Speaking Of The Dead

In late medieval Catholicism, mourners employed an array of practices to maintain connection with the deceased—most crucially, the belief in purgatory, a middle place between heaven and hell where souls could be helped by the actions of the living. In the early sixteenth century, the Reformation abolished purgatory, as its leaders did not want attention to the dead diminishing people's devotion to God. But while the Reformation was supposed to end communication between the living and dead, it turns out the result was in fact more complicated than historians have realized. In the three centuries after the Reformation, Protestants imagined continuing relationships with the dead, and the desire for these relations came to form an important—and since neglected—aspect of Protestant belief and practice. In Speaking with the Dead in Early America, historian Erik R. Seeman undertakes a 300-year history of Protestant communication with the dead. Seeman chronicles the story of Protestants' relationships with the deceased from Elizabethan England to puritan New England and then on through the American Enlightenment into the middle of the nineteenth century with the explosion of interest in Spiritualism. He brings together a wide range of sources to uncover the beliefs and practices of both ordinary people, especially women, and religious leaders. This prodigious research reveals how sermons, elegies, and epitaphs portrayed the dead as speaking or being spoken to, how ghost stories and Gothic fiction depicted a permeable boundary between this world and the next, and how parlor songs and funeral hymns encouraged singers to imagine communication with the dead. Speaking with the Dead in Early America thus boldly reinterprets Protestantism as a religion in which the dead played a central role.

This was first published in 2000: This text explores issues surrounding the use of human cadavers and human tissues in science and medicine. This is an area of increasing significance in contemporary society, as more and more techniques become available for manipulating human genes and human material (including embryos, body organs and brain tissue). These issues are explored through case studies from contemporary society. Some of the most topical issues examined include plastination of human bodies as an art form, the use of biopsies from surgical operations, the ethics of using human DNA and stem cells in research, and the debate surrounding the transplantation of animal tissue and organs into humans.

Modern technology has given us powerful new tools for an age-old dream: seeing and speaking with the dead. Using things you probably already own - such as a camcorder, computer, or tape recorder - you can contact departed loved ones or other spirits, record their images and voices, and establish two-way communications between the worlds. Speak with the Dead also details the more traditional methods of seance, trance, and scrying. You don't have to be a "techie" or an occultist to use any of these techniques. This book will guide you to one of the most awe-inspiring experiences you'll ever have - making contact with deceased loved ones and other souls. Speak with the Dead is the first book in the modern marketplace to focus on practical, usable techniques for communicating with spirits. This book shows you seven methods for spirit contact: -catching Electronic Voice Phenomena on tape -using radio noise to provide spirits with a voice -capturing ghostly images on videotape -letting spirits use your computer or telephone -scrying, establishing telepathic contact with the dead, and holding a seance Speak with them. They're waiting.

This incredible book will teach you the secrets and methods employed by those that reach out beyond, those that call themselves "mediums"; the special breed of practitioner who understands the occult secrets of the mind; who tap into the hidden channels of power; who can, truly; "speak with the dead." Have you ever been curious about ghosts; ESP; psychic powers;; haunted places; telepathy; precognition; clairvoyance; and how to tap into those hidden powers we all have buried deep within? Read this incredible book, and learn from one who walked the primrose path to the "other side"! Learn the secret, forbidden art of the ages, and reach out! In time, you too may truly learn to SPEAK WITH THE DEAD!

In most Western and Westernized cultures, the reality of death is a subject that we avoid because it makes us uncomfortable. Even participants in religions that celebrate death as a release to a paradisiacal realm will avoid talking about or facing the death experience, unless it's through the lens of their religious beliefs. The rest of us tap dance around the subject, enjoying death-related fiction involving vampires, zombies, and serial killers, while we recoil in mind-numbing horror at the thought of being in the same room with a corpse. Chelsea Tolman is a funeral director, mortician, and embalmer with over 15 years experience. In her book, "Speaking of the Dead," she attempts to provide the balm that allows us to engage in the real world of death's circumstances and give us a peek behind the curtain at what it's like to be a professional in the death industry.This book is a collection of Chelsea's recounted stories that illustrate the unique perspective of being a professional in the death industry. She covers a wide range of emotions and circumstances from light hilarity to deep sadness and grief. She does well in not taking herself too seriously and is quick to share stories where she laughs about her own foibles and mistakes. Chelsea also takes the time to celebrate the diversity of cultures, describing in intimate detail the way some religions and nationalities treat their dead. All get equal respect, including the careful corpse wrappings of the Bha'i, the pronated wailing women of the Far East, the colorful dancers of Africa, suicides, and drug overdoses. She expertly weaves these stories of culture in with the experience of grief and loss to reveal how we all share the basic human essence of missing our dead.Finally, "Speaking of the Dead" serves as Chelsea's heartfelt attempt to show to the world that the experience of caring for one's dead is one that should be embraced and cherished, rather than avoided and feared as it largely is at present. She details the loving care she gives to the bodies and how she encourages the loved ones to participate and catalyze their own progress at closure. The tenderness she shows in wrapping infants in blankets, smoothing an old man's hair, or applying a young woman's make-up invites you to step over the gap from macabre avoidance to emotional acceptance and understand that death is simply another part of the human experience that we should all embrace.

Between being possessed by an angry spirit and being accused of a brutal murder, Joey Stillman is in a fight for his life. He has no memory of the attack, but he remembers the bloody aftermath vividly. Since being arrested, he struggles with rage that seems to flow from his dreams and the patience and control required dealing with his trial. Help, for what it is worth, is on the way in the unlikely form of two elderly menone carrying a scrapbook and the other carrying an old brown backpack. Its time to let the dead speak.

Speaking Ill of the Dead: Jerks in Washington, D.C., history features 15 short biographies of notorious badguys, perpetrators of mischief, visionary if misunderstood thinkers, and other colorful anti-heroes from the history of the nation's capital.