Perhaps a deceased relative in the spirit world is trying to tell them something. It's an interesting thought, and the following tale shows this.

In April, Mr D from Hebburn went shopping in Jarrow with his wife.

In Mrs D's bag was a zipped pocket in which she kept her house keys.

Just as they got back to the car, she opened the pocket to remove the keys, ready for use when they got home.

But, to Mrs D's surprise, the keys weren't there. Which puzzled her as she was sure they had been there earlier, and she knew that she hadn't taken them out.

Nevertheless, they retraced their steps and were astonished to find them on top of a till in the last shop they had visited opposite Jarrow bus station.

Of course, it would be easy to suggest that Mrs D must have removed the keys accidentally and left them there, but several days later a series of other strange incidents – all involving keys – took place and made the couple wonder.

On one occasion Mr D deactivated the house alarm with a special key, only to find the key was missing two hours later. Days after, the key was found behind a sofa.

By this time, Mr D was beginning to wonder whether something was going on.

Mr D told me he had been thinking about moving house. He suspected that a deceased relative may not have been happy about this, and may have been trying to tell him so by giving him coded messages involving keys.

It's not impossible, of course. Our loved ones do not stop caring for us when they pass over, and will often impart their feelings to us in strange ways. The question is, how do we tell?

My advice to Mr D was to trust his instinct. If he felt he was being given a message, and the message was related to his potential house move, then he may do well to consider the possibility seriously.

A reader from Hexham once told me he placed his car keys on a coffee table in the hall and was astonished to find them missing minutes later.

He searched the house, but couldn't find them. To his amazement they reappeared exactly where he'd left them three hours later.

The next day he was told by a colleague that a nasty car crash had occurred exactly where he would have been if he'd left the house on time.

"I can't prove I would have been in that car crash", he told me, "but I believe that I would have been."

Of course, we shouldn't live our lives purely on the basis of what we think our deceased loved ones may be thinking. In the final analysis we have to do what we think is right.

Our lives are a mixture of failures and successes, and we learn valuable lessons from both.

No one can tell Mr D whether or not he should move house. That is for his family and himself to decide.

However, the thought that the spirits of the deceased are looking after us can be comforting indeed.

* For more supernatural stories and interviews with some of TV's best known paranormal celebrities visit Mike's Bizarre website here.