Interesting responses.
It had occurred to me that the term might seem assumptive, but I couldn't think of a better wording. Don't most Christians and other Abrahamic religionists believe there are places beyond the physical universe where spirits reside but physical beings cannot, e.g., paradise and hell?
Calling heaven and hell "places" is, perhaps, saying a bit too much. To put it mildly, it's complicated.
The Bible itself actually has very little to say about what we might call "the afterlife". In the Old Testament, especially pre-Exile (before the Jews were taken into captivity in Babylon) we generally only see a very vague and somewhat nebulous idea about what happens after death. There is what is called "she'ol", a Hebrew word that literally translates to "grave" or "pit". We see bits and pieces about this state of existence "in the grave", in she'ol, as a kind of conscious experience. For example, after King David's infant son died, David says that he will be re-united with his son in death. When King Saul went to a necromancer in the middle of the night (which was a big no-no), there is a strange encounter where we read that the Prophet Samuel rises out of the ground, his shade or soul or whatever you want to call it. But that's all it really is, a sort of vague state of death. On the other hand, we do see the beginnings of the hope and belief in a future resurrection, so that in the book of the Prophet Isaiah we read that the dead will rise. So death, and the state of death, is a nebulous sort of thing, the interim between this life and the future resurrection.
At the same time, the language of "heaven", more-or-less just means everything we see when we look up--the stars, the sun, the moon, etc. After Solomon had the first Jewish Temple built and God deigns to inhabit it with His Divine Presence, Solomon says, "The heavens, not even the heavens of heavens, can contain You; how much less this house which I have built!" This phrase "heavens of heavens" can also be rendered as "the highest heavens" "the greatest heavens" etc. That is, the most sublime, uppermost, of everything we can see or fathom is insufficient to hold God, God is greater still, so Solomon is in awe that God who is greater than everything would choose to make His Divine habitation in this building of stone. That is, as the chief locus of the Divine Presence; the same God who also says, "The heavens are My throne, and the earth is My footstool"--again, a reference to God's unfathomable greatness as beyond and above all things. It is in this sense that "heaven" comes to be a way of talking about God's utter transcendence; so the angels (God's messengers) when described as being from heaven has more to do with the fact that they dwell in God's presence in a special or particular way. It's not about a place, a location, or a realm, or dimension--but rather about their being in the presence of God. But, again, the Jewish high priest who enters into the inner sanctuary of the Temple, likewise, enters into that same incomprehensible presence of God. In that way, when the high priest entered beyond the veil into the Holy of Holies--the inner sanctuary--it was, in a sense, as though the high priest entered into heaven--not in some literal change of location, but because he was before the profound presence of YHWH.
Post-Exile Judaism, or what we refer to as the Second Temple Period, and the books of the Old Testament written in this period still don't really go into much detail; though in extra-biblical writings from this period we do see a somewhat more complex. Apocalyptic literature (which doesn't mean "end of the world" but refers to a class of writings which involve visions, robust and graphic imagery, etc) frequently involved visions or visionary experiences where the main figure of the work is taken by an angel and shown profound things. So, for example, in the apocalyptic work of the book of Enoch (not in the Bible, but an influential work of the ancient period nonetheless) the titular Enoch beholds the Garden of Eden when he is taken into the third of seven heavens (why "seven heavens"? Because in the ancient world seven was often symbolic of divine things, not that there are literally seven "heavens"). Another word for the Garden of Eden is "Paradise", a Greek word borrowed from Persian, literally meaning "a garden". At the same time, Paradise or Gan-Eden (Garden of Eden) was viewed as a place of resting for Israel's patriarchs, hence also being called "Abraham's bosom", the righteous dead were seen as spending their rest in a foretaste of the renewal of creation.
That gets us to the New Testament, where the idea of "she'ol" is translated with the Greek word "hades", a general "place of the dead" as it were. But it is divided between the state of the righteous dead, called Paradise or Abraham's Bosom, and the state of the wicked dead called Gehenna. Gehenna is the Greek form of the Hebrew Ge-Hinnom, literally "Valley of Hinnom", a valley located outside of Jerusalem where in much more ancient times Canaanite Pagans worshiped the god Molech and would sacrifice their children to him by literally roasting their children alive on a red-hot metal idol of Molech. Considered in the Old Testament one of the most detestable and abominable practices of the Canaanites. The imagery and language of the Hinnom Valley was taken to describe how the state of the wicked dead was not pleasant. Jesus describes the state of the wicked as burning with unquenchable fire, in "outer darkness" where there is "wailing and gnashing of teeth". This is what most people think about when they hear the word "hell".
Also in the New Testament we see two more things. The Apostle Paul in his 2nd letter to the Corinthians speaks of a being present with Jesus while apart from the body. The words he uses in Greek can literally mean "emigrate from the body and immigrate to the Lord". So here Paul speaks of being apart from the body (in bodily death) which is with Jesus. And since the New Testament speaks of Jesus ascending to heaven, and being seated at the right hand of God the Father (again, not about literal location, but rather about Christ being enthroned as King and Lord of all things), it wasn't a great leap for Christians to speak of "going to heaven" after we die. And secondly, in St. John's Apocalypse (the Revelation) one of the visions we read involves Christian martyrs, having died in persecution, standing before God in heaven, asking how long until God will finally act to deal with this world's wickedness.
And this is where the language of "heaven and hell" comes from. That between death and the future resurrection, there is a foretaste of what is to come. For the righteous, it is a taste of eternal life resting in the presence of God, and often describe this as "being in heaven" as shorthand. And for the wicked, there is a foretaste of future judgment, what we usually describe as "hell". It's not about where, but rather about an experience that anticipates the future.
Christianity maintains that one day Jesus will return, and when He returns it is as Judge of everyone, of both the living and the dead. When He returns, the dead will be raised, the righteous will be raised to the fullness of eternal life and share in the beauty of God and the renewing of all creation. The wicked are raised to judgment and to an existence we don't quite understand--but St. John in the Revelation sees a vision in which the wicked, the devil, and even death and hades are themselves cast into what he describes as a "lake of fire and sulfur", and is called "the second death". This is also often called "hell" in a modern context. What exactly John's vision refers to is almost anyone's guess--there has never been a very clear consensus in Christianity on that front.
So, like I said, it's complicated. But it really has nothing to do with "spirits" being in a different "place", but rather about the experiences of the dead between death and resurrection. And, though I've written a lot here, I need to reiterate, the Bible itself says remarkably little--the Bible just isn't that interested in "the afterlife"; but cares a lot more about this life, and what can be called "life
after life after death".
-CryptoLutheran