Tucked in among the drivel this week on Yahoo’s home page was a story of actual interest.  If you’d nodded off while reading the titillating news about Bobbi Kristina dating her adopted brother, Ashley Judd’s plastic surgery, or a very pregnant Jessica Simpson tottering about on stiletto heels, you may have missed it.  If so, here’s the skinny.  As reported by the BBC, the family and friends of 32-year-old Jack Froese, a man who died of a heart condition in June 2011, are still receiving emails from him.

 

Because the messages were extremely personal, and in one case prophetic, the emails did not appear to be cases of cyber theft.  In other words, Jack’s loved ones do not attribute the emails to spammers appropriating the dead man’s information via his online accounts.

 

Tim Hart, the dead man’s best friend, received an email alluding to a conversation to which only he and Jack had been privy.  Jack’s cousin, Timmy McGraw, said that Jack had warned him about an injury that Timmy suffered after Jack had passed on.

 

Are these reports true?   And does science, or faith, hold the answer?

 

Science has proven that matter cannot be destroyed; it can only be altered, changed into a different state.  When a person dies, his body crumbles to dust, but his spirit continues as a form of energy.  Decades of documented paranormal research reveals that many spirits (energy beings) communicate with the living through electronic means.  These include and are not limited to EVP (Electronic Voice Phenomena) recordings, lights and household appliances turning on and off by unseen hands, and even computer screens exploding for no discernable reason.

 

Science has also proven that humans have evolved over the course of time from apes into our current form – and, we are still evolving.  As late as the Victorian era, many people in Western civilization were slight of stature.  Now, 6’ is considered an average height for an average Western male.  If we are still evolving, how much of a stretch is it to envision a spirit using technology to reach out to his loved ones from beyond the grave?

 

If I had access to Colton Burpo, the subject of the runaway best-seller Heaven is for Real, I’d ask him.  Written by his father Todd Burpo with Lynn Vincent, the book recounts how four-year-old Colton, at death’s door after a ruptured appendix, paid a visit to heaven.  As Colton was not clinically dead at the time of this visit, his was not an NDE (Near Death Experience) in which one passes into the next life and then miraculously returns, usually a few minutes later.

 

Little Colton claims to have visited heaven, meeting and/or communicating with celestial beings as well as loved ones who had passed on before he was born – including a sister he had not known who had died in their mother’s womb.  Over the several years, Colton recounted what lay beyond the Pearly Gates.  His father, who is a pastor, was compelled to find the truth in Colton’s experiences.  He did so with specific Biblical references that eerily mirrored the child’s descriptions, Biblical references of which the child had no knowledge.

 

 

In the book, Colton describes many beings, including a loving Jesus who served as his teacher, John the Baptist, the angels, and even lots of animals.  But nowhere did Colton mention spirits of the deceased sitting at computers, shooting off emails to their earthbound peers.  This is not to say that he didn’t see them.  Perhaps, in light of all his wondrous experiences, Colton chalked up the email dispatchers as mundane, not worthy of mention.

 

While we cannot prove that Jack Froese was the author of the emails in question, neither can we disprove it.  But maybe, we can look a little closer at our own emails before we hit the Delete key.  Maybe one day, among all the unsolicited ads and forwards, among all the junk mail, will lay a small, unexpected treasure.  If my dear, departed grandmother should one day send me her delicious recipe for struffoli, a recipe that no living relative possesses, I’ll let you all know!