My decision to find out whether there is a spirit world, whether our deceased loved ones do still exist somewhere, whether there is life after death, and whether one possibly can contact the deceased, led me to think about how one could fulfill such a task and how one could find adequate proof thereof.

Of course everyone has heard tales about clairvoyants, gypsies, ouija boards, pendulars, apparitions, ghosts and spirits; and religions tell us of resurrection and eternal life as well, but can these things be considered as real "proof", or are they only tales? There must be something that proves the existence of life after death!

My first step was to search for literature on the internet. I found the following extract from the PSA Dictionary:

"Communication with the deceased? The historical roots of parapsychology go back to the spiritualism of the 19th century, a science which regards the possibility of contacting the deceased as feasible. This very day the question of a possible 'contact with the spirit world' belongs to the extended area of interest in parapsychology. While laboratory researchers refrain from it, the more so as the hypothesis of a possible contact between living and deceased persons may certainly be acceptable, but cannot be scientifically proven, a controversial field of research has come into existence, whose supporters even argue that direct audio tape recordings of the deceased can be made (Instrumental TransCommunication, ITC)."

So this means that while contacts cannot be scientifically proven, although this has certainly been tried for centuries, this also means that no counterevidence has been found!

Then I got different books. First I read "Life After Life" by Dr. Raymond Moody, Jr., which I highly recommend to everyone. In his research Dr. Moody deals in the most objective way possible with the phenomenon of dying, the experiences of dying people, OBEs (Out of Body Experiences), NDEs (Near Death Experiences), the tunnel with the light at the end, what awaits us beyond the tunnel, insights into the spirit world, and reports by revived people. Dr. Moody also takes into account the opinion of critics, which all have plausible explications for these phenomena. And although Dr. Moody's book has a positive influence over a person in mourning and delivers absolutely believable explanations, unfortunately for me, it was not enough proof of the existence of a spirit world and an afterlife.

The more I read, the more I realized how difficult it would be to prove the existence of life after death, and even if I were able to prove such an existence, how could I find out whether contacting the dead and communication with them would be possible?

To simplify my task, I considered undertaking a reversed line of reasoning. If a true contact with the deceased could be established, this would mean that the deceased must exist, that there must be a kind of spirit world, and consequently, a life after death! This line of reasoning seemed to imply less effort because I didn't have to deal with OBEs and NDEs, with chemical reactions in the human brain during the process of dying, nor with the validity of reports by revived people. In this way I could avoid a lot of delicate issues, because if real contacts with the deceased were to be established, it is not important to exactly comprehend HOW they come about. There are so many things that we do not understand in life (aspects of medical science, weather, outer space), and nevertheless we all realize that these things exist. Until now, no scientist could explain how tornados develop, but everyone knows that they exist and that they are dangerous. No one would ever deny their existence, just because of the fact that we don't know how they develop and how they work internally!

So the next step was to collect information and reports on the spirit world. I read more books, e.g., "Love Beyond Life" by Joel Martin and Patricia Romanowski, and "Reunions - Visionary Encounters With Departed Loved Ones" by Dr. Raymond Moody, Jr. All of these books deal with several forms of possible contact with the spirit, i.e. with emotions, dreams, strange happenings, apparitions, and how to set up a psychomanteum. And although everything sounded really convincing, it wasn't good enough for me as 'proof'. How can you be sure that the emotions are not only a product of your own brain, which would, in the state of deep grieving, and driven by your own wishful thinking, be ready to believe what one wants to believe?

At approximately the same time, I saw a report about a missing girl on TV. The police, who had been stuck in their investigation for weeks, had sought the help of two mediums. The first medium saw the girl lying strangled in the woods. Further, the medium claimed that the girl had been kidnapped in a blue car by a male person, well known to her, and gave hints about the direction in which they drove. The second medium, however, felt that the girl was still alive. Later, the girl turned out to have in fact been kidnapped by a neighbor from the same house, in a blue car, and taken to a wooded area nearby, where she had been raped and strangled by this neighbor. The killer had admitted the crime.

This report interested me in so far as it showed that mediums do not all have the same clear visions; on the other hand it could not just be a coincidence that everything the first medium 'saw', apart from the precise location, was right. Granted, one could certainly figure out a lot of things. When children are kidnapped and molested, often the kidnappings are by acquaintances who murder the children afterwards so that they do not reveal the culprit's name. And what about the wooded area? Of course, nobody would want to commit a crime out in the open! Even discerning the blue color of the car could just have been incidental, for it was quite obvious that a car would be used for the kidnapping, and that most cars have standard colors. However, the report was interesting, and I decided to take a closer look at mediums.

The next book I read was "We Don't Die - George Anderson's Conversations With the Other Side", by Joel Martin and Patricia Romanowski. To get straight to the point, this book was enough of a proof for me for the existence of contacts with the spirit world via a truthful medium! George Anderson, who is considered to be the world's most famous medium, has given this proof in over twenty years and thousands of sessions, some of which have been broadcast live, i.e. on radio and later on TV. He has demonstrated over and over that he can communicate with deceased relatives, that he can come to know things that he impossibly could not have known beforehand, often things that no one knew and were proved true later. Throughout his career, numerous critics have, of course, tried to demonstrate that these kind of contacts were impossible and that his alleged contacts with the spirit world was just cheating the public, but no one has ever succeeded. Far from it, some of his critics have since become his supporters. I cannot sufficiently explain in a few lines why these sessions constitute proof; I only can recommend everyone to read the book. I can state that, considering these very convincing sessions and the fact that, throughout all these years, no fraud could be proven. Further, George Anderson charges rather high fees for his readings and thus the FBI would certainly have intervened in case of interstate fraud. All of these points were sufficient for me as a proof.

Consequently, I had to ask myself why the second medium missed her guess in the case of the girl. To be able to have a better judgment on this, I read some information about contacts with spirits, the way they work, which way the information is transmitted, and about possible sources of errors during the transmission. Anyway I had come to the point where I was quite sure of the existence of a life after death, a spirit world, and thus that my wife still existed, and that I could contact her. I only needed the last proof, my direct contact with my wife...

The following weeks I read about the working methods of different mediums. Because of the high fees that good mediums often charge (George Anderson charges US$ 1.000 for a one-hour session, plus the phone charges for the long-distance call to Long Island, New York), and the long waiting time for a reading (for George Anderson up to 9 months), I tried to find another medium who was good, capable, not that expensive, reliant, and able to establish contact with my wife soon. Besides, I didn't want to have to travel or pay additional phone charges, and above all, I wanted to have a written protocol of the reading, so that I could read it afterwards, analyzing the statements after I had slept a few nights on them, in order to avoid being emotionally affected by the reading.

My research showed that there actually are real mediums, as well as so called 'psychics' and 'sensitives', who are not qualified to be mediums, and of course an army of minor and major crooks who will supposedly predict the future and establish contacts with the other side for a handful of dollars, or who will try in other ways to get their clients' money. We won't be talking about these. I am only interested in 'real' mediums. By now I know that real mediums either have this predisposition, or that they have acquired this skill over the years and often with great effort. Every human has a certain kind of 'antenna', but it usually is not sensitive enough to allow precise and sound communication with the spirit world.

In a later chapter I will address the issue in more detail as to how such a communication takes place, where the difficulties are, why some mediums often are simply wrong, what we know about the spirit world from mediums, and everything that is necessary to better understand this sort of contacts. But first, let me talk about my 'ultimate proof'. The next chapter contains the protocol of the reading with my wife.