“THE MYSTERY OF DEATH AND THE AFTERLIFE” and More True Paranormal Stories! #WeirdDarkness
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Welcome, Weirdos! I'm Darren Marlar and this is Weird Darkness. Here you'll find stories of the paranormal, supernatural, legends, lore,

crime, conspiracy, mysterious, macabre, unsolved, and unexplained. If you're new here, welcome to the show! And if you're already a member of this weirdo family, please take a moment and invite someone else to listen – recommending Weird Darkness to others helps make it possible for me to keep doing the show. And while you're listening, be sure to check out WeirdDarkness.com where you can find me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and more, along with the Weird Darkness Weirdos Facebook group.

Coming up in this episode… On January 1, 1091, an army of the dead came to Normandy for one priest. It would be a night that he would never forget. Despite what we're led to believe from movies and television, cemeteries, graveyards, and churchyards are actually quite peaceful places with no reason to be haunted any more than any other plot of land. They are in fact meant to be resting places, not restless places.

Repton Village Churchyard in Derbyshire apparently never received that memo. Office romances are nothing new. Sadly, neither is sexual harassment in the workplace. And apparently, in the 1800s, a 40-something boss could try to seduce a 15-year-old worker. And if you guessed that didn't turn out well for anyone, you'd be right.

Men admired and emulated Camille Flammarion, and many a woman swooned over him. ***Which is kind of an odd thing if you think about it, seeing as the man was consumed by thoughts of death. What is it like after we die? Is there life after death? And can science ever get on board with the idea despite testable evidence?

Now, bolt your doors, lock your windows, turn off your lights, and come with me into the Weird Darkness. The medieval world believed in ghosts and spirits. There are countless stories from the Middle Ages how people were visited by the dead. While people would naturally be frightened if they came across a ghost, rarely would the ghost itself come to haunt or torment the living.

Instead, they often appeared to those people that they knew while they were alive and usually wanted something from them. The concept of purgatory was fully realized in the medieval period – that when a person dies, their soul doesn't automatically go to heaven or hell.

The Roman Catholic doctrine believed that even if the soul was not condemned to hell, it still needed to be purified before entering paradise. This is the idea of purgatory, where the souls would get tortured and punished for their sins. The living world could help the dead in getting out of purgatory, though, mainly by praying for their souls.

By the late Middle Ages, it was a popular practice for people to leave money in their wills to hire priests that would perform mass for their souls once they have departed and the will was read. Many of the ghost stories from the Middle Ages involved souls that were in purgatory but contacted their living relatives to ask them to do something that would help relieve their suffering and assist them in entering heaven.

These could range from paying a debt, fulfilling a vow, or just making sure that they were being prayed for. One of the strangest stories to be written down in the Middle Ages comes from the pen of Orderic Vitalis, a 12th-century monk. From the abbey of St. Everult in Normandy, Orderic wrote his Ecclesiastical History, offering one of the best accounts of the Anglo-Norman world up to the year 1141.

Orderick wrote about the reigns of the king's William I to Stephen, the political events that happened locally and abroad, and even about the news coming from his monastery.

At one point in Book 8 of his Ecclesiastical History, Orderick pauses from discussing the warfare between William Rufus and his rebellious Count Robert of Bellamy and states, "...I am sure that I should not pass over in silence or consign to oblivion something that happened to a priest in the diocese of Lisieux on January 1st."

Kordorik explains that the priest was named Walshelen, and he was a young man, strong and brave, well-built and active. On the night of January 1, 1091, he was returning home after visiting a sick man at the far end of his parish. He was traveling along the road, far from any homes, when he heard the sounds of a great army coming towards him.

Walshland believes that these were the soldiers of Robert of Bellamy, and he decided it would be best for him to hide behind the trees and let the army pass. Orderick relates what happened next: "But a man of huge stature, carrying a great mace, barred the priest's way as he ran, and brandishing the weapon over his head, cried out, 'Stand! Go no further!' The priest obeyed at once, and stood motionless, leaning on the staff he was carrying."

The stern mace-bearer stood beside him without harming him, waiting for the army to pass by. Walshlin stayed at the side of the road as he watched thousands of people walk by. First came the peasants, who were carrying across their necks and shoulders their clothes, animals, furniture, and other worldly goods. To the priests, they seemed to be a mob of people who were carrying off the plunder from an attack.

Then came hundreds of women riding side-saddle on horses, but the saddles were marked with red-hot nails. As the women rode, they would jump off their saddles and into the air, and then land back on the nails, leaving them burned and stabbed. After them came a crowd of priests, monks, even bishops and abbots, all dressed in black cowls and groaning and lamenting as they passed by.

Next followed a great army of knights, in which no color was visible save blackness and flickering fire. All rode upon huge horses, fully armed as if they were galloping to battle and carrying jet-black standards. What scared Walshland so much was that he recognized many of these people. They were his neighbors and fellow clergy, but they had all died in recent years.

There were even people that Walshelen and others thought to be good Christians, even considered saints. But they were here too, walking with this army of the dead. The worst of this group were those being carried on byers, suffering terrible punishments,

On the byres sat men as small as dwarfs but with huge heads like barrels. One enormous tree trunk was borne by two Ethiopians, and on the trunk some wretch tightly trussed with suffering tortures, screaming aloud in his dreadful agony. A fearful demon sitting on the same trunk was mercilessly goading his back and loins with red-hot spurs while he streamed with blood.

Walshlin at once recognized him as the slayer of the priest Stephen, and realized that he was suffering unbearable torments for his guilt in shedding innocent blood not two years earlier, for he had died without completing his penance for the terrible crime. As Walshlin watched them pass by, he realized this was Heliquin's army, which apparently had been a folktale for many years, although Ordric Vitalis is our earliest writer to talk about them.

Throughout the 12th century, this legend would spread around and around Western Europe. Walter Mapp explained that they got their name from ancient Britain king named Hurla, who made a deal with the dwarf king. The dwarf gives him a small dog and tells Hurla and his companions that they cannot dismount from their horses until the dog jumps off Hurla's arms. Otherwise, they will all be turned to dust.

Perla soon realizes the dog will not leave his arms, and so he and his companions are doomed to wander the earth as a kind of undead. There are several tales about Heliquin's army, or Heliquin's hunt, some of which involve King Arthur or other medieval legends. Church writers apparently associated this ghostly ramble with purgatory, offering a horrific example to the living on what awaits those who sinned when they died.

As Walshlin continued to watch the medieval horde pass before his eyes, he said to himself, "I have heard many who claimed to have seen them, but have ridiculed the tale-tellers and not believed them because I never saw any solid proof of such things."

Now I do indeed see the shades of the dead with my own eyes, but no one will believe me when I describe my vision unless I can show some token to living men. I will catch one of the riderless horses following the host, quickly mount it, and take it home to compel the belief of my neighbors when I show it to them." He tried to grab the first riderless horse he saw, but it bolted away before Walsherland could reach it. Another steed came along.

The horse stopped for the priest to mount, breathing from its nostrils a great cloud of steam in the shape of a tall oak tree. The priest put his left foot in the stirrup and, seizing the reins, placed his hand on the saddle. Immediately he felt an intense burning like raging fire under his foot, and an indescribable cold struck into his heart from the hand that held the reins.

Just then, four of the dead knights rushed towards them, shouting, "Why are you molesting our horses? Come with us! None of our people has harmed you, yet you try to take what is ours!" Walshelen was very frightened, but one of the knights told the others not to harm the priest. He identified himself as William of Gloss, and he spoke about how his sins in life were punishing him in his death.

But most of all usury torments me, for I lent my money to a poor man, receiving a mill of his as a pledge, and because he was unable to repay the loan, I retained the pledge all my life and disinherited the legitimate heir by leaving it to my heirs. See, I carry a burning mill-shaft in my mouth, which, believe me, seems heavier than the castle of Rowan.

Therefore, tell my wife Beatrice and my son Roger that they must help me by quickly restoring the heir the pledge, from which they received far more than I ever gave." As Walshlin heard more about this knight's sins and his demands, he decided not to help him. "It is not right to declare such things. In no circumstances will I carry your orders out to anyone.

The knight, in a terrible rage, then put on his hand and seized the priest by the throat, dragging him along the ground and threatening him. His victim felt the hand that held him burning like fire, and his great anguish cried out suddenly, "Blessed Mary, glorious Mother of Christ, help me!" Just then another knight appeared, waving a sword in his right hand and saying, "Wretches, why are you murdering my brother? Leave him and be gone!"

This new knight came to Walshland and revealed himself to be his brother Robert, who died in England. But Walshland did not recognize him or believe him, even after Robert revealed things that only his brother would know.

Finally, the dead knight exclaimed, "I am amazed by your hardness and obstinacy. I brought you up after both our parents died and loved you more than any living person. I sent you to schools in France, kept you well provided with clothes and money, and in many other ways furthered your progress. Now you have forgotten all this and disdain even to recognize me." It was only then that Walshelen believed him, and the two brothers talked for a while.

Robert explained, "After I last spoke to you in Normandy, I left for England with your blessing. There I reached my life's end, and when my Creator willed, and I have endured severe punishment for the great sins with which I am heavily burdened, the arms which we bear are red-hot and offend us with an appalling stench, weighing us down with intolerable weight and burning with everlasting fire, up to now I have suffered unspeakable torture from these punishments.

But when you were ordained in England and sang your first Mass for the faithful departed, your father Ralph escaped from his punishments, and my shield, which caused me great pain, fell from me. As you see, I still carry this sword, but I look in faith for release from this burden within the year.

Finally, as the last of Heliquin's army went by, Robert said, "I cannot speak longer with you, my brother, for I am compelled to hasten after this wretched host. Remember me, I beg. Help me with your prayers and compassionate alms. In one year from Palm Sunday, I hope to be saved and released from all torments by the mercy of my Creator."

"Keep thought of your own welfare. Correct your life wisely, for it is stained by many vices, and you must know that it will not be long enduring." Once the ghostly army had gone, Walshlin fell ill for a week, but he slowly recovered and told the local bishop of what he saw. Orderic Vitalis reveals that he himself had heard this story from Walshlin himself and even saw the scar on his face caused by the evil night.

Walshelen would live for at least another 15 years. Orderick sums up this event by writing, "I have recorded these things for the edification of my readers, so the just men may be encouraged in good and the vicious may repent of evil." When Weird Darkness returns, office romances are nothing new. Sadly, neither is sexual harassment in the workplace. And apparently in the 1800s, a 40-something boss could try to seduce a 15-year-old worker

And if you guessed that didn't turn out well for anyone, you'd be right. But first: Despite what we're led to believe from movies and television, cemeteries, graveyards, and churchyards are actually quite peaceful places with no reason to be haunted any more than any other plot of land. They are, in fact, meant to be resting places, not restless places. But Repton Village Churchyard in Derbyshire apparently never received that memo.

That story is up next on Weird Darkness. Hey Weirdos! If you enjoy what you're hearing from me in the Weird Darkness Podcast throughout the year, may I ask for a Christmas gift from you? It's an easy one, and it's free to give. This month, just invite two or three people you know to give Weird Darkness a listen. That is truly the greatest gift you could ever give to me.

Letting your family, friends, co-workers, neighbors and others know about the podcast is incredibly valuable to me, my bride Robin and our cat, Ms. Mocha Monster. That's it. Tell someone about the show. Drop a link to Weird Darkness in your social media. Maybe send a text to a few folks to wish them a very scary Christmas with a link to the show in that text. It doesn't matter how you do it, but it does make a huge impact when you do.

From all of us here at Marlar Manor, thank you, and Merry Christmas!

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Despite their macabre associations, churchyards are not normally more liable to ghosts than anywhere else, for in normal circumstances, churchyards are simply resting places which should not contain any restless spirits or echoes of a troubled past. In Derbyshire, Repton Village Churchyard has certain distinctive features which makes such echoes slightly more possible.

The Church of St. Whiston contains a unique Saxon crypt which is one of the most important surviving pieces of Saxon architecture in England. It dates from around 750 AD and contains the tombs of King Æthelbald of Mercia and King Wiglaf . When Whiston, grandson of Wiglaf, a Saxon prince, was treacherously murdered, he was buried in the crypt with his ancestors.

Soon after, the crypt became a shrine, where miraculous cures were claimed to take place. Historians claim the site of the church was previously occupied by an old Saxon abbey, with a secret passage leading to Anchor Church nearly three miles away. As the capital of the kingdom of Persea, Repton had a fairly active history, which culminated in 874 AD when the town and abbey were sacked by Danes.

The abbey was completely destroyed, but the crypt partly survived to be built. The area has had a varied history, but recorded curiosities do not begin to occur until much later. Sir Simon de Gui, traveling in Derbyshire in 1727, gives this account of an unusual story from an old labourer

About 40 years since, cutting hillocks near the surface, he met with an old stone wall. When clearing it further, he found it to be a square enclosure of 15 feet. In this he found a stone coffin, and saw in it the skeleton of a human body, nine feet long, and round it 100 skeletons of the ordinary size, laid with the feet pointing to the stone coffin, the head of the great skeleton he gave to Mr. Bowes, master of Repton School.

I inquired at this school and one of the present masters, who is the son of Mr. Bowes, concerning the skull, but it is lost, yet he says he remembers the skull in his father's closet, and that he often heard his father mention this gigantic corpse, and thinks that the skull was in proportion to a body of that stature. The present owner will not suffer it opened, the lady of the manor having forbidden it."

This grave was in a field now covered by the northern position of the churchyard. It was eventually dug up again at the end of the 18th century, but this time only a confused jumble of bones was discovered. Perhaps it is from this that the impression of a disturbing influence in the churchyard dates.

At some time before the mid-19th century, the villagers are said to have gone searching with lanterns for ghosts. And in 1861, a boy watching from a window in the neighboring school said that he had seen three white figures crossing the churchyard at two in the morning, then vanish suddenly before his eyes. Could this be the ghostly figures walking the line of the secret pathway to Anchor Church?

Later, a village gravedigger used to complain that when he was digging graves, he was made uncomfortable by the specter of a 17th-century gravedigger who stood among the trees watching him. Another fascinating local belief is that a goblin-type entity lives at the top of the church steeple. Scarcely less strange are the twisted figures which sometimes appear sitting on top of gravestones in a wreath of smoke.

A cross from the church is a cross, reputedly where Christianity was first preached in the Midlands in 653 AD. Until the end of the 19th century, regular markets and fairs took place in the area between the cross and the Priory Arch. It was here that in 1848 a man brought his wife with a halter round her waist and offered her for sale for one shilling.

Back in the churchyard is the grave of Frederick Wickham Railton, who died at the age of 14 years and 8 months in 1853 while a pupil at Repton School. The grave houses the body of an uneasy spirit, which has been known for the last 120 years as the "Gallery Ghost." The boy is said to have been murdered, and his ghost makes its appearance on the night of the senior steeplechase running race and haunts the unfortunate winner

Apparently, in his lifetime, Railton himself was notable as a good runner. The gallery into which the boys' bedrooms opened is in the top story of the Repton School's accommodation. It was here that Railton was made to run the gauntlet for some schoolboy offense. Six times up and down the gallery between assailants, armed with towels and pillowcases,

One of them, and it is rumored it was his own brother, had tied an ink bottle in his towel and a blow from this struck him on the head and killed him. As with many haunted towns, Repton has a strong link with religion and specifically the Augustine Abbey that now houses Repton School.

With its strange mass grave that contained over 250 skeletons, subterranean crypts, and secret tunnels to its local folklore stories relating to unusual entity manifestations, Repton certainly seems to have a field of strangeness, or what I term haunt field.

From its foundation, the land has been interpreted as being a part of the borderlands of human belief, whether being deemed "holy" or "cursed," through the last 500 years since the Reformation that field of belief has developed and entered modern society.

Ask any old Reptonians about the ghost of young Frederick and they will know of a fellow pupil who allegedly witnessed the spectre or, stranger still, may have seen one of the many entities said to haunt the area around St. Whiston Church. Fanny Windley began working in the factories of Brooklyn at the age of 10. When she was 15, Fanny was seduced by her 45-year-old employer, George W. Watson.

Watson's unwanted attention continued for the next two years, even after Fanny's marriage. Then, one day, on the stairway of the factory, she countered Watson's lewd advances with a gunshot to the head. There was no question that Fanny Winley Hyde killed George W. Watson. It would be up to the jury to decide whether this act was first-degree murder or if Fanny was "under a weight of grief that could not be resisted."

John Windley brought his family to America from Nottingham, England in 1864. He was a poor man, and Fanny Windley had begun working in England when she was eight years old. She was ten when they arrived in America and soon after the life of a factory girl in Brooklyn. She was a bright girl, attending school when she could, evenings and Sunday, and as she approached adolescence she was also considered quite beautiful.

When she was 15, Fanny went to work at a hairnet factory owned by George W. Watson, a 45-year-old married man with five children. About four months after she started the job, Watson called Fanny into his office and forced his attentions on her. To keep from losing her job, Fanny let him have his way. For the rest of her time at the factory, Watson took every opportunity to take advantage of his young employee.

When she tried to leave the job, Watson threatened to reveal to her father what they had been doing, knowing he would view Fanny as equally culpable. Inevitably, Fanny became pregnant and Watson gave her some medicine to induce abortion. The medicine did the job, but had the additional effect of destroying Fanny's health.

During this period, Fanny had moved out of her father's house. She came to see him after two months' absence, and both her father and stepmother commented on how much weight she had lost and how pale she was. Her weight had dropped from 125 pounds to 95 pounds. At her new lodgings, Fanny met a man named Hyde, a widower with a daughter around her own age.

He asked her to marry him, and she agreed. George Watson had promised Fanny that if she married, he would leave her alone. In fact, she had him swear to this on a Bible. But the promise did not last long, and soon, Watson was up to his old tricks. This time, Fanny told her husband, and Hyde was livid. He went to see Watson himself and threatened to expose the situation to Watson's wife. Once again, Watson promised to leave Fanny alone.

and once again, he broke his promise. In January 1872, Fanny's brother helped her buy a gun. She said she intended to use it only to frighten Watson away from her. The pistol was small enough to conceal in the bosom of her dress, and it was hidden there when she went into the factory on January 23rd. She met Watson on a landing at the stairway as he was leaving the office for lunch. There, she shot Watson in the head, killing him.

Several hours later, Fannie turned herself in to the police. The trial began April 15, 1872. The prosecution of Fannie Hyde was one of the sensational New York murder trials that dominated the headlines in the 1800s. Watson's family hired a prominent criminal attorney to assist the prosecution, making sure that Fannie was convicted and, as much as possible, mitigating the damage to George Watson's reputation.

The district attorney declined the offer. He believed it was an open-and-shut case of premeditated murder. Fanny had laid in wait on the stairway landing and shot Watson in cold blood. The defense argued that it had not been cold-blooded murder. It was a chance meeting on the stairway. Watson accosted her as usual, and Fanny had resisted. There was evidence that she had fought him off. The body was found with scratch marks on the face.

When this did not stop him, Fanny pulled the pistol from her bosom and shot. In her own testimony, Fanny recalled that Watson had called her a whore and said that she should go with him. She had no recollection of the shot itself. The defense took a two-pronged attack. First, they argued for justifiable homicide.

"Why, gentlemen, the meanest worm that walks the earth in human form, the frailest thing that reveals night and day in the meanest dens of infamy, is mistress of her own body; and the man who dares to lay violent hands on that body against her will, and attempts to use it against her will, and she kills him, she is justified in doing so, and so the court will instruct you." Then they argued for temporary insanity.

"We shall demonstrate to you as clear as sunlight that the defendant was no more responsible at the time of firing that shot than the pistol from which it was fired. Her mind was stormed in its citadel and laid prostrate under a stroke of frenzy. In either case, don't you see enough in this case to show you what a weight of grief must have been borne down upon this frail creature's head and heart, that this act was perpetrated under a weight of grief that could not be resisted?"

The case was given to the jury at 2.30 p.m. on April 19. They seemed somewhat baffled over what direction to take, and at 10.30 they requested that the court provide them with precise definitions of first-degree murder, manslaughter in the third degree, and justifiable homicide. The judge declared that they'd already been given those definitions but obliged them anyway. At around midnight, they sent word that they were hopelessly deadlocked.

The judge sent them back and told them to work out an agreement. At 7 a.m. the next morning, they tearfully told the judge there was no possibility of agreement. The New York Times reported that the jury had been swayed by sentiment toward a pretty woman. Ten jurors had voted for acquittal, while the other two wanted third-degree manslaughter. A compromise was proposed in which they would find Mrs. Hyde guilty of fourth-degree manslaughter.

The resulting fine of $1,000 would be paid by the ten jurors favoring acquittal. It was not enough to sway the holdouts, and the jury remained deadlocked. The verdict? A hung jury. Fannie Hyde was released on $2,500 bail. In January 1873, her case was called again, and Fannie failed to appear, forfeiting her bail. In March, she was arrested and sent to Brooklyn's Raymond Street Jail to await trial.

There, she met Kate Stoddard, the city's latest sensational defendant. In September 1873, Fanny Hyde was again released on $2,500 bail. She was never heard from again. When Weird Darkness returns, men admired and emulated Camille Flammarion, and many a woman swooned over him. Which is kind of an odd thing if you think about it, seeing as the man was consumed by thoughts of death.

We all dream, but for some people, what should be a time for their bodies and minds to rest turns into a nightmare from which they cannot escape. Our next Weird Darkness live stream is Saturday night, December 28th on the Weird Darkness YouTube channel, and during the live broadcast I'll share some of these chilling nighttime stories.

Tales of shadow people, sleep paralysis, and demons who stalk their victims in that place between dreams and reality. I'll share true tales of prophetic dreams, some joyful, some not. Sleepwalking incidents that are both amusing and disturbing. I'll also share real stories of night terrors so horrifying that sleep

became something to fear and dread for those victimized by the night. You might not want to sleep after joining our next live-screen. It's Saturday, December 28th at 5pm Pacific, 6pm Mountain, 7pm Central, 8pm Eastern. On the lighter side, I'll also be responding to comments and questions live on the air and doing a giveaway of some Weird Darkness merch.

Prepare yourself for our next live-screen for chilling tales of what some people must endure in an attempt to get some sleep. Find the details on the live-screen page at WeirdDarkness.com.

Eat, save, and be merry with low prices and same-day delivery from Amazon Fresh. Whether you're looking for sweet deals on holiday treats or your dream gingerbread house, outshine the tree with holiday deals delivered right to your doorstep. Prime members save even more with deals on thousands of grocery items and up to 50% off on weekly favorites. Celebrate the holiday season with savings and same-day delivery from Amazon Fresh.

When you're part of a military family, you understand sacrifice and support. So at American Public University, we honor your dedication by extending our military tuition savings to your extended family. Parents, spouses, legal partners, siblings, and dependents all qualify for APU's preferred military rate of just $250 per credit hour for undergraduate and master's level programs. American Public University, value for the whole family. Learn more at apu.apus.edu slash military.

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In late 19th and early 20th century France, a famous and favorite personality was the astronomer, science popularizer, and science fiction writer Camille Flammarion. It's difficult today to gauge the celebrity status that Flammarion held. Men, at least some men, admired and emulated Flammarion, and many a woman swooned over him. As the saying goes, some would give their right arm to be in any way associated with the great Flammarion.

Indeed, in a bizarre but true story, Flammarion received a body part from a deceased young female admirer. How this may have influenced his serious scientific interest in the possibility of life after death is unclear. A young French countess became amorously infatuated with Flammarion. She's reported to have had an image of Flammarion even tattooed on her body,

She came down with tuberculosis, and before dying prematurely, she instructed her physician, upon her death, to cut a large piece of skin from her back and deliver it to Flammarion with the request that he have it tanned and use the leather as the binding of his latest book, in honor of her, and thus she would always be close to him, at least in some sense. The desires of the countess were carried out, and the skin delivered to Flammarion

He duly had it prepared and used it to bind a copy of his book, The Land of the Sky, which he kept in the library of his private observatory. On the cover, in gold, he placed the following inscription, "'Pious Fulfillment of an Anonymous Wish. Binding in Human Skin. Woman. 1882.'"

The basic truth of this story has been confirmed: the skin was received and the book bound with it. But there are tantalizing details and variations that may or may not be true. In one version, before her death, the beautiful countess invites Flammarion to her chateau. He compliments her on her shoulders, and as a way to ensure that he will never forget her, she arranges for the macabre gift upon her death.

In another variation, which Flammarion stated was the real truth of the matter, he had never met the Countess in life and may not have even known her name. Apart from his anthropodermic adventures, Flammarion had a long and continuing fascination with physical studies. In modern terms, we would call them parapsychological studies, and the question of what, if anything, lies beyond bodily death. Indeed, this was apparently one of the consuming passions of his life,

By his own account, Plumerian's serious researches into psychical studies began in 1861 and continued until his death some six and a half decades later.

In his lifetime, he published such works as The Unknown in 1902 and Mysterious Psychic Forces in 1907, but his masterpiece and grand synthesis was the three-volume work Death and Its Mystery, published 1921-1923, with Volume 1 being titled Before Death, Volume 2, At the Moment of Death, and Volume 3, After Death.

"Death and Its Mystery" is a massive compilation of evidence, with Flammarion's analysis bearing on psychical phenomena and the evidence for an afterlife. In many ways, it encapsulates the work for his first generation of serious afterlife researchers, beginning in 1882 with the founding of the Society for Psychical Research, or SPR, in London. Yet despite the wealth of case studies it contains, many modern investigators of the afterlife have not cited Flammarion's opus

find this situation rather strange, even inexplicable, unless it's possibly due to Flammarion's style, which can be rather opinionated, to the point of perhaps alienating the modern reader. Be that as it may, I will briefly introduce you to some of Flammarion's main themes, and also place his work into historical context. One reason Flammarion was so popular with the public is that he was not afraid to speculate.

He was not satisfied with simply recounting data and hard facts, but would extrapolate from those facts, mixing in his own speculations. This is seen in his astronomical work from the start. His first book, The Plurality of Inhabited Worlds, originally published in 1862 Flammarion had barely reached adulthood at that time, was a bestseller, going through dozens and dozens of editions.

Part of its amazing success was no doubt due to the stance taken by Flammarion, namely that the universe is teeming with life, exotic species, and even intelligent beings on other worlds. Extraterrestrial life, at least according to Flammarion, undoubtedly exists. Such themes were followed up in many of the dozens of books, both non-fiction and fiction, that Flammarion authored during his lifetime.

Given this speculative and open attitude of Flammarion, many of his devoted readers expected him to also be open, even supportive of the concept that there may be more to life than simple material existence, more than the physicists' matter and energy as we know it.

That is, if there is life on other planets out there in the universe, could not there be the continued existence of life or something in some dimension or space after the dissolution of our material bodies? As Fulmerian wrote, "When the first editions of my book The Plurality of Inhabited Worlds were published, a certain number of readers seemed to expect the natural sequel, The Plurality of the Existence of the Soul."

"If the first problem has been considered solved by my succeeding books, the second has remained an open question. And the survival of the soul, either in space or on other worlds or through earthly reincarnations, still confronts us as the most formidable of problems." But though they may have had to wait nearly 60 years, ultimately Flammarion's readers did receive their answer with the publication of "Death and its Mystery."

The 19th century saw the rise of modern spiritualism, essentially the belief in both survival after death and the ability to communicate with the deceased, for instance during a séance. Flammarion was not the only person of the educated classes to take a serious interest in the subject. The SPR was established by a group of Cambridge scholars to seriously and scientifically investigate, among other subjects, spiritualist claims and the possibility of an afterlife.

Before addressing the question of life beyond the grave directly, the SPR first explored the issue of the reality of telepathic, or direct mind-to-mind, interactions. This was seen as important both in its own right and as a possible way that "discarnate spirits" might communicate with living, body-bound individuals,

The initial study, spearheaded by SPR member Edmund Gurney, polled 5,705 people concerning possible telepathic experiences and resulted in the two-volume 1886 work titled Phantasms of the Living. The evidence in Phantasms of the Living supported the reality of telepathy, but not everyone was convinced, so more data was collected, resulting in a truly massive study.

Between April 1889 and May 1892, 17,000 sane and healthy people were polled as to whether they had ever had any hallucinatory experiences — the vast majority had not — and if so, the details of their experiences. The large number of people polled for the "Census of Hallucinations" was necessary in order to develop a meaningful statistical analysis of the data.

As the author of the study realized, given the labor it involved, it was unlikely that such an extensive study would ever be undertaken again. And so far, this is true. While information on all kinds of hallucinations was collected, a special focus of the study was to collect data that could add to the examination of the evidence for telepathy. In particular, there was a special examination of death coincidences. Here's an example, which I have paraphrased, collected as part of the census:

Mr. S. Walker Anderson was living in Australia, while an aunt of his, Mrs. P., was in England. During the night of 17 November 1890, Mr. Walker Anderson woke up from his sleep and saw his aunt standing near the foot of his bed. He watched her lips move, and although he could hear no sound, he understood that she meant to say goodbye. The figure of his aunt then gradually vanished. Early the next morning, he told his wife about the incident, being convinced that his aunt had died.

Both Mr. Walker Anderson and his wife made written notes of the time and date of the hallucination or apparition. Some weeks later, they learned from first an English newspaper and later via a personal letter that the aunt died on the same day and about the same time as Mr. Walker Anderson's hallucination, within a few hours, taking the time difference between England and Australia into account.

This, like all material collected for the study, was carefully examined and cross-examined by the researchers so that no false evidence would be included. The authors analyzed 65 attested death coincidences collected as part of the census. A death coincidence was defined as a hallucination, similar to the case I just shared with you, occurring within 12 hours before or after the death of an individual.

Eliminating all questionable cases for the purposes of statistical calculations, only 30 of these death coincidences were accepted. These death coincidences were compared to other hallucinations found among the census participants, the probability of a person dying on any particular day, and various other factors. Ultimately, the result was that even though death coincidences are very rare, they occur at least 300 to 400 times more often than they should due to chance alone.

The authors wrote, "Between deaths and apparitions of a dying person, a connection exists which is not due to chance alone. This we hold as a proved fact." The authors of the census were less sanguine concerning possible evidence for post-mortem existence. Although they had received some tantalizing suggestions of possible communication from the dead, they did not regard the evidence as conclusive.

Frederick W. H. Myers, who had helped author both Phantasms of the Living and The Senses of Hallucinations, continued to study the issues of the afterlife until his own death. In his massive, posthumous two-volume work, Human Personality and Its Survival of Bodily Death, Myers assembled the best evidence up to his time for life after death. His conclusions are summarized as follows:

"I hold that certain manifestations of central individualities associated now or formerly with certain definite organisms have been observed in operation apart from those organisms, both while the organisms were still living and after they had decayed." Thus, in a limited and somewhat circumspect way, Myers asserted that there is an afterlife, at least to some degree for at least some people, and possibly other organisms.

This was farther than phantasms or the census had taken the subject, but still did not match either spiritualistic or everyday conceptions of an afterlife. Enter Camille Flammarion. The first task the Flammarion set for himself was to prove the existence of the soul independent of the material body. The second task was to demonstrate that the soul persists even after the dissolution of the physical organism. Let's see how he approached each issue.

Flammarion devotes much of his first volume of his trilogy, Before Death, to a discussion of the evidence for, in his terminology, supranormal faculties. These include the ability to receive information psychically at a distance, classic telepathy and precognition. Like the SPR studies, Flammarion is absolutely convinced of the reality of telepathy. He also argues strongly for the reality of precognition,

Flammarion essentially equates the psychic element differing from the material organism with the concept of the soul. As he stated at the end of Volume 1,

To solve the mystery of death, to establish the survival of the soul, we first had to prove that the soul does exist individually, an existence proved by special, extracorporeal faculties which cannot be included among the properties of the material brain, or among chemical or mechanical reactions, faculties essentially spiritual such as the will acting without the spoken word,

telepathy, the sight by the spirit of a far-off country, of a future scene or event, all phenomena outside the sphere of our physical organism lacking any common measure with our organic sensations and proving that the soul is a substance which exists in itself.

Flammarion discusses the possibility that at least some psychic phenomena might be due to unknown but nonetheless physical or material or energetic causes. For instance, something analogous to radio waves as the mode of telepathic transmission, but essentially dismisses such arguments as unrealistic.

In particular, Flammarion places great importance on the fact that precognition can occur. Even if there is some chance that other psychic phenomena, such as telepathy, might ultimately be explainable by some sort of matter or energy phenomena currently not understood, in Flammarion's opinion there is no conceivable manner by which precognition will ever be explained by conventional physics.

I'm not so sure this is actually true, given recent developments in physics. For Flammarion, the reality of precognition proves incontrovertibly that the psychic element, the soul, is real and distinct from the physical, mechanical, and chemical organism. Given its importance to Flammarion's reasoning, what evidence is there for the reality of precognition? Flammarion cites several examples to make his case, but perhaps the best can be summarized as follows:

On June 27, 1894, at 9 a.m., Dr. Gallet, at the time a medical student, was absorbed in studying for an examination in Lyons, France, when he was suddenly obsessed with a sentence that came to his mind. « Monsieur Casimir Perrier is elected President of the Republic by 451 votes! »

He not only wrote down the sentence, but told a fellow student. After lunch, the two students met a couple of other friends, and all had a good laugh at the "prophecy" since Casimir Perrier was not considered a serious candidate. The election took place at Versailles at 2 p.m., and that afternoon, the students heard a newsboy shouting, "Monsieur Casimir Perrier is elected President of the Republic by 451 votes!"

Given the fact, at least as established to Flammarion's satisfaction, that the soul can somehow access the future, Flammarion posits that the soul, as an independent being, can survive into the future after the dissolution of the physical body. Volume 3 of Death and Its Mystery is devoted to the supposed occurrences or manifestations of the once-living at time periods that clearly fall well after physical death.

The second volume is devoted to manifestations of the dying-death coincidences that may be explainable by telepathy among the living, even if some of the living are about to die or in the throes of death. Flammarion cites numerous reputed manifestations and apparitions of the dead. Here's one which, for the sake of space, I have paraphrased.

On September 2, 1916, Madame A. Clarenval suddenly and inexplicably knew that her son, a pilot with the French air forces, was in danger. Two days later, she was informed that at that very day and hour, her son had disappeared behind German lines. After the end of the war, the family found out the son had died and was buried in a soldier's graveyard in France.

Mdm. Clarenval and her husband made four trips to the graveyard but were unsuccessful in locating their son's body. Then on May 25, 1920, Mdm. Clarenval had a vision. She saw the face of her son in a group of trees, and on either side of him were the faces of two young men, a Russian and a German. It was subsequently discovered that her vision happened when, to the day, bodies were being exhumed from the graveyard and moved

Ultimately, she and her husband went back to the cemetery area and found the body of their son buried between that of a Russian soldier and a German soldier. Madame Clarenval was convinced that her son had come back from the grave to direct her to the location of his bodily remains. As Flammarion acknowledged, the issue is whether or not such cases necessarily require the manifestation of the dead to explain all the details.

In general, we can eliminate only with great difficulty the possibility of influence exerted by living persons' minds. In the incident of Madame Clarenville, everything could conceivably be explained by telepathy — between her and her son when he died, and possibly between her and grave workers, although she did not know the grave workers, perhaps combined with her own precognition of the future — namely, a precognition of finding her son's grave.

However, if we are to posit a precognition on her part of finding the grave, that precognition also seems to be the very factor that allows her to find the grave. How can this be? Flammarion and like-minded thinkers find the argument that the sun is actually communicating from the beyond more convincing. Flammarion, like Myers before him, concluded that apparitions or manifestations of the dead are real, but they decline sharply with time after death.

The vast majority occur within the first days and weeks after death, and by the end of the first year, manifestations of the dead are exceedingly rare, although Flammarion contends that some have occurred up to decades after death. What do we make of this pattern? Do the deceased, perhaps occasionally, remain in our everyday terrestrial realm for a short period of time before leaving?

The longer the temporal duration after bodily death, perhaps the more likely it is that the deceased will have left the terrestrial realm. Such a hypothesis would account for the rapid drop-off of apparitions as we become further removed temporarily from the death incident. But what happens to the deceased? Where do they go? Well, here are Flammarion's speculations.

In our total ignorance, from a scientific point of view, of the conditions of ultra-terrestrial life, we can only make conjectures as to this life. We know and shall know henceforth that the soul exists. To admit this survival leads us to admit pre-existence. Earthly life is but a phase in the life of the spirit. The doctrine of reincarnation is, moreover, the only one which remains admissible after we have pondered all metaphysical considerations, and it is the oldest of definite religious beliefs.

There must be both a previous existence and an afterlife. Ever the astronomer, Plumerian adds, "There is no reason for thinking that the reincarnations of the human soul are limited to our planet, nor is it unscientific to attribute to psychic monads the faculty of voyaging through the immensities of space, of passing from one planet to another, from the Earth to Mars, Venus or some other world." So what is it like after we die?

Is there really life after death, and can science ever get on board with the idea, despite the testable evidence? We'll look into that a bit more when Weird Darkness returns.

Hey Weirdos, our next Weirdo Watch Party is Saturday, January 18th and sci-fi film host and all-around nice guy Jukesua is back with another terrible B-movie – this one from the infamously inept Roger Corman. From 1958 it's "War of the Satellites" – and yet you propose to follow this tenth failure with another attempt?

Using more of your volunteers? An unknown force declares war against planet Earth when the United Nations disobeys warnings to cease and desist in its attempts at assembling the first satellite in the atmosphere. We are obviously in the grip of a force stronger than we can oppose. It's a movie eight weeks in the making, and it shows on every frame of film. See the last few seconds with a wire holding up a planet.

See the satellites spinning in different directions every time you see them. There it is, the barrier. All those men in that satellite will die. See shadows somehow being cast onto the backdrop that is supposed to be outer space. Sigma barrier dead ahead. Crash emergency. All hands secure for blast. You'll even see actors wearing the same clothes day after day after day because...

Who knows? War of the Satellites! Join us online as we all watch the film together on January 18th at 7pm Pacific, 8pm Mountain, 9pm Central, 10pm Eastern on the Monster Channel page at WeirdDarkness.com. The Weirdo Watch Party is always free to watch - just tune in at showtime and watch the movie with me and other Weirdo family members.

and even join in the chat during the film for more fun. We're always cracking jokes during the movie, usually at the actor's or director's expense, but hey, it's all worthy of criticism. It's Jukesua presenting Roger Corman's War of the Satellites from 1958.

You can see a trailer for the film now and watch horror hosts and B-movies for free anytime on the Monster Channel page at WeirdDarkness.com. That's WeirdDarkness.com slash TV and we'll see you Saturday, January 18th for our Weirdo Watch Party!

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What happens when we die? Human beings have asked this question probably more than any other, with "Does God exist?" and "What is the meaning of life?" coming in as close seconds. All three, of course, are intertwined. But while the reality of the deity and the solution to life's riddle may be grasped in the here and now, what happens when we give up the ghost seems to be something we can know only by doing just that.

It seems that the only way we can know for certain what happens after death is by dying. And while the attraction of that ultimate mystery is strong, the means of solving it appear to most of us at least somewhat less attractive. But is it really the case that the answer to what happens after death lies beyond a threshold which, once crossed, cannot be uncrossed?

While messages from the dead fill folklore, myth, seances, and religions around the world, and through the ages have in different ways assured their devotees of the reality of an afterlife, many of us are nevertheless not entirely certain that anything awaits us beyond the grave, except perhaps annihilation, which is of course the standard modern view.

In recent times, however, assurances of a continuity of consciousness beyond the brain have come not from the camp of religion, mysticism, or the occult, but from that of their often-sworn enemy, science. In 2001, a paper appeared in the prestigious medical journal The Lancet, purporting to show evidence supporting the reality of near-death experiences, or NDEs.

In "Near-Death Experiences in Survivors of Cardiac Arrest: A Prospective Study in the Neanderthals," the Dutch cardiologist Pim van Lummel and his research team presented the results of a 20-year-long study of the strange experiences reported by patients who survived heart failure. That these patients reported being aware of anything during cardiac arrest was strange enough. The standard view is that when the heart and lungs stop, so do the brain and consciousness.

What should have happened was that they experienced nothing at all. Nevertheless, they did. The patients Lummel studied reported that during the period of unconsciousness brought on by their seizure, they experienced some very remarkable things indeed.

Many recounted feelings of bliss and intense happiness. Many spoke of a bright white light, of a tunnel, of seeing deceased relatives, and of going through a kind of life review in which their entire lives, as the cliche goes, passed before their eyes. Many spoke of having an out-of-the-body experience, of seeing themselves and their nurses and doctors from some vantage point near the ceiling. Many spoke of guides, angels, and spirits come to comfort them.

Many also assured Lummel that the experience was entirely beneficial, that it relieved them of their fear of death, that it had transformed them in some way, and that it gave them the certainty that the life we know here on Earth is not the only one. Lummel's Lancet paper understandably caused an uproar, yet the research was impressive.

The statistics Lommel and his team provided seemed to show that the usual explanations given to account for NDEs from the mainstream scientific view did not at least in these cases work. Lommel studied some 562 survivors of cardiac arrest, and he discovered that up to 18% of them reported having had an NDE.

Of these, none could be chalked up to oxygen deficiency to the brain, the effects of drugs, or other physiological or psychological reasons usually offered as a way to explain the phenomenon. Lommel and his team concluded the NDE was an actual, objective event and that it argued in favor of some kind of post-death survival. Perhaps even more controversial, the findings also seemed to offer proof that consciousness can exist outside or even without the brain.

While most mainstream scientists will merely snort at the idea of an afterlife, they will positively bellow at the suggestion consciousness is anything more than a byproduct of that three-pound mass of grey matter that we have. According to a number of prestigious neuroscientists and philosophers of the mind, consciousness is absolutely, positively, 100% produced by the brain.

Lommel was unrepentant, and in 2007 he produced a book, "Consciousness Beyond Life," based on his paper, presenting his case studies in greater depth and bringing his research to a wider public. You can actually see that paper in New Dawn Magazine if you wanted to check for it. The results were encouraging. The book was a bestseller in the Netherlands, then repeated its success in Germany, the UK, and the US. Lommel has presented his ideas in interviews and videos and on television.

Lummel's work has, of course, attracted criticism. Yet his findings seem to stand and, for the open-minded, provide the kind of hard evidence that scientists dismissive of any non-materialistic accounts of consciousness demand, in order for them to consider changing their minds in any way about the matter. Lummel was not the only medical practitioner to take NDEs seriously and to subject them to study.

Even more controversial than Lummel's findings was the account by the American neurosurgeon Eben Alexander of his own NDE. Alexander had 25 years' experience studying the brain and teaching others how to study it, at institutions such as the Harvard Medical School. Like most of his colleagues, he accepted the dogma that the brain produces consciousness.

Then, in 2008, a bacterial infection — a rare form of meningitis — had him in a coma for a week and taught him otherwise. His chances of recovery were slim at best, and his family was advised that if he did survive, he would be little more than a vegetable. The infection had caused irreparable brain damage. Yet on the seventh day, under a ventilator, Alexander opened his eyes and came to. This was miracle enough.

But the story Alexander had to tell was even more remarkable. The white light was there, and also beautiful melodies, angelic choirs, fantastic landscapes with strange plant life, waterfalls, crystal pools, and thousands of beings dancing, and a girl who came to him on a butterfly wing.

During the week of his coma, when his brain shouldn't have produced the slightest hallucination — should have produced no consciousness at all — Alexander went on a journey to higher realms, and eventually to what he calls the Core, a center of reality filled with the infinite healing power of the all-loving deity, the source of everything. He was privy to fundamental realities, for which God seemed to puny a little human word.

He speaks of experiencing a higher dimensional multiverse and an oversphere, and that his notions of time, space, and everything else were radically changed. During his coma, he underwent a kind of spiritual evolution, from what he calls the earthworm's eye view to the core, many times learning truths about the nature of existence and our part in it.

One truth was about the reality of the afterlife, knowledge of which Alexander has tried to pass on to his many readers in his best-selling books Proof of Heaven and Maps of Heaven. Like Pim van Lommel, Alexander came to believe that human beings are much more than their physical bodies and consciousness is something more than a byproduct of the brain. They disagree with the philosopher John Searle, who argues that the brain produces consciousness as the liver does bile.

Consciousness, they argue, is not localized in or produced by the brain, because consciousness itself is the ultimate reality, not the physical world, an insight echoed down the ages by mystics and visionaries, but which in recent times it seems some scientists are cottoning onto as well. They see it as a way out of the cul-de-sac reached by trying to solve the hard problem in mainstream neuroscience: how does a neuron, a physical phenomenon, become a thought, a mental one?

The answer is it doesn't. It's the other way around. Whatever we think of Alexander's account of the afterlife and his ideas about mankind's spiritual evolution – he has since become a popular advocate of the union of science and spirituality with appearances on Oprah Winfrey and other talk shows – the notion of a non-local consciousness has a history.

What was remarkable about the cases Lommel studied and Alexander's own was that they reported vivid, inner, transformative experience during a time when the brains involved should have been incapable of producing anything. If brains produce consciousness, this should have been impossible, rather like a flashlight shining without a battery. Some studies done in the 1960s suggest consciousness may not need much brains at all

In 1965, John Lorber, a specialist in hydrocephalus, or water on the brain, published a paper as remarkable as Lummel's. In Hydroencephaly with Normal Development, published in Developmental Medicine and Child Psychology for December 1965, Lorber presented several case studies in which people with little or no cerebral cortex functioned normally. In one case, the subject had an IQ of 126 and an honors degree in mathematics.

Two girls born in the 1960s had fluid where their cerebrums should have been, with no evidence of a cerebral cortex, yet both had perfectly normal intelligence. Unlike the Wizard of Oz's scarecrow, they and the other cases Lorber studied seemed to get on perfectly well without a brain. Such cases, though well documented, may push the believability barrier, but we need not resort to these extremes to argue the brain does not produce consciousness.

In the late 19th century, the philosopher Henry Bergson argued eloquently that rather than produce consciousness, the brain served an "eliminatory function," acting as a reducing valve, filtering reality and allowing only what was necessary for survival to reach conscious awareness. Rather than produce consciousness, the brain edits it down to something manageable. Otherwise, we would be overwhelmed by reality's complexity, condition common to many mystics.

Aldous Huxley resorted to Bergson's idea when, in The Doors of Perception, he tried to account for the effects of the drug mesaline on his consciousness. The mystical effects of the drug, Huxley believed, were due to its opening the filters of the brain, allowing more consciousness than needed for mere survival to flood into awareness. The fact that, in the cases Lommel studied and in Alexander's own, the brain was out of commission seems to support the Bergson-Huxley thesis.

With the filters off, much more of reality, what Huxley called mind at large, became available. If the brain mutes reality, allowing, as Huxley said, only a thin trickle to enter consciousness, in the NDE the taps seem to be on full blast. The analogy is apt, as our kitchen taps do not produce the water in our sinks, but quite the opposite. They stop it from running. It's already there in the pipes.

Some variant of Bergson's idea is popular among "alternative" scientists, such as the biologist Rupert Sheldrake, who speaks of the brain acting as a kind of tuner, selecting different wavelengths of reality, rather as a radio works by cutting out all transmissions except the one you wish to hear, or as a television that picks up a broadcast but is not responsible for it. Neither my radio nor my television produces the programs they play.

They receive them from the broadcaster, and Sheldrake and other scientists and philosophers like him see the brain as a kind of inner TV, picking out different channels, broadcast by, well, we're not quite sure.

The general idea is that consciousness is the fundamental reality. Rather than being stuffed into the cramped confines of our skulls, it pervades the universe. This is the panpsychism that philosopher David Colmers advocates, following in the philosophical footsteps of Bergson and his contemporary Alfred North Whitehead, who in different ways envisioned some version of mind at large.

Needless to say, or perhaps not, such an idea as an all-pervasive consciousness or mind is of course a staple part of many pre-modern worldviews.

Another who accepted the idea of mind at large was, oddly enough, an early investigator into NDEs, although in his aptly posthumous Human Personality and its Survival of Bodily Death in 1903, the first scientific study of the afterlife, F.W.H. Myers did not call them that. Myers spoke of the subliminal mind, by which he meant something different than Freud's unconscious, which Myers' coinage preceded by some years.

It was Huxley who in his foreword to Myers Classic compared his subliminal mind to an upstairs in the house of the soul rather than Freud's garbage-littered basement. This upstairs had some unusual characteristics, and in the late 19th century, Myers and his fellows in the Society for Psychical Research devoted their lives to studying them. Take for example the remarkable experience of Dr. A. S. Wiltz, who in 1889 died from typhoid fever.

Wilts was pronounced dead, but found himself waking up inside his body and gradually being released from it. He felt himself emerge from his body and found that he could walk away from it. No one noticed him, and stranger still, he found that he could walk through people.

Wiltz then found himself confronting huge rocks standing beneath storm clouds. A voice told him that if he continued past them, he would enter eternity. But if he desired, he could return to life, a common choice in many modern NDEs. He then woke up four hours after being pronounced dead and told of what he saw. Meyer's account of Dr. Wiltz's experience was preceded by an even earlier one,

In 1871, Albert Heim, a professor of geology, fell some 70 meters while climbing in the Alps. During the few seconds of his fall, Heim experienced a panoramic life review, seeing his whole past take place in many images, as though on a stage at some distance from me. Like many who have experienced an NDE, he saw a heavenly light and was free from fear and anxiety.

Conflict was transmuted into love, and he found himself moving painlessly and softly into a splendid blue heaven. Heim survived his fall, but the experience so moved him that he began to collect accounts of similar experiences by other climbers. Forgotten for years, Heim's work was rediscovered when what we might call the NDE and afterlife boom of the 1970s and 80s in the work of Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, Raymond Moody, Kenneth Ring, and others brought it back to light.

Another fairly well-known account of an NDE is that of C.G. Young, who in 1944, following a heart attack, found himself orbiting the Earth and confronting a strange temple and Hindu floating in space. Young was about to cross the threshold, like Dr. Wilts, when he found himself whisked back to Earth, disappointed at the prospect of coming back to life. Do Lummel and Alexander bring anything new to this study?

Their scientific and medical credentials certainly bring new attention to it, although to be sure not all of it is positive, and the claims and expertise of both have come under heavy scrutiny and criticism. But part of what makes their and other studies convincing, at least to the open-minded, is the similarity between the accounts they study and older reports on what happens when we die.

As Ptolemy Tompkins in The Modern Book of the Dead makes clear, there is much overlap between accounts of the afterlife found in the Egyptian Book of the Dead and the Tibetan Book of the Dead, to speak of only the two most famous earlier reports on the beyond. And these two share much with recent investigations, such as the insights about the life between death and rebirth, gleaned by the spiritual scientist Rudolf Steiner through his access to the Akashic Record.

For instance, Steiner II makes the "life review" a central part of the process of dying in preparation for reincarnation. But as Tompkins makes clear, there are also differences. The Swedish scientist and religious philosopher, Emanuel Swedenborg, who wrote much about the brain, journeyed to heaven, hell, and also to an intermediary realm he called the "spirit world" — not through an NDE, but through inducing visionary states.

He gave his own proof of the higher spheres in his book, Heaven and Hell, yet his account is somewhat different from Eben Alexander's, while both Swedenborg's and Alexander's differ considerably from Steiner's. Enough similarities exist among these accounts to suggest that in some way they and other voyagers were encountering different parts of the same inner landscape, and if the proofs of heaven that we have glanced at here are at all reliable.

It is one that, at some point, we will all have an opportunity to journey through, in this life and the next. Thanks for listening! If you like the show, please share it with someone you know who loves the paranormal or strange stories, true crime, monsters, or unsolved mysteries like you do.

You can email me anytime with your questions or comments at darren at WeirdDarkness.com. And you can find me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and the show's Weirdos Facebook group on the Contact Social page at WeirdDarkness.com. Also on the website, if you have a true paranormal or creepy tale to tell, click on TELL YOUR STORY

All stories in Weird Darkness are purported to be true unless stated otherwise, and you can find source links or links to the authors in the show notes. The Medieval Walking Dead was posted at Medievalists.net. The Ghosts of Repton is by M.J. Wayland. A Weight of Grief is by Robert Wilhelm for Murder by Gaslight. The Mystery of Death is by Robert Scotch for New Dawn Magazine. And Life in the Afterlife is by Gary Lockman, again for New Dawn Magazine.

Weird Darkness is a production of Marlar House Productions, and now that we're coming out of the dark, I'll leave you with a little light. Isaiah 9 verse 2, The people walking in darkness have seen a great light. On those living in the land of the shadow of death, a light has dawned. And a final thought, start making your own happiness a priority. I'm Darren Marlar. Thanks for joining me in the Weird Darkness.

Her mind was stormed in its citadel and laid prostrate under a stroke of frenzy. In either case, don't you see enough in this case to show you that— On September 2, 1916, Madame A. Clarenval suddenly ended—

On September 2, 1916, Madame A. Clarenval suddenly and inexplicably knew that her son, a pilot with the disappeared ***, knew that her son, a pilot with the French Air Forces, was in danger.

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When it's PCS time, you know the drill. Pack, research a new base, get the kids in school, because family supports family. At American Public University, we support military families with flexible, affordable online education that moves with you. As a military spouse, your tuition rate is the same as your partner's, just $250 per credit hour. American Public University, education that moves with you.

Learn more at apu.apus.edu/military