Education Materials
IANDS provides the following educational resources to learn more about NDEs:
- 2003 BBC documentary on NDEs: The Day I Died: The mind, the brain, and near-death experiences
- A recommended reading list
- Downloadable brochures on a variety of NDE-related subjects
- Audio tapes from past conferences (available from our store)
- The quarterly magazine, Vital Signs (free to members)
- The quarterly journal, Journal of Near-Death Studies (free to professional members)
- Speaker's bureau (for assistance, contact the office)
Near-Death Experience (NDE) Factsheet
Fact Sheet: Near-Death Experience (NDE)
Written by: Janice Miner Holden, EdD; and Bruce Greyson, MD
In an NDE, usually during a close brush with death due to severe illness or injury or during some other extreme circumstance, a person has a lucid and vivid experience of perceiving the material world from a position outside the physical body and/or perceiving and interacting with beings and environments not of the material world.
What forms do NDEs take?
NDEs typically include several features.
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IANDS Fact Sheets
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After-Death Communication (ADC) Factsheet
Fact Sheet: After-Death Communication (ADC)
Written by: Jenny Streit-Horn, PhD; Janice Miner Holden, EdD; Noelle St. Germain-Sehr, PhD; and Evelyn Elsaesser, PhD
After-death communication (ADC) is a spontaneous phenomenon in which a living person has a feeling or sense of direct contact with a physically deceased person or animal.
What forms do ADCs take?
ADC may occur as any of several types—alone or in combination.
In the following types, the ADCr’s perception may be either in the external physical environment or as internal mental imagery:
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NDE Training Video Now on Sale!
For doctors and nurses: How do you recognize a patient's near-death experience? How do you respond to it? This new IANDS-sponsored NDE Medical Training Video provides answers. It is now available on the IANDS Shopping Cart!
This groundbreaking video features six medical professionals, addresses the needs of near-death experiencers, and provides professional and general audiences with knowledge of NDEs.
Training Video DVD only (30 min) ~ $29.95. The institutional NDE Training Package (includes the DVD and supporting training materials) ~ $199. Both items are now available on the IANDS Shopping Cart, discounts available to IANDS members. View the trailer now!
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Writing a Paper on Near-Death Experiences
We're glad to hear that you're interested in writing a paper on near-death experiences.
Our bibliography will give you a start. In particular, if you have access to the 2000 book, The Varieties of Anomalous Experience, Bruce Greyson's chapter on near-death experiences offers an excellent overview and includes a description of a very interesting NDE that occurred to a woman documented to have an inactive brain for one hour during surgery.
To locate resources in the library or bookstore, begin by checking listings under the author's name, if you know it, or under the topics of Near-Death, Death, and Dying. You may find books in the sections for Religion, Psychology, or Parapsychology. You may need to ask the librarian or salesperson; the topic is handled differently from place to place.
For magazine articles, look under the same topics suggested for book titles. Use the library's search facility if there is one. Otherwise, check the Reader's Guide to Periodical Literature. For some excellent recent magazine and journal resources:
- The August 2003 issue of Reader's Digest included an article on near-death experiences (pages 122-128).
- The September 2003 issue of Spirituality & Health included an article entitled "Beyond Fear: The New Science of Near-Death Experiences."
- The December 15, 2001, issue of the highly respected international medical journal, The Lancet, included an article by Dr. Pim van Lommel and his colleagues who studied NDEs for 13 years in hospitals in Holland. We have commentary, including a link to an on-line copy of the article.
- To read research papers on near-death experiences, go to Google Scholar and search for the desired author and "near death experience". For example, search for Greyson "near death experience", or other authors like Ring, Holden, Parnia, etc. Many of these papers are available on-line as PDFs.
For websites where near-death experiencers post their experiences and sometimes discuss them with others, go to:
If you are interested in actually interviewing people who have had a near-death experience, try these suggestions:
Check to see if there is a local support and interest group near you for near-death experiencers (a Friends of IANDS group: FOI). Use the contact information to learn when and where the group meets. At the meeting, identify yourself as someone preparing to write a paper on near-death experiences.
Run a small request in your school or community newspaper, or post a notice on a high-traffic bulletin board (library, supermarket, wherever in your community people are most apt to stop and browse).
Whenever you interview a near-death experiencer, be sure to guarantee confidentiality-and keep this promise without fail!
Term Paper Topics about Near-death Experiences
Basic: The near-death experience (NDE) in general
- What research says about the NDE
- Effects of the NDE on people's lives
- Children's near-death experiences
More advanced
- Were the people who report NDEs really dead?
- A comparison of NDEs and deathbed visions (the reports of people who do actually die); see Raymond Moody's books; Callanan, M. & Kelley, P. (1992). Final Gifts: Understanding the Special Awareness, Needs, and Communication of the Dying. New York: Bantam. Osis and Haraldsson's book At the Hour of Death; and others)
- What healthcare professionals (or the public, or any other group) think about the near-death experience
- Do near-death experiences prove there is life after death?
- Distressing near-death experiences
- How scientists attempt to explain near-death experiences
- How religious traditions explain near-death experiences
By subject
Journalism
How the tabloid papers report near-death experiences
History
Near-death experiences in history see Book X of Plato's Republic (also here); St. Paul's experience on the road to Damascus; William James Varieties of Religious Experience; and others)
Film
- "The Wizard of Oz" as a near-death experience;
- NDEs in film (see "Resurrection," "Jacob's Ladder," "Ghost," "Flatliners," "All That Jazz," "Heaven Can Wait," "Always," "What Dreams May Come," "Dragonfly," and others)
Literature
NDE themes and similarities in Katharine Anne Porter's Pale Horse, Pale Rider; Dickens' A Christmas Carol; Black Elk's Black Elk Speaks
Biology
- Similarities between NDE and limbic lobe disorder;
- physiological theories that attempt to explain the NDE (see especially the work of Susan Blackmore);
- levels of consciousness (altered states of consciousness)
Culture
Similarities and differences among NDEs across world culture
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