Ghosts and the Light

Since I have been attending meetings of the International Association for Near-Death Studies in Seattle, Portland, and Salem, Oregon, I have been focused primarily on the composite vision of the big picture that NDE accounts provide.

I like imagining what the tunnel must be like and how it feels to race into the light. In recent weeks, especially after reading Kenneth Ring’s Lessons from the Light, I have burned many creative calories pondering what the life review must be like.

I have also longed to see what spirits see. Did you know that when we are spirits, we see in 360 degrees? Our vision has increased at such a rate that it’s as if we have both microscopes and telescopes for eyes. Our hearing is supposed to amplify exponentially, too.

I look forward to knowing anything I want to know just by asking the question. All those mysteries that have dogged us humans in physical space are walking around in plain telepathic sight in the spirit world.

To me, the near-death experience opens a window to the big picture, the larger-than-this-life reality that is our destiny. It is a liberating vision of a reality much greater than the one proffered by most of our media messengers. Whenever I watch the news now, I have a much clearer vision of all the assumptions being made about life and death—assumptions that near-death experiencers insist are not true!

Long before near-death experiences had become a brand-name phenomenon, there was a time in my life when I looked to psychics for this kind of insight. I was initially intrigued by how psychics on the radio appeared to have unusual insight into people’s lives and great stories to tell about the big picture world of reincarnation and life beyond earth.

However, before too long I found that psychic impressions did not add up to a reliable world view. For example, of all the psychics who gave me readings, not one of them ever mentioned a similar past life. Logic would say that if I had ten readings from ten different psychics, there should be some agreement about past lives. One or two should duplicate or confirm a previous existence, especially the last one, but that never happened.

Meanwhile, predictions from psychics often did not come true. Quite quickly I began hearing that free will can change any prediction. That may well be true. However, that’s also carte blanche for a psychic to say anything s/he wants, and then use the free will argument as a prediction failure defense.

The biggest name psychic in my life so far has been Sylvia Browne. I knew her in the 80s before her best-seller days. She was only charging $300 for a reading then. By contrast, that was about my rent. (The last I heard she charged $700.) I managed to find myself in situations in public places where I could ask her questions; I never got great answers. The best one was when she promised that we would write best sellers together. I’ll write up that story someday.

While psychics did not amaze me with accuracy, near-death experiencers intrigued me with accounts of their out-of-body adventures. When linked up into a commonly shared vision, these puzzle pieces added up to an exciting travel guide to other dimensions—a preview of coming attractions.

In view of all this, I have never been especially intrigued by ghost stories. I never heard one that was inspiring. In the media, ghost stories are almost always cloaked in the clichéd trappings of spooky stuff like the Haunted House ride at Disneyland. Ghost stories are usually about how the big bad ghosts stress out the humans they haunt, with very little attention paid to the fate of the poor ghost.

Occasionally a movie like The Sixth Sense will come along and present a more compassionate view of the plight of earthbound dead people. In that film, we see some people with their fatal injuries still showing as they wander around in a fog of confusion about what happened to them.

I didn’t much consider real-life ghosts until last Sunday when I met a husband and wife pair of psychic investigators, Todd and Martina. I was part of a group of curious individuals who met at a private residence where ghost activity has been a (para)normal part of the owners’ lives. They live in a farmhouse that’s over 100 years old and has as part of its history warfare between white settlers and native Americans, or in this case, native Oregonians.

Before I met Todd and Martina, my jaded attitude was showing through. I could not understand why anybody would be fascinated with ghosts when there is such a richer collection of experiences to study among NDErs. After all, ghosts are earthbound people. Many are tortured souls. Many are people who, if living in this plane, you wouldn’t want to hang out with. I don’t especially like to go through sections of cities where the vibes feel creepy; why would I want to seek out the ghost version of people like that.

Well, I learned differently. Todd and Martina were fascinating people with great big hearts and delicious senses of humor. Todd has been an anthropologist for 18 years. He brings his scientific background to paranormal research. His wife Martina is a psychic sensitive with training in parapsychology. They introduced me to some of the techniques of using technical equipment to bridge the gap between what Martina perceives intuitively and what can be proven scientifically.

I am delighted that I met them and I hope in the future to be able to share more insights. I took back from that meeting that “ghost hunting” is one more way to gather evidence that you don’t need a flesh body to exist. Something exists, and it appears to respond just like we here do. One technique they use is to carry a tape recorder. They ask questions. While you can’t physically hear an answer, when you play back the tape, you sometimes can. (I have not asked why this is so—why a tape recorder or a video recorder can “hear” what we can’t hear and then convert it into something we can hear.) This is called EVP for electronic voice phenomenon.

I was also very impressed by the empathy and concern Todd and Martina showed for the entities they’re attempting to communicate with. I never got the feeling that the “ghost” was a commodity to be used for research. Rather, I got the feeling that they both cared about these fleshless people and hoped to assist them on their journey towards the light. I also got the same feeling from the people whose residence we visited. They care very deeply about the welfare of the invisible inhabitants of their house.

Thinking of it from the point of view of the fleshless entities, it’s still their house! And they’re still living, albeit in a different form. Imagine how you would feel if you died in your house—but to your perception didn’t really die—and then a bunch of strangers barged in and took over as if you didn't exist. Material reality doesn’t account for that situation; if you lose your body you lose everything.