Harold Sherman - The Dead Are Alive: They Can and Do Communicate with You

Up to now you may not have given the matter of your departure from this earth much thought. It has not been too pleasant or happy a subject to reflect uponand there may have seemed little you could do about it anyway. Better just put off facing it as long as possible

In this book which you hold in your hands, you will read the individual testimony of many sensible, sensitive men and women who profoundly believewho not only believe but feel that they knowthat there is personal survival after physical death.

Such people have one thing in common: They are free of fear, they say, as a result of psychic or spiritual experiences they have had. They are sure they can face the time for their departure from earth without apprehension, withinsteada feeling of anticipation. They are not nearing an end of life but a new beginning.

A Fawcett Book
Published by The Random House Publishing Group
Copyright 1981 by Harold Sherman

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States of America by Fawcett Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.

Fawcett is a registered trademark and the Fawcett colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.

www.ballantinebooks.com

eISBN: 978-0-307-78816-0

v3.1

To The
SEVEN
WHO
Will
LIVE
FOREVER

DEATH reached down and wrote upon the upturned faces around the world, leaving an image forever in their minds and hearts.

At that awful unexpected moment, the souls of five courageous men and two equally courageous women space travelers were released from earth bodies no longer existent.

Only a few there were in that vast assemblage of witnesses who actually realized what was happening. It had all been concealed by a spectacular, mammoth, explosive white cloud effect, followed by a fireworks of falling fragments of different shapes and sizes.

Then, after an awesome, stunned few seconds of unbelieving silence, there came a mighty heartrending, anguished chorus of Oh, God! .. Oh no! .. Oh God! which rocketed and reverberated enough to shake the planet.

It couldnt happen, but it did! In some unaccountable manner, a flame seared its way into the fuel tank, and the Shuttle, with everything in it, was instantly incinerated.

But what of Ellison, Christa, Gregory, Judith Michael, Francis and Ronald? What happened to them?

We last saw their blue-clad figures marching happily, single-file, as they waved goodbye and disappeared, to be forever, inside the bird-like coffin.

Mortal eyes could not see simultaneous transformation from flesh to spirit mortal minds could not sense that Death had not touched REAL LIFE at all!

Death is nothing at all. I have only slipped away into the next room. I am I and you are you. Whatever we were to each other, that we are still. Call me by my old familiar name. Speak to me in the easy way which you always used. Put no difference in your tone. Wear no forced air of solemnity or sorrow. Laugh as we always laughed at the little jokes we enjoyed together. Play, smile, think of me, pray for me. Let my name be ever the household word that it always was. Let it be spoken without effect, without the trace of a shadow on it. Life means all that it ever meant. It is the same that it ever was. There is absolutely unbroken continuity. Why should I be out of mind because I am out of sight?

I am waiting for you, for an interval, somewhere very near, just around the corner. All is well.

Harry Scott Holland
18471918
Canon of St. Pauls Cathedral.

Chapter 1

O n December 10, 1974, Wilma Plimpton left this life. She had been unconscious for 72 hours before passing. At least this is what doctors and nurses clinically thought. But Wilma told her husband, A.J., a year or so later after he had established two-way communication with her, that she had been out of her body, in her spirit form, trying to tell him she was still alive, and knew what was going on.

When death of the physical body occurred, said Wilma, she had blacked out, and when she returned to consciousness, she found herself in what appeared to be an almost endless hospital ward with rows of occupied beds and white-attired attendants. Her first thoughts were that A.J. had had her moved to another hospital, until she saw her formerly deceased father and mother standing beside the bed, smiling down at her.

Then, for the first time, the thought struck her: I must have died! If Im dead, where am I? Her parents, sensing her thoughts, explained that she was in what might be called a Rest Home, one of many which exist around the earth, where most people are transported at death, to remain for longer or shorter periods, until they become adapted to the new conditions.

As Wilma became more and more aware of her surroundings, which seemed to be as real and substantial as her earth existence had been, she was almost overwhelmed by the emotional pull of A.J.s grief upon her.

The effect on Wilma was such that, while she didnt know how it could be done, she felt she had to respond to A.J.s mental call and return to earth and try to assure him that she was still alivethat there was a life after death, in which he had not believedand that they, one day, could be re-united.

As Wilma had these thoughts, she suddenly found herself in the Plimpton home in Oklahoma, and in the physical presence of A.J. who was, at that moment, gazing fixedly at her photograph. She heard her own voice speaking to him but was frustrated to observe that he didnt hear it. She followed him about the rest of the day, in his car, wherever he went, trying to embrace him, to comfort him, to catch his attention in one way or anotherand her fruitless efforts continued until night when A.J. finally retired, and went to sleep, calling her name.

It was then that Wilma intercepted his thought and sensed that he was contemplating suicide, since he felt he could not go on without her.

In January of 1975, a little more than a month after Wilmas demise, a despondent A.J. still intent on doing away with himself, passed a newsstand and was challenged by a paperback book title, YOU LIVE AFTER DEATH by Harold Sherman. He bought it on impulse, wondering skeptically if he could have been wrong, if there could be a form of continuing life after death. In any event, he decided that he would see what this writer had to say.

I, of course, was the author of this book. It had first been published in 1949, and after a number of editions in hard cover, had gone into paperback with Fawcett Publications, now known as CBS-Fawcett, New York City, where YOU LIVE AFTER DEATH has remained a best seller ever since.

A.J. took the book home and read it that night. When he came to the last page, he saw a letter from me wherein I invited all who had had psychic experiences to write me a report of them, in care of my ESP Research Associates Foundation in Little Rock, Arkansas.