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May 20, 2012 - The Unexplained - Howard Hughes
01:02:11
Edition 81 - Erlendur Haraldsson

This edition features one of the worlds best known paranormal and parapsychologyinvestigators, Icelander Erlendur Haraldsson. His exhaustive research on apparitions and the people whoreport them is detailed in his book The Departed Among The Living.

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Across the UK, across continental North America and around the world, on the internet, by webcast and by podcast, my name is Howard Hughes and this is The Unexplained.
Thank you for returning to the show.
Thank you very much for the kind emails that I've had about Edition 80, which are still coming in.
And like I said last time, I'm back in the saddle now and determined to keep those shows coming.
I've got lots of guest ideas and quite a few bids in for guests at the moment.
I'll tell you more about those as soon as I can.
Just to name check, a few people who have been in touch recently had some very nice emails.
The latest of those came from Mike in Kansas this morning as I record this.
Mike also has tinnitus like I've got.
And Mike, you're a fellow sufferer, so you know what it's like.
I think one of these days they were getting closer and closer to a cure for this thing, which seems to be more in the brain than actually in the ear.
So there's a lot of hope out there for anybody who has this problem.
Laura in America, thank you for your email.
Nice one.
Rob, thank you.
Julio.
Julio suggests that I do a show about mono-atomic gold, something that is again in the news at the moment.
And it's kind of claimed to be, isn't it, Julio?
An elixir of life, a cure-all.
I remember some years ago having Reg Presley, lead singer of a band called The Trogs, who had that hit with Wild Thing, both sides of the Atlantic, right around the world in the 60s.
And Reg Presley loves crop circles, and he was due to come on radio with me live and talk about that.
And he produced from his pocket this little bottle of substance, and I believe it was mono-atomic gold.
And he claimed it could do all kinds of things like stop your hair going grey.
And I think at one point he said it could cure cancer, which of course you cannot legally claim on any radio station in this country because there's a law against that.
And none of that has been substantiated at all.
But it is a controversial and interesting subject.
And if I can find a good person to talk about it, Julio, I think I probably know who you're thinking about.
There's a guy in America who does a great deal with this.
I might put him on.
Kim, thank you for your email.
Cheryl, thank you.
You suggested Cal Cooper.
I'm in contact with Cal and we're working out a date for him to come on.
Liam, thank you for your email.
Del, kind thoughts in your email.
Thank you for those.
Len, thank you very much.
Mark suggests a story from Scotland, a land of mysticism and a lot of strange stories.
He suggests the Mackenzie Poltergeist.
Even the name sends a small chill down your spine, doesn't it?
Maybe we might get around to that.
Thank you, Mark.
Julian, thank you for your email.
Cy, thank you for your nice one.
Tamara, thank you for yours.
And Mike emailing from the oil sands of northern Canada, a place that is a Bonanzatown now, isn't it?
Huge area that is generating a great deal of prosperity.
We have this thing here in the UK where they're trying to extract gas energy certainly from sands just off Southport and Blackpool, an area that I was brought up in and know very, very well.
My dad still is in Southport.
And they do it by this process called fracking.
And it's a controversial process.
I was actually in a hotel in Southport when my dad wasn't very well a few months ago, overhearing a conversation in a hotel bar by some of the people who work on these rigs and they've worked around the world talking about the fracking process, which is still quite controversial in this country.
I'll keep you posted about that.
As I record these words, the Daily Mail, tabloid newspaper in the UK, they love space stories and they've got one this morning.
This is amazing.
A newly discovered asteroid, it says, could come so close to Earth in February 2020, it might hit communication satellites.
The paper says the asteroid 2012 DA14 was discovered by astronomers at the La Sagre Observatory in Spain.
Although NASA says the chance of it hitting Earth is just 0.031%, sounds quite high to me.
They can't rule out the possibility that it might hit on its next fly pass in 2020.
The exact orbital path of the asteroid is now being determined by NASA, but astronomers are concerned that it could come close enough to come into contact with the satellite.
Can you imagine the effect that would have alone?
Paul Chodis, a planetary astronomer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, JPL in Pasadena, says, that's very unlikely, but we can't rule it out.
I've got a number somewhere.
I'll dig it up for a guy who is in charge of the Near Earth Objects section of the European Space Agency.
A German guy.
Very, very good.
Put him on the radio last year.
I'll try and get him on here to talk about this and other subjects.
We had an MP in this country called Lembit Opik, who made headlines for many reasons.
And Limbit Opik, his big thing was to get us to prepare more for something hitting Earth, because as he used to say, we are situated in a cosmic shooting gallery.
And one of these days we could be hit unless we predict it.
Looks like, according to this piece in the paper, that is what they're preparing for now.
Our guest this time, very good one, Erlander Haroldson, written an amazing book called The Departed Among the Living.
You in your life may have had an experience like this, but it seems an awful lot of people have, where perhaps at the point of death or at any time, they've come into contact with a vision, full colour, three-dimensional, of somebody who's departed.
It's happened in so many circumstances, and Erlander Haraldsson in Iceland, who we're about to connect with, has done some very, very comprehensive research.
This guy is a man who's got a long track record in investigating things like this.
So this is not third-hand work.
This is his research.
It's a great book.
So we'll get into that and connect with Iceland digitally in just a moment, which is a first for me.
Just to say thank you to Adam Cornwell at Creative Hotspot in Liverpool for creating our great website, www.theunexplained.tv.
Creating things is what Adam does so well.
So please go to the website, www.theunexplained.tv.
Just check it out.
Send me some feedback about the program or if you'd like to a donation to keep this work going, which is absolutely vital.
And thank you for the donations that have come in.
Please keep them coming.
They are essential to keep it all cranking forward.
What else?
Martin, thank you for the theme tune.
Good to hear from you recently.
And thank you to you for being part of the family that is the unexplained.
All right, let's not hang about.
Let's connect with Iceland now and Erlinda Haraldsson.
We're going to talk about the departed among the living.
Erlanda, thank you for coming on The Unexplained.
Well, thank you.
Welcome.
I'm happy to be with you.
Erlinda, I have to say, it is the first time that I've connected with Iceland, a country that is surrounded in myth and mystery and legend, isn't it?
It is an amazing, amazing place from what I hear.
Well, that is what, yeah, well, that is the conception that foreigners have about the country.
You mean you're telling me it's not true?
In a more normal way.
But of course, it is very different from, I think, practically every other European country.
And it has a lot of open spaces.
And so it's quite antiquars.
And the sea is always near.
And we have high mountains and we have lava fields.
Then we have volcanoes bursting on and off.
So it's a country in creation, always changing.
One of the things that people think down here, and one of the things that I learned is not true, people here think that the country is full of ice all the time, and that's not true.
It's a very green land.
That is not true at all.
There is a glacier here.
Maybe 10% or so is covered with ice, the glacier, and they are up in the high mountains.
But the country is the low country is green and beautiful in the summer.
And the soil is good.
And it's a fertile country on the lowland.
Whereabouts?
Are you in Reykjavik?
Are you in the capital?
Yes, I limit the capital.
Okay.
Well, I must come and visit.
I have a friend on TV radio there, Bergliet Baltisdorter, who I've spoken to a number of times on the radio.
And she always says, you've got to come and see the country for yourself, so I have to.
Absolutely.
No, we'd love to.
We could do this in person.
Okay, I've got the book in front of me, was reading it through last night, so I'm prepared to talk about this.
But first of all, I want to ask you about you, because you have an academic background, and I always wonder what makes somebody with an academic background want to investigate what people call the paranormal.
Well, it has a long story.
Maybe what made me interested in it in the scientific way was one professor I listened to, I came to know in Germany.
I studied psychology at the University of Freiburg in Germany, at the University of Munich.
And he was interested in the paranormal and he was a great speaker.
And his lectures were very popular with the students, not only psychology students.
He was so popular that he had to have the biggest hall in university to so all those who wanted to listen to him could be seated.
And then later I came to know him and we started to do a little work together.
And then when I returned to Iceland quite a number of years later, then one of the first things that I did was to make a survey in Iceland about the experiences, paranormal relations and beliefs and folk beliefs of the population in Iceland.
And I got a random sample from the National Registry and it was a big sample, about 1,100 persons.
And we sent out quite a detailed questionnaire about all these matters.
And we had the return of about 900 of them.
And then when we analyzed the results, then there was one thing in particular that rather surprised me.
And that was that 31% of those who answered, and they were representative of the population, they claimed to have had some kind of an encounter with someone who had passed away.
Erlander, can I tell you something?
I've got a statistic written down on my notepad here.
I was making notes on your book last night.
And the first thing that I've got written down is 31% of Icelanders have been aware of a deceased person.
So I thought that was an amazing statistic for that sample of population.
Yes, but then I learned later that it was perhaps not so amazing because there was a little later another survey done across Western Europe, in many countries, most countries of Western Europe,
and then the mean for these countries was 25%, namely one-fourth of the population had at one time or another felt that they were really in touch with someone who had died.
And then later I learned in the United States they have about the same percentage as we here in Iceland, 31% on one occasion.
So this was not so rare as I had expected.
But this of course brings to mind several questions.
What are these experiences that people say are experienced of the deceased?
What is it that they really experience?
Do they see them?
Do they hear them?
Do they just feel their presence?
And so on and so forth.
And of course it is interesting, this figure, 31% of Icelanders believe that they have had some kind of encounter.
Now to believe a thing and for it to be true, as we both know if you research, are two completely different things.
And I suppose that's the point at which you have to start your research.
Yes.
And then I may add that in the UK, the percentage was 26%, not so far off from the 31% here in Iceland.
So you started to gather some of the specific stories of these people, didn't you?
And they are chronicled in great detail in this book.
Yes, so I decided to make an interview study of these people.
And I, and with some of my senior students, we interviewed a great number of them.
In the end, we had over 450 interviews.
And there we asked people in detail about their experiences.
First, we recorded their story, how they described the incident.
And then we asked them, of course, various details, how was the deceased person deceived?
Who was the deceased person?
What were the circumstances of the experience?
Were they awake?
Had they just come out of bed or were they resting?
Or was it in the middle of day?
Or was it in the night?
And so on and so forth.
And some of these stories are remarkable.
I've headlined a few of them in the book.
There's one here on page seven, a man from Nordfjord.
And this is a man who'd worked on a boat, isn't it?
A fishing boat, I think.
And he came into contact with a man and later asked the other members of the crew who this was.
And I'll just read from the book.
It says, I described the man I'd seen and the men from Nordfjord recognized the description.
This person had died some years before and had worked on the boat until he died.
And the interesting point about this is this man who'd worked on the fishing boat had no knowledge of this man who died.
Only the other crew members knew him.
Yes.
We have quite a few reports of such experiences that people become aware of someone who is deceased, whom they had never seen before, and then by describing that person to others, that the person is identified as someone who had died.
So in some instances, people seem to get some information about persons who had died whom they had never known about.
Well, that's a fascinating story, but there are literally scores of stories like that in the book.
And also, what comes across in the way that you write these stories up, and I know that you say you and your students interviewed a lot of people for this, is the stories are very credible in the way that they come across.
These are people who are not starry-eyed paranormalists.
You know, these are not people who would believe anything.
These are down-to-earth people doing day-to-day things with day-to-day lives.
Yes, these are just normal people.
Of course, when we have about one-third of the population, then most of them will be normal people.
Sort of just a man in the street, as you would say, in England.
Now, these visions, and we'll deal with the visions of the departed first if we may, because these are perhaps the most fascinating aspect of this.
What do people see?
Do they see a fully formed three-dimensional multicolored image?
What is it that they tell you they've seen?
Well, I think it differs.
Sometimes they would see like the whole figure.
Sometimes they would see perhaps the upper part of the body.
But in about two-thirds of the cases, they reported a visual experience, namely they saw someone.
And then in quite some number of cases, they also heard him at the same time.
But the most common experience was a visual one.
But you mentioned earlier, of course, we were very keen to check on the stories.
So we made several efforts to do that.
First of all, if someone reported a case to us, or whenever a case was reported to us, we would always ask, was someone else present?
And then we would ask, did this person the same thing or a similar thing?
So that was one thing we did.
We wanted to find out if there were more than one witness sometimes.
Well, that's crucial, isn't it?
If somebody else sees it, then you're dealing with some kind of very solid phenomena.
And in what sort of percentage of cases was somebody else a witness?
Was it a high number?
I think it was about one fourth of the cases that there was someone there who witnessed it.
And we were able to get just the moment, yes.
Yes.
There were cases, that would seem to me to be quite a high number.
Whether the person who was present was in a position to observe something.
And that was so in about 26% of the cases.
And in about half of them, the person who was present was reported to have had the same observation.
And then, of course, we always tried to get hold of these persons.
But some of the cause were untraceable, some had died, and so on.
But we were able to find 23 cases of these 32 where there was a second person who was a witness who had observed the same thing.
Now that's where it starts to get really fascinating because the descriptions would be the starting point.
You know, how similar were the descriptions of the departed person?
Well, they were quite similar, I would think.
May I tell you one story?
Please do.
Like there was a man walking home in the night, and the nights are bright here in Samaritan Iceland.
And his father was a psychiatrist in a mental hospital, the only one in the country at that time.
And when he was coming towards his home, and it was a barren field, no trees, no houses, then he walks towards him and very old woman, stooped in her shoulders and looked very old.
And she walks past him and he says good morning or whatever.
And then he looks back and sees that she has turned and is following him.
Well, then he doesn't pay much attention to her.
But when he gets to his house and he's here at the room with his brother, his brother was asleep, but he wakes up a little bit and tells him, what is this old woman doing here?
And then he goes to get something to drink and goes to bed.
And then again, his brother says that old woman is here again.
And well, then both of them go to sleep.
And then the next morning they are having food with their parents.
And they start to speak about this in a rather joking way.
And then their father, the psychiatrist, becomes quite attendant and asks him to scribe the old woman.
And they do that.
And then he says to them, that is strange old Vicar, she died in the middle of last night.
And old Vicar had been living in the mental hospital for many, many, many years.
And so they saw that old lady just around the time when she died.
Now, those stories are perhaps the most common ones that we hear reported.
I even know people around my own family circle who say that at the moment of death or thereabouts, very close to it, the person who's died is seen as if in life by somebody else, not necessarily somebody in the family, perhaps somebody in the family, but sometimes somebody like in this case, pretty much unconnected.
Yes, yes.
We analyzed when that person was seen or how close to death it was.
And in about every seventh case, the experience took place on the day or the night the person died.
So this is the most common time for having the experiences is around the time when someone dies.
And what do you think, and I suppose it can only be a supposition, is happening here?
Do you think that the power of the soul, if such a thing exists, is so intense that it in somehow, at this crucial cataclysmic moment of life, it ignites something and it sends out a spark or a radio wave or some kind of communication which some people who are sensitive to it the right place and the right time are able to pick up.
Is that what you think might be happening?
And if it isn't, what is?
Well, I think what you say sounds credible and likely.
And of course, when people die, they may be more likely to want to communicate or become communicate than at any other time.
And then of course, not in the case of that old wiki, but in many instances also, we have cases where someone is experienced, but when the death is a violent death, death by accidents or murder and suicide.
These are also fairly common.
About half of the experiences that we had concerned relatives.
And so that is the bulk of the experiences.
But then we have about one fourth that concerns strangers.
And many of these strangers are people who have died violently.
And as a matter of fact, about 28% of our cases, if I remember correctly, concerned persons who had died violently.
And there is, in fact, a whole section in this book about murder victims, which is fascinating.
And I wonder if have there been cases where the victim of a murder, of a violent death, has identified the killer or helped to?
I didn't get any such case.
That's interesting.
I wonder why that might be.
Murders have not been frequent here in Iceland.
And we got only three cases in which the person was murdered.
That's only 1%.
But I made a comparison of the frequency of death in the population, the factual frequency, and the mode of death among the people who were experienced.
And there was quite a difference in that way.
In the population, about 92% die of disease.
But among the Appalitians, only about 70% have died by disease, and that is because there are so many experiences of persons who have died violently, namely 28, 29, 30%.
So it seems that those who die violently, they are keener on communicating or making themselves somehow perceivable than those who die normally.
Maybe because of the sudden death, we do not know.
Do you think it could be something like what happens in life?
You know, you're perhaps on a country road driving by yourself.
You have a strange experience and you want to tell somebody about it, but there's nobody else there.
Could it be that human thing, if it goes beyond life, that human desire to communicate things that happen to us?
Well, I really cannot answer that question anymore better than you do.
You can do.
But that looks reasonable.
And maybe also because it's often a tragic death, it's a sudden death, it's an unexpected death.
And those who die by violently, they die much younger than those who die by disease.
And so they are like thrown out of life.
And maybe that is the reason why we have more of that.
And more of those cases where it's against nature that the person dies.
You know, it's not a natural death.
It's a death by disease at a young age, which is sad.
It's not the way of things.
People tend to live to a reasonable old age in general, or there are violent circumstances around it, things that are against the order of things.
If you die peacefully in your sleep at the age of 97, then that's the way of things.
And what these figures seem to suggest, at least, is that somebody like that would be less inclined to make their image or presence felt to this life from wherever they are.
I told you we made several sort of inquiries to get more reliable data.
One of the things was that when we got the mode of death reported by the person who had the experience, we always checked that.
I was fortunate enough to get access to some records here that are at the university about the population and how they died.
So I always checked if what they were reporting was correct, if the man had in fact died violently.
And that is the figure that I use.
We always also, we asked for the name of the person that was being perceived, which of course was not always available, but in most instances.
And we checked these names with the record of the population.
So we did have really a major effort to sort of check on the stories that we received.
Now, when you do research in an empirical, statistical way like this, it is more inclined to be believable by people who are ordinary skeptical individuals buying books like the one that you've just written.
What do you believe, having done this research, is at work here?
It would seem to suggest that this is proof of an afterlife.
Well, we are always hesitant to speak about proof, but it certainly is very suggestive that there is an afterlife.
And it's a strong indication of an afterlife.
And it's very hard to explain some of these cases without assuming that there is an external power that causes this experience.
For example, you mentioned this case from North Short, where someone was seen who had been working on the boat.
Why should a stranger who works on the boat suddenly perceive someone he has never even heard about?
So it seems in some instances like this experience is like thrust on the people who have it.
In that particular Nordfjord case, which fascinated me when I read it last night, did you and your researchers rule out the possibility that the other members of the crew might have been playing a joke on this person?
Well, I don't think we were in a position to do that.
I do not recall the details of this particular case, but whenever it was possible, we tried to verify the cases as far as possible.
But I cannot tell you about that particular case.
Now, interestingly in the book, the way these visions and sights are perceived are different among different people.
There are some people who report seeing a fully formed figure only as far as the waist or the knees, aren't there?
And there are some who see the entire figure right down to the feet.
What do you think is happening here?
Well, that is very hard to say.
Well, I think there is, of course, there are theories about how this comes about.
And one of them is, of course, that this is all sort of somehow created in the mind of the person who has the experience.
And the question is, what is the source of this creation?
And this is probably something that is sort of formed and is in the mind that is then externalized.
And maybe how much is visible or how much becomes visible depends on the power to create this image.
And well, it could be a creation, just a purely mental image that is then like projected and perceived as a real thing, or possibly some kind of a physical form is there.
We don't really know.
But still amazing and worth more investigation, because if there is something, say, in a boat or in some location that is so strong as an imprint, a recording there that it gets into the mind of somebody who's quite receptive, that in itself is a phenomenon that is well outside science as we understand it, yeah?
Yes, yes.
Well, yes.
Well, of course, we also know about hallucinations.
They can occur to normal people.
And not just hallucinations.
There is something that is very, very common.
I know because many people tell me about this, and this happens to me all the time.
When you're in bed, quiet and peaceful at night, and it's dark and quiet and you're drifting off to sleep, sometimes you will see things.
Now, there is, in my own life, and I've never told anybody this before, there is one completely inexplicable instance that happened to me.
I was a teenager, and my father was running a shopping center in Liverpool.
He'd retired from the police and he got himself a job running this shopping center.
And he had a man working for him called Billy.
And Billy was a really good guy.
He was a security guard who wore a uniform.
And he was the nicest of people was Billy.
And I remember, I had no reason to think of Billy.
Why should I?
Falling asleep one night and I saw an image of Billy in his full uniform standing at the gate of this shopping centre, the Belleville Centre in Liverpool.
And I told my dad about it a day or so later.
And we didn't know, but Billy had died.
I think it was at a weekend and my dad didn't know and I didn't know.
But I saw Billy, who I'd spoken with a lot, around the time that he died.
And I can't explain that.
No.
Well, I think this is not so uncommon.
As I told you, every seminal case occurs about the time of death.
But I think these experiences, they may be just sort of purely in the mind.
You are only aware of it as something.
You get the idea, you get an image, or it can become more externalized.
And so it is sort of a continuum from something just purely mental something that is like fully physical and very, very realistic.
So there's a continuum here for these experiences.
Do you think this tells us something about the nature of consciousness?
That we think of consciousness as being one fixed thing, but perhaps consciousness, the awareness of what's going on around us, is different within the minds of different people?
Well, I think so.
Yes, I agree with you on that.
And then consciousness between people may on occasion become connected somehow, and that widens our view and our perception.
And maybe we are at the roots of our consciousness somehow connected in a way which we are not normally aware of.
But then on occasions, we may find this connection.
I suppose a real scientific test would be to go to a location where something very important happened or where the apparition or spirit or ghost or whatever of somebody who's departed had been and had imprinted itself on somebody to go to that place and call that person up.
Yes.
Did any of your researchers try that or is it something perhaps you might think of doing in the future?
Well, we haven't.
You mean just go to the spot and see if we can get that contact with that person?
Yes.
Yes.
Well, I haven't tried that, but there are some people who believe they are psychic.
Or are psychic that claim they can perceive the presence of persons who have died on particular spots.
And you have a whole section in the book about psychics and mediums.
What do you think about them?
Well, some of them, I mean, if you look at it historically, some of them have been very remarkable indeed and be able to describe diseased persons very correctly.
So there is no doubt about it that there have been very great psychics.
And we had one particularly impressive medium in Iceland by the name of Interity Interderson in the beginning of the 1900s.
And even at one time described, or a person who came sort of through him, described a fire in Copenhagen.
And at that time there was no telephone, no radio contact with Iceland.
And so those who were present, they wrote down what he said.
And he said there was a fire in a factory.
And then they waited for the next ship to come and then they looked up the newspaper and then they found the description of fire in Copenhagen on That same evening in the factory.
And so this was confirmed.
And then, if I may say a little more about it, he had given his name, this man, as Jensen, fabricant or a manufacturer Jensen.
Then I thought now, more than a century later to, to check in Copenhagen, if there was any man by the name of Jensen who was a manufacturer, but he had told a few days later, given his full name as Emil Jensen, that he had some brothers and sisters, that they were all alive, and so on and so forth.
So I checked in Copenhagen.
I was able to find an Emily Jensen who was a manufacturer.
And he had had two brothers and one sister.
And I verified that they had all been alive at the time when this incident occurred.
But my greatest surprise was when I saw where he had lived.
This fire in Copenhagen was what is called the Great King Street, Sturikonguskale.
And this man who appeared at the Sienz, he had lived at Sturi Konguskale in the same street as the fire took place, just three houses away.
And he had lived most of his life in that street.
So that's a very remarkable case.
Very remarkable case.
There are very few cases like that, sadly.
Yes, and I reported that, by the way, in the proceeding of the Society for Psychical Research in England just earlier this year.
By the way, maybe there's one thing also I want to mention, that in the late 19th century, the founders of psychical research in Britain, they made an extensive study of what they call the phantasms of the living, which in fact were mostly phantasms of the deceased.
And their findings were very similar to mine.
Like I think about every seven case concerned experience of people at the time they died.
And also what was found through analyzing the cases much later that I think about 28% of the cases concerned persons who had died violently, which was very close to the figure that I obtained here in Iceland.
And do you think that was statistically interesting, coincidence, worthy of more research?
What's your thoughts about that?
Please say this again.
Do you think that that is statistically interesting, worthy of more research, or could it just be coincidence?
No, I think that it's more than coincidence.
I think that because there have been done surveys also, like even in China, in Germany, and in some other countries.
And I think that the main features of the cases seem to be very similar or the same across countries, and not only across countries, but also across time.
Like this great British survey that was done in the 1880s, it has, although it was done essentially before my study, it has essentially the same features.
So these are perennial experiences.
These are just human experiences, which are probably much the same wherever they occur, at whatever time they occur.
But very interesting that the numbers are similar, even in different studies done at different times in different places.
You talk also, not only about visions and things that people see, but about smells and senses of the departed.
There is one story on page 25 of your book, and if I may read it, because I like this one, it says, my mother lived in the same house as I did until she died, a few days after she died.
I started to hear her walk up the stairs in the apartment.
The footsteps I heard sounded typical for her manner of walking.
I've often heard this since, and sometimes with my husband, he's also heard this, even when I have not been near.
So smells and sounds very important too, it seems.
Yes, there are many cases of smells and sounds, and these are usually smells that are relevant for the person, like it may be a smell of perfume, maybe a smell of medicine, it may be a smell of tobacco, even of alcohol.
And maybe I will tell you now another case.
There was a family, they had just moved into a house in Santiarte, CNI the Kaplevik airport, and they had bought the house from a man by the name of Erlink.
And then one day, the lady of the house, she was at home, she sees that one man passes by one of the doors inside the house.
But then she feels a strong smell of liquor.
Well, but then that disappears.
Then later in the day, her husband comes home from work and then he asks her, why is this smell of alcohol here?
And then she tells him about her experience.
Well, The next day or two, her husband comes home again and then he says, no wonder there was a smell of alcohol the other day.
Erling, the man from whom he bought a house, bought the house, he was missing in Singlefjord in the north of Iceland.
And he was now found, he had drowned in the harbour.
But this man, Erlinger, he was an alcoholic and he had fallen into the harper and died.
So it's almost as if something from the other side, if you believe there is another side, wants to leave almost like a calling card.
And for this person, the calling card was the smell of booze.
Yes.
Well, or maybe he sort of appeared there in some way, but the smell was so impregnated him so much that it came with him.
And almost as if he knew what aspect of his persona, of his existence, would be best to get across his presence.
In other words, would be the best way of communicating what he was all about to somebody who knew nothing very much about him.
Yes.
Yes.
Do you believe there's any truth in the suggestions that have been made by many people over the years that perhaps there are many realms of existence, there are many levels of existence, and we don't actually die.
We're still existing perhaps on another plane somewhere.
In other words, there might be four or five versions of you and I, and we'll both die at some point, but perhaps somewhere else we go on.
Yes.
Well, there have been for a long, long time since the times of William James, some notions about not only universe, but multiverse, that there are not only one existence, the physical one, but another one.
And some present day physicists or cosmologists, they even take this up today.
And I think that these phenomena that we have been describing, and maybe also near-death experience and deathbed visions, they are suggestive of this, that there is, in fact, more than one realm of existence.
I once heard somebody describe it as being existence is a series of concentric circles, and occasionally those concentric circles touch, and when they touch, the other reality in the other plane of existence bleeds over into this one.
What do you think of that?
Well, that's a good idea, a good way probably of describing it.
Elender, you've also done some research into past lives, haven't you?
Now, here in the UK, we've got a number of people who will do hypnotic regressions for you, and many people say that they've been other individuals.
Let me tell you that when I was three years of age, I had clear memories of California, and there was no way that I could have known California, but I told people that I was from America and that I was Californian, and I could describe a place that I now know as the Pacific Coast Highway.
What do you think about past lives?
Well, I have studied a number of cases of children who claim to remember past lives, particularly in Sri Lanka and in Lebanon, and one case here in Iceland.
And these are very highly interesting cases, and I have spent a lot of time on that and published several papers and review articles.
So some of these cases are quite impressive.
Can you think of one that perhaps is the most impressive and tell me about it?
there were just so many of them yeah Well, of course, the most impressive ones are the ones that you learn about before the case gets solved, before any person is found who is a potential previous personality of the child.
Yes, yes.
There was one girl we came to know in Sri Lanka.
We lived in Panadura.
And she had claimed that she had previously lived in a town called Aqueresa.
And she had lived in a house close to a river that flows through the city.
And there was once when she was walking across that river over a footbridge, she fell into the river and drowned.
And she also said that she had been five months pregnant when she drowned.
She furthermore stated that the house she had lived in had been a wiggled house with painted walls and so on, whereas now she lived in a mud hut.
Well, then her brother went to Aqueresa but was not able to find anything or verify the case.
But we then went ourselves and then we found a bridge across the river, a footbridge in a poor shape.
And the girl had given the name of her previous family as Nanayakara.
So we asked, is there any Nanayakara living here close by?
Yes, we were told there is a Nanayakara just a little beyond the bridge.
You will find the home of the Nanayakara family.
So we went there and then we asked if anyone had died recently in the family.
Well, they told us that their daughter-in-law had drowned several years ago when she was Walking across the river with her husband, and then we learned that she had been pregnant.
She had been five months pregnant.
And we went to the coroner to get this verified, and he had a record of the death of this woman.
And she had, in fact, been pregnant when she drowned.
So this was a very interesting case.
All the major details were verified, and it was a very impressive case.
Well, absolutely sounds it.
Do you think there's anything in the theory that somehow we transfer memories and recollections of our lives through DNA?
Well, maybe some in a very broad way, but I do not...
Yes.
Well, I have not found in my study of children who claim to remember past lives much, many cases where they talk about life in the family, like grandfathers or things like that.
But there are a few such cases.
You have a few in-family cases, but the bulk of the cases, at least in Sri Lanka, the Lebanon, where I studied them, they are not of this kind.
There will be people listening to this now who say, you know, you're an academic, you have clearly a very well-developed mind.
Why do you do research on this?
Of the many things that you could do research on in the field that you trained in, why research this?
Why is it important to you?
Well, I told you about this, how this started.
And then just one thing followed another.
And then I came to know, I went to the United States for further studies.
And I was at the University of Virginia really to study more clinical psychology.
But then I came to know Dr. Ian Stevenson at the University of Virginia.
And he had made many studies of children with past lives who claim to remember past lives.
And then much later, after he had been studying such cases for decades, he asked me if I would be willing to make an independent study.
And he gave me the financial support that was necessary.
So that is how I got involved in studying of children who remember past lives.
And I have now studied almost 100 cases.
I think almost 60 in Sri Lanka, some 30 in Lebanon, and then, well, at least one here in Iceland.
So that is how I got involved in that.
Now, Erina, there are many researchers that I've talked to over the years, I've said to them, well, does your research and its conclusions mean that you now believe X, Y, or Z theory?
So I'll ask you, the research that you've done into these fields, are you now comfortable with the thought that death is not the end?
And do you now believe that life goes on?
Well, I am very favorably inclined to that view.
Personally, I am pretty convinced that there is a life beyond death.
And what about in your own case?
Because all of us die, you know, whether we go on or whether we don't, whatever you want to believe about it, that's just the only inevitability in life.
At some point I will, and at some point you will.
Will, when you die, you want to make an effort to communicate to this side?
I would guess you might, but have you had thoughts about that?
Well, I haven't really thought much about that.
But I think that when we look at those who communicate, they are those who die suddenly.
They are those who die by accidents primarily.
They seem to be very almost thirsty for some kind of a contact with the living.
But so I really couldn't tell.
And then I think that once we have died or we are on the other side, maybe what we experience and the world we perceive is somehow very different maybe from what we think.
Then this question of contact doesn't become so...
Because you do hear lots of cases.
And my own mother, my own case, died six years ago now and is still, of course, very sorely missed by all of us.
She was very spiritual, and we always believed that if anybody would try to contact us regularly on this side, she would.
Now, we've had a few experiences, but they were mostly around the time of her death.
Now, we don't really experience anything, and that's a surprise.
So that bears out what you say, that if the person doesn't die in violent circumstances, and there is no need to make a contact, there is no need to make a dent in the fabric of whatever it is and get the message through, then simply they go on into whatever continuum there is beyond here.
Yes, they are.
Yes, that is.
But there are also sometimes these experiences occur unexpectedly.
I remember one case, it was a young woman, and she was reading a book in the evening.
Then suddenly she sees her grandmother in front of her.
And she seemed very happy and well.
And then she disappeared.
And then the next morning she tells to her mother that I saw my grandmother.
And then the mother said, oh, that was nice.
She had the birthday yesterday, but we forgot about it.
Now, how could you explain that?
That is amazing, isn't it?
Well, there are so many very interesting accounts that there are about 400 of them in my book, The Departed Among the Living.
So those who want to know more, they should take a good look at the book and it's, I think, very interesting contents.
Well, I think at the very least, it's enough to pique the interest of a sceptic.
You know, I would say even the most hardened sceptic should take a look at this book, because there are stories in here that are just truly, and I know I keep using the word, fascinating.
I think it's a marvelous book, and I'm not in the business of promoting books, but I think this is one of the best that I've ever seen.
So I congratulate you on it, Erlinder.
What are you going to be working on next?
Some things in the pipelines, like a model that Icelanding medium that I've been working on recently, who described the fire in Copenhagen.
Then, in fact, I was asked by a publisher here in Iceland to write my memoirs.
So I've been working on that.
That's now practically finished.
There are always things that come up.
And then I give a lot of lectures.
I was even recently in Britain, in England, and gave some four or five talks in March.
So I keep quite busy and very happy with that.
I'm very happy that you're happy, Erlander, and it's been a privilege to talk with you in Reykjavik, Iceland.
I wish you all the very best with this very good book.
It is called The Departed Among the Living, an investigative study of afterlife encounters, and there are plenty of those in here and statistics as well, which is a rarity in this field.
The man I've been talking to is Ellender Haraldsson, and as we see, he was in Reykjavik, Iceland.
And Elinda, I wish you every success with everything you do in future, and I wish you success with this book.
And thank you for coming on The Unexplained.
Yeah.
Well, thank you, Harold.
And when you come to Iceland, you let me know.
Absolutely.
I'm longing to see the place.
I've heard so much about it.
Thank you very much.
Oh, welcome.
Well, I know I use this word a lot, but what a truly fascinating topic and what a truly amazing investigation by Erlander Haraldsson in Iceland.
The book, like I say, is called The Departed Among the Living, an investigative study of afterlife encounters.
And for my money, it's published by White Crow Books, by the way.
It's well worth checking out.
And I don't often say that, but I was entranced by the stories that I read in this book and fascinated by the depth of research that's gone into it.
Right, we will return very soon.
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