I don't look at this as a religious based thing. To me this is energy based.
Keep a journal, and learn how to see how you as an individuals sees information so you can learn your own sign language. Meditate and practice psychic self defense and surrounding yourself with prayer.
I think that the majority of messages are validating messages to confirm the survival of conscious. And many times that validation message is negative or sad.
In my experience victims are more concerned with helping their families understand that they are still connected to them. In some rare experiences information comes through that helps understand what happened.
The process of receiving information for me is seeing, hearing, and feeling their energy in my frame of reference. That doesn't mean I see the individual, unfortunately.
Information comes through to me in 3 basic ways seen, hearing, and feeling the energy of the person that's crossed over. In which it is a symbolic type of language.
I believe that before anybody makes the journey to the other side, we have to know on a soul level that we are leaving, whether it's an accident or illness, and we prepare ourselves to a certain degree that we won't be there in the future.