Recent Research on Near-Death Experiences and Out-of-Body Experiences

Near-death experiences are only one of an interrelated set of phenomena suggesting life after death and the existence of a human soul with uncharted powers and limitations. The diagram below sketches the wider picture that near-death experiences are part of. 

A paper describes how voluminous is the evidence for near-death experiences (NDE)  and out-of-body experiences:

"NDEs are not rare phenomena; survey studies indicate that the incidence may be around 4% of the general population (Gallup & Proctor, 1982; Knoblauch, Schmied, & Schnettler, 2001). Researchers have collected tens of thousands of cases. Three important case archives have been established: one at the Religious Experience Research Centre, based in the University of Wales Trinity Saint David; one at the Division of Personality Studies of the University of Virginia; and one in the Near-Death Research Foundation. These archives hold approximately 4,000 case reports. By 2005, more than 65 research studies involving nearly 3,500 NDErs had been published (Holden, Greyson, & James, 2009, p. 7). 

Mainstream neuropsychiatry appears to be stumped in terms of explaining NDEs (Greyson, Kelly, & Kelly, 2009; van Lommel, 2010, pp. 113–134), opening up the possibility that important discoveries may result from deeper investigation of NDEs. Of particular importance in this regard are cases in which people report having conscious experiences under conditions of cardiac arrest. Researchers have found that 10–20% of the people who survive cardiac arrest report such experiences (Greyson, 2003; Parnia, Waller, Yeates, & Fenwick, 2001; Schwaninger, Eisenberg, Schechtman, & Weiss, 2002; van Lommel, van Wees, Meyers, & Elfferich, 2001)."

Below are some fairly recent papers on this topic:

• The 2023 study "Incidence of near-death experiences in patients surviving a prolonged critical illness and their long-term impact: a prospective observational study" found that 19 out of 126 survivors of Intensive Care Unit hospitalization (15%) had a near-death experience. There was only a very low association between such experiences and positive responses on a Dissociative Experiences Scale questionnaire, with an odds ratio of only 1.13. The low association seems to argue against hallucinatory explanations for near-death experiences. The paper here ("Measuring dissociation: Comparison
  of alternative forms of the dissociative
  experiences scale") gives us at its end the questions used for this Dissociative Experiences Scale, a questionnaire that is claimed to be a way of detecting a psychiatric syndrome called "dissociation."  One of the questions asks about out-of-body experiences. The question is: "Some people sometimes have the experience of feeling as though they are standing next to themselves or watching themselves do something and they actually see themselves as if they were looking at another person." People doing the survey are asked to rate how often this happens to them. Anyone having an out-of-experience would answer "Once" or "Sometimes" to such a question, causing them to get a non-zero score on such a scale. But this does nothing whatsoever to show any pathology of such people. It merely shows that people who have out-of-body experiences report out-of-body experiences. 
• A 2024 study "Near-Death Experiences, Post-Traumatic Stress, and Supernormal Abilities in a Latin American Sample" found that "most of our 128 participants reported significant changes regarding beliefs and attitudes toward themselves and others as well as an increase in psychic or supernormal abilities."
• The 2024 study "Near-death experiences after cardiac arrest: a scoping review" examined other previously published studies. It found that "near-death experiences may occur in as frequent as over one-third of patients with cardiac arrest." A table from the study is shown below:

The study "Why Near-Death Experiences (NDEs) Matter to Psychology: An Exploration of Aotearoa New Zealand Psychologists’ Knowledge of NDEs and Implications for Professional Practice"  tells us that psychologists tend to lack knowledge about near-death experiences. We read this:

"Walker and Russell (1989) surveyed 117 registered U.S. psychologists in Illinois... Many were familiar with the term ‘near-death experience,’ but few had knowledge about NDEs."

In the study 45 psychologists were given a fictional narrative that sounded like a typical near-death experience, including a heart attack followed by an out-of-body experience that included the participant viewing his body from outside it, and a claim by the participant that "universal truths" were revealed to him, and a claim by the participant that he had an encounter with God or maybe something like God. Only 11% of the psychologists identified the account as a near-death experience, with the majority of psychologists guessing it was a panic attack, even though the description made no mention of fear or panic. 

The result should come as no surprise. Nowadays you can get a PhD in neuroscience and psychology without ever having been exposed to the vast evidence for paranormal phenomena. Such evidence is senselessly censored from most of the textbooks of neuroscience and psychology. 

Here is a quote from one recent study of near-death experiences:

"In my review of 617 near-death experiences from NDERF, a life review occurred in 88 NDEs (14%). None of the life reviews in these NDEs appeared to have any unrealistic content as determined by my review or based on comments by the NDErs about their own life reviews. Life reviews may include long forgotten details of their earlier life that the NDErs later confirm really happened. If NDEs were unreal experiences, it would be expected that there would be significant error in life reviews and possibly hallucinatory features. "

The same study says:

" A study by Dr. Emily Kelly was a comparison of 74 NDEs with descriptions of encountering deceased individuals with 200 NDEs that did not describe encounters with the deceased. ²³ This study found that when NDErs encountered beings known to them from their earthly lives in their NDEs, only 4% described meeting beings that were alive at the time of their experiences. I reviewed 84 NDEs from NDERF that described encounters with individual(s) that they knew in their earthly life. ²⁴ There were only three NDEs (4%) where the encountered beings were alive at the time of the NDEs, consistent with the findings of the Kelly study."

In the paper here, we have a long discussion of a Mr. M. who reports very frequent out-of-body experiences. The paper uses the term SAC to mean "state of accreted consciousness."

"Mr. M reports experiencing SAC at least once a day for the duration of a couple of minutes to many hours of the standard physical time flow as experienced by a healthy physical body....The vast majority of instances of Mr. M‟s SACs occur spontaneously or at will while Mr. M is fully conscious and active. Mr. M also experiences SACs while relaxed or resting. Mr. M reported his SACs occurred multiple times daily spontaneously or at will, while in a waking or active state such as standing, working at a computer, driving a car, etc., or when resting such as sitting or lying down. Mr. M reported he would be walking or performing regular daily activities at work, when suddenly he would spontaneously slip out-of-body and into the SAC. The SAC experiences would be extremely vivid, real, and a clear sense of separation between the Self and the physical body would accompany each SAC. The surroundings as described by Mr. M, when in SAC, would appear in brighter colors than what is considered normal under a regular state of consciousness. 'Under SAC I perceive colors that are not visible when in the physical body.' ...What triggers Mr. M‟s floating above his body while experiencing SAC in the waking/active state, given the fact that he represents the healthy population and his sensations of being clearly separated from his physical body are not caused by drugs, alcohol, hypnosis, trance, or linked to any pathological condition, is unknown."

The study "Differences and Commonalities Among Various Types of Perceived Out-of-Body Experiences (OBEs) (Phase II)" analyzed 252 reports of out-of-body experiences, received by those who filled out questionnaires after responding to advertising asking for responses from people who had out-of-body experiences. Some interesting findings of the study are below:

• Page 57: "At least 90 (35.7%) of the 252 perceived OBEs have included a report of having had an actual form or nonphysical body of some sort, usually similar in shape to the physical body (but not always). Other studies found that experients reported having a shape similar to their physical body (or some other type of form included in the results of two of these studies) with a range from 49% to 77% (Alvarado & Zingrone, 1999; Greyson & Stevenson, 1980; Twemlow et al., 1982). A total of 70 (27.8%) of the 252 perceived OBEs in this research so far included a report of lacking any type of form."  One of the participants claimed the ability to change his form at will during an out-of-body experience. 
• Page 24: "Some of the participants reported they were able to see a much wider area than before. This even included a visual perception spanning up to 360° in some cases. Although there was a question about the clarity of sight asked during both phases, the question did not mention anything about the field of their vision, so their comments about a broader form of sight were not directly solicited and their descriptions contain self-chosen terms (e.g., 360°, etc.)." There then follows several quotes from survey respondents talking about 360 degree vision of "fish-eye lens" vision, and two respondents talking about a binocular or zoom ability. 

The study "Incidence of near-death experiences in patients surviving a prolonged critical illness and their long-term impact: a prospective observational study" found a 15% incidence of near-death experiences in ICU (intensive care unit) survivors. 

For a very in-depth discussion of a recent paper purporting to present a model of near-death experiences (the NEPTUNE model of Charlotte Martial and others), see my long post "Physically Unrealistic NEPTUNE 'Model' of Near-Death Experiences Is a Misleading Mishmash." Some of my complaints were similar to those in a letter published in Nature Reviews Neurology a few days before my post was published, a letter entitled "Limitations of neurocentric models for near-death experiences." The letter is behind a paywall, but without paying I can at least read that it says this about Martial's NEPTUNE "model" of near-death experiences:

"Their model, though ambitious, omits key phenomenological features that are central to the core NDE experience [near-death experiences] and overextends certain neurochemical correlates into causal explanations. In establishing their neurocentric model, Martial et al. attempt to reframe many defining features of NDEs. NDEs characteristically involve a distinct constellation of features that sets them apart from dreams, fantasies, hallucinations or epileptic phenomena. These features include veridical out-of-body observations (often corroborated by medical personnel); transitions to ‘otherworldly realms’; panoramic life reviews (including re-experiencing past events from multiple vantage points); and encounters with deceased (but not living) relatives or ‘beings of light’. Many experiencers also undergo lifelong transformative changes in personal values and a marked loss of fear of death. Such features appear with remarkable consistency across cultures and times, and merely equating them with phenomena on the spectra of hallucinations or stress-induced fantasies misses precisely what distinguishes NDEs in terms of their specificity, coherence and intensity."

The paper "Explanation of near-death experiences: a systematic analysis of case reports and qualitative research" has a title that sounds like one of those affairs in which silly or skimpy speculations are suggested as explanations of reports beyond explanation.  But the paper is no such affair. The paper has the chart below in which "supernatural experiences" (in pink) is listed as the most common type.

According to the chart, the two most common aspects of near-death experiences are "out-of-body experiences" (the highest pink bar in the chart above) and "heightened senses." 

That the second largest bar in such a chart is "heightened senses" should come as no surprise to any very thorough student of out-of-body experiences and near-death experiences. Below are some accounts in the the literature of heightened senses during out-of-body experiences. 

(1) On page 70 of a book an author quotes Eugenie Garcia as having an out-of-body experience, apparently while being hypnotized:

"  I cast my eyes on myself: 'Look! I am luminous, transparent, light as a feather.'  Suddenly, I saw my body lying motionless in an armchair. Three or four people surrounded me, watching me attentively. What are they looking at me like that? Let's see. I come closer and look at myself too. doing like everyone else. I could clearly see the inside of my body, I could see the heart beating, the blood circulating, the networks.."

(2) On page 63 of a book, we read an account by Joseph Costa an out-of-body experience. Speaking as if he had X-ray vision, he says, "I saw my body perfectly recognizable by its particularities, its profile, my figure, but also bundles of veins and nerves vibrating with a luminous tingling."

(3) On page 62 of his book Lessons From the Light, Kenneth Ring quotes an account received by him in a letter, in which a woman described an out-of-body experience (when she says "three hundred degree" she apparently means "three-hundred-sixty degree"):

"I was hovering over a stretcher in one of the emergency rooms

at the hospital. I glanced down at the stretcher, knew the body

wrapped in blankets was mine, and really didn't care...I could see

the tiles on the ceiling and the tiles on the floor, simultaneously:

three hundred degree spherical vision. And not just spherical. Detailed! I could see every single hair and the follicle out of which it grew on the head of the nurse standing beside the stretcher."

(4) On page 37 of the same book, Ring quotes a male witness who claimed to see a womanly figure of light during his out-of-body experience. He recalls this when looking at his body:

"I could see the vascular system and the chambers emptying and filling with blood. I could see the vascular system and the life-sustaining materials working their way through the entire body. "

(5) On page 60 of the same book, a nearsighted woman recalls "the next I was aware of was floating on the ceiling" and that at this time "it was so vivid" and that "I could read the numbers on the machine behind my head." 

(6) On pages 254 to 255 of the 1895 book Brown Studies by George H. Hepworth, we have a description of an out-of-body experience. On page 255 he seems to describe enhanced vision during such an experience:

"I shall never be able to tell you how the stars looked that night. The heavens were an astonishing revelation to me. Not only did I see with perfectly clear vision, but there seemed to be a penetrating, a far-reaching quality to my sight which doubled the number of glistening lights above me, and the spectacle was so marvelous, so beautiful, that I stood entranced."

On page 256 the author compares his enhanced vision during his out-of-body experience to an account he heard of a very nearsighted boy who was given glasses and who could suddenly see the world clearly for the first time. 

(7) In the account below (from page 393 of the paper here) a person having an out-of-body experience reports having enhanced hearing (the account has both Feature #1 and Feature #4):

(8) One person having an out-of-body experience said this: "I was suddenly not in my body but above it...I could see, but all around, as

if my mind ...had eye-facets all over."

On page 72 of Green's book on out-of-body experiences, we read this:

On page 79 of Green's book she quotes someone who claims to have seen through a wall during an out-of-body experience. 

Around page 59 of his book Lessons From the Light, Kenneth Ring begins discussing cases that seemed to show superior vision during out-of-body experiences. He mentions some cases of people who reported being able to see very clearly the dust that was in some high spot above their bodies, such as the dust on a hanging lamp. On page 60 he estimates that he encountered about six cases of what he calls the "dust on the light fixture" type. On the same page he quotes someone as saying that she could see in vivid detail during her our-of-body experience, even though she is very nearsighted, and at time was not wearing her glasses. On page 61 he quotes a first-person account of someone else who claimed he could see very clearly during an out-of-body experience, even though he was very myopic and not wearing glasses. 

On page 76 of Green's book, she quotes someone who claims to have seen clearly in the dark during an out-of-body experience outdoors. On page 78 she quotes someone who claims to have been able to see "in a full circle of 360" degrees during an out-of-body experience. 

The study "Differences and Commonalities Among Various Types of Perceived Out-of-Body Experiences (OBEs) (Phase II)" analyzed 252 reports of out-of-body experiences, received by those who filled out questionnaires after responding to advertising asking for responses from people who had out-of-body experiences.  On page 24 we read this: "Some of the participants reported they were able to see a much wider area than before. This even included a visual perception spanning up to 360° in some cases. Although there was a question about the clarity of sight asked during both phases, the question did not mention anything about the field of their vision, so their comments about a broader form of sight were not directly solicited and their descriptions contain self-chosen terms (e.g., 360°, etc.)." There then follows several quotes from survey respondents talking about 360 degree vision or "fish-eye lens" vision, and two respondents talking about a binocular or zoom ability. Page 26 quotes a person as saying "everything seemed very vivid, a higher definition," and quotes another person as saying, "I could see very clear and it looked crystal clear like it was the best high definition ever." The same page quotes another person as saying, "I could see everything perfectly clearly, which is odd because my glasses had fallen off my face in the accident." 

The author of a 2023 PhD dissertation ("Investigating the Nature and Psychological Impact of Out-of-Body Experiences") performed an online survey of 213 people who claimed to have had an out-of-body experience (page 156).  He states that 16% reported "the ability to see through physical objects" (page 450), that 23% reported "the ability to see at an abnormal distance" (page 450), that 45% reported "the ability to see in the dark" (page 450), and that 22% reported "the ability to see 360 degrees" (page 451). 

The 2025 paper "Inducing Unusual Bodily Sensations and Out-of-Body Experiences Across the Wake-Sleep Cycle: A High-Density Eeg and Neurophenomenology Study" is one of a class of papers that makes misleading insinuations that out-of-body experiences were somehow artificially induced. The paper describes some combination of suggested meditation techniques and visual stimulation, which the paper calls an "induction technique." Because the main element is the mental effort of the participants, what is going on is not actually any thing that can be fairly described as a technological induction technique or a pharmaceutical induction technique. We cannot trust any of the claims made that out-of-body experiences occurred, because we do not have first-hand testimony from the participants. We do not know whether statements they made were responses to leading questions, questions designed to push them in a particular descriptive direction, questions utilizing the power of suggestion. (Previous studies of this type have been marred by leading questions to subjects, such as "So did you kind of feel a sort of floating feeling?") The second-hand descriptions by the writers of the paper (describing what went on in someone else's mind) should not be trusted, as readers of the paper cannot compare such descriptions to first-hand testimony by the participants. The failure to provide first-hand testimony from the participants seems like a fatal flaw in this study. A researcher cannot be trusted to accurately describe what went on in someone else's mind, particularly when the researcher is motivated to put a desired interpretation on what someone else was experiencing. 

The 2025 paper "Out-of-body experiences: interpretations through the eyes of those who live them" examined the accounts of "10 participants without mental disorders or neurological and/or vestibular pathologies" who reported out-of-body experiences, none of them involving life-threatening situations.  We read this:

"All participants agreed that their experience was not only real but described it as more vivid and authentic than everyday reality. Four participants had no explanation for their experience, while one interpreted it in physiological terms. The remaining five explained their experiences using terms like 'other planes or dimensions' and 'universal consciousness,' aligning with some authors who use concepts such as 'non-local' or 'expanded consciousness' to address OBEs."

At the link here you can read a free online 160-page book on the topic of near-death experiences and out-of-body experiences. After you press the [] icon at the bottom of the screen, it is very easy to read the whole book by finger-swiping. 

When Apparitions Get Multiple Witnesses

Let us look at some cases of apparitions seen by more than one witness. 

Below is a report of several workers seeing an apparition of a worker who recently died at their work site:

You can read the account here:

https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn86075298/1923-09-07/ed-1/seq-7/

Below is another report of several workers seeing an apparition of a worker who recently died at their work site:

You can read the account here:

https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn90059523/1903-09-26/ed-1/seq-1/

Here is a newspaper account of an apparition seen by two different witnesses, both of which claimed to have seen the apparition of Fred F. Lange. There is a strange additional detail of 3 photos taken of Lange's corpse, which all come up blank. 

You can read the account here:

https://www.loc.gov/resource/sn85059663/1914-04-18/ed-1/?sp=6&r=0.045,0.234,0.642,0.26,0

Here is another newspaper account of an apparition seen by two different witnesses:

You can read the account here:

https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83016810/1923-07-07/ed-1/seq-2/

Below we read of an apparition of a Colonel Brice. In the account a professor says he saw the apparition once, and that an associate saw the apparition three times. The professor says the apparition was transparent, and walked through the professor's bed.

You can read the account here:

https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83045462/1957-11-10/ed-1/seq-48/

Below is a rather chilling story of multiple witnesses seeing an apparition, not just once but multiple times, apparently:

Below is an account of an apparition seen by six witnesses, including an ex-Congressman:

You can read the account here:

https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn89053684/1902-03-21/ed-1/seq-7/

Below is another case of an apparition reportedly seen by multiple witnesses:

You can read the account here:

https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn84025841/1907-01-12/ed-1/seq-3/

Below we have a very dramatic account of an apparition witnessed by a very sick child's father and the child's stepmother. The apparition reportedly had an appearance matching that of the child's deceased mother. 

You can read the account here:

https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn91064011/1910-04-14/ed-1/seq-9/

Below is a quote from a scholarly article, in which the author quotes an account he heard on TV. The witness claims that he and five other people saw an apparition corresponding to a person who was at the time close to death. It's one of the rare cases of an apparition of the living, which tend to occur when the person matching the apparition is having a close brush with death. 

"In recently watching the Jonathan Ross show again on the 29th October, quite unexpectedly, another guest and poet, Benjamin Zephaniah, presented another experience for all to hear. Following asking about attitudes towards Halloween, Ross, already primed with information on his guests, asks Zephaniah, 'am I right in thinking that you had a sort of supernatural experience once?' Drifting into thought and recollection, he replied, 'Yes, I had a very, very weird experience, and interestingly y’know, a lot of these experiences happen in the night when there’s shadows y’know and stuff like that, but this happened in broad daylight. Me, and five other people, were in a house in Birmingham. We were waiting for cousin to come home. She walked in [through] the front door, through the front room, and out the backdoor. And we went to see her, and she wasn’t there.'  The other guests on Ross’s show clearly shocked with stunned reactions at this point. He continues, 'And we all saw her. Later on that day, we found out that she’d been hit by a car, died for about five minutes or whatever it is, and came back to life [Ross lets out a ‘wow’ with his eye fixated on Zephaniah], and it wasn’t just me, like I said there were five others who witnessed it… And I’m not really one of those people that believes in that stuff, I’m into science y’know, but I also understand that there is stuff that we can’t prove.' Ross remarks that normally he would dismiss that sort of thing, and yet, it was hard to with Zephaniah’s account as it sounds so convincing, especially as sober and level headed gentleman." 

In the 1914 news account below, we have quite a few prisoners in the same jail claiming to see the same apparition, an apparition of John F. Jones, who hanged himself in the same jail in 1896. We read of nine prisoners pleading guilty, and the article suggests that more than a dozen confessed because of the apparition, saying, "Investigations of the reasons brought out the story of the 'ghost' and also the remarkable fact that in the past ten years twenty murderers had made confessions of guilt urged on by the same cause." 

You can read the account here:

https://www.loc.gov/resource/sn99021999/1913-03-09/ed-1/?sp=21&r=-0.096,0.518,1.055,0.427,0

The account here is quite the "haunted house" account. There are many details of people seeing spooky things in the house. We hear that a Mr. and Mrs. Siegal several times saw a ghost walk through their living room. But the second-hand nature of the account means it is not first-class evidence of an apparition. 

On page 136 of the document here, we read that some paranormal investigators said they saw an apparition of a man holding a baby. 

In a previous post I briefly mentioned the case of Mary Goffe, writing only this:

"The case of Mary Goffe was one of the earliest reports of an apparition of a living person.  On her death bed in 1691, Mary Goffe claimed that she had seen her children who had been entrusted to the care of a nurse far away. She claimed 'I was with them last night, when I was asleep.'  The nurse swore that she saw Mary Goffe appear at two o'clock, and that she visited the children. The nurse said, 'If I ever saw her in all my life, I saw her on this night.' "

My discussion was rather lacking, in that it did not refer to the original source material, which should always be cited whenever possible.  I have since found the original version of this account. It is on page 147 of the book The Certainty of the World of Spirits, published in 1691. On page 147, and the next few pages, we have the original account, which occurs in the form of a letter written by Reverend Thomas Tilson, dated July 6, 1691. I would quote the whole account exactly as it appears in its original form, except that it would be hard to read in the original because of all the antiquated typography in which the letter "s" is printed as "f." 

But luckily the 1691 letter from Thomas Tilson  is quoted exactly in a 1929 facsimile in the January 12, 1929 edition of the journal Light. Here is the account as quoted in that edition, which matches the original text:

"Mary, the wife of John Goffe, of Rochester, being afflicted with a long illness, removed to her father’s house, at West Mulling, which is about nine miles distant from her own; there she died, June 4th, 1691. The day before her departure, she grew impatiently desirous to see her two children, whom she had left at home, to the care of a nurse. She prayed her husband to hire a horse, for she must go home, and die with her children. When they persuaded her to the contrary, telling her she was not fit to be taken out of her bed, nor able to sit on horseback, she entreated them however to try....The next day this dying woman told her mother, that she had been at home with her children. 'That is impossible'  said the mother, ' for you have been here in bed all the while.'  'Yes'  replied the other, 'but I was with them last night when I was asleep.' 

The nurse at Rochester, Widow Alexander by name, affirms and says, she will take her oath of it before a magistrate, and receive the sacrament upon it, that a little before two o’clock that morning, she saw the likeness of the said Mary Goffe come out of the next chamber (where the elder child lay in a bed by itself, the door being left open) and stood by her bed-side for about a quarter of an hour : the younger child was there lying by her; her eyes moved and her mouth went, but she said nothing. The nurse, moreover, says that she was perfectly awake; it was then day-light, being one of the longest days in the year. She sat up in her bed, and looked steadfastly upon the apparition; at that time she heard the bridge clock strike two, and awhile after said,  'In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost, what art thou?'  Thereupon the appearance removed, and went away; she slipped on her clothes and followed, but what became of it she cannot tell. Then, and not before, she began to be grievously affrighted, and went out of doors and walked upon the wharf (the house is just by the riverside) for some hours, only going in now and then to look at the children. At five o’clock she went to a neighbour’s house, and knocked at the door, but they would not rise; at six she went again, then they arose and let her in. She related to them all that had passed; they would persuade her she was mistaken, or dreamt: but she confidently affirmed, ' If ever I saw her in all my life, I saw her this night.' One of those to whom she made the relation (Mary, the wife of J. Sweet) had a messenger who came from Mulling that forenoon, to let her know her neighbour Groffe was dying,-and desired to speak with her; she went over the same day, and found her just departing. The mother, amongst other discourse, related to her how much her daughter had longed to see her children and said she had seen them. This brought to Mrs. Sweet’s mind, what the nurse had told her that morning, for till then, she had not thought fit to mention it, but disguised it, rather as the woman’s disturbed imagination. 

The substance of this, I had related to me by John Carpenter, the father of the deceased, next day after the burial. July 2nd, I fully discoursed the matter with the nurse, and two neighbours, to whose house she went that morning. Two days after, 1 had it from the mother, the minister that was with her in the even, and the woman who sat up with her last that night: they all agree in the same story, and every one helps to strengthen the other’s testimony. They all appear to be sober intelligent persons, far enough off from designing to impose a cheat upon the world, or to manage a lie, and what temptation they should lie under for so doing, I cannot conceive." --

 Thomas Tilson. Minister of Aylesworth, near Maidstone in Kent, Aylesford, July 6, 1691

We have here high-quality evidence for the reality of this astonishing appearance of an apparition of a dying person. A very important fact is that the testimony has been written down within about a month after the claimed events, with the writer being someone who interviewed most of the relevant witnesses, including the nurse who claimed to see the apparition. According to the account, both the nurse and one of Mary Goffe's children saw the apparition, so we may classify this case as one of the cases of an apparition seen by more than one. 

A Google search for "Soyuz 7 angels" produces quite a few web pages claiming that astronauts on the Soyuz 7 mission of the Soviet Union in 1969 saw apparitions of angels or mysterious beings outside of their space station.  I have been unable to yet track down the original source of this account, or any firsthand testimony from any of these astronauts. So I don't know whether this claim is reliable. 

For other cases of apparitions seen by multiple witnesses, see my posts below:

When an Apparition Is Seen by Not Just One

When an Apparition Is Seen by Multiple Observers: 17 Cases

When an Apparition Is Seen by Multiple Observers: 17 More Cases
More Apparitions Seen by Multiple Observers
Many an Apparition Is Seen by More Than One
Still More Apparitions Seen by Multiple Observers

More Apparitions Seen by Multiple Witnesses

When Multiple Witnesses See the Same Apparition

Yet More Apparitions Seen by Multiple Witnesses

Many Said They Saw Nelly Butler's Apparition

If you enjoyed this post, you may enjoy my free online book "Spookiest Years," which can be accessed here. After pressing the [] icon at the bottom of the viewer, the entire 435-page book can be very conveniently read by finger-swiping. 

Science Sites Mislead Us, Trying to Persuade Us That Innovative Visible Evolution Can Work Fast

The dogmas of materialism are spread these days largely by a huge internet-based information infrastructure that is scattered across the globe. That infrastructure gives us a mixture of news, facts, hype, speculation, data, dogma and BS, with enough profitable clickbait and corporate PR for the infrastructure to mostly pay for itself. 

One of the web sites involved in pushing materialist propaganda is the ad-heavy site www.livescience.com, where we mostly get true headlines, but often get science headlines that simply are not true, typically written by writers who are not scientists. To give some examples:

• On the Livescience site we had the utterly untrue headline "'Building blocks of life' discovered on Mars in 10 different rock samples." The story discusses some observations of biologically irrelevant chemicals on Mars, none of which are ingredients of life or building blocks on life.  
• A story at the LiveScience site was entitled " 'This might be the seeds of life': Organic matter found on asteroid Ryugu could explain where life on Earth came from." The story was misleading for several reasons: (1) Scientists do not believe that life ever existed on the asteroid  Ryugu or on any other asteroid. (2) There is no scientific concept of any such thing as a "seed of life," in the sense of something causing life to arise from non-life (with the exception of plant seeds, and plant seeds were not found on Ryugu).  (3) No actual components of life were found on the asteroid Ryugu, and most organic molecules are not components of life. 

• Another story at the LiveScience site referred to a claimed discovery of the simplest amino acid (uracil) on an asteroid, in the faintest trace amount of only 13 parts per billion. The headline at the LiveScience site made the very untrue claim that this "could explain the origin of life." Living things require twenty types of amino acids, which must be massively arranged in very specially ordered arrangements to make many types of the very hard-to-achieve molecules called proteins.  The discovery of one type of amino acid in the faintest trace amounts no more explains the origin of life than the discovery of a twig on the ground (making the letter "I") explains the origin of books consisting of vey much well-constructed prose. 

• Another article on the LiveScience site was devoted to selling the groundless idea that there is a "dark mirror" universe inside ours. 

• Another article on the LiveScience site had the nutty title "The 1st life in the universe could have formed seconds after the Big Bang."  Anyone familiar with the incredibly high temperatures and density at such a time (preventing all chemistry and even the existence of atoms) should understand how crazy such a claim is. 

• Another article on the LiveScience site had the phony title "Here's what we learned about aliens in 2020," a reference to extraterrestrials. Of course, we did not learn anything about extraterrestrials in that year. 

• Another article on the LiveScience site had the phony title "These weird lumps of 'inflatons' could be the very first structures in the universe."  We saw a visual of some strange structure that looked like a planetary nebula. The caption read, "Shown here, one of the dense clumps of inflatons that emerged during the inflation phase of the Big Bang, in the infant universe."  The caption led the reader to believe he was looking at some photo of something in space.  But the photo was not a photo of anything observed in space.  It was merely a photo of some junk generated by an entirely speculative computer program. No actual "inflatons" have ever been observed, and the program was based on one of the innumerable speculative models of the unproven cosmic inflation theory.

• The Livescience site had an article with the groundless headline "The brain stores at least 3 copies of every memory." Human beings recall things, but no scientist has ever discovered even one memory in a brain.  The study the article referred to was a very bad example of Questionable Research Practices.

Livescience.com is a for-profit web site with the main purpose of generating profits for the media company that owns it. 

Let us look at a recent story on the Livescience site that was a kind of textbook example of the type of misleading statements found in Darwinist literature. We have an article entitled "How fast does evolution happen?"  Below the title is a subtitle stating this: "Measuring the pace of evolution is tricky, but some species can evolve as quickly as a few generations."  

Right off the bat, we are being tricked.  The average person reading that subtitle will think that the article will show that a new type of species can originate within a few generations.  But when you carefully consider the exact wording,  you should  realize no such claim is being unambiguously made.  The word "evolution" is a word of almost infinite flexibility, which can mean 101 different things.  So when stating "some species can evolve as quickly as a few generations" an author might merely mean that some type of change -- perhaps some very trivial and not even visible change -- can occur in a species over such a time span.  

Darwinists are constantly exploiting the ambiguity and flexibility of the term "evolution."  The writers of Darwinist literature are constantly making statements which can be interpreted in many very different ways.  They often play a game of making a statement that means little interpreted in one way, but means something gigantic when interpreted in another way.  You might call this a game of "refer to something that may be a pebble or a mountain, and hope the reader  interprets that as if I meant a mountain." 

The Livescience article gives us this attempt to give an example of evolution, stating "In the famous example of Darwin's finches on the Galápagos Islands, different species evolved different beak shapes and sizes within a few decades to specialize in feeding on different types of nuts and insects." 

The claim that observations of differences in finches sparked Darwin's theory is incorrect. The differences between the finches was not even mentioned in The Origin of Species. On page 134 of his biography of Darwin, A.N. Wilson states the following:

"Peter and Rosemary Grant, evolutionary biologists from Harvard University, spent twenty-five summers studying these birds....They revealed that the beak changes were reversible -- this is hardly 'evolution.'  Beaks adapted from season to season, depending on whether droughts left large, tough seeds, or heavy rainfall resulted in smaller, softer seeds."

We then have a textbook example of one of the leading deceptions of Darwinist literature, the deception of trying to pass off examples of human-directed artificial selection as examples showing the power of natural, unguided evolution. We read this:

"By the early to mid-20th century, scientists realized that evolution can happen much more quickly than Darwin ever thought by using the theory of natural selection to make crops more palatable in as few as seven years and domesticate dogs over a few generations. 'We made evolution happen,' Bonnet told Live Science. 'We could see that the change happening at this scale of a few generations (can) be quite dramatic.' "

Since these references are to human-directed artificial selection, you should not be using the term "evolution" to refer to them, and you should not be citing such things as examples showing the power of natural evolution.  

We then have some examples that do nothing to show any power of natural evolution to create any type of innovations or structural improvements in organisms. We read this:

"To find out, Bonnet and an international team of researchers analyzed decades of genetic data for 19 bird and mammal species. They found that the rate of adaptive evolution was two to four times faster than previous estimates. More specifically, each generation increased its survival and reproduction by 18.5%, on average, under completely stable conditions. This means that if survival and reproduction decreased by a third, adaptive evolution would help a population recover in three to seven generations. Bighorn sheep (Ovis canadensis) evolved horns that were 0.7 inches (2 centimeters) shorter than before over 20 years, or three generations, because hunters had targeted those with larger horns. Snow voles (Chionomys nivalis) shrank by up to 0.1 ounces (3 grams) over 10 years, or eight generations, probably because of changes in snowfall."

None of the statements above refer to any type of innovative evolution.  We have a link to a scientific paper that does not mention any type of innovative evolution.  All that has gone on is that the authors have analyzed the population of 19 species scattered around the world (mostly birds), and claimed that these 19 species are doing fairly well in improving the size of their population. But why were these 19 species chosen among the 32,000 species whose population is  been tracked (according to the Living Planet Index)? The authors make no claim to have made a random selection of 19 species. Nor did they pre-register a group of species before analyzing data.  So we should suspect that they chose a group of species that would support the thesis they were trying to advance. No evidence of a power of evolution has been given. 

We then have a statement by an evolutionary biologist that "evolution is always occurring," but such a statement is true only about evolution with the tiniest of small e's (gene pool variation), not innovative evolution.  There is no evidence that visible innovative evolution is occurring anywhere in the world. We have the profoundly misleading statement quoted below:

" ' Rates of evolution can be fantastically fast because of that constant environmental change,' Michael Benton, a vertebrate paleontologist at the University of Bristol, told Live Science. But 'the shorter the time scale, the faster the rate, and this is after you have corrected for time,' he added."

Whatever is being referred to here, it is not innovative evolution in the sense of the origin of new types of proteins, the origin of new types of cells,  the origin of new types of visible body structures, or the origin of new species very different from any previous species. No such things have been observed by humans studying nature.  So making claims like the ones quoted above are profoundly misleading. 

We then have in the LiveScience article this laughably weak bit of evidence:

"Stroud and his colleagues at the University of Miami are now using nonnative green iguanas as a case study for rapid evolution. The warm-adapted lizards are known to freeze and fall out of trees during Miami's infrequent cold snaps. 'What we saw is that some die, but some survive — and the ones that survive can actually tolerate colder temperatures than the ones we measured before,'  Stroud said. 'So it suggests that evolution might be happening.' "

Evolution might be happening? A look at the paper reveals the reason for Stroud's hesitance here. The sample sizes are so small (only about a dozen animals per species) that no robust evidence has been provided that there has been any improvement in the ability of iguanas to survive in the cold. 

Then the LiveScience article gives us this little attempt to provide evidence of the power of evolution to produce rapid results: " In the Triassic period (251.9 million to 201.3 million years ago), after the Permian extinction, large marine reptiles called ichthyosaurs evolved to be gigantic in less than 3 million years — more quickly than whales did — because they became the ocean's top predators."  Endless similar examples could be provided of cases in which some type of dramatic innovation seems to suddenly appear in the fossil record, with little or no record of transitional intermediate forms. But no such cases prove any evidence of the power of innovative evolution or rapid evolution. To the contrary, such cases undermine the claims of Darwinists. The more rapidly things appear in the fossil record, the less credible are Darwinist claims of such things appearing because of Darwinian evolution, which cannot credibly explain complex biological innovations occurring over any time scale, and fails particularly bad in trying to explain dramatic biological innovations occurring over rapid timescales. 

The person who made the previous misleading statement that "rates of evolution can be fantastically fast" was Michael Benton, who is not a biologist, but a paleontologist, a guy who studies fossils. The Livescience article ends with him making an equally misleading statement by saying, "Maybe the answer is that everything is capable of enormously crazy fast evolution, if it has to." Pretty much the only way you could get such an idea is by studying bones,  for the fossil record gives us endless examples of dramatic biological innovations seemingly occurring "out of nowhere." Such cases contradict Darwinist biology, which predict that no such things should ever happen.  The more you study biology and the vast level of organization required for biological innovations, the more you will dismiss the possibility of unguided processes such as Darwinian evolution producing such results.  

Bone guys like Benton usually fail to study the mountainous levels of organization, fine-tuning and component interdependence in living things. The incredibly high requirements thresholds for biological innovations mean  the odds against biological innovations by accidental random mutations are everywhere prohibitive. 

Trying to sell us on the idea of rapid Darwinian evolution, our Livescience article has failed to provide any decent evidence for it, and has failed to provide any decent evidence for any power of Darwinian evolution to explain dramatic biological innovations. Another article on the Livescience site (by the same author as article discussed above) also tries to persuade us that evolution can work fast. It is an article entitled "Which animals are evolving fastest?" 

We have a claim that some scientists think that the fastest evolving animal is "tuataras (Sphenodon punctatus), lizard-like animals found only in modern-day New Zealand." But then we are told there has been little change in the appearance of this animal, and no mention is made of anything new that the animal evolved during human history. An evolutionary biologist named Lee says such animals  "have not evolved that much anatomically." The same biologist suggests that the fastest evolving animal is "the Lake Victoria cichlids."

We hear the claim that "More than 500 species of cichlids (Cichlidae, a family of fish) have evolved there over the past 15,000 years."  The claim is unverifiable. We don't know how many cichlids there were or what types there were 15,000 or 10,000 or 5,000 or 2000 years ago. No mention is made of any biological innovation occurring during this time. We also hear a claim that guppies are evolving quickly, but we get no specifics about this, and only get a reference to a paper behind a paywall. It seems that our author is unable to find a single animal species that is evolving in any very impressive way. We hear no mention of any new anatomical structure in any species that appeared during human history, with humans observing such a feature gradually appearing. 

Read between the lines here, and you get the truth: Darwinian evolution is impotent as an explanation for visible biological innovations. We do not see Darwinian evolution acting in any very impressive way anywhere in the world, in any species. 

Having the phony headline of "An Incredible Lifeform Is Evolving at Lightning Speed—Faster Than We Ever Imagined Possible," the headline above is from the Popular Mechanics site (nowadays a notorious purveyor of untrue clickbait "science news" headlines). A person reading the article about a 10-year study of water fleas will get this confession: 

"Across a 10-year span, the study analyzed the genetic variance of D. pulex in a stable environment. The study showed that the organisms experienced changing selection pressures, but that they all eventually canceled out, meaning no dominant trait took over and influenced the organism’s evolution." 

One of the very many reasons why Darwinism fails to explain innovative evolution is that generally speaking the early stages of new innovations are useless; and such early stages cannot be explained by gradualist ideas of a series of tiny steps, each giving a benefit. 

The oldest known depictions of humans show humans looking just like current humans. There has been no major evolution of human abilities since ancient times, with the possible exception of a few minor things not visible. The ancient Greeks were as smart as anyone living today. Masterpieces of subtle philosophy such as the Dialogues of Plato are proof that before the time of Jesus there lived minds as intelligent as any living today. 

Below is a diagram illustrating a very severe problem for Darwinist explanations. Each brick in the diagram represents roughly one million human lives. It has been estimated that about 100 billion people have lived since about 10,000 BC. It is also believed that the human or pre-human population was very small prior to 10,000 BC, consisting of only about 10,000 people at any one time. So under the claims of Darwinism, there was some enormous leap of macroevolution between 200,000 BC and 10,000 BC, resulting in humans that could speak, philosophize and build cities; but there has been no major evolution in humans since 8000 BC. That makes no sense; it is not believable. Why would there be evolution so enormous in only a relatively small number of lifetimes, but no major human evolution during a period in which the number of human lifetimes was many times greater? 

Why do our scientists believe so devoutly in many things never observed, while refusing so stubbornly to believe in many other things very often observed?

Postscript: Don't be fooled by the recent headlines such as "Scientists Say Humans Are Going Through a Major Evolution Right Now." The evolution discussed is cultural evolution, not Darwinian evolution.