Death is the one experience nobody can really prepare for—but a surprising number of people have gotten close enough to report back. – Ashley Fike
About 10% of people across 35 countries report having had a near-death experience, according to a survey published in PeerJ. That’s not a small number. These are millions of people who came close enough to death to report something on the other side, and what they describe follows a surprisingly consistent script: leaving the body, moving toward light, reuniting with someone who died before them, a feeling of overwhelming peace, and then coming back.
Dying, from a neurological standpoint, isn’t like flipping a light switch. Studies of patients at the moment of death show the brain producing a sudden surge in gamma waves—its highest-frequency output, associated with peak conscious processing and perception. A 2023 study found these surges concentrated in brain regions associated with visual processing and memory retrieval. Whatever’s generating those NDE reports, the brain activity behind them appears to be very real.
Most People Who Have a Near-Death Experience Say It Was a Happy Trip
The emotional picture that emerges from NDE accounts is mostly positive. Research out of France and Belgium found that feelings of peace dominated the experience, with many people also reporting a sudden sense of understanding everything at once. A large multi-site study of cardiac arrest survivors found that some patients reported overwhelming peace and love during the period in which they were actively receiving CPR. About 14% of NDE accounts do include distressing elements, so it’s not universally a good trip. But the majority of people who report any experience at all describe something they don’t want to come back from.
A new theory published in Frontiers in Psychology in 2026 attempts to explain why. Researcher Kayış proposed what he calls the dying-moment dream hypothesis, arguing that the experience is best understood as a dream state the brain generates in response to oxygen deprivation. When the brain stops receiving input from the outside world, it turns inward, flooding consciousness with memories and emotions drawn from the person’s own life. The theory’s most provocative claim is that the emotional tone of the experience—peaceful or hellish—is shaped by the person’s accumulated emotional history. A life defined by love and connection would, in theory, produce a very different ending than one weighted by trauma and unresolved guilt. Cultural context plays into it as well: in Christian cultures, the bright light is perceived as a being, while in Japan it’s more often reported as an inanimate object.
That particular piece of the theory hasn’t been tested yet and remains speculative. What isn’t speculative is that fewer than 40% of people who come close to death report any conscious experience at all. There’s a reasonable chance the whole thing is just nothing. But for the people who do come back with a story, it’s usually a fascinating one. – Vice, 4 July 2026
› Ashley Fike is a senior writer covering travel, lifestyle, wellness, music, and whatever else deserves a closer look.
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