GLIMPSES OF DEATH: ANALYSIS OF LETTERS SUBMITTED IN RESPONSE TO A BBC DOCUMENTARY ON NEAR-DEATH EXPERIENCES.

This paper reports on a content analysis of a collection of letters describing spontaneous cases of near-death experiences (NDEs) and out-of-body experiences that were submitted to Dr Peter Fenwick in response to a BBC documentary that gave sympathetic coverage to the phenomenon. The project was undertaken to place in the public domain a collection of cases that were hitherto relatively unknown. In order to provide structure to a content analysis of the material, cases were analysed in terms of the reported features and the circumstances of occurrence. This enabled us to evaluate the degree to which the current collection was consistent with Ring’s (1980) claim that NDEs involve an unfolding sequence of stages. No support was found for this suggestion, although the phenomenology and circumstances are comparable with other case collections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]