Ghosts - By Hans Holzer Page 0,5

the physical body.

The case I am about to present are, to the best of my knowledge, true experiences by average, ordinary individuals. I have always shied away from accepting material from anyone undergoing psychiatric treatment, not because I necessarily discount such testimony, but because some of my readers might.

As Dr. Raymond Moody noted in his work, there is a definite pattern to these near misses, so to speak, the experiences of people who have gone over and then returned. What they relate about conditions on the “other side of life” is frequently similar to what other people have said about these conditions, yet the witnesses have no way of knowing each other’s experiences, have never met, and have not read a common source from which they could draw such material if they were inclined to deceive the investigator, which they certainly are not. In fact, many of these testimonies are reluctantly given, out of fear of ridicule or perhaps because the individuals themselves are not sure of what to make of it. Far from the fanatical fervor of a religious purveyor, those whose cases have been brought to my attention do not wish to convince anyone of anything but merely want to report what has occurred in their lives. In publishing these reports, I am making the information available to those who might have had similar experiences and have wondered about them.

I cannot emphasize strongly enough that the cases I am reporting in the following pages do not fall into the category of what many doctors like to call hallucinations, mental aberrations, or fantasies. The clarity of the experiences, the full remembrance of them afterward, the many parallels between individual experiences reported by people in widely scattered areas, and finally the physical condition of the percipients at the time of the experience all weigh heavily against the dismissal of such experiences as being of hallucinatory origin.

Mrs. Virginia S., a resident in one of the western states, had in the past held various responsible jobs in management and business. On March 13, 1960, she underwent surgery for, as she put it, repair to her muscles. During the operation, she lost so much blood she was declared clinically dead. Nevertheless, the surgeons worked feverishly to bring her back, and she recovered. This is what Mrs. S. experienced during the period when the medical team was unable to detect any sign of life in her:

“I was climbing a rock wall and was standing straight in the air. Nothing else was around it; it seemed flat. At the top of this wall was another stone railing about two feet high. I grabbed for the edge to pull myself over the wall, and my father, who is deceased, appeared and looked down at me. He said, ‘You cannot come up yet; go back, you have something left to do.’ I looked down and started to go down and the next thing I heard were the words ‘She’s coming back.”’

Mrs. J. L. H., a resident in her middle thirties living in British Columbia, had an amazing experience on her way back from the funeral of her stepfather, George H. She was driving with a friend, Clarence G., and there was a serious accident. Clarence was killed instantly, and Mrs. H. was seriously hurt. “I don’t remember anything except seeing car lights coming at me, for I had been sleeping,” Mrs. H. explained. “I first remember seeing my stepdad, George, step forward out of a cloudy mist and touch me on my left shoulder. He said, ‘Go back, June, it’s not time yet.’ I woke up with the weight of his hand still on my shoulder.”

The curious thing about this case is that two people were in the same accident, yet one of them was evidently marked for death while the other was not. After Mrs. H. had recovered from her injuries and returned home, she woke up one night to see a figure at the end of her bed holding out his hand toward her as if wanting her to come with him. When she turned her light on, the figure disappeared but it always returned when she turned the light off again. During subsequent appearances, the entity tried to lift Mrs. H. out of her bed, pulling all the covers off her, thereafter forcing her to sleep with the lights on. It would appear that Clarence could not understand why he was on the other side of life without his friend.

Mrs. Phyllis G., also from