Notice: This article uses content directly taken from the Afterlife article at the Vampire Diaries Wiki, and is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike License.
The Afterlife is a metaphysical concept which exists in The Vampire Diaries and The Originals. It is the collective term used for the multiple planes of existence which are reachable through physical death, in which one exists in an incorporeal state.
While "finding peace" and being "sucked into oblivion" are presumed to lead to the naturally existing spiritual realms for souls, there have been other spiritual realms which were unnaturally created by magic. These other dimensions include the Ancestral Plane and the Other Side, which both can either trap or prevent souls from moving on to the natural aspects of the afterlife.