The spirit world is full of lonely souls.

In A wanderer in the spirit lands,* spirit author, Franchezzo, tells that the spirit world is full of lonely souls, all eager to return and show that they still live, still think of those whom they have left, still feel an interest in their struggles, and are as ready, and often more able to advise and help than when they were on earth, were they not shutout by the barriers of the flesh. 

He explains that he has seen many spirits hanging about the earth plane when they might have gone on to some bright sphere were it not for their affection for some beloved ones left to struggle with the trials of earth, and grieving in deepest sorrow for their death.  These spirits hang about them, hoping for some chance, which will make the living soul conscious of their presence and constant love.

Could these, says Franchezzo, but communicate, as friends do on earth when one has to go to a distant country and leave the other behind, there would not be such hopelessness of sorrow. 

Franchezzo has known a mother to follow her son for years, striving in vain to impress him with the sense of her presence that she might warn and save him from his path of sin. 

He has seen spirits in such sorrow, such despair, trying in vain to win one conscious look, one single thought, to show that their presence was felt and understood (Franchezzo has seen them in their despair cast themselves down before the individual, and seek to hold a hand, dress; anything). 

There is no despair of earth, great as it often is, equal to the despair a spirit feels when he realises the barrier, which death has placed between him and the world of living souls. 

*A. Farnese, A wanderer in the spirit lands by Franchezzo (Spirit), London, W. J. Sinkins, 1896