The afterlife or life after death is a purported existence in which the essential part of an individual's stream of consciousness or identity continues to exist after the death of their physical body. The surviving essential aspect varies between belief systems; it may be some partial element, or the entire soul or spirit, which carries with it one's personal identity.
In folklore, a ghost is the soul or spirit of a dead person or non-human animal that is believed to be able to appear to the living. In ghostlore, descriptions of ghosts vary widely, from an invisible presence to translucent or barely visible wispy shapes to realistic, lifelike forms. The deliberate attempt to contact the spirit of a deceased person is known as necromancy, or in spiritism as a séance. Other terms associated with it are apparition, haunt, haint, phantom, poltergeist, shade, specter, spirit, spook, wraith, demon, and ghoul.
Parapsychology is the study of alleged psychic phenomena and other paranormal claims, for example, those related to near-death experiences, synchronicity, apparitional experiences, etc. Criticized as being a pseudoscience, the majority of mainstream scientists reject it. Parapsychology has also been criticized by mainstream critics for claims by many of its practitioners that their studies are plausible despite a lack of convincing evidence after more than a century of research for the existence of any psychic phenomena.
In many religious and philosophical traditions, the soul is the non-material essence of a person, which includes one's identity, personality, and memories, an immaterial aspect or essence of a living being that is believed to be able to survive physical death. The concept of the soul is generally applied to humans, although it can also be applied to other living or even non-living entities, as in animism.
Spiritualism is a social religious movement popular in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, according to which an individual's awareness persists after death and may be contacted by the living. The afterlife, or the "spirit world", is seen by spiritualists not as a static place, but as one in which spirits continue to interact and evolve. These two beliefs—that contact with spirits is possible, and that spirits are more advanced than humans—lead spiritualists to the belief that spirits are capable of advising the living on moral and ethical issues and the nature of God. Some spiritualists follow "spirit guides"—specific spirits relied upon for spiritual direction.
Victoria Helen McCrae Duncan was a Scottish medium best known as the last person to be imprisoned under the Witchcraft Act 1735 for fraudulent claims. She was famous for producing ectoplasm which was proved to be made from cheesecloth.
The 21 grams experiment refers to a study published in 1907 by Duncan MacDougall, a physician from Haverhill, Massachusetts. MacDougall hypothesized that souls have physical weight, and attempted to measure the mass lost by a human when the soul departed the body. MacDougall attempted to measure the mass change of six patients at the moment of death. One of the six subjects lost three-quarters of an ounce.
Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers is a 2003 nonfiction book by Mary Roach. Published by W. W. Norton & Company, it details the unique scientific contributions of the deceased.
Mary Roach is an American author specializing in popular science and humor. She has published seven New York Times bestsellers: Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers (2003), Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife (2005), Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex (2008), Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void (2010), Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal (2013), Grunt: The Curious Science of Humans at War (2016), and Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law (2021).
Spook is a synonym for ghost. Spook or spooks may also refer to:
Fascination with death has occurred throughout human history, characterized by obsessions with death and all things related to death and the afterlife.
Rudi Schneider, son of Josef Schneider and brother of Willi Schneider, was an Austrian Spiritualist and physical medium. His career was covered extensively by the Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research, and he took part in a number of notable experiments conducted by paranormal researchers/debunkers, including Harry Price, Albert von Schrenck-Notzing and Eric Dingwall. Some of these researchers declared him to be a fraud while others were unable to find evidence of trickery.
Thomas Lynn Bradford of Detroit, Michigan was a spiritualist who died by suicide in an attempt to ascertain the existence of an afterlife and communicate that information to a living accomplice, Ruth Doran. On February 5, 1921, Bradford sealed his apartment in Detroit, blew out the pilot on his heater, and turned on the gas, which killed him.
The Afterlife Experiments: Breakthrough Scientific Evidence of Life After Death is a book written by Gary Schwartz and bestselling author William L. Simon, with a foreword by Deepak Chopra. The book, published in 2003, reviews several experiments which aimed to investigate the possibility of life after death through the use of psychic mediums. Included in these experiments is one filmed and aired as part of an HBO special. Two studies stemming from the experiments were also published in the Journal of the Society for Psychical Research. The substance of the book and the studies it describes was generally claimed by the media as scientific evidence of life after death. However, there was significant criticism from the scientific community of the studies, their methodologies, and resulting data analyses.
A near-death experience (NDE) is a profound personal experience associated with death or impending death, which researchers describe as having similar characteristics. When positive, which the great majority are, such experiences may encompass a variety of sensations including detachment from the body, feelings of levitation, total serenity, security, warmth, joy, the experience of absolute dissolution, review of major life events, the presence of a light, and seeing dead relatives. When negative, such experiences may include sensations of anguish, distress, a void, devastation, and seeing hellish imagery.
Suzane Northrop is an American writer, podcaster, TV show host, and psychic medium. She has written at least four books, and hosted the television show, The Afterlife with Suzane Northrop. She participated in The Afterlife Experiments which was turned into a book by Gary Schwartz. The experiments and their conclusions were widely criticized across the scientific community for not being blinded, and for the lack of inclusion of any other scientifically credible evidence.
Karlis Osis was a Latvian-born parapsychologist who specialised in exploring deathbed phenomena and life after death.
Kathleen Goligher was an Irish spiritualist medium. Goligher was endorsed by engineer William Jackson Crawford who wrote three books about her. She was exposed as a fraud by physicist Edmund Edward Fournier d'Albe in 1921.
Jeffrey Long is an American author and researcher into the phenomenon of near-death experiences (NDEs). A physician by training, Long practices radiation oncology at a hospital in Kentucky. Long is the author of Evidence of the Afterlife: The Science of Near-Death Experiences, which appeared on The New York Times Best Seller list. In 1998, he founded the Near Death Experience Research Foundation, which is concerned with documenting and researching NDEs.
Surviving Death is a docu-series directed by Ricki Stern about near-death experiences and beliefs in life after death, and psychic mediumship. Its first season of six episodes was released on Netflix on 6 January 2021. The series is based on the 2017 book Surviving Death by journalist and paranormal enthusiast Leslie Kean.
