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Evidence for NDE’s includes some corroborated reports with some limited scientific means of testing and systematising them. We have 4 types of evidence we will use in this case: Almost dead; post-heart stoppage; Post-brain activity and Loved ones whose death was at the time unknown.  [1]

Introduction

Many cases which have been collated where the dying person was able to view individuals, events or circumstances around them, or even other and distant places, with amazing accuracy after coming close to dying or being declared clinically dead. Some of the cases happened while the patient was in a comatose state. In summary, these patients reported independently corroborated data that would not normally have been in the range of their senses even if they were a fully conscious person at the time of the recalling.

Much of the data collected form these patients was gathered by rather ingenious methods and controls to aid quantifying the data. Through this research it concludes that many individuals have reported independently corroborated data that would not normally have been in the range of their senses even if they were fully conscious art the time.  

Case Study: Katie

A young girl name’s Katie almost drowned in a pool. After her emergency room resuscitation, a CAT scan showed extreme swelling of the brain, her doctor had an artificial lung machine attached to help her to aid being able to breathe. The doctor gave her a 10% chance of living. However, within three days, she made a full recovery and began relaying this incredible NDE testimony. Katie, with great accuracy, described the physical characteristics of the doctors involved in her resuscitation, details of the specific medical procedures used on her, even though she was “profoundly comatose” with her eyes closed during the entire time. 

If this wasn’t all enough, Katie then claimed to have “met Jesus and the Heavenly Father” and an angel named Elizabeth. She also “followed” her family home during the time her body was comatose in the hospital and remembered seeing specific trivial details such as the selections for the evening meal prepared by her mother, how her father was behaving towards her incident, and which specific toys her sister and brother were playing with at the time. 

The doctor attending to her investigated these claims — form his personal presence in the hospital emergency room and the procedures he performed, to the testimony of the nurses, and to the whereabouts of Katie’s family when she watched them at home. The family members were bewildered at her descriptions of their clothing, where they were positioned in the house, and the food served at dinner. All the information that she gave was verified as genuine. [2] She was able to see and report details of what was happening to her and around her in the hospital as well as what occured in her home while her body lay in another location. 

Case Study: Five year old Rick

Rick suffered from meningitis and was rushed to the hospital in an ambulance. As his body was taken away, he decided to “stay behind”. When he did, he was able to watch varying family members and their grief-stricken reactions to his emergency. In one situation he watched his father weeping as he entered the car to take the family to the hospital. Then Rick rushed to the hospital, ‘arriving’ ahead of the ambulance, and watched hospital personnel move a girl about twelve years old out of the room he was to occupy. 

Like with the previous case, the details in Ricks report was correct. Rock’s family was bewildered by the depth of information of the particular details he had witnessed, especially when these incidents happened away from the proximity of his body. The incredibility of the event was magnified when they recalled that Rick was comatose before he was taken in the ambulance, and he stayed that was for several days afterward. [3]

Case Study: Young lady

The next is a young lady, named anonymous in the study but we still have the source for the case report. The woman was in hospital and near death, experienced herself leaving her body and visiting her relatives in another room. There she witnessed her brother-in-law saying he was going to wait and see if she was going to “kick the bucket” or not. Later after her recovery she confronted and surprised her relative by repeating his words to him! [4] Raymond Moody also relates a similar experience in which a dying girl thought she had left her body and went to her older sister in another hospital room and heard her crying and pleading with her not to die. She, too, surprised her older sister when she ,later told her exactly where she was and what she had been saying [5]

Blind

Other curious cases involve blind people. One such case was about a Chemist, for example, after being bl;indeed a year earlier in an accident, correctly reported the visual details surrounding his near-death experiences. Other individuals who had been blind for years (and were even tested for blindness again afterward) accurately described the design and colours of clothing and Jewelry worn by those around them when they almost died.[6] These are not rare cases, they are unexpectedly common.

Anonymous Blind case

In a volume by Kimberly Clark Sharp there is a testimony of one congenitally blind woman reported an NDE that apparently included colour images, in which she correctly reported several items that she claimed to have seen. Even more evidentially, she described the rendezvous with two of her close friends, both also blind, and was able to accurately describe each one in physical terms, even though she had never seen them before either! Even further, both of these friends were dead at the time of the NDE! [7]

Blue Tennis Shoe

This is an account told by social worker Kimberly Clark Sharp. Maria, a victim of a heart attack, described an MDE in which she saw a number of items both inside and outside of Harborview Hospital in Seattle. Her report was later confirmed. But it was not this potential confirmation that interested Sharp at the time. Maria told Sharp that she especially concentrated on a single item in her line of vision—a tennis shoe. It was located out on the roof of the hospital ledge, around the corner of the building that she had entered and currently occupied. Maria revealed that the shoe was characterised by a worn little toe and the position of the lace, which was located under the heel. After unsuccessful attempt to find the objection the roof area indicated by Maria, Sharp finally located and retrieved the shoe [8]

This evidence was further supplemented by Philosopher Gary Habermas contacted Sharp, and he discovered some incredible details. Maria just only just arrived in Seattle and was unfamiliar with the locality. Moreover, Sharp interviewed Maria the exact day the NDE had taken place! Maria had never previously been in the hospital where the aging shoe had been located; the shoe could not be seen found the ground; and, at the time, the hospital was not surrounded by any nearby buildings of sufficient height for the object to be seen in that manner. Regarding the tennis shoe that was found according to Maria’s instructions, neither the badly worn toe nor the position of the lace could be seen from the window through which Sharp had seen and retrieved it. More specifically, Maria had identified it as a very large blue shoe. She was correct in all the details—from the worn toe (Further described by Sharp as being “down to threats”), to the lace being found under the heel, to the overly large size, to the blue canvas exterior. Sharp then brought it to Maria’s hospital room and kept it behind her back until Maria described it one more time. Then the object was uncovered and shown to her! Subsequently Maria was interviewed by several other researchers, which provided additional input from differing perspectives. Sharp continued to communicate on a regular basis with Maria over a three-year period, after which contact was broken due to Sharp’s leave of absence [9]. Few have questioned Sharp’s veracity, especially with regards to claims of fraudulence.  All of the testimony was repeatedly checked by others in later interviews. After all, Maria had provided enough data for the show to be found in the first place. So it would appear clear in this case,l the remote viewing of an object during an NDE is the explanation that best accounts for all the data we have.

Anonymous: Red Shoe

Another NDE from Hartford (CT) Hospital told a nurse that during her resuscitation she went through several floors of the hospital. “Next, she said that she floated above the roof of the building and observed the Hartford skyline. At this time, “out of the corner of her eye she saw a red object. It turned out to be a shoe…”

The same day the show was discovered by a sceptical resident who ventured our onto the roof in the area indicated. It is interesting that the attending nurse had never heard of the case in Seattle, and she expressed amazement that there was a similar case elsewhere. [10]

Sources

1. Method of explaining NDE’s, one example in contention is Michael Grosso, “Toward an Explanation of Near-Death Phenomena” Anabiosis, vol. 1, no. 1 (July 1981), pp. 4-5
2. Melvin Morse & Paul Perry, Closer to the Light: Learning from the Near-Death Experiences of Children (New York: Random House/Vuillard, 1990), pp. 3-9
3. Melvin Morse & Paul Perry, Closer to the Light: Learning from the Near-Death Experiences of Children (New York: Random House/Vuillard, 1990), pp. 152-154
4. Raymond A.  Moody, Jr., “Almost dying,” a lecture given at Louisiana State University, 26 April 1987.
5. Moody, Life After Life, p. 91.
6. Kenneth L. Woodward, “There is life after death,” McCall’s, Aug 1976, p. 136; J. Kerry Anderson, Life Death and Beyond (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1980), p. 91; Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, On Children and Death (New York: Macmillan/Collier Books, 1983), p. 208.
7. Gary Habermas interview with Kimberly Clark Sharp, 16 November and 2 December 1994
8.  Blackmore, p127-128. Sharp’s own description is contained in her “clinical Interventions with Near-Death Experiences,” The Near-Death Experience: Problems, Prospects, Perspectives, ed. Bruce Grayson and Charles P. Flynn (Springfield: Charles Thomas Publishers, 1984), p242-255
9. Gary Habermas interview with Kimberly Clark Sharp, 16 November and 2 December 1994
10. Kenneth Ring and Madelaine Lawrence, “Further Evidence for Veridical Perception during Near-Death Experiences,” Journal of Near-Death Studies, vol. 11, no. 4 (Summer 1993), p226-227