For ten years after his death, Ingrid Giraud believed that her son was visiting her as a dragonfly.

She didn’t know how. She didn’t know why.

What she did know was that almost a week after he died, the dragonflies began to appear.

“You know, it's a subject that's mind boggling to me, as well, having experienced it,” Giraud said in her thick New Jersey accent.

Now in her mid-60s, Ingrid Giraud has a strong jaw, closely cropped ringlets of dark hair, and a solemn face devoid of makeup. Her eyes flitted about pensively as she thought about how to frame her “bizarre” story, perhaps grappling with the skepticism she’s faced so many times after telling it.

“I think his background actually makes this more important,” she concluded. “It’s the most important part of it all. Reason being that he had a brain injury when he was three and a half months old.”

Ingrid Giraud’s son, Vaughn, was nonverbal and quadriplegic. He had a host of physical and mental disabilities that required near-constant medical attention. Later in his life, Giraud learned that the origin of his condition likely stemmed from being shaken as a baby while left in the care of his father, Giraud’s partner at the time.

"When I tell you, if I had $1 for every time they told me he wasn't going to make it through the night, I would have a nice chunk of money."

Now referred to as Shaken Baby Syndrome, this condition is the most common cause of child abuse death in children younger than five in the United States. At the age of three and a half years old, Vaughn would be dependent on his mother for the rest of his life.

Giraud often remembered the harrowing nights at the hospital when she would brace herself for the unthinkable again and again.

“When I tell you, if I had $1 for every time they told me he wasn't going to make it through the night, I would have a nice chunk of money,” she said. “I knew I was going to hear the words.”

Night after grueling night at the hospital, Giraud tried to sleep next to her little boy, praying not to wake up to her living nightmare – his seemingly impending death. However, birthdays came and went, candles on frosted cakes doubled from three to six to twelve, then increasing to fifteen, sixteen, and beyond.

Still, he remained with her, close by her side.

Their lives became deeply intertwined. They formed a bond that Giraud claims may have even transcended the bounds of time and space.

“I always seemed to know what he was feeling, or wanting to say. He'd sort of grunt at me, and… I don't even know how I picked up on it, but I would pick up on whatever it was.”

Eventually, the accuracy of the unspoken communication became too uncanny even for his doctors to believe.

At one point, Giraurd says in slight amusement, a few doctors and nurses worried that such accurate predictions of his ailments might signal to a case of Munchausen by proxy, a condition in which a mentally ill parent induces medical problems in their child for their own gain. Yet no evidence for this was ever found, despite thorough investigation.

“He spoke to you in ways that we can't know why or how. … I definitely think that he was on a different level than we were, even though he could never speak and could never walk. … Intellectually, he was on a different plane than we were – than I was – definitely.”

Eventually, Vaughn’s doctors reluctantly admitted that such odd predictions on Giraud’s part might go beyond the purview of conventional science, and moved on with treatment.

“His doctors changed their view on these types of silent communications based on what they witnessed with us,” Giraud said with some pride.

Over the years, Vaughn existed in his small orbit of close friends and family. He and his mother continued going in and out of hospitals, undergoing endless treatments for a widening range of ailments. His immune system had little tolerance for illnesses like pneumonia, even common colds, and the warnings that he wouldn’t make it through the night became more frequent.

As he grew older, Vaughn’s cousin and Giraud’s sister’s son, Adam, became another fixture in their lives, and another profoundly powerful connection through which Vaughn was deeply rooted.

Adam was about the same age as Vaughn and treated him with tenderness.

“[Adam] was a loving child. Very, very gentle with him. He would come over and treat him like he was a baby,” Giraud said. “Trying to soothe him, hang out with him, hold his hand and rub his head, do things like that. … I don't know that he ever really thought of [Vaughn] as different. Oh, he just was like, ‘That's my cousin, and I love him.’”

The love surrounding Vaughn continued to grow.

In 2005, Giraud’s nightmare became reality.

Even though her son had passed away slowly in her arms, and even though she had seen his life slip away from her firsthand, she was nevertheless left in shock.

“When he did pass,” she recounted, “It was… it was hard. But it was like we'd been at the doorstep so many times that now that it's happened, it doesn't seem real.”

After the first week without him, she began to fall apart.

“I was just sort of in a stunned state, because after all these times it finally happened, and… ‘Is this real?’ I sort of went into a numb state. I can't explain it any better. I was almost [in] a dream state, like I couldn't… I couldn't wrap my head around it.”

Giraud paused briefly, then visibly steeled herself before continuing.

“Then the tears came, and… I was just feeling all kinds of different things, like I wished he had had a better life, or a different life. And, you know, I can't explain that. I was just all over the place. I went from nothing to one thousand, like my emotions went straight through the roof.”

As each looming black wave of grief crashed and receded, they tossed Giraud along with them, and her family and friends became increasingly concerned. She was growing withdrawn.

I should be at the pearly gates myself, she thought to herself, lying motionless on the floor for what felt like days. I shouldn’t be here.

The days bled into one other. At some point, her phone rang. She picked it up.

“Ingrid?” the voice crackled on the line.

Her old friend.

It turned out that Giraud’s sister had conspired with her to get her out of her home. Some sun would do her good, they agreed. Soon after Giraud reluctantly agreed to join, her friend picked her up, officially deeming that special date to be “Rescue Ingrid Day.”

When Giraud arrived at her friend’s home, she had been rapidly fluctuating between hysterical sadness and an echoing numbness. Going through the motions, finding it difficult to articulate herself in any way, she forced herself out of the car, and let her friend lead her inside, through the house, and out the backdoor, where they both froze mid-step.

The summer sun was out, the sky was a cloudless robin egg blue, and the air was shimmering iridescent. All around her were what looked like fairies, sparkling stars, swooping and gliding in a glittering whirlwind.

Dragonflies.

Recounting the experience later, Giraud seemed as breathless as she might have been in that very moment. Her eyes, hardened by grief just moments before, gave way to sparkles. It was as if the dragonflies were still living there, behind her pupils, echoes of a memory etched forever.

“I felt like I was in a snow globe, only instead of snow, it was dragonflies,” she said. “As soon as I walked through the gate, it was almost like we were in this private little session with a bunch of dragonflies. I don't know. I don't remember hearing anything. I don't remember the conversations we had. I just remember the awe. I went from crying to, Oh, my God, you know what's happening here.

"By the time I realized that this was going to be a thing, and I realized it was him, I felt a sense of peace. I felt like I should be celebrating him rather than mourning him. I shifted gears from being sad to feeling happy for him, because he's free, and he's clearly telling me he's free and that he's living a life that you know he didn't get on this side.”

This certainly wouldn’t be Giraud’s last encounter with her dragonfly messengers, but it was a memorable first, and it was infused with unshakeable, almost supernatural confidence that yes, it was true: he was there with her.

“It was wild. I mean, there's no really other way to put it, [other than] it was wild. The way I went from A to Z, in a blink.”

In most ways, Dr. J. Kim Penberthy, professor of research in psychiatric medicine at the University of Virginia, fit in with what one might expect of a typical psychiatrist, clinical researcher, and academic.

In the background of one of her educational webinars, however, the pastel-colored magic mushroom garland in her office hinted at a different story. Delicate and polka-dotted, it hung teasingly across a shelf heavy with leatherbound DSMs.

Even more curious was the profound warmth in her deep blue eyes that contrasted the iciness of the clinical terminologies she used, like “depersonalization” and “palliative.”

Nonetheless, at least on the surface, it’s clear that Penberthy occupies a realm that is, in her own words, “as mainstream as you can get.”

During her career in experimental psychology and neurobiology, she’s become a distinguished clinician with awards and recognitions that include being named President of Division 12 of the American Psychological Association in January 2023, as well as being elected Psychologist of the Year for the state of Virginia.

Before earning her PhD, she spent a part of her career at the Duke Cancer Center, where she shepherded the dying and their loved ones through and beyond countless stages of trauma and grief.

Now, in addition to being a practicing psychologist, she’s also a highly respected professor at a university popularly regarded as a “public Ivy.”

It may come as a surprise, then, that when Penberthy chose to fuse her needle-sharp medical expertise together with her lifelong interest in the paranormal, she did so with immense ease. Then again, Penberthy has long been accustomed to moving in and out of different realms

“My father was a cardiothoracic surgeon, very smart man, a man of few words,” she explained. “Very scientific. And my mother was a nurse, very loving. She probably would have been Wiccan if she had known anything about it.”

Growing up, her staunchly atheist father taught her that the ultimate purpose of all living things was biological: reproduction, or the survival of a species. Meanwhile, her mother would counter his materialist view, teaching her daughter that there was more to living beyond mere survival. Love, Penberthy was told, was the purpose of existing.

Evidently, both sides of the argument stuck.

Today, Penberthy is a prominent member of the University of Virginia’s Department of Perceptual Studies (also known as DOPS), where she works alongside equally distinguished professors, clinicians, and research specialists who strive to find correlations between cutting-edge biomedical instrumentation and what they often refer to as “psi phenomena.”

These include “after-death communications” (ADCs, for short), factually supported cases of reincarnation in kids as young as two, and accounts of near-death experiences (also referred to as NDEs) from those lucky few who may have gotten to get a peek behind the starry curtains.

“I have a foot in that [mainstream] world, and then I have a foot in this world, which we might call paranormal. I am just genuinely so curious and so, so interested in how our consciousness works, and how people have such capacity that they may not know about,” Penberthy said, her eyes alight with passion. “You know, capacity to love. To be really just… amazing. I think people are just amazing creatures, and I think there is a component to us that is way beyond just our physical body.”

In 1957, at just 38 years old, the soon-to-become founding father of DOPS, Dr. Ian Stevenson, was appointed Professor and Chairman of the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Virginia. He had the honor of being one of the youngest appointees to hold the position in the history of the school.

The following list is designed to give an idea of what a parent or caregiver might hear from a child reporting memories of a previous life. This list is not meant to be exhaustive as these statements can be quite varied.

‍List of Statement Examples

- “You’re not my mommy/daddy.”
- “I have another mommy/daddy.”
- “When I was big, I … (used to have blue eyes, have a car, worked downtown, etc.).”
- “That happened before I was in mommy’s tummy.”
- “I have a wife/husband/children.”
- “I used to … (drive a truck/live in another town, etc.)”
- “I died … (in a car accident/after I fell, etc.)”
- “Remember when I … (lived in that other house, was your daddy, etc.)”

— From the UVA Division of Perceptual Studies' official website

Ten years later, in 1967, Dr. Stevenson resigned from his post in order to found the Division of Perceptual Studies, the result of a lifelong mission to explore reincarnation and investigate whether there was a scientific basis to study it.

DOPS’ founding followed Stevenson’s travels to Tibet and rural India, where he examined firsthand accounts of individuals (primarily children, with their caretakers as witnesses) who showed signs of being reincarnated.

He referred to these subjects as CORT cases, or “cases of the reincarnation type," a term still in use at DOPS today.

Born in 1918, Stevenson endured frequent bouts of bronchitis during his childhood, leaving him sickly and bedridden.

Between bouts of illnesses, he found himself wondering if his recurring health issues were due to some karmic roots in a previous life. This curiosity, alongside his access to his mother’s library of reincarnation literature, sparked a lifelong interest in “anomalous phenomena,” a blanket term for what most might consider supernatural experiences.

As a student of Freudian psychoanalysis in psychology's early days, Stevenson had gained attention in 1957 for publishing a paper challenging the rigid view of human personality, suggesting it was more malleable than previously assumed.

This sparked backlash among his peers, along with heated criticism. It was an experience he would grow accustomed to as his research delved deeper into unconventional topics.

However, like Dr. Penberthy, Dr. Stevenson was uniquely positioned to make his case.

His background in the mainstream sciences provided a bulletproof foundation that proved useful as his theories and research methods proved more unconventional.

Even the hardiest debunkers couldn’t deny how immensely qualified he was a practicing psychiatrist and academic, lending new credence to his theories about consciousness potentially surviving death.

He was, in other words, secure in his academic standing at one of the most renowned universities in the country. His work, far from being dismissed, became a large body of research at DOPS, which now hosts the largest database of anomalous experiences.

Stevenson reflected on his journey in the Journal of Scientific Exploration in 2006, writing:

"We all die of some affliction. What determines the nature of that affliction? I believe the search for the answer may lead us to think that the nature of our illnesses may derive, at least in part, from previous lives. The cases of children who claim to remember previous lives and who have related birthmarks and birth defects suggest this; some such children have related internal diseases. My own physical condition, defects of my bronchial tubes (from early childhood on), has given me a personal interest in this important question. Let no one think I know the answer. I am still seeking."

Stevenson passed away in 2017 from a chronic lung infection. His research, however, has found a new direction under the leadership of Dr. Jim Tucker, who leads the current efforts to continue Stevenson’s legacy as Director of DOPS and Bonner-Lowry Associate Professor of Psychiatry.

While Dr. Tucker has continued Dr. Stevenson’s research on reincarnation, the Division as a whole now specializes in investigating other anomalous phenomena that can be studied using the scientific method, including Near Death Experiences, Out of Body Experiences, and Altered States of Consciousness (including those induced by psychedelic drugs like psilocybin).

Today, DOPS continues to be completely donor-funded, as it was during its inception.

A photograph of Dr. Ian Stevenson conducting field research, currently displayed at DOPS headquarters at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. (AU/Natalia Quintana-Feliciano)

When skeptics counter claims of the existence of an afterlife, they often take refuge in numbers.

Data.

After all, data doesn’t lie, and many assume that the statistics around such topics are clear in their verdicts: The world is an exclusively physical place, and our consciousnesses – inextricably linked with the matter making up our brains – can’t possibly survive beyond the death of the body.

There are, however, numbers that tell another story.

In a Pew survey conducted between March 27-April 2, 2023 and cited by Dr. Penberthy in her presentation on after-death communications, researchers found that 53% of U.S. adults say they’ve been visited by or communicated with a dead family member “in a dream or in some other form.”

In the same survey, respondents were asked whether they had felt the presence of a deceased family member in the past 12 months. 34% of them said that they had.

“A lot of my colleagues had no idea there was a Pew Research poll on this, and the numbers are staggering," said Dr. Penberthy, who often refers to these numbers when expressing the frequency of these events in people's lives. "I think everyone in the mainstream assumed after-death communications were something very rare – sort of like, you know, in the category of ghost stories and stuff like that. So, to see that was pretty impactful, certainly."

Respondents varied in spiritual and religious beliefs – even atheists and agnostics were among those who had acknowledged an after-death communication.

“Roughly half (48%) of Americans who are religiously unaffiliated – atheists, agnostics, and those who report their religion is “nothing in particular” – say they have ever been visited by a dead relative in a dream or other form. However, those who describe their religion as nothing in particular are much more likely to say they have ever been visited by a deceased loved one (58%) than are agnostics (34%) and atheists (26%),” the study said.
‍

The walls of Dr. Marieta Pehlivanova’s office at DOPS headquarters in Charlottesville are lined with books and the bust of some stone-faced scientist. Steel filing cabinets labeled with the names of research subjects lined the walls, many of them bearing the names of research subjects and their respective supernatural phenomena.

Near Death Experiences. Out of Body Experiences. After-Death Communications. CORT cases – Cases of the Reincarnation Type – labeled in pen with the names of families who had come in with reports of their children sharing unsettling memories not their own.

Dr. Pehlivanova has a mass of thick, dark hair, deep-set, black eyes and a focused yet faraway look about her.

She is soft-spoken, a skilled statistician and expert data analyst, but there’s something about her that hints at a kind of dreamlike disposition.

Pehlivanova received her undergraduate degree in Mathematical Statistics at American University, graduating Summa cum laude before getting her M.A. and Ph.D at the University of Pennsylvania in Experimental Psychology, later on with a Cognitive Neuroscience focus.

Before arriving at DOPS, she worked as a Biostatistician at the Medstar Health Institute in Maryland for several years.

When asked how her statistical background gave her an advantage as a researcher at DOPS, she looked into the distance and measured her response carefully, never quite making eye contact for long.

“We all have different strengths and weaknesses," she began, "and for me, I can do my own analyses. I don't need to outsource that. …That's also a big reason why the senior researchers got interested in hiring me. I was getting a PhD in Psychology at a good university, but I also had this statistical background that I think kind of put me on the map.”

Like most statisticians and mathematicians, Pehlivanova takes a deep interest in patterns. In her area of study, she said she’s found the most incredible patterns in her studies of near-death experiences.

Without fail, there are particular features that emerge in most cases of this phenomenon despite the idiosyncrasies of each individual experiencer. These have proven to be statistically significant.

She’s particularly intrigued by the “life review” as a feature of NDEs.

Life reviews are likely the origin of the commonplace saying “to have your life flash before your eyes.” It is a phenomenon in which a person who is unconscious or clinically dead for a period of time witnesses or re-experiences their life play out in incredible detail during the stretch of time that they aren’t responsive.

The forms that these experiences take vary widely. Some have been on record saying that they had seen their lives unfold from birth to death on giant metaphysical screens in front of them.

Many others claim to feel the emotions they themselves have inflicted upon others during life. Other times, an omniscient knowing has been reported. For example, trauma patients will accurately describe interactions that have occurred around them while they were clinically dead, or even when they weren’t in the room at all.

“It could be something small that happened years ago. They didn't think twice about it [when it first happened], but it impacted someone else. This is more of an example of a feature to me that's very interesting.”

It was clear that Pehlivanova was mentally scanning through the different accounts that have crossed her desk over the years, her tone becoming more animated.

"People who have near-death experiences – especially deep ones that are rich in these features and intensity – tend to change very profoundly in predictable ways,” she said, now making direct eye contact. “On average, we know that one of the strongest changes [after-near death experiences] is that they lose their fear of death, sometimes almost instantaneously. There's also a lot of changes in terms of becoming more interested in spiritual matters, having a strength and belief in life after death, becoming more interested in helping other people, less interested in material stuff.”

These changes are often sudden and unprecedented. Someone who may have struggled to overcome an addiction, faced constant relapses and spent decades in treatment, might from one day to the next overcome it after experiencing one instantaneous life review.

For psychologists to discount this simply because it seems supernatural, Pehlinova argues, is harmful to the field of clinical psychology as a whole.

“In terms of human psychology, just speaking as a psychologist, it's very difficult for humans to change, right? People can change if they want to, but it's not an easy thing, so people do interventions and therapy. Yet, for some people, it's possible for this experience to change them so profoundly. In the realm of psychology research, this is very extraordinary.”

Giraud remembers the day in her friend’s backyard often.

“When that happened, I didn't think anything of it except that, well, I was lucky that that happened to me, and that made me feel better about my situation, because I was mourning and that brought some light into my life. Not thinking anything more than it was just an experience with nature.”

But when her time in her friend’s yard had started to come to an end and it was time to go inside, she pointed at a dragonfly whizzing above her that caught her attention.

“Oh, look at that! It’s blue, it’s beautiful!”

Down it came, landing gracefully on the side of the finger she was pointing with. Its cobalt iridescence gleamed in the setting sun. Giraud watched it as it carefully studied her.

“What’s up?” Giraud said.

The little insect bobbed its head up and down. A response? No – it must be her imagination. Giggling, she said it again.

“What’s up?”

Right on cue, the blue dragonfly bobbed its head in response. This time, her friend shrieked. The dragonfly remained still, unfazed.

“What’s up!” Giraud laughed again at the little creature, and once again, its head gave an unmistakable, quick little movement, as if in casual greeting. It seemed wholeheartedly committed to staying planted on her skin, its bead-like eyes looking at her with something that resembled recognition.

“How are you doing that?” her friend asked incredulously.

Giraud had no answer to give. They quietly observed the creature for a while, until it was time to go back inside. Giraud lowered her finger to a nearby ledge.

“I set it down, and it hopped off my finger, like it knew what I wanted it to do. And I went inside. … That night, we couldn't talk about anything else,” she said.

This, Giraud asserted, was her first supernatural encounter. While she didn't put too much stock into it at the time, something about it felt more profound than most of the experiences she’d had up until that point.

A few weeks later, she decided to mourn by the ocean. I might as well feel terrible in a beautiful place, she thought. It was a place where she always felt at home.

Sitting on the sand that afternoon, watching the horizon, another dragonfly landed on her foot.

“I've never seen dragonflies on the beach,” she said. “So I'm trying not to make a big thing of it, but I'm blown away by it, right? Because now I'm starting to think this is a sign.”

From then on, Giraud would walk out of her home and see multiple dragonflies whiz past, something that she never recalled happening in the years prior.

When they eventually began to come to her on cue after she called them by her son’s name, those around her began to take notice, as well.

“People would just be flabbergasted, because nobody could explain why it was happening,” Giraud said. “It went on for like ten years. Sadly, it doesn't happen anymore, but for whatever reason during those ten years, I'd be telling people about this experience, trying not to sound crazy.”

Inevitably, some well-meaning people in her life began to worry for her sanity. Giraud recalled the instances in which she could see the people's expressions shift once she confided in them, and the pity that took shape in their faces, as if she was lost and in grave need of help.

“People are looking at me like, ‘Oh, you poor thing,’” she said. “I'm like, ‘No, really, I'm trying to tell you something.’”

Though religious, Giraud’s mother was never one for superstitions. Outside of an eternal life she believed could only be gained through traditional Christian means, she hadn’t given much thought to an afterlife. As a child, Giraud never felt connected to the church and stopped going altogether – her mother didn’t seem to mind.

Her mother was, at first, the most worried about Ingrid’s new fixation on dragonflies. Giraud’s insistence on her new gift and her tendency to call them by her son’s name made her wary. She wondered if her daughter was experiencing a potentially maladaptive fantasy, gradually pulling away from an existence that had become too painful to bear.

“There were times where I tried to explain to my mom what was happening, and she thought I needed to see a psychiatrist. She was like, ‘She's lost it. She's totally lost it.’”

Feeling alone and misunderstood, Giraud quickly learned when to keep these experiences to herself, and when it was safe to share them.

Looking back, she can empathize with those who didn’t believe her, acknowledging that she would likely feel the same had she been in their shoes.

“I'm also a realist. I'm not somebody that all willy-nilly starts thinking things [like this are real], because I've been forced into a life where I had to be real about the things in front of me. I had no time for games. I had no time for wishy-washy. Give it to me straight. I'll give it to you straight. And that's it.”

On May 22, 2024, the above review was submitted in response to a manuscript proposal sent in by Dr. Marina Weiler, Assistant Professor of Psychiatry and Neurobehavioral Sciences at DOPS.

Back in 2016, Dr. Weiler joined the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in order to research the effects of brain stimulation on patients experiencing cognitive decline. Her background included using cutting-edge fMRI technology to investigate brain changes in those suffering from Alzheimer’s. Later on, at UCLA, she was involved in a project which identified biomarkers associated conditions resulting from traumatic brain injuries.

Together with two co-editors, Dr. Weiler had submitted a paper on an in-depth study she had conducted on the history of remote viewing, one of the many anomalous phenomena that fell under DOPS’ purview of research.

Experiments on remote viewing usually unfolded via the following process:

The test subject (who normally qualifies as psychically “gifted,” in the words of Dr. Weiler) sits in a steel-walled, soundproof room inside the DOPS lab. In another room, a physical target object is placed in a random location.

While under observation, the test subject is asked to use techniques like visualization, mental imagery, or intuitive sensing to attempt to perceive the location of the target. The subject then records their perceptions, typically through written descriptions, drawings, or other forms of reporting.

Interestingly, Dr. Weiler says, there has been greater statistical chance for success in guessing the location of the target if another non-remote-viewing participant was physically looking at it.

The results of remote-viewing studies have historically been significant enough to justify the U.S. government's 18-year long funding for a program called "Stargate." Founded in 1977 in response to Cold War tensions, mainstream scientists were working with the CIA as recently as 1995 to harness the potential military uses of such "gifts."

In her own findings, Weiler drew compelling relationships between moments of clairvoyance and the brain’s production of “alpha waves,” a type of brain wave pattern associated with certain states of consciousness and mental activity, such as sleep.

Such correlations have been so significant that Dr. Weiler is now calling for a “shift in a paradigm.” Her colleagues at DOPS agree.

“It was a huge paper, like 50 pages, where we explored the historical aspects of remote viewing, how it's been used for intelligence gathering, the military, everything,” explained Dr. Weiler.

In contrast to Dr. Pehlivanova’s office, Dr. Weiler's workspace is decorated in greenery. Photos of her and her toddler sit on the windowsill and various surfaces of the room.

She wore a blazer over a t-shirt emblazoned with some faded 2010s graphics and talked with her hands. Despite her warmth, there was a hint of hesitancy in her voice as she explained her areas of study. It was a kind of wariness that may be justified in the scope of her recent experiences with peers in the psychology field.

In reference to the review cited above, Weiler said she was faced with multiple “very disrespectful” responses.

Another reply to the same manuscript concluded with the simple phrase:

"There is simply no good reason to take this seriously."

While Dr. Pehlivanova – the statistician with an interest in near-death experiences – hadn’t faced outright criticism around her research, she acknowledged that things were different for Dr. Weiler, who mainly focused her studies on mediumship (or communication with the spirits of the deceased) and remote viewing.

“Maybe one day, things will change, as far as skeptics,” said Pehlivanova. “I mean, there's skeptics and there's debunkers. A true skeptic is a skeptic, but they're open minded, and I have no issue with that. It’s a good thing to be skeptical. But there are debunkers who are just not even willing to engage with the literature. I don't even engage with these people.”

Dr. Weiler seemed similarly unbothered, even faithful in the future of her area of study. Her primary mission at DOPS is to create a safe space for those who are afraid to come forward with stories about unexplainable experiences, those like Ingrid Giraud.

“I think I would agree with Dr. Penberthy, that these experiences are transformative, and when [an experiencer is] shut down, they can be very detrimental. You know, if you don't talk about it, …it's just gonna grow a ghost inside you. If you just talk about it, you realize everyone's had these experiences. They're common. I'm not alone, I'm not different.”

While her personal understanding of reality and consciousness has shifted continuously throughout her time as a researcher, she seems to have personally come to the conclusion that our consciousness is primary, while the physical body and the material plane it lives in is not.

In other words, to be free of the physical body is to return to the natural state of the soul.

“After a while, we come back here, and then we learn a little bit more in a different body, in a different life, in a different reality, in a different space on time,” she said.

While this was a conclusion Weiler had come to personally, it is also one that she admits she had yet to prove.

It was a balmy summer day when Ingrid Giraud and her nephew Adam, then 18 years old, strolled through the brightly colored gates of the Six Flags in New Jersey.

The sky was a crystalline blue, and the air smelled like popcorn.

“Where do you want to go first?” she asked him.

The pair was giddy and gleeful, welcome feelings against a backdrop of grief in which they had been living ever since Vaughn’s death not long before. There had also been an undercurrent of anxiety lurking beneath each family gathering ever since Adam decided to join the Marine Corps.

Adam had always loved roller coasters growing up, and Giraud did too. It was their “thing.” When they planned to go to the amusement park together as a final goodbye before he left for the Marines, the two made it a point just to go by themselves – auntie and nephew.

They boarded the first rollercoaster right away, too eager to wait. They’d catch up on the ride, they decided.

“How are you doing?” Adam asked. The attendant started his way down the rows ahead of them, ensuring that their safety bars were locked. The ride was the kind in which the riders’ legs hang down, so the restraints went over the shoulders.

How are you doing?

‍The question was a loaded one, but Giraud was mostly eager to tell him about everything she had experienced recently. She explained the magical encounters with the dragonflies, about how she’d been seeing them nearly everyday since Vaughn passed. More dragonflies than she had ever seen in her entire life! And what’s more – she could even call them! All she had to do was call out the name “Vaughn!” and down they came to greet her. They’d even react to his name.

The rollercoaster gave a mechanical jolt as it began its nearly vertical climb up a massive hill.

“They nod at me!” she continued, and paused abruptly when her eyes met his.

Adam’s face had fallen. Reading his expression, Giraud knew what he was thinking.

‍Oh, my poor auntie. It’s finally happened. She’s cracked.

Giraud could feel his well-meaning pity burning a hole right through her chest.

They reached the top of the hill, from where the whole park below looked like a tiny pop-up book. Then, something whizzed past.

“Look! There’s one right now!”

The dragonfly swept back down, soared between their seats, and perched itself on the row in front of them, studying them.

“Wow,” whispered Adam. It disappeared in one swift movement, like a shooting star.

Now that Adam and Giraud were at the top of the rollercoaster, teetering on the edge of the first drop, she extended her arm and pointed. The dragonfly returned the instant she reached out, landing on her finger, perfectly on cue. Planted firmly on her skin, the small creature watched them both as they dangled in the air, awestruck.

When Giraud looked over at Adam, his jaw had completely dropped.

“How did you do that?”

“I've been trying to tell you!” she replied.

“Oh my God,” he said. “That’s… that's Vaughn.”

As soon as he said it, the little creature jerked and looked at him with an unmistakable sort of familiarity.

The rollercoaster lurched forward, the dragonfly flew into the sky, and down they went.

Adam screamed with joy, tears streaming horizontally as the forces of gravity yanked them back towards Earth.

“My cousin’s with me!” he yelled, laughing, falling. “My cousin’s with me! My cousin’s with me!”

Giraud didn’t realize the impact that the dragonflies would have on him. She realized she had been crying too, laughing with him, screaming with joy.

When the ride was over, Adam went to her and hugged her tight. For a while, they held each other and sobbed.

Then, Giraud stepped back.

“Now, he doesn’t want us to be sad,” she said to her nephew, holding on tight to his shoulders. “So we’re going to continue our day and be happy, ok?”

They were walking on air for the rest of the day.

Now, as she recounts the story, Giraud can’t help but smile.

“I think it was impactful for a lot of people that witnessed it,” she said.

While always committed to the bold pursuit of knowledge that is core to all the sciences, the entire DOPS team is remarkably at ease with the unknown—not just as scientists and clinicians, but as human beings.

"I believe, personally, that this is part of the human condition. That we are made to perceive these things," Dr. Penberthy said with serene and impenetrable assurance, sitting in her office at DOPS. Next to her, her bookshelf with the mushroom garland. "I really am not that concerned if I ever find the ‘reality’ of this, because it is real to them and it has a real positive effect in their life. And so to me, as a clinician – as a human – that is important and needs to be honored.”
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After hearing Giraud's story, both Dr. Weiler and Dr. Pehlivanova are inclined to agree.

"I think she's lucky that she had all these experiences with dragonflies," said Dr. Weiler. "And I'm sure they meant something to her. If it was the spirit of her son, or any type of after-death communication she was having with her son... I don't think we'll ever know that, but I don't think it matters."

For her part, Ingrid Giraud holds these memories close. She even got a dragonfly tattoo on her finger, as a reminder of the secret she was let in on -- that maybe there is more after this life, after all.

"There were all these stressful feelings and suddenly, it's almost like doors burst open. I feel all this sunshine being let in and fresh air and everything. It was almost like he was released, and so was I, in a sense. I guess I never actually put it that way before, but yeah. That's exactly what it felt like. Like we were both set free."

NATALIA quintana-feliciano

For ten years after his death, Ingrid Giraud believed that her son was visiting her as a dragonfly.