To Hell and Back

From: The Crossover Experience: Life After Death - DJ Kadagian, Gregory Shushan PhD, Dr. Pim van Lomell

4% Have a Hellish Experience

Hellish near-death experiences are rarely recorded. Both the prospective and retrospective studies show rates from 1% to 4% 

It should also be noted that a large percentage of those having reported a hellish NDE went on to have a positive one.

The most common location for the occurrence of a hellish experience is in or around the tunnel, which may morph into a cave. It is most often described as dark or pitch-black.

Those encountering this realm report seeing evil demons, slithering beings, and angry, mean souls. They report hands reaching out towards them in an attempt to pull them into a space that is often dark and obscured. They often report being attacked, badly injured, and even tortured. Screaming, moaning, and evil laughter is heard. They also report unpleasant odors such as a burning smell. 

Many describe calling out to a higher being for help, who often arrives in some form, causing these evil entities to flee. We do not get a sense of how long these encounters last, but they appear shorter than the average positive NDEs.

The message NDErs often take away from a hellish experience is that they were shown this realm as a warning that they need to look more closely at how they have been living their lives, and how they have treated others. Unlike in the life-review, there does seem to be a sense of judgment. And the message from a hellish NDE is delivered more through fear than through a connection with others.

Hellish NDEs are rare in historical and cross-cultural NDE accounts, especially in indigenous societies.

The earliest recorded Native American NDE was a negative one. Reported in the 16th century, it involved a “wicked man” who had been “dead and buried,” and then revived. He claimed that his soul had journeyed westward toward the hellish realm of Popogusso, but was saved by a deity who made him return to his body to teach his people how to avoid such negative fates.

Negative NDEs are not generally consistent with each other. There are no identifiable, negative, cross-cultural NDE features. This is in contrast to the general similarities of the more usual NDEs, even despite the cultural differences (entering darkness, emerging into light, meeting deceased relatives, etc.).

An African account of the Akan people from the kingdom of Whydah (Benin) told of “an old Sorceress” who saw “strange things concerning Hell” after claiming “to have been there in person.” She saw “several of her acquaintance[s] there,” some being “miserably tormented.” This was reported in 1704.

In an account from 1646, a Native American woman of the Wyandot people had converted to Christianity before her NDE. When she rose from her burial in a Christian cemetery, she told of her experiences in the heaven of the French — a realm of fire where Christians burned souls to possess them. She was greeted “with firebrands and burning torches, with cruelties and torments inconceivable.” Though she was dead only one day, it seemed like years. She was finally assisted by “a certain person, moved with compassion for her,” who released her from her chains and showed her a valley that led to the afterlife realm of indigenous people who had *not* converted to Christianity — a place of delight and goodness, a place without evil.

Most frightening experiences occur before entering the tunnel, or before entering the otherworldly realm. About 15% of the people who have a positive NDE experience a frightening moment in the dark space before entering the tunnel and the light. It is as if they experience an incomplete NDE because they are not yet permitted to proceed into the light.

One to two percent of people with a near-death experience linger in this frightening dark space, unable to escape. To their horror, they sometimes find themselves pulled even deeper into the profound darkness. The NDE ends in this scary atmosphere from where people reenter their bodies. The experience is devoid of positive emotions and later stirs profound feelings of guilt. In fact, such a terrifying NDE usually produces long-lasting emotional trauma. Not surprisingly, it is also known as a “hell experience.”