Shared Death Experiences

**Dom Bettinelli** (0:00)
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You're listening to episode 429 of Jimmy Akin's Mysterious World, where we look at mysteries from the twin perspectives of faith and reason. In this episode, we're talking about Shared Death Experiences. I'm Dom Bettinelli, and joining me today is Jimmy Akin. Hey, Jimmy.

**Jimmy Akin** (0:32)
Hiya, Dom.

**Dom Bettinelli** (0:33)
Folks, be sure to stay around for the end of the episode. We'll have your feedback on our recent episode number 418, Skeleton Lake. But first, have you ever sat at the bedside of a dying loved one and then found yourself swept up in what seemed to be their experience of dying? Maybe the room filled with a brilliant, impossible light. Maybe you watched a luminous form rise out of their body.
Maybe you felt yourself accompanying them part of the way into the afterlife. If so, you may have had what researchers today call a Shared Death Experience. These experiences have been reported all through human history. They've been the subject of serious scientific study for decades, and they come in a remarkable variety of forms. So what is a Shared Death Experience? Who has them? And what do they tell us about what happens when we die?
That's what we'll be talking about on this episode of Jimmy Akin's Mysterious World. So Jimmy, what are we talking about today?

**Jimmy Akin** (1:34)
Well, the topic today, as you said, is Shared Death Experiences, which researchers sometimes shorten to SDEs. And before we dive in, I want to situate the listener relative to a couple of things that we've covered before because SDEs overlap with a few other phenomena that we've looked at before on the show. We talked about Near Death Experiences, or NDEs, back in Episode 27
We covered Deathbed Visions in Episode 318, and we looked at Crisis Apparitions in Episode 417
SDEs are distinct from all three, but they're all closely related. So let me define an SDE. A Shared Death Experience is when someone who is not the dying person, nevertheless seems to share in some part of the dying person's experience of death. The key word is Shared. In an NDE, it's the dying person who has the experience, and in a Deathbed Vision, the dying person sees something that the bystanders typically don't. But in an SDE, the bystander, who could be a loved one, a caregiver or a friend, reports experiencing some of the same things that the dying person seems to be experiencing, or sometimes the bystander experiences remarkable phenomena that seem to be part of the dying person's transition, even though the dying person may be unconscious and unable to report anything.

**Dom Bettinelli** (3:04)
What kinds of things do the bystanders and SDEs actually perceive?

**Jimmy Akin** (3:09)
Well, the range is surprisingly wide. Some SDEs are relatively simple. It's just a sense that the room changed or a sudden warmth or an inexplicable piece. Others are extraordinarily vivid and detailed. The most commonly reported features include things like a brilliant light fill in the room, often described as brighter than anything the experiencer has ever seen, but yet it's still somehow not blinding.
They may also report watching a mist, a haze, or luminous form rise out of the body of the dying person.
They may report seeing or sensing deceased relatives appearing to greet the dying person, hearing music with no apparent source, often described as more beautiful than any earthly music, feeling the room change, or having a sense that the geometry of space has shifted, you know, walls no longer meeting at right angles, that kind of thing, or having a brief out-of-body experience and accompanying the dying person part of the way, often traveling towards a light, and sometimes glimpsing what looks like an otherworldly landscape before being sent back. Now, not all SDEs include all those features. Most SDEs just involve one or two, but those features cluster in a recognizable pattern that researchers have found to be remarkably consistent across cultures and across centuries.

**Dom Bettinelli** (4:38)
So how is an SDE different from a crisis apparition?

**Jimmy Akin** (4:42)
Well, they can look similar from the outside. A crisis apparition, as we covered in episode 417, is when you see or sense someone who's in a crisis, often dying, often at a distance.
You get an impression of the person. Maybe you see them, or maybe you just know something is wrong. But in an SDE, you're not just perceiving a signal from the dying person. You're actually participating in what looks like their death experience. You see the light that they appear to be moving towards. You feel yourself lifted. In some cases, you travel with them. So the difference is between just receiving information that someone is in a crisis and actually being drawn into the experience of that crisis. I'd also note that the more dramatic crisis apparitions where the recipient sees a brilliant light, hears music or perceives the agent in a joyful state are often reclassified today as SDEs because they have those participatory qualities. And there's obvious overlap with deathbed visions as well. The dying person might be having a deathbed vision at the same moment that a bystander is seeing the vision too and having an SDE.