Afterlife encounters are also known as ‘after-death communications or contacts,’ terms used elsewhere on the website. In her excellent 2005 book Afterlife Encounters Dianne Arcangel defines an afterlife encounter as “any sense of being connected to, or in the presence of, a discarnate entity.” She groups them into five categories: 1) personal, which involves deceased relatives, pets, friends, colleagues, neighbors, or anyone familiar to the experiencer; 2) spiritual figures such as God, Jesus, Buddha, angels, and saints; 3) historical or famous figure (such as George Washington, Mother Theresa, and Marilyn Monroe; 4) unknown involving any discarnate entity who is unfamiliar to the experiencer at the time; and 5) objects and nonhuman species such as telephones, computers, animals, and butterflies.
Afterlife encounters, she notes, appear in one of two forms – ghosts or apparitions. Ghosts are connected to a particular place and can be sighted in the same location by different witnesses. They do not display animated personalities, interact with observers, exhibit intentions, appear in vivid colors, or emit radiant energy. According to most investigators of the possibility of survival ghosts are the psychical imprints of people or animals that were left in certain areas while alive. Any sensitive person can pick up the prerecorded images and sounds.
Apparitions are associated with people. Each may be seen in different locations by the same person(s). Most radiate personality, energy, and color. Some apparitions engage in conversation or touching. All, Arcangel says, occur for one basic reason, and that is growth. They offer growth for everyone involved. To do this they appear in a form that will most likely be noticed and thought about. Thus, they manifest either directly or indirectly.
Direct encounters with apparitions are often visual in which they appear lifelike, ethereal as cloudlike vapors, or surreal, more real than real. They may be auditory involving such things as a voice, cough, whistle, or other sounds. Sometimes they involve an aroma such as pipe smoke or perfume or the sense of being touched. An afterlife encounter can also involve sensing a definite but unexplainable impression of being in the company of a disembodied personality. Typically a direct afterlife encounter includes a combination of senses.
Indirect encounters occur through a broad range of animate mate and inanimate objects. Wild and domesticated animals such as cats, birds, and butterflies are reported to bring signs to surviving loved ones. Rainbows, feathers, and pennies can present meaningful messages. A diverse range of devices such as answering machines, computers, pagers, baby monitors, cameras, clocks, music boxes, telephones-serve what Arcangel calls bridges between worlds. Instruments have been designed by professionals and hobbyists alike to systematically record possible posthumous contact. These kinds of possible contact are known as electronic voice phenomena and are discussed elsewhere on the website.
Arcangel directed a five -year international survey ( August 1998 – August 2002) that involved 956 people’s experiences with afterlife phenomena. The major objective was to collect data pertaining to the effects, if any, afterlife encounters held for recipients over time. In the first part of the survey they were asked to measure the level of comfort they felt on a scale from 10 ( tremendous comfort) to 0 (no comfort) during, immediately after, one year after, and then a number of years since their encounters occurred. The second part focused on grief. Respondents were asked if their encounters occurred after the death of a loved one, and, if so, to measure their levels of grief prior to, during, immediately after, several days after, one year after, three years after, and then their current level.
Eighty-two percent of respondents rated their levels of comfort between 10 and 8 during their encounters, 81 percent immediately afterward, and 84 percent one year thereafter. Some respondents reported 20- 30; and 40-plus years had elapsed since their experiences, and most rated them on the highest scales as well. Eight percent were not bereaved or were well past mourning at the time of their accounts, and they also rated them favorably. Overall, afterlife encounters provided considerable and persistent comfort for 98 percent of participants. The effects proved so strong that 99 percent welcomed more discarnate experiences in the future.
Arcangel notes that one study’ suggested that the aftereffects of the phenomenon can be similar to the effects of near-death experiences, that is they are -powerful and transformative. “AEs offer the living a spiritual transcendence.”
A small portion of respondents, however, scored their encounters as unfavorable, explaining that their sorrow and longing intensified. Most of them experienced their encounters through mediums, and they seemed to be related a fear of loss of control, that the only possibility of contact was in the hands of a medium.
Afterlife encounters are frequently cited as providing good evidence for life after death. Arcangel notes six criteria by which indicates this. 1. The apparition conveyed information that was unknown by the person who experienced the encounter. 2. The encounter was concurrently experienced by more than one person. 3. The apparition was unknown by the perceiver at the time but was later identified. 4. The apparition reported a current event that was unknown by the witness and later verified. 5. The apparition manipulated a physical object. 6. The apparition exhibited a purpose that did not involve the percipient.
However, skeptics maintain that the first three conditions are not evidence for postmortem existence. They claim that every word that has ever been spoken and every thought that has ever been conceived remains in the universe. Afterlife encounters are the result of us living people tapping into the past. This blanket claim certainly rests on shaky grounds.
Arcangel offers the following account from her survey exemplifying the fourth condition in which the apparition reported a current event that was unknown by the perceiver and was only later proven accurate. John Simon stated that February 13, 1978, his friend burned to death in an arson fire at a hotel in New York City. He felt enormous grief. Some twelve months later a dream encounter Simon saw him. He was smiling and standing next to a headstone. Simon had never seen the stone and didn’t know it had been set. The apparition gestured toward it, and Simon heard his thoughts, “Call my mother in Queens and tell her I love my headstone.” When he woke up, Simon drew a picture of the headstone that included curly-cues, shape, and color. He called his mom and was amazed to hear his friend’s stone was laid the previous day. He immediately called off sick from his job and drove out to the cemetery. Sure enough, his sketch matched the new headstone to a tee.
The fifth criterion for evidence for survival, an apparition manipulating a physical object independent from the witness, Arcangel tells us, has been widely reported in literature. However, some parapsychologists speculate that the perceivers, not the posthumous apparitions, moved the objects by psychokinesis, mind over matter. This claim, known as the super ESP theory, is discussed elsewhere on website.
Arcangel presents several accounts that refute this. One involves Tammi who in 2000 gave birth to a beautiful baby boy. Two years later he accidentally drowned in the backyard swimming pool. A couple of months after the accident Tammi woke one night out of a deep sleep, ripping her necklace from her neck. It was very special to her because it had charms with the birthstones of each of her children and was her lifeline to them. She treasured it so much that she never removed it and had no idea why she ripped it off. She got out of bed and to her dismay saw that she really had.
While the incident made her grieving for her baby a little stronger, she knew that there was nothing she could do about the necklace right then, so she put it on the nightstand next to her bed. The next evening her mom stopped by and went in her room looking for her. She noticed the necklace lying on the nightstand and picked it up. Her mom immediately saw that it was completely broken it in two places and knew Tammi would be upset about it. The following morning they were in her room making plans to go to the cemetery to see the baby’ new headstone. Tammi asked her mom if they could stop and buy a new chain for her charms?” She got up and walked to her necklace lying on the nightstand. As she picked it up, she was amazed to see that it wasn’t broken anymore.
Her mom asked if she was sure it was the same necklace. Tammi was. She hadn’t touched it since putting it on her nightstand. The only other person to touch it was her mother who confirmed it had been broken because she held it in my hand and saw where the chain was broken in two different spots. Tammi knew immediately that her little boy had fixed her necklace. He knew how important it was to her and how sad she was about breaking it. He mended it to make her happy again and to let her know that even though he wasn’t here with her in the physical sense anymore, he was with her in spirit.
The sixth criterion Arcangel offers in which afterlife encounters provide evidence for survival is when the apparitions exhibited a purpose that was extraneous to the perceivers. Linda’s survey account is an example.
In 1961 her fiancé Wayne was killed in an accident at the age of 20. Thirty-five years later, in 1996, she underwent chemotherapy and several surgeries for cancer. During one according to the doctors, her heart stopped for three minutes. Although Linda didn’t recall anything medically, she remembered having a wonderful dreamlike experience. She was in a beautiful place and Wayne was there.
Neither of them looked different; they hadn’t changed. Wayne told her to find out the truth about how he died, saying that his military record was not accurate. He gave her names of four men who would know. He said that we wasn’t not dead, only passed on to another level. He’d never left you her. He knew all about her life, and everything that happened to her since 1961.
After her initial encounter, she felt Wayne’s presence again, pushing her to find the true facts about his death. Linda began searching for the people he said were involved. She had met a few of his old buddies, but none of those men he mentioned were among them.
One by one, she located all four. Each, by himself gave her the same details that Wayne had about how he was killed. Linda found his sister, and she requested a copy of his autopsy from his military records. It didn’t include any of the information Wayne and his comrades had given her. Linda reported that she doesn’t hear or see him anymore, but she knows Wayne is with her at times, especially when she faces health problems. His presence has totally taken the fear of death from her.
Skeptics further allege that apparitions are the result of mourners’ wishful thinking, longing, and expectations. However, of the survey participants who experienced postmortem personalities, 82 percent were not longing for anything of that nature. A number of the survey respondents had never experienced an encounter, yet 89 percent did report an intense and extended longing. Arcangel points out, nonmourners also receive discarnate visitations. Furthermore, 30 percent of perceivers do not believe in encounters beforehand. Grief, expectations, desire, longing, or wishful thinking do not necessarily play a role in spontaneous accounts. It seems evident, she says, that rather than experiencing the greatest portion of encounters, the bereaved simply recall and cherish them.
Arcangel designed a second study to gather data on the elapsed time between the death of an individual and his or her appearance as an apparition in an afterlife encounter. Almost 1,200 people from 19 countries responded to her website survey. Whereas 53 percent occurred between the moment of death and the first anniversary, 47 percent manifested well beyond the one-year point. In fact, participants reported some 20, 30, 40, and even 50 years had lapsed. Visits from the Great Beyond, Arcangel says, “escape the grasp of time – they occur when perceivers need them most.”
Cynics are so unyielding, she says, because of fear. In many cultures death, dying, and the afterlife have been taboo topics, and some people still recoil at the thought of “glimpsing behind the door.” Charlatans and the ill-informed create ate further blocks that prevent many from” peeking through the portal.”
While skeptics are the catalysts behind many discoveries for which we can be grateful, those who never venture from their self-centered rigidity fail to see how they affect people outside their world. Absolutely no one, Arcangel emphasizes, has the right to take another person’s experience from them. The only hope some mourners have left is the remembrance of experiencing their dearly departed. To obliterate that in any way is unwarranted. Furthermore, skeptical insistence is baseless because the truth is that no one can say unequivocally whether or not we continue beyond physical death. However, more evidence leans toward the affirmative.
Those individuals experiencing afterlife encounters are not the ill-informed, superstitious, and less educated. Arcangel describes a 1991 extensive systematic study of “unusual events” conducted for the Bigelow Holding Company. The survey involved a general sample of Americans and was administered face to face by poll takers to 5,947 participants. Pollsters categorized participants according to their similarities and discovered that those making up the “Influential Americans” group reported the greatest number of afterlife encounters, 16 percent. This group were trendsetters, socially active, college graduates, middle-aged, wealthier than the norm, and married with children.
Discarnate figures frequently play a role in major transitions. In the case of physical death they help the dying to disengage from this world and enter the next. Those who loved us most, whom we loved in return, greet us with welcoming arms. But apparitions we would never expect can appear first before they show up.
Terminally ill patients often experience pre-death encounters as their departure time grows near, and hospice staff take note and increase the frequency of their visits. While these pre-death encounters facilitate the dying as they make their transition to the other world, life-continuing visions help the living continue in this one. During periods of transition they offer comfort, love, guidance, and encouragement. Sometimes they are congratulatory, occurring during weddings, baptisms, and other celebrations. Sometimes they bring meaningful support during rites of passage, In considering the most likely candidates for receiving visitations, we need remember that the phenomenon is not totally dependent on perceivers. The highway between worlds runs both ways.
At the heart of afterlife encounters, Arcangel emphasizes, lies one primary purpose, and that is growth. As catalysts, apparitions manifest for the growth of everyone involved.