In 1892, William Stead discovered he had the gift of automatic writing and it was then that a discarnate entity claiming to be Julia Ames began to write using Stead's hand. "Sitting alone with a tranquil mind, I consciously placed my right hand, with the pen held in the ordinary way, at the disposal of Julia, and watched with keen and skeptical interest to see what it would write." Stead wrote at the time.

Explaining the process of her death Julia wrote; "I did not feel any pain in "dying;" I felt only a great calm and peace. Then I awoke, and I was standing outside my old body, in the room. There was no one there at first, just myself and just myself. At first I wondered I was so strangely well. Then I saw that I had passed over. She added in another communication, "There is no death... Death is only a sense of deprivation and separation which the so-called living feel – an incident of limitation of 'life.' Death only exists for the 'living,' not for us."