ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses Richard Matheson’s vision of the afterlife in the ‘space between’: at the confluence of several seemingly incongruous discourses, where spiritual beliefs meet scientific research and popular literary fiction. In positioning his narrative, Matheson eludes the discursive limitations of these individual modes of expression in a manner befitting the evanescent nature of his subject matter. To demonstrate these claims, the chapter outlines the hitherto under-investigated What Dreams May Come, first, in the context of Matheson’s eclectic and genre-bending oeuvre, in order to make sense of the multiple sources, influences and traditions that intersect in the narrative; and, second, in the context of the emergent parapsychological field of Near-Death Studies that emerged in the mid-1970s. The chapter brings these two lines of inquiry, into Matheson’s narrative practices and his scientific influences, respectively, together to consider the cultural function of fictionalised accounts of life after death when putatively ‘true’ testimonies of near-death experiences are readily available to interested readers.
