When my Grandfather died in 1999, things went strange for a time. We knew it was to do with him because of the nature of the things that were going on. Here is the account of the most obviously bizarre.
Years ago he had bought my Mom a clock for her birthday or for Christmas, I forget which. It was one of those clocks that run off batteries but still have the pendulum beneath, made of a dark wood and having a tendency to make a loud ticking sound. It was kept in the kitchen, because there was no way anyone could fail to be creeped out by the steady tick - tick - tick at night.
On the morning of Granddad's death, the clock froze. The batteries had been replaced only a few weeks earlier, so we thought it was something wrong with the mechanism. We tried everything to get it working again, replacing the batteries, messing with the mechanism - we tried to change the time, but the hands refused to move.
It was late morning when we got a phone call off my aunt, who told us that he had died during the early hours of the morning. We asked her what time - she answered that it was between six o'clock and half past, or so she believed. The clock was fixed at twenty minutes past six. A strange coincidence, or paranormal occurrence? Still, that's not the end of it.
We hung the clock up again - I'm still not sure why, but I have a feeling Mom thought it would offend him to discard it - without the batteries. There it stayed, gathering dust and doing very little. One year to the day later, Mom was startled to hear a loud and distinctive tick - tick - tick as she got ready for work in the morning. She looked at the clock, and saw the pendulum swinging and the clock in full working order, not missing a single minute when she checked it against the other clock.
It was then that she felt at peace. She took it as a sign that he was fine now, that he'd gone on to Heaven and this was his final farewell. I saw the clock ticking that afternoon too, but it only worked for a week until it gave up the ghost (pun not intentional!) for good. We kept it for a while, but in the end it was no more than a broken clock; none of us saw the need to keep it as we had before, and so we got rid of it.
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