From Infidel753:
Once last week we had rain in the morning, and a cool day interrupting the August heat. My mother used to love rainy days, especially in the summer — they reminded her of her native England. When I realized it was raining, I went to the room where I keep her ashes and opened the window, to let her hear the rain. I know full well how irrational that is, yet it felt very natural.
Later, though, this set me thinking about the gods which have beset humanity throughout its history, and where they might have come from.
If it is a common thing to feel an awareness of the “presence” of the recently dead whom we knew well, and an urge to continue the interactions we had with them while they were alive, then this has probably been the case for at least as long as we’ve been fully human, perhaps much longer. Primitive people would very easily interpret this feeling as the real continuing presence of the spirits of the dead, somehow still around in disembodied form and watching the living.