Through the afterlife forum magazine, you can tell people about your real personal experiences of matters relating to communication with friends and relatives who have passed away to the “afterlife” (etheric world).

Like the near death experiences and out of body experiences, people spoke of them for decades and when the media picked it up there was a massive flood of people coming forward and now the thinking about NDE and OBE has changed.

For hundreds of years, mediums and others have been gathering evidence of survival and the afterlife, through departed friends communicating with us and showing themselves to us in the material world.

The afterlife forum is a place where people can discuss their own experiences of communicating with departed friends, through thoughts, direct voice or, more rarely, materialisation.

AF Publishing explores the fact that every person and animal survives death and lives on as “spirit”, “energy”, “an etheric being”, “a soul” or whatever word you prefer and we know that we have a physical body, an etheric body (“spirit” body) and a separate mind (a Human Trinity).
We look at afterlife communication, matters related to scientific proof of survival and explain what we mean by ethical conduct in this life.

AFTERLIFE FORUM CENTRES
This website forum is a first step towards setting up afterlife forums all over the country where people can come together in a friendly and accepting environment and talk openly about their experiences. Although run on a friendly and open way, we’ll also be business-like and secular – science and discovery being our watchwords – to further the work of communicating with and understanding the etheric world.

If you want to take part, please send us your write-ups of what you have experienced; if you want us to change the names in your article, please let us know and we’ll publish them on this website.

My Etheric Experiences
by Debby Wakeham July 2004.

I believe most people have had one or more etheric experience. If you ask them, they might at first deny it, unless of course they have seen etheric beings (commonly called ‘spirits’ or ‘ghosts’ – of people or animals who have died) but, when you give examples, they will quickly change their mind and say: ‘Oh yes, that has happened to me’.

Thinking of someone for the first time in ages, only to bump into them accidentally in the street or receive a letter from them; ‘knowing’ who is on the phone before you pick up the receiver; having a gut feeling or premonition about something which turns out to be true; telepathic experiences which are later verified; actually seeing etheric beings, maybe not realising at first that they have passed on. These are just some of the etheric experiences people can have.

I prefer to call them ‘etheric’ rather than ‘supernatural’ or ‘paranormal’ because I believe they are completely natural and totally normal. If Arthur Findlay and the subatomic physicists are right, the ether pervades everything and it is sometimes possible to pick up information by tuning in (by chance or by design) to the right frequency. ‘The truth is out there’ as they say on the X Files.

I would like to touch on a few of my experiences. Rather than itemise them chronologically, I will put them into categories.

Seeing etheric beings
When I was eight years old, I lived in a flat in London. One afternoon, I went into the living room and standing in front of me I saw a little boy, aged about six. He had blond hair and blue eyes and he was wearing clothes from a different time. I am not a historian so I would be grateful if someone could pinpoint the century from which he came. He wore a light green suit with lace cuffs (arranged almost like an Elizabethan ruff) and there were gold ‘V’s’ embroidered on his sleeves just above the cuffs. I knew he was a ‘ghost’ and I was excited, not at all frightened. I ran to call my mother to come and see but somehow I knew that by the time we got back into the room, he would be gone.

In 1984, our black cat, Emma, went missing. A few weeks later, I was doing some housework, thinking mundane thoughts as I vacuumed the front room. It was a sunny day and I had the back door open. I noticed Emma curled up on the sofa. Thinking she had just wandered back in as if nothing had happened and gone to sleep (as they do) I bent down to stoke her. My son will be so pleased, I thought. He had a special relationship with her and was missing her horribly. To my utter disappointment, when I put my hand out to stroke her, there was nothing there. When I eventually told my son what had happened, he confirmed that that was the exact spot she had been when last seen in the house.
Tinker was frail and thin when he died in 2003, aged nearly 18. Three days later, as I went into the kitchen, I saw him going into the litter tray! His fur was a deep rich ginger and he appeared to be in his prime.

Seeing etheric bodies of living beings
I love horse riding and try to go every weekend. Once, I was not able to go but wished very much that I were there. The following Saturday, when my husband, Peter, took me to the stables, we got talking to the owner’s mother who lived on the premises. She mentioned in conversation that she had seen us up there the previous weekend. She was visibly shaken when we told her that this was impossible as we had been elsewhere.

Another time at the stables, I was grooming a horse in his stall after riding, while waiting for Peter to come and collect me. (I can’t drive, so he kindly provides a taxi service). I saw him approach and then – he wasn’t there. In a split second I wondered if he had had a fatal crash on the way but was then certain that he was safe. Two minutes later, he arrived to pick me up.

When my two sons were children, they shared a bedroom next to mine. One night, while sitting up in bed, I saw my younger son, David, curled up asleep on my bed, beside me. I was not worried as I knew his physical body was safely asleep in his own bed.


Auditory experiences
I do not often ‘hear’ things – so far, it has only happened twice. The first time was when I was woken in the night by my friend calling my name. I then saw her face in the back of the sofa. (I was sleeping on the sofa in the front room of my flat, as I had given up my bedroom to Melody and her boyfriend, who were out at a disco at the time I was woken). I was very worried about her, thinking something terrible had happened but I managed to get back to sleep. Next morning, it transpired that all was well. They had returned in the early hours and nothing untoward had happened while they were out.

Several years later, my friend Jessica was staying with me. I got up early that morning. She was still in bed and I thought I heard her call my name: ‘Deb.’ I answered her. She eventually responded, bemused and sleepy. She had not called out to me. She had in fact been asleep and my response had woken her. We tried to work out who or what it was that I had heard. Jessica thought it was probably her niece, who had recently been killed in a road accident, and that I had mis-heard her calling out ‘Jess.’ Unbeknown to me, her voice was almost identical to Jessica’s.

Vicarious sightings
I had my beloved ginger-white cat, Tiger, put to sleep because he was in the advanced stages of a fatal disease. Shortly after this, I had acquired Blackspur, a feisty female. One night, she and Tinker were asleep on my bed. Suddenly, Blackspur sat bolt upright, stared over to the other side of the room and growled. I looked over and at first could see nothing, then, for a nanosecond, I caught a glimpse of ginger gold. Blackspur eventually stopped growling but remained for some time on full alert. Tinker remained asleep throughout.
I have read of similar instances of behaviour whose most likely explanation is that the animal concerned has seen an etheric being – in some cases a stranger, in which case the reaction is one of fear or hostility, or a sorely-missed friend*, where the reaction is joyful and games are enacted in the same way as when both were alive, followed by bewilderment when the etheric playmate disappears. (*Fortean Times, March 2001)

Precognition
I commute and I have often ‘known’ in advance that my train is going to be late or early. I have also often ‘known’ when social arrangements are going to fall through as, when visiting friends, I was looking forward to seeing Ali whom I had not seen for a long time, but I knew in advance that something would prevent her from being there, at the last minute.

When working for an adult educational establishment, I made an appointment for a man to attend an interview for classes. I ‘knew’ that he would come two weeks early.

Premonitions
When I was a child, I bred hamsters. Sadly, one of the mums died while still suckling her young. They were fairly advanced and seemed robust. They appeared to be thriving on hand-rearing. However, as I approached our front door on the way home from school that day, I ‘knew’ they had all died.

At the stables again. I had a particular favourite, a white pony called Spirit, whom I used to ride most weekends. That Saturday, as I got out of the car into the yard, I had a terrible premonition that she was dead. I told myself not to be morbid and put it down to the fact that I was feeling a bit low anyway. However, when I got into the stables, the owner greeted me with the words: ‘There’s been a tragedy.’ Some of the horses had become very ill through drinking polluted flood-water. Three of them had died; one of them was Spirit.

Telepathy
I have had various telepathic experiences both with etheric beings (not verifiable) and with people who are living on this earthplane (verified). I ‘knew’ of the existence of my older son, Richard, from his conception. Since then, I have had several telepathic experiences with him and his brother, often knowing when something is wrong and having it subsequently confirmed.

When I attended my first lecture in a training course to teach adult literacy, my father put a telepathic thought in my head: ‘You should have done this years ago.’ It is exactly the kind of thing he would have said

There have been other telepathic communications from etheric beings, who have conveyed opinions or information diametrically opposed to my way of thinking, which indicate to me that these are genuine, rather than wishful thinking or products of my imagination.

‘Impersonal’ sensing
It is hard to know how to categorise this particular experience. The only way I can describe it is that there was no telepathy involved; I was not aware of any attempt by the person concerned to communicate with me – my part was more like that of an observer or a witness, though it did not involve an actual sighting. A woman (who, following these events, became a friend – however, I never told her about this experience) had been referred to me. She was booked in for an abortion the following morning but, after we had spoken, had agreed to postpone the operation – giving herself and the baby more time before making a final decision. The morning came and went and I was hoping that ‘no news is good news.’ But, around 4 o’clock that afternoon, I got a sudden sense of her baby’s personality being unleashed on the atmosphere. The baby made no attempt to communicate with me. When Aysha (not her real name) rang me a couple of days later, she said the hospital had persuaded her to keep the appointment and the abortion had been carried out on the appointed day – in the afternoon.

My experiences may or may not resonate with you. To paraphrase Thomas Paine* when, with masterful insight, he debunked the religious idea of ‘revelation’ (*The Age of Reason, p.10) my experiences are ‘revelation’ to me only, and hearsay to every other person, and consequently they are not obliged to believe them. Those who know me will vouch for my integrity; those who do not may think I am unbalanced, deluded or a compulsive liar. That is their choice. It is my conviction that some, at least, of what I have experienced will ring true for many. It may be different for each person. But, as I said in the introduction, I am absolutely certain that etheric experiences are commonplace; they are a part of the fabric of everyday existence.

We can help the scientists who are conducting controlled experiments by ‘coming out’ with our experiences. In this way will a critical mass of anecdotal evidence be gathered, which – as happened in the case of the near-death experiences – will no longer be able to be ignored.