Encountering deceased persons is an important element in
NDEs. Nearly half of NDErs report seeing or sensing the presence of someone in
their NDE who had died earlier; none of the NDEs in Greyson’s collection
involved an NDEr mistakenly thinking a person still alive had died. Frequently
the focus of the NDEr’s encounter with deceased relatives involves sorting out
family relationships. The NDEr may later recognize the deceased relatives in
old family photographs.
“The people who stood out the most were two older couples, but there were many others with them. All of them were very nice, and they wanted to tell me who they were. But first they needed to know who I was. I felt incredibly small and overwhelmed when I said my name. ‘I am Kenneth Leth,’ I said with my tiny eight-year-old voice. A few of them recognized the Leth name; it got their attention. Then someone asked who my father was. ‘Lyle,’ I said. Many of them gasped when they realized they knew my father, ‘Oh, you’re Lyle’s son.’ I was a little boy, so I didn’t understand all of the sudden thoughts that flooded into my head when they telepathically tapped into our family history.
“Two of the older women introduced themselves as my father’s grandmothers. ... I was quickly introduced to a lot of departed souls from my earthly family. Both of my great-grandmothers on my father’s side of the family came to me and introduced me to my great-grandfathers, their husbands. ...
“I’m rather proud of two oval framed photos that currently hang on the walls of my home. They are of my great-grandparents, whom I met back in 1963 in the far reaches of Heaven. The photos were taken in the early 1900s, and I immediately knew who they were when my living grandmother showed them to me many years after my NDE.”
The encounter with deceased relatives, friends, or acquaintances generally involves:
The person may be recently deceased or they may be a relative or childhood friend who died years before.
The NDEr may see the person in full figure, may see only their face, or may merely sense their presence.
The NDEr generally recognizes the deceased loved one for who they are. They in turn recognize and acknowledge the NDEr. They may also give details about who they are, as Ken Leth’s relatives did.
The NDEr’s encounter with the deceased loved one may include a resolution of a regret or a strained relationship with the person.
Typically, the message to the NDEr from the deceased loved one is “It’s not your time. You must go back.”
The loved one or acquaintance may also give the NDEr a message to bring back to someone still living.
Skeptics can object that these experiences are really due to the NDEr’s expectation of meeting deceased loved ones because they realize they have died. Or the experience is due to wishful thinking or pure imagination. Any veridical information received from the deceased person is just a lucky guess.
How can we check that the deceased person is real and is the person they appear to be to the NDEr? There are two situations in encounters with a deceased person that provide strong evidence.
Persons known to the NDEr but not known to have died
For one thing, if the NDEr recognizes the deceased person and receives veridical information during the encounter that they did not know at the time but is later verified after the NDE, this is strong objective evidence that the deceased person was actually the person known to the NDEr.
The case of 9-year-old Eddie Cuomo
Physician K. M. Dale related the case of 9-year-old Eddie Cuomo, whose fever finally broke after nearly 36 hours of anxious vigil on the part of his parents and hospital personnel. As soon as he opened his eyes, at 3:00 in the morning, Eddie urgently told his parents that he had been to heaven, where he saw his deceased Grandma Cuomo, Auntie Rosa, and Uncle Lorenzo. His father was embarrassed that Dr. Dale was overhearing Eddie’s story and tried to dismiss it as feverish delirium.
Then Eddie added that he also saw his 19-year-old sister Teresa, who told him he had to go back. His father then became agitated, because he had just spoken with Teresa, who was attending college in Vermont, two nights earlier; and he asked Dr. Dale to sedate Eddie. Eddie began to cry. “Is Teresa going to stay in heaven with Grandma and Auntie Rosa and Uncle Lorenzo? Does that mean she won’t be home for Christmas time? I don’t want her to stay with them. I want her home with us!”
Later that morning, when Eddie’s parents telephoned the college, they learned that Teresa had died instantly in an automobile accident just before midnight, and that college officials had tried unsuccessfully to reach the Cuomos at their home to inform them of the tragic news.
Eddie’s sister Teresa died just three hours before Eddie woke up from his coma. The objective fact of Teresa’s death was not known to anyone in Eddie’s family until after he had reported meeting her in his NDE.
The case of Jack Bybee
NDEr Jack Bybee was hospitalized with severe pneumonia with periodic seizures at age 26 in Cape Town, South Africa. He was cared for by a nurse named Anita who had taken time off on the weekend to celebrate her twenty-first birthday. Jack had his NDE on that weekend.
“In my NDE, I met Nurse Anita on the other side. ‘What are you doing here, Anita?’ I asked. ‘Why, Jack, I’ve come to fluff up your pillows, of course, and to see that you are all right. But, Jack, you must return, go back. Tell my parents I’m sorry I wrecked the red MGB. Tell them I love them.’ Then Anita was gone—gone through and over a very green valley and through a fence, where, she told me, ‘there is a garden on the other side. But you cannot see it. For you must return, while I continue through the gate.’
“When I recovered, I told a nurse what Anita had said. This girl burst out into tears and fled the ward. I later learned that Anita and this nurse had been great friends. Anita had been surprised by her parents, who loved her dearly and had presented her with a red MGB sports car. Anita had jumped into the car, and in her excitement raced down the highway, De Waal Drive, along the slopes of Table Mountain, into ‘Suicide Corner’ and a concrete telephone pole. But I was ‘dead’ when all that happened. How could I possibly know these facts? I knew them as stated above. I was told by Anita in my experience.”
Note that Anita requested a message be given to her parents. Also note that the details of Anita’s statements to Jack about the red MGB were verified as objective facts by Anita’s friend. This case was not due to wishful thinking because Jack had no desire to see nurse Anita on her weekend off.
Persons not known to the NDEr
If the deceased person is not known to the NDEr at the time of the NDE but is later verified as the person they presented themselves to be, this is another form of strong evidence that the deceased person was objectively real.
The case of the man who looked at me lovingly
The unknown deceased person can later be verified through photographs, as Ken Leth did when his grandmother showed him portraits of his four great-grandparents.
“During my NDE following a cardiac arrest, I saw both my dead grandmother and a man who looked at me lovingly but whom I didn’t know. Over ten years later my mother confided on her death-bed that I’d been born from an extramarital affair; my biological father was a Jewish man who’d been deported and killed in World War II. My mother showed me a photograph. The unfamiliar man I’d seen more than ten years earlier during my NDE turned out to be my biological father.”
The case of the unknown sister Rietje
The unknown deceased person can later be verified by name and the circumstances of their death.
“When I was five years old I contracted meningitis and fell into a coma. ‘I died’ and drifted in a safe and black void where I felt no fear and no pain. I felt at home in this place. ... I saw a little girl of about ten years old. I sensed that she recognized me. We hugged and then she told me, ‘I’m your sister. I died a month after I was born. I was named after your grandmother. Our parents called me Rietje for short.’ She kissed me, and I felt her warmth and love. ‘You must go now,’ she said. ... In a flash I was back in my body. I opened my eyes and saw the happy and relieved looks on my parents’ faces. When I told them about my experience, they initially dismissed it as a dream. ... I made a drawing of my angel sister who had welcomed me and repeated everything she’d told me. My parents were so shocked that they panicked. They got up and left the room. After a while they returned. They confirmed that they had indeed lost a daughter called Rietje. She had died of poisoning about a year before I was born. They had decided not to tell me and my brother until we were old enough to understand the meaning of life and death.”
Cases of this sort can’t be due to expectation or wishful thinking, because the deceased person was completely unknown to the NDEr at the time.
Robert G. Mays, BSc and Suzanne B. Mays, AA, “There is no death: Near-death experience evidence for survival after permanent bodily death.” An essay written for the 2021 Bigelow Institute for Consciousness Studies addressing the question: “What Is The Best Available Evidence For The Survival Of Human Consciousness After Permanent Bodily Death?” Footnotes are omitted from these excerpts but are in the full text available from the Bigelow website at https://bigelowinstitute.org/contest_winners3.php.
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