The Life After Death Project Special Edition (2013) (DVD review).
Two DVDs all about life after death! The problem being most people don’t really know if there is life before death or even then, what life actually is. The true definition of life is quite difficult to ascertain and the concept of living after death is a rather vague notion. Before getting into an extrapolated metaphysical conversation, a look at this DVD presentation, ‘The Life After Death Project may be a good idea.
First of all, what is it? It’s an attempt by three guys to look into life after death experiences, not in a scientific way but rather as a series of conversations, anecdotes and instances of where the afterlife became apparent. The first DVD was probably more interesting because it related to Forrest J Ackerman, whose picture you will see on the cover. Many will know him from Hollywood where he was a founding father of Science Fiction, a larger than life character and editor of ‘Famous Monsters Of Filmland’ magazine devoted to monsters, especially the likes of King Kong, Dracula and Frankenstein. For me, this was the most interesting part of the presentation however, the rest was frankly boring.
The DVD collection retails for about $25 in the USA where it will be released in mid-June and at the moment nothing has come up regarding sales in Europe. If you’re interested, keep looking up Amazon or one of the other sites to see when it will be for sale.
A difficult subject to present at any time, there was no real focus to the DVDs. As said, Ackerman was the subject of the first and the second dealt with various experiences of people with close encounters to death. Things like blotted ink, shadows on a wall and ticking clocks don’t really do much to keep you awake. There was no impact of any strength behind the so-called revelations.
Mention was made of people dying and lights coming from the body. Auras of an indeterminate nature surrounding the corpse, something that has never ever been verified, were pointed to as of significant relevance to the existence of a spirit. I’ve seen people die and once worked in a cemetery seeing bodies at all stages of death. I’ve never witnessed an aura or any strange lights. All I ever saw were dead bodies, lifeless and inanimate. I was reminded of the quotation which stated that one man’s mumbo-jumbo was another man’s science and in this case that’s probably nearer to the truth.
Maybe the people presenting this DVD, who have connections to Hollywood just want to make a go at expressing their own feelings. Fair enough, but at the end of looking through 200 minutes one became literally bored to death. Some of the examples were taken out of context, for instance mentioning the light coming from stellar objects which may in reality not be there anymore. There’s nothing odd in that, only the fact that light takes time to travel over astronomical distances and we are not seeing objects as they really are. Even the moon is about 1.25 seconds out of synchronisation. If the sun disappeared we would not know about it until after 8 minutes.
There were no attempts to do any serious paranormal research, no real science and nothing beyond second-hand information. This is something you would probably see on one of the minor channels on TV, interspersed with adverts and cups of tea. In all probability, you would either fall asleep or switch to something else. If you buy this, don’t expect any life changing moments or even death changing moments for that matter. This DVD will probably end up dead and buried within a short time and I don’t think it will have an afterlife.
Rod MacDonald
(multi-region DVD: pub: Indieblitz B00C2U6F1O. 2 DVDs 207 minute film. Price: $24.95 (US))
cast: Whitley Strieber, Dannion Brinkley, Gary E. Schwartz, Michael Shermer and Forrest J Ackerman
check out website: http://lifeafterdeathproject.com/