Leslie Kean - Surviving Death: A Journalist Investigates Evidence for an Afterlife

Part One
Is There Life Before Birth?

Chapter 3: Investigating Cases of Children with Past-Life Memories
Jim B. Tucker, MD

Chapter 4: The Old Me
Cyndi Hammons

W hile exploring the evidence for an afterlife, I witnessed some unbelievable things that are not supposed to be possible in our material world. Yet they were unavoidably and undeniably real. Despite my initial doubt, I came to realize that there are still aspects of Nature that are neither understood nor accepted, even though their reality has profound implications for understanding the true breadth of the human psyche and its possible continuity after death.

I was directly exposed to people capable of perception that seemed to transcend the limitations of the physical brain; unexplainable forces, acting with apparent intelligence, able to move objects; and the delivery of obscure and accurate details by possible discarnate beings communicating through people unknown to them. I also studied numerous published papers, including those by medical doctors, describing clinically dead patients with no brain function who reported journeys to a sublime afterlife dimension.

My explorations of these and other remarkable phenomena gave rise to many questions. How can it be that an apparition returns a wave from a human observer? Or that people watch their own resuscitation from the ceiling in the operating room, aware that they have left their bodies? How about a human hand materialized by a declared disembodied survivor of death, on multiple occasions? And how could a two-year-old boy seem to remember numerous specific facts about a previous life, unknown to anyone in the family, that are later verified as accurate?

As documented within the scientific literature for over a hundred years, these and other manifestations have one aspect in common: they suggest that consciousnessor some aspect of ourselfmay survive physical death. In these pages I will take you on a journey into this world.

An investigation of such evidence has rarely been systematically consolidated and subjected to in-depth, rigorous scrutiny by a journalist. This task has been left primarily to a few courageous scientists, philosophers, medical doctors, psychiatrists, and other investigators usually writing about one specific area of research. My intention is to present some of the most interesting evidence from diverse sources and show how it interconnects, making it accessible for the intelligent and curious reader encountering the material for the first time. Strict journalistic protocols can be applied to any topic for which there is data, no matter how unusual or even indeterminate.

Yet, this book is far from a catalog of evidence for the survival of bodily death. It is also a very personal story for me. My narrative would have remained one-dimensional and abstract without the experiences and personal experiments that are part of it. In this sense, I have taken a step inside this investigation in a new waythrough experience and first-hand examination, and not just from the perspective of a detached observer who studies data and peers into a strange world from the outside. It may be professionally risky to expose these very personal events, but I feel it is my obligation to do so. It would be dishonest to omit elements that had an impact on my thinking and my effort to come to terms with many remarkable phenomena, elements that drew me even more deeply into the material. However, I was also careful to step back from them afterward, remaining as analytical and discriminating as I was with everything else. The tricky aspect lies in the interpretation of the extraordinary events, not in their reporting.

As a journalist, I have been interested in the question of whether there is evidence for survival past death for over ten years. In 2007 I became an associate producer for a documentary film on this topic, which offered me exposure to some of the best cases and experts in the United States and abroad. I traveled to Glasgow, Scotland, to meet with the family of a small boy named Cameron who had talked about a past life that haunted his early years. The memories had generated much emotion and longing for his previous family. His mother and psychiatrist Jim Tucker, an expert on child reincarnation cases, eventually took Cameron to his previous house on an island called Barra, where they were able to document the accuracy of his memories. Although very sad and subdued while walking through the home, Cameron seemed to be healed after that; his memories faded away and he was able to live a normal life in the present.

Was all of this just wishful thinking on the part of a mother with a disturbed little boy? Strange as it might seem, was three-year-old Cameron using some kind of psychic mental power to retrieve information about this location to which he had no known connection? Or, was he actually remembering a life lived before this one, as seemed indisputable to him and eventually to his mom?

I also assisted with interviews of two physical mediumsthose who facilitate the manifestation of extraordinary physical phenomena while in a trance state that they say is generated by forces coming from the spirit world. In this case, these included moving lights, levitated objects, materialized hands, unusual images on factory-sealed photographic film, and detailed information provided from deceased relatives. These manifestations were witnessed by hundreds of people between 1993 and 1998 in the village of Scole, England, and in six other countries. The stated purpose of the Scole experiments, as the more than five hundred sessions were called, was to demonstrate the reality of life after death. The sessions were scrutinized for three years by three qualified outside investigators, who often conducted and controlled the experiments themselves, and who documented the events as genuine in a lengthy, scholarly report. Others who studied the data after attending only a few sessions questioned whether enough controls were in place, especially since most of the experiments were conducted in darkness. I was determined to experience these astonishing phenomena myself someday, which I finally did with a different physical medium while researching this book.