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1. Introduction to Veridical Perception in NDEs
The “holy grail” of NDE research is finding an undeniable answer to the question of whether consciousness can survive bodily death. But before this can be answered, researchers must first determine whether consciousness can transcend the brain and function outside of it. One way to discover this is to examine those NDEs which are “veridical” (i.e., verified). Veridical NDEs occur when the experiencer acquires verifiable information which they could not have obtained by any normal means. Often, near-death experiencers report witnessing events that happen at some distant location away from their body, such as another room of the hospital. If the events witnessed by the experiencer at the distant location can be verified to have occurred, then veridical perception would be said to have taken place. It would provide very compelling evidence that NDEs are experiences outside of the physical body. NDE research is coming very close to providing such undeniable evidence. What follows are some exceptional examples.
2. Exceptional Examples of Verified Perception in NDEs
a. Pam Reynolds
In Dr. Michael Sabom’s book, Light and Death, he includes the NDE account of a woman named Pam Reynolds who underwent a rare operation to remove a giant basilar artery aneurysm in her brain that seriously threatened her life. The surgical procedure used to remove the aneurysm is known as “hypothermic cardiac arrest” or “standstill.” Pam’s body temperature was lowered to 60 degrees, her heartbeat and breathing were stopped, her brain waves were flattened, and all the blood was drained from her head. For all practical purposes, she was put to death. After removing the aneurysm, she was restored to life. But, during the time that Pam was in standstill, she experienced a profound NDE. Her remarkably detailed veridical out-of-body observations of her surgery were later verified to be very accurate. Pam’s case is considered to be one of the strongest cases of veridical perception evidence in NDE research because of her ability to describe the unique surgical instruments and procedures used and her ability to describe in detail these events while she was clinically and brain dead. The following is the out-of-body aspect of her NDE in her own words:
“The next thing I recall was the sound: It was a Natural “D.” As I listened to the sound, I felt it was pulling me out of the top of my head. The further out of my body I got, the more clear the tone became. I had the impression it was like a road, a frequency that you go on … I remember seeing several things in the operating room when I was looking down. It was the most aware that I think that I have ever been in my entire life …I was metaphorically sitting on [the doctor’s] shoulder. It was not like normal vision. It was brighter and more focused and clearer than normal vision … There was so much in the operating room that I didn’t recognize, and so many people.
“I thought the way they had my head shaved was very peculiar. I expected them to take all of the hair, but they did not …
“The saw-thing that I hated the sound of looked like an electric toothbrush and it had a dent in it, a groove at the top where the saw appeared to go into the handle, but it didn’t … And the saw had interchangeable blades, too, but these blades were in what looked like a socket wrench case … I heard the saw crank up. I didn’t see them use it on my head, but I think I heard it being used on something. It was humming at a relatively high pitch and then all of a sudden it went Brrrrrrrrr! like that.
“Someone said something about my veins and arteries being very small. I believe it was a female voice and that it was Dr. Murray, but I’m not sure. She was the cardiologist. I remember thinking that I should have told her about that … I remember the heart-lung machine. I didn’t like the respirator … I remember a lot of tools and instruments that I did not readily recognize.
“There was a sensation like being pulled, but not against your will. I was going on my own accord because I wanted to go. I have different metaphors to try to explain this. It was like the Wizard of Oz – being taken up in a tornado vortex, only you’re not spinning around like you’ve got vertigo. You’re very focused and you have a place to go. The feeling was like going up in an elevator real fast. And there was a sensation, but it wasn’t a bodily, physical sensation. It was like a tunnel but it wasn’t a tunnel.”
(Pam meets her deceased relatives and then must return to her body.)
“But then I got to the end of it and saw the thing, my body. I didn’t want to get into it … It looked terrible, like a train wreck. It looked like what it was: dead. I believe it was covered. It scared me and I didn’t want to look at it. It was communicated to me that it was like jumping into a swimming pool. No problem, just jump right into the swimming pool. I didn’t want to, but I guess I was late or something because he [the uncle] pushed me. I felt a definite repelling and at the same time a pulling from the body. The body was pulling and the tunnel was pushing … It was like diving into a pool of ice water … It hurt! When I came back, they were playing Hotel California and the line was “You can check out anytime you like, but you can never leave.” I mentioned [later] to Dr. Brown that that was incredibly insensitive and he told me that I needed to sleep more.” (Pam Reynolds)
b. Reverend George Rodonaia
The book entitled, The Self Does Not Die: Verified Paranormal Phenomena from Near-Death Experiences, by Titus Rivas, Anny Dirven, Rudolf H. Smit, Robert Mays, and Janice Holden, documents P.M.H. Atwater‘s research into George Rodonaia‘s extraordinary case of veridical out-of-body telepathic perception of an injured infant and George’s wife during his NDE from Atwater’s book Beyond The Light. The following is an excerpt:
“When Rodonaia thought of his body, he saw it lying in the morgue. He remembered everything that had happened. He was also able to ‘see’ the thoughts and emotions of his wife, Nino, and of the people who had been involved in the accident. It was as if they had their thoughts ‘inside of him.’ He then wanted to find out the ‘truth’ of those thoughts and emotions. By expressing a longing for greater knowledge, he was confronted by mental images of existence and thus became acquainted with thousands of years of history.
“When he returned to his body in the morgue, he was drawn to a nearby hospital, where the wife of a friend had just had a baby. The newborn was constantly crying. He examined the baby. His ‘eyes’ were like X-rays that could look right through the little body. This ability enabled him to draw the conclusion that the baby had broken a bone during delivery. He spoke to the baby, ‘Don’t cry. Nobody understands you.’ The baby was so astonished by his presence that the baby immediately stopped crying. According to Rodonaia, children are able to see and hear transmaterial apparitions. The child reacted to him, he believes, because he was ‘a physical reality’ to her.
“After three days, when the autopsy of Rodonaia’s body was just getting under way, he succeeded in opening his eyes. At first, the doctors thought it was a reflex, but Rodonaia appeared to have actually come back from the dead, even though his death and his frigid condition had both been confirmed. He was in poor condition physically, but after three days, the first words he spoke were about the baby that urgently needed help. X-rays of the baby confirmed that he was right.
“At one point, Atwater interviewed Rodonaia’s wife, Nino, who stated that during his NDE, Rodonaia had actually witnessed what she had seen. According to Nino, he had actually had telepathic contact with her. In an email dated July 28, 2015, Atwater wrote Rivas the following about this aspect of the case:
“George told me that as part of his near-death experience, among the many things he could do was to be able to enter the minds of all his friends and find out whether or not they were really friends. During this entry process, he also entered the mind of this wife, Nino. When he did, he both saw and heard his wife picking out his gravesite. As she stood there looking at the gravesite, in her head, she pictured several men she would consider being her next husband. She made a list for herself of their various qualities, pro and con, to decide which one would be the most suitable.
“After George revived and his tongue shrunk back to its normal size so George could talk (this took three days), George greeted his wife. He told her about the gravesite scenario. He described everything she saw there. Then he told her everything she thought about while there, the specific men she was considering to be her next husband and [the] list she was making in her mind about their various pros and cons. He was correct in every detail. This so freaked her out that she refused to have much to do with him for a year. I had no sense that this was telepathic, but real, physically real, as if George’s mind was physically inside his wife’s mind. He saw what she saw. He also saw what she thought.
“When I met Nino and both children, I asked Nino if I could talk to her about that incident at the gravesite and her list of qualities of the men she was considering marrying. She described the incident for me and that all of this was done in the privacy of her own mind. She only thought about the men and their various qualities. The list was her own. When her suddenly, newly alive, formerly dead husband talked about that personal moment at the gravesite, named the men she thought about, and then went on to ‘read’ the list back to her that she made for each man, she was utterly shocked at his accuracy and how he could even do this. This shock was felt as if an affront against her right to privacy, the intimate privacy of her own mind. I asked if it was true that she would have little or nothing to do with him for a year. She said, yes, it was true. She could not sleep in the same room with him. When I asked why, her answer was: ‘I no longer had the privacy of my own mind. This was very hard to take.'” (The Self Does Not Die, p.130-132)
Nino also confirmed what happened at the hospital, the first words he said after his tongue swelling went down, of his friend’s wife having just given birth to a daughter, he told the doctors to get right up to the maternity ward and X-ray that baby’s hip, that it had been broken by the attending nurse who had dropped the baby. George was a doctor himself and he described the hip break in detail. The doctors rushed up to the maternity ward, had the baby X-rayed and found the break exactly as described by George. They then confronted the nurse with what they found and she admitted to dropping the baby. She was immediately fired.
c. Dr. Pim van Lommel’s Case
In January of 2001, near-death experiences and near-death research earned greater scientific respect and credibility when the findings of a particular NDE study (PDF) were published. The distinguished British medical journal The Lancet published an article by Dr. Pim van Lommel of the Rijnstate Hospital in the Netherlands on the first large-scale study of NDEs which he conducted.
His study began in 1988 and lasted 13 years. It included 344 survivors of cardiac arrest from 10 Dutch hospitals. Of these 344 survivors, 18 percent experienced an NDE. And because Lommel and his staff conducted follow-up interviews with these patients over many years, they were able to rule out such factors as anoxia, seizures, medication, etc. Lommel’s findings confirmed prior research findings conducted by other near-death researchers. It confirmed that NDEs are real and they cannot be explained by physiological or psychological causes alone. Lommel also accepted the implication that consciousness survives death and that consciousness is not completely dependent upon the brain.
Lommel noted that only 10 seconds after the heart stops beating, the electroencephalogram goes dead. At this point, there is no activity in the brain cortex and the brain cannot manufacture visions. Within 10 minutes, brain stem activity ceases and irreparable brain damage can occur. However, Lommel notes that some patients still reported being conscious at this point. One particular example cited by Lommel is a man who came into the hospital already blue from a lack of oxygen. The hospital staff spent 90 minutes trying to resuscitate him, using artificial respiration, heart massage and defibrillation, before they could move him to intensive care where he was remained in a coma for a week with brain damage. But when the patient regained consciousness, he was able to describe events that occurred around him while he was brain damaged and out of his body. This veridical evidence comes from a coronary-care-unit nurse who reported the veridical out-of-body experience of the comatose patient:
“During a night shift an ambulance brings in a 44-year-old cyanotic, comatose man into the coronary care unit. He had been found about an hour before in a meadow by passers-by. After admission, he receives artificial respiration without intubation, while heart massage and defibrillation are also applied. When we wanted to intubate the patient, he turns out to have dentures in his mouth. I remove these upper dentures and put them onto the crash car. Meanwhile, we continue extensive CPR. After about an hour and a half the patient has sufficient heart rhythm and blood pressure, but he is still ventilated and intubated, and he is still comatose. He is transferred to the intensive care unit to continue the necessary artificial respiration. Only after more than a week do I meet again with the patient, who is by now back on the cardiac ward. I distribute his medication. The moment he sees me he says:
“Oh, that nurse knows where my dentures are.”
“I am very surprised. Then he elucidates:
“Yes, you were there when I was brought into hospital and you took my dentures out of my mouth and put them onto that car, it had all these bottles on it and there was this sliding drawer underneath and there you put my teeth.”
“I was especially amazed because I remembered this happening while the man was in deep coma and in the process of CPR. When I asked further, it appeared the man had seen himself lying in bed, that he had perceived from above how nurses and doctors had been busy with CPR. He was also able to describe correctly and in detail the small room in which he had been resuscitated as well as the appearance of those present like myself. At the time that he observed the situation he had been very much afraid that we would stop CPR and that he would die. And it is true that we had been very negative about the patient’s prognosis due to his very poor medical condition when admitted. The patient tells me that he desperately and unsuccessfully tried to make it clear to us that he was still alive and that we should continue CPR. He is deeply impressed by his experience and says he is no longer afraid of death. Four weeks later he left hospital as a healthy man.” (Dr. Pim Van Lommel)
d. Dr. Norma Bowe’s Case
Perhaps the strongest case of veridical OBE perception can be found in Erika Hayasaki’s book, “The Death Class.” Her book documents the NDE of a woman who was pronounced dead-on-arrival at a hospital, but her heart beat was restored and she spent weeks in a coma. She later awoke from her coma and told Dr. Norma Bowe and staff of having an NDE. She said she floated out of her body and saw her body hooked up to a respirator. Because of the woman’s severe case of obsessive compulsive disorder, she had the bizarre habit of memorizing every number see saw. The woman memorized 12-digit serial number of the respirator she saw while out-of-body. Dr. Bowe – a skeptic at the time – indulged her, writing the number down. The respirator was seven feet high, so it required a maintenance guy and a ladder to check it out. The 12-digit number was the exact 12-digit number the woman had given to Dr. Bowe – giving strong evidence for veridical perception in NDEs.
e. Dr. Sam Parnia Case
One of the most discussed cases of veridical perception from a scientific study comes from the AWARE study led by Dr. Sam Parnia. The AWARE study (AWAreness during REsuscitation) was an extensive research project aimed at understanding consciousness during cardiac arrest. Conducted across 15 hospitals in the UK, USA, and Austria, the study involved 2,060 patients who suffered cardiac arrest between 2008 and 2012.
A patient reported an out-of-body experience where he described floating above his body and observing the medical team’s efforts to resuscitate him. He recounted hearing two distinct beeps from a machine in the room, which were not audible to anyone in normal consciousness. These beeps were confirmed to correspond with the machine’s operation, which makes a sound at three-minute intervals. This was particularly noteworthy because:
a. Timing: The patient’s memory of these beeps occurred during a period when his heart was not beating, suggesting his brain should not have been functioning to perceive these sounds.
b. Accuracy: The sounds he described matched the timing and nature of the machine’s operational beeps, which was later verified.
Although this case did not involve visual perception of the hidden targets (since no such targets were in his room), the auditory veridicality was significant. It suggested that some form of consciousness or awareness could persist even when brain functions, as measured by standard medical equipment, were absent. This case supports the idea that consciousness can exist independently of the brain, aligning with dualistic views where the mind or soul might separate from the body during near-death states.
This case from the AWARE study is pivotal because it’s one of the few instances where an NDE included elements that could be verified as corresponding to real-world events during a time when the patient was clinically dead. It has fueled ongoing debates about the nature of consciousness, the possibility of life after death, and how we interpret human experiences at the brink of death. However, the scientific community continues to call for more rigorous, repeatable evidence to further understand and substantiate these claims.
3. Examples of Verified Perception in NDEs
a. Vicki Umipeg
In Dr. Kenneth Ring‘s book, Mindsight, he documents his research concerning NDEs in people born blind. One of his subjects, Vicki Umipeg, told Dr. Ring that she found herself floating above her body in the emergency room of a hospital following an automobile accident and saw for the first time in her life. She was aware of being up near the ceiling watching a male doctor and a female nurse working on her body, which she viewed from her elevated position. Vicki has a clear recollection of how she came to the realization that this was her own body below her:
“I knew it was me … I was pretty thin then. I was quite tall and thin at that point. And I recognized at first that it was a body, but I didn’t even know that it was mine initially. Then I perceived that I was up on the ceiling, and I thought, ‘Well, that’s kind of weird. What am I doing up here?’ I thought, ‘Well, this must be me. Am I dead? …’ I just briefly saw this body, and … I knew that it was mine because I wasn’t in mine.” In addition, she was able to note certain further identifying features indicating that the body she was observing was certainly her own: “I think I was wearing the plain gold band on my right ring finger and my father’s wedding ring next to it. But my wedding ring I definitely saw … That was the one I noticed the most because it’s most unusual. It has orange blossoms on the corners of it.” (Vicki Umipeg)
b. Kimberly Clark-Sharp’s Case
In a paper published in the Journal of Near-Death Studies concerning veridical NDE evidence, Dr. Kenneth Ring included perhaps the most famous case of veridical observation in NDE research at that time. Kimberly Clark-Sharp first documented the NDE of a woman named Maria in her book, After The Light.
“Maria was a migrant worker who, while visiting friends in Seattle, had a severe heart attack. She was rushed to Harborview Hospital and placed in the coronary care unit. A few days later, she had a cardiac arrest and an unusual out-of-body experience. At one point in this experience, she found herself outside the hospital and spotted a single tennis shoe on the ledge of the north side of the third floor of the building. Maria not only was able to indicate the whereabouts of this oddly situated object, but was able to provide precise details concerning its appearance, such as that its little toe area was worn and one of its laces was stuck underneath its heel. Upon hearing Maria’s story, Clark, with some considerable degree of skepticism and metaphysical misgiving, went to the location described to see whether any such shoe could be found. Indeed it was, just where and precisely as Maria had described it, except that from the window through which Clark was able to see it, the details of its appearance that Maria had specified could not be discerned. Clark concluded, “The only way she could have had such a perspective was if she had been floating right outside and at very close range to the tennis shoe. I retrieved the shoe and brought it back to Maria; it was very concrete evidence for me.” (Clark, 1984, p. 243).
c. Dr. Kenneth Ring’s Case
A study on veridical perception in NDEs was conducted by Dr. Kenneth Ring and Madelaine Lawrence. It included the 1985 account of Kathy Milne who was working as a nurse at Hartford Hospital. Milne had already been interested in NDEs, and one day found herself talking to a woman who had been resuscitated and who had an NDE. Following a telephone interview with Kenneth Ring on August 24, 1992, she described the following account in a letter:
“She told me how she floated up over her body, viewed the resuscitation effort for a short time and then felt herself being pulled up through several floors of the hospital. She then found herself above the roof and realized she was looking at the skyline of Hartford. She marveled at how interesting this view was and out of the corner of her eye she saw a red object. It turned out to be a shoe … [S]he thought about the shoe… and suddenly, she felt “sucked up” a blackened hole. The rest of her NDE account was fairly typical, as I remember. “I was relating this to a [skeptical] resident who in a mocking manner left. Apparently, he got a janitor to get him onto the roof. When I saw him later than day, he had a red shoe and he became a believer, too”” (K. Milne, personal communication, October 19,1992).
After Dr. Ring’s initial interview with Milne, he made a point of inquiring whether she had ever heard of the case of Maria’s shoe [as described in the introduction above]. Not only was she unfamiliar with it, but she was utterly amazed to hear of another story so similar to the one she had just recounted to Dr. Ring. It remains an unanswered question as to how these isolated shoes arrived at their unlikely perches for later viewing by astonished NDErs and their baffled investigators.
d. Dr. Joyce Harmon’s Case
In the summer of 1982, Dr. Joyce Harmon, a surgical intensive care unit (ICU) nurse at Hartford Hospital, returned to work after a vacation. On that vacation she had purchased a new pair of plaid shoelaces, which she happened to be wearing on her first day back at the hospital. That day, she was involved in resuscitating a patient, a woman she didn’t know, by giving her medicine. The resuscitation was successful and the next day Harmon chanced to see the patient, whereupon they had a conversation, the gist of which (not necessarily a verbatim account) is as follows:
“The patient, upon seeing Harmon, volunteered, ‘Oh, you’re the one with the plaid shoelaces!’
“‘What?’ Harmon replied, astonished. She says she distinctly remembers feeling the hair on her neck rise.’
“‘I saw them,’ the woman continued. ‘I was watching what was happening yesterday when I died. I was up above.'” (J. Harmon, personal communication, August 28, 1992)
e. Margaret Fields Kean
The following is one of P.M.H. Atwater‘s case studies from her book Beyond the Light which is not only veridical, it is highly suggestive of the survival of consciousness after death. Atwater has stated that this testimonial has been verified by relatives of the experiencer involved. Here is the excerpt:
“I spoke of Margaret Fields Kean who nearly died in 1978 after being hospitalized for about three weeks with severe phlebitis. A blood clot had passed to her heart and lungs and she became deathly ill. Then she was given injections for nausea that, due to the blood thinners she had previously received, caused internal hemorrhaging. Pandemonium reigned as she slipped away. While absent from her body, she witnessed the scene below her, then heard and saw people in the waiting room down the hall – right through the walls – as well as nurses at their station. She also knew their thoughts. Margaret went on to have a transcendent near-death experience in which she instantly knew and understood many things; her future, and that she would become a healer. This completely contradicted her vision of herself at that moment in her life, for she was content being a super-mom farm wife who rode horses, taught Bible classes, led 4-H and Girl Scout groups, gardened, canned, and baked bread. A healer? Ridiculous! Yet, when Margaret revived, she immediately began to heal other patients in the room around her by ‘reaching out’ to them. Then, she ‘projected’ into the isolation room of a white boy charred black by severe burns. She ‘sat’ next to him on the bed, introduced herself, and proceeded to counsel him about his purpose in life. She told him it was okay if he chose to die as God was loving and he had nothing to fear. Months later, while continuing her recovery and still in great pain, Margaret was attending a horse show when a couple, hearing the loudspeaker announce her daughter’s name as a winner, sought her out. They were parents of the severely burned boy. Before he died, he had told them about meeting Margaret and relayed all the wonderful truths she had told him about God and about life. The parents were thrilled to have finally located her so they could say thanks for what she had done for their son. The dying boy had identified her by name – even though the two had never physically seen each other or verbally spoken in any manner, nor had any nurse known that the two had ever communicated, nor had it been possible that Margaret ever could have known if the isolation room was even occupied much less who might be there.” (P.M.H. Atwater)
f. Sue Sanders’ Case
Dr. Kenneth Ring reported in a scholarly paper one of the most interesting case of verified out-of-body perception. In the late 1970s, Sue Saunders was working at Hartford Hospital as a respiratory therapist and had the following experience resuscitating a patient:
“One day she was helping to resuscitate a 60-ish man in the emergency room whose electrocardiogram had gone flat. Medics were shocking him repeatedly with no results. Saunders was trying to give him oxygen. In the middle of the resuscitation, someone else took over for her and she left. A couple of days later, she encountered this patient in the ICU. He spontaneously commented, ‘You looked so much better in your yellow top.’ She, like Harmon, was so shocked at this remark that she got goose-bumps, for she had been wearing a yellow smock the previous day. ‘Yeah,’ the man continued, I saw you. You had something over your face and you were pushing air into me. And I saw your yellow smock..”” (S. Saunders, personal communication, August 28, 1992)
Saunders confirmed that she had had something over her face – a mask – and that she had worn the yellow smock while trying to give him oxygen, while he was unconscious and without a heartbeat. Saunders confirmed that she had had something over her face – a mask – and that she had worn the yellow smock while trying to give him oxygen, while he was unconscious and without a heartbeat. According to Dr. Ring, this case attests to these three important observations:
a. Patients who claim to have out-of-body experiences while near-death sometimes describe unusual objects that they could not have known about by normal means.
b. These objects can later be shown to have existed in the form and location indicated by the patients’ testimony.
c. Hearing this testimony has a strong emotional and cognitive effect on the caregivers involved, either strengthening their pre-existing belief in the authenticity of NDE accounts or occasioning a kind of on-the-spot conversion.
Source: Ring, Kenneth, Ph.D. & Lawrence, Madeline, R.N., Ph.D. “Further evidence for veridical perception during near-death experiences” (PDF), Journal of Near-Death Studies, 1993 11 (4)223-229.
g. P.MH. Atwater’s Case
In P.M.H. Atwater’s book, Children of the New Millennium, an interesting case of verified out-of-body perception is documented about a woman named Lynn whose observations during her near-death experience were later proven to be true, including the black and Asian doctors on the operating team.
“The next thing I knew I was floating around the ceiling looking down on my body. My chest was open wide and I could see my internal organs. I remember thinking how odd it was that my organs were a beautiful pearl gray, not at all like the bright red chucks in the horror flicks I loved to watch. I also noticed there was a black doctor and an Oriental one on the operating team. The reason this stuck in my mind is that I was brought up in a very white middle-class neighborhood, and I had seen black schoolteachers but never a black doctor. I’d met the operating team the day before, but they were all white. Suddenly, I had to move on, so I floated into the waiting room, where my parents were. My father had his head buried in my mother’s lap. He was kneeling at her feet, his arms wrapped around her waist, and he was sobbing. My mother was stroking his head, whispering to him. This scene shocked me, as my father was not prone to showing emotions. Once I realize they would be fine, I felt myself pulled into a horizontal tunnel.” (Lynn)
h. Dr. Gary Habermas’ Case
Dr. Habermas and Moreland’s research: Dr. Gary Habermas and J.P. Moreland documented two cases of veridical perception in their book, Immortality, The Other Side of Death. The first case was a young girl named Katie who nearly drowned in a pool. After being resuscitated in the emergency room, a CAT scan showed she had massive brain swelling. She was attached to an artificial lung to keep her breathing and given a ten percent chance of survival. Three days later, she completely recovered and told a remarkable story. Though she had been profoundly comatose, with her eyes closed throughout her entire treatment, she gave exact details regarding the physical features of her doctors, the hospital rooms in which she had been treated, and the medical procedures her doctors employed to save her. Amazingly, she was also able to describe, in minute detail, what her family was doing at home, awaiting news of her status, while she lie in the hospital! Then, Katie said she met Jesus and the heavenly Father. Their second case involves a five-year-old boy named Rick who suffered from meningitis. As Rick was rushed to the hospital in an ambulance, he decided to stay behind. He later reported seeing his father crying in the car while he drove the family to the hospital. Rick then rushed to the hospital arriving before the ambulance. He saw hospital orderlies move a young girl out of the room he would be occupying. Rick’s memories were corroborated by his family, and were particularly amazing due to the fact that he was comatose before he was taken in the ambulance and for several days afterward. (Habermas and Moreland)
i. Miscellaneous Cases of Veridical Perception
“If veridical memories of events during flat EEG are taken seriously, we must leave the realm of (conventional) materialist theorizing about mind-brain relations.” (Titus Rivas)
“One young woman, admitted for a gunshot wound to her chest and abdomen, remembered floating above her body in the emergency room watching hospital personnel cut off her garter belt. She remembered viewing the tops of people’s heads with curiosity, and knew she felt calm.” (Janice Holden)
In 1996, NDE researcher Arvin Gibson interviewed a firefighter named John Hernandez who had a rare “Group NDE” with other firefighters who were overcome by the flames while fighting a major forest fire. The enormous winds caused by the inferno erupted all around them making their emergency shelters useless. During their Group NDE, the firefighters actually met each other while out-of-body and saw each other in the air above their physical bodies. A bright light appeared and informed them that neither John, nor any of his crew who chose to return, would suffer any ill effects from the fire. All of them miraculously survived completely healed as foretold. They later verified with each other that their Group NDE actually happened. (John Hernandez)
“A young girl had no heart beat for 19 minutes, yet completely recovered. She was able to recount details of her own resuscitation, and then said that she was taken down a brick lined tunnel to a heavenly place. When Dr. Morse showed his obvious skepticism, she patted him shyly on the hand and said, “Don’t worry, Dr. Morse, heaven is fun!” (Dr. Melvin Morse)
A dying girl left her body and into another room in the hospital where she found her older sister crying and saying, “Oh, Kathy, please don’t die, please don’t die.” The older sister was quite baffled when, later, Kathy told her exactly where she had been and what she had been saying during that time. (Dr. Raymond Moody)
4. Conclusion
The study of veridical perception in NDEs continues to be a frontier where science, philosophy, and spirituality intersect. While compelling cases exist, the scientific community remains cautious, calling for more rigorous, repeatable studies to substantiate claims. Meanwhile, the personal impact of these experiences on individuals who have them often leads to profound life changes, suggesting that, regardless of their ultimate explanation, NDEs have significant psychological and existential implications.
