Could A Dead Man's Handprint On A Mirror Indicate Life After Death?

Janis Heaphy Durham was a sceptic, who never thought that there could be life after death, according to cbsnews.

Back in 1999, she was happily married to Max Besler in California. She was publisher of the Sacramento Bee, which won a couple of Pulitzer Prizes. He was not only a political consultant, but a loved stepfather to her son, Tanner.

"He was compassionate and empathetic and my lover and my best friend," she said.

But in 2003, he was diagnosed with terminal cancer. "The most painful part was just watching him suffer" -- and feeling helpless, she said.

In May 2004, just before he turned 56, he died. But then things in her home began to get weird: Lights in her Sacramento home would flicker and clocks would stop at the moment Max died.

In the next death anniversary, though, she saw a jaw-dropping scene in her bathroom.

"I looked up at the mirror and I saw a handprint," she told Smith. "A perfectly-formed, powdery handprint. Large, on the mirror. It was the right hand."

At first she thought her son Tanner had played a prank, but then she saw that the hands were big.

"That hand looked so consistent, so similar to Max's," she said. "So I did have the wherewithal to photograph it. I wish I had done more. I wish I would have thought to take a sample. But I just didn't even think of it. I thought, 'I do need to photograph it, however.'"

Today, she is convinced that Max visited her. "I have faith in things that I can't see, but you know there are millions of people out there that are going to say, 'Come on! Exactly," said Durham. "And I was one of them, so I really understand it."

In 2008 she married again, yet the old memories kept coming back. There was one footprint on a chair at home, while carpets moved across the floor.

On the second anniversary of Max's death, there were further powdery images on the mirror, while the year following that had a third handprint.

Read an extract from her book, "The Hand on the Mirror: A True Story of Life Beyond Death" by Janis Heaphy Durham (Grand Central Publishing) here.