I bought Schwartz book 'The Afterlife Experiments', and have read about 50% of the book.
Some interesting stuff, although I must say the tone of the book is not objective despite his claims. He frequently writes that his opinion is that of a scientist, he doesn't know the answer, and further research is needed to follow up on the data that is gathered etc....
But then throughout the book he'll say something like, "Then the mother of the sitter (person being read) forced her way past the other souls and told her that................", rather then, "John Edwards said this and here is the transcript........... there are specific pieces that correlate etc....
I just assume he was writing to a specific new age audience of people who would buy that book, not necessarily his fellow academics, hence the use of subjective interpretive language.
John Edwards certainly comes off from the experiments as a legit medium from reading this book. The practice of medium seems quite complicated and like an abstract game of 'telephone charades', where the medium will be given images from those it is communicating with.
IMO it is likely that mediums are in contact with other forces and get real information but it is often not straight forward information, so it can be hard to understand, particularly since the medium is trying to relay abstract personal information to someone they don't know so that other person can make sense of it. Also seems like from the book, they can get future, past and present information all from different sources all the time, so it can be very hard to piece together the timing, assuming you are even able to figure out what the meaning is behind the symbols.
But I must say at the end of the day, Arigo's story blows each of these mediums out of the water with a nuclear cannon!
Is there an afterlife? I think it is very very likely. Is it in the way most major religions describe? I doubt it, but the one thing that we can all bet on is that we will find out!
