A phantom limb is a reality in an amputees mind. Evaluate a different situation where a reality only exists in a persons mind. Have you every experienced a reality that only existed in your mind?

An example of an experience that I think I have had that is like the phantom limb would be an optical illusion of my grandfather’s spirit. Maybe it was that his death was so hard to take in and it happened so fast that no one really believed that he wasn’t there anymore. I guess maybe i was thinking too much and thought I saw someone or something when i really didnt. It happened on the day before my grandfather’s funeral when my brother and I were supposedly cleaning up the house. He had been mopping while I did the dishes. After my brother finished up, he left to grab something from the bathroom. I could have sworn that I saw something or a figure of someone move from the corner of my right eye. The strange thing was that it happened right where my grandfather usually sits to eat his meals. What made it even eerier was the fact that when I turned to look around, there were muddy footprints around our dinner table which could not have been possible because no one had been in the kitchen except my brother and I and neither one of us could have made those footprints. Though my brother did not see the flicker of movement, he was stumped when he saw the footprints. To this day we still have no explanantion of who’s footprints those were or who had come into the kitchen unnoticed. Although my experience might differ from an amputee and his/her phantom limb, I would say that they are similiar in the fact that mine probably only existed in my mind as well. I think it was because I missed him so much that I was willing to take anything as a sign that he was doing ok. I don’t know what it was that I thought I saw but I assume it must be grandpa, there is no other way to explain because no one was around.

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