FROM THE AUTHOR

My Son and the Afterlife is a book of hope, not of sadness. It’s the hope that we are eternal beings. It’s the hope that the loved ones that we’ve “lost” aren’t really gone and that our relationship with them can continue, even grow.I started my journey, not from a place of hope, but of despair and disbelief. When Erik died, I didn’t know where to turn for relief. After all, I was raised by atheists and, as a physician, science taught me that something exists only if it could be perceived by the senses. This made it difficult for me to answer two all-consuming questions: Does my son still exist, and if he does, where is he?Desperate for answers, I read books about quantum physics, alternate dimensions, near death experiences, and even controlled studies on mediums. After reading those studies, I did what a lot of parents do when they don’t know where else to turn. I hired various spirit translators to channel Erik. Doubtful and afraid at first, my thick shell of skepticism opened up just a tiny sliver when two of them gave overwhelming evidence that I was communicating with my son. For instance, translator, Jamie Butler, was able to tell me exactly where Erik was sitting when he killed himself, the fact that he used a gun, what kind of gun he used, and even what clothes he was wearing. She was also able to capture his personality perfectly: his irreverent sense of humor, his mischievousness and the sailor talk that caused poor Jamie to cringe and blush.After feeling like I may have connected with my son, I asked him, in several sessions, all the personal questions I could think of, including the big “Why?” In future sessions, I asked him to describe death, including his own, the afterlife, the spirit and much larger concepts. Some of these questions included, “What does death feel like?” “Where do you go?” “What happens to nonbelievers?” “What does it look like where you are?” “What can you do, and what do you have there?” “What’s it like to not have a body?” “What do you look like?” “Do you still have your senses?” “Can you feel emotions?” “Is there anything you miss about being here in a body?” “Do you have any new abilities that you didn’t have when you were here?” “What is God?” “What are we, and why are we here?” “What’s the science behind death, the afterlife and the soul?” Naturally, whenever he shared scientific explanations to many of my questions, it satisfied the scientist in me. This is just a small sampling of the answers that would, unbeknownst to me at the time, become this book.

While gathering Erik’s answers to these countless questions, I was also journaling in my blog, Channeling Erik. It began as a way to vent my grief and to let others do the same in a place where they felt safe, loved and supported. But right after Erik’s death, family members and friends came out of the woodwork sharing how Erik had visited and pranked them. Erik even manifested himself to one of my atheist family member who was, of course, very shaken by the experience. No sooner had I started sharing these stories on my blog than its members from all over the world claimed the same. Erik was communicating with hundreds of them in various, usually mischievous, ways. But where were my visits? I’m his mother, after all. Eventually I did receive amazing visits from him. One of the first was when I saw him jumping from one foot of my bed to the next, hoping like a bunny. My deceased sister, Denise, was sitting on the left foot of the bed, grinning at Erik. It was all so surreal, because I was sure I was awake! My head had just hit the pillow! After watching him hop to and fro for a while, he suddenly turned his face toward me and he looked shocked. He said, “Mom, you can see me!” and he flung himself in my arms. When I hugged him, he felt so solid, just the way he felt before he died.

Despite that visit and other evidence that defied explanation time and time again, my journey to belief was still an arduous one. As time passed after one of these experiences, I’d begin to second-guess myself. In truth, I didn’t really want to believe! What if I did only to wake up one morning to find out it was all some cruel cosmic joke? That would mean losing Erik again but this time forever. I couldn’t go through that again. So these words are not the wishful thinking of a grieving mother.

But then I heard his voice, and that changed everything for me. He and two others spoke on one of our recorded sessions. Not only did Jamie and I not hear any voices during the live session, there was no one in the room! A mother knows the sound of her own kid’s voice. He had this way of saying, “breakfast” like a small child: “breakfiss.” That was there as well as one of his verbal tics. These small details and more convinced me to have the voices reviewed by a sound professional who, after putting the recording through rigorous analysis, agreed that these were not human voices. For one, they left no voice signature. So here I am,100% sure and never to look back.

That said, if you have “lost” someone dear to you, remember that love knows no boundaries, even death. They’re not really “gone”. They just don’t happen to have a body. Furthermore, they’re happy, free from mental and physical disease, free from the aches and pains of old age. And they don’t want to be forgotten. They want your relationship with them to continue, and there’s no reason why it shouldn’t. For you mothers out there, our grief is different. It’s profound. It cuts to the bone and claws at the heart. But please take comfort in knowing that the umbilical cord can stretch and stretch and stretch, but it will never break. You’ll always be connected to your child.

I hope you enjoy your journey.

Elisa

FROM THE PUBLISHER

An emotional journey through grief to healing and skepticism to belief—discover the answers that will change your life forever.Until her son Erik took his own life at the age of twenty, Dr. Elisa Medhus never believed in life after death. But all of that changed when Erik began communicating with her from the other side.As an accomplished physician, Dr. Medhus had placed her faith in science. But the tragedy surrounding her son’s death forced her to seek answers, to ask those universal questions we have all asked ourselves: Is there life after death? Do the dead communicate with the living?In My Son and the Afterlife, answers are finally revealed. Through a series of conversations, Erik reveals a compendium of new knowledge on the nature of death and afterlife, the abilities and activities of the soul, and the powerful experience that love knows no boundaries—not even death.Intimate, heartbreaking, and illuminating, go on an incredible journey from grief and skepticism, to healing and belief. Based on Medhus’s wildly popular blog Channeling Erik, My Son and the Afterlife provides answers to the most universal questions of being human.

At once tragic and uplifting, Erik speaks from the other side with candor, wisdom, and depth as he describes his own experiences and provides new answers on the nature of souls, death, and the afterlife—answers that have the potential to change our lives forever.