Josh Langley - Dying to Know: Is There Life After Death?

Josh Langley

Dying to Know

Is There Life After Death?

SAGA Egmont

Dying to Know: Is There Life After Death?

Cover image: Shutterstock

Copyright 2014, 2022 Josh Langley and SAGA Egmont

All rights reserved

ISBN: 9788728277010

1st ebook edition

Format: EPUB 3.0

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrievial system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor, be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

www.sagaegmont.com

Saga is a subsidiary of Egmont. Egmont is Denmarks largest media company and fully owned by the Egmont Foundation, which donates almost 13,4 million euros annually to children in difficult circumstances.

To my partner, Andy, who has been part of this journey since the start. Thank you for being my travel companion and helping keep my feet on the ground when things got a little weird.

To Mum and Dad for encouraging me to have a healthy sense of curiosity, and thanks to Clare and her daughter Nikki for making this journey so extraordinary.

Also thanks to Val Coventry, Sofia of 39 Steps Skopelos, Trish Moulton, Amanda Maloney, Sharyn Lynch, Kathleen Kelsey, Naomi Pearce, Jake Cole, Bryan French, Chris Parsons and Simon Healy for all the help and inspiration; it was invaluable.

Finally to the many other people who helped me in my quest, I deeply thank you.

Dying to Know is a factual account of my three-year quest to find personal evidence of the afterlife, and along the way I met many wonderful people and visited some interesting and rather creepy places.

However, due to the unusual and personal nature of the experiences I encountered, Ive changed some names of the people and the identifying features of the places I visited to protect privacy.

And because lots of freaky shit happened in a seemingly random order, Ive tried to put it in a sequence that would make sense to you, the reader, and condensed the timeline, so you dont fall asleep reading the book over a three-year period.

Strap yourself in its going to be an interesting and bumpy ride.

I Am the Reaper

I am the Reaper.

All things with heedful hook

Silent I gather.

Pale roses touched with the spring,

Tall corn in summer,

Fruits rich with autumn, and frail winter blossoms

Reaping, still reaping

All things with heedful hook

Timely I gather.

I am the Sower.

All the unbodied life

Runs through my seed-sheet.

Atom with atom wed,

Each quickening the other,

Fall through my hands, ever changing, still changeless.

Ceaselessly sowing,

Life, incorruptible life,

Flows from my seed-sheet.

Maker and breaker,

I am the ebb and the flood,

Here and Hereafter,

Sped through the tangle and coil

Of infinite nature,

Viewless and soundless I fashion all being.

Taker and giver,

I am the womb and the grave,

The Now and the Ever.

William Ernest Henley (18491903)

Why am I in Greece?

Im 13,000 kilometres away from home, sitting in a small villa on a Greek island drinking Greek coffee and I really have no idea of why Im here. The coffee is good and well deserved as Ive been travelling for four days, on various size planes. I stayed overnight in a very spartan hotel on Skiathos complete with broken shower, and then finally took a ferry to Skopelos. I feel somewhat at home even though Ive never been here before. Everything is so Greek narrow laneways lined with bright geranium flowers and blue shutters, old men huddled around tables chain smoking and drinking Ouzo and yet it doesnt feel like a clich when you see it with your own eyes.

Our host for the stay is a delightful lady named Sofia, the haunting image of my Auntie Clare who passed a few years ago, with her boisterous banter, eccentricities and love for all things slightly bohemian. This is the same Clare who I want to get a message from.

Everything felt slightly surreal, especially when Sofia showed us around town after we first arrived and I noticed a taverna with blue chairs and white tables scattered under the shade of a big tree and I knew Id seen it before. Not in a book or glossy travel magazine; it had been in a dream Id had a couple of years ago the same chairs, the same tables, the same tree, the same feel.

One of the mediums Id had a reading with in September the previous year while researching for this book said that he felt Id be going back to trace family roots and it would feel like going back home. The second medium said something similar; I would be heading overseas to somewhere that felt like home.

Researching and writing this book has been far from straightforward; its been like putting a giant jigsaw puzzle together but without the original picture. I knew that finding personal evidence of the afterlife wasnt going to be as simple as having a ghost jump out in front of me, even though thats what I wanted, but I didnt think it would be this bizarre and freaky.

So why am I here in Greece? Im not even Greek.

A church bell rings in the distance. I start writing Dying to Know.

What kind of strange guy wants to explore the afterlife? Who is he and why does he want to know so badly? Is it a condition that can be cured with some lotion and a good lie down?

Dont mention death at dinner parties!

Have you ever wanted to know something so badly that youd do anything to find out the answer? Ive had a burning question raging inside me for nearly 15 years and its not a flippant question like will blue be the new black this winter? Its the simple age old question that everyone would like to know the answer to but refuses to actually ask:

Is there life after death?

Thats the question that has occupied most of my waking and nonwaking life. Its quite an innocent question really, but not to most people. Ive nearly ruined perfectly good dinner parties by asking it of guests. Usually the conversation stops dead, followed by uncomfortable sounds of cutlery scattering across plates and a few awkward coughs from the end of the table, then the topic is quickly changed to something more acceptable, like politics or why on earth you would be a teacher in this day and age.

While some people are fascinated by model aeroplanes, others with yoga or choral music from the 16th to 18th century, I have a fascination with death. My partner, Andy, lets me indulge my macabre fascination and doesnt blink an eye when we go past a second-hand bookshop and I have to rush in to buy another book by a psychic or on neardeath experiences. My bookshelves are loaded with them every topic remotely to do with death and dying is covered and I think Ive scraped the internet clean as well.

However, this book is not about gaining more knowledge about the afterlife; its about trying to get personal experience of it. Because without personal experience of something its just intellectual knowing, not real knowing. So youre going to follow me on a journey to places that most people are too afraid to go, and ask the questions were all too afraid to ask. Together well venture into the dark realms that would scare even the devil himself, well journey to the edge of consciousness and peer over the side and jump head first into a world thats normally off limits to most of modern western society.