Near-death Experience - in Popular Culture

In Popular Culture

• In the 1983 film Brainstorm a team of scientists invents "the Hat", a brain/computer interface that allows sensations to be recorded from a person's brain and converted to tape so that others can experience them. One of the scientists, Lillian, suffers a heart attack while working alone, realizing that help cannot reach her in time, she dons the Hat and records her experience as she dies. When another scientist, Michael, accesses the final part of the death tape, after the point of Lillian's physical death, he sees "memory bubbles" and experiences Lillian's memories. To his awe, Michael bears witness to the Afterlife; Lillian experiences a brief vision of Hell before travelling away from Earth and through the universe, even after the tape ends, ultimately witnessing visions of angels and departed souls flying into a great cosmic Light. Michael then collapses in an apparent coma. Awakening from the experience, he weeps with joy.

• The 1990 film Flatliners dramatizes the attempts of five medical students (acted by Kiefer Sutherland, Julia Roberts, Kevin Bacon, William Baldwin and Oliver Platt) to find out what lies beyond death. They conduct clandestine experiments that produce NDEs.

• The 2001 novel Passage (hardcover, ISBN 0-553-11124-8), by Connie Willis, follows the efforts of Joanna Lander, a research psychologist, to understand the phenomenon of NDEs by interviewing hospital patients after they are revived following clinical death. She becomes the partner of Dr. Richard Wright, a neurologist who has discovered a way to chemically induce an artificial NDE. Their studies lead Joanna to the discovery of the biological purpose of NDEs.