13th Congress of the International Society for Folk Narrative Research

Presentation Abstracts

KÖHLER-ZÜLCH, Ines

Near-Death Experiences in Past and Present

With the appearance of Raymond A. Moody's Book Life after Life a broad public suddenly became aware of the phenomenon of unusual psychic experiences surrounding death (Moody 1975). The publication of the recorded reports of reanimated and also of dying people, the fact that this phenomenon was rendered public, encouraged persons who had been revived to talk about their own transcendental experiences that they had formerly passed over in silence. Scientific studies as well as reports of personal experiences were multiplying. Near death experiences are, however, not limited to the present and are not only due to the progress made by rescue medicine and intensive care that has increased the possibilities of reanimation on a larger scale.

Titles such as ‘Life after death’ are ambiguous: is it intended to emphasize the aspect of a new terrestrial life or rather to affirm that an otherworldly life after death does exist? The books tell of people returning to life, but they reveal less about this new life than about the phases of death, about transcendental experiences that have been lived through. This leads us to the abundant sphere of conceptions of life after death. Contemporary records of near death experiences show many parallels to tales about visionary death experiences from the most diverse times and countries.

This paper gives individual examples from different periods in European history, ranging from medieval visionary literature to the publications of the popular German author Karl May, a representative of light fiction. Consideration is given to the question of how far these heterogenous sources are comparable and how far they are the expressions of socio-cultural conditions or of common patterns of human experience. These are issues concerning cultural history and the history of mentalities