Do you believe in ghosts?

Hello everyone...:o)
I thought you might like to see a painting I did a few months ago for my MIL...
And hear about the strange reason for painting it in the first place...(not that I'm being all dramatic ;o) )

Last year my husband (The Troll) 's grandmother 'Cissy' who died in 1994 kept 'visiting' me...not in the ghostly sense...but in the 'keeps-popping-into-your-head' sense...she just would not leave, she was there all of the time...I couldn't stop thinking about her...
Now I never knew Cissy very well, we only met a few times but she was a lovely lady, with so much life in her and a wonderful past to share if anyone wanted to hear...and The Troll was very close to her and spent all of his holidays and weekends at her home when he was young...
We were the last people who saw her alive, which has not gone down well with the MIL :o(
We visited Cissy and Charlie, her husband, a couple of days before she died unexpectedly and I had a feeling when she looked at us driving away that she was going to die...she seemed strange...
MIL (Lee) says that if I had told her that I thought her mother was going to die she would have rushed down to Gloucester (yes the home of Dr Foster ) to be with her...which says a lot for my 'premonitions' really, but I felt bad telling her...I don't think she will ever forgive us for being the last ones to see her mother alive...

So...back to the painting...I don't do portraits it's not really my thing...but Cissy just wouldn't go away...it was as though she was telling me to paint her...I have a few photographs of Cissy as an old lady but they weren't right for the painting...I have one very old photo of her as a young woman and this seemed to be the right one...so I started to paint her, not exactly as she was in the photo as she wasn't smiling...but as she is here...
Cissy was by my side as I began...and she stayed with me throughout the painting process...sometimes correcting me by gently pushing me on...then one day...Cissy was gone...just like that...she had left...
The Troll was away while I painted his Grandmother so it was a surprise for him to see her...I'm not really sure how he felt about seeing her after so long but I think he liked her...
If it had been left to me, I would have refined the picture more and corrected some mistakes...but when Cissy left me, I thought I should stop painting...so this is how it was then...without my usual fiddling!
I know that Cissy wanted me to create this picture for her daughter Lee (MIL) so I wrote a letter to her explaining why it was created and that Cissy wanted her to have it and that I had no idea why...and also that Cissy seemed happy...then The Troll took the painting when he visited the family (on a detour from a work trip) and gave it to his mum...I just hoped that the whole thing didn't upset her or drag nasty things into the present for her!
She wrote back to say that she had been visiting a 'Spiritualist Church' locally and had been trying to contact Cissy for a long time...with some slight success...and that she felt her mother had come (through me) to tell her the answer to something she had been worried about (I don't know what)...and that it was a lovely spiritual gift and she was very happy with it...
Which was a relief! :o)
So...that's the story behind my 'Spirit Painting'...I'm not sure if I enjoyed the experience but I do wonder if anyone else will 'come through the veil' and ask for a portrait...I wouldn't mind doing Marc Bolan...but that's another story...;o)
Bye for now...back to the sick room for me...