November 1, 2005

Vol. 04 No. 11, Ed. 01


The Near-Death Newsletter is a free semi-monthly newsletter from www.near-death.com which is emailed to subscribers every 1st of the month and on every 15th of the month. The mission of this newsletter is to provide the latest news on the subject of near-death experiences and related phenomena and to promote IANDS (International Association for Near-Death Studies), near-death researchers, experiencers, events, and multimedia resources. Disclaimer: This newsletter is not affiliated with IANDS; but the author of this newsletter, Kevin Williams, is a member of IANDS and is dedicated to the IANDS mission. IANDS is the premier organization for near-death research. Membership gives you access to their prestigious Journal of Near-Death Studies and Vital Signs newsletter. You can join IANDS at their website. Get connected with IANDS because they will probably be the organization who will someday provide the scientific evidence proving that human consciousness survives death.

       Download this newsletter in PDF format


 Table of Contents


  (1) Near-Death News
  (2) Q & A with P.M.H. Atwater
  (3) Books on the NDE
  (4) IANDS in the Spotlight
  (5) Odds and Ends

(1)

Near-Death News


Archive of NDEs in the News - Read all the major news articles concerning the NDE and related phenomena from 1995 to current. This is a permanent archive to ensure that these news articles will always be available on the internet. The Near-Death News section of this Near-Death Newsletter will soon be available in syndication so stay tuned!


News From P.M.H. Atwater


(November 2005)

"Beyond the Indigo Children: The New Children and the Coming of the Fifth World" hit bookstores September 28th. Get a copy. I know you will be surprised by what is in the book! It is now time for all of us to move beyond labels such as indigo, crystal, star, sky, cosmic, and psychic, and take a real look at the REAL children now entering our world - and the Great Shifting occurring everywhere!

LATEST HEADLINES FROM P.M.H:

FREEBIES FROM P.M.H:

WHAT'S NEW ON P.M.H.'S WEBSITE:


Halloween Special: A Spirit Photo

  (CAUTION: This photo may shock you.)

(October 30, 2005)

In the spirit of Halloween (pun intended), I found a photograph on the Internet which is the best "ghost" photo I have ever seen. A teen was murdered in his home and his mother was so despondent that she put her home on the market for sale and moved into an apartment. In the process of selling her home, she took a number of photographs of the interior of her home. When she received the developed photographs, she looked through them all to see how they turned out. When she came across one particular photograph, however, what she saw shocked her so much that she ... [Read more here]

   Related items of interest:


Near-Death Experiencers Wanted

  (Submit your NDE testimony)

(October 30, 2005)

The following organizations are looking for NDErs to share their story:

 A top UK publisher is looking for personal NDE accounts preferably from experiencers living in the UK. Contact Tammy Cohen at tammymichael@btinternet.com.

 A national magazine called First For Women is seeking to interview women who have had an NDE . Send a photo and full contact info to: Christine Coppa, ccoppa@bauerpublishing.com, Bauer Publishing, Special Projects, 270 Sylvan Avenue, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 07632, phone: (201) 569-6699 x394, fax: (201) 569-6264.

 NDErs needed for interview for a History Channel documentary called "The History of Heaven" to be televised later this year. Please email Associate Producer Ann LeSchander at annbbp@earthlink.net with your name, your testimony and your contact information.


Out-of-Body or All in the Mind?

  (Dr. Sam Parnia's NDE research)

(September 22, 2005)

Reports of OBEs and NDEs are often simply anecdotal, but the hospital environment allows Sam Parnia to monitor and compare oxygen, carbon dioxide and salt levels in the patients who did and did not have either experience. His study also involves a novel method of testing if the "self" actually does leave the body during an OBE. Sam has suspended boards below the ceiling and these have images on the upper side. The idea is that if people do look down from above, they may recall the extra information. As yet, no patients have reported seeing these images. Whether these phenomena are visions of a dying brain or paranormal activity, Dr Parnia says science needs to offer an explanation of what happens when we die. "I think that NDEs hold the key to finally solving this mystery. In studying them further we will be able to discover the true nature of the relationship between the mind and the brain and answer the wider questions regarding the existence of an afterlife."  [Read more here]

   Related items of interest:


A Tunnel Back to Life

  (Patrick Tierney's NDE)

(October 30, 2005)

I felt a pinch in my chest and I found myself in a tunnel, what seemed to be a tunnel. I walked or floated down the tunnel until I came to ... two more tunnels. One was very bright and the other one was black. So I took the one on the right, which was light, and suddenly appeared before a picket fence, similar to the fences you'd find around the old railway stations ... I was looking out on an area which was multi-coloured. The colours were beautiful. I can't describe them. The only way I could describe them - it was a very, very beautiful garden. What seemed a few seconds, my parents appeared from the side, were standing in front of me, smiling. My mother-in-law, she joined them. They're all smiling and I had the urge to go through the fence, through a gate into the garden. And my father gave me a look which fathers give to naughty children. In other words: "Don't do that, or else." So I didn't go through the gate. Next thing I found I was back in the tunnel going the way I'd come. [Read more here]

   Related items of interest:


Seeing The Light

  (Rev. Elkan Kemp's NDE)

(October 26, 2005)

Watching himself die and be resuscitated -- twice -- has brought the Rev. Elkan Kemp to his own interpretation of a relationship with God ... "I remember I was in the hospital and they were trying to resuscitate me," Kemp said. "And I was off in one side of the room watching what was going on while they were trying to bring me back to life. At the time, it was not an emotional experience, but just a matter-of-fact experience of witnessing it." Then there was the pneumonia incident, when Kemp spent too long a period on his back. It caused his breathing to become impaired and he suffocated. "I saw the doctors working on my body, lifting me up. And I heard the death rattle. The doctor pulled the sheet over my body and said, 'We're done.' Then the nurse pulled it off and tried again, and I came back," Kemp said. "It was kind of like a dream or a nightmare." [Read more here]

   Related items of interest:


How Many Dance on the Pin? (Mark Patterson's NDE)

  [Note: You may have to register to read this article. It's free.]

(September 28, 2005)

He floated into an "almost blinding white light," he said. "I heard dolphins clicking, and there was this really white light with a blue hue," said Patterson, now 35. "Then I saw seven angels, and they took me into a building. They were your traditional angels with wings and everything. They were 14 feet tall, and they were all females." During his time with the angels, Patterson said he learned that God and angels love people's souls unconditionally, understanding that the mind is a separate entity that can force people to make bad decisions. "You feel so peaceful and loved," he said, describing the angels' presence. He added the angels explained to him people are reincarnated until they learn to respond with love in bad situations instead of anger. When he awoke in his bed the next morning after being slammed back into his body, he didn't tell anyone about his experience, but he did change his life. "I try to spend time meditating, and it made me study religions to find the common truth among all of them," said Patterson, who earned an undergraduate degree in psychiatry. "It made me 100 percent responsible for myself." [Read more here]

   Related items of interest:


The Write Time

  (Graham Taylor's NDE)

(October 7, 2005)

"I've always been interested in the paranormal. I had a near-death experience when I was six years old. I drowned in a river and was resuscitated by my sister. While I was drowned I saw another boy in the water. I was being dragged away from him and I realised that this other boy was me. So I knew at the age of six that there is some form of other existence and from then on I've been searching, through every job and life situation I've had, for this paranormal life ... When I published Shadowmancer I had a series of dreams that told me what was going to happen in the future and they've all come true," he explains. [Read more here]

   Related items of interest:


Back from the Dead

  (Sgt. David Gratton's NDE)

(October 3, 2005)

A soldier "died" for 40 minutes after a horrible car crash - then amazed his Sheffield family by regaining consciousness. Sgt. David Gratton was about to be deployed to Iraq when his Army Land Rover was involved in a serious motorway collision. The 22-year-old squaddie was brought back to life at a top intensive care unit ... "My son was clinically dead for 40 minutes but somehow a surgeon managed to save his life." David, who was based at Aldershot Army barracks in Surrey, was traveling in an Army Land Rover when it collided with another vehicle. Rescue teams who attended the accident on the M3 in Basingstoke in February failed to detect breathing and thought David had died. Doctors later conducted a medical test which showed he had the same level of consciousness as a dead body. [Read more here]


Near Death Experience

  (Joanie Thurston's NDE)

(October 30, 2005)

Take Joanie Thurston for instance. She was a 52 year old woman when she crashed her late model compact car into a light pole. The force of the impact crushed her chest and caused major internal damage. Moments later Thurston watched the paramedics pull her from her car from above. Joanie wrote a book about her near death experience called Possible Fatal with fellow writer, Wally Johnston. She candidly reveals that one of the true miracles of her near death experience is that she was changed for the better. From everyday personality shifts to eradicating deep emotional wounds, Thurston's NDE and its aftermath is a powerful biographical testament. [Read more here]

   Related items of interest:


Tapes of Mellen-Thomas Benedict's NDE Presentations Are Available


(October 30, 2005)

On October 1, 2005, Mellen-Thomas Benedict spoke at the Virginia Beach IANDS and an audiocassette tape and a VHS videotape of his presentations were made. Copies are available of his first presentation (a 2-hour audio tape) and his second presentation (a 3-hour video) through the Virginia Beach IANDS. For a donation to the Virginia Beach IANDS of $10 (also add $2 for shipping & handling), you can get either the audio tape or the video tape. For a donation of $20 (also add $2 shipping & handling), you can get both which is the recommended package from the
Virginia Beach IANDS. Place your order by sending an email to Dick Dinges at RichardADinges@aol.com. Specify whether you want the 2-hour audio tape, the 3-hour video, or both (the recommended package). Make your check out to "VBIANDS" and mail it to this address: Dick Dinges, VBIANDS, 1285 Paramore Drive, Virginia Beach, VA 23454.
[Read more here]

   Related items of interest:


Research to (Nearly) Die For

  (Dr. Peter Fenwick's NDE Research)

(September 10, 2005)

Scientists probing the paranormal said on Wednesday they hoped to set up a major experiment in Britain trying to find out once and for all whether the mind can step outside the body at the brink of death. The proposed study would involve interviewing people who had survived cardiac arrest to see if they had had an out of body experience while on the operating table. "Over the course of a year we hope this would give us 100 people who leave their bodies," neuropsychiatrist Peter Fenwick told reporters at the annual meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science. The researchers plan to ask 25 hospitals to place special objects and pictures around their cardiac units. Each survivor who then claimed to have an out of body experience -- where they typically hover near the ceiling watching the resuscitation process -- would be asked if they had noticed any of the objects. "If they do notice them when the brain is not functioning then it makes the case for the mind being separate from the brain," he said. [Read more here]

   Related items of interest:


Near-Death Experiences With Meningococcal Disease


(July 2005)

Near-death experience is a term used to describe a unique psychological experience in individuals who survive a life-threatening medical condition such as cardiac arrest and includes one or several of the following elements: the sensation of seeing one's body from a vantage point outside the physical body (out-of-body experience); entering a tunnel; meeting living or dead relatives; a strong positive affect; encountering "religious" aspects such as a "being of light," lights and colors, a celestial landscape or a deity; a panoramic life review; and a ... [Read more here]

   Related items of interest:


Maybe Death Isn't So Bad After All

  (Juliet Nightingale and the Nashville FOI)

(September 15, 2005)

The group, Friends of the International Association for Near-Death Studies, have been meeting every fourth Saturday for about two years. In the case of the mediator, Rev. Juliet Nightingale, her life has slipped precariously from her hands not once, but three times, from bouts of colon cancer, pneumonia and meningitis. But these folks aren't concerned with the particulars of how they'd died, but rather, how to live seeing what they've seen, knowing what they know ... Nightingale mentions that she jetted around the universe in death, and while she “saw scenes that were difficult to look at,” she never felt afraid. There is no ego in death, she explains -- no attachment to people or things. What keeps spirits around, according to these folks, is the energy of the living, who refuse to let them pass. So the notion that people live on forever in our memory, while comforting to us, may not be that great a shake for those trying to get to more exciting destinations. [Read more here]

   Related items of interest:


Out-Of-Body Experiences: Life Changing Benefits

  (William Buhlman's OBE Research)

(September 2005)

The following are some of the many benefits that out-of-body experiencers have reported worldwide in the last three decades ... Development of a greater awareness of reality ... Personal verification of our immortality ... Accelerated personal development ... A decreased fear of death ... Increased psychic abilities ... An increased desire for answers ... Realizations concerning death ... Accelerated human evolution ... Spontaneous healing ... More expansive self-concept ... Increased spirituality ... Recognizing and experiencing past-life influences ... Accelerated psychological change ... Obtaining personal answers ... Encountering a being of light, an angel, or nonphysical resident of some kind ... An increased respect for life ... Increased self-respect, self-responsibility and inner dependence ... A reduction in hostility, violence and crime ... Increased knowledge and wisdom ... A profound sense of knowing instead of believing ... An inner calmness ... An increased zest for living ... Increased intelligence, memory recall and enhanced imagination ... A sense of adventure. [Read more here]

   Related items of interest:


Academia Embraces Spooky Studies

  (The Paradigm Cops balk)

(October 11, 2005)

At two of America's best universities, professors and doctors are studying the existence of the soul, near-death experiences and reincarnation ... The University of Virginia's Division of Perceptual Studies is another hotbed of afterlife inquiry. It's home to both near-death studies (why do people have visions on the operating table?) and a researcher who compiles reports of children who talk about their past lives. Have these researchers actually found anything to suggest the existence of a soul or afterlife? Schwartz said his research with about 20 mediums proves that some do indeed have a connection to the dead, or at least a way to glean details about them. [Read more here]

   Related items of interest:


Two People Discuss How Dying, Living Changed Them

  (The NDEs of Nancy Clark and Dennis Hale)

(August 11, 2005)

Nancy Clark is not afraid of dying. Neither is Dennis Hale. Been there. Done that. Came back. Their deaths, they say, changed their lives, and for the better. Clark, a resident of Dublin, and Hale, who lives in the small town of Rock Creek outside of Ashtabula, have both had what they classify as near-death experiences. Clark is convinced she died during the birth of her son in 1962. Hale firmly believes he passed away in 1966 while floating on a life raft in Lake Huron following the sinking of an ore freighter on which he was a member of the crew. In addition, Clark had what she terms a "transcendent experience" while delivering a eulogy in 1979 for a close family friend who had been killed in a plane crash in Alaska. Clark had attempted to completely ignore that first experience in 1962, but not so in 1979 when, she says, once again she lifted out of her body and saw that bright light. No longer concerned with what people might think of her mental state, Clark began telling family and friends what had happened to her in that funeral home.  [Read more here]

   Related items of interest:


Racing Veteran Back From the Dead

  (The NDE of Rinaldo Maestrelli)

(October 15, 2005)

"For 35 minutes he was dead, the doctors said, but somehow his heart came back and it started beating again." Roberto Zanini, a cardiac specialist at the hospital, said: "You do sometimes get these sort of unusual cases in medicine. "For 25 minutes we had fought to save him with electrocardiogram and massage but there was no response. "When there was no sign of heart or brain activity he was declared dead, but under Italian law he still had to be kept attached to the monitor for two hours. Then a full 35 minutes later the machine beeped again and his heart started beating. "Further chest massage was given and he responded well this time - so much so that he was able to speak and eat a light meal. "As a matter of routine we checked the monitor and it was in perfect working order. "The patient is still in hospital but is responding well to treatment." Mr. Maestrelli is now understood to be recovering. Yesterday his wife, Anna Maria, said: "We just can't believe it. This is truly a miracle." [Read more here]


A Skeptic's Search For Proof of Afterlife

  ("Spook" Applies Science to the Realm of Belief)

(October 9, 2005)

And in the last chapter, "Six Feet Over," Roach reports on the study that most excites her. At the University of Virginia Hospital, Professor Bruce Greyson has set up a computer screen facing the ceiling of a defibrillator-insertion surgery room where patients routinely have "near-death experiences." During such out-of-body wanderings, people often claim that they float somewhere near the ceiling, watching their own surgery in progress. If so, they will be able to see -- and later describe -- the image on Greyson's computer screen, which would not be viewable from elsewhere in the room. (Too bad the study is in too early a stage to have produced any reportable data.) ... Indeed, this personal journey is what the book most successfully captures: How a skeptic learned to be a believer (or a possible believer, anyway), and still keep her wit intact. [Read more here]

   Related items of interest:


Robbery Victim Survives With 6 Bullets in Head

  (The NDE of Jim Holladay)

(October 6, 2005)

The six bullets lodged in Jim Holladay's skull sometime make his ears ring when he passes through a metal detector. But he said they also gave him an opportunity to hear a joyful sound never heard on Earth. For seven minutes that "seemed like an eternity" Holladay, the victim of a 1992 robbery, said he was dead. Before doctors at Huntsville Hospital revived him, he said, he saw heaven approach, only to learn it wasn't his time to be there. "But I was there long enough to hear the heavenly choir," he said. "It was the most beautiful thing I ever heard. It was way better than any rock band." Doctors told Holladay, 39, at the time, that he seemed upset when his heart started beating again. Holladay said he was mad because he couldn't stay in heaven.  [Read more here]


Dog from the Afterlife Warns Woman of Need for a Mammogram


(October 19, 2005)

In the Andersons' new release "Rainbows & Bridges: An Animal Companion Memorial Kit", they deal with all aspects of pet loss, including after-death reunions. McCluskey says in "Rainbows & Bridges" that her deceased Great Dane Keira communicated in a dream that her sister, of whom the dog had been fond, needed a breast exam immediately. McCluskey related the warning to her sister via an e-mail letter. About a week after the dream, McCluskey's sister phoned and said that indeed, she had been putting off having an exam of a lump in her right breast. She hadn't wanted to alarm McCluskey by telling her about it. After reading the letter about McCluskey's dream with Keira, the sister got a mammogram and thankfully, found that the lump was benign. [Read more here]

   Related items of interest:


Comatose Man Could Hear Everything


(October 6, 2005)

An Italian man who spent two years supposedly unconscious in a deep coma and written off by doctors as nearly dead, awoke saying he had heard and understood everything happening around him during his ordeal. Salvatore Crisafulli, a father of four, is describing his case as a "miracle". His brother said Crisafulli was "an Italian Terri Schiavo case", a reference to the brain-damaged Florida woman who died in March after her feeding tube was removed. Crisafulli, 38, who had been injured in a road accident in 2003, emerged from the coma three months ago, but began speaking only recently. His first word was "Mama". [Read more here]


Greetings From Beyond: Loved Ones Have a Way of Reaching Us, Even in the Afterlife

  (A Psychologist's Research into the Paranormal)

(October 9, 2005)

She said that after some of the patients died, she continued to work with their family members. "They were grieving, but they were rational," Apollon said. "They were experiencing the presence of their loved ones. They would sometimes hear them calling out their names or they would be sitting on the couch and suddenly the seat next to them would start to go down" ... She's fascinated by what patients have told her about psychic dreams. Most dreams are psychological, with issues from daily life and symbols that may help provide meaning to them. Psychic dreams are different. "A psychic dream may be one where you said to your loved one before you go to bed, 'I hope we have a visit,' " she said. "They're so real, and when you wake up it's a very different experience than a psychological dream. You know that you have had a connection with your loved one." [Read more here]

   Related items of interest:


Talk On After-Death Communications to Benefit Katrina Relief

 

(Bill Guggenheim's Research into After-Death Communications)


(October 11, 2005)

Bill Guggenheim, co-author of "Hello from Heaven!," was invited by Nick Roy, of Greensburg, who for nearly three years has led meetings at WCCC to discuss purported contact from dead people ... Guggenheim will talk about reported after-death communication incidents that people claim helped them through the loss of loved ones ... Roy's interest in after-death communication began years ago, when he believes that his dead brother contacted him by phone. He started a discussion group at WCCC after he researched after-death communication and found others with similar experiences. More than 400 people have attended and enrollment has increased this semester ... His interest began in 1978 at a seminar by Dr. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, an expert on death and dying who said a deceased patient "came back" to her. Two years later, Guggenheim said, he had an experience that saved the life of his youngest son, Jonathan, when he was a toddler. The family had a pool with a locked safety gate, but the boy somehow got through. Inside the house, Guggenheim claimed, he heard "in his head" the voice of his dead father. "He told me to go outside and check the swimming pool," he said. He found Jonathan floating face down in the water. The boy survived. "That really grabbed my attention," Guggenheim said.  [Read more here]

   Related items of interest:


Family Says Deceased Psychic Writes From Beyond the Grave

  (Is Ruth Montgomery trying to contact us from Beyond?)

(October 20, 2005)

Rob Macomber and his family say they have been receiving communications via "automatic writing transmissions" from the spirit of the deceased psychic, Ruth Montgomery. The Macombers are writing a book based upon the automatic writing communications they say they began receiving after Mrs. Montgomery's June 10, 2001 death. According to the Macombers, these transmissions occur when the energy of a departed spirit enters the body and moves the pen in the hand across the paper on its own ... The book includes: A 3-part action plan that provides solutions to the planet's greatest troubles. Why 50% of the book's profits will be donated to help address the world's single most pressing problem: the plight of the Third World. Ruth's description of Heaven and the hope that she and the Spirit Guides have for humanity. In one of her communications, she told the Macombers, "It is fun doing this work from 'The Other Side.' There is so much freedom 'up here' . . . I can't wait for the day when humans on Earth will experience this kind of bliss." In another message, the Spirit Guides explained: "To give away our many secrets is such a relief . . . " [Read more here]

   Related items of interest:


A Walk to the Otherside

  (Dr. Carla Wills-Brandon's has a new radio show!)

(October 27, 2005)

Dr. Carla Wills-Brandon debuted her new radio show, "A Walk to the Otherside" on October 27th. Carla is the author of "One Last Hug Before I Go: The Mystery and Meaning of Deathbed Visions." Her radio show airs every other week Thursdays 9 pm to 10 pm CST and her topics include healthy spirituality, life after death research, healing grief and more. Call-ins are welcome. Carla's up-beat program takes the fear out of death by focusing in on research and investigation into the incredible, mystical experiences that often occur around the time of physical death, such as after death communications, the paranormal departing visions of the dying and those who love them, near death experiences and premonitions. For more information on how to tune in every other Thursday night, visit her website. [Read more here]

   Related items of interest:


Dreams May Ease Passing: Authors Reveal Theory on Dreams and Dying

 

(The Dream Research of Kelly Bulkeley and Rev. Patricia Bulkley)


(October 19, 2005)

To paraphrase Jane Austen, there are two truths universally known. Everybody dies and everybody dreams, whether they can remember them or not. An emerging notion is that the dreams we have before we die may be particularly significant and can be used to ease a terminal person and their families' pain and grief. The Rev. Patricia Bulkley worked as a spiritual counselor at a hospice in Marin County, Calif., for more than 10 years. What she found when speaking to patients was many of her patients had stories to tell and dreams to share ... The authors focus on three types of dreams and the symbols inherent in them. These are dreaming that one is going on a journey and all the excitement that entails, seeing dead who act as a guide, and dreams where the dreamer resolves a conflict or faces a recurrent sense of anxiety. [Read more here]

   Related items of interest:


Inside with Real-Life Ghost Whisperers

  (Psychics James Van Praagh and John Holland)

(October 13, 2005)

"Our research strongly suggests that [Van Praagh] is actually receiving communication with the consciousness and energy of the person who died," says Dr. Gary Schwartz of the University of Arizona. "The simplest explanation that accounts for the largest amount of information is the survival of consciousness after death." Van Praagh is on a mission to help people understand that, so they can evolve to the next life without fear. "The dead have a lot to teach us," he says. "The dead always leave gifts behind. We have to be open to receiving them. We are all connected in some cosmic way. We are all one." "Mediums: We See Dead People" also follows John Holland to a restaurant in Little Italy where he "reads" the death of mobster Joey Gallo more than 30 years ago; we visit the home of psychiatrist Raymond Moody, who is the leading investigator of what he calls "life after life" and watch Pam Coronado as she works with police to help solve crimes. [Read more here]

   Related items of interest:


Death as a Trip

  (The Tibetan Book of the Dead)

(October 28, 2005)

The Tibetan Book of the Dead is a kind of Baedeker (i.e. travel guide) for the afterlife and, like the best guidebooks, its reassuring refrain is “Don't panic!” After death, it says, you will be assailed by thunderous sounds and bewildering apparitions as first the peaceful deities rise before you, then the wrathful ones, who drink blood and eat the entrails of bloated corpses. If you are very unlucky, Yama (representing the forces of impermanence and the laws of cause and effect) will chop off your head, lick out your brains and drink your blood, then eat you. The trick is not to be afraid and to remember that you don't have a body any more, so he can't hurt you ... This idea fascinated Jung, who revered The Tibetan Book of the Dead as a great psychological work. According to Highest Yoga Tantra (from which The Tibetan Book of the Dead derives), only during the