Animals and the Afterlife Read Online Free PDF Page A

least in part—what originally sparked my interest in the afterlife.
    While other children were out playing ball or hopscotch, I was often curled up with a book about ghosts, haunted houses, or other unexplained phenomena. I discovered many stories that provided tremendous evidence of life after death, but none of these stories specifically mentioned animals.
    After reading piles of books containing photographs of ghosts, I began trying to capture them on film myself. Although I occasionally spotted some interesting-looking lights in the photos, nothing conclusive ever resulted from my efforts.
    My brother, Scott, was my closest friend, and he shared my fascination with ghosts and such things. We spent countless hours reading real-life ghost stories aloud into a tape recorder, adding our own sound effects to heighten the drama. We took turns doing the narration and the voices of the various characters in the stories. To my knowledge, audio books didn’t yet exist back then, so perhaps those early recordings of ours were some of the original audio books. I like to think so, anyway.
    One of our favorite childhood pastimes was to turn the garage into a “haunted house” and then charge a nickel for neighbors to walk through it. I suppose it was our version of a lemonade stand. This was especially popular around Halloween; but in our world, haunted houses happened year round. In the summers, our Texas cousins often joined us in turning Grandmother and Grandaddy’s Ranch house into a haunted one; and during holiday visits to Grandma and Pop Pop’s house in New Jersey, our East Coast cousins joined us in haunting the spooky cellar and then inviting the grown-ups for a tour. My favorite rides at Disneyland were the Haunted Mansion and Pirates of the Caribbean, both of which revolve around ghosts. I just loved the idea of ghosts having a good time even though they had died.
    My other great delight was performing séances for family members. These séances took place at home and also when visiting The Ranch. Early on, my parents and brother had grown accustomed to my unusual endeavors. My grandparents, cousins, aunts and uncles, however, probably thought of me as “the crazy kid from California”; but I think they found my antics genuinely entertaining. I didn’t feel that I ever actually made contact with the dead, but I had a lot of fun trying and pretending.
    I determined that when I grew up I wanted to be either a veterinarian (or something having to do with animals) or a paranormal investigator (a “ghost buster”)—ideally, both. However, it would be decades before I finally merged these two interests.
    Meanwhile, I grew up and pursued a career in health and nutrition, spurred by some interesting courses I took during my first year in college. I initially took health and nutrition courses out of personal interest and never intended to turn health into a career, but sometimes life just happens and we forget that we had other plans. I did make an attempt at pursuing my two primary childhood interests, but neither one worked out quite as I had planned.
    I was fortunate to attend a college that offered several courses in parapsychology (the study of psychic phenomena), and they were by far my favorite classes. However, they were merely electives offered by the psychology department. So, I pursued general psychology for a while but soon grew tired of watching films of people putting rats through endless experiments in hopes of understanding human psychology. I did learn some valuable information (from the studies that actually involved humans) and went on to earn a degree in psychology; but by then I had already decided it wasn’t the career path for me. Meanwhile, I had become fascinated with the topic of hypnotherapy, so I went on to become a certified clinical hypnotherapist; but I soon decided that a career in hypnotherapy wasn’t my calling either.
    My interest in veterinary medicine was quickly abandoned when I