After Death Messages – Can You Plan Ahead?

I have created a way to facilitate communication with my loved-ones after death. There is a questionnaire at the end that you can use to help do the same!

Talking to Our Loved-Ones After Death

After my son died, I was determined to connect with him again. However, I am much more cognitive than I am spiritual. Butterflies fluttered by me, but I didn’t see Jake. I talked to his gravestone, but I didn’t hear back. But then one day, something happened to make me really stop and question whether Jake was sending me a message.

Jake’s Message…?

Jake was a twin and I had been praying to have twins again with my next pregnancy. One day, I was making a recipe that required a dozen eggs. I cracked an egg. It had twin yolks. I cracked the next one. It had two yolks as well. As I cracked each yolk in the carton, I was astounded to see that every single one was a twin egg. It was just a random egg carton from the grocery store. I even checked later to see if they sold “twin eggs” and the teenage employee looked at me like I was crazy. Was this a message from Jake assuring me that he could hear me? Was he telling me I would have twins again? I wanted it to be. But I also knew that if I had randomly picked up those eggs under any other circumstance, I would have been like, “Hey Rich! Check out these crazy eggs!” And that would have been it. Sometimes things just happen randomly, and human brains are geared to seek meaning in them. I didn’t think Jake could go so far as to cause a chicken to lay a dozen twin eggs and ship it to my grocery store. But maybe a spirit could influence me to pick that carton if the circumstances were right. If I was trying to send a message to my mom that she would have twins again, I honestly can’t think of a better way. The problem was, there was no way to know for sure. And by the way, I did have twins again.

My Scientific Spiritual Journey

I had a long way to go to actually have a spiritual connection to Jake. I decided to use a little of both my cognitive and spiritual side to guide me on my journey. My undergraduate degree is in Psychology and my sister is a Social Psychologist. Psychologists have come up with methods to scientifically study elusive concepts, like love or friendship or racism. Why not use them on spiritual experiences.

Scientific Principles I Tried to Use, That Didn’t Work

Reliability

Concept: When a person is reliable, it means you can count on them to do something time after time. When scientific data is reliable, it means that if you are measuring something in the same way, you should get a similar result each time.

Application: My theory was, if psychic mediums could really receive messages from Jake, the messages should all be pretty consistent. I was looking for “inter-medium reliability.” So, every time anyone told me they had received a message from Jake, I wrote it down immediately and emailed it to myself so that my memory of it wouldn’t change. This way, I could look back and compare all the visions of Jake. However, this assumes that all mediums are equally accurate and that Jake is always trying to communicate the same message, so this didn’t really pan out.

Validity

Concept: When we talk about something being “valid,” in every day conversation, we mean that it’s real; It’s legitimate. Scientists talk about their data being valid when it appears to measure the concept they are trying to capture, and not something else. Like, measuring love, not just attraction.

Application: Another way of validating mediums’ messages was to give Jake a password. I told him many times that if he ever sent messages to a medium, that the password should be “Apple and Banana.” These were our nicknames for our babies in-utero when they were “Twin A and Twin B.” One of the mediums actually started her reading with a vision of Jake playing under an apple tree. He picked an apple and was very excited to show it to her. I wasn’t sure what to think about that. Is half the password valid? My husband pointed out later that apples have a lot of symbolism in our culture, so there were still other explanations. Oh well. I guess I will have to come up with a new password now.

Correlation is not Causation

Concept: By merely observing two things happening together, you cannot tell which one causes the other, or even if they’re both being caused by something else.

Application: Take my egg incident from the beginning. I had twins. So did the chicken or chickens whose eggs filled the egg carton I bought. There are many explanations for how both of those things happened that do not involve Jake. Maybe both the chickens and I were on hormones to increase our egg production (I certainly was, and those were not organic eggs). I also don’t know how many other people got twin eggs that week. Maybe there was a whole batch, so the chances of me choosing one were been pretty likely. You just can’t draw conclusions about causation from a single case.

Another Problem – Confirmation Bias

Concept: When people are searching for an answer, they tend to look for clues that confirm their beliefs. For example, if you were trying to figure out if someone was an extrovert, you would be more likely to ask them questions like, “How much do you love parties?” rather than, “Do you just feel you need to be alone sometimes?” This happened in studies even when people were offered monetary incentives for accuracy.

Application: When we’re looking for signs from our deceased loved-ones, we want it so badly, that it’s hard to be unbiased. Researchers are aware that their own expectations influence how participants behave in studies as well. This is why many studies control for expectations by keeping researchers and participants blind to condition (e.g. who takes the real pill and who takes a placebo).

Conclusion From My Previous Efforts

I just wasn’t going to be able to scientifically test this one case, but I could plan for the future. I decided to create my own study design, to allow myself and my loved ones (and, hopefully later, others) to plan for their own after death experiences, so that there will be no doubt in their minds.

So What’s the Plan?

First, I created a questionnaire that my loved-ones and I could fill out prior to our deaths (and by the way, my parents were super creeped-out when I excitedly told them that my sister and I were doing this).

Now, I have no idea what I’ll actually be able to do once I’m a spirit, so I have provided several options. I studied up on ways people reported being contacted by spirits, based on personal discussions, a book called “Hello From Heaven,” and the Netflix Show “Surviving Death.” I have broken up after-death communications into several categories. Then I made specific goals for myself to try to contact the person from each category. My sister and I both sent ours to our cousin. This way, if my sister, for instance, has a dream about me, she can check with our cousin, and see if it’s the message I said I would send her. This is why it’s important that she does not know ahead of time. Otherwise, she might just end up wanting it so hard that she imagines it, and then doubts the reality of the experience when it happens.

After Death Message Questionnaire

Below is a list of ways you are going to try to contact your loved one after death. Please fill this out for a specific loved-one (e.g. your spouse). There are blank spaces you can fill in, or you can write your own sentence. The important part is to be specific. It’s also important that you don’t share your answers with your loved-one ahead of time! This way, your wishful thinking will not influence your (or your loved-ones) perceptions as much, and it will increase confidence that the message you (or they) receive is actually real. I suggest sending this to a third-party loved one.

Here are the ways I am going to try to contact ______________ (Name)

Touch – Some people report feeling a loved-one’s touch (e.g. my friend felt her deceased mother’s hand on her shoulder during a sweat lodge).

I will touch your _________ (choose appropriate body part – feel free to make a joke here though), when you are in this specific location ________ (e.g. a certain room in your house, or a favourite chair, or somewhere outside of significance to you).

Bugs/Nature – Some people report feeling that a butterfly, moth, ladybug, bird or other animal interacting in an odd way was a message from a loved-one.

A _______________ (specific type of insect) will land _______ (location) and do _______ (e.g. a specific behaviour or amount of time it stays with you).

OR

A _________ (specific animal) will approach when you are _________ (doing something) and __________ (act in a specific way).

Dreams – Some people report dreams of a loved-one sending them a message.

Is there a specific thing you can do or say in the dream to prove it is you, along with the normal reassuring messages you will tell them (e.g. I love you, I’m okay). Maybe an outfit you will be wearing, or a certain action you will do in the dream.  

Psychics – Some people believe psychics can send them messages from their loved ones.

I’ve noticed a lot of psychics report they receive images rather than words in their visions. Pick a password that you will send the psychic that could be a word, but also could be an image. Or one of each.

Visions – Some people believe that spirits can send us thoughts or images.

Pick a place or an activity that you will be doing in the vision. What will you be wearing? Any specific hairstyle?

Felt presence – Some people report feeling the presence of their loved-one.

Where will the message recipient be when you try to make your presence felt.

Final Question – In case none of these messages work, is there anything you would like to write to your loved-one now? Feel free to share this part with your loved-one when the survey is completed.

My Future Quasi-Experimental Design

My long-term goal is to turn this into an actual experiment. Here’s how I plan to do it. I would randomly assign half of the participants to the experimental condition (two close loved-ones filling out the survey) or control (close loved-ones receiving education on how to organize their legal documents in preparation for end-of-life). I would be the third party to keep the questionnaires for participants. I would later contact people to determine whether any of the participants had passed away and if the remaining loved-ones believed they had experienced any after death communications. If they had, I would check the surveys to see if the experiences were consistent with what the deceased loved-one had planned. I would also check with control participants to see if there was any difference in the frequency of their after death communication reports and compare how sure each group felt that the communication was real. I could provide the deceased participants’ surveys to their loved ones at that time and call later to determine whether there were more perceptions of after death communications after being given the survey.

My hypothesis is that both control and experimental groups will report some amount of after-death communications. The experimental group might report more simply due to filling out the survey themselves and being more aware of the types of communications that people could receive. However, I suspect that if any of the communications coincide with what people planned, it will help loved-ones be more confident about their experiences and more willing to tell other people about them. I also believe that if a significant number of people do get contacted in a way that was pre-planned, but that they did not know about ahead of time, it could go a long way to convincing those of us who have doubts, that our loved-ones continue on after death.

Closing Thoughts

Part of my spiritual journey involves an urge to prove the existence of the afterlife to myself and others. That is why I wish to pursue this line of research. I hope it will help me find a way to be both spiritual and cognitive at the same time, and help me feel more connected to my loved ones, even after death. However, many people do not feel the need to prove the legitimacy of their spiritual experiences to themselves or others. They feel the reality of it as it is happening, and it is life-changing. On the flip side, an atheist friend of mine pointed out that, in the end, the most important message we could ever receive or send is “I love you” and that can be said and demonstrated throughout your entire lifetime. This is why I added the final question to the survey, to give people a chance to receive this message of love, no matter what.

P.S. Don’t think I’ve given up on having a spiritual experience with Jake. There is still a whole world of psychedelics to try!