Erlendur Haraldsson is a Professor emeritus of psychology at the Faculty of social science at the University of Iceland who, despite having retired from his former post at the University of Iceland, continues to be an active academic. He has published work in various parapsychology journals, and done work with Ian Stevenson and Karlis Osis on reincarnation research. As well as doing work in Iceland, Haraldsson worked in the United States and at the University of Freiburg, in Germany. While in the United States, he worked with J.B. Rhine. He has written several books including Modern Miracles: An investigative report on psychic phenomena associated with Sri Sathya Sai Baba (1997), At the Hour of Death (1997), and The Departed Among the Living: An Investigative Study of Afterlife Encounters (2012)

1. Have You Ever Perceived the Presence of a Person Who Has Died? 2. Visual Experiences 3. Auditory Perceptions 4. Someone Touched Me! 5. That Smells Familiar 6. Sensing an Invisible Presence 7. Experiences at the Moment of Death 8. How soon after Death were the Deceased Encountered? 9. Who were the Deceased Persons? 10. Who or What is the Source of the Apparitional Experience? 11. Accidents and Violent Deaths: Sailors and Death by Drowning 12. Accidental Deaths on Land 13. Suicide 14. Murder or Manslaughter 15. Circumstances, State of Mind and Consequences 16. Widows and Widowers 17. How did the Phenomena Appear and Disappear and How Long Did it Last? 18. How Physically Real was the Experience? 19. Was the Whole Body Visible or only Part of It? 20. Unusual Behaviour of Animals 21. Meaning and Messages 22. Experiences from Childhood 23. Localized Apparitions 24. Person-Centered Apparitions 25. Warnings and Rescue at Sea 26. Guidance and Words of Warning 27. Healers and Cures 28. Mediums and Psychics 29. Is Someone Watching Over Us? 30. I've Got a Bad Feeling About This 31. They Showed up For Their Funeral 32. Obtaining Information Unknown Before the Encounter 33. Multiple Witnesses 34. Indirect Verification 35. Representative Surveys on Approaches to the Afterlife 36. Belief in Life After Death Among Participants 37. Crucial Features of After-Death Encounters 38. Arguments For and Against an Afterlife 39. Personal Experiences. Appendix A: Comparison of the two surveys References Acknowledgements Appendix B: The Questionnaire

From earliest times, people have speculated about what happens when they and their loved ones die. Their views vary from certainty about life after death to utter disbelief. Today, many continue to believe in the survival of consciousness after physical death with some claiming actual experiences of the departed and contact with them of some kind. In an era which we think of as the enlightened era of science, education and widespread secularism, many people report contact with dead. In a survey at the end of the 20th century, 31% of people in the USA , reperted they had felt that they had been in contact with some one who had died (Greeley 1975), and in Europe the number was 25% (Haraldsson and Houtkooper 1991).Scientist, Erlendur Haraldsson, a native of Iceland, sought an answer to his question, "Have you ever been aware of the presence of a deceased person?" In the modern and educated society of Iceland, one of the Scandinavian countries; he conducted an extensive survey. During the following years, detailed personal interviews were conducted with over 450 people who responded with a yes to questions about personal experiences of the deceased while in a waking state. These accounts form the basis for this book. The results are fascinating and make compelling reading.