We get some unexplainable bumps and bangs around our house since my mother in law died. We were sat watching TV last week when a picture her mother had painted fell off the wall, the screw was still there in the wall and the string on the back of the picture was still intact, the picture has been hanging there for about 18 months 
Nick, its good to hear your daughter is OK 
I do not wish to scare you, but I believe Pete that what you are experiencing indicates the spirit of the deceased, your mother-in-law, has not fully departed this world for the next. This, I believe, is different to when people first depart this life and move on and pictures suddenly bounce of walls as I described in my earlier comment, or the deceased has made a final departing good bye to let you know all is ok, as I have known to happen with close relatives and in particular my mother and mother-in-law.
The situation Nick faced is one of those incidents involving very much the living, when some form of psychic energy is emitted due to high emotion or drama that is transmitted across often vast (to human perspective) distance. It is more often in the form of "knowing something is wrong" with someone a long way off, as many women especially seem to experience, as I have done, with just knowing your daughter /son / mother / husband etc has a problem. Another example of this is knowing somehow the telephone is about to ring with 'a problem' just before it does. That has happened numerous times for me!
