The purpose of “The After Death Experience,” Ian Wilson explained in his book’s Introduction, is to explore two central questions: If we know so little about the nature of our consciousness, how can we be certain that it does not survive our physical death? And, since nothing in physical nature stops existing but simply changes into another form, either as inanimate matter or pure energy, is it not reasonable to apply this principle to our consciousness, our spirits, or our souls once our bodies die?

We learn about a girl who was found “dead” by her physician father, who was able to resuscitate her and to bring her back to life. Describing her experience, the girl said she had traveled to a beautiful garden where she was greeted by a kind old man who asked her if she wanted to stay or go back. She said, “I think Mummy and Daddy would be very sad if I didn’t go back, so I think I’d really like to go back.” But she spent some time with the old man before being sent home.

Several months later, some visiting relatives brought a photograph album. Looking at one of the pictures, the girl exclaimed, “Oh look, that’s the old gentleman I met up with in the garden.” She learned that he was her great-grandfather, who died long before her birth. She had never seen a picture of him prior to looking at the photograph album.

The late Pope Paul VI had a bedside alarm clock that, for 55 years, the Pope insisted on taking with him wherever he traveled. It was never known to be fast or slow and was always set by him to ring at precisely 6:30 a.m. On Aug. 6, 1978, as Dr. Mario Fontana, the Pope’s physician, and other aides observed the dying Pope’s life ebb away, the clock ticked steadily at his bedside, neither rewound nor reset. Paul was given the Last Rites. At 9:30 p.m., the doctor listened to the Pope’s chest, felt his pulse, and announced, “It is over.” Just as he pronounced the Pope dead, to the amazement of all present in the room, the alarm clock shrilled.

U.S. Army Specialist Fourth Class Jacky Bayne initially was reported to have been killed in Vietnam as he tried to fire an anti-tank rocket during a fierce battle with the Vietcong. In an out-of-body experience, Bayne watched himself from above as the Vietcong pulled his boot off and picked up various things. Bayne said, “I could see me … it was just like I was looking at a manikin laying down there … I could see my face and I could see my arm. I was pretty well burnt up and there was blood all over the place.”

Several hours later, U.S. troops arrived. “I looked dead … burnt up … they put me in a bag.” Bayne’s body and other bodies were put in a truck for transfer to the morgue, where he was laid out for embalming. Bayne watched while the embalmer cut into the left groin to expose the femoral vein to inject the embalming fluid. “He had already made a slight incision when he was just curious as to why there was that degree of blood. So he checked my pulse and heartbeat again and I could see that too, standing up about as you were looking at a third party … He checked the pulse, and he wasn’t sure, so he asked someone else. He had decided he would stop cutting at that point. It was about that point I just lost track of what was taking place. … They apparently took me to another room and severed my hand off and maybe a few minutes after that surgical procedure the chaplain was in there saying everything was going to be all right … I was no longer outside looking at the situation. I was part of it at that point.”

Wilson’s fascinating book, filled with stories similar to those described above, discusses reincarnation and past lives, ghosts, out-of-body experiences, departed souls communicating with the living via dreams, and other aspects of near death or after death experiences.

Although there is no mention of this case in the book’s narrative, the book’s back cover refers to the discovery of an angry ghost that was haunting the Rochester, N.Y., home of James Fox and his family in 1847. The ghost communicated to them that he was a peddler who had been murdered by the former tenant of his house. It wasn’t until 1904 that a male skeleton and a tin peddler’s box were discovered behind one of the house’s walls.

My online search for more information about this case produced no results.

One of my friends was hospitalized for two months with Covid-19. For much of that time he was comatose, on life support, and sometimes required resuscitation. He recalls feeling the powerful, all-encompassing presence of a spirit who told him his life was not yet over, that he had to go back into his body, even though his body had been traumatized. He believes that he had a near death experience, possibly even an after-death experience, while in a comatose state.

I purchased “The After Death Experience” for a dollar at a used book sale at Canandaigua’s Wood Library. Other books by Ian Wilson include “The Shroud Of Turin,” “All In The Mind,” “Jesus: The Evidence,” “Exodus: The True Story,” and the “Mysterious Shroud Undiscovered.”

In the final chapter of “The After Death Experience,” Wilson wrote that “We may not have proved that there really is some form of after death experience, but perhaps we have at least furnished sufficient information for the issues to be taken seriously, and to have some effect on the way we conduct our future lives. For, as was cogently pointed out by the pioneering United Nations Secretary-General, Dag Hammarskjöld, who himself died so tragically in a plane crash, ‘no choice is uninfluenced by the way in which the personality regards its destiny, and the body its death. In the last analysis, it is our conception of death which decides all the questions that life puts to us.’ ”

For more recently published books about these issues, I would recommend reading “Proof of Heaven: A Neurosurgeon’s Journey into the Afterlife” by Dr. Eben Alexander, and “Messages: Signs, Visits, and Premonitions from Loved Ones Lost on 9/11,” by Bonnie McEneaney.

Canandaigua resident Joel Freedman contributes book reviews and essays to the Finger Lakes Times frequently.

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