A mixed near-death experience, also referred to as a mixed NDE, hybrid near-death experience, or hybrid NDE, is a near-death experience with a blend of pleasurable and distressing features.
Pleasurable NDEs are pleasant and peaceful, while distressing NDEs are scary, disturbing, or even sometimes hellish. Mixed NDEs involve the characteristics of both — they might start off frightening, but evolve toward having peaceful features. Or, they might start peacefully, and then transition toward more frightening features.
We don’t yet know how commonly a person might encounter a mixed near-death experience. Most prevalence studies classify NDEs by their dominant emotional tone — they might be labeled more generally as a pleasurable or distressing NDE, without an accurate read on whether the NDE contained both pleasurable and distressing features.
Mixed Near-Death Experience vs. Hybrid NDE: What’s the Difference?
As you delve into this subject, you may find yourself coming across two seemingly distinct terms: mixed near-death experience and hybrid near-death experience. So, in an effort of cutting off any underlying confusion at the pass, we want to note that mixed NDEs and hybrid NDEs both refer to the same phenomenon — NDEs with a blend of positive and negative aspects.
In The Darker Side of Near-Death Experiences (2023), prominent NDE researcher and IANDS co-founder Dr. Bruce Greyson discusses what he refers to as “Mixed Pleasant and Unpleasant Near-Death Experiences.”
Meanwhile, Lund University researchers Karolina Kinnunen, Amal Ait Melloul, and Etzel Cardeña referred to them as “hybrid experiences” throughout their paper The Phenomenology of Distressing Near-death Experiences and Their Aftereffects.
Both phrases are used, and both phrases are considered acceptable. The phrase “mixed near-death experience” does seem at least slightly more common in older research, while “hybrid near-death experience” is arguably used more often in newer research. And that’s all incredibly relative, given how young this field of research is to begin with.
We should also mention here that the phrases mixed near-death experience and inverted near-death experience do not mean the same thing. These two phrases are sometimes confused or have their meanings swapped, but they’re two distinct concepts.
An inverted NDE is one where features we commonly associate with pleasurable NDEs — out-of-body experiences, entering a tunnel, approaching a light, or interacting with deceased people — are found by the experiencer to be frightening, rather than comforting. And yes, it’s possible for a near-death experience to be both mixed and inverted.
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A mixed near-death experience is just one type of NDE. Interested in learning more about near-death experiences and related phenomena? You’ve come to the right place!
IANDS offers a wide range of educational resources to introduce you to this topic. You may want to start with the IANDS Glossary, which offers definitions of the terminology of near-death studies. Also check out our IANDS Q&A, where we answer frequently asked questions.
- IANDS Glossary:
- IANDS Q&A:
