When I had my "death" experience in 2001 I really didn't know what to make of it. The reason I say "death" experience is when the paramedics arrived the found me not breathing or a heart beat. I was revived in the ambulance on the way to the hospital. When I awakened in the hospital I knew I had experienced something, I just chalked it up to the brain starving for oxygen. It was the experiences afterward that changed my mindset on the afterlife. As I lay on the hospital bed in ICU my Dad visited me and told me that everything will be fine, my Dad had died in 1979. I chalked this up to the medication I was on. You see being an atheist I had to justify my experiences no matter how unexplainable they were. In 2003 is where thing really start getting strange, my brother paid me a visit, my brother and I are 2/3rds of a set of triplets, however, my brother died in 1985. My brother continued these visits until 2007 and we enjoyed many conversations. We talked about my experience when I had my heart attack 2001, we talked about my Mother who died in 1998 and my older sister who had just died a year ago 2006. We cover a number of topics, then in July of 2007 he told me that he would not be visiting anymore because he had decided to return, that was the last time I saw him.
Do I believe in an afterlife, NO! Why, because I know there is an afterlife or spiritual realm, whatever you choose to call it and no one is left out of it.