Jack Froese died in June 2011. So why did his family begin receiving personalized emails from him five months later?
Jack Froese was the name of a 32 year old man who lived in Dunmore, Pennsylvania. In June 2011, he died unexpectedly of a heart arrythmia. It was an unknown condition that no doctor had yet caught. Froese was a relatively healthy man, if a little overweight, and his sudden death caused a outpouring of grief among his family and friends. Time, of course, heals all wounds and this was no different. Over the next few months, people started coming to terms with his death and settling down into the usual patterns of life. That is, until multiple people began receiving messages from his now-defunct email address.
The first report was by his best friend, Tim Hart. In November 2011, Hart was sitting on his couch surfing his laptop when, to his utter shock, a new email icon popped up with the name... Jack Froese. Upon opening it, he read:
SUBJECT LINE: "Im Watching"
BODY: "Did you hear me? I'm at your house. Clean your fucking attic!!!"
Terrified, Hart searched his entire house to see if someone may be playing a practical joke on him. But there was nobody else around except him. Particularly eerie was the fact this message seemed to be referencing a private conversation he had with Froese just a few days before the latter's death. Hart and Froese had been up in Hart's attic, and Froese joked about how messy it was.
Of course, one man claiming he received an email from beyond the grave doesn't mean much. There are many explanations for it, and this story would have likely slid into obscurity... if another email was not sent a few days later. This time it was to Jimmy McGraw, who was Jack Froese's cousin.
SUBJECT LINE: "Hey Jim"
BODY: "How ya doing? I knew you were gonna break your ankle, tried to warn you. Gotta be careful."
"Tell Rock for me. Great song, huh? Your welcome. Couldn't get through to him. His email didn't work."
It is unclear what the last part of the email was referring to. But the chilling part of the message is that McGraw had broken his ankle two weeks prior to receiving this email... in other words, almost 5 months after Froese was dead.
And that was it. No further emails were sent. Froese's family and friends investigated to see if there was any rational explanation for this, and ultimately they closed the case, deciding that they were just going to accept it as a gift and move on. So how exactly did Froese manage to send emails from beyond the veil? Several theories have been proposed:
A) Someone hacked Froese's account. This seems like the most obvious answer. That someone managed to get into Froese's account and send the emails to him, perhaps in an effort to play a prank or revive his memory somehow. Of particular interest is the fact that Froese's mother gave a rather mysterious response when she was interviewed: "I saw they made some people happy, they upset some people, but I see it as people were still talking about him." It stands to reason that perhaps she - or someone else - had access to his password and decided to fire off a few emails in order to stir up interest in his legacy again. There are a few problems with this theory. The first is that the message about cleaning the attic was a personal discussion between Hart and Froese. Even if we assume Froese had told this story to a third party right before his death, it's beyond bizarre that this person would remember that and wait six months before specifically referencing it in a vague email to Hart. The pattern of these emails did not follow what you might expect from someone trying to intentionally pretend that Froese was a ghost watching his family and friends. There were only two emails, both were vague and referenced personal details that would be unlikely for anyone else to konw, and no further emails were sent to continue the "prank".
B) McGraw and Hart collaborated to prank everyone else. This is certainly a possibility. Both men could have gotten together and tried to pull off a story about getting emails from Froese. But again, this theory has similar holes to the above. There seems to be no secondary motivation. Neither McGraw nor Hart profited from this. Neither of them have even publically discussed the matter since, other than to say they don't want to think about it any more and they are just accepting it for what it is.
C) Froese planned this out. It's not beyond realm of possibility that Froese may have pre-planned these messages. There are third party apps that will send timed messages out to people, and there's no reason why that couldn't trigger after one's death. But this theory has even more holes. Froese did not know he would die; his heart suddenly gave out without warning. He almost certainly had no indication in the days or weeks prior that this would happen. Furthermore, the email to McGraw referenced his ankle breaking, which happened months after Froese's death.
D) Froese truly was communicating from the afterlife. There's not much more to say about this one; if you believe then you believe.
So how did not one, but two of Jack Froese's contacts get personalized and specific emails from him six months after he died? This will likely forever remain a mystery.