“A few years ago, the city council of Monza, Italy, barred pet owners from keeping goldfish in curved bowls…saying that it is cruel to keep a fish in a bowl with curved sides because, gazing out, the fish would have a distorted view of reality. But how do we know we have the true, undistorted picture of reality?”
—STEPHEN HAWKING
The information in this chapter may make some readers uncomfortable. It may make others angry. Don’t be. Suspend any initial defensive stance. Receive the information and take from it what you will. Who am I to tell you definitively what the “truth” is about such things? Think of this as an opportunity for us to think together about how our vision can be narrowed when we experience or attempt to interpret these sorts of phenomena. Each of us tends to interpret things from our own unique vantage point based on our own unique fund of information and experiences. All of that is influenced by our needs and fears and other predispositions. The conclusions we draw about what may or may not lay beyond the veil is inevitably clouded or clarified by all of these things. Consider the following topics.
As a magician, I require that accusations of a hoax be proven. Agendas are everywhere, and public declarations are in need of careful scrutiny, too. The UFO field saw this run rampant with Philip Klass’s incorrect statements based on lack of research of the facts. The famous Bigfoot Peddleton video also faced cries of hoax but has never actually been proven to be a hoax, but it has puzzled scientists that tried to discredit it, yet looked closer at the film and the movements of the creature. Even Hollywood couldn’t duplicate it with a “suit.” Yet misinformation and public declaration ruled the day. In fact, I am very shocked that I often see more misinformation and abuse of the facts by those trying to prove something is a hoax than by those who believe it is real phenomena! How do we avoid this? Let’s just use the same methodology. Don’t guess, don’t lie, and your opinions are just that—opinions. They are fine and welcome, as long as they are clearly labeled as such. Let’s stick to the facts and detail them. However, the “don’t lie” part is a challenge.
It is natural for us to assume that if we see a “spirit” of someone that we know is “dead,” then they are appearing from “beyond” or the afterlife. Like most of our primitive assumptions, we divide things into two—here and there—which we call “beyond.” Although an obvious and very common correlation, it may be true. However, it is far from being a definitive theory. In the theory of the multiverse, it would also make sense. What if spirits who couldn’t cross over needed to cross back over to their familiar world and not to a one-dimensional other world or spirit world? What if they were very much alive and we are being given a glimpse into an otherwise-hidden view of the multiverse?
In more than 30 years of investigation into so-called talking to the dead, I have never been presented with any evidence or even confirmation that a deceased loved one departed valuable information that only they would know. I am not talking about through a medium who can research such matters easily to confirm the known, but from the deceased to the loved one or family. In my mind, this doesn’t mean that all of these experiences are frauds. It does suggest, however, that perhaps we are witnessing limited communication due to a parallel world intersect. If they are in fact living a different life in a different world, they wouldn’t be inclined to depart things of this nature. Sometimes they wouldn’t even communicate directly with you.
Here are two quotes that I particularly find fascinating in the discussion:
I don’t believe that ghosts are “spirits of the dead” because I don’t believe in death. In the multiverse, once you’re possible, you exist. And once you exist, you exist forever one way or another. Besides, death is the absence of life, and the ghosts I’ve met are very much alive. What we call ghosts are life forms just as you and I are.
—Paul F. Eno
When I see ghosts they look perfectly real and solid—like a living human being. They are not misty; I can’t see through them; they don’t wear sheets or bloody mummy bandages. They don’t have their heads tucked under their arms. They just look like ordinary people, in living color, and sometimes it is hard to tell who is a ghost.
—Chris Woodyard
Those who have passed on but “feel” they are not yet ready can delay their crossing over to the other side until they are ready. Think of these “souls” as the same kids that didn’t finish their homework when it was due and the teacher gave each one more chances to complete it. Those who suffered through it late into the night to make sure it was done on time got no extra reward for their diligence. I theorize that there is much more to this regardless of your belief system. “I am not ready” never cut it with the nuns for me in Catholic grammar school and I don’t think it is an acceptable reason for a delay after we die (or appear to die) in the visible here and now.
“I have no GPS. I am lost. Even in death, I have difficulty finding my way.”
Most who die manage to take care of themselves and get to where they need to go. Not these folks. They wander around aimlessly hoping to find an arrow to direct their way. Even in death they can’t get it right. If they are lucky, a medium among the living will help them complete their passage since they are helpless on their own. (I have the definite feeling that I will end up in this class of wandering “spirits.” I get lost right here on the well-mapped earth. Imagine my plight within the unknown?)
I never thought that this made any sense. It does make sense that tragedies or intense emotions are perhaps one way to “open” a view or form a parallel world intersect (or substitute your theory or belief system here), but to me getting lost is a sign of getting stuck between. That between does not appear to be a traditional purgatory belief. If souls get stuck, lost, and displaced, one starts to wonder what kind of operation God is running up there. Why are people able to get displaced or lost? This is a wondrous area to ponder and discuss.
If something acts in some way that is perceived as negative, then its whole being must be evil. We throw the word evil around a lot in paranormal discussions and once that label is attached to a force or essence it tends to define its complete, singular property. This position grows directly out of the human being’s need for self-preservation; if we can’t be sure something is completely safe, we tend to classify it as potentially hurtful and do not approach it. We often seek to destroy the unknown as a result of this preservation approach. I’ll never forget the words in an episode of The Outer Limits. A person steps on a spider and the other person asks them if they know why they did it. Hearing no answer, he responds back, “We kill what we don’t understand,” which is why we fear the unknown so much. As the old saying goes, “Things can always get worse.”
If another species observed us and our actions during times of extreme behavior brought upon by fear, being away from home, feeling we are under attack, mental illness, confusion, and the like, they might reach the same conclusion that we are evil.
My mom always taught me that first impressions mean everything. It’s true. An entity displays negative behavior and we will categorize their whole being as being that way. And why not? Corporate America does the same. One wrong action could make it so you will never advance. Years ago, a neck tattoo used to hold back your promotion by about five years. A nose ring could hold it back for who knows how long. If we are so harsh to judge our own species even after getting to know them and their work ethic, it’s only natural that we categorize the unknown in very strict compartments even though we only see them in a limited capacity and probably not even at their best.
If there was a multiverse, Jesus would have told us all about it in the Bible.
They can’t be entities from another world because the Bible calls them demons. Let’s face it: Primitive humans require primitive explanations. Why would we expect anything else? The paranormal holds up to all religions. You can even be an atheist and believe in the paranormal. The reasons behind it are where we will all differ but that is an open discussion that no one can definitively solve as of today.
We never seem to consider the entities’ point of view. I am not saying that things are not always as they seem. Sometimes, they are exactly as they seem. The challenge with the paranormal is that there are so many unknowns, we limit ourselves when we label phenomena and only accept that it can be one way.
One example I like to use is possession. We universally think about possession from the point of view that something else is invading us on purpose and taking over our body as an evil act. For the purposes of our discussion, let’s ignore all the psychological behaviors that can be cured by a fake ceremony, or those instances that can be cured by ignoring the person altogether.
The common view of possession involves ourselves as the center. It’s all about us. This is no surprise because that is the way we view our world. Everything revolves around us. We even once thought it actually did planet-wise.
What if possession really is an entity finding itself inside a person? Not deliberately, but it just ends up there? Now it is scared, angry, fighting from the inside. Evil? Maybe or maybe not. But suddenly, in this example, it’s not just about us anymore. It is something that has happened to two beings, not one. This is a tough theory for anyone to consider. We are the good things minding our own business and it’s these things that are the bad guys. They are evil. Completely evil. Really? And how well do we know them? From a religious point of view, we would say they are demons. However, we don’t know what these things are. We do know they “visit” people of all faiths and they can always be dispelled without the use of any religion. The bottom line is that these various entities are simply not the theologians we thought they were.
Once we die, all the answers will be revealed to us. This would nicely fulfill our need for closure and for everything to neatly fit into place, wouldn’t it? Not only is life made fair in the afterlife, but we expect to finally have it all figured out.
However, this is the biggest paranormal assumption of all beliefs. The reality is there may be no first-day orientation afterward and as our spirit, soul, or energy (or insert whatever you believe) lives on, you may be as clueless about many things as you are today. Or perhaps more so.