Ever wish you could talk to a deceased loved one again, hear the essence of their voice, listen to their stories, and imagine their lives from before you knew them? U.S. Army veteran Wilson Feliz created the ‘Chapter3Five’ app to bring the dead back to life.
“I thought to myself, so many veterans and so many people grieve and are lonely. A lot of the suicide rates among veterans come from the fact that they feel like they’re alone, and they have nobody to talk to,” Feliz, the app’s founder, said in an interview with Military.com. “So what I did was create an app that was solely based on the ability to communicate with identities so that nobody grieves alone.”
Those identities, as he called them, could be anyone who passed away and left behind a grieving loved one. Feliz said the app’s name is meaningful and gives users, many of them military veterans, spouses or children, the chance to spend more time listening and actually hearing from someone who is physically gone.
“The number three suggests communication, while five indicates a new direction,” he said about the app’s name, which launched in late August with just 40 users to start. “Put it together and ‘Chapter3five’ marks the beginning of communication in a new direction.”
Personal Struggles While Serving Inspired App
For Feliz, the idea for the app came from his own struggles. The 36-year-old married father of three lives in Bethlehem, Pa., and works in computer coding. He served eight years in the U.S. Army, last stationed at Fort Bliss, Texas. Feliz got out in 2019, he said, because his military service had taken a toll on his mental and emotional health.
“I was an alcoholic after my time in the service. I dealt with post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, suicidal thoughts. You name it, I went through it,” he said. “I was looking to answer, ‘how do we help people stand back up when the world shuts them down? What happens with grieving? What happens with loneliness?’ That is what motivated me to create an application where the finality of death doesn’t exist anymore.”
‘Chapter3Five’ is available for download on the Apple and Google Play stores. It works as a recording app for people to tell their stories by being prompted to answer 45 open-ended questions, including:
What is your favorite moment?
Bring me to that place.
Tell me how it smells.
Tell me what you ate.
Tell me what you experienced.
What do you dislike?
What advice would you give?
What did you learn?
Who are your heroes?
Who do you love?
“After you answer all 45 questions, a code is then given to you and then shared with family and friends who will then inherit their way onto their application,” Feliz said. “Upon doing so, they will be able to communicate with you even after you’re gone.”
According to Feliz, each answer allows the app to capture the essence of how a person communicates, thereby creating what he called an “identity” that can then tell stories, answer questions, and give advice as a form of two-way communication.
“So if you go to Grandpa Joe’s ‘identity’ and you say, ‘Hey, Grandpa Joe. This is what I’m kind of going through right now. What advice would you give me? The app will catch the essence of that person and their answers to those questions,” Feliz explained. “The brain doesn’t know the difference between reality and imagination. So when a family member communicates with an identity on the app, it almost feels like they’re talking to the person as if they’re still alive.”
Founder Explains App Does Not Replace Therapy
Feliz is careful to explain that ‘Chapter3Five’ is not therapy.
“Grieving a death comes from the idea of never being able to talk to a person again or see them again,” he said. “So while this app cannot take the place of therapy, it can ease a person’s loneliness and grief, not just temporarily, but each time the app is activated and an identity is accessed.”
For military families who’ve lost a loved one in the line of duty, to even a child who died prematurely, Feliz said ‘Chapter3Five’ can make death less about a person dying and more about how they lived.
“I want people to have this application and feel like death no longer exists,” he said. “If grandma might be dying soon, she can record her thoughts and answer the 45 questions so that her grandkids will still be able to talk to her and find out who she is. It should feel like those grandkids are talking to grandma like she’s never gone away.”
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