Seeing the Living among the Dead

QUESTION 

“My name is Conway and I am a pre-med at Emory University. Currently, I am writing a paper on Near-Death Experiences (and have quite honestly been obsessed with them for years), but am having a little bit of trouble and was hoping you could help me answer one question about NDEs: why and how do people sometimes (although it is rarely) see apparitions of living people during their NDEs? I personally read your book, The Big Book of Near-Death Experiences, and remember you saying the apparitions of the living seem to have a (for lack of a better term), short appearance during the NDE. But if you don’t mind, can you categorize this a little further? What do the deceased do in the NDE that the living don’t? I realize your time is very valuable, and hope you find time to share your thoughts with me. I personally am aspiring to become a professor of medicine and in many ways, look up to NDE researchers like yourself.”.....Conway

ANSWER 

Conway, as near as I can tell, the appearance of the living serves a purpose. Children have more of these than adults, but adults have them too. And what I have noticed in every single case thus far, regardless of age, is that the living person serves to calm the experiencer, set them at ease, so the experience itself can deepen. Once the experience begins to deepen, the living disappear. I find this fascinating, almost as if there must be some kind of “agreement” or “invitation” between souls - for one to help the other face what lies ahead without fighting it, or denying it, or trying somehow to push it away. That sense of relief, or comfort, or peace, the living give the dying so they can continue on with whatever lies ahead, is unmistakable. . . at least to me. I did find one case, an adult male, who was met by a living girlfriend on the Other Side, where the girlfriend quite alive saw and felt what was happening to her friend AT THE MOMENT THE GUY WAS DYING, and realized it was her job to help him face what lay ahead. It was several years later, at a near-death group meeting that I was holding at a library, that the two attended, that they talked for the first time about the strange “coincidence” and how important it was to him that she was “there.”

Hope this helps. PMH

EXTRA STORY

Occasionally, I run across some cases that are intriguing, sometimes funny. This one concerns an unusual coincidence as to a death event, rather than near-death. Aron shared the following:

“I nearly died while undergoing a ruptured Aorta. AAA repair, the one thing I can say is that it was visual. I was hauling ass down the road in a black Firebird, kinda like ‘Smokie and the Bandit.’ Came to a cross-road stop sign, 4 corners. At that time, I had a choice. Go straight, right turn, left turn, or head back the way I came. Guess what, here I am. 2 in 100 survive this. It was what John Ritter died of.

“Now, this is what is freaky. My wife suffered the same Aortic dissection, four years earlier. It was one of the most traumatic events ever after being married 30 years. I asked God to take her pain and give it to me, I can take it. I don’t even believe in God. Sure enough 4 years later I have the same operation. Two people not genetically related with the same ailment? I’m not sorry for the request that I made, however. My near death was respiratory failure twice on the table.

“I make a joke often about child-birth trauma. First you get smacked on the ass by a doctor, then a few weeks later they snip some skin off your dick. Who thinks up this crap. No wonder boys bend over instinctively to protect the family gems. Saw your site on a friends FB page.”  --Ron