When Spirits Come Calling: The Open-Minded Skeptic's Guide to After-Death Contacts

Two out of five Americans report sensing meaningful contacts with lost loved ones. Such contacts are usually comforting - and surprisingly intense. Most do not involve mediums. And unlike near-death experiences, they come unexpectedly to healthy people going about their normal lives.

Here are moving, never-before-published stories of apparent afterlife communication, told in the perceivers' own words. Comparing today's Western beliefs with those of other traditions, ancient and modern, Professor Wright opens the door to reasoned discussion about this often hush-hush subject.

Sylvia Hart Wright has won numerous academic and literary honors and has been listed in Who's Who in the East and Who's Who of American Women. A graduate of Cornell University, Professor Wright holds advanced degrees in sociology and information science. Her publications include two books on contemporary American architecture and a monograph on urban education.

Until well into her forties, she had no interest or belief in the paranormal. But after she was widowed in 1983, she began sensing that her husband's spirit was contacting her and learned that others who had been close to him sometimes sensed his presence too. In 1991, Professor Wright retired from the City University of New York, where she headed the library of the School of Architecture and Environmental Studies, and moved to Oregon. Since then she has devoted much of her energy to afterlife research. Articles about her work have appeared in Britain and Italy as well as in the United States.