The Lovely Bones: Murder Victims in the Afterlife
The Lovely Bones is a luscious film about an angelic fourteen-year-old girl who is murdered and how she tries to reach her family from the afterdeath state. Many of the basic premises the film works with are similar to what I’ve seen from murder victims on the other side. Most victims stay close to this world rather than fully freeing themselves into the afterlife because they are trying to reach us to explain what happened. This is especially true in instances where the wrong person is accused of the crime. The need can be extreme. In an attempt to communicate, I have seen them literally emerge from their pictures, whether from a family photo or from a picture of them on TV during news broadcasts of their deaths, and start sending information to anyone who can pick it up. In general, the deceased will try to reach us in most cases of sudden and unexpected deaths, such as death caused by an accident or an unforeseen heart problem. In fact, they are often desperate to make contact. Their stories are usually charged with emotion, vivid and full of amazing details about their very last moments and the passage itself. Most of us think of afterdeath communication as primarily benefiting the living. But the dead often need to communicate just as much as we do and sometimes more.
