All my life i was in fear and terror of eternal torment…
This web site has set me free.
A Google search on “negative near-death experiences” will bring up–at least as this is written–well over two million links. Is another site really necessary? You can believe it is! Make this two million and climbing.
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 and site after site, what you will find is rumor or narrow views or conventional wisdom or a ton of guesswork. Too many sites are like trampolines launching folks into sheer nonsense.
By contrast, together with the book Dancing Past the Dark: Distressing Near-Death Experiences, this site will give you as much reliable data about distressing (“negative”) NDEs and their relatives as currently exists. It will offer as much thoughtful commentary as I am capable of expressing. It will include a variety of perspectives: academic, secular, religious, and “spiritual but not religious.” Although this site is neither anti-religious or non-religious, neither does it wave any doctrinal flag. When the data isn’t altogether factual, I will say so. Opinion will be noted as such. There will be many questions, few promises of concrete answers.
I want to create the fullest possible understanding of what is going on with these deeply troubling experiences.
I am a near-death experiencer. On most Sundays, I am in church, where I exercise a deep though unconventional faith and a thoroughgoing distrust of literal interpretations, although 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, secularism and religious beliefs, and the sometimes loony world of public opinion. To the best of my knowledge, my work is as close as anyone has come to offering a body of substantial scholarship specifically about the distressing end of the near-death spectrum. For more information about me, see the tab About the Author.
Dancing Past the Dark: Distressing Near-Death Experiences is available both as a paperback and an ebook for Kindle, Nook, and other e-readers. I hope the book and this website will be the source of the kind of solid, trustworthy information that was not available after my own traumatizing NDE.
I also 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, and no rants or abusiveness, which are also in overabundance elsewhere).
You are very welcome here.
Nancy Evans Bush