Signs: gifts from dead?

Bob and Phran are full of stories about the messages the dead leave. One day, Bob says, he visited a friend who is also his doctor. Bob hadn't seen him in a while, so he launched into an explanation about the Forever Family Foundation. At the end of the conversation, Bob remembers, "Finally he says, 'I've got to tell you something. Seven years ago my father died. He died at 2 in the morning, and later that day I called my answering service. They said, Your father called. They said he called at 4 that afternoon. They read me back the message and it said Frank, it's me. It's OK. Everything is better here.' " It was the first time the man had shared the story with anyone. "He hadn't even told his wife," Bob says.

The thing about "signs" is that there always appears to be another explanation: coincidence, randomness, wishful thinking; a story misinterpreted, details left out or embellished in the retelling. Scientists, by and large, have avoided studying phenomena such as afterlife communication, apparitions, death-bed visions, reincarnation, and, to a lesser extent, near-death experiences.

Response to his own afterlife research, says Schwartz, generally goes like this: 20 percent of scientists "feel it's profoundly important," 50 percent "are people who won't say anything in public, but behind closed doors, off the record, say 'I wouldn't be brave enough to do this kind of work but I think it's important,' " and 30 percent "think it's crazy and impossible and anyone who would entertain this hypothesis is either not a good scientist or is fooling himself. They're very, very, very negative about it." Of course, he adds, "there were scientists who said the Earth isn't round. When a fundamental belief is challenged, they view it as an attack."

Schwartz has written two books about his work with mediums, "The Afterlife Experiments: Breakthrough Scientific Evidence of Life After Death" and "The Truth About Medium." The latter reports on his research with the woman whose life is the basis for the TV show "Medium."

Schwartz says his work was inspired by a woman named Susy Smith, whom he met later in her life after she had written 30 books about her experiences as a medium and her lifelong attempt to prove that the soul survives bodily death. She claimed to have communicated with, among other people, the 19th century philosopher William James. According to Smith's final book, she also wrote a column called "Shopping With Susy" for both the Deseret News and the Salt Lake Tribune during the early 1950s.