READ: Artificial Intelligence and Virtual Reality Are Resurrecting the Dead
For centuries, people have searched for ways to bridge the divide between the living and the dead. From necromancers in ancient Mesopotamia to mediums of the Victorian era, the desire to call back loved ones has been as old as death itself. Today, technology offers a new gateway: artificial intelligence and virtual reality. These tools can reconstruct voices, mannerisms, even lifelike presences of the deceased—leaving us to wrestle with an old question in a modern form. Are we comforting the grieving, or are we trespassing into dangerous territory once reserved for seers and occultists?
The strength of virtual reality lies in its ability to convince. Even when we consciously know we are in a digital simulation, the body reacts as if it’s real. A fake fall creates vertigo; a digital object hurled toward us makes us instinctively flinch. This power makes VR a valuable tool for therapy in cases of PTSD and anxiety.
Applied to grief, VR seems to promise something powerful: a chance to face the image of a lost loved one without relying on imagination. Instead of the traditional “empty chair” exercise—where mourners are asked to pretend their loved one is sitting across from them—VR puts a convincing likeness right in front of their eyes.
But here lies the danger: if the illusion feels real enough, what happens when the mourner begins to treat it as real?
Researchers such as Francesco Fanti Rovetta warn that VR simulations can create an “ambiguous attitude toward death.” The mourner knows, rationally, that death has occurred, but the emotional experience of the digital encounter may encourage denial. The grieving process, already filled with pain, risks being derailed.
Psychologists have long noted that grief, however crushing, is necessary. Pain is not a malfunction but part of how love reshapes itself after loss. To shortcut this process with digital replacements risks offering the illusion of healing while trapping the mourner in dependency.
The ethical dilemma sharpens when we realize grief is not an illness to be “fixed.” Some argue that calling it a “disorder” only medicalizes suffering that is both natural and inevitable. In this light, VR grief therapy may not be curing but commodifying pain—turning mourning into a clinical problem that technology must solve.
Yet the ethical questions are only half the story. On a spiritual level, the idea of reviving the dead in any form has always carried warnings. In many traditions, attempts to contact the departed were considered dangerous, even forbidden. Ancient necromancy often claimed to raise the dead through ritual. Spiritism promised communication through mediums. Today’s technology may look clinical, but is it so different in spirit?
Biblical texts speak directly to this. In Deuteronomy 18:10–12, necromancy and summoning the dead are listed among practices detestable to God. Saul’s consultation with the medium of Endor in 1 Samuel 28 is remembered not as a triumph of connection but as a grave sin of desperation. The warnings are consistent: meddling with the realm of the dead risks confusion, deception, and spiritual harm.
VR simulations may be digital, but they can carry the same temptation: the idea that we can bring back what God has taken, that death itself can be sidestepped. Even if no spirit is involved, the practice flirts with the same impulse—to call back what has passed on, rather than accept the finality of death. These avatars risk becoming a new breed of “ghost,” programmed by code but no less powerful in their emotional grip.
The dangers of this path were dramatized in the Black Mirror episode “Be Right Back.” A grieving woman uses technology to resurrect her husband. At first, the replica soothes her loss. But over time, the imperfections of the imitation only sharpen the absence it was meant to erase. In the end, she orders the replica away, realizing that the dead cannot truly be replaced.
This story feels less like fiction now and more like prophecy. What was once a cautionary tale has become an ethical dilemma staring us in the face. Should we use technology to bring back the dead, even as simulation? The answer depends on whether we believe grief is a process to endure or a problem to solve, whether we see digital resurrections as therapy or as trespassing into sacred ground. Psychologically, it risks reinforcing denial. Spiritually, it echoes practices long condemned as necromancy. Culturally, it may redefine death itself, turning finality into something negotiable.
In trying to summon the dead through machines, we may find ourselves not comforting the living but walking the same forbidden path of necromancers and mediums, where shadows promise solace but lead only deeper into darkness.
