CAN THE DEAD BE BROUGHT BACK?

Nearly four decades of "in the trenches" research has led me far away from the two-dimensional, 19th century vision that most people cling to when it comes to the paranormal. For example, I don't believe that ghosts are spirits of the dead. I don't believe in death at all.

When I deal with the paranormal, and ghosts in particular, I experience a vast "multiverse" in which we (bodies and all) function on multiple levels in multiple, parallel lives. In my experience, ghosts are living beings functioning in close parallel worlds that are just as physical as ours. People who are "dead" here are still living and breathing "there." That's true even if "there" is a different time, a different place or a different way of life.

This begs the question: If we can see, hear, touch, taste or feel across these "world boundaries" during paranormal experiences, can we reach in, literally grab our "departed" loved ones, and bring them back to our own conscious world?

On two occasions in the late 1970s, when my cases were nudging me closer and closer to multiverse thinking, I encountered two shamans of two different traditions in two different parts of the world. Both said that they had known other shamans, many years before, who had literally gone into "the other world" and brought back people who had died -- bodies and all. According to these two men, who were very reluctant to talk about this, the shamans had performed these deeds against their better judgment and only after being harassed, then highly paid, by the grieving families. Allegedly, one shaman, in Australia, had brought back a young boy nearly a year after his death.

The two men I spoke with insisted that these events involved neither reincarnation nor resurrection. The two subjects were literally dragged out of other worlds where they had never died. Fascinatingly, both men also said that the shamans who did it soon regretted it.

The young boy who was brought back knew his parents but not some of his siblings or neighbors, I was told. According to the story, he never again "fit" into the community and ended up insane. The other returner, a dead man in his 20s, the father of a family, seemed confused and frightened, then tried to fit in, later running off into the forest, never to return. The man who told me this story, a boy at the time of the incident, actually claimed to have seen this returner.

Granted, these are stories I heard second-hand nearly 30 years ago. Granted, shamans aren't necessarily more honest than other people. Granted, their stories, as with those in any religion, gather "baggage" over the years. But the very nature of these tales, as told to me, bespoke not campfire stories but solid and recent memories. And they clearly communicated the message that there are some multiverse realities that are so for a reason, and that we shouldn't "mess" with them.

Given what appears to be the nature of the multiverse, there is no reason whatsoever to believe that "returns" such as these are impossible. People disappear into thin air relatively often, sometimes in front of witnesses. Where -- or when -- do they go? All those "spirit guides" or guardians we hear tell of and sometimes feel ourselves -- could some of them be shamans from parallel worlds, trying to reach us?

Similarly, mysterious people appear out of thin air from time to time, not knowing where they are. On a few occasions, they have carried passports and money from countries that never existed, spoken no known language and/or worn clothes of no known fabric.

In the multiverse, all possibilities exist. ALL possibilities. Maybe we should stop asking "why?" and start saying "why not?"

This site was last updated 07/01/09