Is There An Afterlife?

Is death the end of this existence, as some scientists seem to assume? Fontana, a British psychologist and fellow at Cardiff University, thinks not. In this manual, he marshals studies and other evidence to demonstrate the persistence of unexplained phenomena that point to the likelihood of life after death. In systematic fashion, Fontana plows through chapters on parapsychology; apparitions and visions of ghosts; hauntings (where apparitions are seen by more than one person in the same place over a long, continuous period); the history and nature of mediumship; different kinds of mediums; electronic voice phenomena; near-death experiences; out-of-body experiences; and reincarnation. Throughout, he includes case studies of alleged paranormal events from around the world, and also describes some of his own experiences, including a local Cardiff poltergeist he investigated from 1989 to 1992, and a medium who seems to have communicated with Fontana's deceased mother. It's clear that Fontana believes that many claims to the paranormal are true and that they provide credible evidence that a soul or spirit survives beyond physical death. Still, his tone is a bit more balanced than other paranormal apologetic texts. The book is indeed "comprehensive," as the subtitle indicates, and it is organized well enough that readers can easily skip to the chapters or sections that interest them rather than slogging through each chapter sequentially, since the writing can be overly detailed.