Cast

These 4 New York Times best-selling authors leap into the mystery of life beyond death and after death communication (ADC.)

DANNION BRINKLEY, author of SAVED BY THE LIGHT. He was struck by lightning and was clinically deceased for a half hour with no heartbeat, no breath and no pulse. He revived and insists life after death is a fact.

WHITLEY STRIEBER, author of COMMUNION, TRANSFORMATION and THE COMING GLOBAL SUPERSTORM, has concluded that some mediums do communicate with spirits of the dead. He has received extraordinary readings from Glennys MacKay, who is in this film.

RICHARD MATHESON, author of WHAT DREAMS MAY COME (starring Robin Williams), SOMEWHERE IN TIME, I AM LEGEND and many others best-selling books and major films, believes deceased loved ones sometimes communicate with us in our dreams. He states in this film that he has concluded that the late Forrest J Ackerman, who in life was a skeptic, actually has engaged in After Death Communication (ADC) with the director of this film and others.

DR. MICHAEL SHERMER, author of WHY PEOPLE BELIEVE WEIRD THINGS and THE BELEIVING BRAIN, and editor of Skeptic Magazine, claims that there is no solid, scientific evidence of an afterlife. However, he says that if proof is found, it will not be something “supernatural”; it will be understood through quantum physics or other scientific theories that explain reality, and it would eventually become an additional chapter in science textbooks.

Forrest J Ackerman

FORREST J ACKERMAN, the late Founding Father of Contemporary Science-Fiction, first editor of Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine, author, actor, scholar, agent, writer and lord of the Ackermansion, the greatest collector's museum for sci-fi, fantasy and horror memorabilia. He coined the term sci-fi. The strange, apparent contacts from him from ‘The Other Side’ began the weekend of a huge tribute for him at the Egyptian Theatre in Los Angeles.

2 cast members doing state-of-the-art life after death research.

DR. GARY SCHWARTZ, Professor of Psychology and Medicine at the University of Arizona in Tucson, has a background of teaching at both Harvard and Yale. He is the author of THE SACRED PROMISE and many other books. He argues that his University-sponsored research of over 15 years shows that some mediums actually do receive information from the spirits of deceased persons, and he has developed computer software that he says holds the promise of facilitatin such contacts now and in the future.

MARK MACY, author of MIRACLES IN THE STORM and other books, was a skeptic when he went to Europe to investigate a group claiming successful After Death Communication. The evidence he encountered there convinced him, and he says he has received actual phone calls from the deceased Constantine Raudive, a forerunner of afterlife communication research. He explores the new field of instrumental trans-communication (ITC) which purports to show that departed spirits can contact us using our technology.

MARK MACY'S face was distorted by multiple cameras during our interview. The reasons are unknown, but speculation is that it was actual ITC interference during filming.

World-Class chemists baffled by the mysterious inkblot message.

DR. JAY SIEGEL, Chairman of the Chemistry Department at Indiana University/Purdue University, says there are some things that cannot be explained by science, and he concludes that the mysterious inkblot in “The Life After Death Project” is one of them. He is a chemical specialist in the field of inks, paints and solvents, and he has been an expert witness on chemistry in dozens of trials.

DR. JOHN ALLISON, Professor of Chemistry at The College of New Jersey, spent three years researching and trying unsuccessfully to duplicate the mysterious inkblot that Paul Davids claims is After Death Communication from Forrest J Ackerman. He admits he is still baffled by the unsolved mystery, and he reports strange and inexplicable incidents happening to him since beginning this research, including a broken clock that chimes, papers scattering around a room and a cell phone repeatedly bouncing off a mantle and coffee table.

Other Experts

DR. CLAUDE SWANSON is an MIT and Princeton educated physicist. He is the author of THE SYCHRONIZED UNIVERSE and LIFE FORCE: THE SCIENTIFIC BASIS, and he has done extensive research into the physics of the “paranormal.”

DR. LEO SPRINKLE, a professor of meteorology at the University of Wyoming and a psychologist, has researched unusual phenomena and paranormal claims as an avocation throughout his career. He is a scholar of traditions of belief in life after death throughout history, and he has done research into theories of reincarnation using hypnosis.

Experiencers of apparent spirit phenomena

IAN JOHNSTON and MIKE MACDONALD are Canadian filmmakers who made a biographical film about Forrest J Ackerman. They were the first people experience unexplained phenomena connected to Ackerman, on March 7, 2008, the day they visited his crypt and then attended the tribute for Ackerman at the Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood.

PHYLLIS GALDE is the publisher of FATE Magazine, the oldest American publication still being published that deals with reports of the strange and unknown. She believes that throughout her life she has had contact with spirits of deceased persons, especially relatives.

DR. LYNNE D. KITEI, M.D., is a Phoenix medical doctor who presents in this film, for the first time, physical evidence of contact from her deceased mother that occurred precisely ten years from the date of her mother’s passing.

JOE MOE is a Hawaiian writer, editor and musician who was assistant and caretaker / caregiver for Forrest J Ackerman during the last decade of Ackerman’s life. Although he considers himself a skeptic, he experienced a sort of apparition of Ackerman appearing to thank him for his work on the Ackerman tribute at the Egyptian Theatre Tribute.

SEAN FERNALD is a film producer and music supervisor who experienced unexplained phenomena connected with the late Forrest J Ackerman.

RHONDA EKLUND SCHWARTZ has assisted her husband, Dr. Gary Schwartz, in his afterlife research, and she wrote a book, LOVE ETERNAL, about her experiences of contact from her deceased mother. One of those contacts provided her with the location of a missing insurance policy.

JUSTIN KNAUSE has lived in the remodeled Ackermansion, which was once the site of Ackerman’s immense collection of science-fiction, fantasy and horror memorabilia. He claims that the house is haunted, and that he has witnessed the shadowy form of a ghost moving about a room. He also reports awareness of a continuing ghostly spirit of a non-threatening entity.

SUZANNE RICK is a singer and actress who has lived in the remodeled Ackermansion. She has experienced unexplained phenomena there, such as pages of music on a music stand being scattered to the floor repeatedly while she has left her rehearsal room for short periods. She speculates with humor that perhaps Forry Ackerman does not care for her singing.

TODD E. MILLS is a real estate entrepreneur and manufacturer of various inventions. He loaned the director of this film a tribal mask from Africa as an art object. Anomalous electro-magnetic fields were measured around the mask the day after the mysterious inkblot message appeared in the same house. All of Mr. Mills’ slides of the mask being danced in Africa have vanished without a trace for years – the only ones of his thousands of slides that are missing.

SIR ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE was the prolific British author who created Sherlock Holmes. He had a consuming interest in psychic contact with the dead and séances and was convinced that life after death is real and that he experienced genuine contact with deceased persons. His claims and beliefs are covered in “The Life After Death Project” through archival material.

Psychics

GLENNYS MACKAY is an ordained spiritual minister, clairvoyant, medium, healer and metaphysical teacher and lecturer. Her psychic reading for author Whitley Strieber left him convinced of her abilities to bring genuine messages from deceased persons. She gives a reading connected to Forrest J Ackerman in the film.

CATHERINE YUNT had a lifelong career as a high school math teacher when she discovered her psychic abilities. Her gift for giving psychic readings, including contact with the dead, has been studied by Dr. Gary Schwartz in a university-sponsored program. She gives a reading connected to Forrest J Ackerman in the film.

ORIT ISH YEMINI TOMER is well known in Israel as a psychic who gives very accurate and specific readings, including messages from and about deceased persons. She has traveled to the U.S. to participate in research by Dr. Gary Schwartz, and she gives a reading connected to Forrest J Ackerman in the film.

CARL LANGSPECHT is a clairvoyant in Albuquerque, New Mexico, who has experienced strange phenomena with apparent spirits, including what he calls “aports” (physical materializations of objects) and inexplicable physical movement of objects, such as a book popping off a bookshelf that he concludes (because of its title "Hello from Heaven") was a message from his deceased mother.

Narrators

SCOT JOHNSON is a scientist at Los Alamos National Laboratories who played Sherlock Holmes in a community theater play in Los Alamos. He believes anomalous incidents occurred to him on the day he was filmed for the “Boat of the Afterlife” sequence in this film.

JUANITA SENA-SHANNON is an actress who starred in another film directed by Paul Davids: “Before We Say Goodbye.” She appears with Scot Johnson in “The Life After Death Project” to introduce various types of afterlife phenomena and beliefs of various cultures.

Others

CASEY WONG met Forrest J Ackerman when he was four years old, when his father took him to see the collection of memorabilia in the Ackermansion. He now works as a special makeup effects artist and sculptor in Hollywood, and he has done various sculptures of Ackerman, whom he looks up to as his mentor. He reports on Ackerman’s skepticism and Ackerman’s promise to contact friends if, after death, he discovered he had been mistaken.

DENNIS BILLOWS was both an assistant and archivist for Forrest J Ackerman as well as an early contributor to Ackerman's Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine.

DEBORAH PAINTER is an environmental scientist from Virginia who knew Forrest J Ackerman and wrote a biography of his life called FORRY. She reports on the history of phenomena in the Ackermansion, dating back to when actor Jon Hall lived there, who starred as Ramar in the Ramar of the Jungle TV episodes.

EARL ROESEL was an assistant to Forrest J Ackerman who was present when Ackerman passed away. He notes that the time of Ackerman’s death (two or three minutes to midnight) was predicted in a painting made of him in 2004, four years before his death. That painting has become the poster for “The Life After Death Project.”