Anna Britton's later-in-life marriage ended in Sep tember 2000 when her husband Bruce died from a stroke. But the man who was `` the love of my life'' stayed with her.

`` I feel his presence,'' Britton said. `` I know I'm not crazy.''

Every year on the anniversary of their nine-year marriage, something happens that she sees as a mes sage from Bruce.

First, two buds bloomed on a mini-rose bush she had given him in the nursing home, and then planted in the front yard after he died.

On another anniversary, a white mushroom she describes as `` absolutely gorgeous'' sprouted in a house plant they had gotten at an inn in Vermont where they went every year to celebrate.

Red petunias One year, two red petunias she had not planted began growing outside the front door.

`` You can say what you want, but I'm telling you something, there's more to it,'' Britton said.

Whether they are called extraordinary experiences, near-life events or after-death communication, these types of occurrences are quite common, experts say. People who are grieving see an everyday happening as a sign from a deceased loved one that ends up comforting them.

A plant blooms unex pectedly, as it did for Britton. A bird lingers. An animal visits. A butterfly hovers. A light goes on or off. A song comes on the radio. A dream brings comfort.

Yet people who have these experiences are often reluctant to talk about them because of how others might react.

`Losing it'

`` People will think they are losing it,'' said Kenneth Doka, professor at the graduate school of the College of New Rochelle in New York, the author of several books on grief and a consultant to the Hospice Foundation of America.

Yet Doka said some studies show that 60 percent of people who are grieving report some type of experience. Whether or not these occurrences stem from the power of suggestion or are actual signs from the beyond is not important, he said.

`` It's common, and for most people it's helpful,'' Doka said. `` As a therapist, my goal is to help people interpret them within their own bereavement experience.''

Carol O'Connor of Attleboro, a social worker and grief counselor who gives seminars on bereavement, said people often describe these occur rences, but usually view them as just another sign that they're going crazy from grief. Yet she said there is just too much anecdotal evidence for these experiences to be mere coincidence.

`` People immediately know when they have had one of these experiences,'' O'Connor said. `` It clicks. They tune right into it.''

Joan Scott lived much of her life in the Norton home she and her husband John built in 1955, and has had experiences there since John's death two years ago.

Family photographs are often found lying down, not as though they fell, but as though they were placed that way.

Lights occasionally go on or off when no one has been in the room. That happened the day Joan was clearing out her hus band's massive collection of coins, stamps and base ball cards, and the lights upstairs kept going off.

`` He did not want any body to touch his stuff,'' she said.

To Joan, it's the soul that causes these things to happen.

`` I believe it lives on,'' she said. `` They are around us.''

According to Louis LaGrand of Florida, a retired professor at the State University in New York who has written sev eral books on the topic and has studied it for 25 years, these extraordinary expe riences occur in several ways -- through the senses like hearing or touching, by feeling the presence of the deceased, through a message conveyed by another person, by way of the unexpected movement of natural objects and in the form of dreams.

These occurrences, he said, have nothing to do with psychics or spiritual ists, but rather are sponta neous and come from out of nowhere.

He estimates that 70 million Americans have had them -- infinitely more than those who have had so-called near-death experiences.

The vast majority occur within a relatively short time of the death of a loved one, he said, but some happen months, and even years later.

Ana Santos, who grew up in Pawtucket and now lives in California, lost both her parents in a car accident nine years ago. Her father loved birds, and since his death, birds seem to come to her.

`` I feel his presence,'' she said. `` When a bird looks at me, it's like my dad is looking at me. It's like the physical presence of him.''

The scientific world would say these occurrences are actually the result of coincidence, illusion or even hallucination, LaGrand said. On the other hand, he said, supernaturalists would see them as signs of the after-life. Naturalists would say the brain is trying to help people deal with loss.

He believes the only explanation is that something outside the self, a supreme intelligence, perhaps, causes these happenings. They are experienced by people of all religious persuasions, including atheists.

At times they bring people closer to their spiritual beliefs, so they can hardly be the work of the devil as some religious traditionalists claim, he said.

Yet despite the comfort and solace these events bring, many counselors, especially psychiatrists and some psychologists, simply dismiss them as a product of grief, LaGrand said.

`` These things are a tremendous resource that remains untapped by the general public and by a lot of counselors,'' LaGrand said. `` As a culture, we short-change people who have these experiences. By supporting them, we help people find new meaning about life and death.''

Sister Judith Costa of Taunton, who runs a grief education and support group at the LaSalette retreat center in Attleboro, said she encourages people to talk about these experiences, but only to those who are receptive and non-judgmental.

She does not disregard anything a grieving person experiences. When people are deeply hurt by loss, she said, they should hold on to whatever comforts them.

`` We can use everything to help us survive and move forward,'' Sister Judith said.

A woman from the Boston area who asked that her name not be used said that after her 17-year-old daughter was killed by a train two years ago, she thought she could not get through the wake and funeral.

During a fitful night's sleep she was awakened by a tapping sound at the window of her second-floor bedroom. No one was there, but when she woke in the morning, she felt a calmness and strength she did not have just hours before.

Then months later, the family was getting ready to move into a new house they had started building when her daughter was still alive. The woman struggled with the idea of leaving the house where her daughter had grown up, and kept saying she just wanted to hold her one more time. Then she dreamt she was in a kitchen holding her daughter and repeatedly kissing her on the cheek.

`` I could feel the warmth of her,'' she said. `` Her face was against my face.''

When the woman woke up, she knew it was OK to leave that house.

She believes these experiences do not come directly from the deceased person, but rather from God.

`` We get what we need because it is sent to us,'' she said.

Skeptics may say that the bereaved person is looking for a sign. But Sister Judith said the people who want these experiences are usually the ones who don't get them, while those who are not looking for them often do.

She tells of her own mother who at age 84 thought she heard someone calling her name while she was shopping in a store, but did not see anyone. When she heard it a second time, she realized it sounded like the voice of her dead husband. It was only later that she remembered the day would have been their 50th wedding anniversary.

O'Connor said these occurrences often come not when people want them, but when they need them.

She tells of her own experiences. After the death of a friend, she and her husband were sitting on their backyard deck when a chickadee perched on her husband's foot and pecked at his leg before flying off. They later learned from the friend's wife that he loved chickadees and took care of a birdhouse where they regularly nested.

After the death of another friend and several tragedies in her family, O'Connor was on vacation in New Hampshire and asked her friend to show her a sign that there really was meaning in life. She heard her friend say `` see wildlife,'' then spent days looking for a sign through animals, but saw nothing unusual.

Then on the last day, a moose came within 20 feet of the house and spent the afternoon languishing under a tree before finally going back into the woods. The owner of the house later said she had never seen a moose in her 50 years of vacationing there.

But O'Connor's first experience involved her father.

A few weeks after his death, she was visiting his home and feeling guilty that he had died on the one day she did not visit him in the hospital. She was sitting in a room used for storage when she heard a voice tell her to lift the corner of the rug. When she did, she found a card from a child's game that said, `` a heavenly body.''

`` That to me was a message,'' she said.

Maryem Medeiros of Warren, R.I., has seen many signs since losing her 20-year-old son John two years ago when his jeep crashed near his college campus in Connecticut.

Often, these signs involve numbers, like the day she was looking in his room for things to put in his casket and came across the cardboard number he had worn in the university games -- 419, the date of his death.

Another day, she stopped by the cleaners and saw a referee shirt hanging there with the number 17, the number he had worn as a high school athlete.

After months of grieving, she was still unable to return to work as a hospital nurse until the day she picked up a box of items, and out fell the nursing pin she had lost years before. It was as though her son was telling her to go back to work, she said.

`` This was his home, and he may not be here, but his presence is,'' Medeiros said. `` There are so many coincidences, but in a mother's heart they are not coincidences. Is this the way God allows them to comfort us?''

Britton believes it is. Whenever she is feeling low, she said, something nice always happens that helps to keep her going.

`` It's like he petitions for me,'' she said of her late husband Bruce. `` He's my angel up there. I really, truly believe that.''

GLORIA LaBOUNTY can be reached at 508-236-0333 or at glabounty@thesunchronicle.com.