The smokers were already lining the stone benches outside, the heat already peaking at 9:00 a.m., the misters on full-blast. I nodded and tapped my name tag, noting that I was one of them. It appeared that they had all become fast friends at the banquet, pairing off and whispering about odd occurrences in their lives—the unexplained. I felt like an outsider already and worried that I had blown it by not staying for the dinner to meet Guy Roberts.

Because he was the main attraction, the large ballroom was a rush of people trying to find seats near the front. I imagined what other events that took place in these rooms were like: medium-budget weddings, sales conferences for lower-tier companies, and perhaps occasional motivational speakers who had photos with Tony Robbins on their website. This was not the kind of place where big dreams were hatched.

After I found a seat, I listened to the whispers of two women who said that Guy had sat at their table—their biggest chance to know the truth about the afterlife—and not only had he been unkind to them—“stuck up,” one of the women said—but he spent half the time looking for someone better to talk to. Mid-conversation, he had stood up and announced, “There’s someone over there I’d rather speak to at the moment.” They were paying for this. They had bought his books. They were keeping him afloat, they said.

During his presentation in the morning, he smiled casually, as if he hadn’t slighted anyone, and tapped on his controller to move his PowerPoint forward. He was the leader in near-death experiences, he told us. He was here to debunk death. There was an afterlife, and it was like America, but better. Better parks, better golf courses, rivers, streams, all the pets you loved and lost, and racial harmony. He laughed slightly when he said it, like he knew something incredible that we could not comprehend.

“I have evidence,” he yelled at us. “It’s science.”

He paced the stage, and people clapped.

“What I want to do for all of you is provide a safe space where you can come out of the spiritual closet.”

Everyone around me clapped harder.

“We are living in a time of fear. Fear of your own bodily death. Fear of the process of dying. Fear of living the greatest life you have ever envisioned. Fear of what’s going on on the other side. All that fear hurts me. I can feel it. I’m consumed by all the fear in this room. And so are you.”

He stopped in the middle of the stage and adjusted his microphone.

“Do you know that you can find out exactly what’s happening on the other side if you really want to? Do you want to?”

People around me screamed yes.