Who administers theAfterNet? theAfterNet is run by theAfterNet Internet Consortium (ANIC), funded primarily by the United States government (Department of Health and Human Services), in cooperation with the United Nations Council on Aging and Death.

Who pays for theAfterNet? Levies on Internet addressing (domain names) and portions of income taxes from the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Japan, Germany, the Netherlands and Spain (with four other countries about to approve funding) finance theAfterNet. In addition, theAfterNet is experimenting with advertising.

How do I know that someone who claims to be dead really is dead? Only the dead can operate an AfterNet terminal. There are no moving parts like a mouse or keyboard as on a regular computer terminal. An AfterNet terminal responds to miniscule variations in extremely low electromagnetic frequencies and gravimetric fields. These variations are too subtle to reproduce by any ordinary means.

How do I know that someone who says he’s PontiusPilate123 is the same PontiusPilate123 I talked to the week before? All dead people using theAfterNet request a username and password. The ANIC Traffic Authority (ANICTA) makes sure all PontiusPilate candidates use the same conventions -- to prevent PPilates and PontiusPs from cluttering the network. AfterNet passwords are stored in 256-bit encrypted form. Even sysops can not decipher a lost password. Once issued, a username/password combination cannot be reused.

In addition, each disembodied user’s “spiritual energy signature” is recorded. It is as individual as a fingerprint or DNA.

Has there been abuse of the system? There is no confirmed abuse of the system. theAfterNet Security Agency (ANSA) investigates any claim of abuse.

How do I know that someone is the dead person they claim to be? Unfortunately it’s very difficult to prove identity. That’s why there are 154 dead who claim to be Jesus Christ and 576 who claim to be Elvis. Only a few have proven their living conclusively, through their knowledge of details of a person’s life.

Why are there so many Julius Caesars and George Washingtons? Most people never were famous in their living existence. Not surprisingly, most of the dead would rather pose as more famous people.

Why do so many of the dead (who don’t claim to be famous historical figures) appear to have lived in the latter half of the 20th century? Because the dead are unable to hear and can only perceive the electromagnetic spectrum, they are often unaware of current events that aren’t directly observed. Literacy is only a recent phenomenon. So unfamiliarity with technology, the difficulty of operating an AfterNet terminal and the poor mental condition of many of the dead results in most of the users being from the present day or latter half of the 20th century.

Who is the oldest confirmed dead person? Herman Olejuwicz, who died in Warsaw, Poland, in 1897, is the dead person who has the earliest claim to a living identity. A luthier (violin maker), he had written a message on the inside of a violin made for his daughter. Investigators found the violin and confirmed the message.

Why are there so few dead, shouldn’t there be millions of people on theAfterNet? In fact, it’s estimated about 545 billion dead humans inhabit the earth.

Why do the dead have poor mental conditions? Sadly, poor mental conditions is a euphemism. Most of the dead are insane from long, long deprivation from human contact. Imagine, spending hundreds, perhaps thousands of years unable to talk to the living. Seeing the world but for many unable to comprehend the changes in the world. And unable to communicate with the other dead until the invention of theAfterNet.

What does it mean to be dead? Humans do have a “soul” or essential energy that defines that person apart from their physical being. This soul or energy is almost massless. It is roughly comparable to the weight of a square foot of sunlight striking a piece of paper. This energy is about two feet in diameter. Death liberates the energy from the body.

Do the dead see? The dead can see the entire electromagnetic spectrum.

Do the dead hear? The dead cannot hear because sound travels through air molecules and is not part of the EM spectrum.

Can the dead communicate with the living? Only through an AfterNet terminal. There are, of course, apocryphal ghost stories that have never been proven. But researchers believe the physical mass of a soul is so insignificant that they cannot affect the physical world sufficiently to account for the classical trappings of haunting eg. chains clanking, ghostly wails, etc.

Can the dead communicate with each other? Only through an AfterNet terminal. The dead are dimly aware of the presence of other dead. But unfortunately they are as insubstantial to each other as they are to the living.

Can the dead pass through walls? No, although the dead are almost noncorporeal, they do have mass and volume, however slight. They can pass through certain semi-permeable membranes (a fancy way to say curtains or parts of the human body) without harm. Accidental experiments have shown that the volume of a soul can be reduced drastically without harming the dead, but according to these test subjects, the experience was very unpleasant.

Can the dead be harmed? The dead are collections of energy. It is possible that the energy could be dissipated but United States and international law forbids most testing in this area.

Can the dead feel pain? Not pain as the living know it. Certainly the dead can feel loss, loneliness, joy, etc., but not papercuts and broken limbs.

What do the dead like to be called? Everyone has heard terms like corporeally challenged, corporeally disadvantaged and disembodied entities. But the dead prefer to simply be called the dead. However, the policy of theAfterNet is to call them the disembodied.

Who invented theAfterNet? theAfterNet was not invented, it just grew, as do so many things on the Internet. It started even before public AfterNet terminals were available for the use of the dead. The formal AfterNet started operation Sept. 12, 2001. Click here for a timeline of events.

Who discovered the existence of the dead? Everyone knows the name of Antonia Simone, but the exact circumstances of her discovery are wildly varied. In 1992, her younger brother Ricardo, was injured in a martial arts accident that left him completely paralyzed. He needed a respirator to live and could only communicate through eyeblinks. She was a computer scientist at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center and decided to create a computer terminal sensitive to the slightest energy source. She was a student of Kirlian photography and strongly believed the body’s electromagnetic fields could affect sensitive electronic equipment. She created a terminal that could not be affected by traditional means -- no keyboard, mouse or other input devices. A veritable black box. Ms. Simone was devoted to her brother and tried for years to make a computer terminal that would allow her brother to communicate naturally. Distraught over the failure of her terminal, which she thought would free thousands of similarly afflicted people, she killed herself by hanging. When paramedics found her body days later, there on a computer screen was the message: “What took you guys so long? I’ve got the most important news.”

I’ve been told that pets have been “heard” on theAfterNet. Is this true? AfterNet terminals are designed to distinguish coherent messages from the dead from the background noise or static present on theAfterNet. Occasionally, however, the background clutter forms repeatable but senseless patterns. It’s been theorized that these patterns represent the thought processes of lower forms of life. But whether these patterns represent primitive human ancestors or your dead dog Spot is unknown. Nevertheless, most researchers believe all life forms in some degree possess these essential energies that humans call souls.