What happens after we die? Near-death experiences suggest the soul and afterlife exist, says doctor who studies people’s accounts of them
- Dr Jeffrey Long has studied over 5,000 near-death experiences across cultures; these occur when a person at death’s door is unconscious or even clinically dead
- He says many cases he’s looked at include a euphoric out-of-body experience that defies science, and explains what he considers their implications to be
While out riding her horse, Betty was thrown violently, hitting the ground and losing consciousness. She recalls: “My body was ‘asleep’ but my consciousness was alert. I went into my body and could feel pain and seemed to enter a dream state.”
According to Betty, while her body lay on the ground, she saw her horse “make the additional two miles (3.2 kilometres) around the road back to the barn lot”.
She also witnessed her “friend and employer look the horse over, look out over the fields for me, and get in the truck to head out on the road looking for me.
“I was not sure how this was possible but it was not distressing. I was glad that the horse went home. I remember watching myself be found and thinking that I must have died, yet I felt no pain.”
She saw the people at her house get a phone call, the ambulance rushing to save her – and her life flash before her eyes. Betty saw things that are, for a lack of a better word, inexplicable.
Betty didn’t die, but she did have a near-death experience (NDE) – according to Dr Jeffrey Long, a leading expert in these unusual events. The radiation oncologist, who oversees the care of cancer patients undergoing radiation therapy, lives and works in Kentucky, in the United States.
