Official websites use. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites. The great majority of near-death experiences NDEs reported publicly over the past four decades have been described as pleasant, even glorious. Almost unnoticed in the euphoria about them has been the sobering fact that not all NDEs are so affirming.
Some are deeply disturbing. Few people are forthcoming about such an event; they hide; they disappear when asked for information; if inpatient, they are likely to withdraw; they are under great stress. What do their physicians need to know to deal with these experiences? We have documented three types of distressing NDE: inverse, void, and hellish. A man thrown from his horse found himself floating at treetop height, watching emergency medical technicians working over a his body.
Next he was shooting through darkness toward a bright light, flashing past shadowy people who seemed to be deceased family members waiting. He was panic-stricken by the bizarre scenario and his inability to affect what was happening.
I realized that we were on a collision course, and it terrified me. I saw the blinding white light come right to me and engulf me. A woman in childbirth found herself abruptly flying over the hospital and into deep, empty space. A group of circular entities informed her she never existed, that she had been allowed to imagine her life but it was a joke; she was not real.
She argued with facts about her life and descriptions of Earth. I had become a light out in the heavens, and I was screaming, but no sound was going forth. It was worse than any nightmare. I was spinning around, and I realized that this was eternity; this was what forever was going to beβ¦. I felt the aloneness, the emptiness of space, the vastness of the universe, except for me, a mere ball of light, screaming.
