Venture beyond the veil with Oxford-trained philosopher Chris Carter as he joins Linda to explore one of humanity’s greatest mysteries: Does consciousness survive death? In this compelling episode, Carter takes us on a journey through meticulous research, personal experience, and the powerful evidence accumulated by renowned societies for psychical research.

Here are three inspiring insights from this thought-provoking conversation:

🔹 Evidence Beyond Faith: Uncover why there’s no need to take refuge in mysteries or mere belief—Carter reveals that the case for the afterlife is supported by robust, independent lines of evidence. From near-death experiences and apparitions to messages from departed loved ones through mediums, each path points to the continuation of consciousness 05:36.
🔹 Life’s Ripple Effect: Discover how the afterlife is shaped by the life we lead here. Carter shares messages from the other side, emphasizing that our actions, values, and the love we share continue to shape our journey long after this life ends 11:28. Our lives aren’t just meaningful—they influence eternity.
🔹 Transformation and Hope: Hear powerful examples of transformation triggered by encounters with the afterlife, both peaceful and challenging. Near-death experiences often lead to profound personal growth, shifting perspectives, and inspiring us to live with greater kindness, compassion, and spiritual depth.

Explore these topics and more as Chris Carter provides hope and perspective for anyone yearning to understand what lies beyond. Allow the conversation to inspire you toward living a life rooted in meaning, mindful choices, and the assurance that there is, indeed, something brighter and more magnificent waiting beyond this world. Don’t miss this uplifting exploration on Exploring the Mystical Side of Life!

 

Transcript:

Chris Carter:
There’s no need for those of us who accept the reality of an afterlife to make excuses for our beliefs or take refuge in mysteries of faith, because the evidence is strong.

Announcer: Welcome to Exploring the Mystical side of Life with your host, Linda Lang.

Linda Lang:
Hi, this is Linda Lang from ThoughtChange.com we are exploring the mystical fat of life once again this week. Today we are exploring the afterlife. I have Chris Carter here. He is an Oxford, Oxford trained philosopher. Welcome, Chris.

Chris Carter:
Thanks for having me, Linda.

Linda Lang:
It’s a pleasure having you, Chris. I’m curious why an Oxford trained philosopher would even be compelled to start researching the afterlife and trying to prove that it’s true. So how did you start on this path?

Chris Carter:
It all began when I was a student, and the first year there, I was living in one of our college’s dormitories. One night I was in a friend’s room, we were talking, and he was trying to convince me to spend our second year living in a farmhouse on the outskirts of town which is owned by our college. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to leave the dormitory, but he was relentless and he ended up telling me that finally the the place has a ghost. And I just said, “Has anyone seen anything?” And he said, “No, but there’s been a lot of strange sounds reported.” So I decided to see the farmhouse for myself. It turned out to be a large stone building, probably built during the late Middle Ages. And while I was on the farm, I stopped in to see the college carpenter who had his workshop on the property. I said, “I hear the place as a ghost.”

He said, “Well, I don’t know myself, but the carpenter before me, he swore the place was haunted.” Well, that was enough for me, so I decided to move in there with three other grad students and spend the next year living in this allegedly haunted farmhouse. To make a long story short, I did have some unusual experiences there. Nothing particularly dramatic, but they did spark my interest. After I returned to Canada, I began to reflect on my strange experiences in the old farmhouse and wondered if anyone else had done any serious research over the years on things such as hauntings and apparitions and so forth. And I was surprised to find that there was an enormous volume of research that had been performed over the years. The most impressive was that performed by the British and American Societies for Psychical Research. Both of them were founded in the 1880s.

The British Society was founded in 1882 with Henry Sidgwick, a philosopher at Cambridge, as its first president. Three years later, the American Society was founded. William James, a philosopher at Harvard, as its first president. And both societies included some of the most elite scientists, philosophers, scholars, physicians, lawyers, and others on both sides of the Atlantic. And they conducted an enormous amount of very careful research. Research, groundbreaking research. And despite the often repeated lie that the British and American Societies for Psychical Research never found anything, the simple fact of the matter is that by the early years of the 20th century, the evidence that they had gathered was so strong that almost all of them, with very few exceptions, were convinced of the reality of the afterlife. Including those such as Richard Hodgson, the lawyer who started off as die hard skeptics.

They joined the SPR with the intention of debunking mediums. Proving that was all a lot of, I guess, hogwash. But even they, these investigators, were convinced by the evidence that they had found that they recanted their former skeptical views and accepted the reality. So this led me on a. On a strange path. I started wondering if I was actually fooling myself, just sort of believing what I want to believe. And so what I did was I started looking for contrary views. And I quickly discovered a website devoted to debunking the idea that we survived the deaths of our bodies.

As I read through it, I was shocked by the vehemence of the author. So I wrote to this fellow and over the next few weeks we engaged in a online debate. I gained great insight into the so called skeptical way of thinking about these issues and I decided that a book was needed. I ended up writing three books. The first one was titled Parapsychology and the Skeptics, it was later renamed. The second book was on the near death experience. The third book was on other evidence for the afterlife, and the books were well received. This fourth book, The Case for the Afterlife, my latest book, it’s much shorter than my first three books. It’s much more focused. I like to say that if my first three books were an armada, then this book is a surgical strike.

Linda Lang:
You go into quite detail in your book, exploring things like near death experiences, past life, mediumship. Was there any one of those that was more compelling to you that proved or at least built your case that there is life after death?

Chris Carter:
Well, in this book, The Case for the Afterlife, I consider five independent lines of evidence: deathbed visions, near death experience apparitions, children who claim to remember previous life, and messages from the departed via human mediums. All five lines of evidence are all very different from each other, yet they all point in exactly the same direction towards the reality of an afterlife. So they reinforce each other. The single strongest line of evidence would be apparent communication from the departed via human mediums. That was really the clincher for many members of the British and American Society of Psychical Research. Basically because after their friends and colleagues had left this world, messages from them, detailed messages from their departed colleagues and friends began to come through. That’s what turned the tide, for instance, for the skeptical lawyer Richard Hodgson.

A friend of his fellow lawyer named George Pellew died at the age of 32 from an accident. Now Hodgson and Pellew entered into act that whoever should go first try to contact the other. Both of them were very skeptical of the reality of an afterlife. But shortly after Pellew died, messages from him started to come through, relayed through a third party of a control Dr. Phinuit. But shortly after this, Pellew seems to have sort of pushed Phinuit aside. He’s spoken directly to the Boston medium Lenora Piper, to his old friend Richard Hodgson. Hodgson was amazed.

He brought in 150 sitters to meet this person who was speaking through Piper and purporting to be his old friend George Pellew. Of these 150 sitters, 30 had known the living George Pellew. Pellew recognized 29 of the 30 and held detailed conversations with them. And there was never a case of false recognition. Of the 120 sitters that had not known the living Pellew, he never once claimed recognition. So this ruled out any form of extrasensory perception between the medium and Richard Hodgson, a skeptical member of the Society for Psychical Research. So this, this amazed Hodgson and it amazed everyone else as well. But I mentioned that Pellew recognized 29 of the 30 sitters he had known in life.

He failed to recognize one of them. The one person that he failed to recognize had been a young girl that he’d last seen eight years earlier when she was a child. He didn’t know her. But during the course of the conversation, he finally began to see light. He said, “Good Lord, are you her little daughter?” And she said “Yes.” And he said through Ms. Piper, “I can’t believe how you changed. I don’t recognize you.

You’ve changed a great deal.” And he said “Yes, I was a little girl.” Now if any form of extrasensory perception had been responsible for these communications, then the, the medium would have recognized her. And so the super ESP hypothesis would predict recognition because sources for telepathy were readily at hand. Hodgson knew that the living Pellew had known this woman when she was a little girl. The little girl, or woman rather, had known that the living Pellew had known her eight years previously. So the ESP hypothesis would predict recognition.

Pellew’s non-recognition of this girl, this young woman, is contrary to super ESP but is exactly what would be expected if in fact George Pellew was still alive and communicating through the medium, Mrs. Piper. So this was a case that utterly convinced Hodgson he changed his mind. He said, “I was wrong.” He admitted it. So yeah, but to answer your question, I’d say the single strongest line of evidence would be seeming communication with the departed via human mediums.

Linda Lang:
Chris, when you started this whole exploration, did you believe in the afterlife yourself? Or is this something that shifted through you were studying?

Chris Carter:
Well, I suppose I started out as an agnostic. It wasn’t something that I thought about a great deal. I thought about it occasionally and I often wondered if there’s any evidence. The turning point really was living in this, this old farmhouse and then my subsequent investigation into these matters and finally this online debate that I had with this so called skeptic who is absolutely determined to debunk the idea of an afterlife. I was completely unimpressed. I was astonished by the weakness of his arguments and by his absolute ignorance. And the quotes he supplied from other so called skeptics were equally unimpressive. That’s why I decided to embark upon this career of writing books on this subject and taking on the so called skeptics.

Linda Lang:
So you’re a believer now?

Chris Carter:
I don’t like that word. I’d rather say that I follow the evidence where it leads.

Linda Lang:
And open to exploring more…

Chris Carter:
Right, yes, of course.

Linda Lang:
So in your research, aside from trying to prove whether it exists or not, was there anything that, from your perspective, would be hopeful for humanity, that there’s something better after this life?

Chris Carter:
Well, my book has six appendices at the end. The very last appendix is simply titled What the Dead Say. I left that for the very end because I first wanted to establish the case for the afterlife. I wanted to show that it’s been proven beyond all reasonable doubt what it is that the best, almost complete, messages convey. I suppose the messages indicate that the sort of existence we experience, at least at first, on the other side, depends to a great extent upon the sort of person that we’ve become, how we’ve led our lives, how we’ve treated others, not so much upon what we believe, but what we believe is important because the way we act, the way we treat others, depends to a large extent on what exactly we believe. But yeah, I think one of the messages is tell all the despairing and despondent people that there’s something better and brighter in the world to come.

Linda Lang:
So, what do you feel that that means for how we should live our lives here right now?

Chris Carter:
All right. There was a fellow named William Stead. He was a British journalist, and he discovered, much to his surprise back in the late 1800s, that he himself was an effective medium. He would go into a trance and like many mediums, he would sit with a piece of paper and a pencil and let his mind go blank and see what came through in the writing that followed. Stead perished on the Titanic. After being informed that the lifeboats were filled to capacity, he calmly accepted his fate. He went to the smoking room, began reading his Bible while pandemonium was all around him.

But in the 1880s, he was working both as a journalist and as an amateur medium. A friend of his, a young woman named Julia, had died recently and she had made a pact with her friend that whoever should die first would try to appear to the other. And she did appear one night to her friend in her bedroom at night while her friend was sleeping. The whole room lit up and she saw her, didn’t say anything. And then this mutual friend asked Stead to try and get in touch with her. The result was a beautiful book titled Letters from Julia. This is one of the messages that came through from apparently from Julia. “You may think it’s strange that the verification of another life should increase the importance of this, but such is the fact. And you can never understand the importance of your life until you see it from this side. You are never for one moment idle, influencing eternity.”

Linda Lang:
So many cases of near death experiences that people go to the light and it’s peaceful, it’s beautiful, they don’t want to come back. There are some people that have an experience that is not filled with light and love and peace that it’s very unsettling for them. Is there any explanation as to why some people seem to go to a darker place?

Chris Carter:
My second book focused almost exclusively on the near death experience is titled Science and the Near Death Experience. Don’t blame me for the title; my publisher changed it against my will. But at any rate, there’s a chapter there titled Hellish Near Death Experiences where yes, you’re absolutely right, some people do seem to fall into an abyss. There’s no solid evidence that only nasty people have such hellish or unpleasant near death experiences. On the other hand, many of the people who have had these experiences and come back returned regard their experience as a sort of warning. The intent of they should change their ways. And some of them have reported leading selfish, destructive lives history of short temper or violence, what have you.

And so if anything good has come out of these hellish experiences is that many of them changed their ways and were determined to live a different sort of life. There’s no solid evidence that only nasty people have these sort of experiences. But then again, many of these individuals do regard these experiences as a warning to change their ways.

Linda Lang:
I think it’s probably fair to say too that some nasty people, if we want to use that term, go to the light and have beautiful peaceful experiences and come back and also change their life. So it’s just kind of interesting why some people seem to need a more dramatic experience in order to have the shift that they need.

Chris Carter:
Yeah, there’s plenty of experiences of people changing their ways. One of the common after effects of a near death experience is a change in values perspective. People tend to grow from the experience, become kinder towards others, more thoughtful, more interested in spiritual matters.

Linda Lang:
Is there a particular vision of the afterlife that really resonates with you personally?

Chris Carter:
And I suppose the idea that the afterlife is not one simple single place, one static, dreamy heaven where we float around and play harps or anything like that. Rather, the evidence indicates that there are several levels to the afterlife. Where we end up first depends upon the sort of life that we’ve led, the sort of person that we are, the interests that we have. Long we spend on the first level, which is sometimes called Summerland, depends upon ourselves how quickly we wish to progress. Those who desire to learn and move on, we’ll move on to more advanced realms of existence. So the afterlife is not a single place. It’s not the same for everyone. It very much depends upon who we are, what we’ve become and who we wish to become.

Linda Lang:
There are a lot of people who think that the afterlife is actually here, but just out of phase from the 3D existence rather than being, say, you know, up in heaven somewhere else.

Chris Carter:
I suppose there’s merit to it.

Linda Lang:
Do you think the belief systems have anything to do with where a soul ends up when they first cross over?

Chris Carter:
What we believe is important because how we live our lives depends to a large extent upon what we think happens after we leave this world. Frequently those who think that death means oblivion will lead selfish, self-centered lives, determined to make as much money as they can, use others for their own gain. Climate change is a hoax. And you know, even if they don’t believe it’s a hoax, I guess what they think is, “Well, I won’t be around but years from now, why should I care?” It’s that sort of selfish, destructive behavior which receives its due process in the early stages of their next existence.

Linda Lang:
And it seems like a soul retains its personality and certainly its memories when it does cross over, because this is how people were able to communicate and essentially prove that it was that spirit that was coming through, being spoken to.

Chris Carter:
Oh, yeah. Well, over and over again the messages say that, you know, we’re not suddenly transformed by the change called death. Good people do not become bad, bad people do not become good, and so forth. So, yeah, we’re essentially the same. You mentioned the idea of proof again. One of the central themes of my book is that the case for the afterlife can be proven beyond all reasonable doubt. It can’t be proven beyond all conceivable doubt because that’s an impossible standard to meet when we’re dealing with factual matters. It’s only when we’re dealing with or in the realm of logic and mathematics that we can prove anything beyond all conceivable doubt.

I’m sure your listeners are familiar from their school days with the old argument, if A is greater than B and B is greater than C, then A must be greater than C. I mean, it’s simply inconceivable. But if the first part of that argument is true, then C is greater than A, we simply can’t imagine that that’s what’s meant by proof beyond all conceivable doubt. But once we leave the realm of pure logic and mathematics, we can never prove anything beyond all conceivable doubt, only beyond all reasonable doubt. Now, what do I mean by that? When we have good reasons to believe it’s true and no good reason to believe that it may be false. When we’re dealing with factual matters, all good reasons must be reasons based upon evidence, not based upon speculation, wishful thinking, anything like that, but based upon evidence. The reason why this controversy continues is because of the skeptical trick of trying to create the illusion of reasonable doubt by raising conceivable doubt.

And so the common tactic is to resort to pure speculation. Speculation does not provide reasonable doubt. And this is the reason why speculation is forbidden by the rules of evidence and courts of law. And I argue in my book that the case with the afterlife has been proven beyond all reasonable doubt, I think it’s a mistake to simply ask the blanket question, how has the scientific community reacted? Because that assumes to my mind that there’s some sort of monolithic body of opinion and nothing could be further from the truth.

Linda Lang:
Well, that is true, and our science only expands by questioning.

Chris Carter:
Yeah, questioning the so called prevailing wisdom or the conventional assumptions.

Linda Lang:
So after you have been researching and contemplating the afterlife, has it in any way expanded your sense of the mystical nature of existence?

Chris Carter:
I’m not entirely sure what you mean.

Linda Lang:
If it helped you open your mind to greater possibilities that maybe necessarily don’t meet the qualifications of a scientific experiment, let’s say? Or scientific proof. You know, people who believe things don’t necessarily need science to back them up. I’m wondering if that did it for you or if, you know, mostly just it’s an intellectual conversation for you.

Chris Carter:
I’m the sort of person that needs needs evidence before I believe in anything. And yeah, I think that all of us are like that to some extent. But even your readers who are already predisposed to believe in these matters, I think they’d probably be pleasantly surprised to find out just how strong the evidence can be in support of the view that yes, we do survive the change called death, and yes, there is communication between the two worlds.

Linda Lang:
What I picked out in your book were older cases. Was there anything really more up to date?

Chris Carter:
Absolutely. The chapter on the near death experience, most of the research on the near death experience has been done by physicians, mostly cardiologists, since Raymond Moody published his famous book Life After Life. I also mentioned the fascinating case of a chess game between a living and deceased grandmaster that took place in the 1980s, I believe, and I argue that that’s one of the most single convincing cases of them all. So, some of the cases are, as you said, they date back to the 1880s. Some date back to the early years of the 20th century, the mid years of the 20th century, shortly after the Second World War, and several modern cases as well.

Linda Lang:
Is there anything else you would like to share with our listeners before we wrap up, Chris?

Chris Carter:
If listeners are interested in learning more about the book, they can always go to my publisher’s website. That’s Llewellyn. On that website, which they can find a link to a short essay that I wrote, Can We Prove the Existence of an Afterlife? And description of the book, various endorsements… And I think listeners need to remember that there’s no need for those of us who accept the reality of an afterlife to make excuses for our beliefs or take refuge in mysteries of faith because the evidence is strong and the evidence fully supports the reality, the existence of an afterlife.

Linda Lang:
Any mention of an existence of Source or God?

Chris Carter:
I really don’t talk about that. But I do argue in the book that the evidence that we gather, and it has been gathered is fully consistent with Christianity and several other religions for that matter. Many of the early members of the British Society of Psychical Research active members were clergymen and let’s see here. I’d like to read. One of these active members was the Reverend Charles Drayton Thomas. He was a Methodist minister and participated in many sittings with the mediums who were investigated by the SPR. This is what he wrote: “Perhaps it will be asked what benefit may be expected from a general acceptance of this evidence for survival. I think it will do for others what it has done for me.

It has supplemented and reinforced my faith, both in times of bereavement and in the prospect of old age and death. Also, this further emphasized the value of personal religion.” And there’s something from Father Pere Francois Brune. He’s a Catholic priest and theologian, and he’s wrote about how the opinion of the Catholic Church has shifted over the years. And he wrote, “We do not have an official change in the Church’s position, but it is in fact an evolution that without any doubt is due to the realization that the phenomena exist and that they indeed correspond very often to an authentic communication with our dead.” So there’s no conflict between the facts of modern revelation and the words of the ancients.

Linda Lang:
Chris, thank you so much for being my guest.

Chris Carter:
Well, thanks for having me, Linda.

Linda Lang:
And thank you for listening to this week’s edition of Exploring the Mystical side of Life. You will find all of our podcasts on YouTube and your favorite podcast platform. If you enjoy our conversations, remember to subscribe, share with a friend. Come Visit me at ThoughtChange.com, pick up your copy of Learning to Listen, and we will see you again next time. Bye for now.