Hey mate, don't mean to pick on you, but I know you are a good sport. ;) To all other non-believers, this thread is also for you.
It seems you always want proof and evidence of some kind of afterlife, but always have a "Reasonable Explanation" for any evidence put forth. :P Oh, and try not to take my puns too seriously will you? :)
Here goes, I have two experiences to relate to you, both of which I believe are evidence of there being an afterlife, and a way to communicate with those who have passed over. I would like to know your point of view on how these experiences were possible without that communication taking place. These are first hand accounts, not hearsay. I hope you trust that I have not added or embellished any part of these stories. If you feel I have been less than honest, please just say so, though I see no reason to lie about any of this. After all, I am not trying to prove anything to you, just get a better bearing on your mindset and belief system.
First of all a little background. I lived in Manchester, England for the first 18 years of my life. My grandfather Bill died when I was two years old, and I only ever remember seeing a couple of pictures of him. One of the photos was him with my mother on her wedding day, and one was of him in his casket (God knows why my mother decided to let us see that photo). I don't remember much about him at all. He was a tall, skinny man, and I only know this from the photo of him and my mother. The only reason I knew he was in the military was because my mother often regaled us with the story of how she was born on a Singapore military base.
At the age of 18, I moved to Missouri USA and got married to a beautiful lady 15 years my senior. I took on 2 step children, and have been more of a father to them than their biological father has ever been. With my upbringing though, I am sometimes a little stubborn with them, expecting of them what was expected of me in my good little JW days. Three years after I got to America, I left the Organization, and have been trying to get my family out since, to their chagrin.
Now, the experiences...
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Experience 1...
Last year, my wife and I decided to visit a very close friend on the south coast of England, Devon specifically (a full 6 hour drive from Manchester). I have know him for 4 years. Never has he met my grandfather that he or I know of. There, he told us of his interest in Spiritualism, and invited us to a church he had attended once or twice before. Part of the service, he told us, included a medium getting up on stage and giving "readings" to people in the audience. We thought it sounded interesting, so we attended.
We walked in amongst the 50 or so people and took our seats directly at the back of the hall. No-one really paid any attention. A few minutes went by, and in walked a young gentleman (I later found out he was a "visiting psychic" not from this church) who went to the stage and took a seat. As he was walking though, he looked distracted for a second, and looked up and looked directly into my eyes for a second, nodded, and carried on. Strange, I thought.
Well, the services started, a prayer was offered, and up he stood. He closed his eyes, and looked again directly at me. "You there at the back," he said in a strong Devon accent, "young man in the sweater". I acknowledged him. He told me he was getting an image of a tall man, and he felt this man was a relation on my mother's side. I nodded. He said he was getting military images also, and asked if I knew who this person could be. I said "Yes", not hinting as to who he actually was. At this point I was as much a skeptic as anyone, and knew what "reading someone" consisted of, so I gave as few physical or verbal signals as possible.
He said this spirit was here to tell me he was proud of me (lol, I am already almost crying here) for what I was doing with my life. He said he was proud that I was taking on the fatherly role that I had, that I was doing good, and was a positive influence on their lives. He told me I needed to be more patient with the kids, and that I need to just let them be kids sometimes. I nodded in acknowledgement. He also said that although I am taking control in that part of my life and doing well with it, I have to learn to let others be where they want to be, and not try to push or pull them into another way of life, I should just keep the peace. Again, he said he hears the word patience. This, I was very certain, was referring to the way I almost lost my family due to trying to pull them out of the Organization.
After this, again, he stressed that this person was proud of me, and was going to leave me at that. The gentleman stood back for a second and closed his eyes to allow communication with another spirit. But, instead, he opened his eyes again, and said "Well, there is one more thing he wants you to know, the dogs are OK". I was puzzled. I didn't recall him ever having dogs, and my mother had never mentioned them, which would have surprised me as my family love dogs. He asked if I knew what he was talking about, and I replied no and I shook my head vaguely. He closed his eyes for a second, and held his hands level at his hips as if to denote height and said "I am getting a picture of two large dogs, not just big, but large, and I get the impression these dogs were well known where this gentleman lived." I still had no idea. He told me not to worry about it, to think about it, ask my family some questions, and if I still had no idea then maybe the message wasn't for me. I nodded OK, and he went to another person, tuning in for them.
After our visit with my friend in Devon, we returned to Manchester a few days before our flight back to the US. I asked my mother very nonchalantly (as she is still a JW and I didn't want her to know why I was asking) if grandad Bill had any dogs. She said he did. I asked her what kind he had, and she said one was a boxer, and one was an alsatian. My mother made a point of telling me (without prompting) that they were really big and were always barking at people as they passed the yard when they were let out of the house. Yep, they were well known in the neighborhood alright.
Points of interest:
First of all, this man could not have possibly known or recognized me. I lived most of my life 6 hours away from that place, and was 2 at the time of my grandad's passing. No-one there knew my grandad, pretty much including me. He did not see me walk in with my wife, my friend, and his wife, and as he was a visitor himself, he could not have known who was with who. My wife and I are never associated at first glance as husband and wife, due to the age difference. Even when we are holding hands and canoodling, people always assume we are mother and son (very disconcerting at times). He could not possibly have known we were married, and if so, there was no way he could have known I was the father of stepkids (taking on the fatherly role). So, his first three comments identifying the gentleman were dead on hits, as were all circumstantial comments after that, regarding the fatherly role, my expectations of the kids, and the pulling my family away from where they were comfortable.
As for the dogs... I did not even know the dogs existed. Even if you use the argument that the first half of this event was "read" (I was about 40 feet away from the gentleman), there is no way he could have "read" from me what I did not know. Especially the details, them being very big dogs and that they were well known to be Bill's.
Now, that is experience one done.
Experience 2...
Shortly after we returned to the states, we looked up some Spiritualist churches, they were few and far between, not like England. The closest one to us was about one and a half hours away. We attended a few times and after a few rather vague messages for us, we weren't majorly impressed, but we stuck around. Well, one Sunday, my step-daughter Sarah decided to come with us to see what all the fuss was about. We took her, and she was bored during the 30 minutes of healing meditation they did every week (never enjoyed it much myself). Then it came time for messages.
The gentleman (who we had never seen there before, but was actually part of that church) got up to the stage and closed his eyes. This time Sarah was the first to have a message. He looked directly at her, and verbally described her so she knew she was the one being spoken to. The guy said that he sees an older lady, who feels like it is a sister of sorts, on "a motherly vibration" (Spiritualist jargon for "on your mother's side"). He asked if Sarah knew who it could be, and Sarah had no clue, and neither did my wife. He said this lady loved hats, that she was showing him an image of her wearing a big hat, and that she seemed to have died in her mid-50s. Still nothing from Sarah or Tammy. Again, he gave the "ask around your family" thing, and he went on to say a few things personal to Sarah. The parts that I knew about were spot on, including noting a few personality traits of Sarah's that needed work according to this old lady, and one particular phrase Sarah likes to use ("could things get any worse?"), and that she needed to stop using it "because the answer is yes". It seemed very personal, but we had no idea who this lady was. The reading finished pretty much there. The speaker moved on.
On our way home, we tried to figure out who this mystery lady was. My wife called her mother (who takes care of my wife's grandmother) and asked her about it. My mother-in-law had no idea, and asked why. Tammy told her about the reading, and Susan didn't like that we had taken Sarah to a church like that one bit, at one point saying "I don't know how you get yourselves into this shit" (referring also to Tammy's brief stint as a witness). It rested there for a day.
The next day, I got a phone call from my wife at work. She told me how my mother-in-law told grandma about the wacko stuff we were getting into, and how this mystery lady was supposedly telling Sarah what to do with her life, and that we were trying to find out who matched this description. Virginia piped up that Susan had just described her aunt Francis (Virginia's sister). Francis died in 1956, at the age of 55 years old. And... she never left the house without a hat. My mother-in-law was amazed.
A few days later, Susan and Virginia managed to find a picture of Francis. She was wearing a very big hat in the picture.
Points of interest:
Well, pretty self explanatory. We didn't know this guy, he didn't know us. He was very accurate in what he stated to us, in describing the lady, her age, and also the things he presented to Sarah about herself. Also, three generations had no idea this lady existed. Sarah had never even heard of her great-great-aunt Francis, and Susan had never even heard of her aunt Francis. And as for the hat, can you get a more arbitrary fact? I will try to find that picture and scan it or take a quick picture of it later.
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So, these were my experiences. Since then I have had a few more experiences. One of even having contact with a spirit directly, and even another accurate exchange with my grandfather through another medium (yep, in America).
I have not embellished either of these stories to make them more interesting or believable. These are the facts. Believe them or don't.
Again, this is not an effort to persuade you that the afterlife exists, though I certainly hope it will let you become a little more open minded and encouraged about the great beyond. I sincerely would like to know how a non-believer processes and makes sense of this information.
Have at it. :)
Keith J.