A Near-Death Experience (NDE) is a profound experience reported by some people who come close to death or experience an extreme physical crisis. Reported features may include leaving the body, heightened awareness, extraordinary light, feelings of profound peace or unconditional love, encounters with deceased loved ones or other beings, a life review, perception of another realm, or a sense of returning to the physical body. Not everyone who comes close to death reports an NDE, and individual experiences vary considerably.

A Shared Death Experience (SDE) occurs when someone who is not dying reports participating in or witnessing aspects of another person’s dying or death experience. In the terminology I use, the important distinction is that the dying person dies, leaving the surviving participant to report the shared experience.

I use Shared Near-Death Experience (SNDE) for an experience in which someone who is not physically near death appears to participate in aspects of the extraordinary experience of someone who is critically ill or near death — and the near-death person survives. That potentially leaves two living experiencers connected to the same event.

Most NDE reports come from one person. With an SNDE, researchers may potentially have two living people whose experiences can be examined. If their accounts are collected independently, researchers can compare what each person remembers, where their experiences overlap, where they differ, what each person knew beforehand, and whether any reported perceptions can be independently corroborated. A second experiencer does not prove a particular explanation for NDEs. But independently obtained accounts could potentially strengthen the evidential value of an individual case and may help researchers better understand NDEs reported by individuals alone.

No. Dr. Raymond Moody used the phrase “shared near-death experience” in his 1999 book The Last Laugh. Glennys Howarth, PhD, and Allan Kellehear, PhD, subsequently published research on “Shared Near-Death and Related Illness Experiences” in the Journal of Near-Death Studies in 2001. I independently began using Shared Near-Death Experience (SNDE) years later because I was searching for language that described what happened between David and me. My work today focuses on helping clarify and distinguish SNDEs from SDEs, identify and document additional cases, encourage further research, and bring greater awareness to the phenomenon.

No. David and I had never met. I knew his name because mutual friends had told me about his catastrophic health decline, but he was a stranger to me. In September 2005, after weeks in the ICU, David’s condition had deteriorated dramatically. His mother had been called to come say goodbye. Through an unexpected series of circumstances, I met her later that day. As an act of compassion for a mother facing the loss of her son, I offered to visit David, pray, and provide gentle Reiki during what everyone believed could be his dying hours. I could not have imagined where that decision would lead.

During one of my visits to David’s bedside, my consciousness suddenly appeared to shift out of my physical body. I experienced entering a realm of extraordinary love and light. David’s consciousness was already there. Although we had never met physically, there was an overwhelming sense of recognition and connection — as though we knew one another beyond this life. Then I returned to my body. David remained in a coma. But he survived. He eventually awakened, and only then did we truly meet in this world.

We experienced and remembered it very differently. This is an important distinction in understanding our Shared Near-Death Experience (SNDE). I was awake at David’s bedside when I experienced my consciousness leaving my body and entering an extraordinary realm of love and light where I perceived David’s consciousness to already be. I experienced our encounter as a distinct event: I entered, we connected, and I returned to my body.

David’s experience was very different. He had been critically ill and unconscious for weeks. His memories of that period are fragmentary, and his understanding of them has continued to unfold as he has reflected on the experience over the years. What he has consistently remembered most clearly is floating in an extraordinary state of love and light, without an ordinary sense of time. As he has continued to process the experience, additional impressions and context have emerged, including a recollection of encountering a presence he understood to be an angel.

Because David experienced this state as timeless, he cannot place that encounter at the precise moment of my experience—and we do not claim that he can. Nor did David initially report a conscious memory of meeting me as an “angel.” That understanding has emerged gradually as he has reflected on his experience and tried to make sense of memories, impressions, recognition, and aftereffects that were initially difficult to place in context.

What was striking after he awakened was his powerful sense of love, recognition, connection, and familiarity with me—a woman he had never met before his hospitalization—along with a feeling that “he knew everything” about me, and loved me deeply, all without knowing how he knew these things or understanding these profound feelings because I was a stranger to him.

This difference in our memories raises an important question about the meaning of the word “shared.” Must two people consciously remember an extraordinary experience in exactly the same way for it to be shared?

I don’t believe identical recall should be assumed. I entered the experience briefly from ordinary waking consciousness. David had been unconscious and critically ill for weeks and experienced a prolonged, timeless near-death state. We came to the experience from profoundly different states of consciousness, so it is perhaps not surprising that our memories and perspectives are different.

Our experience therefore raises a larger research question:
Can two people participate in an overlapping extraordinary experience while perceiving, remembering, and processing it differently—and what might the points of convergence and difference between their accounts tell us about consciousness?

That is one of the reasons I believe Shared Near-Death Experiences deserve further study.

“Blue Beings” is the term I use for unusual blue-appearing beings I perceived during another experience while visiting David. They appeared to be working specifically in the area of his kidneys. I cannot objectively tell you who or what they were. I can tell you what I experienced. What became particularly fascinating years later was learning that other experiencers from different countries and cultures have also reported encounters with blue or blue-appearing beings during NDEs and other extraordinary experiences.

No. This distinction is very important. The Shared Near-Death Experience and the Blue Beings encounter happened on separate days. During the SNDE, my consciousness appeared to leave my body and enter the realm where David’s consciousness was already present. On another day during the same 12-day period, I perceived the Blue Beings apparently working on David’s kidneys. These were two separate extraordinary experiences.

I don’t claim that I can scientifically establish what caused David’s kidney recovery. What I can describe is the sequence of events: David was catastrophically ill and his kidneys were severely affected; I experienced what appeared to me to be blue beings working specifically on his kidneys; and his kidney function subsequently recovered. David’s medical recovery and my extraordinary experience are both parts of our story. Whether there was a causal relationship between them remains an open question.

I often describe David’s recovery as miraculous because of how extraordinary it was. But “miracle” is not a medical diagnosis or scientific explanation. David received extensive conventional medical treatment. He also received prayer, touch, positive suggestion, Reiki, love, and human presence. Rather than claiming that one intervention caused his recovery, I believe our story invites a larger question: what don’t we yet understand about healing?

No. I have never claimed to be a “great healer,” and I do not claim that I cured David. I prayed. I offered gentle Reiki and compassionate touch. I talked positively to him even when he was unconscious. I remained present with him. And I experienced extraordinary events at his bedside that I still cannot fully explain. At the same time, David was receiving intensive medical care. I believe his remarkable recovery deserves curiosity rather than certainty.

That is how I understand what happened. When my consciousness encountered David’s in that extraordinary realm, there was an immediate recognition. The love I experienced was not simply romantic love. It felt larger — an overwhelming sense that we already knew one another. Yet here on Earth, we were strangers. David survived. We later met in ordinary waking life, our relationship developed, and eventually we married.

Whatever David and I may have experienced beyond ordinary consciousness, we still had free will. We still had to build a relationship here. We brought histories, families, wounds, responsibilities, personalities, and all the ordinary complications of being human into our marriage. That taught me something important: recognizing love and choosing love are not necessarily the same thing. Love still has to be lived.

Some of the questions I believe deserve investigation include: How often do SNDEs occur? What criteria should distinguish an SNDE from an NDE, SDE, or other extraordinary experience? What does each participant remember independently? Where do their accounts converge or differ? What information did each person possess before the event? Can any reported perceptions be independently verified? What were the medical circumstances and timing? What long-term aftereffects occur in each experiencer? And perhaps most importantly: what can two experiencers potentially tell us that one experiencer cannot?

Write down everything you remember as soon as possible. If another living person was involved, consider asking them to independently record their experience before you compare accounts in detail. Preserve dates, medical information when available, journals, messages, contemporaneous notes, and witness accounts that could help establish a timeline. You don’t have to decide immediately what the experience means. The first step may simply be to document what happened as accurately as possible.

Our story is told in We Met on the Other Side: A True Love Story. The book explores our Shared Near-Death Experience, David’s catastrophic illness and remarkable recovery, my encounter with the Blue Beings, my childhood NDE, our eventual relationship and marriage, and the questions these experiences raised for us about consciousness, healing, love, and life.