In the early 1980s, several people close to me died. Within the tradition of my religion, I included them in my prayers each night. When I prayed, my grandmother really seemed to be there. I dismissed this as a comforting hallucination until my grandmother began to tell me things that I could not know and that later proved true.

Fast forward several decades.

I have developed and refined my psychic ability and I’ve been quietly helping people all over the country. I prove to one family at a time that their loved one still exists and describe their deceased experience. I created Solace Medium Service as a framework for that work and I am now also offering you my book, Choices in the Afterlife.

Choices Publishing was started so I could print and distribute my books myself. I have written another book, a gardening book, with and for a publisher and while they were good people I didn’t want to lose the control of this work that is so close to my heart and soul.

By REBECCA RULE For the Concord NH Monitor May 11, 2008 - 12:00 am

What if when we died we found what we expected - Peter at the gate, loved ones who went before us, our beloved pets, choirs of angels, a bevy of virgins, Jesus with open arms, solitude in a beautiful garden - or a cold dark empty nothingness? What if our mind/soul/essence/spirit continued separate from our physical bodies? What if we continued to evolve as individuals in death just as in life? What if we had choices after death? To stay close to the physical world we knew (a ghostly presence); to reincarnate and return to life; to ascend to a higher spiritual level. Call me crazy (many do), but when Gretchen Vogel asserts these what-ifs as truth in Choices in the Afterlife: What We Can Do and Where We Can Go After Death, she makes sense. I said to someone more cynical than I: “So I’m reading this book about what happens after we die.” To which Ms. Bigtime Atheist replied: “Unless the writer talks to dead people, she’s got nothin’.” Well, Gretchen Vogel talks to dead people. Seriously. She has been communicating with the dead for more that 20 years. I discovered this ability while praying for deceased loved ones. Often, when I prayed for my paternal grandmother, she seemed to be with me. I thought this was just a comforting hallucination until she began to tell me things that I could not have known. When things she told me proved true, I began to think something unusual was happening. I started to experiment for friends and acquaintances. I gradually found myself working with people all over the country. It would be easy to make fun of this book and its premise that, through meditation, Vogel, who lives in Keene, connects psychically to those who have passed through the veil. And I admit to deep skepticism as I began to read. I am, by nature, skeptical. On a trip to Ireland, as we toured a haunted house, when a fellow traveler said, “Did you hear that? She’s right outside the door?” referring to the resident ghost, I knew right away he was yanking my chain. I scoffed when members of my family became addicted to the television series Ghost Hunters, in which plumbers turned psychic-phenomenon-investigators visit spooky locations, like the Mount Washington Hotel, to flush out spirits, using fancy equipment like EPTs, DUIs and FTDs. And, in full disclosure, I count myself among the unchurched and have never bought into notions of either heaven or hell. But while science fiction and organized religion leave me cold, Vogel’s sincerity won me over within a few pages. She believes so strongly and writes about her beliefs with such clarity that even the most skeptical reader will entertain, briefly perhaps, the notion that there might, just might, be some truth to the idea that the physical brain differs from the mind, and the mind lives on after the death of the body. Whether we believe our loved ones survived their death doesn’t matter. They did. Whether we believe we will survive our death also doesn''t matter. We will. Simply put, after we die we return to where we were before we were born. In Choices, Vogel doesn’t try to persuade or recruit, she matter-of-factly explains the ultimate mystery as she has come to understand it. In her mind, she’s figured it out. But not all by herself. The dead helped. As she meditates, she communicates with specific people who have died. They explain their circumstances. She records what they say. Low and behold, accounts vary: If you asked twenty people to describe life to you there would be twenty different perspectives. Parents might bring up their children first, children might talk about their toy . . . . The core of life for the elderly may be their physical changes. When I asked each deceased person . . . how they perceived the afterlife, I heard many different opinions and interpretations. Everyone’s story of how they left their body or experienced death, achieved consciousness out of body, how they healed and chose meaningful activities in their new reality was unique. But I began to understand there was a general pattern to the after death experience. In Choices, she describes that pattern, supporting her conclusions with testimony drawn from her meditations. She sorts through their testimony to make sense of it, because many of them are, not surprisingly, confused. Some of them don’t realize they’re dead, or are unwilling to accept the fact. Vogel does what she can to help them along. Others are at peace with their status and articulate about their circumstances and journeys. Not surprisingly, who we are in the afterlife mirrors who we were in life. Just as our physical lives differ and can be altered according to the choices we make, so do our afterlives. If we’re mean and miserable, we’re mean and miserable, alive or dead. Though death, like life, offers opportunities for change. If we’re open, searching, reflective, those tendencies carry on as well. Call me crazy, but Gretchen Vogel’s sincerity and her courage in writing about her life mission (at the risk that some might call her crazy), didn’t just give me pause, it brought me to a full stop. What if???

(reprinted with permission of the author)