A couple years ago I lost my friend to suicide. A few months later, she was checking me and my family out at the grocery store she used to work at. I was young and it was recent, but I was so sure that it was her, I mean, it looked exactly like her, so how? Seeing dead people that were close to you is a common form of grief. Little things from feeling the sensation of someone who died all the way to physically seeing them are all signs of this bereavement state of grief, the reason it happens is because of something that psychologists call continuing bonds. When we build a strong connection with somebody, it is almost impossible for the brain to immediately forget the routines created. You see your neighbor outside his house letting his dog out every morning, one morning he’s not there and you don’t really realize but you expect him to be there the next day. I would expect to see my friend working every time I go to that grocery store, and when I’m there, I believe that I am going to see her but then I don’t and as I keep going back, I continue to not see her. Since our brain is always using these past experiences to interpret our senses, grief plays a big role in what we see in our environment, especially when someone in our daily routines is excluded from them.

The brain is a fascinating interconnected system of nerves that connect to your entire body. It sends signals that help to fully comprehend what a person may be smelling, seeing, feeling, and so many other biological processes. This includes memory, experiences, people, and daily routines. Everything that we experience and see in our everyday lives is influenced by the sensory signals sent to the brain and it interprets it by using memories and past experiences. Wavelengths of light, for example, are read by the cones in your eyes and the physical signals are transmitted all the way to the brain. The brain then compares different wavelengths and how they have been seen to create a specific color that you are then seeing with your eyes. This also means that the brain works with our past experiences and what we expect to happen to produce illusions. When someone close to another person dies, years of memories and daily routines that include that person are disconnected from the brain. So how does the brain react to these past memories of a person and connect them to our daily routines without them.

Quasi-Sensory Experience of the Dead

Quasi-Sensory Experiences of the Dead (SED) is a common grief response that people may feel. As a matter of fact, it is so common that researchers, “estimate that between 50% and 60% of bereaved people continue to sense or feel the presence of the person they are grieving” (Sabucedo et. al.) through SED. They are able to feel the presence of a dead loved one, whether physically seeing them or something more subtle like hearing and smelling them. Some have even reported having conversations with them. This means that these people are able to create new experiences with the person they have lost. Researchers hypothesize that this happens because the brain is adapting and recognizing that this person is no longer in a person’s life. One proposal is that the brain is using these experiences to adapt to the person’s absence and still continue to have that personal connection.

 The brain does not function on, necessarily, “knowing” things but rather predicting based on past experiences. This is especially prominent when the brain has no time to adjust to a death, something like a car accident, and with people that an individual is close to like relatives or significant others that can leave the brain unprepared. That is why the brain predicts these cases where you would see a loved one and allows you to create them out of people that you see or even hallucinate them out of nothing. These continuing bonds, or bonds that keep an individual grieving without entirely “letting go” of someone who has died, play a role in it because people get close to them and when they suddenly lose them it is difficult for them to cope. They keep that relationship alive through memories, traditions, or the sense of their presence. SED has provided these individuals with a way to see their loved ones once again. To better explain that, it is like living with a picture of that person that you can’t let go of; it can’t be avoided and most people use it to maintain the connection that they had created with this person.

Does What We Believe Change What We See?

One interesting study that I found measured how cultural and religious beliefs could play a role in this phenomenon. Their findings suggest that people who have some form of belief in the afterlife were more likely to experience these physical illusions of a person, and that most participants experienced at least some form of SED, like a similar smell. Unfortunately, researchers do not fully understand the mechanics behind how SED works in the human body. Most articles that you will read will say the same thing, and the reason for this is because it is not necessarily something that can be measured or studied. We can look at the effects of this form of grief on the quality of life of somebody that has been impacted, like how it allows for people to create fresh interactions with this person and let them go easier, but we can’t physically measure how often or why people experience some specific phenomena but not all of them at a time.

How to Handle an Experience Like This

So if this is happening to you, no, you are not going crazy. Experiencing SED, by itself, does not mean that someone is undergoing psychosis or any other mental illness. It is viewed as an event that the brain puts you through to process the grief of losing someone close to you. My recommendation for you if you are experiencing this would be to embrace it. So many people use this as a form of letting go, it allows them to maintain their connections and have great last moments with them. It is commonly used for reducing feelings of isolation in individuals and creating improved daily routines. In reality, this has been around for decades and not many people truly understand it. I wish that somewhere in the future psychologists can actually fully study these hallucinations because I find them quite interesting. So who did I really see at that grocery store? The answer is a stranger, maybe they looked similar or maybe they looked completely different; all I know is what I saw was someone my brain had not yet stopped learning to expect.

Works Cited

Bell, Vaughan. “Ghost Stories: Visits From the Deceased.” Scientific American, 2 Dec. 2008, https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/ghost-stories-visits-from-the-deceased/.

Elsaesser, Evelyn, et al. “The Phenomenology and Impact of Hallucinations Concerning the Deceased.” BJPsych Open, vol. 7, no. 5, Aug. 2021, https://doi.org/10.1192/bjo.2021.960.

Gillete, Hope. “Feeling a Presence After a Loss: Hallucination or Vision of Grief?” Psych Central, 28 Jan. 2022, https://psychcentral.com/health/grief-hallucinations-vision-loss#causes.

Haring, Chris. “Grief Explained From a Neurobiological Perspective.” Death With Dignity, 6 Oct. 2023, https://deathwithdignity.org/news/2023/10/the-neurobiology-of-grief/.

Kamp, Karina Stengaard, et al. “Sensory and Quasi-Sensory Experiences of the Deceased in Bereavement: An Interdisciplinary and Integrative Review.” Schizophrenia Bulletin [United States], vol. 46, no. 6, Dec. 2020, PubMed Central, pp. 1367–81, https://doi.org/10.1093/schbul/sbaa113.

Love, Shayla. “Why so Many of Us See Our Loved Ones After They Have Died | Psyche Ideas.” Psyche, https://psyche.co/ideas/why-so-many-of-us-see-our-loved-ones-after-they-have-died. Accessed 30 Aug. 2026.

Sabucedo, P., et al. “Sensory Experiences of the Deceased in Bereavement: History of a Psychological Concept.” Mortality, June 2026, pp. 1–24, https://doi.org/10.1080/13576275.2026.2690491.

“Seeing, Hearing or Sensing Someone Who Has Died.” Cruse Bereavement Support, https://www.cruse.org.uk/understanding-grief/effects-of-grief/seeing-hearing-or-sensing-someone-who-has-died/. Accessed 30 Aug. 2026.

Stokes, Patrick. “Sensing Presence: Deathbots and Bereavement Hallucination.” Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, vol. 25, Mar. 2025, https://doi.org/10.1007/s11097-025-10064-9.

Stollznow, Karen. “Grief Hallucinations | Psychology Today.” Www.Psychologytoday.Com, 30 Nov. 2023, https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/speaking-in-tongues/202311/grief-hallucinations.