Contact the Other Side: Seven Methods for Afterlife Communication [Paperback]

Konstantinos (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 1, 2001

Engage in Seven powerful methods for speaking with the dead * From the author of Vampires: The Occult Truth, and Summoning Spirits * Contact deceased loved ones and other souls - speak with them, they're walting * Catch eluslve electronic voice phenomena on tape, and open up your telephone or computer to spirit voices * Speak with the dead using your mind alone, or draw in a soul close and communicate with it through a scrying tool * Involve others in afterlife communication through seances Whether you've been frustrated in the past by afterlife books that cite case studies but no usable methods, or are just now entering the world of paranormal communication, your search for proof is over. Contact The Other Side will guide you to the most awe-inspiring experiences you'll ever have while still alive.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

According to Konstantinos, practicing mystic and occult author, contacting the dead is easier than you might think. All that is required is some basic equipment, an open mind and a willingness to try any or preferably all of the seven methods he sets forth. Unfortunately, a number of the "simple" methods presented here are likely to appeal to only a small subset of technologically savvy amateur occultists. While Konstantinos's first method uses a simple tape recorder to capture "electronic voice phenomena," he soon escalates to using radio static and white noise; by method four, the reader is expected to be experimenting with noise reduction software and positive video feedback loops. Konstantinos's own reports of spirit contact offer little incentive for such heroic efforts; the idea of listening to hours of feedback and white noise on the chance of hearing a barely discernible voice whisper something like "Not solid... more thought, more reality" will probably repel all but the most dedicated seekers. For those who can set aside the suspicion that methods one through four are merely 21st-century updates of the photographic techniques employed by fraudulent or credulous Victorians, the second section, dedicated to more traditional psychic means of contact, is ironically more persuasive. Here Konstantinos's strengthsAhis earnestness, clarity and reasonable manner of explaining techniqueAoffset his somewhat scant presentation. Thanks to these qualities, the book should still find some fans among followers of the paranormal, technologically inclined or not. (Jan.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About the Author

Konstantinos is a recognized expert on occult, new age, and paranormal topics.  He has a bachelor's degree in journalism and technical writing from New York Polytechnic Institute.  He is a published author of articles and short fiction which have been featured in numerous publications including Popular Electronics, The Spook, and FATE Magazine.  Konstantinos is a popular lecturer on the paranormal at colleges and bookstores in the New York City area and he has appeared on CNBC's After Hours and The Ricki Lake Show.

A Dark Neopagan, Konstantinos has been researching the occult and practicing magick for over fifteen years. Born and raised in Long Island, New York, Konstantinos now devotes his time to writing, singing Gothic rock music, and exploring nocturnal life in New York City and around the country.

Konstantinos is also the author of Vampires: The Occult Truth, Summoning Spirits: The Art of Magical Evocation, Speak with the Dead: 7 Methods for Spirit Communication, Gothic Grimoire, Nocturnal Witchcraft, Nocturnicon: Calling Dark Forces and Powers, and the forthcoming Werewolves: The Occult Truth (September 2010).

Product Details

• Paperback: 240 pages
• Publisher: Llewellyn Publications; 1st edition (January 1, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1567183778
• ISBN-13: 978-1567183771
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 6 x 6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,534,427 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

24 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Interesting for a variety of reasons, March 26, 2001

By 

James Crain (Wildwood, MO United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Contact the Other Side: Seven Methods for Afterlife Communication (Paperback)

This could have been "Afterlife Communication for Everyone". It presents detailed descriptions of different ways of talking to people who have died. Four of these seven methods are based on the concept of electronic voice phenomena ['EVP', sometimes called 'ITC']. The other three methods are more traditional spiritualist methods. Konstantinos does not make any assumptions about what the reader may know already -- either about technology or about spirituality. He takes you step-by-step through the whole book.

The book's content is presented in a very organized, straight forward manner. Konstantinos writes clearly and in a consistently engaging manner. He comes across as very open about what he's observed and he tells the reader not to take what he says on faith but to try the things he describes. I found his attitude, as well as his style, refreshing in a book about the afterlife.

Konstantinos opens the book with a short description of the afterlife, which is reminiscent of the descriptions in Michael Newton's "Journey of Souls". Interestingly, Konstantinos then goes on to say that he has studied stage mentalist techniques and he denounces as fakes (without naming names) those mediums who make the talk show circuit giving cold readings. His point of view is that since everyone is able to communicate with deceased spirits for him- or herself, such mediums are unnecessary at best and con men at worst.

Konstantinos then moves on to a brief history of the EVP techniques the first four methods are based on, before presenting his first method for capturing spirit voices on an audio tape recorder. As the later methods are presented, they build on the ones presented earlier. The fourth method describes how to capture images from the afterlife on video tape. Konstantinos takes pains to make sure that readers have realistic expectations about the results of these methods, but he is obviously very enthusiastic about them. He wants readers to try the methods because of the experiences he's had using them.

The last three methods are completely non-technical. These sections cover scrying, "mind to mind" communication, and group communication (i.e., seances). These are so far beyond my experience that my only comments on them are that they make interesting reading and I enjoyed Konstantinos' description of his meeting with the spirit of his great-grandfather, whom he had never met while living.

Now, a few caveats. First, I have read this book through. Second, I have not tried any of the methods presented. Third, I have never tried - nor experienced - communicating with people who aren't alive. My motive for reading this book was simple curiousity.

How you will react to the material Konstantinos presents will depend on your philosophy. Those with a strong faith in the afterlife who are looking for a practical guide to methods of communicating with the dead will find step-by-step methods here. Naturally, I can't say how well they work because I haven't tried them.

Those with a strong interest in the afterlife who have already made a study of afterlife communication may not find much that's new. But bear in mind that I have not made such a study myself, so I can't say that with certainty either.

Those who are skeptical of the idea of an afterlife will find several targets. Konstantinos' description of how to analyze tape recordings made during an EVP session is sure to be taken as an example of a "Type I" error by statisticians. According to Konstantinos, what is necessary in analyzing EVP recordings is to search the tape (or computer file) for sounds that can then be interpreted as speech. This often takes several passes.

This is nothing more than "data searching". Konstantinos justifies it as a necessary step to getting results. But searching data to find desired patterns is poor scientific method. It brings to mind the equidistant letter searches [ELS] people use to find coded prophecies in the Torah. Or, perhaps more to the point, it brings to mind those who find messages in recordings which are played backward.

The real clincher about methodology, though, was Konstantinos' saying that it's sometimes necessary to change the sampling rate to understand the speech. That is, sometimes you need to speed up or to slow down the playback of the recording to understand it. Now, if you can take that kind of liberty to interpret your data - only because "that's what works" - then who knows what you might find in it?

Konstantinos wonders, early in the book, when mainstream science will pick up on EVP techniques. That will never happen until EVP analysis ceases to be subjective. While presenting his EVP methods, he describes how he has used computers in that work. This caused me to wonder what results could be found in his EVP recordings by running them through some decent voice recognition software. Or has this been tried already?

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Dubious Phenomena, September 1, 2002

By 

Sauropod (Tucson, AZ) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Contact the Other Side: Seven Methods for Afterlife Communication (Paperback)

Konstantinos' book on contacting the dead, mainly through EVP (electronic voice phenomena), contains some interesting information and is written in a straightforward, unpretentious style. The trouble is, the phenomena themselves don't seem all that impressive. If you doubt this, just go to the author's Web site (look up his name on a search engine and you'll get there) and play the WAV files of EVP he's captured. I think you'll find, as I did, that the "speech" he's recorded sounds more like random noise. The brain has a tendency to find patterns where none exist - we look at the moon and see a face, or hear some white noise and imagine a few scattered words. Unless EVP (and related phenomena, like video images) can be captured in a less ambiguous form, they will never be very persuasive. Incidentally, I was a little surprised by Konstantinos' diatribe against mediums at the start of his book. He ridicules the idea that the dead could be waiting in a TV studio to speak with their loved ones - but later on, he tells us that EVP researchers can pick up thousands of voices. If the dead are eager to cluster around Konstantinos' microphone, why wouldn't they be equally quick to drop in on John Edward's "Crossing Over" studio? Personally, I find mediumship, when it produces verifiable messages under controlled conditions, to be much more convincing than the screechy noises captured by EVP.

3.0 out of 5 stars Starts out Great, but Quickly Overreaches, May 24, 2011

By 

Michael A. Kleen "mikefall2" (Charleston, IL) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Contact the Other Side: Seven Methods for Afterlife Communication (Paperback)

Contact the Other Side is both a useful and a problematic book for any researcher of the paranormal. It is useful because of its easily accessible body of knowledge, including a practical guide to contemporary spiritualist methods, but problematic in its ready acceptance of testimony as evidence, as well as its author's rather colorful musings on alleged communication with the dead.

Alongside its seven methods for afterlife communication, this book offers a hefty dose of background information, potential pitfalls, and enough disclaimers to allow any reader to easily hedge his or her bets if the results described fail to materialize. For instance, he wrote in the introduction, "When first approaching the mystery, our minds are not ready to make first contact... Even those who claim to be believers may have contradictory subconscious feelings on the matter." (3) Translation: if any or all of the methods in this book fail to produce the desired results, it is because you are not "ready" for them, not because they simply don't work.

Years ago, a man named John Edward made millions with several books and a TV show in which he claimed the psychic ability to communicate with the dead. In Chapter 2 of Contact the Other Side, the author exposed Edward's technique, known as `cold reading.' This was, I believe, one of the most valuable moments of the book. Konstantinos carefully laid out every trick and technique available to cold readers (Try it on your friends!). I recommend reading this chapter and then going back and watching old episodes of Crossing Over. You will be amazed at how obvious the illusion becomes.

If there is anything scientific about Contact the Other Side, it is the author's contention that everything is his book can be performed by anyone. Like any scientific experiment, anyone with the tools and the prerequisite knowledge can perform the `experiments' inside. Here there is no need for mediums, intermediaries, or psychic powers. Although there is, as the author reminds us time and time again, a need for each individual person to genuinely believe that communication with the dead is possible. That is where faith enters and science departs.

Another valuable part of this book is the brief overview of the history of modern spirit communication, particularly Electronic Voice Phenomenon, or EVP. Ever since humanity discovered the miracle of electricity and electronic communication, there have been those who have tried to use the technology to speak to the dead. From Thomas Edison to Friedrich Jurgenson, the author gave his readers a valuable and seldom-explained history of the phenomenon.

Where Konstantinos fell off the deep end is when he began to describe the alleged spirit communication. Not just a few words or sentences, mind you, but this author related entire conversations with `technicians' from the afterlife, alongside elaborate descriptions of what the afterlife is like. He even went so far as to delineate between a New Agey heaven and hell (the Summer Realm and the Low Realm) and even described what the spirits of the dead like to do in their free time!

If you are looking for an interesting book that will challenge your thoughts on spiritualism, technology, and ghost research, then this book is for you. Despite its many faults, Contact the Other Side is one of the better books out there on this subject. Just take everything you read with a grain of salt.