Leslie Kean's dead brother communicates with her

Leslie Kean, author of Surviving Death, writes: “I take after death communications (ADCs) seriously partly because I received some dramatic ones myself over a two-year period (from 2013 to 2015) while researching evidence included in this book. Although they are very personal and remain puzzling, they made a deep impression on me, and after much thought I decided it would be dishonest for me to withhold them from my narrative. They are part of my investigation—the time was fortuitous—and I kept an open and receptive mind throughout the process, sometimes even asking for an ADC to occur through directed thought. Some of the experiences had an interesting link to aspects of my mediumship readings. These paranormal events may be hard to believe (they were for me), but in reporting on them here, I trust myself as the most reliable source I know! You can be absolutely certain that everything I describe is exactly as it occurred, down to the smallest details. I made notes immediately after each event and analyzed them afterward. I understand why ADCs have so much impact, and how profoundly mysterious, and provocative, they are. They evoked a complex set of emotions in me—expanded awareness, elation, incomprehension, questioning, doubt, and hope—and always a sense of connection to something nonlocal.

 

“My younger brother died unexpectedly in January 2013. We were always bonded and through his life he was closer to me than he was to our other two siblings. Sadly, I don’t think I realized how much I cared about him until after he died. The shock of his sudden departure, and our unfinished relationship, was a different kind of emotional pain than anything I had ever known, and I never could have predicted the deep effect it had on me.

 

“My first ADC came out of the blue before I had entertained even the slightest thought of any such communications. I was lying on my bed alone, in deep mourning with the overwhelming pain of my brother being gone forever. Suddenly his voice burst onto the scene. It startled me, because as I experienced it, it was not generated from my brain; it was from the outside. I heard his familiar voice clearly say, ‘Leslie . . . I’m fine. It’s okay.’ The way he said my name was unique to the way he spoke; it was so clearly his tone. His emphasis was: ‘Hey—stop! Everything is totally okay and I’m fine!’ I was stunned because it was like a sudden and jolting external intrusion, completely different from a thought or memory.

 

“This seemed like an experience of telepathy: I felt like I was hearing with my mind and not my ears. It wasn’t in my mind, but was perceived by my mind, as if my consciousness had its own nonphysical ears. It had sound: it was loud, but not quite like someone talking, because it wasn’t localized to one spot. I was completely taken aback.’

 

“Some months later, I was staying at my family’s summer house on the coast in Massachusetts. One afternoon I was in the woods and sat on a rock near the ocean, and in a deep, lengthy, heartfelt meditation I connect to my brother and asked him for a sign. I wanted more ‘proof’ that he was there—something physical that would make it obvious to me.

 

“The next morning, I woke up and groggily went into the kitchen, turned on the light, and made coffee. After adding milk to my cup, I was just about to put it in the microwave when the ceiling light blinked twice—off, on; off, on—and then went off. The microwave went off also, along with the light above the stove on an adjacent wall. The other lights in the kitchen remained on. I checked the lights in rooms nearby, and they were all working. Well, all I wanted was a hot cup of coffee, so I picked up the microwave and plugged it into a working socket on another counter. Then it hit me: Is this Garry? Then the lights came back on. They had been off about three or four minutes.

 

“Some requests I made for signs after that were not answered. But on May 15, 2014, I went into a meditative state and once again passionately and deeply asked my brother Garry to do something definite, something obvious, to show his presence. I need more proof! I never get enough physical manifestations to convince me! I need to dispel my doubt! The request was not made casually, and I spent much time delivering it.

 

“The next day, I was cooking and using Spectrum organic sesame oil. In one bottle there was only a little left, and I had a second bottle about a third full. So, I emptied the remaining sesame oil from that jar into the second one, and put the now-empty bottle down on the counter with the cap loosely on top. (The standard sixteen-ounce jar had a narrow neck with a plastic opening allowing the cap to be screwed on.) About a minute later, suddenly the top went shooting straight up into the air about five or six inches, and fell on the counter. There was a force there, seeming to be coming from inside the empty bottle, strong enough to send the cap flying into the air. But there was nothing inside the empty bottle. I admit that I was elated. My brother was delivering in spades!"

 

Leslie Kean, Surviving Death: A Journalist Investigates Evidence for an Afterlife (Three Rivers Press, 2017).