Michael Nahm, in his Bigelow award-winning essay, "Climbing Mount Evidence: A Strategic Assessment of the Best Available Evidence for the Survival of Human Consciousness after Permanent Bodily Death," writes: "Typical cases of after-death contacts (ADCs) comprise the unexpected perception of an apparition of a deceased individual who appears briefly and then vanishes again. It may be perceived collectively by several percipients, including animals, thus displaying a degree of objectivity or at least of intersubjectivity. Frequently, the apparition may convey a message to the percipients, for instance providing comfort. Other examples concern crisis apparitions, in which people perceive apparitions of people who indicate that they have just died or are on the verge of dying—but without the experiencer knowing this through any normal means. Here is an impressive example:
A dog, two adults, and five children were together in a room at 6 pm in May. Suddenly the dog began to bark loudly and jumped towards the corner with the stove. The seven people followed the dog’s movements with their eyes. In the corner, they saw an apparition of a child in a shirt that looked like a boy who was a friend of the family and often came to play. The apparition started to float above them, leaving the room through an open window. The dog followed the moving apparition through the room, continuously barking fervently. The episode lasted for about 15 seconds. Later in the evening, the family learned that this boy had died at about the time they saw his apparition.
"There is a huge body of literature on ADCs, but the best documented cases can still be found in monumental treatises published by founding members of the Society of Psychical Research. They comprise different subcategories of ADCs including collectively perceived apparitions. A later classical analysis of the phenomenology of apparitions has established that there are virtually no detectable differences between apparitions of the living and apparitions of the dead, which leads to the logical inference that the dead might be living as well. Many ADCs also occur in dreams, and in modern times, even malfunctions of electronic devices that appear meaningful are sometimes interpreted as ADCs. A recent study has confirmed that ADCs are widespread and cannot easily be regarded as hallucinations.
"An intriguing subcategory of ADCs consists of near-death visions (NDVs). These ADCs are reported by the dying. Just as with ADCs perceived by healthy individuals, the dying may perceive a bright light that appears somehow related to a deceased spirit, hear inexplicably beautiful music of unearthly quality, and most importantly, see apparitions of deceased loved ones. But the dying typically perceive apparitions who come to prepare them for their death, often with the apparent purpose of guiding them into the afterlife realm. The experiencers are usually still conscious and may tell the bystanders of their visions in real time or later. Sometimes, the dying even report having met individuals in NDVs whose death was unknown to them at the time.
"From the perspective of studying survival, NDVs are of specific significance because they don’t only comprise apparitions of the deceased, but also concern the dying themselves. NDVs even occur in patients who have been nonresponsive for months or years because of neurological disorders such as Alzheimer’s disease that appeared to have destroyed their brains. Still, such patients can sometimes display a sudden and unexpected reemergence of lucid mental clarity, recognize family members again, talk with them, report an NDV, and then die. These drastic experiences indicate that NDVs, which occur in an identical manner in patients dying with healthy brains, might be occurring in relative independence of the precise status of the prevailing brain chemistry.
· Patients taking medication prone to inducing hallucinations and/or suffering from high fever shortly before dying should report more NDVs than others.
· Patients dying in a state of stress and anxiety should report more NDVs than those dying calmly.
· Patients dying rather unexpectedly and in the expectation of recovery should report more visions related to this world whereas patients dying in the expectation of death should report more otherworldly elements including deceased individuals.
· NDVs should vary greatly from individual to individual, being shaped by personal memories, hopes, religious afterworld beliefs, etc.
"Interestingly, none of these postulates was confirmed. Osis and Haraldsson concluded that the hallucination model is therefore not as likely as it might appear at first sight. Rather, NDVs display an autonomy of their own that seems largely independent from the mental dispositions of dying individuals and their brain chemistry. From the survival perspective, this is exactly what one would expect. This is also confirmed by the many collective and reciprocal NDVs on record in which concordant observations were reported by two or more witnesses.
"Now to the survival score of ADCs including NDVs: The investigability of a single case of a typical ADC is “relatively low”, thus giving a score of (2). This is because most ADCs occur spontaneously and privately, and only occur for a very short time, perhaps for a few seconds, and all this perhaps only once in a lifetime for some people. Hence, it is extremely difficult to study and document ADCs in real time. They can usually be assessed only in retrospect. But as the above-mentioned classical treatises on ADCs and studies of NDVs demonstrate, retrospective assessments still allow substantial evidence for survival to be gathered, and therefore, one cannot consider the possibility of investigating a given ADC entirely “low”. It is “relatively low”.
The repeatability of ADCs including NDVs in the sense of their multiple occurrences over time and space that allow their investigation is, however, “relatively high” (3). These experiences occur on a regular basis all over the globe, and because many people live and die on it, they occur frequently. However, because of their unpredictability and ephemeral nature, the repeatability of ADCs cannot be considered “very high”.
The quantitative strength, or complexity and detailedness, of ADCs including NDVs is “relatively low” (2). The observed details often suffice to identify a deceased individual and to understand the conveyed message; but on the whole, this is obviously not much.
The qualitative strength of ADCs including NDVs is likewise “relatively low” (2). Obviously, the conditions of observation as well as the witness testimonies of ADCs are often not satisfactory. ADCs frequently come as a complete surprise, even on the sickbed. Also, most are only reported by a sole witness, or at best by a few individuals. And even in these collective cases, the witnesses may report divergent observations: Tom may report having seen a bright light, but Jerry may in addition report having seen a human shape in this light. Hence, ADCs imply a degree of subjectivity even in collectively perceived cases, which impedes the formation of an objective judgment about the witness testimonies. These aspects of ADCs are also relevant for their interpretation in terms of survival. On theoretical grounds, it is often not easy to determine whether an apparition perceived only fleetingly was created by the deceased individual him- or herself or was a hallucination of the living percipient. All this contributes to rendering the qualitative strength of ADCs “relatively low”.
Nevertheless, the overall relevance of ADCs including NDVs for survival after permanent bodily death is obviously “high” (4).
Michael Nahm is a German biologist and parapsychologist whose psi research has focused on terminal lucidity, near-death experiences, cases of the reincarnation type, physical mediumship, hauntings, the history of parapsychology, and various other riddles of the mind and the evolution of life. In 2018 he accepted an appointment at the Institut für Grenzgebiete der Psychologie und Psychohygiene (IGPP) (Institute for Frontier Areas of Psychology and Mental Health) in Freiburg, Germany. His publications are available at http://www.michaelnahm.com/publications-and-downloads and his Bigelow essay may be downloaded at https://bigelowinstitute.org/contest_winners3.php. Footnotes have been deleted in these excerpts but are available in his text posted on the Bigelow website.
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