Guest Editorial
Is There a Hell?
Surprising Observations About
the Near-Death Experience
P.M.H. Atwater
Charlottesville, Virginia
ABSTRACT: The percentage of hell-like near-death experiences (NDEs) is
probably much larger than has been previously claimed. In this article, I
discuss current research into what are now termed “distressing” or “unpleas
ant” NDEs, and my own findings from interviews of over a hundred such cases.
I compare this information with earlier reports from Maurice Rawlings (1978,
1980), mythological traditions about the concept of hell, and renderings from
The Tibetan Book of the Dead (Evans-Wentz, 1957). Finally, I detail four types
of NDEs-initial, hell-like, heaven-like, and transcendental-and what seems
to be an attitudinal profile characteristic of each type.
My plane was late. That meant I had to run lengthy corridors at
Dulles International Airport near Washington, D.C., to catch my next
flight. As I ran, another woman scurrying in the opposite direction
yelled, “I know who you are; you’re the woman I just saw on television.
You’re the gutsy one who talks about negative near-death experiences.
Keep doing it. Don’t stop.”
I was so startled by her comment, I momentarily slowed my pace and
yelled back, “Who are you? What do you mean by that?”
P.M.H. Atwater is a free-lance author, lecturer, and workshop facilitator, whose
principal interest is near-death experiences and spiritual transformations. Reprint re
quests should be addressed to Ms. Atwater at P.O. Box 7691, Charlottesville, VA 22906.
Journal of Near-Death Studies, 10(3) Spring 1992
1992 Human Sciences Press, Inc.
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Her answer surprised me. “I’m a surgical nurse at a hospital in
Phoenix, Arizona. We have lots of near-death cases there, and almost
all of them are the negative kind. You know what I mean-people who
wind up in hell!”
Before I could respond further, she was out of sight. I wanted to go
after her and ask more questions-what hospital? how many cases?
how long has this been happening? why haven’t you reported it?-but
my pressing need to hurry convinced me otherwise. I barely made my
connection.
This incident happened in 1989, a year when I was nearly over
whelmed by reports from people who experienced a hellish environ
ment at the brink of death, rather than a heavenly one.
Most researchers of the near-death experience (NDE) report that
unpleasant cases are quite rare, numbering less than one percent of
the thousands thus far investigated and of the eight million tallied by
a Gallup Poll during a survey on the subject published in 1982 (Gallup
and Proctor, 1982). Yet my experiences interviewing near-death sur
vivors since 1978 have consistently shown me otherwise, suggesting
an abundance of such cases: 105 out of the more than 700 I have
queried.
At the 1990 Washington, D.C., conference of the International Asso
ciation for Near-Death Studies (LANDS), Bruce Greyson, a psychiatrist
noted for his long-term commitment to near-death research, admitted
that people like himself had not been asking the right questions to
identify those who might have undergone “dark” or distressing epi
sodes. He confessed: “We didn’t try to find them because we didn’t want
to know.” His comment underscored the fact that, for the most part,
published reports of near-death studies have side-stepped “negative”
accounts.
Greyson and Nancy Evans Bush, President of LANDS, have recently
completed a descriptive study of 50 terrifying cases they have collected
over the past 9 years (Greyson and Bush, 1992). Others whose work has
acknowledged the existence of such experiences include British re
searcher Margot Grey (1985) and sociologist Charles Flynn (1986).
Cardiologist Maurice Rawlings and myself, however, have actively
pursued near-death reports of a hellish nature since the very begin
ning of our involvement in the field.
Beyond Death’s Door, Rawlings’ first book (1978), focused on his
observations of people in the process of being resuscitated after clinical
death. In it, he recounted story after story of near-death experiencers
describing unpleasant or threatening scenarios: being surrounded by
grotesque human and animal forms, hearing other people moaning
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and in pain, violence and demonic types of torture. He thought that
because he was present when the phenomenon actually occurred, he
was able to obtain pure and unrepressed reports. This led him to
formulate his theory that at least half of the near-death cases begin as
hell-like, then become heaven-like as the episode proceeds, with the
average individual able to remember only the heavenly part once
revived.
His second book, Before Death Comes (1980), added to these accounts
and included his conviction that in order for people to die a good death
and avoid the horrors of what must assuredly be hell, they should
commit themselves to the doctrines of Christianity. Needless to say,
Rawlings caused quite a stir among other researchers. So far no one
has been able to substantiate either the extent of his anecdotal find
ings or his theory, even when present during ongoing resuscitation
procedures conducted in clinical settings.
My first introduction to the NDE was in a hospital room listening to
three somber people describe what they had seen while technically
“dead.” Each spoke of grayness and cold, and about naked, zombie-like
beings just standing around staring at them. All three were profoundly
disturbed by what they had witnessed. One man went so far as to
accuse every religion on earth of lying about the existence of any
supposed “heaven.” The fear these people exhibited affected me deeply.
A decade passed before I, too, had a personal opportunity to discover
what might exist beyond the threshold of death. Not once did this
happen to me, but three times. A miscarriage and hemorrhage precipi
tated my first encounter in January of 1977. Two days later the second
occurred when a major thrombosis in my right thigh vein dislodged,
accompanied by the worst case of phlebitis the specialist had ever seen.
Three months afterward I suffered a complete and total collapse. On
the occasion of each of these “deaths,” I experienced uplifting and
enlightening, heaven-like, near-death scenarios. Although each was
different, one somehow led into the next as if the three were progres
sive. When my experiences were over, I determined to find out as much
as I could about the phenomenon from as many different people as
possible. This quest began an exploration of the subject that resulted in
my book, Coming Back to Life: The After-Effects of the Near-Death
Experience (1988 and 1989).
Since the heavenly version is well-known by now and so, too, its
attendant positives, I think it is time that all aspects of the phenome
non be examined, including all the contrasting reports still commonly
bunched together under the singular term “hell-like.” What Rawlings
spoke of a decade ago needs to be reconsidered, especially in light of
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observations that challenge how near-death experiences are cate
gorized. To accomplish this, I’d like first to offer a context for broaden
ing our understanding of the word “hell.”
Historically “hell” is not Biblical, although many people think so.
What came to be translated as “hell” was a peculiar idiom in the
Aramaic language that used the name of a city dump where trash was
burned to signify “mental torment” and “regret.” Centuries later, and
after numerous translations of the Bible, what was originally ex
pressed as “Gehenna of Fire” was changed to “hell.”
The word hell is actually Scandinavian and refers to Hel, the Teu
tonic queen of the dead and ruler of “the other world.” According to
myth, “to Hel” is where people went who were good, but not quite good
enough to transcend to Valhalla, that heavenly hall reserved for
heroes killed in battle and other special folk. Unlike more modern
imagery depicting a Satan and being burned for one’s sins, there was
nothing evil or scary about the supposed hell or Hel herself, except her
looks. She was said to be deformed, with half of her face human and the
other half featureless. Allusions to Hel eventually connoted “an abode
of the dead,” but not some place of everlasting punishment.
Hell, as most people think of it today, was a European conceptualiz
ation used during the early days of Christianity to ensure the obe
dience of converts. Modernized versions were made popular in such
classics as Dante’s Divine Comedy (14th century/1955) and Charles
Dickens’s A Christmas Carol (1843/1983). Even Our Town by Thorn
ton Wilder (1938) served to illustrate how those who “cross over”
might linger for a while in cemeteries before continuing their after
death journeys.
A reference to the hell an individual could encounter during the
death process and after passing through death’s “door” is found in The
Tibetan Book of the Dead (Evans-Wentz, 1957). This ancient text de
scribed three stages to the bardo (the intermediate disembodied state
said to follow death), and how each stage represents an opportunity for
the departed to inhabit a different level of existence. The book claimed
that heavenly visions, resembling what are now defined as states of
consciousness, occur during the first week after death; hellish ones the
second week; and various opportunities for judging one’s life in the
third. Unlike Dante’s Divine Comedy (14th century/1955), this tradi
tional Tibetan view chronicled the various gateways possible for one to
enter after death and between incarnations. Specifically detailed was a
period of 28 to 49 days after a person has died.
Heaven-like scenarios outlined in the book are strikingly similar to
modern near-death reports: visions of pure light, vibrant landscapes as
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if in springtide, blindingly open clear sky, dazzlement. Equally so are
the hell-like versions: terrifying deities, gruesome apparitions, racking
and painful torture. Also described are the life-review process, judg
ment, and a disembodied state, then rebirth into this or other worlds
for further growth and learning.
In 1980, Kenneth Ring reported the finding that those with prior
knowledge of the NDE were less likely to experience it, while those
with no prior knowledge were more likely to do so. A clue as to why this
could be true was also mentioned in the Tibetan book, where the claim
was made that all postmortem visions, regardless of type, are actually
projections from the mind of the participant. This implies that the next
world may be structured by the subconscious mind, that mental imag
ery determines what is met after death. Also implied is that both
heavenly and hellish scenarios might well represent part of the natu
ral course of consciousness as it shifts from one state of awareness to
another, and through numerous levels of existence.
Oddly, the realness of near-death experiences is not diminished by
this claim, or others like it. The phenomenon becomes subjected in
stead to psychic rather than physical laws, which I believe accounts for
the variation of details and descriptions from culture to culture.
During my own interviews of experiencers, for instance, I discovered
little difference between heavenly and hellish near-death episodes in
consideration of how elements unfolded in sequence. By that I mean
the universal elements now identified as central to an NDE can and
often do appear in both types and in the same basic sequence pattern:
an out-of-body experience; passing through a dark tunnel or some kind
of darkness; seeing a light ahead; entering into that light, and sud
denly finding one’s self in another realm of existence usually replete
with people, landscapes, and occasionally animals.
Even the fact that experiencers of hellish visions often travel in a
downward direction (down “the tunnel” as opposed to up) does not
distinguish one type from another, simply because many experiencers
of the heavenly kind also report downward passage when in the tun
nel. Hellish episodes can also include dialogue with beings on the other
side of death along with glimpses of the life just lived, elements once
thought to occur only in heaven-like cases. Both types are, in fact, a lot
alike. Yet they do differ, through the specific details given, and
through the interpretation of individual responses.
To help examine these differences, here is a comparison from my
original study that examines the language experiencers used to de
scribe what they encountered. Notice consistent settings and elements,
yet obvious contrasts in detail:
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Heaven-Like Cases
friendly beings
beautiful, lovely environments
conversations and dialogue
total acceptance and an
overwhelming sensation of
love
a feeling of warmth and a
sense of heaven
JOURNAL OF NEAR-DEATH STUDIES
Hell-Like Cases
lifeless or threatening
apparitions
barren or ugly expanses
threats, screams, silence
danger and the possibility of
violence, torture
a feeling of cold (or
temperature extremes) and a
sense of hell
Of the hell-like cases I have found, I have yet to come across an
individual who reported a fiery hot or burning sensation during the
experience itself, although I have spoken with researchers who have. If
a sensation of temperature was felt, the majority in the study I con
ducted commented on how cold it was, or clammy, or shivery, or “icy
hard.” Also mentioned was the dullness of the light, even grayness, as
if overcast, foggy, or somehow “heavy.” Many experienced a bright
light beckoning to them initially, but when they entered the light it
promptly dimmed or darkened.
Invariably an attack of some kind would take place in hellish sce
narios, or a shunning, and pain would be felt or surges of anxiety and
fear. Any indifference to the individual’s presence would be severe, as
would the necessity of the experiencer to defend him- or herself and/or
fight for the right to continued existence. Themes of good and evil,
beings like angels and devils, I found commonplace, as well as haunt
ings once the individual revived. Examples of this are the numerous
reports of a “devil” who physically manifests in broad daylight for the
purpose of chasing the experiencer, supposedly to capture his or her
soul, or to win “the battle.” The manifestation of other threatening
beings or creatures has also been claimed, quite similar to what was
depicted in the movie Flatliners (Schumacher, 1990). Sometimes fear
ful scenes and sensations reoccur afterward, as when an experiencer is
unexpectedly faced with the onslaught of some perceived cyclone,
whirlpool, tidal wave, or perhaps an unchecked fall into a void.
Amazing as it may seem, I noticed that the same scene that one
individual considers wonderfully positive another may declare nega
tive or horrific. For instance, the light at the end of the tunnel can be
terrifying to some while inviting to others, as can any voices or flash
ing lights experienced during states of darkness, even if nothing
threatening is perceived from either the voices or the lights. Passing
through a bright light into vast new landscapes can be an incredible
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shock to an individual, especially if aspects of creation and worlds
within worlds are seen, even if what is experienced in no way puts the
individual at risk. Meeting a being composed entirely of light can seem
a trick of the devil or a punishment of some kind, especially if the
experiencer tends to be more fundamentalist in his or her religious
viewpoints.
One woman who described for me a light ray she rode through the
vast reaches of time and space was thrilled beyond words to have been
granted such a privilege. Yet another woman, in recounting what
seemed to me a similar light-ray experience, expressed a sense of
horror and revulsion at what had happened to her. Then there was the
man overjoyed to tears by the “loving” darkness he encountered after
death, in stark contrast to several reports I had previously received
from people who felt cursed to have experienced a darkness that some
how seemed “alive.”
Not one of the childhood experiencers I interviewed ever mentioned
anything fearful or hell-like or threatening. Only the adults in my
inquiry reported such stories. This puzzled me. Why would some adults
describe the existence of a hell when children never did? Why would
what appeared as episodes of equal content be labeled hell-like by one
experiencer and heaven-like by another? And why would perfectly
normal individuals who had lived what appeared as positive, construc
tive lives be scared witless by their near-death experience, while
others with similar personalities and lifetime achievements be delir
iously awestruck?
What made this dichotomy even more puzzling for me was a particu
lar question and answer session held after a talk I had given in
Williamsburg, Virginia. A man in the audience related his near-death
story, one so positive and so inspiring it brought tears to the eyes of
most of those attending. Yet, to everyone’s surprise, he went on to
reveal how cursed he felt to have had such an experience and how
difficult his life had been ever since it had happened. Then a woman
jumped up and excitedly recounted her story. Even though her sce
nario centered on a life-or-death struggle in semidarkness at the edge
of a whirlpool, while high winds and the presence of evil threatened,
she was overjoyed to have experienced anything so inspiring and so
revealing about how life really worked and how salvation is guaran
teed by our own willingness to correct our own mistakes. Here were
two people: one traumatized by a heaven-like experience, the other
uplifted and transformed by a hellish one.
After the Williamsburg affair, I started asking more questions of
more people, probing questions I later cross-checked whenever possible
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with family members. Sometimes I used my own increased sensi
tivities to determine what track of questioning to pursue, and some
times I used plain logic; for I, too, am a near-death survivor. Since
apparently, at least from my study, one cannot ascertain heaven or
hell by their appearance, my goal changed from focusing on the phe
nomenon to an investigation of what other factors I might have previ
ously overlooked.
Thus far, this change of focus has enabled me to make the following
observations, arranged by experience types and the psychological con
sistencies I noticed in each grouping. It is my hope that this new way to
categorize near-death experiences, and the probability of a psychologi
cal profile for each type, will inspire other researchers to redesign their
methodologies and pursue different approaches to the subject.
Four Types of Near-Death Experience
Initial Experience (“Non-Experience’9
This type of NDE involves elements such as a loving nothingness or
the living dark or a friendly voice. It is usually experienced by those
who seem to need the least amount of evidence for proof of survival, or
who need the least amount of shakeup in their lives. Often, this
becomes a “seed” experience or an introduction to other ways of per
ceiving and recognizing reality.
Unpleasant and/or Hell-Like Experience
(Inner Cleansing and Self-Confrontation)
This type of NDE involves an encounter with a bardo, limbo, or
hellish purgatory, or scenes of a startling and unexpected indifference,
or even “hauntings” from one’s own past. It is usually experienced by
those who seem to have deeply suppressed or repressed guilts, fears,
and angers, and/or those who expect some kind of punishment or
accountability after death.
Pleasant and/or Heaven-Like Experience
(Reassurance and Self-Validation)
This type of NDE involves heaven-like scenarios of loving family
reunions with those who have died previously, reassuring religious
figures or light beings, validation that life counts, affirmative and
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inspiring dialogue. It is usually experienced by those who most need to
know how loved they are and how important life is and how every
effort counts.
Transcendent Experience (Expansive Revelations, Alternate
Realities)
This type of NDE involves exposure to otherworldly dimensions and
scenes beyond the individual’s frame of reference, and sometimes in
cludes revelations of greater truths. It is usually experienced by those
who are ready for a “mind-stretching” challenge, and/or who are most
apt to use, to whatever degree, the truths that are revealed.
It has been my observation that all four of these types can occur
during the same experience, exist in combinations, or be spread
throughout a series of episodes for a particular individual. Generally,
however, each represents a distinctive episode occurring but once to a
given person.
When you keep a person’s life in context with his or her brush with
death, even a clinical death, you cannot help but recognize connections
between the two, threads that seem to link what is met in dying with
what that individual came to accept or reject about the depths of living.
It is almost as if the phenomenon is a particular kind of growth event
that allows for a “course correction,” enabling the individual involved
to focus on whatever is weak or missing in character development.
With children, it is as if they receive advance instruction and/or have
an opportunity to preview their lives.
In addition, what may seem negative or positive concerning any of
the four types listed I found to be misleading, as value and meaning
depend entirely on each person involved and his or her response to
what happened during the near-death experience and its aftereffects.
Surprisingly, unpleasant or hell-like experiences really can be quite
positive if individual experiencers are inspired to make significant
changes in their lives because of them. But, pleasant or heaven-like
experiences can be incredibly negative if individuals use them as an
excuse to dominate or threaten others while engaged in self-righteous
campaigns. Even heaven-like or transcendent experiences may be
painful or hellish to an individual unfamiliar with the possibility of
alternate realities or unwilling to have his or her worldview inter
rupted or challenged.
Furthermore, my listing of experience types read from top to bottom
seems to parallel The Tibetan Book of the Dead (Evans-Wentz, 1957)
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and passages therein that detail the various gateways to after-death
existences, gateways identified as mental projections from the mind of
the participant. But, if we are willing to reconsider the Tibetan claim
and those made by other ancient traditions, the listing begins to
suggest something else even more extraordinary.
What emerges is a brief panorama of what could be the natural
movement of consciousness as it evolves through the human condition
on a journey of awakening. This journey extends from the first stirring
of something greater and an initial awareness, to confrontations with
the bias of perception followed by opportunities to cleanse and start
anew, then progressing to the bliss and the ecstasy of self-validation
and the discovery of life’s worth, until the moment comes when at last
the unlimited realms of truth and wisdom are unveiled.
This panorama of awakening consciousness indicates to me that the
NDE may be part of an ongoing process within the human species and
not some isolated or separate event, a process of growth shifting indi
vidual souls from one stage of awareness to another and/or from one
state of embodiment to another, a process literally encoded within our
makeup since our very beginnings. When viewed in this manner, the
phenomenon takes on the characteristic of a preparatory adjustment
that the transition of death affords-either literal death, where physi
cal form alters, or symbolic death, where life phases alter. This adjust
ment would enable human systems to ready themselves for the new
demands soon to be placed upon them when present form or conscious
ness capacity changes, thus insuring some form of life continuance and
the steady growth of conscious awareness.
In his book, Closer to the Light, pediatrician Melvin Morse wrote:
The near-death experience is the first psychological experience to be
located within the brain…. By locating the area for NDEs within the
brain, we have anatomy to back up the psychological experience. We
know where the circuit board is. (Morse and Perry, 1990, p. 170)
I have reexamined a generation of scientific research into higher
brain function and have found that the soul hypothesis explains many
“unexplained” events. It explains out-of-body experiences, the sensa
tion of leaving the body and accurately describing details outside of
the body’s field of view. Events such as floating out of the physical
body and giving accurate details of one’s own cardiac arrest-things a
person couldn’t see even if their eyes were open-are virtually impos
sible to explain if we do not believe in a consciousness separate from
our bodies that could be called a soul. (Morse and Perry, 1990, p. 169)
It has been my experience that whatever we need to awaken the
truth of our being will manifest when we need it. The way that
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happens is basically the same for all of us because, on some fundamen
tal level of existence beyond conscious recognition, we all share space
on the same upward spiral of evolutionary development. Surely the
NDE illustrates this truth.
Yet maybe not. Other researchers have noted that those who have
pleasant and/or heaven-like episodes experience far more permanent
life changes than those who undergo unpleasant or hellish versions.
Why? Do hellish experiencers repress their aftereffects, or do they
have aftereffects that differ from the others? This needs to be re
searched; so far it hasn’t been.
Once, when I was autographing copies of my book in a shopping mall,
a man in his middle thirties stopped at my table, looked me straight in
the eye, and with tight lips declared, “You’ve got to tell people about
hell. There is one. I know. I’ve been there. All them experiencers on
television telling their pretty stories about heaven-that’s not the way
it is. There’s a hell, and people go there.” I could not calm this man or
the piercing power of his words, nor could I inspire him to consider
other ways of interpreting his experience. He was adamant and firm.
To him hell was real and to be avoided, no matter what.
That’s what I’ve noticed with individuals like this man: either there
is a special kind of fierceness about them, or an empty fear, or a
puzzled indifference, or an unstated panic. If they show emotion at all,
it is usually tears. Many feel betrayed by religion. Many resent the
endless banter on television talk shows about “the Light,” all that
warmth and love and joy exuded from those who seemed to have
experienced heaven. When I would ask why they weren’t on television
themselves telling their own stories, most would suddenly become
quiet. Eventually I came to realize that they had spoken to no one else
about what had happened to them. Most often they indicated feeling
too ashamed or fearful or angry to talk about it; furthermore, the
possibility of another’s judgment or criticism bothered them.
The tremendous popularity of the movies Ghost (Zucker, 1990) and
Flatliners (Schumacher, 1990) has inspired a host of near-death sur
vivors to surface and be counted, especially those who experienced
hellish visions. I hope this openness continues. Although researchers
in the field of near-death studies have made tremendous strides, there
are still relatively untapped aspects of the experience that must be
addressed if we are ever going to understand the phenomenon and its
aftereffects. Anything less perpetuates a myth that serves no one.
Is there a hell? To one who thinks he or she has been there, the
answer is yes. To a person like myself, who has studied what evidence
exists and has conducted countless interviews, the answer is this: there
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is more to the near-death experience than anyone currently knows.
The phenomenon is vast in scope, its implications more important and
more dynamic than most people are willing to admit. Heaven and hell
may seem more conceptual than fact, but right now they are all we
have to go on as we search further afield into what the mind and its
mental imagery might reveal about the source of our being.
One fact is clear: people who experience an unpleasant and/or hell
like near-death experience must be welcomed by researchers and re
lieved of any trace of stigma or judgment. They have a lot to tell us,
and we need to hear what they have to say.
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