The Uncanny Experience I Had Right After My Father Passed Away

Is there really life after death?

It was the early morning of December 20, 2019. I received a phone call from my cousin that my father had just passed away.

He had gone out for an errand. He even chatted with some of the neighbors on his way but didn’t know it would be his last walk. He passed away on the street due to a massive heart attack.

It was so sudden. I had just talked to him the night before over a video call and now he was no more. I needed the time to process, yet I had no time. I had to book flight tickets immediately to be with my mother a few thousand miles away in India. I wrote about this in this article.

I could get a flight ticket for the next day through Emirates Airlines and on the third day, I reached India. My father was cremated on that day.

Until I arrived, two of my aunts have always been there with my mother. When I arrived, one of the aunts still stayed back to help us.

I could barely sleep, I had so much to process, but at the same time, I had so many responsibilities that night was the only time when all the disturbing thoughts would crash on me like an avalanche. I have a sleeping issue anyways.

Besides, I had a weird uncanny feeling that the moment I would open my eyes, I would see my father. Every night, around 4.00 or 4.30, I would hear the birds and would finally fall asleep.

On the seventh night, my sister and her family flew in from the USA. I went to the airport to receive them and we came back again around 4.00 in the morning. My aunt stayed with my mother.

On the eighth night, my aunt went back to her home. My sister and her younger daughter stayed back while her husband and elder daughter went to live in their house nearby.

My mother, my sister, my 6-year-old niece and I were all sleeping on the same (bigger-than-a-king-size) bed. My mother took medicines for neurological problems and that made her a bit drowsy. So every night she slept deeply.

My sister and niece had jet lag and they slept all day long. My sister still managed to fall asleep, but my niece couldn’t sleep as was fresh from all the sleeping through the day. As usual, I couldn’t sleep as well, but this time I was happy because I had someone to give me company.

Around 2.00 in the night I felt extremely sleepy. All the sleepless nights had a toll on my body. But my niece was awake and she was talking to me when we heard a street dog crying.

It wasn’t the usual barking of dogs, but it was a melancholy cry — very weird. I have never heard a dog crying like this. Although it was creepy, I didn’t tell or show any signs of fear. My niece heard it too and explained that it’s an owl. I didn't correct her although I knew it wasn’t.

The crying stopped after a while and I was almost asleep when my niece said she wanted to go to the bathroom. I was freaked out because of that howling but I had to help her too. My mother was sleeping like a baby and my sister was also deeply asleep. I tried to push her but she wouldn’t budge.

I switched on the bedside lamp and got out of the mosquito net. We sleep inside a mosquito net in India, it’s essential to prevent diseases like malaria or dengue. I helped my niece with the net too.

My father’s room is right next to the room we were sleeping in. And to go to the bathroom, we have to cross my father’s room in the hallway. In my parents' house, we always shut all the doors in every room before we go to sleep.

So I opened the door a bit and peeped outside. I had left the light on in the hallway. Through the crack, I saw nothing. The hallway was empty and all the doors were locked.

I don’t know what I was expecting to see — perhaps see my father? But seeing the hallway clear and empty I regained my courage and opened the door wide open for myself and my niece.

I switched on the light in the bathroom and opened the door. Once again, it was empty. We went inside, locked the door from inside and I helped her with the toilet and washing her hands.

After she was done, I opened the door again and peeped outside, and again everything was clear. So I locked the door to the bathroom and switched off the light. We went inside the room and again locked the door.

We returned to the bed, inside the mosquito net, and switched off the light. Because nothing extraordinary happened, I gained back my courage. I asked my niece to try and fall asleep.

Around an hour later or so, I was either almost asleep or I have indeed fallen asleep, I don’t know, but I heard my niece asking for water. I couldn’t understand if she had fallen asleep too or if was wide awake all the time.

But this time I was so sleepy that I barely had the strength to go out and get the water. She said again that she needed water. I was about to get up when my sister woke up. She said she had rested enough and wasn’t sleepy anymore. She would give her the water.

I felt good thinking that I could sleep. My sister switched on the light and went out of the mosquito net. She was about to open the door when I sort of screamed to not open the door. I really don’t know why. A feeling of panic swept my body and I urged her to not go outside.

I told her there was no need to go out as there was water here right by the bed. She said she wanted to get her phone that was being charged in our father’s room but would do that later. She gave the water to my niece and came back to sleep.

She asked me to check the time. My phone was right underneath my pillow (I don’t do that usually). It was 3.40 in the night. She switched off the light. We tried to sleep, but I was no longer sleepy and my sister was absolutely fresh because of all the sleep throughout the day.

We started talking, a little chit-chat. I don’t really remember what exactly we were talking about. I again tried to sleep realizing that the night would soon come to an end but sleep was elusive.

Then we all heard it. Someone was trying to open the latch of the door to my father’s room.

All three of us heard very clearly. It was a very distinct clear noise of the latch being opened — very very slowly. But there was no one else in the house.

I thought I heard it all wrong. But the noise of slowly trying to open the latch continued. It was not that one flip-second noise of a rat or a cat. It was a continuous noise that went on for a few seconds when my sister blurted out — someone is opening the latch.

It couldn’t be the wind, because it’s not the door, it’s the latch of the door. And unlike the other rooms, my father’s room has double doors like the ones in the old houses.

The two doors are locked by a latch, something like the photo below. The latch is rusty and makes an incredible amount of noise. And in the middle of the night, the sound was amplified and made it sound like a horror movie.

I kept quiet, I didn’t even breathe. There was pin-drop silence. The sound continued for a few more seconds which felt like an eternity to us.

I was now sure there was someone in the house. We felt someone's presence so strongly. It’s something that I can never explain.

My main concern at this point was saving my niece. I was sure by now it’s a burglar and I feared if the burglar could get past open all the locks in the house (our house is literally like a fortress) and get this far, then there is just a wooden door in between us.

The room where we were sleeping was the last room in a long dark corridor. Even during the daytime, this corridor doesn’t get much light. Right next is my father’s room and there is a door between my father’s room and the room we were sleeping in.

While all the other doors and gates in our parents’ house are made of solid wood or iron, this door between our father’s room is a flimsy one and there’s no lock, it was just closed.

So if the burglar can open my father’s room, he could easily open the door between the rooms. And I didn’t know if he had a weapon.

At this point, I whispered to my sister — there is someone in the house. My sister immediately felt relieved that I heard the noise too because apparently, she was also thinking that probably she was the only one who heard it.

But she was equally scared realizing that her fear was real.

That very moment, she couldn’t help but scream — “Who is there?”. Surprisingly enough, the noise stopped instantaneously — as if whoever was there realized we were awake and stopped.

She hugged her daughter tight and implored me to call her husband. The internet wasn’t working, so I called my brother-in-law with international roaming. But I didn’t care. I had to seek help.

He said he would be coming soon. I wondered how long it would take for him to call an Uber and finally get there. Besides, I would have to open that damn door to go to the hallway and all the way downstairs to open the door for him.

I begged him to call the police. This was the time when I really missed an emergency number like 911 or 112.

All this commotion made my mother wake up too. In the meantime, my sister had managed to switch on the light, find my mother’s phone and call my aunt and uncle who lived on the other side of the double house.

It is like a double house where you share the same wall, and there is a door that connects to their side. They were both sleeping when my sister yelled hysterically to call for help.

They started yelling at the unknown burglar and opened the door between us. The light was already on — I had left it on before I went to sleep. Surprisingly there was no one.

On the phone, we could hear our uncle and aunt in our hallway. My sister found some courage and jumped out of the mosquito net, opened the door, and — indeed there was no intruder.

I handed over my niece to my mother and asked her to not let her out of sight. I went out too, but the first thing I noticed was the latch to my father’s door — it was partially open, just the way we heard it.

But there was absolutely no one and no sign of a break-in. All the doors and locks were intact. If it was indeed a burglar and if he got access because he could manage to break in, he couldn’t have been able to vanish in thin air within a few seconds, especially when none of the locks or doors were damaged.

My uncle opened my father’s room too, switched on the light and again there was no one. There is an attached toilet, my uncle opened that door as well to check if the thief was hiding there, but that was empty too.

My aunt and uncle insisted that we were just scared. Nothing actually happened.

When we checked everything and found no trace of a break-in, my mother walked out of her room and very casually told us — that has to be your father.

My sister, my niece, and I — all three of us have heard the very distinct sound of opening the latch. There was no way that we were imagining this.

My mother had locked the door to my father’s room the night before. So I asked her if she locked the latch partially or completely. Unfortunately, she couldn’t remember.

My mother seemed very comfortable with the idea that it was our father and she came back to the bed and fell asleep. But my sister and I were clearly shaken. We couldn’t sleep anymore that night because we just didn’t believe that it was possible for my father to visit us after his death.

We spend the night awake, in fear.

The next morning, I checked my phone to see what time I had called my brother-in-law and it was precisely at 4.02 in the morning. My father used to wake up at 4.00 AM every single morning, rain or shine. He never used an alarm clock.

He would wake up every single morning at that time and go out for his morning walk at that wee hour. Our neighbors have complained to my mother that it’s not so safe to go out at that time, my mother and the rest of the family have pleaded with him so many times, we even argued and fought with him that 4.00 AM is way too early and unsafe.

That was a constant source of stress. But he never paid attention. He continued to do so till his last day.

It was so uncanny that we heard the sound exactly at that time. I have no idea how that is possible. In the next few days, my sister made peace with the fact that it was indeed our father.

I, on the other hand, refused to believe this. For the next few months, I read hundreds of stories on Quora and on the internet. I didn’t know whom to believe and whom not to.

The nights I slept there in that house before this happened, I didn’t experience anything like this, but I was also uncomfortable. I just kept on thinking that something unusual might happen and I have no clue why.

I weighed on science and science doesn’t accept life after death. But science also hasn’t proven it to be otherwise. The absence of proof is not proof of absence.

I started reading more about spirituality — a subject which I didn’t show much interest in earlier.

There are so many unanswered questions here and I don’t know if I will ever come to know what actually happened on that night. But I have come to believe that there is definitely something after death.

When I shared my story with some people, they ridiculed me and that’s what prevented me from writing about this in public. I got the courage after I read the following three articles and realized I am indeed not the only one. I thank these writers for helping me re-gain my courage to openly talk about this and not feel shame.

Justjulieandherblog writes in this story about a creepy experience when she was cat-sitting at her cousin’s house.

Simon Goss writes about his experience in his parents’ house after they passed away.

And yesterday I read a story by Liberty Forrest, Author where she writes about her experience living in a 500-year-old house.

Did you ever experience something like this? I would love to know. Please share your experience in the comments section.

Two years ago this day he passed away and today marks the second year of his death. I feel a strange void that can never be filled. But I now know that he is out there, somewhere.

Thank you for reading.