Is There An Afterlife?: A Comprehensive Overview of the Evidence

626 Pages·2005·2.48 MB·English

by  David Fontana

IS THERE AN
AFTERLIFE?
David Fontana
In memory of three of my dearest friends who
have made the transition we call death.
Ralph Noyes
Arthur Ellison
Montague Keen
Distinguished researchers into life's mysteries
and noblest of spirits.
Copyright
Copyright © 2005 O Books
Reprinted 2006
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Text: © 2004 David Fontana
Text set in Weiss by Andrew Milne Design, UK
Cover design: Krave Ltd, London

ISBN: 1 903816 90 4
All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations
in critical articles or reviews, no part of this
book maybe reproduced in any manner without
prior written permission from the publishers.
The rights of David Fontana as author have been asserted in accordance with the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Printed by Maple-Vail Ltd, USA
CONTENTS
Foreword 4
Introduction 6
Chapter 1 Survival of Death: Questions and Beliefs 10
Chapter 2 Evidence from Modern Parapsychology 16
Chapter 3 Evidence from Apparitions 25
Chapter 4 Hauntings 55
Chapter 5 Mediumship: History and Background 91
Chapter 6 Mental Mediumship 115
Chapter 7 Three Outstanding Mental Mediums 121
Chapter 8 Drop-in Communicators and the Cross-Correspondences 157
Chapter 9 Proxy Cases 190
Chapter 10 Are Statements by Mediums Too General
and Too Trivial? 219
Chapter 11 Physical Mediumship: Independent Voice Phenomena 230
Chapter 12 Physical Mediumship: Materializations and
Other Phenomena 244
Chapter 13 Physical Mediumship: More Recent Examples
and the Question of Fraud 295
Chapter 14 Instrumental Transcommunication 352
Chapter 15 Near-Death Experiences 382
Chapter 16 Out-of-the-Body Experiences 406
Chapter 17 Reincarnation 426
Chapter 18 The Nature of an Afterlife 443
Conclusion 468
References 470
FOREWORD
It is now more than a century since serious research into ostensible paranormal
phenomena began. Psychical research has been conducted in many countries
throughout the world attracting the attention of some of the most famous
scientists, renowned for their important work in disciplines such as psychology,
physics, astronomy, biology, to name only a few.
It has also engaged the efforts and allegiance of respected physicians,
philosophers and statesmen. Many have been members of the Society for
Psychical Research or the American Society for Psychical Research. It is a
remarkable fact, for example, that in the first century of the S.P.R.'s existence,
among the fifty-one Presidents of the Society there were nineteen Professors, ten
Fellows of the Royal Society, five Fellows of the British Academy, four holders
of the Order of Merit, and one Nobel prize-winner.
In their studies of the field, often conducted for decades of years, most of them
accepted that a wealth of evidence has been collected leading them to the
conclusion that a wide variety of different kinds of paranormal phenomena
occur. Many concluded that unless one accepts an explanation involving super-
telepathy, clairvoyance and precognition (the so called super-ESP theory, never
ever demonstrated in a Para psychological laboratory), the possibility that some
human beings survive death, retaining their essential personalities, memories,
characteristics, skills and concern for those they have left behind, has to be taken
very seriously indeed.
And yet more than a century of such evidence is still ignored by the majority of
scientists and of course the materialist reductionist. With respect to scientists it
might be thought that they have carefully examined the evidence and considered
it to be inadequate or faulty. But that is not so. The simple answer is that they
have no track record in psychical research, never having studied the evidence or
experimented in the subject. At best they may have seen some newspaper or
magazine article or some slanted TV programme. With respect to the materialist
sceptic who maintains vociferously that no paranormal phenomenon has ever
been proven to occur, he or she is equally ignorant of the evidence or so Flat
Earth minded that no amount of hard evidence would ever change his or her
mind.
For these reasons and more, Professor David Fonanta's new book is of great
importance. In it he displays an almost encyclopaedic knowledge of the vast
field of psychical research and gives a careful and balanced account not only of
past investigations, but also of modern significant studies being carried out. The
bibliography itself is of great value. His own significant contributions to that
subject in the study of mediumship, both mental and physical, poltergeists and
the Electronic Voice Phenomenon are also described.
I have no doubt that Professor Fontana's book will become a modern classic,
allowing anyone coming fresh to the subject and of open mind to realise why
psychical research is of such importance, providing perhaps the best road to our
understanding of what a human being is. It gives hope of extending our
knowledge of human personality and it shows why many psychical researchers
over the past century have taken very seriously indeed the possibility that
survival of that inescapable appointment we call death takes place.
Archie E. Roy
Professor Emeritus of Astronomy in Glasgow University, Former President of the
Society for Psychical Research.
INTRODUCTION
The Sure Facts of Life
It is rightly said that birth and death are the two sure facts of life. We know a
great deal about birth, the prelude to independent existence, but death remains
shrouded in mystery. Is death the end of this existence, as many people believe
and as many scientists assume is demonstrated by the facts? Or is death the
transition to another phase of life, with all the challenges and promises that such
a transition may present?
The purpose of this book is to survey the evidence that may help us answer
these questions. Some critics may claim that all such evidence can be dismissed
as fraud, delusion, or wishful thinking. Others may be surprised that a
psychologist should even consider a book on survival, as psychologists are
known to be the most skeptical of all scientists on matters relating to any aspect
of the so-called paranormal. My reply to these critics is that one should not
pronounce on the quality of evidence in any field until one has studied it, and
that far from avoiding the subject psychologists should regard it with particular
interest as psychology is about people, and people want answers to fundamental
questions such as whether or not there is life after death.
Many scientists consider that such questions can never be answered, as they
cannot be subjected to proper scientific test. Others insist that even without
proper test, science has demonstrated that the chances we live after death are
vanishingly small. Science has never found anything resembling a soul or a spirit
in the body, and when the body dies that must therefore be the end of it. Even
those relatively few scientists (known as parapsychologists) who do take a
professional interest in the paranormal prefer for the most part to ignore the issue
of survival, preferring to focus instead on paranormal abilities in the living, such
as telepathy, clairvoyance, and precognition. We will explore the reasons for this
at appropriate points in the book, but among them is the fear that the question of
survival is so closely associated with fraudulent mediumship, spiritualism,
religion, ghost stories, and other doubtful areas that any active interest in the
subject is likely to give parapsychology a bad name (see e.g. Alvarado 2003).