From every culture on planet Earth we have reports of communications between the so-called dead and the living. Even today, in materialistic Western society, when we talk about the afterlife in a small group, about 50% of the people there will share that they have seen, heard, or felt a deceased loved one soon after they transitioned.

They say that they saw them standing at the end of the bed, in the hallway, or even sitting next to them in their car. Some will say that they heard their voice warning them to slow down before turning a corner.

Spontaneous communication from a deceased person without the aid of a medium is called after-death communication (ADC), and there have been over 35 formal studies of such events going back to 1894, when a study recorded 32,000 cases, 17,000 in English. It was published in Volume X of the Society for Psychical Research Proceedings (1894). ADCs have happened in every culture and every time.

But whereas near-death experiences (NDEs) have reached mainstream awareness, fewer people seem to know about ADCs. One of the reasons for this seems to be that, in our materialistic society, most people are afraid to talk about their experiences out of fear that they will be thought to be mentally unbalanced.

THE OPEN-MINDED SKEPTIC'S GUIDE TO AFTER-DEATH CONTACTS
After Professor Sylvia Hart Wright's husband, Paul, died in 1983, Wright and her son jointly had an experience that suggested that Paul was trying to contact them. At this time two of his male friends reported similar events. This was startling to people steeped in the scientific method and agnosticism! Scholar that she was, Wright started researching the writings of doctors and social scientists on such phenomena and in time interviewed almost a hundred healthy, everyday people who had sensed contact with the dead. "When Spirits Come Calling: The Open-Minded Skeptic’s Guide to After-Death Contacts is the book that grew out of this work."

COLLECTION OF ADC CASES
The After Death Communication Research Foundation, conducted by Jody Long and Dr. Jeff Long, asks people to send in, through the Internet, details of their after-death communication. It contains more than 1900 recent cases from all over the world. It also has information about grief and life after death.

DR. JAN HOLDEN'S PRESENTATION ON ADCs
Dr. Holden discusses Jenny Streit-Horn's Systematic Review of Research on After-Death Communication (ADC).