The Immediate Post-Mortem Apparition: Two Ideas Concerning Ghosts of the Dearest Sort

5th April, 2007
N. A. Reiter

Background:

After nearly ten years of investigating claims of ghosts and ghostly activity, the number of definitive statements I am able to offer about the true nature of ghosts is disappointingly slim. Early on in my team effort with Lori Schillig, we attempted to generate a taxonomy – a zoological designation if you will – of the different types of haunts, as we encountered them both firsthand and anecdotally from our case files. As case after case and year after year went by, we came to agree that comparatively few cases of ghostly activity appeared to offer any firm evidence for the presence of a physically interactive entity per se. Instead, we discovered much more evidence for novel interactions and mechanisms of consciousness among the living "experiencers" – potential psychokinesis patterned with archetypal symbology, heavy synchronicity, telepathy, and retro-cognitive psi. We also observed the potential for apparent interactions between old emotional dramas occurring in a residence and resonant life themes of modern residents of those locations.

If evidence of ghosts-as-spirits has been inconclusive, ghostly phenomena as proof of actual post mortem survival has been nearly nonexistent. The anomalous activities in haunted houses simply have many more potential causes and mechanisms that must be considered, before legitimately chalking them up to spirits of the dead. Ghost hunting has provided tantalizing clues and glimpses of many wonders of the invisible universe both within and without... but in the end it provides no firmer evidence for survival than any classical laboratory based scientific investigation has. Even the techniques of mediumship cannot tender any answers with certainty, as nobody has ever – and possibly never can - determine that spirits speaking through mediums are who or what they say they are, or whether they are projections/manifestations from the psyche of the medium themselves (possibly tapping or tuning into the deep Collective Unconscious.) Survival after death pretty much remains a matter of faith... as it always has.

However, if one weeds through anecdotes and applies such deductive reasoning as can be allowed, one finds that the small subset of cases that might support post mortem survival – in some fashion – consists of cases where easily recognized apparitions or attributes of a recently dead person are witnessed for a short time by loved ones or connected parties. These are the dearest ghost stories to our hearts, the ones that have given us hope for survival since the most ancient of times. A father who appears by the bedside of his son at the moment of the elder one's death far away, or the sound and scent of a grandmother apparently continuing to putter in a kitchen for weeks after her passing. The touch of a departed spouse's hand. Outside of these sorts of encounters, most everything else in ghost research can be modeled around mechanisms that do not rely on the concept of "survival". PSI, Jungian synchronicity, geophysical energetics, subtle patterns of negative entropy, possible non-human entities, imagination, medical and psychiatric conditions, projections from a strong version of the Collective Unconscious; all can be invoked as possible explanations for events that can never be replicated but remain undeniable as personal experiences.

Immediate post mortem ghosts – let's call them IPMs from here on – lean toward the anecdotal, simply because they are temporary. Or even one time events. They don't usually constitute the sort of ghostly event an investigator can track on an ongoing basis, and it is likely that for this reason alone that the IPM experience through history perennially tends to define the very term "ghost" in the greater cultural view.

The baseline view of the IPM is simple enough. A person dies, some undefined component / spirit / soul / consciousness / energy form lives on, and takes a short bit of time to say goodbye, see that loose ends are tied up, or putter in the kitchen a few last times before "moving on". In truth, there have been times of late when I have been tempted to say that this is a view that should simply be left alone. It comforts us, and allows us to live in less fear of the divide-by-zero absurdity which is death. Science can be brutal and terrible at times, and we all need something warm to get us through the night.

However, the thought once hatched can never go back in the egg of mind, and it becomes the essential if sometimes uneasy burden of the scientist to say, "well- alright then, lets understand the "how" of it!"

Thus, I would like to present herewith two potential theoretical models for IPM ghosts that could extend the matter beyond the notion of "It's just grandma in the kitchen!" Neither of these scenarios, by the way, necessarily negates at all the idea of grandma surviving, and rattling the silverware. It's simply an excursion into a couple of possible ways that grandma is living on. Before we plunge into it, let's pause once more to consider what history and culture tells us.

The Historical and Cultural Perspective:

An astonishingly large number of traditional and aboriginal cultures - around the world and through time - have held a similar view about what happens right after death. A person dies, but a specific period of time exists during which the spirit/soul/essence of the deceased stays close by in the physical world before moving on to whatever destination awaits. Sometimes this period of time is well defined, such as three days among northern European Celts, or one year among the Five Nations Iroquois of eastern North America. Other cultures such as the ancient Egyptians were less time specific – certain invisible components of the human essence, such as the ka and ba were bound to the region near the burial until such a time as the spirit of the departed was finished with judgement on the other side, and was successfully released into paradise. At that time, all the remaining ten or so earthbound components of the soul were re-united and transition was complete, with the physical world left behind.

Often times, these beliefs ended up being incorporated into funeral and mourning traditions. One had to treat the recently deceased with the proper ritual and respect, as they were "watching" for the duration, and one did not want to screw up grandfather's transition to paradise / Heaven / Elysium / Hades / Happy Hunting Grounds... or even reincarnation.

One might be inclined to say logically that it is the particular arbitrary funerary customs that invoke and form the belief of the spirit actually hanging around for 3 days or a fortnight or a month or a year. On the other hand, encounters with IPM ghosts in modern Western culture, where old customs of spirit "hang-time" are long forgotten by most, tend to suggest an underlying principle that continues to manifest outside of a belief system. An objectivity of some sort, if you will...

Consider then, the following.

Alternate World-Line Continuation – A Quantum Mechanical Hypothesis:

In quantum mechanics, every particle can be described in terms of a wave, as well as a state. When a particle strikes another, or two waves cancel each other out, we say that the state of the system has changed. The wave function collapses. Now all of this is fine for dealing with very small particles like electrons and photons, or even super-cooled individual atoms. For very small units of matter, the strange world of quantum mechanics works quite well in a predictable way.

However every larger system in the universe made of matter can also be considered a particle mathematically... and thus also has a wave nature and wave function. You yourself have a wave function at any particular time. Every interaction you have with another person, or your dog, or your car, etc. redefines your energy and position in the universe.

It does not seem unreasonable then that we can view physical death of a person to be a major wave function collapse, and change of state. Granted, the laws of the microscopic world we normally think of as quantum become diluted for larger systems until we find ourselves by sheer size scale in the Newtonian world where "normal" physics and laws – with their comfortable statistical treatments - apply. But the basic principles still hold. You and I have wave functions that eventually collapse in a major way when we die and become inert.

One of the most regularly cited and often times abused thought experiments in quantum mechanics is, of course, Schrodinger's Cat. In that famous illustration, there is a 50/50 chance that a cat will either be dead or alive inside of a cage where there is a randomly activated poison gas release. The cage is covered, and until the observer removes the cover, the condition of kitty is unknown. However, Schrodinger sought to show that technically, until an observer lifts the cover, the cat exists in two parallel and equal states – and some interpret this as parallel universes – where in one the cat is alive, and in the other the cat is dead. The act of observation collapses the potentials to a single agreed state for the sake of the observer... alive or dead.

Over the history of quantum physics, several broad "interpretations" have been derived to explain and predict the interactions of particles. All of these interpretations have aspects that explain and fit well with quantum mechanics, however scientists have never been able to disprove any one of the three or four... only saying that at different times, this or that one seems to fit a little better. The "standard" or most often used and believed-in interpretation is known as the Copenhagen Interpretation. It fits very well in describing accurately how electrons and other particles work in such everyday systems like diodes, transistors, photocells – systems that we can easily see work for us. However another highly viable interpretation that has considerable following... and sadly has been used to death by sci-fi authors... is the Many Worlds Interpretation. In MWI, every state change any particle undergoes opens up an alternative world line or parallel universe. This ultimately leads many to the notion of the existence of nearly an infinite number of parallel worlds where changes either slight or great exist from others. For example, a world where your dog is a Pug instead of a Rottweiler. Or a world where everything else is the same except the mole under my left arm is under my right. Or where yesterday at 5:00PM, I caught a red light on Route 25 instead of a green one. All of these alternate world-lines exist in an inscrutable overlapped fashion, like threads or strings bundled together, extending from the beginning of the universe to the end.

This is where speculation takes over. In our theory about IPM ghosts, we indeed have to use a lot of "what ifs" but that's where modeling a phenomenon sometimes has to start anyway. The Many Worlds Interpretation in a formal way says nothing about ghosts or even humans. And in that formal sense, MWI also says that parallel world-lines are un-reachable for us, as every time we would try to attempt some experiment to see or cross into another world-line, we simply make more. However, some modern mystics and psi researchers have speculated that human consciousness can on occasion cross world-lines, and have some manner of perception of a "bundle" or band, of a number of closely related lines at one time.

Consider this, then. Your Uncle Tom dies suddenly in an unfortunate automobile accident. For several weeks afterward, however, your Aunt Jane hears the back door opening and Tom's familiar cowboy boots clumping through the kitchen. Or you might some evening - a month or two after the funeral - catch a glimpse of old Tom in his easy chair, taking a leisurely drag on his cigar.

Perhaps in a peculiar way, old Uncle Tom has become like Schrodinger's famous undead cat. In this world-line, a 68 year old man named Tom is killed on April 8th in a car accident. However because of the highly unexpected and random nature of that accident, a large number of parallel world-lines still exist in which Tom was not killed in the accident, but rather died a year later of a heart attack, or seven years later of kidney failure. With each passing week, the number of world-lines / universes in which Tom lived on become more rarified or separated from the core world-line where the accident occurred. Eventually, the world-lines where Tom lived and may still live on are now separated from "our" world by a reasonably huge dimensional distance. The probability of Tom living on in any nearby world-line becomes vanishingly small. The sketch shown below illustrates this idea: (click pic to enlarge)

If our consciousness and perception can extend at times a certain ways into the nearby "bundle" of world-line threads, then it may not be unreasonable to believe that occasional perceptions of Tom living on and doing his usual Uncle Tom-ish things can come to our senses. Alternate world-line Toms continue to live on, and pop in to our sensory neighborhood! Only as the alternate "endings" for Tom's life begin to thin out and get more improbable do we see that old Tom shows up to scare Aunt Jane less and less, and finally not at all.

Many cases and potential phenomena could fit into this general framework, but we have to scrutinize our own thinking at every turn. Several predictions would apply to the hypothesis that don't always fit with cases of IPM ghosts:

1. Alternate world-line "Tom" would never be aware of his own demise in other universes (unless he was a quantum physicist or a mystic master), and so he would not have a reason to sit by Jane's bedside and console her or tell her to look for the old insurance papers in such and such a coat. Tom's IPM ghost would simply show up occasionally and be seen doing things Tom might usually be known to do by routine, if he was alive. Some IPM ghosts do indeed act in this way, but others show up with apparent full knowledge that they are dead, and a desire to say goodbye or impart some necessary message.
2. If all ghosts were alternate world-line versions of dead people, then no ghost would likely be seen after a period of time that would exceed the maximum reasonable life expectancy of a human being. So much for applying this explanation to the types of ghosts that appear to still be hanging around an old house after 120 years.
3. Another prediction from the hypothesis is that a person dying from a sudden and highly random accident or misfortune would have more "continuing" world-line copies of themselves, ergo more chances for an IPM ghost to be perceived. An older person dying after a years long battle with cancer or heart disease would not be as prone to nearby world-line continuance, as most threads of the bundle would be likely to end up in a similar way after a similar time frame.

The primary problem with this hypothesis is that it does not lend itself easily to experimental testing in the field. Perhaps some novel experiment involving psychometric or clairvoyant perceptions of a randomly changing system in a PSI research lab environment could support or refute the principle involved. However, as we already know, the world of quantum mechanical laws covers itself in absurdity and capriciousness to our senses, and all four primary QM interpretations of reality work equally well on different levels and at different times.

The quantum world can be a giddy and exhilarating place for the mind to romp, but the heart requires something a little more solid. Let us turn to another possible origin for our beloved IPM ghosts.

Projections from the Collective Unconscious – the "Matrix" Hypothesis:

Author, lecturer, and mystic Stuart Wilde has in recent years used the premise of the now famous motion picture "The Matrix" to illustrate his own interpretation of the invisible world said to exist around us. Wilde's term for the unseen dimension around us is the Mirror Realm, roughly corresponding to the Etheric or Lower Astral of traditional Western occultism. For the past three years or so, I have been compiling perspectives, lore, and testimony into something resembling a "not-so-Grand Unified Theory" of a collective level of human consciousness. My own perspective at this time is that the Lower Astral / Mirror Realm could represent a "strong version" of Jung's famous Collective Unconscious - where every human mind on the planet can be considered as a terminal or node in a "Matrix" – like shared virtual reality.

Dr. Rupert Sheldrake's Morphogenetic Field is also a highly viable model with many parallels to the Jungian C-U and the Lower Astral concepts. Much information on Sheldrake's work and theories can be found here.

One of my primary goals since 2005 has been to understand and uncover the exact mechanism by which individual consciousness links up with others to form the Collective, as well as projecting beyond the physical neurology of the brain and body... both concepts being supported by ongoing psi research and case studies over decades. A tentative model for this human analogue to the "wireless internet link" involving DNA spin coupling will be discussed in upcoming papers and needs to be tested experimentally.

Nevertheless, if we continue exploring the "Matrix model", a fascinating possibility presents itself – the possibility that while we are alive, up to the moment of brain death – we have the ability to "upload" ourselves... in the form of our memories, feelings, thoughts, passions, and most importantly our beliefs... into the Collective. The potential for metaphor and analogy is vast, and so much manifests itself daily in our computer and Internet based society – right before our noses! In this metaphor, the Collective / lower astral is the Internet, and the great old belief systems / religions might qualify as web domains. Studied occultists and astral travelers such as Robert Monroe would give nods of assent... there is a nigh infinite potential in the astral for every notion or belief a human being could ever devise. A Christian Heaven is there, as well as a Hell. Valhalla, Avalon, Elysium, Arcadia might still be there – if enough human beings still believe in them. Maybe Jesus DOES save... or at least He periodically uploads...

Fanciful speculations about the workings of the astral aside, the strong version Collective of the Matrix model does have some compelling elegance and even a certain amount of evidence for it.

In a recent Time Magazine special issue, the workings of the brain and mind were discussed from different perspectives. Of course the predominant featured viewpoint tended toward that sometimes irritating blend of the non-threatening with the hip and trendy, with neuroscientists gently poo-pooh-ing the possible existence of a spirit or soul, since every neuron in the brain appears to do "something" and no evidence exists for a physical component or even a definable consciousness that physically leaves. And I have no issue or problem with that perspective, really. We ARE computers. Turn our power off for too long, or have our hard drive crash or power supply conk out, and we are dead. Period. Silicon, epoxy, and aluminum don't begin to decompose as fast as flesh... but pull the plug, and we and our electronic creations both perish equally, and become fodder for the landfill. But the catch is this... it may be that we have an amazing little port in the back of our individual consciousness. A port where sometimes things come in from the Collective, and other times things can go out. A computer can upload its whole hard drive – if one is so compelled – onto the 'net. Maybe we can too.

So what does that mean for ghosts, and IPM ghosts specifically?

Our hypothesis here starts by considering that IPM ghosts are also very fresh ghosts, in the minds of loved ones and acquaintances particularly. Being fresh in the virtual reality of the Collective Unconscious could likely also mean that there are what might be considered "file copies" aplenty in the individual minds of any who fondly remember or deeply knew the deceased. Or that the wireless connection into the Collective is still encoded with the patterns of personality, thought, or karma of the deceased. The door is still a little open, if you will... even though the realm the door opens into is a bit different than the simplistic views of "the other side" or Heaven. In this model, the "other side" is as widely distributed across the whole of the globe as the Internet is; and just as difficult to describe in terms of 3D geography. Just as the Internet is everywhere a computer (and connection) is – the Other Side is everywhere a human mind is.

IPM ghosts, then, might be the recently activated or finalized "upload" of the deceased person's consciousness into the greater Collective. How and why, though, does it happen that the IPM ghost manifests or shows up as it does, in the lives of loved ones and old friends and family? I believe that we allow them to manifest – or project, if you will – by our memories, love, and emotional ties. The recently uploaded deceased... download again here and there, within the psyches and senses of the living who remember them. Our sense of loss, mourning, and nostalgic reminiscing keep the ports in the back of our minds open. In those cases where physical activities occur - such as dishes being found stacked in the way grandma used to do it – are quite possibly the manifested actions of grandma, made physical by our own unconscious psychokinetic ability. And it has been seen anecdotally that PK is augmented and driven by emotion. In cases where a recently deceased person appears to the senses of someone who was not yet aware they had died, we have an exceptional piece of evidence for the "Matrix model". Our memories and knowing of the deceased alone permits the downloading of their IPM ghosts.

IPM ghosts gradually go away, and fade from our senses and lives, though never from the hearts and memories of people who experience an IPM event. It's the emotion of our memories that keeps the port open for the person now gone into the great Collective. As closure and healing occur, and the living move on with their own roads, the dead are finally released to move on as well. To where? That all depends.

In his books "Journeys out of Body" and "Far Journeys", Robert Monroe described a post-death process he claimed to have seen as an astral traveller, while exploring the "other side". (Or "Matrix", Collective, Inner Realm, Lower Astral, etc.) According to Monroe's testimony, the recently deceased find themselves after death (the "upload") in a comforting state that is crafted initially by their belief systems in life. If the deceased was a believing Christian, they find themselves in a Christian Heaven, surrounded by angelic beings, light, and long departed loved ones. If the deceased was a devout Muslim jihadist, they will find themselves in their promised martyr's paradise. If one passes away as a spiritual agnostic, then the mutable and chaotic nature of the lower astral might just be that – a swirl of possibility. According to Monroe, however, these are temporary arrangements that eventually dissolve, as the core essence of the deceased moves "upward" to a state of union with what would be called God, Source, or Over-soul. Attachments to earthly life and those left behind, memories, fears; the last remnants of mind and consciousness itself - all dissolve. Ego and psyche die, and what the Buddhists would call "atman" – the core essence - resumes its road toward Union or perfection. Monroe claimed to observe that sometimes this road involves coming back into an earthly existence again (and sometimes again and again...). Past a point, though, the road extends into realms or states where logical description and objective proof of existence are impossible. And where musing about it too much in this essay is equally as useless.

Perhaps this does also solve the chicken – or – egg paradox of the cultural-specific time frame in which it was felt that the spirit of the deceased was lingering close at hand. If the IPM ghosts of the deceased stay around as uploaded copies in the human Collective Unconscious, subject to projection and manifestation from the psyches of mourners and loved ones, then the length of time that the "door" remains open really is culturally defined as the period of appropriate mourning and emotional re-alignment. In times and cultures where mourning the dead was a deeply felt and rigorously observed part of life, a ghost would be counted on to stay around for two weeks or three days or a year. In the modern West, where the individual mourns and remembers without strict guidelines, and emotional healing varies from soul to soul, IPM ghosts might present themselves for a day or a month – all based on how long we - the living - keep the door open.

Some might view this hypothesis as being heretical to religious beliefs of afterlife and survival. And it probably is, for those who don't care to look past the comforts and meaning of traditional belief. But the serious mystics of all traditions and great world religions agree that physical death and the dissolving of mind and our former essence really is not just inevitable and essential, but they also are but the beginning of a journey beyond logical proof and human comprehension.

Sitting by the Bed...

Some things remain after the tides of years rise and fall, and for ghosts and the study of ghosts, one of the solid remaining truths that I hold to is the multiple and widely varied nature of the ghostly experience. Yet the existence of ghosts in the primordial experiences of the human psyche was cast solidly 30,000 years ago or more. We've been fearing them, and yet relying on them since. For the vast majority of those people who believe in ghosts, there will always be that element of comfort such that for whatever the ghost is made of, it says there is an existence beyond death. And even within the two hypotheses I've tendered here, that element exists... just perhaps not in quite a traditional way. Some ghosts seem to be the psychokinetic projections of the living, in a household where emotional conflict or issues run high. Others may be the result of geophysics and subtle unknown forces from the earth itself. Many appear to be the pseudo-holographic but otherwise non-conscious images of events and people long gone. Some may be non-human entities who invaded our Collective from another. And some just really are folklore and imagination blended. So many lifetimes could be spent in study of it all, and for me in particular, I see no end in sight for my own attempts to learn and share all that I can. Still, there is plenty of room to add the two speculative models we've discussed here to explain a certain type of ghost – a type that is closest to our heart's definition of what we would like a ghost to be. The triumph of humanity over death.

In the "Alternate World-line" hypothesis, we find a potential framework for understanding not just a certain type of ghost, but such varied facets of the paranormal as clairvoyance and precognition, as well as Fortean phenomena such as apports and strange creatures. Maybe even UFOs. It's an elegant but somewhat aloof and un-testable model.

In the "Matrix" hypothesis, we find a possibility that is not only viable and elegant, but also appears to have the support of ancient mystical traditions as well as the subjective but varied experiential testimony of modern mystics and researchers as well. It is a hypothesis that also can be investigated empirically, in the form of seeking out and testing that actual "Internet connection" that ties human mind individuated into human mind as a whole.

This much can be said... in either case, Uncle Tom lives on in his own way. Whether as copies in a vast number of alternate worlds, or within the astonishing virtual reality / collective consciousness of humanity, that at its furthest limits may touch the hand of the Universal. Either way, Tom-ness prevails. Even if neither of these theories, or for that matter any that we have concocted so far, is true in the end, it may be assured that if humanity survives another 30,000 years, the ghosts of grandmas, grandpas, Uncle Toms and Aunt Janes will be showing up in the lives of loved ones when they least expect it.

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