In his book, Life at Death, Dr. Ken Ring analyzed the near-death experiences of 24 people who attempted suicide. Among them, no one reported the tunnel phenomenon, or saw a brilliant but comforting light, or encountered a presence, or was temporarily reunited with loved ones who had died, or entered into a transcendent world of heavenly beauty. Instead, the suicide-related NDE tended to be truncated, aborted, and damped down. It began with a feeling of relief or peace and continued with a sense of bodily detachment to the same degree as non-suicide-related NDEs. But it tended to end, if it got this far at all, with a feeling of confused drifting in a dark or murky void – a sort of twilight zone. Dr. Ring's research strongly suggests that the suicide-related NDE does not reach completion; instead, it tends simply to fade out before the transcendent elements characteristic of non-suicide related NDEs make their appearance. The following is an excerpt from Ring's research into suicide:

  One young man tried to kill himself by taking an assortment of pills – Librium, Demerol, Valium, Dilantin. As a result of this ingestion, he remained unconscious for four days. He remembers finding himself in a gray area:

  While he was in this state, he felt good:

  He also was aware of music:

  He also reported that everything, including the music, sounded "hollow and metallic – echoey" and that these acoustical sensations were associated with the watery grayness. He felt the grayness going through him, filling him and this felt good to him. After a while, he became aware of a voice:

  He tried to get to where the voice was:

  During his experience he had seen images of people he knew. These people somehow seemed to represent the possibility of a good life; they seemed to care. He described this as "like playing back a recording of my life." The issue was joined:

  And resolved:

  And afterward:

These passages sum up the essential features of his experience. In the course of his interview, he also indicated that although he never clearly saw his physical body on the bed, he did have a sense of bodily detachment and felt he had no weight at all – he was just pure mind. Neither did he have any sense of time. When he momentarily returned to body consciousness (before drifting back into the grayness), he found the sensory world greatly enhanced – the colors were clearer and more vibrant. The only thing scary about his experience was his fear (which was eventually vanquished) of returning to his body. His experience in the grayness was decidedly pleasant and, judging from its immediate aftereffect, very positive and powerful in its emotional impact.

This particular experience includes many features that are common with non-suicide-attempt experiences: drifting through a vast space, feeling good, hearing music and a comforting voice, hearing sounds magnified, seeing a series of flashbacks of one's life, and so forth.

In those organized religions in which hell figures, suicide is a sin and might well be considered an entrance qualification. And yet none of the people who wrote to us about a NDE during a suicide attempt reported a hellish or even an unpleasant experience. On the contrary, what they experienced seemed to provide a reason for continuing life.

It seems that the mental state in the NDE bears no resemblance at all to the person's mental state before the experience. Someone who attempts suicide might be expected to be in some emotional turmoil at the time of their experience. In real life, people who are depressed tend to select only depressive images and memories. And yet if we look at the experiences described below we can see that the depressive feelings vanish when they enter the experience; there is an awareness of peace, of something beautiful; there seems to be a healing of the broken spirit. 

  Here Sheila Berry describes what happened to her fifteen years ago:

  Anne Thomson attempted suicide in the winter of 1972 when she was very depressed.

Only one of the descriptions of NDEs which occurred during suicide attempts had elements that might possibly be construed as hellish. It is one of the very few in which the feeling is one of descent, into a pit, rather than upwards, and in which the light seen is red rather than white or golden. Although there is a presence, this is not perceived as friendly, but not as hostile either. In fact, the whole experience has a neutral quality - not hellish, but not positive either, except for the compassion the returning self feels for her body in the hospital bed.

  Here is another NDE resulting from a suicide attempt: