I want to tell you about this part of my life by beginning with a premise. Everything you are about to read in this chapter and the ones that follow—especially regarding the public figure I will be talking about—you are free to interpret however you wish. I did not decide to tell my story to cause a sensation, nor to convince anyone that my experiences are true. Whether it involves John Doe, Jane Doe, or one of the most famous people in the world is, ultimately, of little importance. What matters is what I lived through, the experiences I had, and my desire to share them with you.

These are subjects that fall outside what we normally consider reality and, precisely for this reason, I leave everyone free to make up their own mind. You can believe me or not. You can think it all came from my imagination, from a particular sensitivity, or from something we are still unable to fully understand today. But I believe that, if you are reading this book, there is a good chance you are willing to approach the subject with at least a little curiosity and the consideration it deserves.

Often, especially at the beginning of such an unusual journey, believing is difficult. I was the first to constantly struggle against my own rational mind. I asked myself questions, gave myself explanations, and looked for coincidences, suggestions, and tricks of the mind. Because, let’s face it, being rational is a good thing. The problem begins when the reality we know no longer seems sufficient to explain what is happening.

To walk a path like this, sooner or later, you have to allow yourself the possibility of opening your mind. That does not mean blindly believing everything. It simply means accepting the possibility that the universe may be infinitely more complex than we are capable of perceiving. I came to believe that death is not the end. To me, it is a passage, a transformation into another form of existence.

It is a belief that matured over the years, nourished by the experiences I lived through, the testimonies I collected, and the stories of people who claim to have come back after finding themselves, for a few minutes, on the boundary between life and death. I believe we are souls on a journey, life after life, and I believe our true home is somewhere else. A place filled with light and with a sense of well-being, peace, and love that are almost impossible to describe. A place where fear, loneliness, and despair do not exist and to which, once this journey is over, we will return.

But before I can get to all of that, I need to tell you how my journey began. And I need to tell you about a soul who, without a shadow of a doubt, left a profound mark on mine.

Before he arrived, I had communicated mainly with my grandmother. She was the one who raised me and loved me from my very first cries. My parents were absorbed in the family business and, throughout my childhood, were not very present. They were busy living their love and their life together, enjoying themselves as perhaps was only natural for a married couple who had had the foresight to open a successful business during the golden years.

Naturally, as a child, I did not see it that way at all. I suffered from the absence of an affectionate mother and longed for a father like the ones you see in movies. One of those fathers who listen, protect, and guide their children. Truth be told, I would have settled for a normal father. Mine, however, not only seemed completely inexperienced, but was also not particularly suited to the role of a parent. He became one many years later, when my own children were born.

But back to my dear grandmother. She was the one who lovingly raised me. Apart from the occasional slipper launched like a drone to keep me in line. Nobody’s perfect. She was the first soul I searched for.

Truthfully, I had already begun taking an interest in these things during my school years. Those improvised séances teenagers sometimes try, automatic writing, and other similar things. Naive experiments, games—or at least that was how we thought of them. And yet, almost immediately, I had the feeling that I possessed a certain affinity for the subject.

But, if I am completely honest, it had all begun much earlier. I was around five years old—or, at least, that is how far back my first vivid memories go. I communicated with what I then considered a supreme being. In my child’s mind, he was the ancient man with a thick beard and white hair described by the Church. I had no other point of reference and, above all, no reason to question his identity. To me, he existed. Period.

I still remember our conversations. I would sit beside him on the branch of a tree or on the edge of a strange cubic world, perhaps created by my imagination. Below us was space, nothingness, and we would swing our feet over the void while chatting peacefully. He never gave me any great revelations, to be honest. No secrets of the universe, no prophecies. A pity, really. I could have taken notes and saved myself quite a few problems in the years that followed.

He was simply a constant, reassuring presence. I always perceived him as some kind of spirit guide. Perhaps he truly was.

When I began communicating with my grandmother and, occasionally, with a wandering spirit or two, I did not take it too seriously. I did not investigate further. I preferred to imagine that it was all a product of my imagination. It was easier. And yet, somewhere deep inside me, I knew something did not add up. Or perhaps something added up far too well.

I first knew of Michael Jackson, the King of Pop, the way almost everyone of my generation did—especially when Thriller came out. I was immediately fascinated by him. There was something impossible to ignore about that young man: his talent, the way he moved, his voice. He seemed to belong to an entirely different category from any other artist I had ever seen.

When the scandals erupted and the allegations dragged him into years of legal and media scrutiny, however, I distanced myself out of ignorance. At the time, I had not yet understood how complex the relationship between public figures, the press, and public opinion could be. I believed what I read. I almost took it for granted that, if something was published as news, it had to be true. I did not know his story well enough to question it.

Then came marriage and children. Life—the real, everyday, chaotic kind. And I almost completely forgot what that Afro-haired child prodigy with infinite talent had represented to me during my teenage years.

Michael died on June 25, 2009. When I heard the news, something inside me stopped. I cannot explain what I felt any other way. Time seemed to stand still for hours. I could not speak or even form a coherent thought. All I felt was an enormous emptiness in my mind and in my heart, as though something had been taken away from me and I could not understand why.

And that was the most absurd part. I did not know him. He was not part of my family. I had not spent the previous years following every detail of his life. And yet I was grieving. That sadness and sense of disorientation stayed with me for days.

A few nights later, I saw a figure at the foot of my bed. I still remember every detail: the white fedora, a bright yellow suit, the black tie against a pristine white shirt, and his gaze lost somewhere in the distance. I knew it was him. It lasted an instant, perhaps less. I turned off the light and convinced myself that my heart had shown me what no longer existed. Suggestion, grief, exhaustion. Any explanation would do.

The second time happened a few evenings later. I was about to switch off the bedside lamp and drift into sleep when, on the pillow, what I still call a moon face appeared. I could see only the eyes and the mouth. He was smiling gently.

“Hello,” he said.

“Hi. How are you?”

It was the first thing that came to mind. Not an intelligent question. Not: What is the afterlife like? Not: Does God exist? Not: What is the meaning of the universe? No. “How are you?” Apparently, even when faced with an apparition, my brain still remembers its manners.

At the time, I spoke to him in English. I had not yet understood that, in my experience, communication with the other dimension does not necessarily happen through audible words. In fact, for me, that is extremely rare. What I perceive arrives mainly in the form of blocks of thought, images, sensations, and complete concepts that only later are transformed by the brain into understandable words.

This is why I came to believe that there is no specific language capable of acting as a bridge between one dimension and another. It is something more like a universal form of telepathy. But I did not know that then. So I spoke English and, had anyone been watching me, they probably would have had quite a few questions.

At first, Michael did not speak much. I perceived a profound sadness in him. Truthfully, he seemed absolutely pissed off—if you’ll forgive the expression. What I felt was someone furious with himself, as though he had failed to control a situation that had slipped dramatically out of his hands. But above all, I perceived his pain over his children. The thought of having left them without his presence seemed to torment him.

Naturally, the doubt was always there, constant. What if it was me? What if I was producing the images and words? What if my brain was constructing all of this because I could not accept his death? I asked myself these questions continuously. And yet I kept going, because it made me feel better. Those conversations eased the emptiness I had been carrying inside me for days.

We continued talking for several evenings. No earth-shattering revelations. At one point, I asked him how he had died and whether he had suffered. What I received was the sensation of an excruciating pain in the back. Then nothing.

The following day, I went looking for information. I needed to verify it. I read that cardiac pain could sometimes radiate to the back, and I searched through everything that was available at the time about his death. The official cause would later be attributed to acute propofol and benzodiazepine intoxication. I had not received a medical explanation, and I certainly could not claim to have discovered the cause of his death. But that reference to pain in the back affected me deeply.

For me, it was the first moment when I seriously wondered whether what I perceived might contain information I was not consciously creating. From that moment on, I began to verify things. Always. Even today, I believe that when dealing with experiences of this kind, it is essential to look for confirmation and to maintain a degree of rationality. It would be irresponsible not to—not only in order to understand whether what we interpret might have meaning, but also because communication, at least as I perceive it, is far from simple.

As I said, clearly spoken and genuinely audible words are extremely rare. Most of the time, blocks of thought arrive, and interpreting a thought is not the same as hearing a sentence. It is easy to make mistakes and misunderstand, especially because we human beings have the terrible habit of adding something of our own: a fear, a desire, a memory, or a belief. The message arrives and our mind immediately tries to complete it. I will talk about this many more times. Don’t worry.

The days that followed were absurd. I began seeing Michael everywhere: in the garden, in the kitchen. I even found him in the bathroom, singing directly into my ears. Privacy, apparently, is a relative concept in the other dimension. Michael had a habit of singing. He hardly does it anymore, but back then he was an almost constant sonic presence and, when my mother became seriously ill, during my darkest moments I often perceived a phrase: Hold my hand. He repeated it like a mantra, so many times that, in my mind, it had almost become a melody.

Months later, Hold My Hand, his collaboration with Akon, was released. You can think whatever you like. I stood perfectly still, staring at the title. I did not know what to think. Coincidence? Suggestion? Someone would probably have told me yes. But I knew how many times those three words had accompanied me throughout my mother’s illness, and I was deeply affected.

And then there was the chewing gum. He would blow it into a bubble and, in my perception, pop it practically inside my eardrums. It drove me insane. It was becoming a nightmare. Only much later did I understand that, in my experience, every soul seems to have a personal way of attracting the attention of the person with whom it is trying to communicate. Apparently, during that period, Michael had decided that ignoring him was not going to be an option. Perhaps he had searched for me because I was able to perceive him. That, however, was something I would understand much later.

At that moment, I was simply terrified. I was not afraid of him. I was afraid of myself. I was terrified that I had finally lost my grip on reality.

Part Two