When the Silver Cord is Severed

      Or ever the silver cord be loosed, or the golden bowl be broken, or the pitcher be broken at the fountain, or the wheel broken at the cistern. Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was: and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it.  - Ecclesiastes 12:6-7

       One Bible reference suggests that the above Old Testament passage be interpreted by taking the "silver cord" to mean the marrow of the backbone, the "golden bowl" to mean the membrane that covers the brain, the "pitcher" to mean the veins of the body, the "fountain" to mean the liver, the "wheel" to mean the head, and the "cistern" to mean the heart out of which the head draws the power of life.

      I infer from Ecclesiastes that the loosening of the "silver cord" is one of several ways by which the physical body and spirit body separate at the time of death, perhaps referring to old age.   Clairvoyants and out-of-body travelers, however, see the severance of the silver cord involved in every kind of death.

       Frederic W. H. Myers, the Cambridge scholar who became a pioneering psychical researcher, communicated extensively through the mediumship of Geraldine Cummins of Ireland, considered perhaps the most famous and credible automatic writing medium ever, after his death in 1901.  Myers referred to the spirit body as the double, explaining that it is an exact counterpart of the physical shape.  "The two are bound together by many little threads, by two silver cords," Myers explained.  "One of these makes contact with the solar plexus, the other with the brain.  They all may lengthen or extend during sleep or during half-sleep, for they have considerable elasticity.  When a man slowly dies these threads and two cords are gradually broken.  Death occurs when these two principal communicating livens with brain and solar plexus are severed."

       Myers went on to explain that life occasionally lingers in certain cells of the body after the soul has departed.   "The double still adheres to the shell by means of certain of the threads which have not yet been broken," he continued.  "The soul does not suffer in the physical sense if thus delayed in his journey.  He may suffer in the sense that he has, thereby, a greater awareness of the immediate surroundings of his physical body.  It gives him the power to perceive his friends and relations wherever this worn-out garment lies.  As a rule, however, he obtains complete freedom from earth's detaining grasp within an hour - or a few hours - of death."

       The soul slowly rises into the double and for a brief time hovers above the physical shell, Myers further explained, adding that a "little white cloud" or "pale essence" can be discerned by some. 

      Estelle Roberts, one of England's most famous mediums, recalled being at the bedside of her husband, Hugh, as he died.  "I looked again at dear Hugh, recalling the happiness we had enjoyed together, and while I sat there I saw his spirit leave the body.  It emerged from the back of his head and gradually molded itself into an exact replica of his earthly body.  It remained suspended about a foot above the body, lying in the same position, and attached to it by a cord to the head.  Then the cord broke and the spirit form floated away, passing through the wall."

        Roberts also reported hearing strange, terrifying noises as if someone was "rending linen" and occasionally sounding like the cracking of a whip.  This apparently the spirit body breaking loose from the physical body. 

        In his 1929 book, A Curious Life, George Wehner, a trance medium and clairvoyant from Detroit, Michigan, tells of his many mediumistic experiences and other paranormal observations, including the passing of his mother.  "A misty blue-white form, the counterpart of my mother's, but radiant, like a blue-white diamond's flame, was slowly rising from her body on the bed," he wrote.  "This form lifted at an angle, the feet rising higher than the head, which remained attached to the physical head.  The form now seemed to try to free itself, and after several tugs, the misty head separated from the body's head, and the freed form righted itself in the air exactly as a log rights itself after it has been dropped into deep water.  For a second, I saw several arms and hands materialize in the air and reach downward to welcome the new-born soul.  Then, like a shadow, the spirit-form of my beloved mother glided rapidly upward through a corner of the ceiling."

        In his 1916 book, Raymond or Life and Death, Sir Oliver Lodge, the esteemed British physicist and radio pioneer, in a séance with medium Gladys Osborne Leonard, discussed the subject with Raymond, his deceased son who had been killed on the battlefield in France.  Raymond told him that the body doesn't start mortifying until the spirit has left it.  He went on to tell his father that he had witnessed a scene several days earlier in which a man was going to be cremated two days after the doctor pronounced him dead.  "When his relatives on this side heard about it, they brought a certain doctor on our side, and when they saw that the spirit hadn't got really out of the body, they magnetized it, and helped it out," Raymond explained through Feda, Leonard's control.  "But there was still a cord, and it had to be severed rather quickly, and it gave a little shock to the spirit, like as if you had something amputated.  But it had to be done." 

       Raymond suggested that there should be a seven-day waiting period before cremation.  "People are so careless," he said.  "The idea seems to be ‘hurry up and get them out of the way now that they are dead."

       There have been other reports of difficulties in "giving up the ghost."  In Zeitschrift fuer Parapsychologie, a clairvoyant man who preferred to remain anonymous reported  sitting at his dying wife's bedside and seeing an "odic body" take form over his wife's physical body.  It was connected to the physical body by a "cord of od."  The arms and legs of this odic body were flailing and kicking as if struggling to get free and escape.  Finally, after about five hours, the fatal moment came at last.  "There was a sound of gasping," the man reported.  "The odic body writhed to and fro, and my wife's breathing ceased.  To all appearances she was dead, but a few moments later she began to breathe again.  After she had drawn her breath twice, everything became quiet.  At the instant of her last breath, the connecting cord broke and the odic body vanished."

         Communicating through the direct-voice mediumship of Lillian Bailey, Bill Wootton, a World War I victim, described the life cord this way:  "It is a silver cord which is thick.  It glows and glistens. From it we can tell the health of  persons.  When we see their cord getting very thin until it's right down to a hair's breadth, we know that the physical body is not going to be held very long by that spiritual cord."

       Wootton said the cord emerges from the pineal gland in the head and extends to the solar plexus.  "It is the life force that belongs to the spirit YOU,  which pours in through the glands and makes the body work."   When death takes place, the cord is severed as if a rope were snapping at a worn-out point, Wootton added.  

        Wellesley Tudor Pole, another British medium, reported on his experiences as he sat with a dying friend, whom he refers to as "Major P."  Death seemed close at hand as Major P. remained unconscious.  Pole noticed a shadowy form hovering in a horizontal position about two feet above the bed.  "This form is attached to the physical body on the bed by two transparent elastic cords," Pole recorded at 3 p.m.  "One of them appears to be attached to the solar plexus and the other to the brain.  As I watch this form it grows more distinct in outline, until I can see that it is an exact counterpart, so far as the form is concerned, of the body on the bed.  I can see what looks like spiral currents passing up through these two cords, and as the physical body grows more lifeless, the form hovering above seems to become more vital." 

      At 3:40 p.m., Pole noted that the "double" had become more distinct  and that he could see the currents passing through the cords gathering greater momentum.  "The life-force is steadily ebbing out of the body, and is apparently passing into the form above."

       At 3:55 p.m. Pole observed two figures stoop down over the bed and break the cords at points close to the physical body.  "Immediately I see that the form or double rises about two feet from its original position, but remains horizontal, and at this same moment Major P.'s heart stop beating."

         Similar reports come from those who have had a near-death experience (NDE).  Long before Dr. Raymond Moody published his findings on NDEs, Dr. A. S. Wiltse, a Skiddy, Kansas physician, reported a personal experience that was no doubt a NDE, as he suffered from typhoid fever.  He was informed by his attending physician, Dr. S. H. Raynes, that he was without pulse or perceptible heartbeat for about four hours. "Dr. Raynes informs me, however, that by bringing his eyes close to my face, he could perceive an occasional short gasp, so very light as to be barely perceptible, and that he was upon the point, several times of saying, ‘He is dead,' when a gasp would occur in time to check him."

      During the time that he appeared to be dead, Wiltse curiously observed what was going on.  "With all the interest of a physician, I beheld the wonders of my bodily anatomy, intimately interwoven with which, even tissue for tissue, was I, the living soul of that dead body.  I learned that the epidermis was the outside boundary of the ultimate tissues, so to speak, of the soul.  I realized my condition and reasoned calmly thus.  I have died, as men term death, and yet I am as much a man as ever.   I am about to get out of the body.  I watched the interesting process of the separation of soul and body.  By some power, apparently not my own, the Ego was rocked to and fro, laterally, as a cradle is rocked, by which process its connection with the tissues of the body was broken up.  After a little time the lateral motion ceased, and long the soles of the feet beginning at the toes, passing rapidly to the heels, I felt and heard, as it seemed, the snapping of innumerable small cords. When this was accomplished, I began slowly to retreat from the feet, toward the head, as a rubber cord shortens.  I remember reaching the hips and saying to myself, ‘Now, there is no life below the hips.'"  

     Dr. Wiltse could not recall passing through the abdomen or chest, but he recollected that his "whole self" was collected into his head.  He appeared to himself something like a jelly-fish in color and form and remembered thinking that he would soon be free. 

     "As I emerged from the head, I floated up and down and laterally like a soap bubble attached to the bowl of a pipe until I at last broke loose from the body and fell lightly to the floor, where I slowly arose and expanded into the full stature of a man. I seemed to be translucent, of a bluish cast and perfectly naked.  With a painful sense of embarrassment, I fled toward the partially opened door to escape the eyes of the two ladies whom I was facing, as well as others who I knew were about me, but upon reaching the door I found myself clothed, and satisfied upon that point, I turned and faced the company."

       Wiltse recalled being surprised at how pale the body looked but congratulated himself on the way he had composed his body, his hands clasped at his chest. He marveled at how well he was feeling, when only minutes before he was in extreme distress.  He then looked back through the open door, where he could see his body.  "I discovered then a small cord, like a spider's web, running from my shoulders (of the spirit body) back to my body and attaching to it at the base of my neck in front."

       Since Wiltse returned to life, the cord apparently was not severed.

       Much more recently, Dr. Peter Fenwick of England and his wife, Elizabeth Fenwick, quote one NDEr as feeling "like a kite on an endless string."  This "cord" seemed to be attached to the back and the person could feel it pulling her back into her body.

       Another NDEr told the Fenwicks that although he could not see his body, he could see that he was attached by a light grey rope.

       Dr. Sam Parnia, another NDE researcher, was told by an experiencer that she found herself standing beside herself looking at a cord that connected her to her body and thinking how thin and wispy it was. 

      In effect, the silver cord appears to be the counterpart of the umbilical cord.   While the umbilical cord must be severed when we come into the material world, the silver cord must be severed when we return to the real world.  

Notice:  Dark Lore III is now available from Amazon.com  I have contributed one of the 14 stories to this anthology concerning the paranormal. My contribution is on the Glastonbury Scripts, which involved the excavation of the Glastonbury Abbey ruins in England.   Frederick Bligh Bond, the architect and archaeologist hired in 1907 to excavate the ruins, decided to employ a medium and contact long-dead monks who had lived at the abbey for information as to where to dig.  Over a period of some 12 years, interrupted by World War I, Bond received more than 60 messages from the monks directing his excavations.  Many of them were exact to the inch.  Some, however, were a little off due to overlapping construction over the centuries.

       The other 13 stories touch upon a wide variety of paranormal subjects.  Nick Redfern gives a different spin to the Roswell E.T. theory.  Greg Taylor, the editor of the anthology,  discusses some of the pre-Raymond Moody near-death experiences, including that of Dr. George Ritchie, whose NDE inspired Moody's 1975 best-seller.  Greg Bishop presents the very intriguing story of Dr. Mario Tazzaglini, who is said to have channeled aliens. Neil Arnold investigates the monsters of Dutch folklore, while Theo Paijmans gets to the occult roots of Nazi Technology and Robert Bauval searches for the secrets of Menkaure, builder of the third pyramid of Giza.  Other contributors include Mike Jay, Philip Coppens, Blair MacKenzie Blake, Robert Schoch, Geoff Falla, Adam Gorightly, and "The Emperor," with the subjects ranging from the "Philadelphia Experiment" to ancient biblical sites.  Check it out at