Is There A Life After Death?

Believing in ghosts and spirits is not actually common, contrary to what most films and TV shows portray. Different cultures and religions around the world have their own variation of doctrine, on how spirits leave the body after they die, and continue to live in another realm.

Christians believe in the concept of Heaven, where souls will join their creator, a place without pain and suffering. The Islamic doctrine holds that human existence continues after the death of the human body in the form of spiritual and physical resurrection. Faith in life after death is one of the six fundamental beliefs required of a Muslim to complete his faith.

In Judism it was not until the Pharisees (c. 100 B.C.E.) that the notion of a spiritual life after death developed in any meaningful way. The Pharisees, who were the forerunners of the rabbis, taught that when the Torah spoke of reward for following God's ways, the reward would be forthcoming in an afterlife, Olam Ha-Ba ( world to come), as they called it.

Practitioners of Buddhism and Hinduism believe in Reincarnation, and that souls or spirits travel through different time and transcends different beings all the time.

Still, the line that separates life and death remain blurry for most, especially when many people recount their stories of how ‘ghosts’ reached out to them, one way or another. Many scientist remain skeptical of the existence of ghosts and spirits in the world of the living. What happens when the people of science themselves experience paranormal communication with the ghosts?

Naoki Yasaku, a 57-year old doctor based in Japan, admits that he often sees things even ‘science can’t explain’. His profession allows his proximity to the blurry border between life and death. Despite being a dignified man of science, he believes that the body and soul are two separate beings and that the latter can live, even after the physical body is gone after death’.

How Do Spirits Communicate?

Dead people can still communicate, or at least express their wanting to communicate with the living through a medium.
But according to studies, people can reach out to spirits too, whether intentionally or not. Many psychics offer their services to people who have unfinished business with their loved ones who passed away. Some people even do it on their own.

There is also a phenomenon called “sleep paralysis” when people communicate with the spirits in their lucid sleep. Some regard it as a sleeping disorder, while some believe that it is also a way of spirits reaching out to communicate in our most vulnerable state.

Real Life Encounters

Paranormal researcher John Mimms recalled seven terrifying encounters he had with ghosts who tried to communicate with him and his team. He recalled through his article in The Huffington Post, “Very rarely does anyone ever see anything, but hearing and feeling are both every bit as, if not more, terrifying.”

Mimms shared that hearing spirits trying to communicate with him are more terrifying than seeing them. He recalled one specific instance when his team investigated an abandoned Tuberculosis sanatorium.

“I heard that those incidents occurred at the tuberculosis sanatorium. The building is six stories high, including the basement, and longer than a football field. At the end of one investigation, I and another investigator went to the upper stories to collect our stationary night vision cameras. Everyone remained on the first floor packing away other equipment. When we reached the 5th floor, we made our way to where the cameras were and just before we got there we both froze. There was suddenly a conversation going on around us as if we were surrounded by people. But we were the only ones on the floor. Even though we couldn’t make out what they were saying, we definitely heard human voices.”

If he was dead the night before, who was I talking to this morning? That was the question Nina de Santo had that no one could answer. According to her account, it was a Saturday night and she was about to close her New Jersey hair salon one night when she saw her customer, Michael, standing at her shop’s front door.

Nina narrates how Michael began sharing his problems. His wife decided to file a divorce. He cried, as he told her that he had lost custody of his kids with the divorce.

After Michael calmed down, he stood, ready to go and said, “"Nina, I can't stay long," he said, pausing in the doorway. "I just wanted to stop by and say thank you for everything."

The following day, Nina received a phone call from one of her employees. Michael's body had been found the previous morning, at least nine hours before their touching encounter. They said he had committed suicide.

"It was very bizarre," she told CNN recalling the 2001 encounter. "I went through a period of disbelief. How can you tell someone that you saw this man, solid as ever, walk in and talk to you, but he's dead?"

Are these encounters enough to answer the proverbial question? Concetta Bertoldi, known for being a medium who communicates with the dead, shares what the spirits she has talked to answered:

“What I’ve heard from the souls on the Other Side is that when we die we leave either through our feet or the top of the head. On this side, I’ve heard of the “silver cord” that supposedly attaches us to life here, but no one from over there has ever mentioned this to me. It’s hard to describe exactly how we are moving — it’s a bit like floating, a bit like walking, a bit like flying, it’s a ‘gravitating’ toward the Light. There’s a feeling of anticipation — maybe a little fear, but more anticipation.
Nothing at all is forgotten. In fact, whereas now we can only remember some highlights of our past, over there we remember every single moment and detail. Everything we knew, loved or experienced.

When we die, within seconds of entering the Light we experience a knowing. We get a fast-forward review of our lives and see the whole domino effect of all our actions. We feel everything we made someone else feel — the joy, the hurt. We see and understand the whole domino effect of all our actions and of every interaction we had with anyone. And we know and understand what our purpose was in this lifetime.”