6 or 7 years ago my boyfriend’s uncle committed suicide by hanging himself in the tool shed at his wife (I think they were separated at that point) and children’s home in Ireland. This event was very traumatic for my boyfriend (and the rest of his family, obviously) and he has never gotten over it. His family being strict Catholics saw his suicide as a sin and didn’t talk about it much. I think this confused my boyfriend because at the time he was only 13 or 14 probably and I think he felt bad and confused that his family responded in shame and negativity, which is not the way you’d expect family to react to such a thing.

During the past 4 years that we have been dating my boyfriend has confided in me that at times he has “seen” his uncle. If he is alone in his room he will sometimes look up and his uncle will appear to be sitting at the table. He has conversations with him. He appears like he isn’t dead. His uncle “asks” him how he’s doing and gives him advice on how to follow the right track in life, etc. My boyfriend says it doesn’t feel the same as talking to someone in real life, that he knows it’s not real while it’s happening, it feels different, like he’s deep in thought or in a trance. He can consciously make it go away. It happens more when he’s really stressed, such as around finals, etc. (We’re in college. He’s turning 21.)

He is going to get help at school when it resumes after the summer (because at school it’s free, and he finally feels ready to help himself) and knows he has to to find out more about himself and work on his problems. He was hesitant to in the past, though, because although he knows it’s not real, part of him would feel a little guilty about making his uncle “go away.” He misses him and it’s almost nice, like he’s visiting. He would also feel guilty because he feels he is the one that has to “remember him” because he feels no one else in the family thinks about it anymore or cares. He feels like it’s his duty to remember him, almost.

Another reason I think this whole thing has been especially disturbing to him is because people would always say that he reminded them of his uncle (while he was still alive… “You’re just like _______.”) Because of this he feels doomed in a way that he’ll “mess up” his life like his uncle and have a similar fate. (Although I’m not worried he’ll harm himself in any way because he would be too terrified, and he always says it’s the most selfish thing a person could do, that he could never do that, and he has been hurt and has seen how hurt his family has been by death.)

He has always been very disturbed by death. When his other uncle died when he was in elementary school, it was his first experience with death, and he was so terrified by realizing what it was that he couldn’t sleep for a month.

He remembers the phone call in the middle of the night that his father answered, saying his brother was dead. He said when he heard the ring in the middle of the night he knew what it was about. At a golf outing a month before (an annual family event in memory of the first uncle who died) my boyfriend saw how his uncle was depressed and drinking heavily. He feels guilty, like he could have done something, because he saw and knew how depressed he was. It also really saddens him that his father, as the eldest child, has been the first to receive the phone calls about both his brothers dying, and has to kind of “handle it” as the oldest.

My boyfriend also said that he could see the scene in his mind of his uncle hanging in the tool shed. He can see him, how he was wearing gray pants and a belt, and there were pastel colored plastic toys on the ground. I know when something is very disturbing to a person they can make up details to visualize and help themselves understand and deal with what’s going on, but I think on some level he thinks he really saw it. I don’t think he’s ever been to that house. My first reaction would be to dismiss what he’s “seeing” as a creation of his mind but it would be really uncanny if the details in his brain were really the details in reality. I think he said he asked his father once if he was wearing gray pants at the time or if he was buried in them or something like that, and his father said yes, how do you know that, or something. So my assumption is that these are things he’s creating in his head but there is a tiny sliver of skepticism in me that says how can I know if these experiences he’s having are real or not. Maybe he has some heightened sense.

Other strange things he’s experienced is in high school he had a dream about a certain part of the bible. He heard the words. When he woke up he googled them and they were word for word taken out of the bible. I think it happened a couple times. He went to a private Catholic school so maybe they were subconsciously stored in his brain? I don’t know. That has always seemed strange to me. The section was abo

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