# Anyone ever have a "life after death" experience?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-ever-have-a-life-after-death-experience/396553
**Category:** In My Humble Opinion
**Created:** [March 19, 2007, 1:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-ever-have-a-life-after-death-experience/396553 "2007-03-19T13:29:33Z")
**Posts on this page:** 18
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@benny73](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/benny73)
#### Post date: [March 19, 2007, 1:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-ever-have-a-life-after-death-experience/396553/1 "2007-03-19T13:29:33Z")
I’d be interested to hear about it if you did. 🙂
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### Author:  [@AHunter3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AHunter3)
#### Post date: [March 19, 2007, 1:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-ever-have-a-life-after-death-experience/396553/2 "2007-03-19T13:34:42Z")
Not yet.
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### Author:  [@ShiefferSaw](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ShiefferSaw)
#### Post date: [March 19, 2007, 2:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-ever-have-a-life-after-death-experience/396553/3 "2007-03-19T14:30:14Z")
I had a dream one time that I died. But never a life after death thing… Sorry nothing exciting here…
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### Author:  [@Johanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johanna)
#### Post date: [March 19, 2007, 3:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-ever-have-a-life-after-death-experience/396553/4 "2007-03-19T15:27:42Z")
Not unless you count certain botanical substances applied along the lines of the _Tibetan Book of the Dead_.
In retrospect 23 years later, it’s kind of hard to decide how bogus it all was versus how helpful it was. If it helps a person practice to face death with equanimity, then I think it’s for the good.
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### Author:  [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)
#### Post date: [March 19, 2007, 3:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-ever-have-a-life-after-death-experience/396553/5 "2007-03-19T15:42:21Z")
We have a member who claims to have had an out-of-body experience during surgery; his name is **Lekatt**. He’s had a particularly rough ride on this site; he attributes this to the unpopularity of his views and bias on the part of his skeptical audience, but I honestly think it’s very much more to do with his poor debating methods and unsubstantiated claims.
[Here](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=131095) is a link to one of his threads - please don’t post in that thread though, as it’s been dead for several years and should probably not see life again.
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### Author:  [@vetbridge](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/vetbridge)
#### Post date: [March 19, 2007, 4:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-ever-have-a-life-after-death-experience/396553/6 "2007-03-19T16:13:44Z")
[QUOTE=Mangetout]
please don’t post in that thread though, as it’s been dead for several years and should probably not see life again.
[/QUOTE]
Ironic? 😃
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### Author:  [@Q.E.D](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Q.E.D)
#### Post date: [March 19, 2007, 10:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-ever-have-a-life-after-death-experience/396553/7 "2007-03-19T22:46:44Z")
The factual answer to this question is “no.”
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### Author:  [@Folly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Folly)
#### Post date: [March 19, 2007, 10:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-ever-have-a-life-after-death-experience/396553/8 "2007-03-19T22:55:52Z")
[QUOTE=Mangetout]
[Here](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=131095) is a link to one of his threads - please don’t post in that thread though, as it’s been dead for several years and should probably not see life again.
[/QUOTE]
Having read that thread for the first time, I have to say **DocCathode** is my new hero.
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### Author:  [@samm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/samm)
#### Post date: [March 19, 2007, 11:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-ever-have-a-life-after-death-experience/396553/9 "2007-03-19T23:19:46Z")
No. But before my current boyfriend, I dated \*three men in a row \* who all claimed to have been clinically dead for a short while before they came back to life. One from a terrible car wreck, one from meningitis and one from some kind of terrible flu he had as a child. I started to wonder if there was some reason that I was attracting people who had died before.
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### Author:  [@Bob55](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bob55)
#### Post date: [March 20, 2007, 12:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-ever-have-a-life-after-death-experience/396553/10 "2007-03-20T00:28:07Z")
Not a “life after death” experience but the white light thing - my mother told me she saw a light when giving birth to my older sister, and was saying something like “I don’t want to go I don’t want to go”. Afterwards she asked the doctor about it and he said “oh don’t worry about it, it was nothing”. This was back in the early 1970s though, before the near death experiences were that common.
I’ve heard that the white light thing may just be what your brain perceives when the cells become oxygen starved? Or when they’re shutting down they all attempt to fire to get things going again? Who knows really…
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### Author:  [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)
#### Post date: [March 20, 2007, 12:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-ever-have-a-life-after-death-experience/396553/11 "2007-03-20T00:49:00Z")
[QUOTE=samm]
No. But before my current boyfriend, I dated \*three men in a row \* who all claimed to have been clinically dead for a short while before they came back to life. One from a terrible car wreck, one from meningitis and one from some kind of terrible flu he had as a child. I started to wonder if there was some reason that I was attracting people who had died before.
[/QUOTE]
I think it’s probably claimed by a lot of men simply because they think it sounds impressive - sort of like showing off scars.
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### Author:  [@Autolycus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Autolycus)
#### Post date: [March 20, 2007, 1:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-ever-have-a-life-after-death-experience/396553/12 "2007-03-20T01:11:49Z")
I’ve had many “life before death” experiences, if that counts.
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### Author:  [@enigm4tic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/enigm4tic)
#### Post date: [March 20, 2007, 1:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-ever-have-a-life-after-death-experience/396553/13 "2007-03-20T01:30:58Z")
Strange thing is, I’ve come very close to dying before, like the sort of traumatic car-crash sort of thing that “causes your life to flash before your eyes” and it’s never happened to me. Always just sort of happened, been over, life (luckily for me) went on.
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### Author:  [@samclem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/samclem)
#### Post date: [March 20, 2007, 1:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-ever-have-a-life-after-death-experience/396553/14 "2007-03-20T01:43:01Z")
Not a General Question. Moved to IMHO.
**samclem** GQ moderator
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### Author:  [@dada2fish](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dada2fish)
#### Post date: [March 20, 2007, 3:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-ever-have-a-life-after-death-experience/396553/15 "2007-03-20T03:08:36Z")
I experienced what is technically called a deathbed vision. It’s a very common phenomenon in Hospice Centers and hospitals. I was a witness to it and it was my sisters vision and communication with someone not of this world. All I could do was watch closely and listen to hear conversation which turned out to be our long dead grandfather waiting to take her hand and help her through when she’s ready.
It was somewhat scary, yet peaceful at the same time.
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### Author:  [@Sleel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sleel)
#### Post date: [March 20, 2007, 4:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-ever-have-a-life-after-death-experience/396553/16 "2007-03-20T04:51:58Z")
Nope. But I did have an experience under the influence of some psilocybin (legal in my location at the time, by the way) where I had the conviction that I had died, the universe had ended with my death, and I recreated it from the seed of my consciousness. What convinced me that I was wrong about this was looking out the window and seeing the usual tangle of man-made crap.
I believe my first words after that contemplation were, “Hell, I could do better than _this_.” Which is, in my opinion, still one of the most damning arguments against a higher power; even the afterglow of mushrooms can’t make power lines and roads look cosmic enough to make a god look good.
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### Author:  [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)
#### Post date: [March 20, 2007, 5:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-ever-have-a-life-after-death-experience/396553/17 "2007-03-20T05:51:24Z")
Heart stopped-nothing happened.
Brain stopped-nothing happened.
First marriage stopped-bright lights and a chorus of angels descended from the heavens!
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### Author:  [@Johanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johanna)
#### Post date: [March 20, 2007, 3:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-ever-have-a-life-after-death-experience/396553/18 "2007-03-20T15:18:13Z")
[QUOTE=Bob55]
I’ve heard that the white light thing may just be what your brain perceives when the cells become oxygen starved? Or when they’re shutting down they all attempt to fire to get things going again? Who knows really…
[/QUOTE]
That’s interesting. I once saw everything in my field of vision go suddenly stark white, except for black shadows that gave things their shapes. It was not under the influence of any substance. It was when I was walking on the street in India, had contracted dysentery or something, and was suddenly taken ill. The onset of illness happened so hard and so sudden, it might have been something like what you described. Instead, I just had a “feeling-like-death-warmed-over” experience for a few days.
edit…
This may corroborate your theory-- on the street in India, I blacked out while standing for just a brief moment and when I could see again it was that White Light (plus shadows, which is how I knew I was still in this world).