Emilia Clarke's Dream as Her Father Passed: A Butterfly

When Emilia Clarke got the call that her father was dying, she was 10 hours from home with no way to contact her family.

The Game of Thrones star was filming in Kentucky in July 2016 when her father, theatre sound engineer Peter "Rick" Clarke, took a sudden turn after battling cancer complications. She had already flown home once to sit with him in a coma for three days before returning to finish the film.

Now, racing back on a plane without Wi-Fi, Clarke's mother had texted during her New York layover saying her father was asking her to hurry. Sitting helpless at 30,000 feet, she began imagining what could slip into a hospital unnoticed to be with him.

A butterfly, she decided. Small enough that no one would notice.

"And so I imagine that I'm flying around the hospital and I'm like making sure that the doctors are going to do a really good job and I'm fluttering around my dad being like, 'I'm coming, I'm coming home,'" she told the How To Fail podcast in May.

She fell asleep running this thought experiment. In her dream, her father's hospital bed appeared next to her airline seat. He turned to her and said, "I just came to say goodbye."

When the plane landed, her mother's text told her not to rush. He had passed at the exact time she was dreaming.

After spending time with his body at the hospital, Clarke returned to the family house with her mother and brother. They opened the door to find butterflies flying around the room.

Sunny's Take

What Clarke experienced is more common than many realize. Research shows that between 30 and 60 percent of people who lose someone report sensing their presence, usually as a feeling rather than a vision or voice.

A 1971 study by Welsh doctor W. Dewi Rees found that nearly half of 293 widows and widowers had similar experiences. He concluded it was a normal part of grieving, not a symptom of illness.

Clarke doesn't analyze it as psychology. When podcast host Elizabeth Day suggested this is where science and spirituality meet, Clarke said her father, who loved discussing black holes, is both. He was cremated, which she sees as him returning to the world.

"He is everywhere," she said. "He's absolutely everywhere." Now, whenever she sees a butterfly, she sees her dad.