ABSTRACT: The percentage of hell-like near-death
experiences (NDEs) is probably much larger than has been
previously claimed. In this article, I discuss current research
into what are now termed "distressing" or "unpleasant" NDEs, and
my own findings from interviews of over a hundred such cases. I
compare this information with earlier reports from Maurice
Rawlings (1978, 1980), mythological traditions about the concept
of hell, and renderings from The Tibetan Book of the Dead
(Evans-Wentz, 1957). Finally, I detail four types of NDEs --
initial, hell-like, heaven-like, and transcendental -- and what
seems to be an attitudinal profile characteristic of each type.
My plane was late. That meant I had to run lengthy corridors at
Dulles International Airport near Washington, D.C., to catch my
next flight. As I ran, another woman scurrying in the opposite
direction yelled, "I know who you are; you're the woman I just saw
on television. You're the gutsy one who talks about negative
near-death experiences. Keep doing it. Don't stop."
I was so startled by her comment, I momentarily slowed my pace and
yelled back, "Who are you? What do you mean by that?"
Her answer surprised me. "I'm a surgical nurse at a hospital in
Phoenix, Arizona. We have lots of near-death cases there, and
almost all of them are the negative kind. You know what I mean
--people who wind up in hell!"
Before I could respond further, she was out of sight. I wanted to
go after her and ask more questions-- What hospital? How many
cases? How long has this been happening? Why haven't you reported
it? But my pressing need to hurry convinced me otherwise. I barely
made my connection.
This incident happened in 1989, a year when I was nearly
overwhelmed by reports from people who experienced a hellish
environment at the brink of death, rather than a heavenly one.
Most researchers of the near-death experience (NDE) report that
unpleasant cases are quite rare, numbering less than one percent
of the thousands thus far investigated and of the eight million
tallied by a Gallup Poll during a survey on the subject published
in 1982 (Gallup and Proctor, 1982). Yet my experiences
interviewing near-death survivors since 1978 have consistently
shown me otherwise, suggesting an abundance of such cases: 105 out
of the more than 700 I have queried.
At the 1990 Washington, D.C., conference of the International
Association for Near-Death Studies (IANDS), Bruce Greyson, a
psychiatrist noted for his long-term commitment to near-death
research, admitted that people like himself had not been asking
the right questions to identify those who might have undergone
"dark" or distressing episodes . He confessed: "We didn't try to
find them because we didn't want to know." His comment underscored
the fact that, for the most part, published reports of near-death
studies have side-stepped "negative" accounts.
Greyson and Nancy Evans Bush, President of IANDS, have recently
completed a descriptive study of 50 terrifying cases they have
collected over the past 9 years (Greyson and Bush, 1992). Others
whose work has acknowledged the existence of such experiences
include British researcher Margot Grey (1985) and sociologist
Charles Flynn (1986). Cardiologist Maurice Rawlings and myself,
however, have actively pursued near-death reports of a hellish
nature since the very beginning of our involvement in the field.
Beyond Death's Door, Rawlings' first book (1978), focused on his
observations of people in the process of being resuscitated after
clinical death. In it, he recounted story after story of
near-death experiencers describing unpleasant or threatening
scenarios: being surrounded by grotesque human and animal forms,
hearing other people moaning and in pain, violence and demonic
types of torture. He thought that because he was present when the
phenomenon actually occurred, he was able to obtain pure and
unrepressed reports. This led him to formulate his theory that at
least half of the near-death cases begin as hell-like, then become
heaven-like as the episode proceeds, with the average individual
able to remember only the heavenly part once revived.
His second book, Before Death Comes (1980), added to these
accounts and included his conviction that in order for people to
die a good death and avoid the horrors of what must assuredly be
hell, they should commit themselves to the doctrines of
Christianity. Needless to say, Rawlings caused quite a stir among
other researchers. So far no one has been able to substantiate
either the extent of his anecdotal findings or his theory, even
when present during ongoing resuscitation procedures conducted in
clinical settings.
My first introduction to the NDE was in a hospital room listening
to three somber people describe what they had seen while
technically "dead." Each spoke of grayness and cold, and about
naked, zombie-like beings just standing around staring at them.
All three were profoundly disturbed by what they had witnessed.
One man went so far as to accuse every religion on earth of Iying
about the existence of any supposed "heaven." The fear these
people exhibited affected me deeply.
A decade passed before I, too, had a personal opportunity to
discover what might exist beyond the threshold of death. Not once
did this happen to me, but three times. A miscarriage and
hemorrhage precipitated my first encounter in January of 1977. Two
days later the second occurred when a major thrombosis in my right
thigh vein dislodged, accompanied by the worst case of phlebitis
the specialist had ever seen. Three months afterward I suffered a
complete and total collapse. On the occasion of each of these
"deaths," I experienced uplifting and enlightening, heaven-like,
near-death scenarios. Although each was different, one somehow led
into the next as if the three were progressive. When my
experiences were over, I determined to find out as much as I could
about the phenomenon from as many different people as possible.
This quest began an exploration of the subject that resulted in my
book, Coming Back to Life: The After-Effects of the Near-Death
Experience (1988 and 1989).
Since the heavenly version is well-known by now and so, too, its
attendant positives, I think it is time that all aspects of the
phenomenon be examined, including all the contrasting reports
still commonly bunched together under the singular term
"hell-like." What Rawlings spoke of a decade ago needs to be
reconsidered, especially in light of observations that challenge
how near-death experiences are categorized. To accomplish this,
I'd like first to offer a context for broadening our understanding
of the word "hell."
Historically "hell" is not Biblical, although many people think
so. What came to be translated as "hell" was a peculiar idiom in
the Aramaic language that used the name of a city dump where trash
was burned to signify "mental torment" and "regret." Centuries
later, and after numerous translations of the Bible, what was
originally expressed as "Gehenna of Fire" was changed to "hell."
The word hell is actually Scandinavian and refers to Hel, the
Teutonic queen of the dead and ruler of "the other world."
According to myth, "to Hel" is where people went who were good,
but not quite good enough to transcend to Valhalla, that heavenly
hall reserved for heroes killed in battle and other special folk.
Unlike more modern imagery depicting a Satan and being burned for
one's sins, there was nothing evil or scary about the supposed
hell or Hel herself, except her looks. She was said to be
deformed, with half of her face human and the other half
featureless. Allusions to Hel eventually connoted "an abode of the
dead," but not some place of everlasting punishment.
Hell, as most people think of it today, was a European
conceptualization used during the early days of Christianity to
ensure the obedience of converts. Modernized versions were made
popular in such classics as Dante's Divine Comedy (14th
century/1955) and Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol (1843/1983).
Even Our Town by Thornton Wilder (1938) served to illustrate how
those who "cross over" might linger for a while in cemeteries
before continuing their after death journeys. A reference to the
hell an individual could encounter during the death process and
after passing through death's "door" is found in The Tibetan Book
of the Dead (Evans-Wentz, 1957). This ancient text described three
stages to the bardo (the intermediate disembodied state said to
follow death), and how each stage represents an opportunity for
the departed to inhabit a different level of existence. The book
claimed that heavenly visions, resembling what are now defined as
states of consciousness, occur during the first week after death;
hellish ones the second week; and various opportunities for
judging one's life in the third. Unlike Dante's Divine Comedy
(14th century/1955) this traditional Tibetan view chronicled the
various gateways possible for one to enter after death and between
incarnations. Specifically detailed was a period of 28 to 49 days
after a person has died.
Heaven-like scenarios outlined in the book are strikingly similar
to modern near-death reports: visions of pure light, vibrant
landscapes as if in springtide, blindingly open clear sky,
dazzlement. Equally so are the hell-like versions: terrifying
deities, gruesome apparitions, racking and painful torture. Also
described are the life-review process, judgment , and a
disembodied state, then rebirth into this or other worlds for
further growth and learning.
In 1980, Kenneth Ring reported the finding that those with prior
knowledge of the NDE were less likely to experience it, while
those with no prior knowledge were more likely to do so. A clue as
to why this could be true was also mentioned in the Tibetan book,
where the claim was made that all postmortem visions, regardless
of type, are actually projections from the mind of the participant
This implies that the next world may be structured by the
subconscious mind, that mental imagery determines what is met
after death. Also implied is that both heavenly and hellish
scenarios might well represent part of the natural course of
consciousness as it shifts from one state of awareness to another,
and through numerous levels of existence.
Oddly, the realness of near-death experiences is not diminished by
this claim, or others like it. The phenomenon becomes subjected
instead to psychic rather than physical laws, which I believe
accounts for the variation of details and descriptions from
culture to culture.
During my own interviews of experiencers, for instance, I
discovered little difference between heavenly and hellish
near-death episodes in consideration of how elements unfolded in
sequence. By that I mean the universal elements now identified as
central to an NDE can and often do appear in both types and in the
same basic sequence pattern: an out-of-body experience; passing
through a dark tunnel or some kind of darkness; seeing a light
ahead; entering into that light, and suddenly finding one's self
in another realm of existence usually replete with people,
landscapes, and occasionally animals.
Even the fact that experiencers of hellish visions often travel in
a downward direction (down "the tunnel" as opposed to up) does not
distinguish one type from another, simply because many
experiencers of the heavenly kind also report downward passage
when in the tunnel. Hellish episodes can also include dialogue
with beings on the other side of death along with glimpses of the
life just lived, elements once thought to occur only in
heaven-like cases. Both types are, in fact, a lot alike. Yet they
do differ, through the specific details given, and through the
interpretation of individual responses.
To help examine these differences, here is a comparison from my
original study that examines the language experiencers used to
describe what they encountered. Notice consistent settings and
elements, yet obvious contrasts in detail:
-
Heaven-Like Cases
friendly beings
beautiful, lovely environments
conversations and dialogue
total acceptance and an overwhelming sensation of love
a feeling of warmth and a sense of heaven
-
Hell-Like Cases
lifeless or threatening apparitions
barren or ugly expanses
threats, screams, silence
danger and the possibility of violence, torture
a feeling of cold (or temperature extremes) and a sense of hell
Of the hell-like cases 1 have found,
I have yet to come across an individual who reported a fiery hot
or burning sensation during the experience itself, although I have
spoken with researchers who have. If a sensation of temperature
was felt, the majority in the study I conducted commented on how
cold it was, or clammy, or shivery, or "icy hard." Also mentioned
was the dullness of the light, even grayness, as if overcast,
foggy, or somehow "heavy." Many experienced a bright light
beckoning to them initially, but when they entered the light it
promptly dimmed or darkened.
Invariably an attack of some kind would take place in hellish
scenarios or a shunning, and pain would be felt or surges of
anxiety and fear. Any indifference to the individual's presence
would be severe, as would the necessity of the experiencer to
defend him- or herself and/or fight for the right to continued
existence. Themes of good and evil, beings like angels and devils,
I found commonplace, as well as hauntings once the individual
revived. Examples of this are the numerous reports of a "devil"
who physically manifests in broad daylight for the purpose of
chasing the experiencer, supposedly to capture his or her soul, or
to win "the battle." The manifestation of other threatening beings
or creatures has also been claimed, quite similar to what was
depicted in the movie Flatliners (Shumacher, 1990). Sometimes
fearful scenes and sensations reoccur afterward, as when an
experiencer is unexpectedly faced with the onslaught of some
perceived cyclone, whirlpool, tidal wave, or perhaps an unchecked
fall into a void.
Amazing as it may seem, I noticed that the same scene that one
individual considers wonderfully positive another may declare
negative or horrific. For instance, the light at the end of the
tunnel can be terrifying to some while inviting to others, as can
any voices or flashing lights experienced during states of
darkness, even if nothing threatening is perceived from either the
voices or the lights. Passing through a bright light into vast new
landscapes can be an incredible shock to an individual, especially
if aspects of creation and worlds within worlds are seen, even if
what is experienced in no way puts the individual at risk. Meeting
a being composed entirely of light can seem a trick of the devil
or a punishment of some kind, especially if the experiencer tends
to be more fundamentalist in his or her religious viewpoints.
One woman who described for me a light ray she rode through the
vast reaches of time and space was thrilled beyond words to have
been granted such a privilege. Yet another woman, in recounting
what seemed to me a similar light-ray experience, expressed a
sense of horror and revulsion at what had happened to her. Then
there was the man overjoyed to tears by the "loving" darkness he
encountered after death, in stark contrast to several reports I
had previously received from people who felt cursed to have
experienced a darkness that somhow seemed "alive."
Not one of the childhood experiencers I interviewed ever mentioned
anything fearful or hell-like or threatening. Only the adults in
my inquiry reported such stories. This puzzled me. Why would some
adults describe the existence of a hell when children never did?
Why would what appeared as episodes of equal content be labeled
hell-like by one experiencer and heaven-like by another? And why
would perfectly normal individuals who had lived what appeared as
positive, constructive lives be scared witless by their near-death
experience, while others with similar personalities and lifetime
achievements be deliriously awestruck?
What made this dichotomy even more puzzling for me was a
particular question and answer session held after a talk I had
given in Williamsburg, Virginia. A man in the audience related his
near-death story, one so positive and so inspiring it brought
tears to the eyes of most of those attending. Yet, to everyone's
surprise, he went on to reveal how cursed he felt to have had such
an experience and how difficult his life had been ever since it
had happened. Then a woman jumped up and excitedly recounted her
story. Even though her scenario centered on a life-or-death
struggle in semidarkness at the edge of a whirlpool, while high
winds and the presence of evil threatened, she was overjoyed to
have experienced anything so inspiring and so revealing about how
life really worked and how salvation is guaranteed by our own
willingness to correct our own mistakes. Here were two people: one
traumatized by a heaven-like experience, the other uplifted and
transformed by a hellish one.
After the Williamsburg affair, I started asking more questions of
more people, probing questions I later cross-checked whenever
possible with family members. Sometimes I used my own increased
sensitivities to determine what track of questioning to pursue,
and some times I used plain logic; for I, too, am a near-death
survivor. Since apparently, at least from my study, one cannot
ascertain heaven or hell by their appearance, my goal changed from
focusing on the phenomenon to an investigation of what other
factors I might have previously overlooked.
Thus far, this change of focus has enabled me to make the
following observations, arranged by experience types and the
psychological consistencies I noticed in each grouping. It is my
hope that this new way to categorize near-death experiences, and
the probability of a psychological profile for each type, will
inspire other researchers to redesign their methodologies and
pursue different approaches to the subject.
Four Types of Near-Death Experience
1. Initial Experience ("Non-Experience")
This type of NDE involves elements such as a loving nothingness or
the living dark or a friendly voice. It is usually experienced by
those who seem to need the least amount of evidence for proof of
survival, or who need the least amount of shakeup in their lives.
Often, this becomes a "seed" experience or an introduction to
other ways of perceiving and recognizing reality.
2. Unpleasant and/or Hell-Like Experience (Inner Cleansing and
Self-Confrontation)
This type of NDE involves an encounter with a bardo, limbo, or
hellish purgatory, or scenes of a startling and unexpected
indifference, or even "hauntings" --from one's own past. It is
usually experienced by those who seem to have deeply suppressed or
repressed guilts, fears, and angers, and/or those who expect some
kind of punishment or accountability after death.
3. Pleasant and/or Heaven-Like Experience (Reassurance and
Self-Validation)
This type of NDE involves heaven-like scenarios of loving family
reunions with those who have died previously, reassuring religious
figures or light beings, validation that life counts, affirmative
and inspiring dialogue. It is usually experienced by those who
most need to know how loved they are and how important life is and
how every effort counts.
4. Transcendent Experience (Expansive Revelations, Alternate
Realities)
This type of NDE involves exposure to otherworldly dimensions and
scenes beyond the individual's frame of reference, and sometimes
includes revelations of greater truths. It is usually experienced
by those who are ready for a "mind-stretching" challenge, and/or
who are most apt to use, to whatever degree, the truths that are
revealed.
It has been my observation that all four of these types can occur
during the same experience, exist in combinations, or be spread
throughout a series of episodes for a particular individual.
Generally, however, each represents a distinctive episode
occurring but once to a given person.
When you keep a person's life in context with his or her brush
with death, even a clinical death, you cannot help but recognize
connections between the two, threads that seem to link what is met
in dying with what that individual came to accept or reject about
the depths of living. It is almost as if the phenomenon is a
particular kind of growth event that allows for a "course
correction," enabling the individual involved to focus on whatever
is weak or missing in character development. With children, it is
as if they receive advance instruction and/or have an opportunity
to preview their lives.
In addition, what may seem negative or positive concerning any of
the four types listed I found to be misleading, as value and
meaning depend entirely on each person involved and his or her
response to what happened during the near-death experience and its
aftereffects.
Surprisingly, unpleasant or hell-like experiences really can be
quite positive if individual experiencers are inspired to make
significant changes in their lives because of them. But, pleasant
or heaven-like experiences can be incredibly negative if
individuals use them as an excuse to dominate or threaten others
while engaged in self-righteous campaigns. Even heaven-like or
transcendent experiences may be painful or hellish to an
individual unfamiliar with the possibility of alternate realities
or unwilling to have his or her worldview interrupted or
challenged.
Furthermore, my listing of experience types read from top to
bottom seems to parallel The Tibetan Book of the Dead
(Evans-Wentz, 1957) and passages therein that detail the various
gateways to after-death existences, gateways identified as mental
projections from the mind of the participant. But, if we are
willing to reconsider the Tibetan claim and those made by other
ancient traditions, the listing begins to suggest something else
even more extraordinary.
What emerges is a brief panorama of what could be the natural
movement of conciousness as it evolves through the human condition
on a journey of awakening. This journey extends from the first
stirring of something greater and an initial awareness, to
confrontations with the bias of perception followed by
opportunities to cleanse and start anew, then progressing to the
bliss and the ecstasy of self-validation and the discovery of
life's worth, until the moment comes when at last the unlimited
realms of truth and wisdom are unveiled.
This panorama of awakening consciousness indicates to me that the
NDE may be part of an ongoing process within the human species and
not some isolated or separate event, a process of growth shifting
individual souls from one stage of awareness to another and/or
from one state of embodiment to another, a process literally
encoded within our makeup since our very beginnings. When viewed
in this manner, the phenomenon takes on the characteristic of a
preparatory adjustment that the transition of death affords
-either literal death, where physical form alters, or symbolic
death, where life phases alter. This adjustment would enable human
systems to ready themselves for the new demands soon to be placed
upon them when present form or consciousness capacity changes,
thus insuring some form of life continuance and the steady growth
of conscious awareness.
In his book, "Closer to the Light," pediatrician Melvin Morse
wrote:
The near-death experience is the first psychological experience to
be located within the brain.... By locating the area for NDEs
within the brain, we have anatomy to back up the psychological
experience. We know where the circuit board is. (Morse and Perry,
1990, p. 170) I have reexamined a generation of scientific
research into higher brain function and have found that the soul
hypothesis explains many "unexplained" events. It explains
out-of-body experiences, the sensation of leaving the body and
accurately describing details outside of the body's field of view.
Events such as floating out of the physical body and giving
accurate details of one's own cardiac arrest -things a person
couldn't see even if their eyes were open- are virtually
impossible to explain if we do not believe in a consciousness
separate from our bodies that could be called a soul. (Morse and
Perry,1990, p. 169)
It has been my experience that whatever we need to awaken the
truth of our being will manifest when we need it. The way that
happens is basically the same for all of us because, on some
fundamental level of existence beyond conscious recognition, we
all share space on the same upward spiral of evolutionary
development. Surely the NDE illustrates this truth.
Yet maybe not. Other researchers have noted that those who have
pleasant and/or heaven-like episodes experience far more permanent
life changes than those who undergo unpleasant or hellish
versions. Why? Do hellish experiencers repress their aftereffects,
or do they have aftereffects that differ from the others? This
needs to be researched; so far it hasn't been.
Once, when I was autographing copies of my book in a shopping
mall, a man in his middle thirties stopped at my table, looked me
straight in the eye, and with tight lips declared, "You've got to
tell people about hell. There is one. I know. I've been there. All
them experiencers on television telling their pretty stories about
heaven -that's not the way it is. There's a hell, and people go
there." I could not calm this man or the piercing power of his
words, nor could I inspire him to consider other ways of
interpreting his experience. He was adamant and firm. To him hell
was real and to be avoided, no matter what.
That's what I've noticed with individuals like this man: either
there is a special kind of fierceness about them, or an empty
fear, or a puzzled indifference, or an unstated panic. If they
show emotion at all, it is usually tears. Many feel betrayed by
religion. Many resent the endless banter on television talk shows
about "the Light," all that warmth and love and joy exuded from
those who seemed to have experienced heaven. When I would ask why
they weren't on television themselves telling their own stories,
most would suddenly become quiet. Eventually I came to realize
that they had spoken to no one else about what had happened to
them. Most often they indicated feeling too ashamed or fearful or
angry to talk about it; furthermore, the possibility of another's
judgment or criticism bothered them.
The tremendous popularity of the movies Ghost (Zucker, 1990) and
Flatliners (Shumacher, 1990) has inspired a host of near-death
survivors to surface and be counted, especially those who
experienced hellish visions. I hope this openness continues.
Although researchers in the field of near-death studies have made
tremendous strides, there are still relatively untapped aspects of
the experience that must be addressed if we are ever going to
understand the phenomenon and its aftereffects. Anything less
perpetuates a myth that serves no one.
Is there a hell? To one who thinks he or she has been there, the
answer is yes. To a person like myself, who has studied what
evidence exists and has conducted countless interviews, the answer
is this: there is more to the near-death experience than anyone
currently knows. The phenomenon is vast in scope, its implications
more important and more dynamic than most people are willing to
admit. Heaven and hell may seem more conceptual than fact, but
right now they are all we have to go on as we search further
afield into what the mind and its mental imagery might reveal
about the source of our being.
One fact is clear: people who experience an unpleasant and/or hell
like near-death experience must be welcomed by researchers and
relieved of any trace of stigma or judgment. They have a lot to
tell us, and we need to hear what they have to say.
References
-
Atwater, P.M.H. (1988). Coming back:
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Dickens, C. (1983). A Christmas
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Evans-Wentz, W.Y. (Ed.). (1957). The
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Flynn, C. (1986). After the Beyond:
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Gallup, G., Jr., and Proctor, W.
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Grey, M. (1985). Return from Death:
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Greyson, B., and Bush, N.E. (1992).
Distressing Near-Death Experiences. Psychiatry, 55, 95-110.
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Morse, M., and Perry, P. (1990).
Closer to the Light: Learning from the Near-Death Experiences of
Children. New York, NY: Villard.
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Rawlings, M. (1978). Beyond Death's
Door. Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson. Rawlings, M. (1980). Before
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Ring, K. (1980). Life at Death: A
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Schumacher, J. (Director). (1990).
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Zucker, J (Director). (1990). Ghost
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Answering
Mysteries
Come