\n<\/p>\n
Last summer, Heather Beville felt something she hadn\u2019t in a long time: a hug from her sister Jessica, who died at age 30 from cancer.<\/p>\n
In a dream, \u201cI hugged her and I could feel her, even though I knew in my logic that she was dead,\u201d she said. She immediately texted a group chat with her close friends, including her husband and her pastor, to tell them about it.<\/p>\n
Like fellow Christians, Beville is sure that death is not the end. But she\u2019s also among a significant number who say they have continued to experience visits from deceased loved ones here on earth.<\/p>\n
In a recent Pew Research Center survey<\/a>, 42 percent of self-identified evangelicals said they had been visited by a loved one who had passed away. Rates were even higher among Catholics and Black Protestants, two-thirds of whom reported such experiences.<\/p>\n Interactions with the dead fall into a precarious supernatural space. Staunch secularists will say they\u2019re impossible and must be made up. Bible-believing Christians may be wary of the spiritual implications of calling on ghosts from beyond. Yet more than half of Americans believe a dead family member has come to them in a dream or some other form.<\/p>\n The survey didn\u2019t clarify how people processed these interactions\u2014whether they thought they were mystical or believed they could have had natural causes. Those who responded that loved ones visited them in a dream, for example, included those who may believe their loved ones were trying to send messages to them as well as those who might have simply dreamt about a favorite memory with their family member.<\/p>\n Experiencing these interactions is correlated with some sense of religious faith. Sixty-three percent of people with what Pew designates as \u201cmedium religious commitment\u201d\u2014who may not go to church every week or pray every day but still believe\u2014say they have sensed their dead family members.<\/p>\n \u201cPeople who are moderately religious seem to be more likely than other Americans to have these experiences,\u201d Pew researchers said. \u201cThis is due in part to the fact that some of the most traditionally religious groups\u2014such as evangelical Protestants\u2014as well as some of the least religious parts of the population\u2014such as atheists and agnostics\u2014are less<\/em> likely to report having interactions with deceased family members.\u201d<\/p>\n Beville, who is now a hospice volunteer and a Stephen Ministries<\/a> lay caregiver at her church, identified with the findings. \u201cIt\u2019s people who have the room and the space to say, \u2018There might be something more\u2019 \u2026 versus people who have more of that fundamentalist or black-and-white background,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Beville was raised Baptist, and the profound experience of witnessing her sister\u2019s death 17 years ago cemented her belief in God. It was her faith that got her through the overwhelming grief that followed. Seeing Jessica in dreams and sensing her presence brought comfort.<\/p>\n Not long after Jessica died, Beville dreamed of her sister sitting in a diner, in her healthy, pre-cancer body. When Beville was in labor, praying for a second daughter, she saw her sister in a rocking chair in the delivery room, shortly before giving birth to another girl. She teared up recounting the story, which she repeats to her daughter\u2014Elizabeth Jessica\u2014every year on her birthday.<\/p>\n \u201cShe\u2019s in heaven \u2026 but I very much feel her presence, and the sense of it brings great comfort,\u201d said Beville.<\/p>\n Researchers say most people who report \u201cafter-death communications\u201d find the interactions to be comforting, not haunting or scary.<\/p>\n \u201cThey\u2019re often very valuable for people. They give them hope that their loved one is still there and still connected to them,\u201d said Julie Exline, a professor at Case Western Reserve University who studies the psychology of religion and spirituality. \u201cThese experiences help people, even if they don\u2019t know what to make of them.\u201d<\/p>\n There are several factors that come into play for a person to turn to supernatural explanations for what they\u2019ve experienced.<\/p>\n A recent Religions<\/em> article<\/a> by Exline and research assistant Kathleen Pait cites \u201cprior belief in God, angels, spirits, or ghosts, combined with a belief that these beings actually do communicate with people in the world\u201d as one condition. The relationship between a person and their loved one\u2014\u201cthe need for relational closure\u201d amid prolonged grief\u2014can also be a factor. And women are more likely to report the phenomena.<\/p>\n Psychologists can come off as skeptical of such experiences, and clients may be afraid to disclose them, assuming it means they\u2019re \u201ccrazy.\u201d Religious settings may not be much better: Evangelicals and people with high religious commitment were less likely to report interactions with dead relatives in the Pew survey.<\/p>\n \u201cI think a lot of Christians are maybe afraid to talk about this or do not know what to do with it. [They] could at least take some comfort in knowing a lot of people have these experiences,\u201d said Exline. Coming out of a fundamentalist evangelical background, she knows that some religious traditions view these experiences as \u201cdemonic\u201d or \u201ckind of freaky.\u201d<\/p>\n The Christian faith operates around the reality of the spiritual realm, even if some of today\u2019s believers can be tempted to downplay it. Chris Pappalardo wrote for CT<\/a> one Halloween:<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n Our holy book contains stories of spirits being called back from the dead (1 Sam. 28:8\u201319), of men who thought they were seeing ghosts (Matt. 14:26, Luke 24:37), and of demons who did tremendous damage, both spiritually and physically (Matt. 8:32\u201334, Mark 9:20\u201322, Acts 19:13\u201316).<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n In fact, Jesus\u2019 ministry can be characterized as an extended battle between his Holy Spirit and the lesser spirits of darkness, a battle that finds its dramatic conclusion in the paradoxical defeat of those spirits on Calvary (cf. Col. 2:15).<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n When it comes to the question of a \u201cportal to the other side,\u201d one night a year might be too modest. If the New Testament is any indication, that portal is never completely closed (Eph. 6:10\u201318). Our world has far more spirits involved in its affairs than we realize.<\/p>\n
\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Inside and outside the church, Christians refer to their late family members looking down on them or going with them as guardian angels. Whether that common imagining of the afterlife is actually theologically sound may depend on who you ask; many theologians say we can\u2019t know for sure what the previously departed are doing while we are here on earth.<\/p>\n John Piper wrote<\/a> that Hebrews 12:1, referencing running the race before a \u201cgreat cloud of witnesses,\u201d could indicate the saints watching down to cheer us on. Yet he warns, \u201cWe should be cautioned to beware of spending too much time thinking about the saints above so that we are tempted to interact with them \u2026 rather than focusing on Christ and the throne of grace that he has opened to us.\u201d<\/p>\n The spiritual realm described in Scripture comes with strong warnings. The text repeatedly advises against calling on spirits outside of God himself, with several Old Testament verses specifically addressing interactions with the dead (\u201cnecromancy\u201d in some translations). Deuteronomy 18, for example, decries anyone who \u201cis a medium or spiritist or who consults with the dead\u201d as \u201cdetestable to the Lord\u201d (vv. 11, 12).<\/p>\n Evangelicals who believe they have seen deceased relatives in their dreams or sensed their presence can be hesitant to come to their pastors with their experience, because they\u2019ve likely heard a leader decry communication with the dead. (Billy Graham called<\/a> it an \u201coccult practice.\u201d)<\/p>\n Still, in the past year, 26 percent of evangelical Protestants reported feeling the presence of a family member who died, and 21 percent spoke to a dead family member about events in their life, Pew found. Just 10 percent of evangelicals said they had dead family members communicate with them.<\/p>\n Exline and fellow scholars also group near-death experiences, \u201cafter-death communications,\u201d and similar spiritual phenomena among the \u201canomalous experiences\u201d for their study.<\/p>\n Visions from near-death experiences, including reports of seeing departed relatives while \u201cvisiting heaven,\u201d have drawn skepticism from evangelicals, particularly as such accounts became popular as bestselling books<\/a> around a decade ago.<\/p>\n When Beville describes the dreams with her sister, she also brings up the moments right before Jessica\u2019s death, when she went from being unconscious to seemingly speaking to God. In both, she said, \u201cthere is kind of like that thin barrier between heaven and earth.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/div>\n