After death communication: Fenwick excerpt #5

Advocate for the Afterlife:

"We will now hear evidence that the dead are able to communicate with this world. Communication with the dead gives many of the bereaved comfort. They accept that the person they love has not simply ceased to exist, and that they are all right. We call Dr Peter Fenwick to resume the stand to discuss the ways in which this communication can occur and the varying forms it can take."

What happens when you die?

Is there a transcendent component to the human being; a spirit locked in which can be released at death? It is an ancient idea, but there are many present-day accounts of apparent direct communication between people who have died and those they have left behind. The accounts almost all occur within two or three days of the death, as though there is a transition period before the ‘spirit’ of the dead leaves the consciousness of the living entirely.

“My father died on the 30th April 1989. I could not go to the funeral because I was nine months pregnant. My son was born on the 17th May 1989. Three days later around 3 a.m. my father actually came into my room – I saw him fully. I even remember sitting up in bed because I did not think he was real. He walked over to the cot and looked at my son and smiled.... nodded his head in approval and left. It was a wonderful experience.” (Fenwick & Fenwick, 2008)*

One obvious explanation for some of these visits is that they are simply hallucinations. So, the following accounts are particularly interesting because they seem to have been experienced by two family members simultaneously.

“My father suddenly died in August 1998.... One night in a dream my father appeared, looked alive and well and told me that he was fine and happy and staying with his uncle. Since that night I stopped having bad dreams about him and was able to let him go. But the most surprising experience came when my sister told me about her bad dreams about our father’s death, that stopped when one night our father appeared in her dream and said he was fine and happy and staying with his uncle. She was telling me exactly the same thing that happened to me. (Fenwick & Fenwick, 2008)

This is another account of such a strange ‘coincidence’, told us by a man whose two year old son had died in 1998, accidentally drowned in a neighbor’s pond.

“In the early hours of Tuesday morning I woke up.... I could see a shadow of a baby’s face looking through the window, I knew it was Matthew. Later I heard a rustling noise (like the noise of a baby walking and his nappy rustling). The noise started near the door and moved across the foot of the bed and up towards my wife. I was reluctant to open my eyes (I was scared, to be honest) but when I did there was nobody there.

I didn’t mention this to my wife at first as I didn’t want to upset her; I told her a couple of days later. She said she had heard exactly the same thing as me, which freaked us both out a bit. Both of us heard the same thing but did not want to mention it in case it upset the other.

Now, Matthew had been doing this for quite a while before he died. He would wake up in the early hours, come into our room pat the foot of our bed and up Janette’s side, and we would hear his nappy rustling. ...One of us would take him back to his own bed later and tuck him in.

I was always a bit skeptical of these stories.... It’s only my own experiences that have made me question what happens when people pass on. It can be a bit daunting mentioning it to other people for fear that they will think you’re crackers.” (Fenwick & Fenwick, 2008)

*Peter and Elizabeth Fenwick, The Art of Dying (2008).

“To Be And Not To Be. This is The Answer: Consciousness Survives,” essay for the 2021 Bigelow essay contest submitted by Dr Peter Fenwick & Dr Pier-Francesco Moretti, Dr Vasileios Basios, and Martin Redfern.The complete essay with footnotes is available at https://bigelowinstitute.org/contest_winners3.php.