IT’S an age old question, is there life after death?
Many people believe there is, while others are firmly in the camp of ‘when you die, you die’.
GettyOne expert has revealed a strange encounter he had with a patient, which has pushed him to study near death experiences[/caption]
Dr Bruce Greyson has been studying near death experiences (NDEs) for nearly 50 yearsCourtesy Bruce Greyson
But one doctor has now revealed a spooky encounter with a patient, which has convinced him that there could be something else going on when the lights go out.
Dr Bruce Greyson has been studying near death experiences (NDEs) for nearly 50 years.
Despite being raised to believe that the only things that exist are the material world, he said his experiences with patients over the years have pushed him to try and understand what really happens when we die.
During his psychiatric training, back in the 1970s, Dr Greyson said he was confronted by patients who were ‘leaving their bodies’ and seeing and experiencing things that couldn’t be explained.
During his time as an intern, Dr Greyson had been asked to see a patient who had overdosed.
On going down to the emergency room, the patient was unconscious, so Dr Greyson was unable to speak with her.
Instead, he spoke to her roomate, but while they were chatting, the medic managed to spill spaghetti sauce on his tie.
To cover it up, he swiftly buttoned up his lab coat and thought nothing of it.
The patient was admitted to the intensive care unit and when she finally came round, Dr Greyson went to introduce himself.
But to his shock, the patient already knew who he was.
“I started to introduce myself but she said, I know who you are, I remember you from last night. That stumped me because she was unconscious clearly when I saw her.
“So I said I thought you were out cold and she said, well, not in my room, I saw you talking to Susan down the hall and that just blew me away.
“And then she told me about the conversation I had with their roommate and then told me about the spaghetti stain she saw on my tie and I just could not understand how she could have known that. So I figured I’ve got to look into this,” he told WMRA.
He explained that these sorts of situations usually happen when someone is pronounced dead or when they are close to death.
For those going through this, he said it might feel as though their thoughts are faster and clearer than usual.
Most people will also have a sense of stopping or slowing down, coupled with strong emotions, usually positive ones.
They might also feel love and peace, Dr Greyson said.
Since his experience as an intern, the expert has conducted thousands of interviews with people who claim to have had NDEs.
Because NDEs happen with extremely limited warning, they’re almost impossible to test.
Written accounts of NDEs date back to at least the middle ages but there is no widely accepted definition of what an NDE is.
Typically, though, the term refers to the mystical, profound experiences that people report having when they are on the verge of death.
Statistics show they’re most common in patients who survive severe head traumas or cardiac arrest.