Life after death is an ancient and universal human belief. Anthropologists believe prehistoric burial practices provide evidence of this expectation. Ancient philosophers, such as Plato, affirmed the soul’s eternal nature. And all major religions teach that we continue to exist after death. In fact, in a survey of almost 16,000 people in the U.S. even a third of atheists and agnostics claimed to believe in life after death. I think it’s safe to say that the vast majority of people who have lived on this planet have believed death is not our final end. After we die something else is coming. Of course, religious teachings differ on the nature of what’s next—heaven, hell, reincarnation, nirvana—but each agrees that we will continue to exist after we die.
Is it possible to test the accuracy of this widespread belief?
Can we scientifically investigate the existence of life after death?
For more than a century, researchers have tried to peer into this realm by examining the experiences of those who have been close to death. After all, these people are right on the precipice of finding out what comes next. Deathbed experiences or DBEs highlight what people say and do prior to dying. These stories include the dying calling out to or even claiming to see deceased family or friends.
Additionally, about four decades ago, researchers began investigating cases where people have been clinically dead then returned to consciousness. Approximately 10-20% return with a claim that they had a vivid conscious experience—more real than daily experience. These are known as near-death experiences or NDEs.
Here’s a partial list of DBE and NDE studies.
Albert Heim
Albert Heim was a Swiss geologist who had a near fatal fall while climbing the Alps. During his fall he noticed that time was greatly expanded. He writes, “What I felt in five to ten seconds could not be described in ten times that length of time. All my thoughts and ideas were coherent and very clear, and in no way susceptible, as are dreams, to obliteration.” He then describes his thought process in detail, including how his whole past life was presented to him in many images. He continues, “Elevated and harmonious thoughts dominated and united the individual images, and like magnificent music a divine calm swept through my soul. I became ever more surrounded by a splendid blue heaven with delicate roseate and violet cloudlets.” After this experience, he began collecting similar accounts from other climbers during the next 25 years. In 1892 he published the first collection of modern NDEs. His study showed that many climbers experienced a similar feeling of calm as they were descending to what seemed like their death.
Raymond Moody
In 1965, Raymond Moody, then an undergraduate student, started interviewing people who had nearly died. These people claimed to have had an out-of-body experience, then returned to their bodies. Some of them could even verify events that were happening while they were unconscious. He coined the term near-death experience or NDE for these hyperreal, conscious experiences. In 1975, following his medical residency, Moody published his analysis of about 150 near-death cases in the U.S. in his book Life After Life, which has sold more than 13 million copies. Moody’s research uncovered fifteen common characteristics of NDEs. A scientific limitation of Moody’s approach was that he primarily relied on self-reporting so he did not attempt to corroborate medical details.
Moody decided to investigate this topic after hearing George Ritchie’s NDE story. In December 1943 Ritchie was in basic military training at Camp Barkeley, Texas when he had an incredibly vivid and life-changing near-death experience. Ritchie’s story was published in 1978 in Return from Tomorrow.
Osis and Haraldsson
In 1959, psychologist Karlis Osis began large-scale surveys on deathbed phenomena in the U.S. He credits William Barrett’s Deathbed Visions (1926) with setting him on this course of study. He then joined with Erlendur Haraldsson to carry out surveys in India to see if the data would be similar between the two countries. They collected data from doctors and nurses then followed up with telephone interviews in the U.S. while conducting in-person interviews in India. All together they received data from about 800 medical personnel in the U.S. and India, “representing approximately 50,000 observations of dying patients” (21). Since they did not make a distinction between near-death and deathbed experiences, their approach is more broadly encompassing than Moody’s. After applying statistical analysis to the data, they found that the “surveys were dominated by similar patterns” (192). Patterns between the two countries included apparitions of religious figures or deceased family or friends, environmental visions (e.g., gardens), and mood-elevation prior to death. They conclude, “In our judgment, the similarities between the core phenomena found in the deathbed visions of both countries are clear enough to be considered as supportive of the postmortem survival hypothesis” (191). They also discovered that in both countries the purpose of the deathbed apparition was to take the patient away and most patients responded with eagerness to go (184). Their analysis was published in 1977 in At the Hour of Death.
Kenneth Ring
After reading Moody’s book, psychologist Kenneth Ring was inspired to carry out his own more scientifically rigorous study in Connecticut, beginning in 1977. Using psychological questions and assessment scales, Ring and his team interviewed 102 patients over a 13-month period. He found that while NDEs have core characteristics, some are more common than others and they occur in a meaningful order. The results were published in his book Life at Death (1979).
IANDS
In 1978, the International Association for Near-Death Studies was formed (originally called the Association for the Scientific Study of Near-Death Phenomena). Approximately 700 near-death cases are currently published on the website. In 1982, this organization established the Journal of Near-Death Studies, which continues to publish scholarly articles on the topic.
Michael Sabom’s First Study
After hearing a report on Raymond Moody’s book in a Sunday school class in Florida, cardiologist Michael Sabom reasoned that Moody’s stories were fabricated. He had never heard such bizarre accounts, but he reluctantly agreed to ask a few patients if they had had any unusual experiences. The third patient he asked described a deeply emotional experience like what he had heard in Moody’s book. Consequently, Sabom began a more thorough investigation of these claims during the next five years, interviewing 71 near-death experiencers. His findings were published in Recollections of Death (1981). I will return to Sabom below.
Greyson Scale
In 1983, psychiatrist Bruce Greyson created the Near-Death Experience Scale, also known as the Greyson Scale. The NDE Scale helps to quantify frequently occurring details in NDE accounts using 16 elements in four clusters: cognitive, affective, paranormal, and transcendental. Experiences with scores of seven or higher are classified as an NDE.
The Dutch Study
In 1986, after reading Return from Tomorrow, cardiologist Pim van Lommel in the Netherlands began a two-year pilot study. He asked all of his patients who survived a cardiac arrest if they had any recollection of their period of unconsciousness. He found that twelve out of fifty patients (24 percent) reported an extremely poignant NDE. In 1988 he joined with two psychologists to carry out a “well-designed scientific study.” Up to this point, near-death studies had mostly been retrospective, which means they relied on people’s memories of previous experiences. And sometimes these experiences occurred years earlier. Van Lommel and his team sought to remedy this weakness by designing a prospective study. (A prospective study looks forward instead of backward so none of the patients had experienced an NDE when the study began.)
Van Lommel writes, “Within a four-year period, between 1988 and 1992, 344 consecutive patients who had undergone a total of 509 successful resuscitations were included in the study. In other words, all patients in our study had been clinically dead. . . Our study found that 282 patients (82 percent) had no recollection of the period of their unconsciousness whereas 62 patients (18 percent of the 344 patients) did report an NDE” (132-40). Additionally, “One American and two British studies among cardiac arrest patients, with the same prospective design as our Dutch study, found near-identical percentages of NDE after a successful resuscitation. None of these four studies, comprising a total of 562 patients, could produce a definitive scientific explanation for the phenomenon” (153). Since the Dutch study was also longitudinal, participants were re-interviewed at two years and eight years. The reported experiences remained the same throughout the duration of the study and long-term effects were apparent. Van Lommel’s book, Consciousness Beyond Life, was published in 2010.
The Atlanta Study
In 1994 The Atlanta Study was conducted under Dr. Michael Sabom. Prior to the study, Sabom was baffled by a contradiction. “According to media reports, near-death experiencers and researchers agreed that NDEs drew persons away from organized religions and toward a more abstract spirituality. But my observation from my own patients was exactly the opposite: NDEs seemed to produce a stronger faith and a higher level of commitment to traditional religious practice” (16). Over the next two years, Sabom personally interviewed 160 patients with “carefully constructed, measurable questionnaires.” He found that 47 had NDEs; the rest were used to create a baseline comparison. Also, instead of relying on self-report alone, The Atlanta Study sought medical documentation of the events surrounding the near-death experience (38). During this study, the extraordinary case of Pam Reynolds was discovered. She was found to be dead by all three clinical tests—EEG, brainstem response, and no blood flow through the brain—and yet she had the deepest NDE out of all the participants. What did Sabom find regarding religious commitment? Most (75%) said their belief in the reality of life after death “strongly increased.” Church attendance also increased (140). Sabom reflected on The Atlanta Study in his book Light and Death (1998).
A UK Study
In 1995 psychologist Peter Fenwick and his wife Elizabeth published an investigation of over 300 NDEs in the UK in their book The Truth in the Light. From their study, they write, “The out-of-body experience is one of the events most often mentioned by people who have had a near-death experience” (23). And “about 88 per cent of those who filled in our questionnaire described feelings of calm or peace or joy during their experience” (65).
NDERF
In 1998, Dr. Jeffrey Long, who practices radiation oncology, founded the Near Death Experience Research Foundation, which currently contains more than 4900 NDEs from around the world.
Based on 1600 verified NDE accounts, Long and Perry published Evidence of the Afterlife in 2009. Both authors expanded their research to include 3000 NDEs in God and the Afterlife (2016), which they say is the largest NDE study in history.
Handbook
In 2009, after 30 years of research, the Handbook of Near-Death Experiences was published. According to this handbook, from 1975-2005 “55 researchers or teams published at least 65 studies of more than 3500 NDEs” (20).
Two Accounts
In addition to major research studies, many books have been written narrating one specific NDE. Here are two books authored by medical doctors who claim to have had their own NDE:
- To Heaven and Back by Dr. Mary Neal
- Proof of Heaven by Dr. Eben Alexander III
Summary
The researchers listed above consider naturalistic theories for this unusual phenomenon, but they conclude that those theories are inadequate. They believe NDE or DBE data indicates that life or consciousness continues after death.
For an author who critiques the afterlife explanation, see the writings of Dr. Susan Blackmore. For a summary of why naturalistic explanations are inadequate see chapter 4 of Near-Death Experiences as Evidence for the Existence of God and Heaven by Steve Miller.
*Most of the authors mentioned above can be found on YouTube so if you don’t want to read you can always listen to them.
After graduating from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, I served as a high school Bible teacher in Asia. I enjoy traveling, writing, and playing the drums. For a deep dive into church history and the character of God, see my book Surprised by Hell.