they had ever told anyone else about it. They expressed sincere relief not only at the opportunity to share this with somebody else, but also at learning that they were not going to be looked upon as eccentric or even deranged for talking about such intimate and unusual psychic happenings. I was also greatly impressed by the number of respondents who prefaced their story with the observation that they had not previously held strong convictions about an afterlife. In other words, it seems that it was an unusual experience that awakened belief in them, rather than the other way around. Greeley’s research has uncovered the same phenomenon. Closely related to this was the way in which the psychic event, in most instances, came unexpectedly as to place and time, as well as content. There were certain similarities, on the one hand, but there was a striking range of variables on the other. To tell the truth, I was surprised by the originality or creativity involved in whatever it is that is going on at such times. As you will see, people report a wide variety of visual and auditory experiences. At times, a fragrance is the vehicle; often electrical disturbances seem to occur with no explanation.
One final word about the methodology. The content of the letters described several stages. The process was admittedly a subjective one. While nearly every letter was interesting, some were obviously more interesting than others. All I can say is that, using whatever critical powers I have, I gradually sifted them down to a final score or so. The overriding criterion was believability: Does this account have about it the ring of authenticity and of truth-telling? This is what Colin Wilson refers to as the “boggle threshold”—how far do we feel or intuit we can trust the person concerned? The credibility of any witness, whether in a court of law or elsewhere, has much to do with how sane and balanced they seem in other ways. None of this, of course, makes any prejudgment about the status of such reports as hard evidence of a life to come. More on that later.
• M.B. is a widow whose husband died in 1984. They were “always very happy together” and his death has left a great void. She writes: “I have had the feeling many times that my husband was there in the room with me, but it is one particular experience that I wish to tell you about. I had stretched out on the chesterfield for a nap before watching a program due to come on TV in an hour. I fell sound asleep but soon the presence of someone standing beside me caused me to wake up. I knew it was Jack, my husband. There he was. He bent over and offered me a bottle of beer. I remember thinking ‘Oh yes, he’s taken the cap off and he wants to pour it into two glasses for us’ (we had always done this and really consumed very little; in fact, I haven’t bought any since I’ve been alone). I reached out to touch him but, in a flash, he was gone! But I actually saw him. And I had a warm feeling for days after. I know it must have been an apparition—but it was the most realistic one I have ever known. I speak to him and feel he guides me in many things.”
• F.P.’s father who died at the age of ninety-six remained completely lucid and alert to the very end. She had visited him the day before, a Sunday, and they had talked about Christmas plans and the new house his son had bought. He wanted to see it “when the weather gets better.” Out of the blue, the old man asked her: “What do you know about double vision?” When she asked if he had some problem with his eyes, he said: “Not really, but this morning when I came into my room there was a woman sitting on my bed.” She asked him whether he knew the woman (there were no women in the wing of the seniors’ home where he lived) and he answered that she had had her back to the doorway. He turned to leave the room and, glancing back as he did so, noticed the woman “was gone.” F.P. felt intuitively that it had been the spirit-form “of my mother who died long ago.” When she went home, she told her husband she had a strange feeling her father’s death was not too far away. Although her father seemed normal for the rest of the day, after he went to bed that night his heart began to fail and he was rushed to the hospital for oxygen. A few hours later, he died. His daughter comments: “While his death came as a surprise, since he was normal when I left him, it wasn’t the shock it might have been because of what he told me he had seen. I can’t explain it, but I accept what happened as a real event.”
• S. J. writes: “One day I received a call and was told that my beloved grandmother, who was in the final stages of ALS, was near death. Earlier that day, I was told she had spoken about ‘going home’ repeatedly, an expression that I found unsettling as she had never used it before. She had turned against God and did not spend much time worrying about her eternal soul. Yet in the last three weeks of her life, she had spoken at length about seeing her long-dead mother, being surrounded by unknown children and conversing with people who had long since left this world. Late that night, I was alone with her. I climbed into the chair with her, placed her head into the crook of my arm and wrapped myself around her. I wanted to comfort her, to cradle her; I thought that even catatonic as she was, she would feel me there and be comforted by it. I did not close my eyes, and was just being still, when everything changed. My vision blurred and I felt energy all around me, an energy so great it caused a visual disturbance in the room. My entire body felt electrified and, although I had never felt it before, it was so purely alive, so strong, that I knew what I was feeling was a different energy, another form of life, in the room. In my arms, Nan seemed to still and settle and I knew, as well, that in that moment her soul had gone forward and away from me. She died six minutes later—her breath just sputtered, and then stopped. It was so peaceful and natural that it changed every opinion I had ever formed about life and death. I was only left to wonder where she had gone, and wait for the day when that wonderful energy comes for me.”
• M.H. begins her letter with the terse statement “I doubt a lot. I’m not superstitious; I’m fairly intelligent.” She then relates how on Mother’s Day a few years ago she was with her grandmother, holding her hand as the old lady was dying. She says she told her over and over, even though she seemed unconscious, that she would help her with dying and that she would soon see her mother and sister, to be with them as she had longed to be. “She died at about 4 P.M. After about ten minutes, while I was looking at her, not touching, I felt a sudden and very powerful aura in the room. It felt as though my grandmother was all around me, in the air of the room, and as though she was most intensely projecting her personality toward me. I have never felt anyone, ever, as strongly as then. It was one of the happiest moments of my life. I have tried to analyze it, tried to be objective, but those few minutes were so incredible, so very happy, and the world all around was brilliant, jubilant, everything in super-Technicolor. I can’t begin to explain how powerful it was.”
• J.D. was devastated at losing her father a few years ago. She writes: “He had a treasured pocket watch that, after he died, I kept on a shelf near where I watch TV. I wound it carefully each night and still do. Several times while I was looking through our album of his pictures or reading his letters from the past and feeling very sad, I would become aware that the watch was ticking more loudly than usual. These spells of enhanced ticking went on for about five months and I wavered between thinking my father was present and thinking something was wrong mechanically with the watch. It then stopped. This past Father’s Day, I was relaxing in the TV room, involved in a program. The watch began to tick loudly. Without thinking, I said: ‘Oh, are you here? Then please show me—flick the lights on and off or do something with the lights to show me you’re here,’—not my exact words but close. Nothing happened immediately and I really didn’t expect it to. I became interested in my program again. About two minutes later, I was stunned when the lamp that my daughter had given her grandfather flicked on. I sat frozen for a minute. I ran upstairs to tell my husband, then went back downstairs and turned it off. The lamp had a trilight bulb in it. By the time I had sat down, it flicked on again, flicked up to the strongest light level, then flicked off! I feel that something otherworldly happened, but my rational mind has trouble with this. I don’t know how it’s possible, but this light had never done this before or since. I have only told my family and a close friend about this since they know I’m not given to imaginings.”
• A.G. lost his wife five years ago. The day after her sudden death, he was alone in the house thinking how glad he was that her will, which they had often discussed, had been finally drawn up only a couple of days before she died. “I spoke her name and said I had fulfilled all her wishes. The room was suddenly filled with her perfume and looking up
