10 Signs a Deceased Loved One Is Nearby (and What They Can't Tell You)
Signs from the dead, plus how to tell a real one from coincidence
By Mimi Young, Taiwanese-Canadian spirit medium and occultist, founder of Ceremonie, and regular presenter at Salem Witch Festival · Book a psychic mediumship reading with Mimi. · Last updated August 25, 2026
I’m reluctant to publish a campy listicle that addresses the question of signs from the dead through séance rooms, cold spots, or a sensationalized Ouija board from the 80s. What I can offer is my experience through Tea, through a family altar I keep, through observing the holidays of my Taiwanese Buddhist-Daoist heritage, through walking the trails near my home throughout the year and becoming very familiar with the energies and seen and unseen beings there.
What Are Signs From a Deceased Loved One?
A sign from a deceased loved one is a small, out-of-pattern occurrence that carries a private meaning connecting it to a specific person who has died. The most common ones are a scent, a number, an animal, a song, an object appearing somewhere it shouldn't. The correspondence carries the meaning, a private reference only the two of you would recognize, and most often is not in the literal object itself.
This page covers how to tell a real sign from a coincidence, the most common signs people report, and what a mediumship reading can tell you that a sign by itself cannot.
How Do You Know a Sign from the Dead Is Real and Not Coincidence?
I've never found a way to prove a sign with certainty, and I don't entirely trust anyone who claims they have. What they're usually selling is reassurance, and it can be exploited to trick someone in deep grief. What I can offer instead are three checks I return to every time, as a set of principles, as a way to discern and gauge.
Specificity. Does it reach for something only the two of you would recognize? This could be a private joke, a date that means nothing to anyone else, a phrase used exactly the way they used it? A robin in the yard is just a robin. A hummingbird tapping at a window in the dead of winter, in a place no hummingbird has any business still being, could very well signal a spirit embodying the bird as an avatar.
Timing. Does it arrive at an anniversary, a birthday, the morning of a decision, the exact second you have a doubtful thought?
Tenacity. Does it repeat across a series, often in threes? A psychic scent, a song that is typically not heard on the radio, small objects appearing in unusual places? A mind that wants a pattern will usually find one, but it tends to find it in a single occurrence. A series of the unusual is a pattern, and is harder to make up or dismiss.
What Are the Most Common Signs From a Deceased Loved One?
Some of what follows may be so common that it sounds clichéd, others may be less frequently reported.
The familiar signs from the dead:
A specific scent with no source: a perfume, a cigarette, a particular soap, arriving in a room it has no business being in.
A bird behaving differently than the norm: lingering, staring at you, ringing doorbells, tapping a window, cawing incessantly at or circling you.
A repeating number tied to a shared date: a birthday, an anniversary, an old address.
A song at an exact moment: unprompted on the radio, in a store, the second their name crosses your mind.
Interference in electronics timed to a specific conversation about them, rather than random malfunction on an ordinary day.
The less familiar signs from the dead:
An apport. The term mediums actually use for a small object appearing somewhere it has no reason to be, often a space already checked and found empty minutes before. And while it could be coins, it could also be jewelry, personal objects that belonged to the beloved dead, hand written notes in their penmanship.
A visitation dream. Distinct in texture from an ordinary dream that are frequently linear rather than fragmented, remembered whole on waking (and retained), built with a direct conversation. Researchers who study after-death communication treat these as their own dream category, separate from the initial grief dreams that the living experience days / weeks after a death.
A palpably sensed presence. I don’t mean ‘energy’ here, I am referring to a felt, physical sense of a hand at the shoulder. In old Victorian mourning customs, the covered mirror, the stopped clock, exists because a household once took this kind of presence seriously.
Unusual flame activity. This could be a candle flame bending toward a person with no draft in the room to explain it, or refusing to extinguish. (This may be familiar ground if you already work with candle magic, though flame activity does not always mean a flame consciously behaving a certain way is beloved dead is visiting).
Hearing your name in their exact voice, with no living human around to have said it.
A moth that lingers. In Chinese folk tradition, especially around Qingming (Tomb Sweeping Day) and the seventh-month Ghost Festival, a moth that enters a home and stays and one that does not flutter frantically against the nearest window, isoften read as a visiting relative. The instruction, culturally, is not to swat it.
A discount after asking for one. Praying to an ancestor for help finding something specific, a car, a piece of furniture, another big-ticket item, and then finding it priced at a steep markdown or timed so precisely, that it’s difficult to write it off as ordinary luck.
Any single one of these may not suggest much, but layered together, and checked against the three questions above, timing, specificity, tenacity, then it’s safe to say that what you’re noticing isn’t simply a coincidence.
Can a Sign Tell You More Than Presence?
Signs can confirm presence, but if that is all, it just means that the spirit is saying, “I am near.” But what about a conversation beyond that? How would one know what the spirit wants to convey? If they need something from the living, or would like the living to receive a message?
Where a sign tells you someone is near, a mediumship reading can bring something addressed, specific, referencing a detail the psychic medium had no way of knowing beforehand.
What Happens in a Mediumship Reading When Someone Has Passed?
All my shamanic mediumship readings are offered as online readings. You submit one question in advance, as a starting point, and in the thirty to forty-five minutes before your video call, that question is taken into a conversation with the spirits directly, on your behalf, without you present for that part.
Then when we meet on the call, I recount the spirits' response to that first question, and often other details. Depending on whether clients book a 30-minute or 60-minute psychic reading, we can cover other questions, with whatever additional channeling comes through in the moment, as well as next steps that are as practical as they are spiritual.
Many clients have described a psychic mediumship session with me as receiving answers they needed, but also other guidance on things they didn't even realize they also needed. My style of psychic guidance is specific and detailed, practical, and risks being "wrong" because I avoid vagueness.
How to Book a Mediumship Reading With Mimi Young of Ceremonie
If what you've read here matches something you've already felt, the next step isn't more research. It's a reading.