(**My book "Was That a Ghost?" is completed and I will be announcing very soon its publication on Tuesday's post, along with a sample chapter. It is a book that helps people figure out if something that happened to them was paranormal or not using techniques I have perfected with clients over all my years of ghost hunting and counseling. I am very proud, as I consider it my ghost hunting legacy**)
People have wanted to talk to the dead for as long as man has lost his family and friends to the great unknown that is Death.
Spiritualists tried seances and Ouija, table tipping and pendulums. Others have attempted to use televisions and radios, digital recorders and video.
Even Thomas Edison thought the phone wasn't quite enough, he once said, "I have been at work for some time building an apparatus to see if it is possible for personalities which have left this earth to communicate with us." There's been a lot of speculation that he might have just built that "ghost box," but no schematics or device was ever found. There is a big difference between "thinking" of building the machine and "building" the machine. During that time period of spiritualists and seances, he was a man influenced by such things when imaging where he could go next with his inventive mind. "This apparatus," he told Scientific American, "is in the nature of a valve, so to speak. That is to say, the slightest conceivable effort is made to exert many times its initial power for indicative purposes." He then likened it to the mere turning of a valve that starts a huge steam turbine. In the same way, the barest whisper of effort from a spirit could influence the highly sensitive valve, and that action would be greatly magnified "to give us whatever form of record we desire for the purposes of investigation. (Reminds me of J&G's sly little unscrewed flashlight concept)
I'm waiting for the release of a movie that I believe is a brilliant concept and I always wanted to see a movie done like this. What if you could build a machine that brought the dead back? Phasma Ex Machina is such a concept. Hurry up, guys! Get this on DVD FINALLY!
Today's modern-day ghost hunters use things like electronic voice recorders and K-II meters and Frank's Boxes to try to talk to the dead. All of these are completely unreliable and inaccurate. All they will receive are intermittent signals, whether from radio, cell or satellite, as well as odd sounds that they interpret as words. There are no vocal chords on the other side. Let's move on.
Here's my example of what the dead are up against. Have you ever tried to talk to someone who is awake while you are asleep? Should you become lucid enough in the dream to realize you can control it and you try to talk to that person who is awake, do you have success? Nope. You are purely working on a level that cannot use your vocal chords and make yourself heard. But, should that person go to sleep, is it at all possible to talk to that person in your dream? I have actually done this and I know many who have, even couples who have integrated their dreams side by side in the bed.
If we are to communicate with the dead, perhaps our sleep state is the only state in which we are free of our bindings to what we see and think and our analytical mind. In this altered state of brain waves, perhaps we are finally on a frequency that they can communicate with. Hell, we might be dealing with them every night and not realizing it is the dead we are interacting with in dream scenarios. People who have lost a loved one often talk about how they got a message from the other side of their dead family members show up in their dreams.
How can we encourage communication through this pathway?
Ideally, you begin with a quiet dark room where there will not be interruptions. If you choose to play music, play something monotone, but I prefer to run a loud fan so it drowns out sounds from outside. Sit down with a notebook and pen and start writing some of the things you want to talk to this person about. Lay this beside the bed and go to sleep. While drifting off, concentrate on the person you wish to communicate with and picture their face, their voice, mannerisms, let them know you want to speak very much. Do this especially in that soft drifting off moment when you let your body weigh heavy in the bed and you give in to sleep. When you do awaken, take notes immediately of everything you can recall. I generally like to set my clock for about 6 am because I know I'll be in dream cycle then and you recall it better if you wake up during it. Don't be surprised if there is not a full face-to-face interaction, but do take note of what you recall from the dream because after a week of this, the notebook will be filled with clues.
Ultimately, the ideal situation is to have labs where people can go and put on the right gear to relax their minds and get their senses ready for such interactions with the other side, a kind of "Total Recall" for the living with the dead. In the mean time, this might be our best avenue of advancement in the field of communicating with the dead.