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A Fear of Dying let Sandra Champlain on a fifteen year secret journey to find proof of the afterlife. The death of her father pushed her to share these discoveries, believing that they would help the grieving. Sandra is the author of the number one international best selling book We Don't Die, a skeptics discovery of life after death, and is also the host. As I've mentioned, the shades of the Afterlife podcast on the Coast to Coast AM Paranormal
Podcast Network. I'll tell you again later on where you can listen to Sandra. Sandra, welcome back, Hove your Ben.
Oh hey George, all is well in my world? All as well.
I want to take just a moment before we get really rolling into this to thank you for your contribution to the Paranormal Podcast Network. How many shows have you done now?
Well, I have recorded two hundred and four. We currently have two hundred and two or three released, so it's been over four years. A labor of love and a shout out to the listeners. I've received so many incredible emails. People experience grief or by get diagnosed with an illness, and we want to know that. We go on and George,
thank you for the opportunity. Because the emails I receive in the words of comfort, people say that Shades of the Afterlife has not only saved their life, but given them life.
Well, you know, years ago I was talking to Tom dan Heiser, of course, our executive producer of the Paranormal podcast network, and I said, you know, Tom, a lot of people are listening on their phones. They have a podcast network, they have podcasting. Let's do that. So we started podcasting coast to coast. But I wanted us to do more. I wanted to bring in some other people like yourself and the others that will join us tonight. And it's worked out tremendously and it continues to growth.
Thanks the folks like you.
Oh it's my pleasure and I'm thankful to you. So it's a win win situation for all.
You have been called a skeptic when it deals with the afterlife, and you changed, of course, I'll come.
Well, I was in the beginning a closed minded skeptic, and it might be how I was raised. My parents great people, but you had to see it to believe it, and I think one of the things that really pushed our family over the edge that none of this paranormal stuff was real is we had a local psychic live in the town that we lived in, and she made this prediction that the Maid of the myths, you know, the boat ride at Niagara Falls with capsize with a
boat full of deaf people aboard. It never happened, and so in my mind that whole world was not real. I felt sorry for people that needed to believe in this spirituality. And I really do feel closed minded. I thought it some but he had a near death experience and they saw the light. It was just a normal part of their brain shutting down. But I didn't take any interest in even learning it. So that's what a
closed minded skeptic is. And thankfully I went through a fear of dying, which was very scary, but it had me open up to what else was possible. And so I think I'm the perfect person to host Shades of the Afterlife and tell the story because I never believed it myself.
But it was the sad death of your father that really got you starting to believe and think about the afterlife, wasn't it.
Yeah? Absolutely, I had done a lot of research secretly about the afterlife, even taking a class and mediumship, and my poor dad was diagnosed with cancer and within five months he passed. And just before he passed, George, I felt this need that I had to share with him some of my investigations. And Dad was very religious. I went to church every single day, but I really felt I had to get this off my chest about what
I learned about the afterlife. And so he loved me and he was open, but he looked at me kind of with one eye bigger than the other, like what is she going to tell me? And so I told him about my fear, some of the things I investigated, And in that moment, George, all of a sudden, in my mind's eye, I see a yellow Piper cub airplane, a tail dragger with black letters, and I feel that there's a man laughing and saying, tell your dad, I
did get to take my toys with me. Now, I'm not a practicing medium, but I've taken plenty of courses and I decided to share this with my dad. His eyes filled with tears, George. He had a friend named Jim who was fighting cancer and my dad kept saying to him, Jim, you can beat this because you don't get to bring your toys with you. What toy are we talking about. Jim owned a yellow Piper cub airplane
with black letters exactly. And my dad wanted me to tell him everything I learned, made me promise that I write a book and share this with people. And I never thought, you know, I'm smart enough to write a book. But when Dad passed, of course grief kicked. In arguments with my siblings, I found a whole world of why we grieve, what happened in the body. Just being the caring person I am, I thought, you know, other people
might like this information. So I created an audio called how to Survive Grief, and I posted it on YouTube and it went viral and people started writing me that not only did it help them with their grief, but George, people told me they chose not to end their lives because of what I described in grief is there's a lot out of our control in our brains. And so it was the hardest time in my life around the death of my father, but it taught me something so
important and that the world needs this information. And within months, a publisher showed up. I got my book We Don't Die published, and thanks to you and Tom, I've been on coast to coast several times and it's really made a difference in a lot of lives at.
This point, do you have any doubts at all now that the afterlife exists?
I have zero doubts. However, I think all human beings are not meant to realize that we go on twenty four to seven, because I think there's this game called life, and as difficult as it is, our soul grows during the difficult times. It really does. Anybody can look back on their past and some of the most horrendous things that have happened have become growth spurts or times that you've been able to help other people. And even the tough time of my dad dying. I wouldn't be here
with you today had it not all happened. So I don't live life all the time knowing the reality of the afterlife. And it's not that I too that. It's just I think we need to play this game called life. So thankfully, every week I produce the show on Shades that has me research and talk to people and keep it real. For myself. I think we all need that.
Do you try to convince skeptics?
Heck no, I used to. But there's two kinds of skeptics. There's a closed minded skeptic like I described myself in the beginning, and there's not a single soul that could have given me all the information that I now have to convince me. That's a closed minded skeptic. They just know better, big ego. And then there's open minded skeptics.
And our friend doctor Evan Alexander did a poll. They took a whole bunch of open minded skeptics, like they didn't believe in any of this, but they were open and every single one of them believed in the afterlife, especially from things like the verifiable information from near death experiences. So it's not worth any of us trying to push this on people. But there comes a time in each one of our lives that we start asking ourselves these big questions and we start looking for it.
What do you think, Sandra, the afterlife looks like, Well.
George, I think it looks very much like the world we live in. And sometimes you look at birds and flowers and plants and all kinds of beings here in nature, and you think there's got to be a higher intelligence to this. Really, even just looking at a beautiful sunrise or sunset. And so our afterlife experience is going to look very similar to what we have right here, right now. It's going to be nice temperature, Our life ones will
be there, even our pets are there. We communicate telepathically, we can create things in our mind and make them real. There's places like the halls of learning where we can explore. We can tap into places in the past. But I think it's comforting for us because it's something we know. We'll have houses there, jobs to do, so it will be that feeling of being home.
When people get there, are they confused or are they comfortable? Are they greeted by others?
Greeted yes, comfortable, yes? Confused maybe, and it would be only brief, depending on how we pass. Sometimes some horrific things happen to people, or there's great illness or an accident of some kind, and all of a sudden they find themselves in the hereafter and it's like, wait a minute, where am I? So for some there could be a little bit of time needed to just adjust, like I'm dead, okay, But it feels more real than where I was before. And then we see our loved ones. We get to
be our perfect health. We get to if we have any kind of infirmities, they're no longer with us. We get to be our perfect age. I've had it said to me so many times that when we arrive in the hereafter, and I like that term hereafter because I think it's vibrating all around us. But when we arrive there, it makes our life here on earth seem like just a dream. That place, the afterlife, is home and we know it that's reality, just like when we wake up from a dream here we think, okay, this is real.
That dream was an illusion.
What do you think came first, our physical life or the afterlife.
It's like the Chicken and the egg, And I sue, it's the afterlife or the before life came first? And I playfully paint this picture, not that it's the truth, but it works for me. That there's a place that all of our souls are and it's good all of the time, and it's wonderful. But the problem with something good all of the time is that it becomes boring. We all know that to really experience joy, we need to have experienced sadness. There needs to be the opposite.
So some wise soul or souls created this place, planet Earth. Let's go there. You get to experience so much, you get these great emotions. There's places to travel to, there's people to be with. The only thing is is you're going to forget that you're a divine soul and that you'll be back here on home, coming home. And so we come here to Earth and we forget who we are and it's brutal. Oh my gosh. There is joy there, most definitely is, and there is fun. But the biggest
life lessons come through the very toughest of times. So that's what I think.
I'm thinking of the actor ray Leoda, great actor who is super and good fellows who died in this sleep. When somebody dies in their sleep, Sandra, what happens do they? Are they in a continuous dream state or just what goes on?
I've never heard a continuous dream state. I think dying in our sleep is probably the most gentle way to go, they say, And there's a lot of research on deathbed visitations. In fact, doctor Christopher Kerr, a hostice doctor, study more than sixteen hundred people, and before we pass, we have what is called dreams, but people say they are just as real as say the people that we see on a day to day basis. So if we're happy and cozy in bed in that dream like state, suddenly that
dream becomes extra real. There are our loved ones, there are our pets, and we get the gentle news that our visit to planet Earth is over. We can still visit our loved ones, but we are now back home. So I think it's a very good way to pass.
Do we know we've died.
Yes, we do. We do. There's stories of people who say that there's earth bound spirits who don't know that they've passed, and I've heard a few of those stories. And for me, the audience that I speak to is the grieving, a lot of grieving parents, and I don't into the earth bound stuff. In my studies, they talk about the power of prayer, and if there's ever any question for anybody, if their loved one hasn't passed all the way over, say a prayer, Imagine a beautiful white
light and imagine them going through it. And I think that helps us more than it helps them, because I think we're either here or there. We're never stuck. But sometimes we need to be able to comfort ourselves here on earth. And if something like that empower, you do it. But love is all around us, and that, like I said, that feeling of being home and that we are loved is so special.
Have you seen any surveys, Sandra that compare those who believe with those who don't about the afterlife?
Interesting, over seventy percent of the Earth's population believe in the act after life. If we look at all forms of religion, most like ninety nine percent believe that the soul goes on. Even people that are atheists and may not say that there's a god, they believe in some kind of a higher intelligence of the universe or in nature, and they're open to the fact that.
We go on.
We well, we know that energy cannot be destroyed. It just can't be you know. So the burning log, even though it's burnt, it turned into a different form, turned into heat, or a puddle will change form and become vapor and turn into a cloud. When we die, our bodies die, we still go on. There's so much studies into the verifiable evidence through near death experiences that our consciousness can be other places in the world outside of our body and witness what's happening. You know, there's no
brain activity. We are legally dead, so most people believe, I think, George, we're just afraid to talk about it because it's a human need to be liked and needed and wanted. And I know for myself. When I first decided to start talking to people about the afterlife, I really thought I was going to lose family and friends, and people thought would think I'm crazy, But just the opposite happened, and people embraced it.
When do those angels kick in? Did they visit us when we die?
I believe they do. I believe they're part of our lives now. I believe that we have spirit guides. A lot of people who pass who see their loved ones, you know, these deathbed visions. They also see beautiful angels. There's a whole world that I don't think our human mind can get our heads around. So the best we can have is faith and listen to good stories of different reasons to believe in the afterlife. And you start hearing so many of these from people, and you think
there has to be something more, And certainly the Angelic Realm. Absolutely.
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