Afterlives of the Rich and Famous Read online

  Afterlives of the

  Rich and Famous

  Sylvia Browne

  with Lindsay Harrison

  From Sylvia and Lindsay:

  For you, Steve—

  we truly hope you’ve found

  everyone you’re looking for

  over there

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Introduction

  Death . . . and Then What?

  Glossary

  The Celebrities

  Acknowledgments

  Also by Sylvia Browne

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Introduction

  This book is about current events in the lives of celebrities who’ve passed away, as reported by a “resident expert” on the Other Side whose name is Francine. Two obvious questions probably leap to mind: “Who’s Francine?” and “Since these celebrities are dead, doesn’t that pretty much mean they’re doing nothing?” Believe me, if I didn’t have good answers to those questions, this book wouldn’t exist.

  As for the first question, Francine is my Spirit Guide. Like your Spirit Guide and everyone else’s, she’s been with me all my life. You’ll find a complete definition of Spirit Guides and what they do for us in the glossary, so for now I’ll just tell you about her.

  I was born psychic, with an inherited ability to “tune in” to the spirit world of the Other Side. At first, starting when I was five years old, I was only clairvoyant—that is, able to see spirits (and I wasn’t exactly thrilled about it, believe me). But then one night when I was eight, I discovered with an equal lack of glee that I was also clairaudient, or able to hear spirits, as well, when a chirpy, high-pitched voice came crashing into my bedroom and announced, “Don’t be afraid, Sylvia. I come from God.”

  My beloved, brilliantly psychic Grandmother Ada explained, after prying her terrified granddaughter from around her legs, that the voice was simply my Spirit Guide introducing herself, that we all have Spirit Guides, and that they’re around to gently help us navigate our way through these brief trips away from Home. And so, tentatively at first, I began communicating with Francine. Throughout our sixty-five years together she’s never lied to me, never betrayed me, and never steered me wrong (I took care of that on my own). She’s also been a fascinating, invaluable source of volumes of information about the afterlife.

  It’s a requirement of all Spirit Guides that they’ve incarnated—otherwise, our problems, worries, and missteps on earth would be incomprehensibly trivial to them, living as they do in the blissful perfection of the Other Side and seeing everything that happens through the perspective of eternity. Francine (who introduced herself as Ilena, which I apparently didn’t like and promptly changed to Francine) only chose to incarnate once, as an Aztec-Incan woman who died at the age of nineteen, in 1520, saving her infant daughter from a spear during the Spanish invasion of Colombia. She’s accompanying me through this lifetime as a result of a mutual agreement we made at Home, before I decided to come to earth again for the fifty-secondth and last time.

  I’ve communicated with Francine every day of my life since I was eight, and I love everything about her but her voice. Like everyone in the spirit world, she lives on a plane that exists on a much higher frequency than ours, with the result that when she talks, she sounds like a tape recording played on fast-forward. I intend no disrespect—I’m deeply grateful for her guidance and for the fact that I can hear her—but it took me a while to even be able to understand her, and after just a few short sentences, listening to her can be downright irritating.

  When I was in my late teens, I began wishing that other people could hear the wealth of wisdom she had to offer without subjecting myself to hours of that annoying, chirpy, Alvin-and-the-Chipmunks voice. She came up with the perfect solution: with my permission, she could borrow my body and my vocal cords and, instead of talking to me, she could talk through me. In other words, by going into a trance and essentially “stepping aside” temporarily, I could channel her, for as long or short a time as I wanted, with no risk to me whatsoever. I wouldn’t have any memory of what she said while I was “gone,” but she could give talks and lectures without driving me or others crazy, and people could record her on tape if I wanted to check out what went on in my absence.

  I wanted no part of it when she first suggested it—I wasn’t about to turn over control of my body and voice to anyone, thank you, not even to someone I trusted as much as I had come to trust her. But I finally agreed to try it, if only to prove her wrong, find out I hated it, and determine never to let it happen again.

  As always, she was right. It was so harmless that there was nothing about it for me to hate, and I’ve been routinely channeling Francine ever since, going through the simple process of announcing her impending arrival, closing my eyes, and letting my spirit “take a break” from my body, so that she can “come in.” Her voice is mine, of course, but her speech pattern is slower, her vocabulary and knowledge far exceed mine, and as a resident of the Other Side she’s able to give eyewitness accounts of everyone and everything that goes on there.

  Throughout the years she’s given countless lectures to groups ranging from ten people to thousands, and she’s provided an inexhaustible amount of extraordinary, profound information for any number of my books. She doesn’t participate when I give readings, largely because she usually responds to earthly problems (including mine) with the accurate but unhelpful assurance, “Everything will work out as it’s meant to.” It frustrates me, so I can only imagine how it would frustrate my clients.

  For decades now, after certain celebrities have passed away, I’ve had calls from the press asking for my psychic input on anything those celebrities might have to say or any information I had to offer about their lives or transition to their afterlives. Francine contributed an enormous amount of that information. And I don’t mind admitting that over the years I’ve checked with Francine many times about “deceased” celebrities I especially loved (or, in one case in particular, especially didn’t). Slowly but surely, with an emphasis on “slowly,” it occurred to me that a book about celebrity afterlives might be of interest to a wide variety of people, from their fans to their families. I began assembling brief biographies, and those were fascinating enough all by themselves—even while putting together biographies of celebrities whose lives I would have sworn I knew all about, I kept thinking, “I didn’t know that.”

  And then, while my friend and assistant, Linda, sat beside me with a tape recorder running, I channeled Francine and let Linda ask question after question, late celebrity after late celebrity. What you’ll find in this book, then, is a collection of biographies and Francine’s comments, transcribed and edited from the tapes of those trance sessions, as much or as little as she had to say about each name that came up, unless it was too indiscreet to include. (Francine has no filters when it comes to answering questions.) I’m not kidding about “as much or as little as she had to say,” either, believe me. When she was finished talking about someone, she was finished, no matter how many more questions Linda asked her, sometimes because that’s all there is and sometimes because, frankly, apathy might set in on Francine’s part. “We all love each other here,” she explained more than once, “but that doesn’t mean we all find each other interesting.” In fact, there were a few names Linda brought up (after I’d spent hours gathering information for their biographies, I might add) to which Francine simply replied, “No.” That’s it. Just “no.” She didn’t even care to discuss why she was saying no, and I didn’t blame Linda one bit for leaving it at that and moving on.

  Francine also asked me to clarify what might be a
misimpression in reading her comments. Several of her discussions include other celebrities with whom the celebrity in question socializes, works, or performs, and she doesn’t mean to imply that celebrities on the Other Side only hang out with other celebrities. For one thing, the whole concept of celebrity is meaningless at Home, where everyone is of equally admired status. For another thing, she thought it would be more interesting to us here on earth to limit her observations to names with which we’re probably familiar. The way she put it was, “I could tell you that one of your celebrities enjoys horseback riding with John Smith or taking guitar lessons with Susie Jones, but would anyone care?” I had to admit that no, we probably wouldn’t. So please don’t be misled by her genuine efforts to edit herself on our behalf. All things considered, I’m sure she did us a favor.

  As for the second obvious question about this book—doesn’t the word “dead” tell us all there is to know about what someone’s doing?—the answer is a resounding, comforting, “Not even close.” God’s promise to us, as part of our birthright from the moment He created us, is that the death of our bodies doesn’t mean we cease to exist. We always were, and we always will be. We all have eternal lives to look back on and to look forward to. Not eternal nothingness, or an eternal vacuum, or an eternity of floating around like blobs of vapor playing harps. Eternal lives, vital and productive, each of us on our own progressive journey toward our spirit’s greatest potential.

  Eventually (as you’ll learn in the course of this book, it just takes some of us longer than others to get there) we all spend eternity in a place called the Other Side, a place every bit as real as earth, but without its flaws. The Other Side is our real Home. It’s where we came from for our brief visits here, and it’s where we’ll return after we’ve accomplished our carefully planned intentions this time around. And when we get there, we’ll joyfully resume our busy lives where we left off, farther ahead than we were before because of all we learned from our latest incarnation.

  It’s true for you. It’s true for me. It’s true for celebrities, both the famous and the infamous.

  That’s why the question, “What are these celebrities doing now?” is just as relevant after their “death” as it was when they were here on earth. Just as everyone you’ve known, loved, and temporarily lost through the illusion of death is somewhere doing something at this very moment, including visiting you, the same can be said for everyone you’ve ever heard of, wondered about, had a crush on, admired, or loathed.

  But before we start exploring the celebrities one by one, it’s worth taking a look at exactly what happens when our bodies die and the variety of places our spirits might go from here.

  Death . . . and Then What?

  Even as a child in Catholic school I was frustrated by how vague everyone was about this “life after death” thing. There seemed to be general agreement that our spirits survive after our mortal bodies give out. It was the “and then what?” part that inspired a lot of throat clearing and hazy, halfhearted answers; I often got the feeling it was the one question the nuns et al. were hoping no one would ask. From what I could piece together, when we die, some sort of tunnel apparently drops down from the sky like a big sparkling megaphone to kind of inhale our souls up to heaven. Alternately, we were offered a lot of lovely imagery about our souls floating away from our dead bodies and disappearing beyond the clouds. But after one or the other or something else happened, our immortal souls either ended up in heaven, which looked like who knows what, to live happily ever after with God, doing who knows what, or we were sent to hell for an eternity of fiery damnation—by a God who was always described as all-loving and all-forgiving.

  Looking back, it’s no surprise that I wasn’t satisfied with those answers, or lack of them, particularly the ones that made no sense. But finally, between Francine’s generous, articulate expertise, a lifetime of study, including a degree in theology, and my own near-death experience at the age of forty-two, I learned the truth about “and then what?” and it’s far more sacred and exquisite than anything my imagination could have created.

  There is a very real tunnel, it turns out, and it doesn’t drop down from the sky when our bodies die. Instead, it rises up from our own etheric substance, or energy field, angles across our body at about a twenty-degree angle, and delivers us to the Other Side, which is actually just three feet above our ground level, but in another dimension whose vibrational frequency is much higher than ours. It’s a perfect mirror image of the natural topography of our planet—our continents, our oceans, our mountains, our rivers, our forests, our deserts, our coastlines, every single feature of earth as it once existed before pollution, erosion, and human destruction came along. Because time doesn’t exist on the Other Side, nothing ages, nothing corrodes or erodes, and everything is eternally, perfectly new.

  As we move through the tunnel we feel weightless, free, and more thrillingly alive than we ever felt for a moment in the finite, gravity-challenged bodies we left behind. No matter what the circumstances of our death, there’s a pervasive sense of peace in the awareness that we’re on our way Home, and we quickly see the legendary white light ahead of us, indescribably sacred, God’s light.

  No matter where on earth we take our last breath, all tunnels lead to the same entrance to the perfect paradise of the Other Side: a breathtaking grassy meadow filled with flowers whose colors seem magnified a thousand times beyond anything we’ll ever experience here. Waiting in that meadow to joyfully welcome us are loved ones from all our lifetimes on earth and at Home as well as every animal we’ve ever loved from those same lifetimes. (Would it be paradise if there were no animals?)

  Once we’ve experienced our reunions in the meadow, we proceed to the triumvirate of buildings—yes, there are buildings—that create the “hub” of the Other Side. You’ll read more about their specific purposes in the glossary of terms that follows, without which some of Francine’s celebrity comments will just be confusing, but for now, in brief, the first three buildings we see when we return Home are:

  The Hall of Wisdom: a Romanesque structure of gleaming white stone adorned with statuary and surrounded by fountains and fragrant flowers in constant bloom. Its most stunning feature is the infinite expanse of marble steps that lead to its countless entrances.

  The Hall of Justice: a pillared Greco-Roman building with a massive white marble dome. Standing guard at its entrance is a magnificent statue of Azna, the Mother God. Surrounding the Hall of Justice are its exquisite Gardens, impeccably designed and extending for as far as the eye can see, filled with sparkling waterfalls and fountains, meditation benches, towering trees and canopies of Spanish moss, crystal streams rushing through carpets of soft green grass, lush forests of ferns, and endless walls of jewel-tone bougainvillea.

  The Hall of Records: a vast edifice with spectacularly carved columns and a dome of sparkling gold. It is constantly bustling with “locals” and spirit visitors from earth alike. Inside stretch an infinite number of aisles, lined with an infinite number of shelves filled with an infinite number of scrolls, books, documents, maps, artwork, blueprints, and such, every shelf in perfectly kept order. One of the functions of the Hall of Records is to house every historical, literary, and artistic work ever written, drawn, drafted, sketched, or painted since time began, and it is revered as the sacred home of the Akashic Records, which are the complete written body of God’s knowledge, laws, and memories.

  There are also the Towers, two identical monoliths of blue glass, glistening from the hushed waterfalls that flow down their facades and mist the forest of jasmine that lines the path to the Towers’ etched gold doors.

  Through this “formal” entrance we resume the lives we chose to briefly interrupt for a trip to earth, in the divine world of the Other Side. And they don’t call it paradise for nothing. The weather is constantly calm and clear with a temperature of 78 degrees, except on the highest elevations, where the 30 degree temperature maintains a perfect snowpack. There is no day or
night—no time at all, in fact, beyond an eternal “now.” The sun, moon, and stars are not visible, and the sky is always the pastel blend of a summer dusk.

  The landscape is rich with magnificent libraries, research centers, schools, houses of worship of every denomination, concert halls and museums, not to mention stadiums, golf courses, tennis courts, and ski resorts—in fact, every noncontact sport is enjoyed on the Other Side.

  Since money is nonexistent and unnecessary, there is no commerce and no reason to work for a paycheck. Most of us do work, though, for the sheer joy and passion of it. We also socialize, as much or as little as we choose, and because we have no need to eat or sleep, we literally have an uninterrupted eternity to seek out anyone and everyone we care to know, explore anything and everything we’ve ever wanted to see, research and learn about any and every subject and activity that’s ever intrigued us, attend every party, concert, play, and sports event that interests us, and generally bask in the bliss of limitless possibilities in a heaven of sacred universal love, respect, and peace.

  We’re free of the earth’s limitations of space and gravity and the laws of physics. We have houses if we want, wherever we want, and we create the homes we want by simple thought projection, just as we travel wherever we want by simply thinking ourselves there.

  And how’s this for something to look forward to: not only is our physical and mental health perfectly restored once we’re Home again, but on the Other Side all of us are thirty years old. Why thirty? As my Spirit Guide, Francine, replied when I asked her that question, “Because we are.” Mind you, the transitions to thirty and to perfect health are usually processes after we’ve arrived, rather than an instantaneous “Poof! You’re thirty!” effect the moment we emerge from the tunnel. And when we visit loved ones on earth, we’re easily able to take on whatever appearance will make us recognizable to them. After all, if we passed away as an infant or a very elderly person, how comforting would a spirit visit from a thirty-year-old really be?