Excerpted from the introduction of Proof of Angels.
One of the biggest events in my years as editor of Angels on Earth magazine came in the summer of 1999, when an applicant for a position that had opened at Guideposts and Angels on Earth came in for an interview. Angels and Guideposts are in the same offices. Edward Grinnan, the editor in chief of Guideposts, thought it would be a good idea if I took a look at the potential hire.
As we talked—me explaining what Guideposts and Angels were about, and Ptolemy telling me about his interests and work up to that point in his life—I noticed that his eye kept traveling to my bookshelves. My office had a lot of shelf space, much of it taken up with books on angels, but plenty of it empty.
It wasn’t long before I was going over to Ptolemy’s office and giving him stories to work on. At our offices someone is always on the phone, talking to the narrator of a story, asking questions, and making suggestions for how to shape and structure it. I soon got used to hearing Ptolemy’s voice in his office doing just that.
At first Ptolemy worked on the usual Angels story—a first-person narrative that the editor works to create with the person who has had an angelic experience. But before too long, he branched out.
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He started producing what we call “thought pieces” for me: articles that would take a subject that at first glance seemed to have little to do with angels, and show how this wasn’t the case at all. I loved these articles, and began to feature them as cover stories every other issue.
From seeds to seashells to birds to stars, wherever Ptolemy turned his gaze he seemed to find connections with angels. The shelves of his office overflowed with books, and I realized what he must have been thinking that day we met in my office: Why aren’t all of her shelves completely full?
In 2007 Ptolemy left Guideposts and Angels to work on a book called The Divine Life of Animals, the idea for which had come from an article he’d written for Guideposts about animals and the afterlife. The article turned out to be one of the most popular in the magazine’s history, and Ptolemy spent the next year developing and enlarging the idea.
Today, Ptolemy and I are married. Though he no longer works in our offices, in a way not much has changed. He still has too many books on his shelves downstairs in his study, and during the time he spent working with Dr. Eben Alexander on Proof of Heaven and The Map of Heaven, I’d often hear Ptolemy on the phone, shaping the narrative, bouncing ideas back and forth, just as he would have done had it been a Guideposts or Angels on Earth story.
In fact, Ptolemy called Proof of Heaven his “ultimate Guideposts story,” and though the result was not a Guideposts article but a bestselling book, I could see why he felt that that was just what it was.
One morning last March, I sent Ptolemy a link to a story that we’d discussed in the weekly editorial meeting: a story about a young woman who had crashed in a river, and the police officers who had worked to save her, believing she was alive because of a voice that came from inside the car. It was just the kind of story Ptolemy would have liked: tragic, mysterious, but also deeply hopeful.
I knew that Angels on Earth readers wouldn’t have taken that mysterious voice for anything other than the voice of an angel, and I knew that Ptolemy would have loved bringing out the details and drama of the story to maximum effect.
Could we do the story justice in our pages, or was it too big a story, too bittersweet, for our short format? I sent Ptolemy the link.
An hour or so later, Ptolemy called. Not too long after my email had come in, he’d received a call from an agent working with one of the police officers who had been on hand at the crash. The agent—Jennifer Gates—knew Ptolemy’s work, and thought he might be able to turn the story into a book. She even had a title in mind: Proof of Angels.
For the next few months, our house was more like an extension of the Guideposts and Angels on Earth offices than ever before. Ptolemy and police officer Tyler Beddoes were on the phone constantly, developing not just a working relationship but what I soon realized was a deep friendship as well. Ptolemy believed that just as Proof of Heaven was his “ultimate Guideposts story,” Proof of Angels was going to be his ultimate Angels on Earth story.
Reading it now, I have to agree. And I can’t help but think that an angel might have been at work that morning Ptolemy received not just an email from me about Tyler’s story, but a call from Jennifer as well.
—Colleen Hughes, editor of Angels on Earth magazine
