People Who Don't Know They're Dead: How They Attach Themselves to Unsuspecting Bystanders and What to Do About It [Paperback]

Gary Leon Hill (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 20, 2005

In People Who Don't Know They're Dead, Gary Leon Hill tells a family story of how his Uncle Wally and Aunt Ruth, Wally's sister, came to counsel dead spirits who took up residence in bodies that didn't belong to them. And in the telling, Hill elucidates much of what we know, or think we know, about life, death, consciousness, and the meaning of the universe.

When people die by accident, in violence, or maybe they're drunk, stoned, or angry, they get freeze-framed. Even if they die naturally but have no clue what to expect, they might not notice they're dead. It's frustrating to see and not be seen. It's frustrating to not know what you're supposed to do next. It's especially frustrating to be in someone else's body and think it's your own. That's if you're dead. If you're alive and that spirit has attached itself to you, well that's a whole other set of frustrations.

Hill has woven this fascinating story with the history and theory of what happens at death, with particular emphasis on the last 40 years and the work of various groundbreaking thinkers whose work helps inform our idea of what it is to live and to die.

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

"If you ever thought about this possibility before then People Who Don't Know They're Dead will delight, inform, and answer some nagging questions about the hereafter. It is filled with some great insights about what happens to us all when we pass through the physical plane and why some of us get stuck." -Fred Alan Wolf, Ph.D., National Book Award winning author of TheSpiritual Universe, audio CDs, and featured star in the movie What the Bleep Do We Know

About the Author

Gary Leon Hill is an award-winning playwright, whose plays have been produced around the country and collected in several published volumes. He is the recipient of a Pew National Endowment and other prestigious grants. Among his plays are Say Grace and Sound Bite, a play based in part on the story of Ruth and Wally's work among the spirits. All of Hill's work reflects his interest in mind, memory, consciousness, and reality. He has worked as a filmmaker, a journalist, a photographer, a transcriber, and an editor.

Product Details

• Paperback: 183 pages
• Publisher: Red Wheel Weiser (June 20, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1578632978
• ISBN-13: 978-1578632978
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.5 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #608,236 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

28 of 32 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Be sure you know what you're getting, August 1, 2005

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C. Church "dagmar" (West Hollywood, CA United States) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: People Who Don't Know They're Dead: How They Attach Themselves to Unsuspecting Bystanders and What to Do About It (Paperback)

The book is more a story of one family's exploration of the attached-ghost phenomena, and less a story about what to do about it. It's good as a folksy biography, but there isn't a lot of self-help stuff, as the title implies. Overall it's an interesting spin on ghosts and their influence on human psychology, one that I hadn't heard before.

26 of 32 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Interesting But Confusing, January 28, 2006

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driven - See all my reviews

This review is from: People Who Don't Know They're Dead: How They Attach Themselves to Unsuspecting Bystanders and What to Do About It (Paperback)

The title of this book intrigued me. It's not everyday that you read about "People Who Don't Know They're Dead".

This book definitely makes you think. In fact, while reading it, I got a paranoid feeling that there could be dead people all around me at any given time. But I also thought that, if that were true, why don't they contact the living more often? And after being ignored for such a long time by the living why do these dead people never catch on to the fact that they are dead? Or do they? This is where the book raises more questions than it answers.

The author also strays off of the spiritual path several times and goes into other subjects like how DNA and pendulums work.

Another part that bothered me is the fact that spirit possession was blamed for a lot of the living's unsavory behavior. It strikes me as dangerous and irresponsible to me to place the blame for drug and alcohol addiction on forces outside of ourselves. As for criminal behavior, if spirit possession were to become a viable defence in court, we'd have a lot more rapists and murderers walking around our streets.

I think it's important to realize that just because information is channeled through a medium doesn't necessary make that information true. Spirits can lie too. (If you've ever used a Ouija board you know this.)

Ghost stories and hauntings are fun to read about. And I'm convinced that there are some restless spirits out there that are yet to find their peace. But let's not blame every whim or mood swing we experience on the undead.

20 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Very Interesting, But Ideas Are a Bit Scattered, August 15, 2005

By 

Katie "book worm" (PA , USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: People Who Don't Know They're Dead: How They Attach Themselves to Unsuspecting Bystanders and What to Do About It (Paperback)

I found "People Who Don't Their Dead" to be a very interesting book. The only downfall was that the author tends to jump around quite a bit, and so the ideas seemed a bit "scattered" to me. However, even with this "downfall", I think it's definitely a worthwhile read.

This book covers many diverse ideas & experiences, but the main theme is that many people who die don't have a clue as to what has happened to them because our society does not make an effort to teach us what to expect - and, since we are still "alive" after death, and appear to still have a body, many people don't realize that they've transitioned to the "Other Side". The idea is that this is the cause for earth-bound spirits or ghosts.

The author also discusses in depth the theory re: "hitchhikers" - the idea that those entites who don't move on after death tend to "reside" in the bodies of loved ones, those addicted to the same substances, and really anyone who had lost conciousness during the same time period that the deceased left their own body. I'm not sure what I believe re: this, but it's an intriguing theory.

So, how do we get rid of these unwanted visitors? A form of spirit counseling is described where someone explains to the spirit that they are dead, and that it's time to move on. A counseling "template" is provided.

Overall, this book kept my interest, and I would highly recommend it to anyone who's interested in the "paranormal".