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SOUL STUFF
Continued from Page 31
not Himself.’ ”
In his 1970 book, Out of the Body Experiences,
Dr. Robert Crookall, a British geologist
and psychical researcher, reported
on the experience of Dr. R. B. Hout, a
physician, who was present at the death
of his aunt. “My attention was called…to
something immediately above the physical
body, suspended in the atmosphere
about two feet above the bed,” Hout recalled.
“At first I could distinguish
nothing more than a vague outline of a
hazy, fog-like substance. There seemed to
be only a mist held suspended, motionless.
But, as I looked, very gradually there
grew into my sight a denser, more solid,
condensation of this inexplicable vapor.
Then I was astonished to see definite outlines
presenting themselves, and soon I
saw this fog-like substance was a assuming
a human form.”
Hout then observed the form take on
the shape of his aunt. The form hung suspended
horizontally a few feet above the body.
When the phantom form appeared complete,
Hout saw his aunt’s features clearly. “They were
very similar to the physical face, except that a
glow of peace and vigor was expressed instead
of age and pain. The eyes were closed as though
in tranquil sleep, and a luminosity seemed to radiate
from the spirit body.”
Hout then saw a “silver-like substance”
streaming from the head of the physical body
to the head of the spirit body. “The color was a
translucent, luminous, silver radiance. The cord
seemed alive with vibrant energy. I could see
the pulsations of light stream along the course
of it, from the direction of the physical body to
the spirit ‘double.’ With each pulsation the
spirit body became more alive and denser,
whereas the physical body became quieter and
more nearly lifeless…”
When the pulsations of the cord stopped,
Hout could see various strands of the cord
snapping. When the last connecting strand
snapped, the spirit body rose to a vertical position,
the eyes opened, and a smile broke from
the face before it vanished from his sight.
Crookall also cited the words of Florence
Marryat, an English opera singer and author,
who wrote about “a cloud of smoke” gathering
over the head of a dying girl, then spreading
out and acquiring the shape of the girl’s body.
“It was suspended in the air two or three feet
above the body… When she lay back unconscious,
the Spirit above, which was still bound
to her brain, heart, and vitals by cords of light
like electricity, became, as it were, a living soul.”
The words of W. W. Oaten, an English author,
are also quoted by Crookall: “A smoke-
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Louisa May Alcott
like vapor rose from the dying body and stayed
at a few feet above it. Gradually it became ‘an
exact duplicate’ of the girl. The ‘duplicate’ was
united to the corpse by ‘an umbilical cord.’
This eventually snapped….The floating form assumed
an upright position. She turned to me,
smiled, and floated away.”
Among the more notable witnesses mentioned
by Crookall was Louisa May Alcott, the
author of Little Women. She told of being
present at a deathbed and watching “a light
mist” rise from the body and float up and
vanish in the air. Her mother saw the same
thing, and the attending physician told them
that it was “the life” departing visibly.
In Zeitschrift fuer Parapsychologie, a German
man reported his experience as he sat at the
bed of his wife as she was dying. He observed
“layers of cloud” drifting into the room, which
he first assumed was cigar smoke from an adjoining
room. “Overcome with wonder, I
looked back at the clouds,” he said, commenting
that he was completely aware and definitely
not imagining what was taking place.
“These floated silently toward the bed and enshrouded
it completely.” He then saw a vaporous
body form above his wife’s physical
body, attached to her body by a vaporous
cord. Soon after his wife took her last breath,
he observed the cord break and the vaporous
body disappear. “I must leave it to the reader
to judge whether I was the victim of a hallucination
brought on by grief and exhaustion, or
whether perhaps my mortal eyes had been privileged
to catch a glimpse of the spirit-world in
all its happiness, repose, and peace,” he ended
his account.
Geraldine Cummins, a renowned Irish auto-
matic writing medium, channeled much
information purportedly coming from
Frederic W. H. Myers, one of the pioneers
of psychical research, who had died
in 1901. Myers explained that the
“double” hovers above the physical shell
for a brief time, during which a “little
white cloud” or “pale essence” can be
discerned by some.
Eileen Garrett, a respected trance medium
and clairvoyant, observed a “vital
synthetic essence” leave the body of several
people as they died, the first when
she was a small girl and was present at
the death of her cousin. “I became aware
of a dim mist that was exuded from her
body, weaving intricately within itself in
a rhythm that was without agitation, tension,
strain, or pressure,” she wrote. “Fascinated,
I watched the faint small cloud
move off into space.”
She further witnessed it when her two
sons died within a few months of each
other. “The dim misty cloud spiraled out
from those small bodies as I held them
in my arms, and moved away; and with
an intensity of desire that was made poignant
by my emotional feeling of personal loss, I
followed those dim vitalities out and out into
endless distances, till the throbbing in my head
broke in upon the focus of my concentration.”
Later, she observed it with a friend. “I perceived
two small clouds emitted from his
body—one from the right side of the torso, at
the level of the spleen, the other from the top
of his head.”
Various spirit communicators have said that
the afterlife condition, at least in the lower
realms, planes, or spheres, is composed of
matter so fine and of so etheric a texture as to
be largely malleable by thought. Thus, it seems
very possible that the “misty cloud” seen
leaving the body at death is the soul, or the
spirit body, etheric body, astral body, double,
whatever name be assigned to it by various esoteric
schools, and does, in fact, have particles
and weight, however microscopic. On the other
hand, it could very well be that what some
people are seeing is non-matter, or a form of energy,
without discernible weight and visible only
to some who can tune into higher vibrations.
Either way, it is apparently beyond the grasp of
modern science.
And while the debunkers and pseudo skeptics
no doubt claim that the many sightings of
“soul mist” are nothing but hallucinations, Dr.
Moody points out that it is one thing to suggest
that the dying person is hallucinating,
quite another to suggest that healthy and alert
witnesses in the room are also hallucinating, especially
when two or more observe the same
phenomenon.
Michael Tymn is the author of The Afterlife
Revealed and The Afterlife Explorers.
Number 95 • ATLANTIS ATLANTIS RISING RISING 63