The Other Side

An Account of My Experiences with Psychic Phenomena

Plot

Is it possible to communicate with the dead? Can we who are alive talk to those who are "on the other side"? If so, what would this say about the meaning of life and reality?

The news has been widely headlined that Bishop James A. Pike - one of America's best-known clergymen - not only believes this is possible, but that he has in fact communicated with his son who committed suicide.

The front-page news has caused storms of controversy and conjecture, to a great extent because the story -- astonishing and uncanny as it actually happened -- has from the outset been slanted: important facts, frequently reported in bits and pieces, have been obscured. This has caused the Bishop to write down his own report -- a complete and dispassionate account of all the events that not only followed, but also preceded, his son's death, thus highlighting "the other side" of a long series of events which were illuminated, but never penetrated, by the lights of news and television cameras.

"The Other Side" is a moving narration of a father's effort to save his son from enslavement to psychedelic drugs; a tragic story of a young and gifted man's premature death; a startling story of poltergeist occurrences which led the father and other witnesses to believe that -- from beyond the grave -- his son was trying to get in touch; a detailed account of how this communication proceeded during a time when the father was under accusation of "heresy" for believing too little. Above all, it is an analysis by one of America's keenest minds of what all these experiences may mean.

"The Other Side" certainly reads like a suspenseful novel. Yet every phase of the narration is painstakingly documented by eyewitness accounts of the strange occurrences which led the Bishop to consult mediums in England and America, and by several word-for-word tape-recordings of such seances. The reader will find here an honest and lucid exploration of psychic phenomena.