by Joe Nickell
Dream Contacts
A significant number of after-death “contacts” come from dreams. They have been associated with the supernatural since very ancient times, and attempts to interpret them are recorded in a papyrus of 1350 b.c.e. in the British Museum (Wortman and Loftus 1981, 380). Now New Age writers like Theisen and Matera (2001) are increasingly chronicling instances of people having dreams about their departed loved ones.
It has been estimated that the average person will have approximately 150,000 dreams by the time he or she reaches the age of 70. Although most are forgotten, the more dramatic and interesting ones are often remembered and talked about (Wortman and Loftus 1981, 380). However, people’s reports of their dreams may be undependable, because of the effects of memory distortion, ego, superstition, and other factors.
Even an ordinary dream can be especially powerful when it involves after-death content, and there are types of dreams that can be extremely vivid and seemingly real. They include lucid dreams in which the dreamer is able to direct the dreaming, “something like waking up in your dreams” (Blackmore 1991a).
A powerful source of visitation reports is the so-called waking dream, which occurs in the twilight between wakefulness and sleep and combines features of both. Actually an hallucination—called hypnagogic if the subject is going to sleep or hypnopompic if he or she is awakening— it typically includes bizarre imagery such as apparitions of ghosts, angels, aliens, or other imagined entities. The content, according to psychologist Robert A. Baker (1990), “may be related to the dreamer’s current concerns.”
For example, here is an account I obtained in 1998 from a Buffalo, New York, woman:
My father had passed away and I was taking care of my sick mother. I went to lay down to rest. I don’t remember if I actually fell asleep or if 1 was awake, but I saw the upper part of my father and he said, “Mary Ellen, you’re doing a good job!” When I said “Dad,” he went away.
It would be correct to say that this describes a rather common hypnagogic event; nevertheless, this does not do justice to the person who experienced it. For her, I think, it represented a final goodbye from her father, and therefore a form of closure, and also provided welcome reassurance during a period of difficulty.
Sometimes, a waking dream is accompanied by what is termed sleep paralysis, an inability to move caused by the body remaining in the sleep mode. Consider this account (Wills-Brandon 2000, 228-29):
My sister said she was abruptly awakened from a very deep sleep. When she woke up, she said her body felt frozen and she couldn’t open her eyes. Suddenly she felt a presence in the room and knew it was Mother. She felt her standing at the foot of the bed.
By their nature, waking dreams seem so real that the experiencer typically insists that he or she was not dreaming. One woman, who “hardly slept” after her daughter’s suicide, saw the daughter, late at night, standing at the end of a long hallway, smiling sadly and then walking away into a brilliant light. “At first I thought I was hallucinating,” the mother said. “But after a new round of tears, I realized that I was wide awake and I had indeed seen Wendy” (Theisen and Matera 2001, 130). Another, describing a friend’s “visitation” experience of her deceased mother-in-law, said, “At first my friend thought she was dreaming but quickly realized she was wide awake” (Wills-Brandon 2000, 60)—a confusion typical of a waking dream.
Apparitions
Some visitations are reported as quite undreamlike, in that they occur during normal daily activity. However, my own investigatory experience, as well as other research data, demonstrates that apparitions are most apt to be perceived during daydreams or other altered states of consciousness. Many occur, for example, while the percipient is in a relaxed state, or concentrating on some activity like reading, or performing routine work. In some instances the person may simply be tired, as from a long day’s work. Under such conditions, particularly in the case of imaginative individuals, a mental image might be superimposed upon the visual scene to create a “sighting” (Nickell 2001a, 291-92).
Also, as indicated earlier, faulty recall, bias, and other factors can betray even the most credible and sincere witness. Consider, for instance, an anecdotal case provided by Sir Edmund Hornby, a Shanghai jurist. He related how, years earlier, he was awakened one night by a newspaperman who had arrived belatedly to get the customary written judgment for the following day’s edition. The man—looking “deadly pale”—would not be put off, and sat on the jurist’s bed. Eventually Judge Hornby provided a verbal summary, which the man took down in his pocket notebook. After the visitor left, the judge related the incident to Lady Hornby. The following day the judge learned that the reporter had died during the night; more importantly, he discovered that the man’s wife and servants were certain he had not left the house; yet with his body was discovered a notebook containing a summary of Hornby’s judgment!
This apparent proof of a visitation was reported by psychical researchers. However, the tale soon succumbed to investigation. As it turned out, the reporter did not die at the time reported (about 1:00 a.m.) but much later—between 8:00 and 9:00 in the morning. Furthermore, the judge could not have told his wife about the events at the time, because he was then between marriages. Finally, although the story depends on a certain judgment that was to be delivered the following day, no such judgment was recorded (Hansel 1966, 186-89).
When confronted with this evidence of error, Judge Hornby admitted: “My vision must have followed the death (some three months) instead of synchronizing with it .... ” Bewildered by what had happened, he added: “If I had not believed, as I still believe, that every word of it [the story] was accurate, and that my memory was to be relied on, I should not have ever told it as a personal experience.” No doubt many other accounts of alleged visitations involve such confabulation—a term psychologists use to refer to the confusing of fact with fiction. Unable to retrieve something from memory, the confabulating person (perhaps inadvertently) manufactures something that is seemingly appropriate to replace it. “Thus,” explain Wortman and Loftus (1981, 204), “the man asked to remember his sixth birthday combines his recollections of several childhood parties and invents the missing details.”
Tales such as that related by Judge Hornby represent alleged “mo-ment-of-death visitations” (Finucane 1984, 195). In that story the reporter had allegedly died at approximately the same time (”about twenty minutes past one”) that he appeared as an apparition to Judge Hornby— although, as we have seen, the death actually occurred several hours later. This case should serve as a cautionary example regarding other such accounts, which are obviously intended to validate superstitious beliefs.
Deathbed Visions
Another type of alleged visitation comes in the form of deathbed visions. According to Brad Steiger (real name Eugene E. Olson), who endlessly cranks out books promoting paranormal claims, “The phenomenon of deathbed visions is as old as humankind, and such visitations of angels, light beings, previously deceased personalities and holy figures manifesting to those about to cross over to the Other Side have been recorded throughout all of human history.” Steiger (2000) goes on to praise writer and family grief counselor Carla Wills-Brandon for her “inspirational book,” One Last Hug Before I Go: The Mystery and Meaning of Deathbed Visions (2000).
Like others before her (e.g., Kubler-Ross 1973), Wills-Brandon promotes deathbed visions (DBVs) largely through anecdotal accounts —which, as we have seen, are untrustworthy. She asserts that “the scientific community” has great difficulty explaining a type of DBV in which the dying supposedly see people they believe are among the living but who have actually died. She cites an old case involving a Frenchman who died in Venezuela in 1894. His nephew(who had not been present at the scene) reported:
Just before his death, and while surrounded by all of his family, he had a prolonged delirium, during which he called out the names of certain friends left in France. . . .
Although struck by this incident
, nobody attached any extraordinary importance to these words at the time they were uttered, but they acquired later an exceptional importance when the family found, on their return to Paris, the funeral invitation cards of the persons named by my uncle before his death, and who had died before him.
Unfortunately, when we hear two other accounts of these events, we find there is less to this story than meets the ear. A version given by one of the man’s two children says nothing of his being delirious, implying otherwise by stating that “he told us of having seen some persons in heaven and of having spoken to them at some length.” But she had been quite young at the time and referred the inquirer to her brother. His account—the most trustworthy of the three, because it is a firsthand narrative by a mature informant—lacks the multiple names, and the corresponding funeral cards, as well as other elements, thus indicating that the story has been much improved in the retellings. The son wrote:
Concerning what you ask me with regard to the death of my father, which occurred a good many years ago, I recall that a few moments before his death my father called the name of one of his old companions—M. Etcheverry—with whom he had not kept up any connexion, even by correspondence, for a long time past, crying out, “Ah! you too,” or some similar phrase. It was only on returning home to Paris that we found the funeral card of this gentleman.
He added, “Perhaps my father may have mentioned other names as well, but I do not remember.”
It is hardly surprising that a man’s thoughts should, at the close of life, turn to an old friend, or that—having long been out of touch—he should have thought the friend already dead. (The individual reporting the case conceded that there was no certainty that the friend had died before the vision occurred.) As the most trustworthy account is the least elaborate, lacking even the vision-of-heaven motif, it seems not a corroboration of the nephew’s hearsay accounts (Barrett 1926, 22-24) but rather evidence of confabulation at work.
In their book The Afterlife, Jenny Randies and Peter Hough (1993, 98-99) tell of a dying man who had lapsed into a coma:
Then the patient became wonderfully alert, as some people do very near the end. He looked to one side, staring into vacant space. As time went by it was clear he could see someone there whom nobody else in the room could see. Suddenly, his face lit up like a beacon. He was staring and smiling at what was clearly a long-lost friend, his eyes so full of love and serenity that it was hard for those around him to not be overcome by tears.
Sheila [his nurse] says: “There was no mistake. Someone had come for him at the last to show him the way.”
But how did the nurse know it was “a long-lost friend” and not, say, Jesus or an angel? Indeed, how did she know he saw “someone” at all, rather than something—perhaps an entrancing view of heaven? The way the nurse makes such assertions—emphasized with words like “clear” and “no mistake”—suggests that she is speaking more of faith than of fact, and her belief is accepted and reported uncritically by Randies and Hough. In fact, the tale contains no evidence of a visitation at all.
Instead, it appears to represent what is termed a near-death experience (NDE), in which a person typically “comes back” from a state close to death with a story of an otherworldly visit, sometimes involving an out-of-body experience, travel down a dark tunnel, and an encounter with beings of light who help him or her decide whether to cross over.
Susan Blackmore (1991b) describes the NDE as “an essentially physiological event” prompted by lack of oxygen, the structure of the brain’s visual cortex, and other factors. She recognizes that the experiences are hallucinations—albeit, seemingly, exceedingly real. Also, she points out that one does not actually have to be near death to have such an experience: “Many very similar experiences are recorded of people who have taken certain drugs, were extremely tired, or, occasionally, were just carrying on their ordinary activities.”
Many of the DBVs reported by Wills-Brandon (2000) and others are similar to NDEs and are probably hallucinations produced by the dying brain. Some of the effects are similar because people share similar brain physiology. For example, the “tunnel” effect “probably lies in the structure of the visual cortex” (Blackmore 1991b, 39-40). Other effects are probably psychological and cultural. Wills-Brandon (2000, 115) concedes: “I agree that when the dying are passing, they are visited by those who will comfort them during their travel to the other side. For a dying Christian, that might mean Jesus; a Buddhist may see Buddha. For others, an angel, a beautiful woman or Druid priest would bring more comfort.” But she rationalizes, “If I’m following a particular philosophy of religion, wouldn’t it make sense for me to be visited at the moment of my death by an otherworldly escort who is familiar with my belief system?” Perhaps, but of course the simpler explanation is that people see what their expectations prompt them to see.
And that, in a nutshell, is the problem with the anecdotal evidence for so-called visitations. The experiencer’s will to believe may override any temptation to critically examine the occurrences. Some proponents of after-death contact adopt an end-justifies-the-means attitude. One (quoted in Voell 2001) states: “Whether any of the connections or feelings or appearances are true or not, I’ve finally figured out it doesn’t make a damn bit of difference. If it has any part in healing, who cares?” The answer is that, first of all, people who value truth care. Although magical thinking may be comforting in the short term, over time estrangement from rationality can have consequences, both on individuals, who may suffer from a lack of closure, and societies, which may slide into ignorance and superstition. That potential peril is why Carl Sagan (1996) referred to science as “A Candle in the Dark.”
REFERENCES
Alvarez, Luis W. 1965. A pseudo experience in parapsychology. Letter in Science 148: 1541.
Baker, Robert A. 1990. They Call It Hypnosis. Buffalo: Prometheus Books.
Barrett, Sir William. [1926] 1986. Death-Bed Visions: The Psychical Experiences of the Dying. Reprinted Wellingborough, England: The Aquarian Press.
Blackmore, Susan. 1991a. Lucid dreaming: Awake in your sleep? Skeptical Inquirer 15, no. 4 (Summer): 362-70.
——— 1991b. Near-death experiences: In or out of the body? Skeptical Inquirer 16, no. 1 (Fall): 34-45.
Falk, Ruma. 1981-1982. On coincidences. Skeptical Inquirer 6, no. 2 (Winter): 24-25.
Finucane, R. C. 1984. Appearances of the Dead: A Cultural History of Ghosts. Buffalo, N.Y.: Prometheus Books.
Hansel, C. E. M. 1966. ESP: A Scientific Evaluation. New York: Scribner’s.
Jahoda, Gustav. 1970. The Psychology of Superstition. Baltimore: Penguin.
Jung, C. G. 1960. Synchronicity: An acausal connecting principle. In The Collected Works of C. G.Jung, Bollingen Series, no. 20, edited by Sir Herbert Read et al., 418-519. New York: Pantheon.
Kubler-Ross, Elizabeth. 1973. On Death and Dying. London: Tavistock.
Nickell, Joe. 1993. Looking for a Miracle. Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus Books.
——— . 1996. Investigative files: Ghostly photos. Skeptical Inquirer 20, no. 4 (July/August): 13-14.
——— . 2001a. Real-Life X-Files: Investigating the Paranormal Lexington, Ky.: University Press of Kentucky.
——— . 2001b. John Edward: Hustling the bereaved. Skeptical Inquirer 25, no. 6 (November/December): 19-22.
Randies, Jenny, and Peter Hough. [1993] 1995. The Afterlife: An Investigation into Life after Death. Reprinted London: BCA.
Sagan, Carl. 1996. The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark.New York: Random House.
Steiger, Brad. 2000. Promotional blurb. In One Last Hug Before I Go: The Mystery and Meaning of Deathbed Visions, by Carla Wills-Brandon. Deerfield Beach, Fla.: Health Communications, Inc.
Theisen, Donna, and Dary Matera. 2001. Childlight: How Children Reach Out to Their Parents from the Beyond. Far Hills, N.J.: New Horizon Press.
Voell, Paula. 2001. Visitations. Buffalo News (Buffalo, N.Y.), 27 May.
Will
s-Brandon, Carla. 2000. One Last Hug Before I Go: The Mystery and Meaning of Deathbed Visions. Deerfield Beach, Fla.: Health Communications, Inc.Wortman, Camille B., and Elizabeth F. Loftus. 1981. Psychology. New York:Knopf.
27
The Sacred Cloth of Oviedo
Although science has established the Shroud of Turin (see chapter 22) as a fourteenth-century forgery—rendered in tempera paint by a confessed forger and radiocarbon-dated to the time of the forgers confession (Nickell 1998, McCrone 1996)—the propaganda offensive to convince the public otherwise continues. As part of the strategy, shroud proponents are now ballyhooing another cloth, a supposed companion burial wrapping, that they claim militates in favor of the shroud’s authenticity.
“Companion Relic”
At issue is the Oviedo Cloth, an 84 X 53 cm. piece of linen, stained with supposed blood, that some believe is the sudarium or “napkin” that covered the face of Jesus in the tomb. As described in the New Testament (John 20:7) it was “about his head.” Such a cloth was used in ancient Jewish burial practice to cover the face of the deceased (Nickell 1998, 33-34).
One reason for the interest in the Oviedo Cloth among Shroud of Turin advocates is to counter the devastating radiocarbon evidence. Three laboratories used sophisticated C-14 dating technology to test a piece of shroud cloth, and the resulting age span was found to be circa c.e. 1260-1390. In response, advocates hope to tie the shroud to the Oviedo Cloth because, allegedly, “the history of the sudarium is undisputed” and it “was a revered relic preserved from the days of the crucifixion” (Anderson 2000).
Unfortunately for the shroudologists, however, the provenance (or historical record) of the Oviedo Cloth, currently located in the Cathedral of Oviedo in northern Spain, is not nearly so definitive. Indeed, even most pro-authenticity sources admit that it cannot really be established as dating from earlier than about the eighth century (Whanger and Whanger 1998, 56), and the earliest supposed documentary evidence is from the eleventh century. According to Mark Guscin in The Oviedo Cloth (1998, 17), “The key date in the history of the sudarium is 14 March 1075.” At that time, an oak chest in which the cloth was kept was reportedly opened by King Alfonso VI and others, including the famed knight El Cid; this is recorded in a document stating that the chest had long reposed in the church. Unfortunately, the original document has been lost, and only a thirteenth-century “copy” remains in the cathedral archives (Guscin 1998, 17).