The After Death Chronicles compiles hundreds of first person, after-death communication experiences from myself and my interviewees. Each one of us has had someone, a deceased parent, child, spouse, etc., contact us through the veil. The stories illustrate the profound effect such contact has on grief, how it can strengthen the bonds of a happy relationship or restore the essential loving foundation of a troubled one.

My approach is anecdotal rather than scientific, as I show how hearts are lightened and the inaccuracy of any fear that the dead wish to draw us into their realm or to harm us. Indeed the opposite is true. The dead may, for instance, protect us by telling us to slow down or to wake up when we’re driving.

The experiences in the book span the gamut from the briefest impression of a beloved’s presence that instantly dissolves fears, to a man who continues, long after his death, to engage with his wife of forty-some years, to hold her, to direct her to an item she needs that only he could locate.

I include visions that light up a room and stories about hawks and butterflies who deliver messages and guidance and love.

I quote from the conversations I held with my daughter Randi and I relate each of the ten different manners in which she returned to visit those she loved, and the results of those visits. For instance, in one case, a single visitation enabled an entire box of Randi’s memorabilia and photos to be returned to our family.

In the chapter called “Is There a Shadow Side?” I discuss how rare frightening contact is and, if it does occur, how to address it and protect ourselves. Our beloved dead send powerful messages through dreams, not only for ourselves but for others, as you’ll read in “Tell Freddy I’m Not Mad at Him.” I tell stories of when the dead inform us of a death by coming in a dream and a vision before the phone rings. This direct contact softens the harsh shock of such a phone call by indicating how much the person cares for us.

“Parting the Veil Between the Living and the Dead” offers ways to increase the likelihood of having contact. I include guidance on making a pre-death plan for how we will make contact after death. The experiences in “To What End?” are examples of how the dead may enhance our life work or even help us to discover it. Moving into a broader arena, where I touch on reincarnation and questions about the simultaneity of time and parallel versus past lives, I share how my daughter’s contact expanded to heal an ancient scar from her death as my infant daughter in a distant lifetime.

We all long to make sense of the challenges we face as human beings and death is among the weightiest of those challenges. We don’t fully comprehend it. We usually fear it. We suffer when those we love die. The After Death Chronicles, and the experience of after-death communication, both open a window to the possibility of new meaning, understanding, and hope. While contact relieves our sorrow and lets us see that our beloveds continue to exist, it unveils the larger truth of how much more there is to existence than the physical and material reality.

A message like, “I am okay,” that seems so simple on the surface, contains the seed of a profound and mystical truth: that consciousness—soul, spirit, whatever we choose to call it—cannot die. This is a book to relieve both suffering and fear, to unsettle beliefs—or to deepen them—and to plunge readers into death’s enigmatic realms. It is an invaluable and enlightening and soul-nourishing resource for everyone from the bereaved to their grief counselors to those who wonder whether consciousness continues beyond the physical.