Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Now here's a highlight from Coast to Coast AM on iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
A Fear of Dying let Sandra Champlain on a fifteen
year secret journey to find proof of the afterlife. The
death of her father pushed her to share these discoveries,
believing that they would help the grieving. Sandra is the
author of the number one international best selling book We
Don't Die, a skeptics discovery of life after death, and
is also the host. As I've mentioned, the shades of
(00:26):
the Afterlife podcast on the Coast to Coast AM Paranormal
Podcast Network. I'll tell you again later on where you
can listen to Sandra. Sandra, welcome back, Hove your Ben.
Speaker 3 (00:37):
Oh hey George, all is well in my world? All
as well.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
I want to take just a moment before we get
really rolling into this to thank you for your contribution
to the Paranormal Podcast Network. How many shows have you
done now?
Speaker 3 (00:53):
Well, I have recorded two hundred and four. We currently
have two hundred and two or three released, so it's
been over four years. A labor of love and a
shout out to the listeners. I've received so many incredible emails.
People experience grief or by get diagnosed with an illness,
(01:15):
and we want to know that. We go on and George,
thank you for the opportunity. Because the emails I receive
in the words of comfort, people say that Shades of
the Afterlife has not only saved their life, but given
them life.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
Well, you know, years ago I was talking to Tom
dan Heiser, of course, our executive producer of the Paranormal
podcast network, and I said, you know, Tom, a lot
of people are listening on their phones. They have a
podcast network, they have podcasting. Let's do that. So we
started podcasting coast to coast. But I wanted us to
do more. I wanted to bring in some other people
(01:52):
like yourself and the others that will join us tonight.
And it's worked out tremendously and it continues to growth.
Thanks the folks like you.
Speaker 3 (02:01):
Oh it's my pleasure and I'm thankful to you. So
it's a win win situation for all.
Speaker 2 (02:08):
You have been called a skeptic when it deals with
the afterlife, and you changed, of course, I'll come.
Speaker 3 (02:15):
Well, I was in the beginning a closed minded skeptic,
and it might be how I was raised. My parents
great people, but you had to see it to believe it,
and I think one of the things that really pushed
our family over the edge that none of this paranormal
stuff was real is we had a local psychic live
in the town that we lived in, and she made
(02:36):
this prediction that the Maid of the myths, you know,
the boat ride at Niagara Falls with capsize with a
boat full of deaf people aboard. It never happened, and
so in my mind that whole world was not real.
I felt sorry for people that needed to believe in
this spirituality. And I really do feel closed minded. I
(02:59):
thought it some but he had a near death experience
and they saw the light. It was just a normal
part of their brain shutting down. But I didn't take
any interest in even learning it. So that's what a
closed minded skeptic is. And thankfully I went through a
fear of dying, which was very scary, but it had
me open up to what else was possible. And so
(03:22):
I think I'm the perfect person to host Shades of
the Afterlife and tell the story because I never believed
it myself.
Speaker 2 (03:30):
But it was the sad death of your father that
really got you starting to believe and think about the afterlife,
wasn't it.
Speaker 3 (03:37):
Yeah? Absolutely, I had done a lot of research secretly
about the afterlife, even taking a class and mediumship, and
my poor dad was diagnosed with cancer and within five
months he passed. And just before he passed, George, I
felt this need that I had to share with him
some of my investigations. And Dad was very religious. I
(04:00):
went to church every single day, but I really felt
I had to get this off my chest about what
I learned about the afterlife. And so he loved me
and he was open, but he looked at me kind
of with one eye bigger than the other, like what
is she going to tell me? And so I told
him about my fear, some of the things I investigated,
And in that moment, George, all of a sudden, in
(04:22):
my mind's eye, I see a yellow Piper cub airplane,
a tail dragger with black letters, and I feel that
there's a man laughing and saying, tell your dad, I
did get to take my toys with me. Now, I'm
not a practicing medium, but I've taken plenty of courses
and I decided to share this with my dad. His
(04:45):
eyes filled with tears, George. He had a friend named
Jim who was fighting cancer and my dad kept saying
to him, Jim, you can beat this because you don't
get to bring your toys with you. What toy are
we talking about. Jim owned a yellow Piper cub airplane
with black letters exactly. And my dad wanted me to
(05:08):
tell him everything I learned, made me promise that I
write a book and share this with people. And I
never thought, you know, I'm smart enough to write a book.
But when Dad passed, of course grief kicked. In arguments
with my siblings, I found a whole world of why
we grieve, what happened in the body. Just being the
(05:30):
caring person I am, I thought, you know, other people
might like this information. So I created an audio called
how to Survive Grief, and I posted it on YouTube
and it went viral and people started writing me that
not only did it help them with their grief, but George,
people told me they chose not to end their lives
because of what I described in grief is there's a
(05:52):
lot out of our control in our brains. And so
it was the hardest time in my life around the
death of my father, but it taught me something so
important and that the world needs this information. And within months,
a publisher showed up. I got my book We Don't
Die published, and thanks to you and Tom, I've been
(06:13):
on coast to coast several times and it's really made
a difference in a lot of lives at.
Speaker 2 (06:19):
This point, do you have any doubts at all now
that the afterlife exists?
Speaker 3 (06:25):
I have zero doubts. However, I think all human beings
are not meant to realize that we go on twenty
four to seven, because I think there's this game called life,
and as difficult as it is, our soul grows during
the difficult times. It really does. Anybody can look back
(06:46):
on their past and some of the most horrendous things
that have happened have become growth spurts or times that
you've been able to help other people. And even the
tough time of my dad dying. I wouldn't be here
with you today had it not all happened. So I
don't live life all the time knowing the reality of
(07:07):
the afterlife. And it's not that I too that. It's
just I think we need to play this game called life.
So thankfully, every week I produce the show on Shades
that has me research and talk to people and keep
it real. For myself. I think we all need that.
Speaker 2 (07:24):
Do you try to convince skeptics?
Speaker 3 (07:28):
Heck no, I used to. But there's two kinds of skeptics.
There's a closed minded skeptic like I described myself in
the beginning, and there's not a single soul that could
have given me all the information that I now have
to convince me. That's a closed minded skeptic. They just
know better, big ego. And then there's open minded skeptics.
(07:52):
And our friend doctor Evan Alexander did a poll. They
took a whole bunch of open minded skeptics, like they
didn't believe in any of this, but they were open
and every single one of them believed in the afterlife,
especially from things like the verifiable information from near death experiences.
(08:13):
So it's not worth any of us trying to push
this on people. But there comes a time in each
one of our lives that we start asking ourselves these
big questions and we start looking for it.
Speaker 2 (08:25):
What do you think, Sandra, the afterlife looks like, Well.
Speaker 3 (08:30):
George, I think it looks very much like the world
we live in. And sometimes you look at birds and
flowers and plants and all kinds of beings here in nature,
and you think there's got to be a higher intelligence
to this. Really, even just looking at a beautiful sunrise
or sunset. And so our afterlife experience is going to
(08:54):
look very similar to what we have right here, right now.
It's going to be nice temperature, Our life ones will
be there, even our pets are there. We communicate telepathically,
we can create things in our mind and make them real.
There's places like the halls of learning where we can explore.
We can tap into places in the past. But I
(09:15):
think it's comforting for us because it's something we know.
We'll have houses there, jobs to do, so it will
be that feeling of being home.
Speaker 2 (09:28):
When people get there, are they confused or are they comfortable?
Are they greeted by others?
Speaker 3 (09:36):
Greeted yes, comfortable, yes? Confused maybe, and it would be
only brief, depending on how we pass. Sometimes some horrific
things happen to people, or there's great illness or an
accident of some kind, and all of a sudden they
find themselves in the hereafter and it's like, wait a minute,
(09:57):
where am I? So for some there could be a
little bit of time needed to just adjust, like I'm dead, okay,
But it feels more real than where I was before.
And then we see our loved ones. We get to
be our perfect health. We get to if we have
(10:18):
any kind of infirmities, they're no longer with us. We
get to be our perfect age. I've had it said
to me so many times that when we arrive in
the hereafter, and I like that term hereafter because I
think it's vibrating all around us. But when we arrive there,
it makes our life here on earth seem like just
a dream. That place, the afterlife, is home and we
(10:43):
know it that's reality, just like when we wake up
from a dream here we think, okay, this is real.
That dream was an illusion.
Speaker 2 (10:51):
What do you think came first, our physical life or
the afterlife.
Speaker 3 (10:58):
It's like the Chicken and the egg, And I sue,
it's the afterlife or the before life came first? And
I playfully paint this picture, not that it's the truth,
but it works for me. That there's a place that
all of our souls are and it's good all of
the time, and it's wonderful. But the problem with something
(11:21):
good all of the time is that it becomes boring.
We all know that to really experience joy, we need
to have experienced sadness. There needs to be the opposite.
So some wise soul or souls created this place, planet Earth.
Let's go there. You get to experience so much, you
(11:43):
get these great emotions. There's places to travel to, there's
people to be with. The only thing is is you're
going to forget that you're a divine soul and that
you'll be back here on home, coming home. And so
we come here to Earth and we forget who we
are and it's brutal. Oh my gosh. There is joy there,
(12:04):
most definitely is, and there is fun. But the biggest
life lessons come through the very toughest of times. So
that's what I think.
Speaker 2 (12:14):
I'm thinking of the actor ray Leoda, great actor who
is super and good fellows who died in this sleep.
When somebody dies in their sleep, Sandra, what happens do they?
Are they in a continuous dream state or just what
goes on?
Speaker 3 (12:33):
I've never heard a continuous dream state. I think dying
in our sleep is probably the most gentle way to go,
they say, And there's a lot of research on deathbed visitations.
In fact, doctor Christopher Kerr, a hostice doctor, study more
than sixteen hundred people, and before we pass, we have
(12:59):
what is called dreams, but people say they are just
as real as say the people that we see on
a day to day basis. So if we're happy and
cozy in bed in that dream like state, suddenly that
dream becomes extra real. There are our loved ones, there
are our pets, and we get the gentle news that
(13:22):
our visit to planet Earth is over. We can still
visit our loved ones, but we are now back home.
So I think it's a very good way to pass.
Speaker 2 (13:33):
Do we know we've died.
Speaker 3 (13:37):
Yes, we do. We do. There's stories of people who
say that there's earth bound spirits who don't know that
they've passed, and I've heard a few of those stories.
And for me, the audience that I speak to is
the grieving, a lot of grieving parents, and I don't
(14:00):
into the earth bound stuff. In my studies, they talk
about the power of prayer, and if there's ever any
question for anybody, if their loved one hasn't passed all
the way over, say a prayer, Imagine a beautiful white
light and imagine them going through it. And I think
(14:21):
that helps us more than it helps them, because I
think we're either here or there. We're never stuck. But
sometimes we need to be able to comfort ourselves here
on earth. And if something like that empower, you do it.
But love is all around us, and that, like I said,
that feeling of being home and that we are loved
(14:43):
is so special.
Speaker 2 (14:45):
Have you seen any surveys, Sandra that compare those who
believe with those who don't about the afterlife?
Speaker 3 (14:53):
Interesting, over seventy percent of the Earth's population believe in
the act after life. If we look at all forms
of religion, most like ninety nine percent believe that the
soul goes on. Even people that are atheists and may
(15:13):
not say that there's a god, they believe in some
kind of a higher intelligence of the universe or in nature,
and they're open to the fact that.
Speaker 2 (15:24):
We go on.
Speaker 3 (15:26):
We well, we know that energy cannot be destroyed. It
just can't be you know. So the burning log, even
though it's burnt, it turned into a different form, turned
into heat, or a puddle will change form and become
vapor and turn into a cloud. When we die, our
bodies die, we still go on. There's so much studies
(15:48):
into the verifiable evidence through near death experiences that our
consciousness can be other places in the world outside of
our body and witness what's happening. You know, there's no
brain activity. We are legally dead, so most people believe,
I think, George, we're just afraid to talk about it
(16:09):
because it's a human need to be liked and needed
and wanted. And I know for myself. When I first
decided to start talking to people about the afterlife, I
really thought I was going to lose family and friends,
and people thought would think I'm crazy, But just the
opposite happened, and people embraced it.
Speaker 2 (16:27):
When do those angels kick in? Did they visit us
when we die?
Speaker 3 (16:31):
I believe they do. I believe they're part of our
lives now. I believe that we have spirit guides. A
lot of people who pass who see their loved ones,
you know, these deathbed visions. They also see beautiful angels.
There's a whole world that I don't think our human
mind can get our heads around. So the best we
(16:51):
can have is faith and listen to good stories of
different reasons to believe in the afterlife. And you start
hearing so many of these from people, and you think
there has to be something more, And certainly the Angelic Realm. Absolutely.
Speaker 1 (17:09):
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