Visions after death
I sometimes define fantasy as something that I have been told but that I have never seen myself.
Michael Harner
The nature of visions
The scientific literature has consigned to oblivion some studies that were devoted to reunification with the dead (visions after death).
The first of its kind that I'm sure of is The Meaning of Hallucinations, conducted in 1894. In doing this work, led by Henry Sidgwick, a member of the Society for Psychical Research England, 17,000 people asked this question: “Have you ever had a clear impression of seeing or being touched by a living or nonliving object in your waking state? Have you heard the voices? Moreover, these impressions and sensations were not caused by an external physical cause."
More than 2,000 people answered these questions in the affirmative. When obvious cases of delirium and sleep were identified, 1,684 people remained who actually experienced visions.
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These stories described the dates as rewarding and brief, usually lasting less than a minute. Many of the visions manifested in a mirror-like environment. Below is the case of "Mrs B" recorded in 1885. She discusses her vision of the upper half of a man with a "very pale face, dark hair and mustache":
“One evening, at about 8:30, I went into the living room to grab something from the sideboard, when I turned and saw the same face in the window of the room's ledge in front of the closed shutters. Again, I saw only the upper part of the body, which seemed to be in a slightly bent position. The light in this case came from the dining room and the hall and did not fall directly on the window, but I was able to perfectly see the face and the expression in the eyes … In both cases, I was 8 or 10 feet away."
The people who collected these stories could not explain them. But they had theories. One theory was that a deceased person leaves "something" in a certain place, and whatever that something is, it is able to communicate in some way with the living. According to the second theory, these visions of ghosts are nothing more than hallucinations of the healthy, a bright creation of the mind. Be that as it may, the Society for Psychical Research concluded that there is no clear evidence of the existence of "posthumous actions".
The researchers made a statement that there is no choice but to call these visions hallucinations, because they leave no physical mark.
They did not consider the possibility that Andrew Lang later put forward: some hallucinations are random and empty, he wrote in Dreams and Spirits.
But between them and the dreams of the sleeping people there is a kind of waking hallucinations that some people can cause deliberately. These are the visions when looking (in the mirror)."
Experience of visions
The incidents of visions of ghosts led me to believe that they belong to the field of paranormal phenomena known as "visions." The vision of Christ on the road to Damascus to Saint Paul is one such example. Another example is the voices of angels that Joan of Arc heard. Such phenomena are called spontaneous visions, which means that people who experience them without making a conscious effort. Spontaneous visions of the deceased often occur in a mirror or other reflective surface, sometimes at night against a wall or in the dark outdoors.
One woman told me that she saw the ghost of my grandmother emerge from the mirror at the end of the hall. The ghost walked half the hall towards her, then through the open door into the next room and disappeared. Another woman told me that when she accidentally looked up at the pendants of the candelabra in her dining room, she saw people talking among themselves in one pendant.
These kinds of visions have happened to many people throughout history. Abraham Lincoln, for example, saw himself in the mirror in his home in Springfield, Illinois, in two images: one - he is lying on the couch, the other - he is pale and like a shadow, like a dead or dying person.
It was not the visions of President Lincoln that struck me at all, but the fact that he was eager to talk about him. Talking about such things today would be disastrous for the political career of the American president, but Lincoln spoke freely about his dreams and visions, Anatole France said that his "great-aunt" had in the mirror a vision of Robespierre dying at about the same time, when he was shot in the jaw. On the night of July 27, 1794, she was looking in the mirror and suddenly screamed; "I see him! I see him! How pale he is! Blood flows from his mouth! His teeth and jaw are shattered! Thanks God! The bloodthirsty rascal will no longer drink blood except his own. " Then she burst into tears and fainted.
Sometimes there have been reports of collective visions of the dead in mirrors. Many (documented) cases of this kind are known from paranormal researchers who are very meticulous in their selection of facts.
One such researcher was Sir Ernst Bennett, first secretary of the English Society for Psychical Research. He was intrigued by the inexplicable nature of many paranormal activities, especially those occurring spontaneously. He has written extensively for scientific journals about this and has carefully documented cases of the study of paranormal events.
In his data, there are cases of collective vision, that is, those in which more than one person experiences the vision of the same person at the same time. Below is one such case he studied, in which a mirror-like surface is present. December 3, 1885.
1875, April 5 - My wife's father, Captain Towns, died at his residence in Crankbrook, Rose Bay, near Sydney, N. S. Wells.
About six weeks after his death, my wife went into one of the bedrooms at 9 o'clock. She was accompanied by a young lady, Mrs. Werthon, and when they entered the room - and the gas was on all the time - they were amazed to see the reflection, as it was, on the polished surface of Captain Towns’s wardrobe.
It was barely half of the body: head, shoulders and upper arms; in fact, it was like an ordinary medallion portrait, only of the same size as in life. His face looked haggard and pale as it had been before his death, and he was dressed in the gray flannel jacket in which he usually slept. Surprised and somewhat alarmed by what they saw, they thought at first that a portrait was hanging in the room, and that what they saw was its reflection; but there was no such picture.
As they stared and wondered, my wife's sister, Miss Townes, walked into the room and, before either of them could speak, exclaimed, “Thank God! Do you see dad? One of the maids was at this moment below, she was called and asked if she saw anything, and she replied:
“Ox, miss! Master!". Then they sent for Graham, the old personal servant of Captain Townes, and he also immediately exclaimed: “Lord, save us! Mrs. Lett, this is the captain! " They called the butler, my wife's nanny, and they also said they saw him. In conclusion, Mrs. Townes was sent for, and, seeing the ghost, she approached him with outstretched hands, as if wishing to touch him. And when her hands passed over the wardrobe panel, the image gradually faded and never reappeared, although the room was regularly resided for a long time after that.
Transformed by vision
The communication was signed by “C. E. Lett,” the captain's son-in-law, and was delivered with confirmation from other witnesses.
In this case, Bennett did not become interested in the effect of the vision on the people watching the ghost, but I believe that the effect was quite strong and profound. Many of the people I have worked with said that visions eased their grief or made them free from suffering altogether. The people whom I helped to experience this experience were primarily healing, and the relationship with the dead improved. The experience is neither frightening nor upsetting. I find this fact amazing in light of the fact that films and books teach us all to be afraid of spirits.
Ancient ghost stories tend to be scary, but modern testimonies are different. There is nothing terrifying about them. Mysterious and surprising? - Yes, those who saw ghosts are not at all seized by panic. Typical is the following spontaneous vision, which occurred when the widow, quite by accident, gazed intently at the reflection in the hotel window. It was dark outside, and the glass reflected the diffused, faint light coming from inside the room, creating a clear depth on the shiny surface.
“This happened to me shortly after my husband died in a car accident. It was early morning, I was lying in bed, staring at the window. It was still dark and I could not see anything; the window looked like a black square. I do not remember that something particularly occupied my mind, I just looked at the window.
Suddenly I saw a man running towards me. He was in a bathing suit, his hair damp, as if he were running from the beach. I was thrilled because I recognized my deceased husband! He ran up to me and smiled. I breathed in his scent and I know I would feel his wet hair if I touched it.
“Everything is fine here,” he said with a smile. He was happy, and that made me happy. This incident helped me cope with my grief, because I was greatly concerned about the pain he must have experienced when the car crashed.
The woman got rid of her suffering when she saw that her husband did not suffer after life. Her encounter with the ghost, like so many others, had a positive effect on her because it allowed her to overcome her grief. The planned visions of ghosts are likely to have a greater positive effect.
Raymond Moody