[Insert "dead letter department" joke here.]
Last June, a British man named Jack Froese suddenly died at the age of 32 of a heart arrhythmia. Six months later in November, the BBC reports that several of Froese's close friends and loved ones received emails which seemed to come from his account. More mysteriously, several of the emails had content that Froese had only discussed with the recipients in the days and hours right before his death.
For example, shortly before Froese's death, he and his childhood friend Tim Hart had occasion to venture into Hart's attic. Froese teased Hart about the messy state of the attic. A few days later, Froese was dead.
In November, Hart received an email from Froese's account with a subject of "I'm watching" which said "Did you hear me? I'm at your house. Clean your f***ing attic!!!"
It's a trivial matter to forge the headers on an email to make it appear as though it came from a different account. As a former email server admin, I can tell you three ways to do it off the top of my head, none of which would take more than about thirty seconds to accomplish. And then there's always the chance that someone managed to hack into Froese's email account and actually send the emails from his account.
To date, the email headers have not been analyzed professionally. Several people responded to their emails from Froese, but no replies have been reported.
There are also several services which will send emails out on your behalf after your death. These services work on the principle of the "Dead Man's Switch." If they don't hear from you for a certain amount of time, they assume you are dead, and act accordingly. Could Froese have popularized one of these services? Would he have kept his email messages that up-to-date and specific, and included a six-month delay?
My question would be whether Froese and Hart had discussed the state of Hart's attic over email. Or if Froese might have emailed someone else about Hart's attic. If this was the case, someone who broke into Froese's email account would have been able to comb through, find the information, and then send the seemingly-impossible email.
Then again, many people believe that the dead communicate with us primarily through electricity. And what is more electric, more easily manipulated than the 1s and 0s which make up the internet? Perhaps the dead have found a modern way to communicate with us directly, after all.