Fly in the Ointment: Why Do Bad NDEs Happen to Good People?

A Biblical, Historical, and Theological Meditation

Those who have read A Magical World will recall that, after unpacking the objective evidence for the reality of near-death experiences, I go on to explore the parallels between Christian theology of the afterlife and the otherworldly experiences of the clinically dead. I offer instances of:

1. People—whether believers or unbelievers—who simply leave their body and observe immediate surroundings but who do not experience any otherworldly realms or spiritual beings

2. People who have positive, heavenly experiences

3. People who have negative, hellish experiences (including one particular person who was saved out of his hellish experience when calling upon God, at which point the experience changed into a glorious one)

In relating these experiences, I proposed a nuanced understanding of these otherworldly realms as not “heaven” or “hell” proper, but as “glimpses” of what may await us after death.¹ Since there is wide testimony among NDErs that they did not pass a so-called “barrier” or “point of no return,” there seems to be reason to believe that the near-death experience is at best a preview of the afterlife. Accordingly, Maurice Rawlings has dubbed the immediate post-mortem state a “sorting ground,” while Erwin Lutzer has called it a “threshold.”²

With such a view in mind, I made the case that we can cautiously infer some truths about the afterlife destiny, even if we cannot be dogmatic. I referenced this diversity of experiences as a potential point of corroboration for the traditional Christian expectation of an afterlife of glory for the faithful and darkness for the wicked. That said, I do not take hard-and-fast positions on the ideas such as:

• The possibility of an eventual post-mortem repentance

• The possibility of post-mortem spiritual progression or versions of Purgatory

Instead, I limit my argument to the very basic idea of faithful/saved people who are headed for glory and wicked/unsaved people who are headed for darkness. This is a “mere Christian” belief which I endeavored to demonstrate through the testimonies of NDErs.

Toward the end of the chapter, however, I made mention of a certain fly in the ointment: Not all NDEs can be so neatly organized according to common Christian expectations. I note the documentation that some pious Christians do indeed suffer negative NDEs. Dale Allison, a Christian New Testament scholar, states the problem starkly:

No correlation obtains between religious faith of any variety and whether one has a positive or negative NDE. Indeed, we know of no clear connection with any specific character trait. Individuals of deservedly ill repute have reported blissful NDEs while seemingly good and decent citizens have narrated inverted or hellish NDEs. The straightforward dualism that turns heaven into the destination of all the faithful and hell into the locale for all the impious does not line up with the phenomenology of NDEs.³

The scope of my chapter did not allow for more than a cursory mention of this puzzling fact, and so I offer in this article some additional thoughts. (The matter of positive NDEs happening to “bad people” deserves its own, separate conversation.)

Let me state at the forefront that I write from a position of curiosity, not dogmatism. Few Christians who have written on the subject of NDEs have attempted to tackle this issue in a systematic way, and I am simply hoping to offer some food for thought to begin such a discussion. I thus hope that readers will indulge some of my “thinking out loud” and offering a stab at the problem, knowing that I do not speak from a position of certainty.

With that caveat out of the way, the problem of negative NDEs happening to the faithful presents a number of plausible options (excluding the naturalistic and hallucination hypotheses, which I consider to be thoroughly undermined in A Magical World):

1. NDEs are wholesale demonic deceptions.

2. The “Christians” who report such experiences are not truly Christian or are lying (alternatively, one might posit that they are “weak” Christians who are not afforded as much protection as “pious” Christians).

3. The traditional Christian expectation of glory for the faithful and darkness for the wicked is wrong.

4. All negative NDEs are simply “life reviews” that have been cut short.

5. These anomalies may be attributed to attacks by malevolent spirits (without denying the ultimate Christian expectation of glory for the faithful and darkness for the wicked).

I do not consider this list exhaustive. There may indeed be some further, more nuanced possibilities. If there is anything I have learned in the past few years of studying the “supernatural,” it is how little we understand of the mechanics of the spiritual realm.

In sifting out these major possibilities, though, it is first necessary for me to reiterate my disdain for the practice of immediately positing the “demon of the gaps” for any such experiences (option #1). The enigma presented by these anomalous experiences may tempt some to simply wave their hands at the entire NDE phenomenon as mere demonic deception: If pious Christians do not uniformly have positive NDEs, does that not undermine the aforementioned arguments that NDEs corroborate the Christian vision of the afterlife? To argue this position would be to throw out the many aspects of NDEs that do seem to corroborate the Christian faith and which have been so positively transformative for individuals around the globe. And it further seems to attribute too universal a power to evil forces.

For those who still want to retain the corroborative evidence of NDEs, another temptation is to simply cast all those who report such anomalous experiences as not “true” believers: Perhaps these NDErs were mere pretenders to the faith and cannot be counted as “real” Christians (option #2). I likewise find this explanation untenable and even lazy.

Another view, propounded by Eben Alexander (who does not share the Christian faith), dismisses the import of negative NDEs, viewing them as nothing more than life reviews which “appear to be incomplete” and which, he expects, would ultimately end in bliss (options #3 and #4).⁴ This view does seem to smell of special pleading and is difficult to square with those episodes of active assault on the departing soul by malevolent spirits.

In response to these reactions, I must demur while at the same time suspecting the activity of malevolent spirits for this particular phenomenon (option #5). This may at first seem to be an act of special pleading on my own part. Yet allow me to offer a cadre of meditations on several independent data points which have given me reason to proffer such an explanation.

Point #1: Don’t Beam Me Up, Scotty—The Tradition of Angelic Escorts at the Time of Death

Growing up, I had a rather simplistic, one-dimensional image of what happens when we die. I thought of the moment of death as an instantaneous jaunt from the physical world to a completely separate world in which to be judged and sent off to an intermediate version of “heaven” or “hell.” A few factors, however, have caused me to adopt a more ancient or medieval approach to this transition into the afterlife.

The first factor consisted in the many testimonies of those who have clinically died and have reported hovering around the location of their physical bodies, observing their immediate surroundings. In A Magical World, I offer testimonies from interviewees as well as from the broader literature to this effect. (I also offer some curious passages from Jewish intertestamental literature which imply a week-long “lingering” around one’s physical remains after death.)⁵ My section on ghostly activity also speaks to this idea that one is not merely “teleported” to a wholly separate spiritual place upon death—at least not in all cases.

The second factor was the longstanding tradition—both before and after Christ—of angelic escorts “carrying” the righteous off at the time of death. Consider the following passage from the Testament of Job, a pseudepigraphal Hellenistic Jewish writing dated between the first century BC and AD:⁶

Now then, my children, since you have these objects you will not have to face the enemy at all, but neither will you have worries of him in your mind, since it is a protective amulet of the Father. Rise the, gird yourselves with them before I die in order that you may be able to see those who are coming for my soul, in order that you may marvel over the creatures of God. (47:10–11)⁷

Consider also this further passage from the same composition:

After three days, as Job fell ill on his bed (without suffering or pain, however, since suffering could no longer touch him on account of the omen of the sash he wore), after those three days he saw those who had come for his soul. And rising immediately he took a lyre and gave it to his daughter Hemera. To Kasia he gave a censer, and to Amaltheia’s Horn he gave a kettle drum, so that they might bless those who had come for his soul. And when they took them, they saw the gleaming chariots which had come for his soul. And they blessed and glorified God each one in her own distinctive dialect. After these things the one who sat in the great chariot got off and greeted Job as the three daughters and their father himself looked on, though certain others did not see. And taking the soul he flew up, embracing it, and mounted the chariot and set off for the east. But his body, prepared for burial, was borne to the tomb as his three daughters went ahead girded about and singing hymns to God. (52:1–12)

According to Michael Heiser, these passages “provid[e] evidence that Jewish traditions about angels escorting believers to the blissful afterlife had been put to writing. The idea was certainly part of Second Temple Jewish thought.”⁸

He similarly points to a passage from The Testament of Abraham (20:10–12, Recension A) which further testifies to this tradition (though the work in question is considered contemporaneous with the New Testament or newer). He quotes Darrell Bock on this matter, who concludes that “an angelic escort [to heaven] is a common Jewish image. In the Christian apocrypha, such imagery took on great detail, with pictures of angels doing battle over the souls of people who had passed away.”⁹

A similar imagery seems to be employed by Jesus in Luke’s Gospel, in the account of the rich man and Lazarus, where the latter “died and was carried by the angels to Abraham’s bosom” (16:22). The commentators disagree as to whether or not this story should be considered a “proper” parable, yet as I have pointed out previously, “Jesus seems to assume the popular understanding of the afterlife presented in the story.”¹⁰ Commentators further disagree as to whether such an angelic escort was understood to be reserved for only “great saints” such as the patriarchs, or whether the common (though faithful) man was expected to be given the same treatment. In any case, angelic escorts were “in the air,” so to speak, in the mindset of many Jews in Jesus’ day. Our Lord did nothing to contradict this concept, and indeed he seems to have underwritten it, offering Christians good reason to admit the idea into their worldview.

Of course, this belief of pious Jews correlates with the folk belief in the “psychopomp” (“soul conductor”) common to cultures all over the ancient world, in which animal, humanoid, or angelic spirit-beings guide the soul of the departed to its appropriate abode in the afterlife. A cynical interpretation of this correlation might remark that the Jews simply “copied” a pagan folk belief into their theological worldview; I and others who are more cognizant of the universality of spiritual experiences, by contrast, can suggest that these common beliefs may actually stem from common experiences. Differences in details need not undermine the idea that a kernel of truth is present in the basic idea of a “soul conductor.”

It would be tedious (though helpful) to index the many examples of this belief from early and medieval Christian writings.¹¹ I believe it is non-controversial to note the continuity of this belief up to and through the modern era. Cardinal Newman’s Dream of Gerontius (1865) is an acute example of pious Roman Catholics’ expectation of a post-mortem angelic escort, which Newman describes as a “gentle pressure” which informs the disembodied soul that it is “not Self-moving, but borne forward on my way.”¹² Newman’s poem overlaps with elements from NDE reports significantly enough that one wonders whether he indeed may have had a mystical vision of the spiritual realm.

Likewise, Billy Graham’s assertion that “The Bible guarantees every believer an escorted journey into the presence of Christ by the holy angels” may serve as an exemplar for the same strand of belief among mainstream evangelical Protestants (even if he greatly overstates the biblical basis for this belief).¹³

To return to the first factor, we should remember that these widespread and heavily documented NDE reports of hovering outside the body frequently include meeting with “welcoming committees”: various “beings of light” who guide the subject on an otherworldly journey, sometimes through a tunnel and often up to a “barrier” or “point of no return.” These beings of light are commonly understood to consist of deceased humans (usually family members) and angels. A similar experience is reported in End of Life Experiences (ELEs) in which dying subjects speak of seeing such beings of light surrounding them in their final moments of physical life. Graham includes a number of these anecdotal reports in his book.¹⁴

Christian visionaries have reported eerily similar glimpses of the spiritual realm. Consider this account from Sadhu Sundar Singh, written in the 1920’s, long before accounts of NDEs hit the popular discourse in the 1970’s. He writes that the dying believer “sees angels and saintly spirits coming to welcome him. Then too, his loved ones, who have died before, are permitted to attend his deathbed, and to conduct his soul to the spiritual world.”¹⁵ Even though Singh is far from a mainstream figure, I cite him partly because of the large overlap between the details of his visions and the reports of NDErs, an overlap that is even more substantial than in Cardinal Newman’s work.

In sum, the biblical and historical references to this concept, as well as the corroborating visions of mystics and NDErs, all point to the idea of a heavenly escort provided to believers at the time of death. Traditions differ as to whether the wicked are carried to their judgment by angels or whether such “unprotected” individuals are accosted by malevolent spirits at the time of death. In any case, Christians who suspect that the declaration of Psalm 91:11 (“For he will command his angels concerning you to guard you in all your ways”) has implications for the post-mortem state are not without grounds for believing so.

And while Paul’s brief statement in 2 Corinthians 5:8 (“we would rather be away from the body and at home with the Lord”) has led some to assume a “Beam me up, Scotty” view of the post-mortem soul, that single clause simply cannot bear the weight of being an absolute statement that there exists no interim between the instant of death and the meeting with the Judge. Paul’s discussion there simply does not preclude the idea of an angelic escort.

Point #2: The Assault of Evil Spirits on Departed Souls

If we are to adopt this notion of an angelic escort at death, the question must be asked: Why? Are we given angelic guardians for mere pomp and circumstance? Or are these guardian angels meant to guard us from something? In answer to this question, let us return to a figure that I briefly mentioned in my book in the context of this issue: Saint Anthony.

A sage that mentored the indefatigable Athanasius and inspired the conversion of Saint Augustine, Anthony is a revered father of the church in both the Western and Eastern traditions. His visions of the spiritual realm, though seemingly eccentric, have been read with sobriety by Christians throughout the ages. Personally, I think that believers today should treat his visions with an equal seriousness. Below are some excepts of his own out-of-body visions, as reported by his biographer Athanasius:

Once, about the ninth hour, when [Anthony] had stood up to pray before eating, he felt himself carried away in spirit, and, incredible as it may seem, as he stood he saw himself from outside himself, as it were, being guided through the air by certain beings [angels]; then he saw malign and terrifying beings stationed in the air who were endeavoring to hinder his passage. When his guides resisted them, they demanded an accounting to determine whether or not he was answerable to them. When, however, they wished to take an account from his birth, Anthony’s guides prevented them, saying: ‘The Lord has wiped out his faults from the time of his birth, but you may take an account from the time he became a monk and promised himself to God.’ Then, after they accused him but proved nothing, his way became free and unhindered, and immediately he saw himself coming, as it were, and re-entering himself, and again he was Anthony as before.

He forgot to eat, and remained the rest of the day and all of the night groaning and praying, for he was astonished to see against how many enemies we wrestle, and with what great difficulties we have to pass through the air. He remembered that the Apostle had meant this when he said: ‘according to the prince of the power of the air about us.’ For, here, the enemy has power to fight and to try to hinder those who pass through. . . . Paul was caught up into the third heaven, and heard inexpressible words, and returned, whereas Anthony saw himself entering the air and struggling until he was proved free.¹⁶

And in a subsequent passage:

[Anthony] discussed with some of those who came to him the life of the soul and the nature of the place it will have hereafter, and on the following night someone from above called him, saying: ‘Anthony, arise, go out and look.’ He went out, therefore, for he knew which voice to obey, and, looking up, he saw a towering figure standing formless and terrifying, reaching to the clouds, and he saw people going upward, as if on wings. The figure was stretching out its hands, and it stopped some, but others, by flying above it, passed over it and rose without further trouble. The towering figure then gnashed its teeth at these, but exulted over those who fell.

Then a voice came to Anthony: ‘Understand the vision,’ and his mind was opened and he understood that it was the passing souls, and that the towering figure was the power and prevents them from passing, but he is unable to seize those who have not yet yielded to him, as they pass above him.¹⁷

The visions of Saint Anthony describe a spiritual realm which is populated with malevolent spirits intent on hindering the passage of souls to an abode of bliss. The success or failure of these spirit-beings to hinder souls seems to be predicated on the virtuousness of the soul itself as well as the level of protection offered by the angelic “guides.”

If Anthony’s visions (and his understanding of Paul’s writings on spiritual warfare) were all the evidence we had for malevolent spirits interfering with the departure of souls, we would be well advised to take this idea with a grain of salt. Yet his visions appear to be corroborated by similar accounts of visionaries, theologians, and NDErs. Christian mystic Sadhu Sundar Singh, for instance, reported:

The souls of the good had with them only angels and good spirits, who had conducted them from their death-beds. Evil spirits were not allowed to come near to them, but stood far off and watched. I saw also that there were no good spirits with the souls of the really wicked, but about them were evil spirits, who had come with them from their death-beds¹⁸

As already noted, Singh reported on angelic escorts for the blessed. In this section, however, he clarifies that these escorts actively prevent evil spirits from coming near and harassing the departed soul. And he further speaks of the “really wicked” who have an unholy welcoming committee: Evil spirits escort these souls “away towards the darkness.”¹⁹ Singh later clarifies that the wicked have become so warped that they would hate the light of God and Heaven, preferring to remain in darkness, an idea reminiscent not only of John’s Gospel, but also of Lewis’ The Great Divorce.

Looking again at John Henry Newman’s Dream of Gerontius, we are given an image of “Some bodily form of ill” which “Floats on the wind” and makes the dying soul “wild with horror and dismay.”²⁰ It is only after a prayer of distress to Jesus (and Mary) that the soul in question is relieved by the escort of his guardian angel, who later shows him a “middle region” of the spiritual plane where a “sudden howl” is heard “from the demons who assemble there.” These evil spirits are “Hungry and wild, to claim their property” and seek to “gather souls for hell.”²¹ Yet their assaults, writes Newman, are thwarted when “some child of grace, angel or saint . . . meets the demons on their raid.” At the sight of the angelic escort, the evil spirits “scud away as cowards from the fight.”²²

Finally, we have the corroboration of NDErs of the reality of evil spirits harassing the recently departed soul. I myself interviewed one for my book (under the pseudonym “Luke”).²³ Howard Storm’s account of being accosted by such spirits is particularly noteworthy, in that his cries of distress to Jesus lead to his rescue, even though he had been an ardent disbeliever up until that point.²⁴

Thus far we have established some defensible points regarding the immediate post-mortem state, based on the testimony of the Scriptures, early Christian writings, visionary reports, and NDEs:

• The soul is not “teleported” at the time of death but rather embarks on a journey of sorts.

• The souls of the dead are typically met by other spirits at the moment of death. These may be benevolent spirits (angels or beatified human spirits). But they may also be malevolent spirits (demons or warped human spirits) or some combination thereof.

• Benevolent spirits protect the departed souls, while malevolent spirits attempt to harass the departed souls.

• As a general rule, the faithful can expect protection while the wicked can expect to be attacked.

Again, I present these points as tentative generalizations of the immediate post-mortem state. These notions are based on the tapestry of testimonies mentioned above, and they are neither meant to be absolute rules nor exhaustive of afterlife possibilities.

Point #3: Evil Spirits Sometimes Thwart Benevolent Spirits

These points having been explored, I would like to throw a wrench into the system. Turning to Daniel 10, we are told of a peculiar episode involving what Paul would call the “powers of the air.”

After twenty-one days of prayer and partial fasting, Daniel is given a vision of a mighty angel, who declares that “I have now been sent to you,” presumably by God Almighty. Though his commission was on the first day of Daniel’s prayer and fasting, this angel was hindered by “the prince of the kingdom of Persia” for twenty-one days. It was only at the assistance of Michael the archangel that he was able to escape the seemingly malevolent principality and accomplish his charge of speaking to Daniel.

Why do I bring up this account? I do it simply to introduce the biblical idea that, at times, it is possible for malevolent spirits to hinder benevolent spirits. Once we admit this possibility—however rare—it introduces new ways of interpreting the issue discussed at the beginning of this article.

Let me make the logic absolutely clear:

• Premise 1: The purpose of angelic escorts at death is to guard the faithful souls from evil spirits.

  • Corollary to Premise 1: An absence of angelic escorts implies vulnerability of such souls to such evil spirits.

• Premise 2: At times, evil spirits can hinder benevolent spirits.

• Conclusion: When evil spirits hinder angelic escorts (however rare that might be), the souls of the faithful become vulnerable to attack from evil spirits.

This conclusion certainly does not necessitate an ultimate darkness for such victims (remembering that these experiences, like all reported NDEs, happen prior to the impassible “barrier”). Instead, it simply provides conceptual room for the idea that even the faithful may become victimized by the denizens of this “middle region” of the spiritual plane described by so many saints, theologians, and NDErs. At some point, one would expect a rescue for these faithful souls, but that does not preclude the idea of danger present in the “sorting ground” of the afterlife.

Such a conceptual framework might give Christians an avenue of explanation for why NDEs writ large can be witnesses to the Christian expectation of the afterlife, while at the same time accounting for those anomalous episodes of the faithful who endure spiritual attack in their NDEs. One does not need to throw out NDEs wholesale nor dismiss these particular NDErs as “reprobates in disguise.” We can also deal with those, such as Eben Alexander, who diminish the significance of negative NDEs by casting them as “life reviews” that have simply been cut short from their uniformly blissful conclusion.

Instead, we may see these episodes as a “glitch in the Matrix,” so to speak. Once in a while, the enemy of our souls breaches the defenses of our angelic psychopomps. If we put things into perspective, acknowledging that similar “breaches” happen regularly on this side of the afterlife (see chapter 6 of A Magical World), then this should not seem so unusual. Once again I cite Dale Allison: “[I]t seems prudent to regard the disturbing NDE as akin to other experiences of evil . . . . Evil picks its targets indiscriminately.”²⁵

People may ask why God would allow such a thing, and to that I can only answer that we must categorize this form of suffering alongside all other forms of suffering allowed by the Almighty. We may not be privy to the God’s providential workings, but we can nonetheless trust him as the God who suffers with us, as so poignantly described by the author of Hebrews.

Though I have hazarded to ignore Allison’s warning against making “further inferences,” I hope that the thought experiment presented above will create intellectual space for unveiling part of this puzzle. Accordingly, my goal is not to prove my speculations—indeed, I hope others will contribute their own ideas—but rather to show that they are at least plausible.

Those who have been distressed by a negative NDE, therefore, need not abandon their trust in Christ, anymore than those saints who have been distressed by the forces of evil on this side of the afterlife. In either case, we look forward to what our suffering will one day produce: “an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison” (2 Cor. 4:17).

1. Matthew McGuire, A Magical World: How the Bible Makes Sense of the Supernatural (Independent, 2024), 210.

2. Cris Putnam, The Supernatural Worldview: Examining Paranormal, Psi, and the Apocalyptic (Crane: Defender, 2014), 185–186.

3. Dale C. Allison, Jr., Encountering Mystery: Religious Experience in a Secular Age (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2022), 145.

4. Premier Unbelievable?, “Are near death experiences real? John Burke and Dr. Eben Alexander MD hosted by Billy Hallowell,” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y9WS7-y44Pg&t=4765s. Alexander does, however, qualify his statement by saying that he believes this to be true of the “majority” of such NDEs.

5. See The Life of Adam and Eve 43:1–2 and 4 Ezra 7:100–101.

6. Scott R. Moore, “Testament of Job,” in The Lexham Bible Dictionary, edited by John D. Barry et al. (Bellingham: Lexham, 2016); Russell P. Spittler, “Job, Testament Of,” in The Anchor Yale Bible Dictionary, 6 vols., edited by David Noel Freedman (New York: Doubleday, 1992), 3:870. The author of the latter source, writing in the early 1990’s, notes his conjecture from twenty years earlier that chapters 46–53 were interpolated by Montanist Christians in the second century AD, but admits that “a strong case in its favor has [since] been made” and that his own proposal “has not found wide acceptance.”

7. Quotations from Old Testament pseudepigraphal writings from James H. Charlesworth, editor, The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, 2 vols., (Peabody: Hendrickson, 2019).

8. Michael S. Heiser, Angels: What the Bible Really Says about God’s Heavenly Host (Bellingham: Lexham, 2018), Kindle Location 3284.

9. Darrell L. Bock, Luke: 1:1–9:50, Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 1994), 1368, as quoted in Heiser, Angels, Kindle Location 3263.

10. McGuire, A Magical World, 221.

11. For a poignant example from ancient Christianity, consider section 14 of the Apocalypse of Paul, a fourth century pseudepigraphal text that greatly influenced medieval Western thinking and which is even alluded to in Dante’s Inferno (though the text seems to have been disparaged by major Church figures like Augustine). See Montague Rhodes James, editor, The Apocryphal New Testament: Being the Apocryphal Gospels, Acts, Epistles, and Apocalypses (Oxford: Clarendon, 1924), 525.

12. John Henry Newman, The Dream of Gerontius (London; New York; Bombay: Longmans, Green & Co., 1906), 36.

13. Billy Graham, Angels: God’s Secret Agents (Garden City: Doubleday & Co., 1975), 152–153.

14. Graham, Angels, 147–155.

15. Sadhu Sundar Singh, Visions of the Spiritual World: A Brief Description of the Spiritual Life, Its Different States of Existence, and the Destiny of Good and Evil Men as Seen in Visions (London: Macmillan, 1926), 8.

16. Athanasius, Life of Anthony, translated by Mary Emily Keenan, in Early Christian Biographies, vol. 15, The Fathers of the Church, edited by Roy J. Deferarri (Washington: The Catholic University of America) 65.

17. Athanasius, Life of Anthony 66.

18. Singh, Visions of the Spiritual World, 11.

19. Singh, Visions of the Spiritual World, 11.

20. Newman, Dream of Gerontius, 4.

21. Newman, Dream of Gerontius, 43.

22. Newman, Dream of Gerontius, 47.

23. McGuire, A Magical World, 224–225.

24. See Howard Storm, My Descent Into Death: A Second Chance at Life (New York: London; Toronto; Sydney; Auckland: Doubleday, 2005), 1–84.

25. Allison, Encountering Mystery, 146.