The Dead Saints Chronicles: A Zen Journey Through the Christian Afterlife

by David Solomon

  Ghosts are Memories, Spirits are real

  Dead Saints have often reported spirits of those who are Earthbound are not typically the spirit of Grandma hanging around the house, because she is, for whatever reason just “hanging around.” Spirits (not ghosts) often appear to be angry, hateful, and filled with guilt and remorse. When a “ghost hunter” or Ouija Board curiosity attempts contact, they find dark spirits in this type of emotional space. Of course, there will be the occasional “friendly spirit,” who is afraid to face the Light, or some souls who have committed suicide and are so remorseful they cannot face the Life Review and Judgment, and for this reason, they have not gone through the tunnel, which deposits the soul into the Grand Central Station of Death in preparation to enter Heaven. It is why, I believe, there is the admonishment by Holy Scripture, not to attempt to contact spirits. Why? Bad things can happen.

  On the other hand, there are mediums who appear to have the ability to receive communication from “normal” spirits, mothers, sisters, brothers, uncles and aunts who have gone onto the heavenly planes, but have the ability to reach down to this world to telepathically communicate with a medium to pass on information.

  The Bible itself contains stories of ghosts or spirits. Some have expressed their confusion stemming from the teachings of their church, which claim, “Communicating with spirits is impossible...because when one dies, they are either in Heaven or Hell.”

  According to the Dead Saints, this is not necessarily the case. The spirit realm and physical realm do co-exist, yet, are on different planes. It is believed some ghosts may not be people on the other side; they could be residual energy or thoughts left over from traumatic or emotional past events, or ghosts in forms mentioned in the Bible.

  One of the first verses many will recognize is I Samuel 28:13-15, where Saul has a medium, the witch of Endor, calls up the prophet Samuel from the other side of the grave:

  “And Samuel said to Saul, why hast thou troubled me, to bring me up?”

  The Scripture is very clear this was the spirit of Samuel and as Samuel had died and crossed over to the other side, that would make him a spirit.

  This medium, the witch of Endor, who Saul used, saw many people on the other side, when she was calling up Samuel. One should also note in this verse, Samuel had maintained his form of an old man wearing a mantle, just like many documented ghost sightings of apparitions, which report the ghost to be dressed in period dress from their own time here on Earth.

  So was Samuel a ghost, an after-image of the true prophet? Alternatively, was it really his spirit called down from Heaven? The first question to ask is how did this first human king of Israel, selected by God, get to a point where he would use the services of a witch?

  There is major debate among Biblical scholars whether this was really the ghost of Samuel or some type of “familiar” or demon. The Hebrew word for medium, is belowb, which means, possessing a familiar spirit or Spirit Guide. Throughout Scripture, there are numerous warnings about what God thought about such people and warned others not to consult them. “Do not go for advice to people who consult the spirits of the dead, (Leviticus 19:31, see also 20:6) and “Any man or woman who consults the spirits of the dead shall be stoned to death.” (Leviticus 20:27)

  Why were the Old Testament Patriarchs so harsh? In what way is it dangerous to religion? Saul’s experience shows mediums, or any one of us, can contact people on the other side. Nevertheless, Saul himself prohibited necromancy and divinations; departed souls could appear to the living only with permission from God. This may be the key; it is safe to listen to “spirits” from the other side of the veil only when God sends them to speak to us.

  Earthbound Spirits: A Unique NDE Perspective

  Spirits can attach themselves to houses, buildings, ships, and even lighthouses. They create their own “reality bubble” within the astral world, creating their own furniture and surroundings within a structure on Earth. It also appears sometimes these souls are so protective of their own “space” they haunt homes on Earth to deliberately drive out its physical occupants.

  This actually happened to my mother in 1981, when an angry, hateful woman, who screamed at her “Get out of my house”, attacked her in a dream! Mom and Dad lived in this 70-year-old gift shop with an attached apartment, along Hwy 11, in the Shenandoah Valley for six months. The dream attacks continued for several months, until they finally gave in, and moved out the house and back to Virginia Beach.

  Another story of a soul creating a “reality bubble” could be taken right from the plot of the movie, The Sixth Sense, where a fatally wounded psychiatrist (played by Bruce Willis) continues to visit his widowed wife, and during his “day job,” counsels an emotionally disturbed teen who can see the dead. He has no memory (or refuses to remember) of his dying, because the kid responds and communicates with him as he did in everyday life on Earth when he was alive. Thinking he is still living, the psychiatrist tries to communicate with his wife in the same way, but wonders why she does not hear or notice him.

  An interview I conducted with Daniel in 2014 describes a similar situation. During his NDE, Daniel had a casual conversation with a deceased friend who was a former narcotics police officer in Brazil. He had been shot and killed during a police blitz many years earlier:

  We talked for a long time remembering our childhood. He told me his family needed financial help. He left a wife and children. He told me he was thinking of working nights as a Security Guard after finishing his day work as a police officer. I was amazed by this. I interrupted him, ‘How can you say that? You are already dead!’ I stared at him. He didn’t accept it, moved his head, and said, ‘No,’ you just dreamed I had an accident and died. The truth is that it didn’t happen.’

  No matter how I tried to convince him he was dead, he refused to believe it.6

  Why Do Spirits Become Earthbound?

  A Dead Saint story reveals why spirits become Earthbound:

  Then, I saw [the Light] coming from beside the white table next to the head of the bed. It continued to brighten as I watched. It brightened to such an extent that had it been any ordinary light I would most certainly have been blinded. The next moment there flooded directly into my mind the words ‘Stand Up. You are now in the presence of the Son of God’ —whereupon out of the Light stepped what I could only describe as the most magnificent Being I have ever known.

  … I suddenly found myself on the move again. This time we didn’t bother about doors. It was straight up through the hospital roof. Then we flew at incredible speeds across the surface of the Earth, however there was no wind to slow us. After a few moments, I found myself approaching a city beside a huge expanse of water. In the city, all the streets and offices were unbelievably crowded. I could see people passing through other people like they weren’t there. We walked into a factory and I saw assembly line workers who were putting together lawnmowers and enjoying a coffee break, while behind them a woman pleaded for a drag of their cigarettes as through she wanted it more than anything in the world.

  When one of the workers clearly blind and deaf to the women behind him actually took a cigarette out of his packet and began to smoke it, the woman repeatedly snatched at it, but it was as if she was clawing at thin air. I came to the conclusion those people must be ghosts (spirits). Even though they were dead, they remained chained to the material world by the very things they had deemed most important during their lifetimes— their jobs, their cigarette smoking, and their material possessions…

  Earthbound ghosts [spirits] destroyed by hatred, lust, and destructive thought patterns, find whatever they think, however fleetingly or unwittingly, becomes instantly apparent to all those who are around them— more complete than words could have expressed and much faster than sound waves could have carried it.

  In addition, the thought that is most commonly communicated amongst Earthbound spirits were usually selfish thoughts,
and this by its very act, kept them Earthbound. The Being of Light, it seemed, felt only compassion for these unfortunate souls, but he knew it was their will, not his, that kept them there.

  I felt like Scrooge in “The Christmas Carol,” having this wise Being accompany me back to the hospital for the final time. I wanted to start my life again afresh when I would care far more about other people and not just myself. No longer would money and possessions be my supreme objective, but I would live my life with a desire to make other people happy.7

  There is a difference between the Realms of Light where deceased loved ones communicate love and deliver God’s messages and the astral realm of Earthbound Spirits who are filled with hatred, envy and destructive habits and attachments. Losing these addictions is evidently, critical while still attending Earth University. It clears a path to the Kingdoms of Light, and away from the lower, darker realms, our topic of discussion in the next chapter.

  —

  Endnotes

  1Apostle Paul, “For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.” (Ephesians 6:12)

  2 George G. Ritchie, Jr., M.D. 1991. My Life After Dying, Becoming Alive to Universal Love. Norfolk, Virginia: Hampton Roads Publishing. p. 23

  3Margaret W Interview with David Solomon, June 20, 2015. Reprinted with permission.

  4Henry W NDE, #1634, 06.22.08, NDERF.org

  5Hafur Experience, #1609, 01.19.08, NDERF.org

  6Interview with Daniel R. with David Solomon. August 10, 2014. Printed with permission.

  7A New Hope NDE, #270, aleroy.com/board270.htm

  — 19 —

  Tragedy, Evil, & Hell

  ~After a finger pruning two-hour soak in the hot tub at the Atlantis Resort, we got to know everyone—their jobs, where they lived, and why they were visiting such a lovely tropical place. Sometime after dusk, it came my turn to talk about my life. I was still bald from radiation and never liked to mention my illness, but it came out anyway—the story about cancer and the Dead Saints Chronicles, which quickly became the hot topic of discussion. A businessman in the hot tub named “Marc” began telling Delynn and me about an experience when he was stabbed on a New York City street while on his way to a business meeting sometime during the 1980’s. A man nearby in the midst of a drug deal saw him stabbed and ran over to help him after the assailant ran away. Blood was everywhere. The drug dealer flagged down a cab, dragged him in, and together they rushed to the hospital, an act that ultimately saved Marc’s life. He later discovered the dramatic event caused the drug dealer to give up drugs and later he became a paramedic. After Marc told the story, no one spoke for several minutes. Like my cancer, tragedy is often part of God’s plan. ~Chronicle 176

  In her best-selling book, Finding Me: A Decade of Darkness, a Life Reclaimed, Michelle Knight describes her kidnapping in 2002 by a Cleveland school bus driver. Trapped in a small cell along with two other kidnapped girls chained together in the room next to her, Michelle was tortured, beaten and raped for a decade. In 2012, during her capture, she ingested mustard given to her on a hotdog, and nearly died of anaphylactic shock from an allergic reaction. After five days, her body bloated and in excruciating pain, she tells her co-captor Gina, “I can’t take it anymore.” The next moment, she finds herself in total darkness, only to open her eyes to see a bright Light, brighter than any light she had ever seen on Earth. She heard a deep voice say, “Michelle, it’s not your time.”1 The next voice she heard was Gina, reviving her.

  Her probable near-death experience convinced Michelle: God is real.

  Upon her return to life, and subsequent escape and release, Michelle wrote about the tragedy, and has been an inspiration to millions…eventually forgiving her assailant.

  If she had died, or if she did not have the horrible experience, she had, perhaps she would not have become the example of the power of forgiveness for millions. The horribly uncomfortable question is: Did God plan this for Michelle, or was she the victim of absolute evil?

  When I first introduced this concept to my wife Delynn, she looked at me in angry disbelief, “Are you [expletive] serious?” Anyone who has lost a child to murder, rape or tragedy, despite their religious beliefs may react this way, and feel justified to react that way. Born-again Christian or not!

  The testimonies of the Dead Saints give comfort and thought to this spiritual dilemma. It is a wrangling that drives some to become agnostic or atheist. Why would a loving God allow some people to be born into a good life of luxury, love and goodness, and others a life of poverty, pain, torture and evil? Is the universe a dartboard for being born into a life of wealth or poverty? Is God a God of Chaos or a God of Order? Amy considered the same question during her NDE:

  All of my life, I had felt confusion and dismay at what I believed was lack of order. When I saw suffering that I deemed, unnecessary, sadness, or anything I couldn’t make sense of, I’d been riddled with a painful impression of Chaos. I was flabbergasted the God I so fervently believed in, and was taught to trust, could do no better than what I beheld in my everyday life. It tore at my soul and I prayed daily and sometimes for hours and hours, begging for an answer that could provide some kind of a reckoning for my confusion.2

  Religions have all sorts of explanations for the reasons behind tragedy like “good karma” and “bad karma,” or some even pawn it off, as “It’s just God’s will.”

  They ask the question, “How can a loving God be part of such suffering? How do you explain evil in a world where God is supposed to be all-Loving?” Scripture and the Dead Saints teach us we are eternal beings. Life is a flash, a moment in our eternal existence. The manner in which a soul chooses to suffer is a part of the drama, the play or movie God, the Creator, and we plan in his blueprint set out for this life.

  Indeed, despite their profound differences, many Christians (though perhaps not all) and many atheists can presumably agree concerning this:

  If a young girl should be brutally raped and murdered and this should be the end of the story for the child, then a supremely powerful, benevolent, and just God would not exist. An atheist may seriously doubt any future compensation would suffice to justify a Supreme Being’s decision to permit such an evil in the first place. The point even many Christians would concede, apart from an Afterlife, such an evil would constitute overwhelming evidence against the existence of God. In addition, some might even concede such an evil would be logically or metaphysically inconsistent with His existence as well.

  So, how can we find answers to murder, rape, and tragic accidents in the NDE?

  Rather than arguing for either side of the dilemma, please carefully read the testimonies of the Dead Saints. I believe these testimonies give another perspective in our search for one of the greatest dilemmas in life…a perspective not easy to hear.

  Why Do Bad Things Happen?

  According to the Dead Saints, tragedy is often planned into our Earth University curriculum before we are born. However, is tragedy all pre-planned, pre-ordained before we are born as part of our mission, or are we sometimes victims of tragedy by souls who use their free will to commit evil acts that were not planned? It is clear from Dead Saint testimonies that unplanned events…accidents…occur. Perhaps if nothing bad ever happened to us we would all be the same. Could we be like metal in a forge that has to be heated and struck repeatedly to make a useful tool from it? In addition, to be an effective tool for God, the Saints believe some of us choose to enter this life with a very difficult class schedule with some of the lessons appearing from our earthly perspective, horrific.

  Therefore, while we may experience pain and sorrow on Earth, it is only a second in the grand scheme of things. We have an eternity to live. When we leave this life of pain, the trauma is forgotten and put in its proper perspective as pa
rt of the learning process.

  Why Do We Have So Much Pain On Earth?

  John attempted to take his own life. He discovered God had been with him throughout his life and he had come to Earth to learn how to love and forgive:

  It was then I asked God why there had been so much pain in my life, and where had he been while I was suffering and so afraid? He then told me to hold my hand while He showed me something. I don’t know exactly how to describe what happened next. The only way I know how to describe it as follows: have you ever seen a pond where, as matter decays on the bottom of the pond bubbles rise to the surface?

  Well, as God held my hand I could see great chunks of memories, many of which I had repressed as they were so painful, come floating up in front of me. I saw myself as a boy getting physically and emotionally abused by my father. I saw myself in grade school, being mocked and ridiculed by other boys and girls, for I had been a loner and an object of ridicule. I saw myself suffering at the hands of nuns and teachers who only knew how to humiliate and denigrate me. The memories were terrible, and watching them I felt so much sorrow and compassion for me as a child.

  He then told me to look closely, and it was then I could see a Light around my body during every one of the events. I could feel God’s love for me as a little boy and He told me He had always been right next to me, and He had never left my side. I was overwhelmed by His love for me at this point, it was completely overwhelming. It was then everyone who had ever hurt me, from my childhood all the way to some of the personalities in the monastery I was having trouble dealing with what I saw, and they too had a Light around their bodies.