About the blog

A Google search on “negative near-death experience” will bring up–at least as this is written–6,480,000 links. Is another site really necessary? You can believe it is! Make this 6,480,001.

The thing is, somewhere in that mass of entries there will  be some well-grounded information; but you’re on your own to find it. Overwhelmingly, post after post after post, what you will find is personal opinion based on rumor or doctrinal religious views or conventional wisdom or guesswork, some of it like trampolines launching folks into sheer nonsense. This site will give you as much reliable data as I know of and as much thoughtful commentary as I am capable of or can find. It will include a variety of religious perspectives. When the data isn’t altogether factual, I will say so. Opinion will be noted as such.

Let me say quickly that although this site is neither anti-religious or non-religious, neither does it wave any doctrinal flag. It’s just that I want to create the fullest possible understanding of what is going on with these deeply troubling spiritual experiences. That means that what you find here will consider many secular elements other than and along with religious statements before drawing any conclusions.

I am a near-death experiencer. On Sundays, I am in church, where I exercise a deep faith and a thoroughgoing distrust of literal interpretations, though I accept that others find them meaningful. I have also been for thirty years a researcher of distressing near-death experiences, working with the International Association for Near-Death Studies and publishing in their peer-reviewed, scholarly journal. My work bridges the gulfs between social science research, religious beliefs, secularism, and the sometimes loony world of public opinion, with occasional brushes with findings from the neurosciences. To the best of my knowledge, it is as close as anyone has come to publishing substantial scholarship specifically about the distressing end of the near-death spectrum. Exceptions: Theosophical scholar Gracia Fay Ellwood set a high standard for scholarship with The Uttermost Deep; however, the book’s objective was not to describe and investigate distressing NDEs themselves, but to consider their impact on the idea of survival after death. P.M.H. Atwater has for many years written thoughtfully about distressing NDEs. Her conclusions are based on her investigative findings and on her own considerable intuitive abilities and views rather than incorporating cross-referenced perspectives from other researchers, making it a non-academic type of research.)

I trust that this site and the book Dancing in the Dark, which will soon be available online, will be the source of the kind of solid, trustworthy information that was not available after my own distressing NDE. I hope you will keep coming back to see what new posts, articles, and links have been added. If you have recommendations, please let me know (except, please, no conventional religious claims or quotes from scripture, as those are already in abundant supply online).

You are very welcome here.

Nancy Evans Bush