Overviews & General Topics

Questions about whether human consciousness survives bodily death lie at the heart of much psychical research. This Survival of Death subcategory offers general treatments of survival-related themes, introducing key concepts, lines of evidence and recurrent debates before readers move on to more specialised phenomena, case materials and interpretative problems.

Cold Spots

Sudden sensations or measurements of temperature variations recur in reports of apparitions, séances and hauntings.

Pearl Curran (Patience Worth)

Author of critically-acclaimed novels, poems and other works that were said to be channeled from discarnate entities.

Did Robert Swain Gifford Survive Death?

Analysis of the Thompson-Gifford case of ostensible possession as evidence of survival.

Encounters with the Deceased

Describes types and characteristics of encounters with deceased loved ones in dreams and elsewhere.

Is Xenoglossy Evidence of Survival?

Xenoglossy in mediumship is less indicative of survival than some researchers assume.

Lurancy Vennum

American case (of a 13-year old girl appearing for some months to be possessed by the spirit of a girl who had died years before

Organ Transplant Cases as Evidence for Postmortem Survival

Recipients of organ transplants may take on the personality of their donors.

Patience Worth (analysis)

Should the writings of 'Patience Worth' (Pearl Curran) be considered as products of creative dissociation?

Perspectival Postmortem Awareness

How could a deceased person view events in the physical world in the absence of a body with sense organs?

Physicalism and the Soul

Explores the nature of souls, afterlives, and possible gods compatible with modern physicalist science.

Postmortem Survival

This article describes research on the question of whether the human mind can survive bodily death.

Postmortem Survival: What Makes an Ideal Case?

Stephen Braude considers what would make the best evidence for survival.

Queen Victoria and Spiritualism

Queen Victoria took an interest in Spiritualism, particularly after the death of her mother and Prince Albert.

Soul Weighing Experiments

Attempts have been made to confirm the existence of a soul by seeking a change of weight in bodies at the point of death.  

Spirit Release Therapy

Clinical treatment used with patients who appear to be ‘possessed’ by harmful spirit entities.

The Super-Psi Hypothesis

Claim that psychic functioning is more extensive than supposed, able to explain most evidence for survival.

The Thompson-Gifford Case

19th century case of a jeweller who was driven to produce high quality paintings in the style of a recently deceased landscape painter.