I'm A Celebrity's Reverend Richard Coles convinced late husband is haunting him after major sign

The former Strictly star said that he could 'smell cigarette smoke' after his husband David's death - and he believes it was a sign from beyond the grave

I'm A Celebrity... Get Me Out Of Here! star Reverend Richard Coles has revealed that he's been haunted by his late husband David after his passing.

He shared that the scent of cigarette smoke, particularly at the bottom of the stairs where it used to drive him mad when David was alive, is a sign from the afterlife. Richard, aged 62, confessed: "David haunts me too, even now... I sometimes smell cigarette smoke, usually at the bottom of the stairs, which used to enrage me when he was living."

"It is a jarring feeling to be both annoyed that he has broken the rules and relieved that he is still present in these spectral fumes." The duo tied the knot in 2010, but tragically, David, who served as a clergyman and an ex-A&E nurse, passed away at the age of 43 due to alcoholic liver disease just before Christmas in 2019.

This heartbreak led Richard, formerly of the pop group Communards, to write his recent book 'The Madness of Grief: A Memoir of Love and Loss', reports the Daily Star. He reflected: "The dead person persists most durably at the edge of things, in the unconscious habits which have accommodated them, impervious to the fact of their death."

"I sometimes think this is what ghosts are, flickers across the edge of sense anticipating the presence of the absent one. The first time it happened to me I was in the sitting room and looked to my left. I had draped a throw he liked to wear when he was cold over the post at the bottom of the banisters, and it hung there, rather like it did on him when he was bony and pale.

"My eye read it as him, and I saw him, with my mind's eye, standing on the bottom step at the beginning of his laborious ascent." Rev Coles described the vivid experience, saying: "I say my mind's eye, it was as real as reality and my heart skipped before my mind reasserted the knowledge of his death."

In another part of his book, the former Strictly contestant and BBC radio host mentioned that he senses David's "presence" in his garden, which was David's "domain". He explained that this feeling persists, as the plants David had planted continue to bloom, bringing him a sense of connection to his late partner.

Rev Coles likened it to receiving a daily bouquet of flowers and a technical challenge from David, allowing him to feel his presence without relying on memories. This is not Rev Coles' first experience with the paranormal, as he has previously spoken about feeling a ghostly presence in his parish as the vicar of Finedon, Northants, where he claimed to have encountered a "grey lady and a black lady".

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