A year after her death, Olivia Newton-John keeps visiting her family as a blue orb

Here’s a bit of handy life advice for everyone out there: Promise to your loved ones that, when you die, you’ll return to visit them as one of those floating orbs that they make such a big deal about on shows about ghost hunting. That’s what Olivia Newton-John apparently did before her death last year, and it really seems like it’s helping her loved ones deal with the loss. And if that sounds sarcastic, it’s not. Grief is hard, and if seeing blue orbs helps you get through it, then good for you.

This all came up in a People profile of Newton-John’s widower, John Easterling, and daughter, Chloe Lattanzi, who both noted that they’ve had a “supernatural year” since Newton-John’s death. Lattanzi says her and her mom would watch “these paranormal shows” together, and she once told her mother that she had to “show up” for her after her death. Apparently, Newton-John then promised that she’d “show up as one of those orb things.” Sure enough, two weeks after Newton-John died, Lattanzi took a picture of her dog and saw it: A little blue orb, the same color as a pendant necklace she was wearing that had belonged to her mother.

Easterling’s story includes less hard evidence, but the details line up. He says he took a trip to Peru recently with Newton-John’s ashes to commemorate what would’ve been their 15th wedding anniversary, and in a photo he took of the spot where the two had gotten engaged, he saw a blue orb. Again: We’re not here to judge anybody. If it helps them, it helps them.

According to a website called Haunted Rooms, one of the first… open-minded websites that came up in a Google search about orbs, these kinds of orbs (or “light balls”) are “generally thought to be the manifestation of energy.” Some aren’t actually “‘ghostly’ in nature,” but are “mere refractions of the light on the lens of a camera” or just a bit of dust, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t real ghost orbs floating around.

This website, which we’re going to assume is an authority on the subject because it’s giving us precisely the information we’re looking for, even notes that there are different colors of orbs that tend to mean different things. White orbs are just kind of neutral, black orbs involve powerful negative emotions (but not necessarily “evil” ones), and green orbs are associated with nature and the soul. But what about blue orbs, like the ones Easterling and Lattanzi have seen? They reflect “the presence of a calming or healing energy or spirit” or could appear when you’re “trying to contact a specific spirit from the afterlife”—all of which lines up with they’re saying!

Take that, cynics! There is magic in the world (if it helps you to believe that there is, especially if you’re grieving and it makes you feel better to think of your loved one still being out there somewhere watching over you, because there’s nothing wrong with that).