What do people think of when they die?

I have been wondering what people think of when they die for quite some time now. I have already asked my dad. But he doesn't know. And every time I ask her, my mom only keeps talking about angels and how people with special birthdays (such as Christmas) see special things others can't see. So I decided to do some research.

People used to be dead once their blood circulation stopped. But nowadays, medicine has found a number of ways how doctors can prevent this from happening (check out some info on Advanced Life Support in this article on Wikipedia. There are also a few reanimation techniques such as CPR - Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation - that can help save people's lives.) Some doctors even claim that they can resurrect people. Someone called Dr Sam Parnia has written a book about cases where people had been dead for more than 40 minutes (check it out on Amazon). So I guess, in the 21st century, you're only dead once your brain has finally stopped working.

My granddad died of a heart attack when he was 89. Technically, it was not his heart that killed him but the fact that - after his heart had given up - his brain was no longer supplied with oxygen. It's too bad I can't ask him what he was thinking when it happened. But there are lots of people around who have worked with people dying or who came back after a near-death experience. So I thought it might be a good idea to have a look at what they're saying...

I found lots of stuff, but most of it was not what I was looking for. In the Guardian, for example, there was an article about what people regretted most when they died. The article was about a woman named Bonnie Ware who used to be a nurse and who wrote a book about the 'Top Five Regrets of the Dying' (you can have a quick look at the book here). What she says is that most people regret that they had to live an unhappy life in which they weren't truly themselves. Having worked too hard came in second place. Bonnie Ware didn't record any young people, and most of her patients were old men, so I think most of the things she has to say are fairly common sense (or just sell very well). Her book didn't answer my question because it didn't mention what people were thinking of when they died. It only went on and on about what they were talking about before it happened.

You can find out all kinds of stuff on near-death experiences (NDEs) online. I think this is because people are really afraid of dying. My granddad used to tell me lots of times that he was tired of life because most of his friends and family were dead. So I think he didn't mind dying that much in the end. But I'm sure he was still pretty scared when it happened.




Psychologists think that most people in our Western World are scared of death. They even have a name for it: it's called 'Thanataphobia'. So I think people will definitely think about how scared or not scared they are when they are dying.

Anyway. There are a few common things in the NDEs I looked at. A priest named Don Piper had a near death experience and was singing along to 'What a friend we have in Jesus' after being hit by a truck. He says he went to Heaven and he's also written a bestseller book about it. He's now a baptist priest with his own church in Texas, so I don't know if he invented the story afterwards to sell a lot of books or if this really happened.

Other people tell stories about how they saw their own surgery or how the paramedics tried to reanimate their lifeless bodies. But they all described their outer body experiences from memory, so I guess they all may have made up at least parts of it. Maybe they were trying to make sense of what happened to them and those were the only explanations they could find. What all near-death experiences have in common is that people saw or thought of something that was connected with who they were or what they believed in.

Sam Parnia says:

'People tend to interpret what they see based on their background: A Hindu describes a Hindu god, an atheist doesn’t see a Hindu god or a Christian god, but some being. Different cultures see the same thing, but their interpretation depends on what they believe.' (I took this quote from an interview on Wired.com)

What this means is that what you think of when you die pretty much depends on who you are and what you believe in. Just before death, the brain goes through some exciting stuff. It is bombarded with a huge amount of sensory information. This happens because of a sudden loss of oxygen or of some traumatic injury (when you get shot in the head, for example). Just before you die, the brain cells then fire one last electrical impulse. Sometimes they also release a chemical called dimethlyltryptamine (DMT). This is exactly the same compound our brain releases when we dream.

So what some people describe as near-death experiences might just be their brain trying to make sense of an enormous sensory overload. And what people later describe as a tunnel or as a white light might just be their memory trying to make sense of a few confusing images...

As it turns out, it is quite difficult to tell what people really think of when they die. Apparently, you can have a near-death experience just by thinking that you're dying. So I think our brain plays all kinds of tricks on us when it is about to stop working.

But I have found out at least one thing that is true. No matter where we're from, which religion we believe in or what our regrets may be. We don't think of shopping lists or money problems when we die. What we think of always has to do with death.


Check out this article on the Daily Mail's website on the thinking you're dying experience. For a few more recorded cases of NDEs have a look round websites such as this one: near-deathexperiences.org. If you always wanted to know how to do CPR, then have a look at this NHS site. There's an interesting video on there with someone showing how to do it properly.

The Zombie Boy was drawn by someone called Rick Lucey, I took it from his blog. The surgery picture came from the National Geographic. The boy in the tunnel can be found on the Paranormal Encyclopedia; the painting is by someone called Mike Pettygrew.