Ever since Chris Carter stayed in a ‘haunted’ farmhouse in England, the Oxford-educated philosopher has been fascinated with the supernatural.

He lived there for a year, while studying in the UK, and though he didn’t experience anything particularly ‘dramatic’ - ‘doors occasionally slamming for no apparent reason' and 'the fleeting sound of a woman's voice which seemed to come straight out of thin air’ - it sparked a lifetime of research.

And now Carter believes he is able to prove beyond all reasonable doubt that death is not the end.

In fact, he claims, it's just the beginning of a long journey involving reincarnation - sometimes two or three times - and a heaven made up of multiple ‘planes’, which he likens to the ‘many mansions’ Jesus spoke of in the Bible

However, contrary to most traditional religious teachings, once we get there, we’re unlikely to see God.

His extraordinary findings are published in his latest book, The Case for the Afterlife, which examines in detail the evidence for and against life after death.

He examines phenomena including near-death experiences, deathbed visions, ‘ghosts’ and apparitions, children who remember a previous life - evidence, he says, of reincarnation - and communications from the dead.

Indeed, when it comes to heaven, one of the most detailed descriptions comes from the post-death 'messages' of Frederic Myers, a British poet and founder of the Society for Psychical Research in the late 19th century.

Frederic Myers, founder of the Society for Psychical Research, described Hades as nothing sinister, but merely a temporary resting place

In the film Ghost, Whoopi Goldberg is a charlatan medium who discovers she really can receive messages from murder victim Patrick Swayze

Myers' account described a journey through seven planes of the afterlife

Twenty-three years after he died, at the age of 57, Myers is said to have communicated intricate descriptions of the afterworld to fellow psychics all over the world.

While many of those who claimed to be in contact with Myers were judged to be charlatans, one in particular, the Irish medium Geraldine Cummins, was believed by many to be genuine.

‘Myers described a stupendous journey of the immortal soul through the various planes or spheres of existence, beginning with Earth,’ writes Carter, adding that the various planes also included:

• Hades, the intermediate state

• The third plane, the sphere of terrene imagination

• Eido

• The Plane of Flame

• The Plane of Light

• Out-Yonder, flight from the physical universe

‘Myers described Hades, the astral plane, as nothing sinister, but merely a temporary resting place on the borders of two worlds,’ he says.

‘The time spent in Hades is said to vary with the needs of the individual, with children often requiring hardly any rest at all. However, for Myers: “I died in Italy, a land I loved, and I was very weary at the time of my passing. For me Hades was a place of rest, a place of half-lights and drowsy peace”.’

Ever since Chris Carter stayed in a ‘haunted’ farmhouse in England, the academic has been fascinated with the supernatural

Hell, he insists, is more like a bad dream - a ‘fire of the mind’ - than the place of physical torture taught by conventional religion

Myers described the third plane as being very similar to Earth, ‘but with a beauty that far transcends the terrestrial’ where ‘communities of like-minded individuals with similar tastes come together and live in mutually constructed environments, while those of a more solitary nature may live in an environment entirely devised from their own preferences and desires.’

Eido, the fourth plane, was the first ‘true heaven-world’ - also similar to Earth, but blessed with colors and sights unknown to humans and more beautiful than anything mere mortals could imagine.

This was the plane Myers himself said he had reached.

‘The fifth, sixth, and seventh planes are said to be increasingly difficult to describe, as they are progressively more and more remote from our earthly experience,’ writes Carter.

‘Nevertheless, they are said to be increasingly desirable.’

By the time they reach the sixth plane, they no longer live in physical bodies, Myers’s account claims, but exist ‘as white light, as the pure thought of their Creator. They have joined the immortals.’

These descriptions, he says, had been passed on to Myers by others who had reached those more advanced states.

Other accounts of the afterlife have echoed Myers’ description, with some claiming that not everyone enjoys such a pleasant experience.

‘Communicators often insist that the subdivision we first encounter within the third plane also depends on how we lived our earthly lives, and upon our level of moral and spiritual development,’ writes Carter.

‘Not everyone enjoys an idyllic existence on the third plane: the lower levels are described as dark, gloomy, desolate, in which there are no children, but only those who, as adults on Earth, had chosen to lead selfish, evil lives.

‘How long they remain in this nether region depends on how long they choose to remain in a selfish, morally undeveloped state.’

The most important thing to understand, he stresses, is that we shouldn’t expect the idea of the ‘humdrum heaven and horrific hell’ taught by conventional religions.

Hell, he insists, is more like a bad dream - a ‘fire of the mind’ - than a place of physical torture.

The newly-departed do not see God because, says Carter, we are too primitive immediately after leaving the Earth

But when asked at what stage we will be in the presence of God, Carter is adamant that won’t happen anytime soon.

‘Absolutely not,’ he says. ‘Myers, in his post-mortem communications, describes God as being far, far above the human, and we… only can come close in what he describes as the seventh plane.’

He adds: ‘Based on my extensive reading of various communications via mediums, the reason the newly-departed do not see God is simply because we are, at first, too primitive and, immediately after leaving the Earth, occupy planes of existence not nearly exalted or advanced enough to closely approach the divine.'

The first level we arrive at depends on how far we evolved, spiritually and morally, on Earth, he claims.

'Sir Oliver Lodge was a famous physicist and a personal friend of Frederic Myers. In the foreword to the first book that he believed the departed Myers communicated post-mortem through the medium Geraldine Cummins, he insisted that “we are not transported to the full blaze of reality all at once.”

‘Only in the final [plane] is there a flight from the material universe and a direct connection with God.’

The Case for the Afterlife: Evidence of Life After Death by Chris Carter is published by Llewellyn Publications