Why I Believe The Dead Are Alive

Book Overview

- In 2020 I came across this old book first published in 1942. For reasons beyond my conscious thought I decided to get into it as I am always interested in why people believe in the Afterlife and how they determined that it exists. I was not disappointed as the author’s goal was to provide numerous experiences he personally had had to prove the point. As I went along reading chapter after chapter I became increasingly intrigued with an occasional reference to an earlier article by Mr. Pelley, titled, “Seven Minutes in Eternity,” which is a first-hand account of what today would be labeled an NDE or Near Death Experience. So, being the intrepid researcher that I am, I had to purchase that article, now a Kindle book as well! What I discovered was that the NDE described in Seven Minutes in Eternity was so powerful that it provided the impetus to entirely change the course of Mr. Pelley’s career. Back in 1929 the general public was not aware of NDEs and so if anyone had one they would be embarrassed to talk about it for fear of being ridiculed.

William Dudley Pelley came to prominence as a writer, winning two O' Henry Awards and penning screenplays for Hollywood films. So when his 1929 essay “Seven Minutes in Eternity” was published in the popular The American Magazine it earned an overwhelming response. In those pre-internet days people responded by writing letters and he was virtually overwhelmed to receive over 30,000 responses, which caused him to set up shop with two secretaries in an attempt to provide a reply to each letter! (People were very gracious in those days!) This situation caused quite a ruckus at the magazine and caused some of the editors to be fired due to political pressure coming from powerful religious organizations who did not want to lose control of the masses. They also refused to publish any further articles of the metaphysical type which forced Mr. Pelley to find other avenues of expression.

This NDE event and the aftermath marked a turning point in Mr. Pelley’s career in that he began an earnest investigation into all things Afterlife which included working with incredible trance medium, George Wehner in New York City. And then later with another famous medium of the era, Bertie Lilly Candler who had the ability to manifest in 3-D so called ‘dead people’ during her seances using something called ‘ectoplasm’ while she was in a deep trance condition.

There was a book published back in 1929, “A Curious Life," which is George Wehner's autobiography. Unfortunately it is a very rare book long out of print, however, I was able to obtain it. As William Pelley relates in his book, “George was a commercial artist, about 30 years old, a bachelor, who had shown the remarkable faculty of separating his soul-mind from his physical body and handing it over to “disembodied" souls who wished to use his organism for a brief visit to earth conditions. In other words, he abandoned his own physical mechanism and gave it over to the temporary use of some “dead" person, allowing its spirit-soul to come into it, take possession of it and use it as though it were his own, thus permitting them to converse with their former relatives or friends precisely as though they had had their former bodies restored to them. One such example provided by Mr. Pelley concerned Mr. Wehner allowing a recently deceased (unnamed) famous author to inhabit his body in order to converse with Mr. Pelley about how he was assisting him in his writing work from the Other Side!

Later chapters in Why I Believe The Dead Are Alive delve deeply into Mr. Pelley’s more extensive experiences with the Physical Medium, Bertie Lilly Candler. Physical Mediumship is the process whereby a loved one in Spirit is able to physically manifest within our world using the capability of the medium. Needless to say this is not at all a common occurrence these days, perhaps due to the tremendous amount of distraction we have today that they did not have back in the days before television and internet. The way this works is this. The medium, Mrs. Candler in this case, goes into a deep trance while an assistance plays spiritual records to get everyone synced up and in the correct ‘mood.’ Then after maybe 15 – 20 minutes, a ‘deceased person’ known to someone in the audience would appear out of thin air, converse with that person and perhaps even touch or hug that person! Fairly incredible, right? And along with the conversation there would be enough proof provided in order to substantiate that the manifested deceased person was really who they claimed to be. And of course the evidence provided would be things that the medium would know nothing about.One of the most fascinating (to me) spirit persons to manifest in the physical was Mary Baker Eddy, founder of the Church of Christ Scientist! And the reason she gave was that while alive she specifically railing against Spiritualism and Mediumship and now that she was living in the ‘higher octaves’ she clearly saw the error of her ways and wanted now to correct that concept through and wit the assistance of Mr. Pelley. Suffice it to say that Mr. Pelley started a publishing house and indeed did attempt to help Mrs. Eddy to enlighten not only her followers but also the entire world via all his many publications put out by.ulcraft Chapels. This book is out of print, but available on Amazon if you want to pay $100 for a copy. You can get it in pdf for free however at this website. http://www.soulcraftteachings.org/pelley.html