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In new book, he says that near-death accounts transcend cultures and agesThe near-death experience story is so common that it has become a bit of a cliché: A medical patient, hanging in a murky limbo between life and death, is drawn through a tunnel of bright light, meets their maker, and is told they must return to the land of living. But that scenario played out letter-perfectly for Mary Jo Rapini. And her story is getting firm backing by a doctor who has studied some 1,300 near-death experiences. Medical doctor Jeffrey Long chronicles Rapini’s story, along with his own research,...

Several years back we met a woman from Syosset, New York, who had a near-death experience. We try to be cautious with all such reports. We're well aware that there can be deception in any realm, and also that near-death experiences, because they involve a reality far outside our own, can seem strange to some people.  But hers sounded legitimate -- one of the most powerful we've heard -- and the Church has been recording such experiences since the fourth century (when Pope Gregory the Great detailed them). Scientists recently issued a study saying that millions have had these experiences,...

It was December of 1994 that Linnie Smith of New Hudson, Michigan, "died" and returned. And when she did, she had an incredible description of Jesus. What she saw, as you will note in a moment, should be a warning to atheists: Many dozens -- hundreds, indeed thousands -- are those who return from death's door with a similar description. In all the fuss over Christmas, in all the commotion over its denial -- in the inconceivable hoopla over taking the Name of Jesus out of His very birthday -- we can rest assured of one thing: there are great...

Sleep holds the key to understanding these mystical events, reports Roger HighfieldPeople who have out-of-body experiences near death, such as flying along a tunnel towards a heavenly light, are more likely to suffer a strange effect called sleep paralysis, according to a survey that adds to mounting evidence for a biological explanation for this mystical experience. During sleep paralysis, people experience a kind of breakdown between states of consciousness which takes place on the fringe of slumber, either when falling asleep or awakening. Because the brain turns off the body's ability to move during dreaming, muscles can lose their tone,...

"I was putting pebbles in a bucket and I was having a really good time." Linda Jacquin was just four years old. Playing in the water though she was so young, she says she remembers everything. Including when her foot slipped off a rock and she was caught under the surface. "I was underwater and I started breathing underwater because at four and a half years old, you didn't know you can't breathe underwater," she says. What happened next isn't completely clear. But Linda says she began to leave her body -- floating away. "With a vantage point of being...

They are eerie sensations, more common than one might think: A man describes feeling a shadowy figure standing behind him, then turning around to find no one there. A woman feels herself leaving her body and floating in space, looking down on her corporeal self. Such experiences are often attributed by those who have them to paranormal forces. But according to recent work by neuroscientists, they can be induced by delivering mild electric current to specific spots in the brain. In one woman, for example, a zap to a brain region called the angular gyrus resulted in a sensation that...

Despite lifelong beliefs that have been ingrained in my faith since childhood, I have to admit that like almost everyone else I have from time to time wondered if my existence will simply come to an end on the day I draw my last breath. There is, after all, no way to prove one way or the other that human life continues in another realm after the body ceases to function. Nobody has come back to testify about it, with one notable exception of course, and those who reject his divinity also tend to doubt what he had to say...

Howard Storm, a former atheist whose brush with death turned him into a Protestant minister, says that he now believes in purgatory. "It only makes sense," he says, "but I have trouble discussing this with my fellow ministers." Featured here a couple months ago and also on MSNBC during Easter Week -- where he told his incredible story to a national audience -- Reverend Storm, considered by experts as one of the most convincing near-death cases, recounted his "dying" in Paris in 1985 from a perforated duodenum and after leaving his body finding himself with a group of hideous beings...

A leading cardiologist — who has become convinced of the existence of life after death after hearing his patients’ experiences — is talking about his research and beliefs at a major conference in London in March. Dr Pim van Lommel was so inspired by the stories related by his patients of their Near Death Experiences (NDEs) that he became the first medical practitioner to risk his reputation with a full, systematic trial into the phenomenon. He interviewed 344 heart patients at his hospital in Arnhem, Netherlands who had all clinically died, some

Father Jose Life After Death Experience written by Father Jose Maniyangat I was born on July 16, 1949 in Kerala, India to my parents, Joseph and Theresa Maniyangat. I am the eldest of seven children: Jose, Mary, Theresa, Lissama, Zachariah, Valsa and Tom. At the age of fourteen, I entered St. Mary’s minor seminary in Thiruvalla to begin my studies for the priesthood. Four years later I went to St. Joseph’s Pontifical Major Seminary in Alwaye, Kerala to continue my priestly formation. After completing the seven years of Philosophy and Theology I was ordained a priest on January 1, 1975...

This is the account of a minister, Howard Storm, from Ohio, who "died" in 1985 from a perforation in his intestines and returned with an account of hell. While he's a minister now (at Zion United Church of Christ in Norwood), at the time he was an atheistic professor, chairman of the art department at North Kentucky University. Storm describes himself as a selfish man who not only didn't believe but detested those who did. Then came the crisis on June 1, 1985, while he was leading students on a trip to museums in Paris. "I needed surgery immediately but...