Evidence for Soul Survival --- a few favorite finds

This is a topic that drew me to ATS years ago, and I wanted to share some of my favorite finds on the subject.

I should give this disclaimer that I had the time to write this up as I am recovering from surgery. In other words, I’m medicated. Ha! So please kindly forgive any typos or general loopiness. And, no, I didn’t have any OBEs while under general anesthesia.

In no particular order, here are seven of my favorite pieces of evidence supporting soul survival. While evidence does not equal proof, I found these to be very intriguing. I hope you enjoy it!


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1.  Marty Martyn – A “Past Life” Case
I apologize for opening with something I’ve already posted about, but this was a mind-blower for me. It needs the top spot. This is an example of some “evidence” that contradicts my faith, but it is a truly remarkable case. How it should be interpreted is not for me to say, but if reincarnation is a reality then I think this is the most compelling case I have ever encountered.

Here is the thread which includes details on the case: www.abovetopsecret.com...

Here is just a snipit of what I had written on that original thread:

I'm reading the book Return to Life: Extraordinary Cases of Children who Remember Past Lives. It was published in December 2013 by Jim Tucker, MD. Tucker worked under, and is now continuing the work of, Ian Stevenson.

…

From preschool age on, Ryan would say things that it seemed like he should have no knowledge of. For instance, Ryan asked his mom for a Tru Ade (a soft drink that was available in the 1940s, discontinued by the 1970s). He stories about Rita Hayworth and how she used to make him "coke floats". Just crazy things. It seemed at night that when his mom would give him a bath, Ryan would often start to get really upset - missing his Hollywood life and wanting to go back. He would often wake up, with nightmares about dying in Hollywood - grabbing his chest and saying that his heart exploded. He was always very clear that this was a "past life" he was talking about - even thought the concept of past lives had never been discussed in their Christian household. He even spoke of the time between his past life and when he choose to come back and choose his mom to be his mother.

Given Ryan's insistence on the reality of his past life, his mom (Cyndi) took him to the public library to get some books about Hollywood. Eventually, they came across a picture in a book from a 1932 movie called Night After Night. Ryan got very excited and said "That's George! We did a picture together. And mama, that guy's me. I found me." The book didn't list the six people in the picture, but Cyndi was later able to verify that the one Ryan pointed to as George was indeed George Raft - a film star of the 1930s and 1940s. Ryan described a scene in the movie that involved a closet full of guns.

That night, Cyndi found Night after Night on You Tube. There was indeed a scene with a closet full of guns. Ryan was only five at the time all this took place and had never even seen a black and white movie, and definitely never saw this one.

But, really, if you haven’t seen the thread before you might want to check it out. There are a lot of specific details and it’s much too long to repost here. It’s a fascinating case.

2. Sound Studio EVP Study
EVPs are some of the most popular, and consistent, “evidence” ghost hunters are able to produce. But, the list of non-paranormal causes of EVPs are practically endless – from audio equipment quirks to stomach gurgles. Frankly, most of it seems like an audio Rorschach test to me. Every now and then, though, you hear something very clear. Then you have to wonder if it was a stray signal from a radio broadcast, or an outright hoax.

I wondered if there had ever been a controlled study of EVPs, like in a sound studio. I found one! And the results are pretty interesting.

ABSTRACT:
A relatively novel acoustic phenomenon has inundated the Internet and specialized literature. Several Associations, some of them with an important number of members, have formed around it in many countries. In the Anglo-Saxon world the phenomenon is called EVP (Electronic Voice Phenomenon) and is usually assumed as electronically mediated communication from or with the deceased. The first tests aimed at verifying the reality of these claims were carried out in Sweden and in Germany, in 1964 and 1970, under the direction of Professor Hans Bender from Freiburg University (Bender, 1970; 1972; 2011). The present report describes in detail the tests designed to record the allegedly anomalous electronic voices, or EVP, under controlled acoustic conditions. Series of experiments were carried out in Vigo, Spain throughout a period of two years under conditions controlled to the highest degree achievable. Several operators were involved in the many tests conducted in Acoustic Laboratories and professional recording studios equipped with very high levels of acoustic shielding. The protocols and procedures followed in the experiments, as well as the results obtained, are herewith described. Several extra voices were recorded during the many experiments performed for which no normal explanation was found.

Anabela Cardoso, “A Two- Year Investigation of the Allegedly Anomalous Electronic Voices or EVP,” Neuroquantology 10, no. 3 (September 2012): 492–514.

Here is a PDF of the study:
www.itcjournal.org...

Do these “extra voices” provide proof of soul survival? Not necessarily, but that is one explanation. They sure are interesting!

3. Spotting a Mousetrap (OBE)
Out of Body Experiences (OBEs) are an interesting line of evidence for soul survival. OBEs can be interpreted as evidence that consciousness can successfully detach from the body – presumably whether that body is alive or dead. The best OBEs, as far as evidence goes, include some element that can be verified. The person having the OBE reports seeing or hearing something that they could not have seen or heard by normal means.

Penny Sartori, an NDE researcher who has a study included on this list, shared this intriguing story:

I became so fascinated with NDEs I decided to undertake my own study at the Morriston Hospital in Swansea where I work. I began documenting NDEs and my research is the largest of its kind in the UK. I was awarded my PhD in NDEs five years ago from the University of Wales.

At first I thought this phenomenon was caused by hallucinations but one 59-year-old’s experience I documented clearly suggests this isn’t the case. The woman was admitted to A&E with severe asthma and revealed that she suddenly found herself feeling calm. In reality she’d blacked out.

Next she was looking down on her body in the hospital bed and she spotted a mousetrap on top of the cupboard. She then saw a bright light. She was drawn towards it and figures appeared as outlines.

She felt incredibly peaceful and travelled towards the light but the figures told her she had to go back. “I wasn’t sure who the beings were but I had a feeling I knew them,” she told me. “They felt like family members.”

When the woman woke up in A&E she told a nurse about her experience. The nurse then discovered the mousetrap on top of the cupboard.

(Continued in next post)

(4) Veridical Perception in a Controlled Setting

This OBE is a very unusual case of veridical perception – which is when verifiable events happen during an OBE. It is unusual because it took place in the controlled setting of an experiment.

Dr. Charles Tart, a Professor Emeritus of Psychology at the University of California, published this experiment in the Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research in 1968. It might be the most famous OBE study ever done, although I had never heard of it until I starting digging on this topic.

Dr. Tart documented the out-of-body experience of Miss Z, a young woman who claimed to have frequent OBEs while sleeping. She was placed in a sparse room with a bed, a shelf, a clock, and an observation window. Dr. Tart observed her through the window from another room. She was hooked up to electrical devices to detect brain waves as she slept in the room. This allowed Dr. Tart to monitor her stage of sleep. Here is what the layout looked like: (this is Dr. Tart’s diagram, not mine)



The test subject, Miss Z, was able to have several OBEs over the course of 4 nights while Dr. Tart watched. During one OBE, she read a 5-digit number (25132) off of a piece of paper that was on a shelf in the corner of the room. When she woke up, she reported the number to Dr. Tart.

The study isn’t perfect, as you’ll see if you read it in it’s entirety, but it is probably as good as it gets in terms of a documented case of veridical perception in a controlled environment.

As a side note, Miss Z seems to be a pretty interesting person. One night of the study she had a nightmare about a young girl getting murdered that apparently had a lot of parallels to actual events happening in the area. Yikes.

Here is the ABSTRACT of the actual study originally published in the Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research, 1968, vol. 62, no. 1, pp. 3-27.

ABSTRACT:  A young woman who frequently had spontaneous out-of-body experiences was studied in a sleep laboratory for four nights. She reported several partially out experiences and two full ones. While the physiological data are limited by dependence on her retrospective report in correlating physiological pattern with the experience, it seems as if her out experiences occurred in conjunction with a non-dreaming, non-awake brain wave stage characterized by predominant slowed alpha activity from her brain and no activation of the autonomic nervous system. Two incidents occurring in the laboratory provide suggestive evidence that the out of-the-body experiences had parapsychological concomitants.

You can find the original article reprinted here (click on section “2” of the table of contents)
www.near-death.com...


(5) A Documented OBE with Healing
This is a study involving Penny Sartori, mentioned in #3. This case involves both veridical perceptions and seemingly miraculous healing connected to a OBE. The patient had a hand that was frozen in a claw-like position since birth due to cerebral palsy. For 60 years he was unable to open his hand. The OBE/NDE occurred while he was unconscious in the hospital. After the OBE/NDE he was actually able to open his hand.

ABSTRACT: There are reports of veridical out-of-body experiences (OBEs) and healing occurring during near-death experiences (NDEs). We report a case in which there was strong evidence for both healing and a veridical OBE. The patient’s experience was thought to have occurred while he was unconscious in an intensive therapy unit (ITU). The patient’s account of an OBE contained many veridical elements that were corroborated by the medical team attending his medical emergency. He had suffered from a claw hand and hemiplegic gait since birth. After the experience he was able to open his hand and his gait showed a marked improvement.

In the “discussion” portion of the case study:

It was documented in the patient’s medical admission notes that he had cerebral palsy with a right spastic hemiparesis. The patient stated that his hand was claw-like and had been so all his life; this was supported by the testimony of his sister. The extent of the contracture had not been formally assessed or documented prior to the NDE. However, a splint had been made for the patient’s hand by the hospital appliances department several years prior to the current hospital admission. The patient stated that the splint had not been effective and that his hand remained contracted. The medical and physiotherapy notes were checked to see if extensive physiotherapy had been performed on his hand; it had not. However, it was documented in the physiotherapy notes that there was increased muscle tone in his contracted hand prior to discharge. This was discussed with the physiotherapist, who explained that the hand should not be able to open without an operation to release the tendons that had been in a contracted position for 60 years. No such operation had been performed. It remains unexplained how it is possible for the patient to be able now to open and use his previously contracted hand.

This is a really neat study to read and includes some great veridical OBE events.
Penny Sartori, Paul Badham, and Peter Fenwick, “A Prospectively Studied Near- Death Experience with Corroborated Out-of-Body Perceptions and Unexplained Healing,” Journal of Near- Death Studies 25, no. 2 (2006): 69–84.

Link to pdf below: 
iands.es...





(6) Awareness when no brain activity was expected.
Time is a funny thing. Have you ever had a dream that you were certain took several hours to complete only to find out were asleep for just five minutes? Along those lines, I sometimes wondered if patients assumed they experienced an NDE when they are “dead”, but in reality the experience took place when they were waking or right before they flatlined.

This case serves as a response to that concern. What is special with this situation is that there is a “timestamp” of sorts for when the patient experienced an NDE/OBE. It appears the patient had conscious awareness during a very specific timeframe when no brain function should have been happening.

From: www.sciencedaily.com...

One case was validated and timed using auditory stimuli during cardiac arrest. Dr Parnia concluded:

"This is significant, since it has often been assumed that experiences in relation to death are likely hallucinations or illusions, occurring either before the heart stops or after the heart has been successfully restarted, but not an experience corresponding with 'real' events when the heart isn't beating. In this case, consciousness and awareness appeared to occur during a three-minute period when there was no heartbeat. This is paradoxical, since the brain typically ceases functioning within 20-30 seconds of the heart stopping and doesn't resume again until the heart has been restarted. Furthermore, the detailed recollections of visual awareness in this case were consistent with verified events.”

This patient had a veridical OBE during a specific timeframe when he should have had no brain activity.

(continued next post)

Check out the actual study: www.resuscitationjournal.com...(14)00739-4/abstract



(7) Shoe Spotter OBE/NDE
I remember hearing this story a few times, and it always had the feel of urban legend.
According to the “The Handbook of Near-Death Experiences: Thirty Years of Investigation” by Bruce Greyson, Janice Miner Holden and Debbie James…this Shoe Spotter story really happened.

A woman entered a hospital clinically dead. After revival, she claimed to have "seen" a shoe on a ledge outside a sixth floor window of another hospital building. A social worker checked. The shoe was there, not visible from the street, on the opposite side of the campus from where the woman had been brought in by ambulance.

Here is an interview with the actual social worker, Kimberly Clark Sharp, who found the shoe:


www.youtube.com...




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There are so many other interesting bits of evidence for soul survival. I’ve personally seen and experienced the power of prayer. Evidence such as faith healings and prophesy I intentionally didn’t include as I wanted this to be a more agnostic list. (Yes, #1 actually butts heads with my Christian faith!) But the evidence available in this category is truly remarkable.

So…Psychic detectives, NDE visions of the blind, documented hauntings, angelic interventions, after-death communications, shared death experiences…the list of fascinating events that might compel one to believe there is more to this world than what we see is long. But finding evidence that is well-documented and rings “true” is a challenge. So please feel free to add your favorite evidence that supports the concept of soul survival. I’d love to hear it!

This subject fascinates me also, so thanks for sharing the links, I shall enjoying looking over them later.

Hope you have a swift recovery from surgery.

The best evidence for reincarnation I have ever seen comes from Dr. Stevenson. He studied thousands of children from India who reported past lives. In my favorite study, he chose children who reported a past life and also had a birth mark or birth defect. Then he looked up the past lives they reported and looked at the injuries sustained and disfigurements present at the time of death. He found an 80% correlation between the injuries from previous lives and the present birth defects. He even had autopsy photos alongside photos of the birth defects. I highly recommend reading his work if you are interested in reincarnation. Fascinating stuff.


reluctant-messenger.com...

The spirit is indestructible.

a reply to: VegHead

Past lives and reincarnation is a scientific fact in the eastern world.

a reply to: anotheramethyst

Yes, Dr. Tucker - the author of the book that introduced me to the Marty Martyn case - worked under Dr. Stevenson. I'd love to read more on Dr. Stevenson's work so thank you for the link!

With the birthmark correlations, you just have a to ask "why"? Why would that be the case? Does the soul remember the death blow so well that during embryonic development it is imprinted on their DNA? Is it a "God Wink" - a way that God wants to let people get a glimpse of a bigger reality? Very odd. Very interesting, but very odd.

a reply to: VegHead

I love looking at birthmarks, its a mark from their past life. The deathblow or memory of the cut, fire, scar must have been so significant that it imprinted on future lives.