People Share Their Near Death First-Hand Experiences

William Peters was working as a volunteer in a hospice when he had a strange encounter with a dying man that changed his life.

The man’s name was Ron, and he was a former Merchant Marine who was afflicted with stomach cancer. Peters says he would spend up to three hours a day at Ron’s bedside, talking to and reading adventure stories to him because few family or friends visited.

When Peters plopped by Ron’s beside around lunch one day, the frail man was semi-conscious. Peters read passages from Jack London’s “Call of the Wild” as the frail man struggled to hang on. What happened next, Peters says, was inexplicable.

Peters says he felt a force jerk his spirit upward, out of his body. He floated above Ron’s bedside, looking down at the dying man. Then he glanced next to him to discover Ron floating alongside him, looking at the same scene below.

“He looked at me and he gave me this happy, contented look as if he was telling me, ‘Check this out. Here we are,’ ’’ Peters says.

Peters says he then felt his spirit drop into his body again. The experience was over in a flash. Ron died soon afterward, but Peters’ questions about that day lingered. He didn’t know what to call that moment but he eventually learned that it wasn’t unique. Peters had a “shared-death experience.”

Most of us have heard of near-death experiences. The stories of people who died and returned to life with tales of floating through a tunnel to a distant light have become a part of popular culture. Yet there is another category of near-death experiences that are, in some ways, even more puzzling.

Stories about shared-death experiences have been circulating since the late 19th century, say those who study the phenomenon. The twist in shared-death stories is that it’s not just the people at the edge of death that get a glimpse of the afterlife. Those near them, either physically or emotionally, also experience the sensations of dying.

These shared-death accounts come from assorted sources: soldiers watching comrades die on the battlefield, hospice nurses, people holding death vigils at the bedside of their loved ones. All tell similar stories with the same message: People don’t die alone. Some somehow find a way to share their passage to the other side.