What happens after we die -- do we continue on or is this life the end?
Many of us hope there is an afterlife, and now Arizona scientists say they have proof through afterlife experiments.
There are many people who say they have died and come back to life. They claim to have experienced an afterlife, even if for only a short time.
Phenomena Magazine
Scientists at the University of Arizona say that they have the proof that consciousness survives our bodily death. Through detailed research,
nicknamed "the afterlife experiments", they believe they can show that the evidence supports this fact.
"Almost anyone who sees the data says there's something real here," said one of the researchers. The 'afterlife experiments' investigated the
alleged talents of several of the most well-known spiritual mediums in the world, including John Edward and Allison Dubois. While Edward is more
famous, lead scientist Dr Gary Schwartz describes Dubois as the 'Michael Jordan' of mediums, due to her amazing 'hit' rate.
Dubois said that she is happy to take part in the experiment, as she would like to be distinguished from the charlatans in the field. "I think there
are some people that are Charlatans, and with any profession there's going to be some bad apples, so I mean that just goes with the territory, so the
ones that are accurate and are legitimate just have to prove themselves," said Dubois.
In one experiment, Dubois attempts to contact the deceased relatives of 'sitter' Christine Vettore. Before too long, Vettore's daughter is
contacted, and soon after her brother and mother. Vetorre is amazed at Dubois' ability to nail 'secret' facts - and says the medium achieved about
an 85% success rate.
At one stage, Dubois tells Vettore that her deceased mother says there is a carrot cake and bowl of peanuts in her house. "None of those things do I
ever have in my house. I have those things in my house this month, carrot cake and peanuts, so that was weird," said Vettore.
Dr Schwartz dismisses skeptics' claims that Dubois is just a lucky guesser, saying it would be near impossible to maintain such a high success rate
of accurate readings. But he's used to the criticism.
"Saying that this is against the grain with academia sort of puts it mildly," said Dr Schwartz.
In another intriguing experiment, Dr Schwartz used one sitter and had them 'read' by five top-class mediums, one after another. When Dr Schwartz and
his staff compared the readings they were astonished to find that in most cases, the mediums would bring through the same people and the same
messages, with an 80-90 percent accuracy rate.
"There are so many people that are going to try to find holes in what we've done ? there is not a hole to find when we agree, or get a final
protocol done," said Schwartz. The team's next project will investigate the related subject of near death experiences (NDE). Dr Schwartz believes
the NDE research dovetails with his earlier research perfectly, and supports the details being given by the mediums.
"When you look at the totality of the data from our laboratory, the simplest explanation is actually that survival of consciousness is real," Dr
Schwartz said.