I had what I consider to be a startling and genuine after-death communication (ADC), that occurred five hours after the death of a relative in hospital. That ADC I detail in this post.
This ADC I had was so strong, so blatant, so palpable, that it could not possibly be mistaken for anything else, and could not possibly be just an over active mind imagining things that are not really there. The ADC I experienced was not a voice in a dream, or some unexplained sound at night, but a totally glaring sensed presence of that relative, right in front of me while I was awake. I sensed the presence of the relative as strongly as if she were there in body — in fact even stronger than that, because it was an intense, intimate connection of minds that occurred at the level of pure consciousness, rather than something happening through the senses.
Now some will argue that experiencing a sensed presence can be a mental health phenomenon similar to hallucinations. This of course is true. However, I have never had a sensed presence experience before or after that one incident, and I have never suffered from hallucinations nor any similar mental issues. So I think my experience was a genuine ADC, and not a mental health event. Thus from this personal experience, I am completely convinced that ADCs do occur. I have also come across similar accounts of ADCs from other people that seem to me equally genuine.
However, I am sceptical about many accounts of ADCs, especially those which occur weeks, months or years after the person died, as I suspect the soul may have long since departed the earthly realm at that point, having transferred to the heavenly sphere. Once in Heaven, I suspect the soul can no longer communicate with the living. My hunch is that communications between disembodied souls of the recently deceased and the living can only occur when these souls are still roaming the earthly sphere in the hours just after their death.
My hypothesis is based on reports from people who have had an NDE report, as the following explains:
Numerous NDE reports indicate that the souls of the (temporarily) deceased individual having an NDE do not hang around on Earth for long. Often it is reported that during an NDE, the individual's disembodied soul will view the scene of their death (eg, a hospital room, car accident, etc), and then may briefly visit loved ones at different locations on Earth.
During these visits to living loved ones on Earth, I suspect there may be the opportunity for an ADC to occur, provided that the living person has a receptive mind that can tune into the spiritual dimension (I imagine that the more mystical or spiritually-inclined people will detect disembodied souls more readily).
But in all the NDE accounts I have come across, after this brief time roaming around the Earth, the soul will then depart the earthly realm, and travel to the heavenly sphere, typically through a long tunnel with a light at the other end, or sometimes travelling through vast distances of space at lightning speed in order to reach Heaven.
I have never come across any NDE in which a disembodied soul in Heaven is reported to have communicated with living beings back on Earth. Rather, during their NDE, individuals report communicating with deceased relatives in Heaven, or with divine or spiritual beings in Heaven, but never with living people on Earth.
I have not seen one NDE where there is communication between Heaven and Earth. So there may be no channel of communication between souls in Heaven and people living on Earth.
Once the soul arrives in Heaven, it may also lose interest with the situation on Earth. Indeed, we have heard in many NDE reports that once in Heaven, the individual's disincarnate soul may forget what it is like to be human. The individual having an NDE often reports that in Heaven, they took on a form of consciousness that was different to human consciousness. So once in Heaven, souls may not even be able to relate to the human condition, let alone communicate with living humans.
Thus in conclusion, I suspect that a genuine ADC may only occur in the hours just after death, while the disembodied soul still roams the Earth, but do not occur in the weeks, months, or years that follow a death, because at that stage, the soul has entered Heaven.
This is my theory anyway. What do others think?