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Maria, as a result of a heart attack, died in the emergency room of a hospital. While doctors and nurses frantically worked to resuscitate her, Maria experienced an out-of-body event that she later described drifting through the ceiling and outside of the hospital. While outside, she observed a tennis shoe on the hospital’s third-story ledge. Maria proceeded to describe the tennis shoe in great detail: “A man’s shoe, Left-footed, dark blue, with a wear mark over the little toe and the shoe lace tucked under the heel.”
The tennis shoes were found exactly as Maria had described it. What Maria experienced is not uncommon; there have been thousands of Near-Death Experiences (NDEs) reported from around the world. These are not isolated cases reported by nut-jobs; these are first-hand accounts attested to by people from wide-ranging occupations, and every socioeconomic class. NDEs are not just reported by the nice little church lady; skeptical scientists and hard-core atheists alike have also reported them. Near Death Experience researcher Dale Allison, Jr. reports that one religiously skeptical woman said that nothing in her “conscious storehouse of concepts” could have prepared her for what she experienced. Another stated, “I was a professed atheist, but after my experience, I know there is [a] God.” Another said that he had never had any belief in the afterlife, but now believes that there must be something after death.
Allison reports that “by one recent estimate, twenty-five million people worldwide have had a NDE.” The phenomenon has also caught the attention of the academic community, as there have been more than 900 articles on NDEs published in scholarly journals. These journal articles, researched and written by some of the leading scientists in their specialized fields, report case after case of experiences that share several commonalities. Near Death researcher Lee Strobel reports that three-quarters experienced the separation of their consciousness (soul) from their body, two out of three encounter a brilliant light that is often equated with unconditional love, more than half describe meeting a mystical being and a heavenly realm, half encounter a barrier or boundary, and about a quarter experience a life review.
