The Afterlife Survey by Maureen Milliken

Author:Maureen Milliken [Milliken, Maureen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781440531378
Publisher: Adams media
Published: 2012-07-15T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SEVEN

VOICES FROM BEYOND

Everyone has heard stories, or even had near-death experiences, signs from the dead, ghosts, and other signs that the dead are among us. Does this prove the existence of an afterlife? Or are these bits of “evidence” just a product of our overly active imaginations?

Almost everyone has a story or knows a story—you find a penny on the day of a loved one’s funeral, and you just know that person is sending you a message. Grandma appears at the end of your bed to tell you she’s okay. A feather drops from the sky.

Or even more intense—you’ve seen a ghost or had a visitor. You hear the voice of someone who died years ago. You go to a psychic and she contacts a member of your family who’s passed on, or you’re playing with a Ouija board and it spells out something no one alive could possibly know.

Or maybe you think it’s all a bunch of hooey.

The 2009 Harris Poll on what people believe found that 42 percent of those polled believe in ghosts, with Christians—at 41 percent—slightly more willing to believe than non-Christians—at 34 percent.

The 2008 Pew Forum survey found that 18 percent of people said they had actually seen a ghost—up from 9 percent in 1990. And the same survey said that 29 percent of people believe they have talked to the dead, up from 17 percent in 1990.

An AARP study has even higher numbers. Among the pool of 1,000 people older than 50 who took their poll, some 53 percent of responders said they believe in spirits or ghosts. And 38 percent said they have felt the presence or seen something they thought might be a spirit or ghost.

In all the polls, women are more likely to believe in ghosts or say they have spoken to the dead than men.

“My sense in studying the history of spiritualism is that people are fascinated with the idea of ghosts because it allows them to give some shape to the uncertainties that arise in the experience they have of their own consciousness,” Weber State University Assistant Professor of History Brady Brower told the Utah Standard Examiner recently. “All sorts of unexplainable things happen in the lives of normally functioning individuals.”

UTAH

While American belief in ghosts hovers around one-third of the population, a Utah psychic medium told the Standard Examiner that state has much higher numbers. Kim Terry, whom the newspaper describes as an Ogden-based professional rescue medium and ghost hunter, said that in Utah, belief in ghosts may be as high as 70 percent. Terry said much of that has to do with the heavily religious nature of the state, including its culture (Mormon), and “the expansion of people’s spiritual awareness.”

“I think they go hand in hand,” she said, adding that part of the Mormon Church’s ordinances include baptism for the dead. She said church members wouldn’t do that if they didn’t believe in the hereafter. She told the newspaper that trying to contact God enhances people’s belief in ghosts.

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