Life After Death, Another Interpretation

I think most people know about the huge statue of Jesus located in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. It is a religious icon and many go there to look at it and pray. Recently a Columbian family went to Rio to see the statue and while they were standing near it they got the shock of their life. The father had taken a photo of one of his relatives by the statue and when he looked at the photo he could see the outline of someone or something wearing the same type of dress as the statue. The figure was wearing a long white robe. He says a lot of people were by the statue and he showed the picture to a man standing there and he got so scared he left. The husband who took the photo said he believes he has gotten a photo of Jesus and here is what one of his neighbors had to say about the photo, “A neighbor who practices Santeria said that it looks fuzzy, because when the photo was taken the ghost was not yet manifested well.” We may never know exactly what the camera picked up and there are many different theories about the picture, but one thing is for certain, it could be a paranormal event.

A new study conducted with patients receiving end of life care has found that most people facing death claim they are visited by deceased friends and family and the closer they get to their death, the more the visits. Scientists have said they don’t know why people are seeing this or even if they really are. The patients told scientists the visits felt very real and most of the visits were from deceased family and friends, but some weren’t. The researchers not being able to explain this fully stated as people approach death they had more comforting dreams and visions. They also said, “These visions can occur months, weeks, days, or hours before death and typically lessen fear of dying, making transition from life to death easier for those experiencing them.” Scientists like to quote Occam’s razor a lot. It states the simplest solution to a problem is probably the correct one. In this case could it be the ghosts are real?

Many think death is the end of things, but scientists at the University of Southampton studied over 2,000 people in different hospitals and claim they have proof that awareness existed in some patients for a limited amount of time in some patients who were declared clinically dead. To me this means there could be something else at work here. Maybe being declared clinically dead doesn’t mean we are really dead. A couple of centuries ago people were declared dead who were not dead, but seemed to be and they were buried. Hopefully being declared clinically dead means we are dead in all cases, but what if this isn’t the case? Some people have said they had out of body experiences when declared clinically dead and cite things they saw as proof and the people who conducted the survey have no way of disproving this. The reason is what they describe really happened and they did see things which cannot be explained.

Another study was conducted online, if you can call that type of thing a study, because who knows who is claiming to have a death experiences. Anyway out of those who claimed to have had them, some said they could see what was happening after they were pronounced dead and others said they experienced nothing. Here is what one person said, I was getting an angiogram done, wide awake watching the screen and talking to the doctor. Alarms started to go off and everyone became panicked. My world became soft and foggy and everything faded to black. Next thing I remember was opening my eyes and hearing a Dr. say "we got him back". It was really a peaceful feeling more than anything." Another person who stated they overdosed on a drug said they also didn’t experience anything. Then there was some who did experience something. One person said there was a fog around him and he saw his best friend step out of the fog. He had been declared dead. He said his friend told him he couldn’t go yet, because it was not his time. Another person said they remember seeing things after they were declared dead. The person claimed to have an out of body experience and could see everything going on as he floated near the ceiling of the room. Were these responses being made up or were at least some of them true, take your pick.

There are a lot of people who claim their homes are haunted. They cite facts they believe prove it as hearing persistent sounds, seeing orbs, hearing voices when no one is there, smelling strange odors, feeling cold spots in areas where there are no drafts from anywhere, seeing shadow people  and all sorts of other activities. Sometimes the activities are more active such as doors slamming, lights turning on and off and things flying across the room or things disappearing from rooms when no one was in them. One home which was said to be haunted was a very old home for the United States. It was built in the mid-1800s in Alabama. The owner of the home was put into prison and when he tried to escape he was shot and his wife was forced to sell the house. His ghost began to be seen around the house a few years after it was sold. Many different people have reported seeing the man in different places in the house and on the grounds and they still see him to this day.

Is there life after death? I believe there is. Do strange things happen after we die? Maybe they do, but I don’t know if I believe in ghosts. There could be other explanations for what people are seeing and it could even include such things as parallel universes. No one has ever been able to explain what happens to us after we die and it is strictly a matter of faith as to what we believe. It does seem some of us do get out of body experiences and even see “the light.” What this means is still up for interpretation. Recently there has been a theory which states our consciousness is stored outside our bodies and our brain is a receiver for it, like a radio or television. If this is true and our bodies die, our consciousness would indeed live on and maybe behave differently without a body.