Emails from The dead?

[ralph124c]

The threads on parapsychology inspired this one: as far as I know, many believers think that some kind of communication is possible, with people who have died. This despite the fact that the bible condemns the practice/attempt to contact the dead; indeed, it is a blasphemous act. Anyway, supposing that this communication is possible, should we look for the least energy-intensive method possible? Instead of having a "medium" scatch out a message from the byond, an email out to be easier and feasible. After all, sending a few lines of code takes very little energy, and a deceased programmer ought to be able to do it.
So, has anyone ever a received an email from a person who is deceased?

[zelie zelerton]

Nah, ghosts are environmentally friendly. They won't waste electricity when they can just move a glass around.

[fisha]

Yeah, sorta.

A guy I know was killed in Afghanistan a couple of years back. He was very good about keeping in contact with me, and when a week went by of no emails, and he wasn't out in the field, I searched, he came up as KIA. About two weeks later, his wife emailed me from his account, to notify me of his death. I'm sure it was the easiest way with all his friends, they'd be on his list of contacts.

Very eerie to have "him" email me.



Godspeed, Troy.

[Ellef]

Y'know, right now on my screen this thread is followed by the "teenage post-breakup melodrama stress" one posted by ... Speaker for the Dead .

How spooky is that?

[guizot]

My father died (from disease) at a very young age. Shortly thereafter, I got a telephone call...from him. Then I woke up. I've had the same dream many times. He just says my name, and then I wake up.

[Khampelf]

I remember a Reader's Digest type story about the hazards of misdirected E-mailing. A man was going on a business trip to Florida, and using the opportunity to spend some vacation time afterwards, and have his wife fly down and join him then. He mistyped her address and sent the message to a lady who's husband had just died. Imagine her consternation to read.

Hi, sweetheart!

It's much hotter here than we were led to believe, but I'm settled in for it, and looking forward to your arrival on the 19th.

[ZipperJJ]

My bro's mother-in-law flew out of town to be with her brother, who had suddenly been hospitalized. Her brother died while she was there.

She is not the sort of person who checks her email regularly. So she hadn't checked it for a few days before she left to be with her brother. And of course, she didn't check it while she was out of town with him.

So when she got back, she had some emails from him. Obviously he sent them before he was died (before he was hospitalized, even) but they were new to her, AFTER he died. Eep.

[devilsknew]

Originally Posted by ralph124c

The threads on parapsychology inspired this one: as far as I know, many believers think that some kind of communication is possible, with people who have died. This despite the fact that the bible condemns the practice/attempt to contact the dead; indeed, it is a blasphemous act.

Well yea, up until the that second half when zombie Jesus came along. Jesus, the friendly Ghost.

[Musicat]

Originally Posted by zelie zelerton

Nah, ghosts are environmentally friendly. They won't waste electricity when they can just move a glass around.

And they're pretty good at toe tapping or table rapping, too, or so I've heard. With that kind of ability, who needs email?

[Kalhoun]

When my younger SIL died a few years ago, she had called her sister a couple days earlier. That SIL had the recording put in a stuffed bear.

Why is is blasphemous to want to communicate with the dead? They're the ones saying there's life after death in the first place!!

[FriarTed]

Originally Posted by devilsknew

Well yea, up until the that second half when zombie Jesus came along. Jesus, the friendly Ghost.

That's theologically inaccurate in SO many ways!

Btw, to the OP- I believe it MAY be theoretically possible, but which is one reason it's forbidden. The dead have their realm. We have this realm. God may allow the dead to get a message to us, but we're not supposed to go banging on their doors because you never know who/what will answer.

[threnodyangelfire]

I got an email from someone who tried to commit suicide immediately after.

He had a change of heart and called paramedics, who saved him.

He lives half way around the globe from me and timed it as such that when I received the note, in theory, he would be well and truly gone.

I am still very angry about that. I am glad he survived but angry at his decision to involve me in that way.

[Boyo Jim]

I sent an email once to someone who turned out to be dead and I got an out-of-the-office auto-response.

[eleanorigby]

Originally Posted by devilsknew

Well yea, up until the that second half when zombie Jesus came along. Jesus, the friendly Ghost.

You're confused. It's Casper the Friendly Ghost and Jesus, the Holy Ghost.

[prissy voice]Please make a note of it.[/prissy voice]



I still have emails cached from my sister who died 4 years ago. I know people who still have dead loved one's numbers on their speed dial-they just can't remove it, even though the number has been reassigned. But they don't get calls or emails from the dead, per se.

[Sevastopol]

Some years ago I received a call telling me that a dear friend had died suddenly (and young - heroin). I went to the office a short time later and there it was, an email, from him talking about the benefits from the Macintosh computer. Must've been just a day, or hours before.

Hey ho, so it goes.

[DMark]

Somewhat related, I can remember during the height of the AIDS crisis, people would look at their Rolodex and realize half or more of the names of the people on it had died.

A friend of mine called an old friend who was very ill. He got a recording from his friend who had died, but had asked his family to put that message on his answering machine. It was surprisingly upbeat, but his it was his final message to all of his friends who called him.

[Mangetout]

It's not the difficulty of manipulating bits and bytes in computers that prevents it, it's negotiating the bloody mail communication protocols.

[si_blakely]

Originally Posted by Mangetout

It's not the difficulty of manipulating bits and bytes in computers that prevents it, it's negotiating the bloody mail communication protocols.

Hand typing SMTP is not that hard.

But hell is still on 300 baud dial-up, and the acoustic coupler is broken...

Si

[Mangetout]

Originally Posted by si_blakely

Hand typing SMTP is not that hard.

For you perhaps. For Auntie Doris, rattling teacups and making the curtains billow is considerably simpler.

[bbs2k]

http://community.livejournal.com/sdmb/334697.html

[F. U. Shakespeare]

Around four years ago, a colleague of mine was murdered in a domestic dispute. He had emailed me at work the day before, and a slow network made it arrive after he'd died (albeit before we'd found out about the crime).

[si_blakely]

Originally Posted by Mangetout

For you perhaps. For Auntie Doris, rattling teacups and making the curtains billow is considerably simpler.

I thought that being dead gave you perspective. If all being dead is good for is scaring cats and rearranging curtains, then I'd rather give it a miss.
I'm hoping for knowledge of the ineffable ('cause I'd really need to know some things that I can't eff, since I seem to spend my life finding things that I can).

Si

[yellowval]

I had something strange happen to me on Labor Day. That morning I was getting ready to go watch the parade that was happening in my town. Before I left I checked my e-mail and found a facebook request from a friend of mine. I had created a facebook account months before but had forgotten all about it until getting the friend request from her. I approved the friend request and went downtown to watch the parade. About an hour-and-a-half later, I got a call from my husband that the same friend I'd approved the request from had been found dead earlier that morning. When I approved the request she was already gone. It was really strange afterward to visit her facebook page and see that I'd approved the request about two-and-a-half hours after she was found.

[LouisB]

The subject calls up a niggling memory of a magazine article (Readers Digest?) from when I was maybe ten years old; it had to do with phone calls made by the dead. IIRC, the calls usually occurred within minutes after the time of death. Being a paranoid little brat who was terrified of death, I refused to answer the phone for a while after the article appeared.

[Sean Factotum]

Originally Posted by ralph124c

So, has anyone ever a received an email from a person who is deceased?

Well, I sent an email to a dead guy. Does that count?

My sister lived with a guy I graduated with for almost 10 years. He died of complications from kidney failure. They had a lot of bills at the time of his death, and she didn't have the money to buy a suit to bury him in. So I gave her one of mine.

Fast forward to about eight years ago, and I was registered on the Classmates.com website. I see that someone else from our class had newly registered on that site. Lo and behold, it's my sister's dead boyfriend. I sent him an email congratulating him on his recovery, and asked if I could have the suit back we buried him in. My sister and I also lodged complaints with the website's PTB, and that account was canceled fairly quick. But I never received a reply email.

[Annie-Xmas]

One of the last things John F Kennedy Jr did before leaving his office on Friday, July 16, 1999 was to e-mail a co-worker, who got the message the Monday morning after JFK Jr's death.

[Marlitharn]

Our work email is, and has been for years, plagued by viruses or malware or whatever you call it; every day all of us get a bunch of emails that purport to be from co-workers but really aren't. Like the sender will be Marlitharn Lastname and the subject line will say "Important! Please read!" but when you open it up it's from that poor destitute Nigerian guy who keeps begging everyone for help.

So a few months after my supervisor passed away, one of my co-workers opened her inbox and found a new email from the dead lady. It was spam, of course, but it still gave her quite a turn - especially because the subject line said something about Snoopy, and this co-worker was a huge Snoopy fan.

<cue Twilight Zone music>