The longing to communicate with deceased loved ones—to express apologies, share “I love you,” or simply hear their voice once more—is a profound and widespread sentiment.
Yet, these experiences usually occur only in films like Ghost and Truly, Madly, Deeply, or are the false assurances offered by those exploiting the grief-stricken.
However, Dr. Raymond Moody, a respected philosopher, psychiatrist, and physician, asserts that it’s possible for anyone to reconnect with lost loved ones. According to him, all you need is a dimly lit room, a mirror, and an open mindset.
Despite studying the paranormal for several decades and even having coined the term ‘near-death experience’, Dr Moody, wasn’t always as convinced about the existence of an afterlife as he is now at 80.
His early work was far less esoteric, serving as a forensic psychiatrist in a maximum-security Georgia state hospital.
‘I was not a religious kid,’ he told The Daily Mail. ‘My parents dragged me to a Presbyterian church three times when I was a kid, and they realized this is not for me. It was usually not for them. They hardly ever went to church.
‘I had always assumed that the idea of an afterlife was a premise of comedy. I had only encountered it in New Yorker cartoons and a Jack Benny movie. I honestly thought that nobody thought of it as serious. I thought it was a joke.’
Dr Moody’s views began to shift while studying ancient Greek philosophers as a young man. A turning point came at the University of Virginia, where he met Dr George Ritchie, a professor of psychiatry who had his own near-death experience at the age of 20. That encounter set him on a lifelong path of research.
In the film Ghost, Patrick Swayze returned from the dead to communicate with Demi Moore
Juliet Stevenson and Alan Rickman played a couple separated by death in Truly, Madly, Deeply
Still, the ancient practice of mirror gazing was a step too far into the realm of superstitious quackery.
‘My initial sensation was one of distrust,’ he wrote in his book Reunions: Visionary Encounters with Departed Loved Ones.
‘Mirror gazing… has always been associated with fraud and deceit – the Gypsy woman bilking clients or the fortune teller who needs more money before he can clearly see the visions in the crystal ball.’
But curiosity won out. The more that Dr Moody researched, the more he was determined to discover whether or not educated, reasonable-minded people could see ghosts ‘on demand’ – even if the scientific establishment warned that he was risking his career in the process
To monitor the results, he created a ‘psychomanteum chamber’, a specially designed room with a clear, reflective surface that enables the viewer to ‘gaze away into eternity’.
‘The ancient Greeks did it with a big bronze cauldron, apparently polished inside and then maybe with olive oil on the top layer of the water,’ Dr Moody told The Daily Mail,
His modern version was simpler – just a quiet, dark room in his Alabama home, with a large mirror on the wall at one end. A comfortable chair was positioned so the viewer could see the mirror but not their own reflection, and the only light source was a dim bulb behind them.
‘I had a bunch of graduate students of philosophy, then some medical colleagues and professors, give it a try,’ he said.
The ancient practice of mirror gazing was considered too far into the realm of superstitious quackery for Dr Moody
He created a ‘psychomanteum chamber’, a specially designed room in which a clear, reflective surface enables the viewer to ‘gaze away into eternity’
Volunteers began the day thinking about and discussing their loved one and their relationship, holding on to mementoes to help remind them of the deceased.
‘The subject was then told to gaze deeply into the mirror and to relax, clearing his or her mind of everything but thoughts of the deceased person.
‘And voila. It works,’ Dr Moody said.
One man reported seeing his mother in the mirror, looking happier and healthier than she had at the end of her life, and assuring him she was all right.
Another didn’t see an image but felt ‘a very strong sense of the presence’ of his nephew, who had died by suicide, urging him to pass on a message: ‘Let my mother know that I am fine and that I love her very much.’
Moody had suspected that these responses were the stuff of mere fantasy, useful in and of themselves to ease the minds of those who were grieving, but fantasy none the less.
What struck him, though, was that unlike emerging AI technology that enables the bereaved to create replicas of the deceased, Black Mirror-style, participants were absolutely convinced that they had been in the physical presence of their dead loved ones.
‘Virtually all of the others described the experience as being “realer than real”,’ wrote Dr Moody.
One woman said her late grandfather even ‘came out’ of the mirror and hugged her.
Dr Moody remained skeptical.
‘I was convinced that if I saw an apparition, it would be different,’ he wrote. ‘If I have an experience like that, I thought, I won’t be fooled into thinking it is real.’
So he set out to take a trip of his own into the Middle Realm by trying the chamber himself. The result ‘totally changed my perspective on life’.
He focused his mind on seeing his maternal grandmother, to whom he had been very close. After more than an hour of gazing into the mirror, nothing happened, and he gave up.
‘Later,’ he wrote in the book, ‘as I unwound from the experience, I had an encounter that ranks as one of the most life-changing events I have ever experienced.
‘What happened altered my concept of reality almost totally.
‘I was sitting in a room alone when a woman simply walked in. As soon as I saw her, I had a certain sense that she was familiar.’
He soon recognized her as his paternal grandmother, who had died some years earlier. What was strange, apart from the fact that a dead woman was standing in his living room, was that the pair had often clashed in life.
Dr Moody believes apparition seekers do not necessarily see the person they want to see but, instead, the person they need to see
In Black Mirror, technology enables the bereaved to create replicas of their dead loved one
The documentary Eternal You delves into the world of startups using AI to create avatars of the deceased
‘She was habitually cranky and negative,’ he wrote. ‘Yet, as I gazed into the eyes of this apparition, I quickly sensed that the woman who stood before me had been transformed in a very positive way. I felt warmth and love from her.’
They had a lengthy conversation, he said – possibly as long as two hours – and throughout the experience she appeared ‘completely solid in every respect’ and not remotely ghostly.
He now believes that his grandmother appeared to help heal their broken relationship.
‘My encounter has clarified why it is that apparition seekers do not necessarily see the person whom they have set out to see… I believe that the subjects see the person they need to see.’
And, unlike the horror films that keep some of us awake at nights, Dr Moody is convinced that seeing the dead in this way is not just possible but is a universally positive experience.
‘I consulted Dr William Roll, one of the world’s leading experts on apparitions of the deceased,’ he wrote, ‘who informed me that he had never once uncovered a case in which harm had come to anyone from an apparition.
‘In fact… he found these experiences to be beneficial in that they alleviate grief or even bring about its resolution.’
Of his own ‘supernatural’ encounter with his grandmother, Dr Moody says: ‘My meeting was in no way eerie or bizarre… this was the most normal and satisfying interaction I have ever had with her.’
Reunions: Visionary Encounters with Departed Loved Ones by Raymond Moody is published by Ivy Books
