During a near-death experience, people often see similar visions – light, flight, their own unconscious bodies, God, angels, as well as loved ones or animals that they lost during their lifetime. Most of these experiences are accompanied by a sense of all-consuming love, unity with the Universe, calmness, and lack of fear. However, not all NDEs are the same; some of them are frightening and mesmerizing.
For instance, the British tabloid Express published the story of a man named Van who went through a painful near-death experience, during which he saw hell. According to Van, this is not at all what he expected to see in the afterlife. However, the experience shook him so much that he then proceeded to completely change his life.
Van’s face-off with death happened many years ago, but has only now decided to talk about it. Back then, he suffered a drug overdose, during which he passed out for 30 minutes and suffered clinical death. However, he remembers what happened after he actually died very well.
“Immediately, I fell through the earth as if the earth were no longer solid and I were sky diving or something… I literally fell through the soil, rocks, minerals, water, etc. It was not so much a tunnel as just literally passing through the solids, which at this point were anything but solid,” the man described his experience. After a long fall, Van found himself on the floor of a hallway.
Trying to find his way out of the darkness, he wandered around this other world and saw many rooms where he found people serving out sentences like prisoners. One woman, for example, was incessantly washing a dirty toilet. Wandering through the rooms, Van felt that he was in a place of eternal punishment. Eventually, he bumped into a man who called himself Satan, which is when everything became clear.
“I ran out of the room and began running down the hallway again… the endless hallway. It felt futile but I was scared and continued running. I could hear the man laughing behind me,” Van said. At that moment he regained consciousness.
Most NDE patients describe a sensation of light beckoning to them. However, this unusual experience suggests that NDEs can be much more versatile. At the same time, one should not forget the high probability that these experiences are nothing more than different kinds of phase states, and therefore one must be careful with any interpretations.
