sunday, 22 August 2010)
3. Dream: I believe it may be called a lucid dream, but I did not have the sense I had been dreaming. I do not recall any story line or animation. It was simply that during the early morning hours before I normally awaken, my deceased mother spontaneously appeared before me, in very close proximity to my face. She looked to be the same age as she had at the time of her death. Only her face appeared, with a dark background. There was no color: everything was sepia or like old photographic negatives. She was not smiling, but sort of looked like she was gazing at me. I immediately recognized her, and although the appearance was brief, I remember it vividly today, nearly 6 months later. It immediately woke me up. I was startled: I looked very intently at her but we had no dialogue. I immediately knew I'd seen my mother upon awaking and was awed by the experience, filled with emotion and joy. I immediately began to cry and give thanks for the visit. (At the time this happened, she had been gone two years.) The event is seared into my brain, still. It felt very, very real; more real than any experience I've ever had. I was very much aware she was not with me on earth, it felt otherworldly and I was left with a feeling of deep gratitude.
4. Significant life event: Dealing with my father who has Alzheimer's Disease. A stressful time.
5. Personal concerns/issues: I wondered if the soul survives physical death and developed interest in near-death experiences for my mother had fear and hear death slow and difficult.
6. Associations: Perhaps my mother appeared to me to reassure me that our conscious survives physical death.
7. Category: Anomalous
8. Pen Name: My Mother's Daughter

Since 2005, I have been collecting dreams such as this one, in which the dreamer is left with the sense of having been visited by someone on the other side. I began the research in part out of fascination that something in this experience is so compelling that people from around the world, and in all walks of life report that they believe the experience was real. Five years, and 3400 dreams later, I have come to believe that once again, we have underestimated our own spirits, the power of love, and the enduring nature of our connection to those we know and love in life.

This dreamer provides a moving portrait of her own experience, which while unique, also bears some hallmark traits of this phenomenon. The experience seems to come about unexpectedly – it is set in her bedroom, it occurs in association with sleep-time, but does not feel like a dream. There is an absence of normal dream activity, such as plot, color, visual stimulation, variety. Most important of all: the dreamer has an immediate, and lasting sense of reality about the experience. This to me is the most telling feature of the visitation dream or the after-death-communication dream: the sense of another’s presence and the lasting belief in some communication. Just as the dreamer is always the final authority on the meaning of a typical dream, so it falls to the individual who has the experience to have the final say on whether it was real, and what it means to them. If we are telepathic in life, and I believe we are, why couldn’t we remain connected in spirit as well?