Seeing a bright light or hovering as a spirit over one’s own body have become  cultural tropes to describe near-death experiences.

Dr Jeffrey Long - a cancer expert who practices in Kentucky - believes they have become tropes because they are true - after decades of studying thousands of cases.

Dr Long, a former skeptic, argued that years of researching the similarities among different accounts of people's brushes with death have upended his own beliefs about a possible afterlife.

He has so far collected more than 5,000 accounts in over 30 languages from people of various religions and cultural backgrounds.

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