Ian Stevenson’s Contributions to Near-Death Studies

Abstract

Most people familiar with the work of Ian Stevenson associate him with his groundbreaking investigations of children who claim to remember previous lives.  But Stevenson was also a pioneer in the study of what have come to be called near-death experiences, or NDEs, the transcendent or mystical experiences that occur among many people who have come close to death or have even suffered an apparent clinical death during a severe illness or accident but who then recover or are resuscitated or escape serious injury.