The unanticipated occurrence of unusually enhanced mental clarity just before death has been reported across time and cultures and has come to be known by the term “terminal lucidity.” Cases that appear to be characteristic of terminal lucidity in children have been sporadically documented in historical and more recent literature, yet no studies have systematically examined the characteristics...
The present article informs about a case of prolonged scientific dishonesty in the field of parapsychology. It emerged that Alejandro Parra, an active member of the parapsychological community since about three decades, has published substantially plagiarized books and articles since at least 2007. Currently, I am aware of 20 publications that contain plagiarized sections or consist almost...
Swiss geologist Albert Heim is well known for his pioneering contributions to several aspects of geology, and for his role in establishing the breeding of different kinds of Swiss mountain dogs. In the field of near-death research, it is also recognized that he performed a pioneering study into near-death states of falling mountaineers. It seems hardly known, however, that Heim also influenced...
In recent decades, the Tibetan Book of the Dead (TBD) has attracted much attention from Westerners interested in Eastern spirituality and has been discussed in the literature on dying and near-death experiences. However, the history of the TBD has practically been ignored in that literature up to now. This history has been elaborated in detail by Tibetologist Bryan Cuevas (2003). To bring this...
Among other authors, Joel Ibrahim Kreps (2009) has recently published accounts of Muslim near-death experiences (NDEs). With the present paper, we aim to contribute to the growing number of non-Western NDE reports by providing summaries of eight additional Muslim NDEs, seven translated from the original Italian source (Giovetti, 2007) and one from an English source (Lerma, 2009), and to provide...
The literature concerned with experiences of the dying contains numerous accounts reporting the sudden return of mental clarity shortly before death. These experiences can be described as Terminal Lucidity (TL). The most peculiar cases concern patients suffering from mental disability including mental illness or dementia. Despite the potential relevance of TL for developing new forms of...
Abstract: In this paper, I present four apparent near-death experiences (NDEs) reported in Roman times. Despite their uncertain reliability, they contain features deserving attention. Three reports involve taking the wrong person to the realm of death by mistake ("mistake cases"), and even include the claim that the correct person had died after the NDEr revived ("correction cases"). Though...