Ghosts - By Hans Holzer Page 0,11

at 9:30 P.M., November 8, 1971, at Ventura, California. My home, where my psychic experience took place, is at least a thousand miles from Ventura, California. The incident is the only psychic experience I’ve ever had.”

William W. lives and works in Washington, D.C. Because of some remarkable psychic incidents in his life, he began to wonder about the survival of human personality. One evening he had a dream in which he saw himself walking up a flight of stairs where he was met by a woman whom he immediately recognized as his elderly great-aunt. She had died in 1936. “However she was dressed in a long gray dress of about the turn-of-the-century style, her hair was black, and she looked vibrantly young. I asked her in the dream where the others were, and she referred me to a large room at the top of the stairs. The surroundings were not familiar. I entered the room and was amazed to see about fifteen people in various types of dress, both male and female and all looking like mature adults, some about the age of thirty. I was able to recognize nearly all of these people although most I had seen when they were quite old. All appeared jovial and happy. I awakened from the dream with the feeling that somebody had been trying to tell me something.”

There are repeated reports indicating that the dead revert to their best years, which lie around the age of thirty in most cases, because they are able to project a thought-form of themselves as they wish. On the other hand, where apparitions of the dead are intended to prove survival of an individual, they usually appear as they looked prior to death, frequently wearing the clothes they wore at the time of their passing.

Not all temporary separations of the body and etheric self include a visit to the next world. Sometimes the liberated self merely hangs around to observe what is being done with the body. Mrs. Elaine L. of Washington state reported an experience that happened to her at the age of sixteen. “I had suffered several days from an infected back tooth, and since my face was badly swollen, our dentist refused to remove the tooth until the swelling subsided. When it did, and shortly after the novocaine was administrated, I found myself floating close to an open window. I saw my body in the dental chair and the dentist working feverishly. Our landlady, Mrs. E., who had brought me to the dentist, stood close by, shaking me and looking quite flabbergasted and unbelieving. My feeling at the time was of complete peace and freedom. There was no pain, no anxiety, not even an interest in what was happening close to that chair.

“Soon I was back to the pain and remember as I left the office that I felt a little resentful. The dentist phoned frequently during the next few days for assurance that I was alright.”

According to one report, a Trappist monk who had suffered a cardiac arrest for a period of ten minutes remembered a visit to a world far different from that which his religion had taught him. Brother G. spoke of seeing fluffy white clouds and experiencing a sense of great joy. As a result of his amazing experience, the monk now helps people on the terminal list of a local hospital face death more adequately. He can tell them that there nothing to fear.

A New Jersey physician, Dr. Joseph G., admitted publicly that he had “died” after a severe attack of pneumonia in 1934 and could actually see himself lying on the deathbed. At the time, worrying how his mother would feel if he died, he heard a voice tell him that it was entirely up to him whether wanted to stay on the physical plane or go across. Because of his own experience, Dr. G. later paid serious attention to the accounts of several patients who had similar experiences.

The number of cases involving near-death experiences—reports from people who were clinically dead for varying lengths of time and who then recovered and remembered what they experienced while unconscious—is considerable. If we assume that universal law covers all contingencies, there should be no exceptions to it. Why then are some people allowed to glimpse what lies ahead for them in the next dimension without actually entering that dimension at the time of the experience? After investigating large numbers of such cases, I can only surmise that there are two