The evidence for survival after death is vast, varied, and ancient. Belief in survival dates back at least to the Neanderthals, who buried their dead with flowers and utensils, presumably for use in the next world. And reports that suggest survival have come to us from virtually all nations and cultures of which we have record. Could the nearly universal nature of belief in the survival of bodily death be based upon experiences humans have reported for thousands of years?

The British and American Societies for Psychical Research were both founded in the 1880s, and their founding members included some of the most elite scientists, philosophers, physicians, lawyers, and scholars on both sides of the Atlantic. Determined to take on the materialists at their own game, these men and women investigated several forms of evidence, and their carefully-documented works survive to this day as monuments of rigor and sophistication. Despite the often-repeated lie that "they found nothing," the truth of the matter is that by the early years of the twentieth century they had found and documented an enormous volume of evidence, enough to convince almost all leading SPR members of the reality of personal survival of bodily death.

Research into this matter has continued on to the present day, and the modern evidence for survival comes from five independent lines of evidence: near-death experiences, deathbed visions, apparitions, children who claim to recall a previous life, and messages seemingly received from the departed via human mediums. These lines of evidence, all very different from each other, all point in the same direction.

And so today some have asked the question: do these impressive lines of evidence prove the reality of life after death? As I argue in my recent book The Case for the Afterlife, the answer is "yes," but we have to be careful of what we mean by "proof." There are two main categories or types of proof: proof beyond reasonable doubt, and proof beyond conceivable doubt. Only the first type is relevant in any dispute over any factual matter, such as over the guilt of a defendant in a criminal legal trial. The second type is only relevant in matters of pure logic and mathematics, and it is confusion over the difference between the two types of proof that has allowed "skeptics" to argue that the case for survival has not been proven, despite the enormous volume of evidence in its favor.

Consider the simple logical argument: if A is greater than B, and B is greater than C, then A must be greater than C. It is simply inconceivable that A < C. This is what is meant by proof beyond all conceivable doubt, but the only reason we can attain such mathematical certainty is that A, B, and C are purely abstract entities in a purely abstract argument. Only in pure logic and mathematics can we attain proof beyond all conceivable doubt.

In courts of criminal law, and when dealing with a dispute over any factual matter, only proof beyond reasonable doubt can be attained. What do we mean by this standard of proof? It must mean simply that a statement is proved beyond all reasonable doubt when we have good reasons to believe it is true, and no good reasons to believe it may be false. And when dealing with factual matters, good reasons must always be reasons based upon evidence, not speculation.

The legal rules of evidence prohibit the use of speculation during criminal trials, on the grounds that no one should be convicted or acquitted based upon speculation. Only evidence-based arguments are allowed in court. If during the cross examination of a hostile witness a defense attorney asks, "It is possible that the police framed my client?" and if the prosecuting attorney does not object on the grounds that the question calls for speculation, then in many cases the correct answer should be "Yes, in the same sense that it is possible that unicorns exist. But until we have some supporting evidence, we have no reason to believe in unicorns or that the police framed your client."

We should perhaps occasionally expect such sophistry from defense lawyers, as their earnings depend on their success at winning cases. But we should recognize it as what it is: an attempt to create the illusion of reasonable doubt by raising conceivable doubt.

This is the same as the distinction between real possibilities and imaginary possibilities. The philosopher Rene Descartes argued centuries ago that is possible—in a purely logical or imaginary way—that the world was created complete with memories and other signs of the past just five minutes ago. (A modern take on this idea was found in the science fiction film The Matrix.) But until we have positive evidence that either of these imaginary possibilities are in fact true, then they are just two among a virtually infinite variety of fantasies we can dream up, and no one should take any of them seriously.

The so-called skeptics of survival, who frequently happen to be militant atheists, have come up with a wide variety of hypothetical scenarios in their various attempts to explain away the evidence for survival. From the very start of the SPR research, these have usually involved fraud, mistaken eyewitness testimony, or extra-sensory perception between medium and sitter.

In fact, the early researchers exposed several fraudulent physical mediums, and so instead switched to only examining mental mediums: that is, mediums who only convey written or spoken messages that seem to come from the departed. Fraud was also conclusively ruled out in some cases by having mediums trailed by private detectives, and by taking at least one medium to another country, where she could have no accomplices. In the best cases, no evidence of fraud was ever uncovered. It is also important to remember that, with very few exceptions, most of the mediums studied were not professional mediums, but rather women of impressive education and standing, and who were not paid for their services.

Mistaken eyewitness testimony also cannot explain the evidence from mental mediums, as it was standard SPR policy to record everything the entranced medium said or wrote. These written records are therefore permanent and objective, and cannot be explained away in terms of mistaken perception.

It is reports of apparitions that are most frequently criticized on grounds that eye witness testimony is unreliable. Skeptics will often refer to experiments involving staged events in psychology classrooms. However, it is important to remember that although witnesses to an event, actual or staged, may disagree on incidental details, they may all agree that such an event occurred. That is, they may disagree on whether the assailant had red or brown hair, a green or blue shirt, fired two shots or three; and yet all may agree that a shooting occurred.

And just how reliable is eye-witness testimony in real life? Because of the unrealistic nature of staged events, the response of the judicial system to such experiments has been lukewarm. Staged events cannot replicate the seriousness of actual events, and so psychologists Yuille and Cutshall examined an actual shooting that occurred in broad daylight, in full view of multiple bystanders. Five months later, Yuille and Cutshall interviewed 13 of the 15 principal witnesses, and compared their statements with the police reconstruction of the incident (this reconstruction was done by combining the eyewitness reports with photographs of the scene, location of blood stains, reports from ambulance attendants, and forensic evidence), and with the statements the witnesses had given five months earlier. Yuille and Cutshall concluded: "We take issue with the essentially negative view of the eyewitness that has been consistently presented by most eyewitness researchers. In the present research a different picture emerges. Most of the witnesses in this case were highly accurate in their accounts, and this continued to be true 5 months after the event."

To state it simply: the rejection of a specific case of eyewitness testimony on the grounds that some eyewitness testimony is flawed, and without presenting any evidence that in this specific case we have reason to doubt the testimony, is simply another example of attempting to create the illusion of reasonable doubt by raising conceivable doubt. Each case must be considered separately, and on its own merits.

Finally, what about the possibility that extra-sensory perception between medium and sitter can explain cases in which accurate information is provided by a medium regarding a deceased person? This hypothesis was put to the test with proxy sittings—in which a sitter with no connection to the deceased visits the medium on behalf of a third person. The best known of these proxy sittings are the numerous ones in which the Reverend Drayton Thomas acted as proxy, usually on behalf of bereaved parents and spouses. One such sitting was arranged by Professor E.R. Dodds, a well-known critic of the evidence for survival. The sitting was not on behalf of Dodds, but rather for a Mrs Lewis who wished to contact her deceased father, and so the sitting was not even secondhand, but thirdhand. Thomas was told only the man's name, home town, and date of death. Regardless, at a sitting the medium seemed to get in touch with him right away, and the results were considered by all to be very impressive. Dodds, the skeptical investigator, was forced to conclude:

It appears to me that the hypothesis of fraud, rational influence from disclosed facts, telepathy from the actual sitter, and coincidence cannot either singly or in combination account for the results obtained. Only the barest information was supplied to sitter and medium, and that through an indirect channel.

Not only is there no experimental evidence for such an indirect form of telepathy, but the both experimental and anecdotal evidence strongly suggest that telepathy usually operates between people who are emotionally linked, or at least associated in some way. But what link or association was there between Reverend Thomas and Mrs Lewis? In a word, none.

Super-ESP to the Rescue
The hypothesis that ESP between sitter and medium could explain the results was thereby proven false. But the hypothesis of living-agent ESP was not abandoned; the "skeptics" merely stretched and extended it into what became known as Super-ESP: the idea that the medium unconsciously employs vast, virtually omniscient powers of telepathy and clairvoyance, allowing her to read the mind of anyone anywhere, including complete strangers, regardless of what they may happen to be thinking at the time, and also allowing her to scan books and other records, regardless of where they are located or even known to exist by the medium. Then, all of this information is instantly collated and presented as the departed person would have presented it, in the form of an elaborate deception by the medium's unconscious mind.

It should be obvious that this is a desperate, last-ditch attempt to salvage living-agent ESP as an explanation. It is not so much a theory as an anti-theory, as it was proposed for the sole purpose of opposing the obvious inference of survival. It is a mere logical or imaginary possibility, without a shred of supporting evidence; indeed, instead of offering such evidence, proponents merely challenge others to prove that such super-powerful ESP cannot explain the data.

However, several well-documented cases I describe in The Case for the Afterlife do indeed have features that simply cannot be explained in terms of any form of perception, normal, extra-sensory, super or otherwise. No magnitude of mere perception can explain the life-like impersonation of people the medium has never met; nor can any magnitude of mere perception explain how the medium was able to instantly and temporarily acquire the skills of the departed, skills that required years of dedicated practice to acquire.

The most that Super-ESP can explain, at least in principle, is the rapid production of accurate information about the deceased, or of some other relevant information that exists in memory or print. And yet even on these grounds Super-ESP ultimately fails as an explanation.

Space allows only a brief description of two such cases. The first case involved a lawyer named George Pellew who died after an accident at age 32. The case was investigated by SPR researcher, friend of Pellew, and arch-skeptic Richard Hodgson. Pellew gave every indication of communicating via the entranced medium Leonora Piper, sometimes directly using her voice, other times by writing with her hand.

As a test, Hodgson had 150 different sitters introduced to Mrs. Piper while in trance, of who the living George Pellew knew only 30. Piper correctly recognized by name 29 of the 30 that George Pellew had known in life (the sole exception was a young woman whom we will soon meet). Conversations were in a manner appropriate for the living Pellew's relationship with the individual sitter, and always showed an intimate knowledge of Pellew's past relationships with them. As Hodgson wrote, in each case, "the recognition was clear and full, and accompanied by an appreciation of the relations which subsisted between GP living and the sitters."¹ And there was not a single case of false recognition: that is, GP never once greeted anyone of the 120 that the living Pellew had not known.

It was the continual manifestation of this personality that finally drove Hodgson to conclude beyond reasonable doubt that Piper was genuine. Hodgson was convinced that Piper had no knowledge of the living Pellew; yet how could she have succeeded in dramatically impersonating someone she had barely met over four years earlier in a manner that convinced thirty people that they were indeed conversing with their old friend?

As mentioned, Pellew failed to recognize only one of the thirty sitters whom had known the living Pellew, a young woman named Miss Warner who had been a child when the living Pellew knew her mother. Since Miss Warner had changed a great deal in the eight years since the living Pellew had last seen her, the non-recognition by George Pellew would have been perfectly natural.

However, on the hypothesis of telepathy, there is no explanation for the failure to recognize Miss Warner. Since both Miss Warner and Hodgson were aware that the living Pellew knew her when she was a child, sources for telepathy were readily at hand, and here the ESP hypothesis would predict "recognition." On the other hand, the non-recognition of Miss Warner is precisely what would be expected if Pellew were in fact directly communicating.

The second case that will be briefly discussed here involves a chess game played between living and deceased grandmasters.

This remarkable story began in 1985, when chess enthusiast Dr. Wolfgang Eisenbeiss contacted amateur medium Robert Rollans, who did not know how to play chess. Eisenbeiss was able to persuade the world-famous chess champion Victor Korchnoi, then ranked third in the world, to participate. On June 15, 1985, a communicator claiming to be deceased Hungarian grandmaster Geza Maroczy (ranked third in the world in 1900) agreed to play.

To make a long story short, Maroczy gave Eisenbeiss a very challenging game, taking him to 52 moves. At one point Eisenbeiss remarked, "I'm not sure I will win." But there was much more than the display of grandmaster-level chess skills. Maroczy, through Rollans, was asked eighty-one questions about the obscure life of Geza Maroczy; he answered seventy-nine (97.5%) correctly (two remained unsolved). Many of his answers to the questions were so difficult to verify that a historian needed to be hired.

The August 4, 1988 edition of the Swiss chess magazine Schachwoche held a readers' competition, asking them: Who was the Austrian founder of the Vera Menchik Club? Eisenbeiss asked Maroczy the same question on August 8, 1988. Maroczy confessed that he was uncertain and speculated on various names. He also described the club as, "a silly joke to which he paid no attention." Note that the Super-ESP hypothesis would predict that the medium, posing as Maroczy, would give the correct name, because by August 4 the entire editing team at Schachwoche knew the correct name.

The solution was published in the same magazine on August 18, 1988: Albert Becker. On August 21, 1988, Maroczy was again asked for the founder's name. However, as Dr. Eisenbeiss noted:

He still does not name Becker as the founder of the club, as might be expected under the Super-ESP hypothesis; once the solution was published it should be possible for the medium to access the information, either clairvoyantly, or telepathically from the minds of the magazine's readers. But instead of correcting his wrong answer, Maroczy quite unprompted comes up with a different story, which evidently demanded his attention much more than the "silly joke"… for Rollans the medium it is difficult to understand [if using Super-ESP] why he should be unable to retrieve the name requested, given his ability to convey detailed precise information on other occasions, even less why he should digress to an umprompted narrative thread.²

In short, we have seen that Super-ESP utterly fails to explain several features of both of these remarkable cases. By contrast, the participation of the living minds of Pellew and Maroczy can explain all of the features of these cases.

And yet, still to this day, the so-called skeptics continue to invent elaborate fraud and Super-ESP scenarios, all without a shred of supporting evidence. Their main tactic is to demand proof beyond all conceivable doubt. But as I stress in The Case for the Afterlife, such fantasies are simply incapable of providing any rational challenge to the evidence-based conclusion that the survival of our minds after the deaths of our bodies has been proven true beyond all reasonable doubt.

¹Hodgson, 1897-8, p. 328.

²Eisenbeiss & Hassler, 2006, p. 76.