October 3, 2025 • 51 mins
Join Sandra and leading expert William Peters to explore SDEs - the profound phenomena where the living accompany the dying part-way into the afterlife!
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
And you're here.
Speaker 2 (00:01):
Thanks for choosing the iHeartRadio and Coast to Ghost Day
and Paranormal Podcast Network. Your quest for podcasts of the paranormal, supernatural,
and the unexplained ends here. They invite you to enjoy
all our shows we have on this network, and right now,
let's start with.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
Chase of the Afterlife with Sandra Champlain.
Speaker 3 (00:21):
Welcome to our podcast. Please be aware the thoughts and
opinions expressed by the host are their thoughts and opinions
only and do not reflect those of iHeartMedia, iHeartRadio, Coast
to Coast AM employees of Premiere Networks, or their sponsors
and associates. We would like to encourage you to do
(00:42):
your own research and discover the subject matter for yourself. Hi,
I'm Sandra Champlain. For over twenty five years, I've been
on a journey to prove the existence of life after death.
On each episode, we'll discuss the reasons.
Speaker 1 (01:04):
We now know that our loved ones.
Speaker 3 (01:06):
Have survived physical death and so will we Welcome to
Shades of the Afterlife. We've heard of NDEs that's near
death experiences, but have you ever heard of an SDE
that is a shared death experience? Today you'll hear from
William Peters, author of the book At Heaven's Door, what
(01:29):
Shared Journeys to the Afterlife teach about dying well and
living better. You can find out more at Sharedcrossing dot com.
Here's William Peters.
Speaker 1 (01:40):
I am a psycho therapist by training. I work at
the Family Therapy Institute in Santa Barbara, California. I'm a
senior staff member there. I specialize in end of life
counseling and I also have worked as a trans personal
a psychotherapist. And that is that people with spiritual issues
premiere relating to extraordinary experiences. Currently, our medical system and
(02:06):
healthcare system doesn't have an accurate perception of what's really
going on for people. I shall also say I am
an experience or I had two near death experiences myself
and also worked in hospice for a good period of time.
So everything I'm sharing with you today I have personal
experience with as well as a good deal research on it.
So with dat, I want to introduce the Shared Crossing
(02:29):
Project and its research initiative and the study we recently
have published. I'm going to introduce shared death experience. We
call those SDE typologies. These are the first typologies that
have ever been presented back by rigorous academic research. There
seems to be a force during a transition that we
see in the SD that tends to be managing the
(02:52):
transition of souls from this human life into an afterlife.
So here's the Shared Crossing Project. I started this project
in eleven to transform people's relationships to death and dying
through education and raising awareness about these shared crossing experiences
and their healing benefits. Doctor Monica Williams is a medical
(03:14):
director and she is an emergency department physician, so she
looks at this from a very medical perspective. We have
doctor Michael Kinsella. He has a PhD in Religious studies
and cognitive sciences and he's our chief of research. And
then you have me as the director and principal investigator,
and I come at this from a mental health background,
(03:35):
so you see, we really try to cover it from
a variety of different disciplinary angles. We collect and he
analyze these shared crossing accounts. It's all about the therapeutic benefits.
We would not be doing this work based on just
the fascination or stimulation of the phenomena because it is
absolutely spellbinding and onspiring the phenomena, but we're not so
(03:59):
much interested in that. We are interested in the therapeutic
value the way this improves people's quality of life and
their relationships with their loved ones. We advocate for education
about shared crossings, and we provide education about shared crossings.
So generally, speaking of shared crossing is an end of
life phenomena that suggests loving communication across the veil, an
(04:25):
ongoing connection with our departed loved ones. My talk today
is really about the shared death experience, but all these
other experiences come up, and they're all quite frankly, very meaningful,
and in many ways sit outside of our understanding from
a healthcare perspective of what's possible for the human experience.
(04:48):
So the first is pre depth premonitions. This is knowing
in advance that you or someone you love are going
to die. These can happen years in advance, but we
see them mostly a few months in advance. Pre death
visions and visitations. These are well known in the field
of psychotherapy and anthropology and religious studies. These are visions
(05:12):
or visitations from the deceased or spirit beings who come
to the dying to tell them your time is coming.
Get ready. We're going to be here for you. We're
waiting for you, but get ready to begin this journey.
We see pre death and at death and after death
(05:33):
synchronicities of all kinds. Take a post death situation where
your relative has died, a love what has died. You're
driving in your car and you hear a song come
on and you think of your loved one, and then
you say to yourself, Wow, that's his favorite song. And
then his second favorite song comes on, and then you say, wow,
(05:54):
if I hear this song, then I know he's talking
to me. And his third favorite song comes on. No,
that comes right out of our research. We have people
who literally say, when I'm thinking of my loved one,
this music comes on. And other experiences like electrical phenomena
are extremely common. So you may see digital displays, ovens,
(06:19):
clock radios, car displays, what have you, flash birth dates,
anniversaries with frequencies that go far above the reasonable probability,
and so the sense of coincidence is logically replaced by
a sense of this is synchronistic. There's more going on
(06:39):
here than just chance. There's a whole group of researchers
who are saying that at the time of death and
around death, there are supernatural experiences, unexplainable that seem to
suggest something beyond what we would call normal. And what
we call that is a shared crossing, a sense that
our deceased level are trying to reach out to us. Okay,
(07:02):
moving on terminal lucidity. These are physiologically unexplainable behaviors at
the end of life. So persons with Alzheimer's who have
been unresponsive for months suddenly a few hours or days
before they actually transition, open their eyes, look around the room,
and recount to their loved ones. In other words, they
(07:22):
say to a grandson, Hey, how's your baseball team doing?
Because I know that you guys are doing better than
you thought. And I'm so sorry to hear that Johnny
hurt himself in the game last week. And You're like, what, Grandma,
we thought you were unconscious, And in fact, terminal lucidity
suggests that the dying in this case with Alzheimer's seems
(07:44):
to have a consciousness that's very much aware of the
people in his or her life. The direct post deaf communication.
These are communications that happened soon after the death of
a loved one where the experiencer that being the surviving
loved one, will say, I know, I was just thinking
about the funeral, for example, and all of a sudden,
(08:05):
my mother's voice came into my mind, saying, I think
your need to seat Uncle Harry next to Aunt Marge.
And by the way, when you give your eulogy, I
want you to talk about the times we had in
Hawaii together. The experience says, it was like my deceased
loved one was in my mind answering questions I didn't
(08:27):
even know I had. And then we have post that
visions and visitations, and these are very common. I'd say
about forty percent of all persons who get interviewed in
grief and breathment report that they feel that their deceased
loved one has visited them, either visually or in some
(08:48):
significant way. The most common way we see in our
research is the deceased appear at the foot of the
surviving loved one's bed or up in the ceiling. They
look younger, they're vital, and they come with a very
clear message. You see that I'm alive and well, I
love you. Go on with your life. I'll help and
(09:09):
I will see you again. And these are what we
see in our visitation. The Spectrum of under life Experiences
was recently published in the OMEGA, the Journal of Death
and Dying. This is the leading academic journal in the
world on pretty much anything having to do with death
and dying, but it tends to be focused on death
education and hospice care, and we submitted this as a
(09:31):
tool for advancing death education to be used in hospice,
in gerontology, to be used wherever people are dying, and
we suggest it should be used well in advance, but
our culture is not quite ready for that. This is
where our research goes and we support the growing understanding
for these phenomena. So what's a share death experience. It's
(09:54):
an experience in which a loved one, caregiver, a bystander
feels that they're sharing in the dying person's transition and
into a benevolent afterlife. Now I use the term benevolent
because that's what comes out in our research, expressed in
different ways. A glorious afterlife, a realm that I couldn't
even imagine, so beautiful. I felt like I was one
(10:14):
with everyone. These are the terms we hear to describe
what our share death experiencers report during their journey into
the afterlife the initial stages of the afterlife with their
departing loved ones. The dominant motif is journey. The themes
are love and understanding. This heightened sense of awareness or
(10:34):
wisdom or consciousness that's often expressed as when I was
in that state, I had answers to all of my questions,
I knew the meaning of life and the deepest mysteries
of the universe. Relationships appear to be central. That is
to say, the bond between the share death experiencer and
the dying is really important. Typically, this is why I
(10:57):
loved ones how these experiences, but we all so see
hospice workers who bond deeply with their patients in their
moment of need, who also have the share death experience.
The features are almost identical to the near death experience.
Both the SD and the ND are looking at the
(11:17):
same landscape, the same afterlife or initial stages of the
afterlife geography. What's different is the vantage point. The share
death experiencer is not having a brush with death. They
are hitching a ride with the dying, and they are
viewing the initial stages of the afterlife as shown to
(11:39):
them in the journey being experienced by the person who's dying.
NDE experiencers are actually having an experience of a brush
with death. They're leaving their physical body and they're entering
into the next dimension. The share death experience is completely
different in terms of the status in the health of
(12:00):
the experiencer. To be clear, the SDE experiencer is healthy
in mind and body. They are simply at the bedside
or remote. Most of our cases are remote at the
time of death of a loved one. We published the
first academic article ever in medical sciences and we were
quite honestly blessed and fortunate that the leading journal known
(12:25):
as the American Journal of Hospice and palladi Medicine published
our research on the sd I was quite frankly blown
away by the responses of the reviewers because the reviewers
said things like, thank you for conducting this research. We
all know these experiences happened, but no one was ever
able to up to this point gather enough cases. And
(12:48):
we suspect this is going to open up more research
in an aspect of hospice and palliative care that has
been lacking in attention.
Speaker 3 (12:56):
I'm going to take a moment here we're going to
go to our break and when we get back, well,
here's some examples and research of these shared death experiences.
How we might be able to hitch a ride with
our loved one and see what they see when they
depart from this life. We'll be right back. You're listening
to Shades of the Afterlife on the iHeartRadio and Coast
(13:17):
to Coast AM Paranormal Podcast Network. Welcome back to Shades
(13:41):
of the Afterlife. I'm Sandra Champlain. Let's continue with William
Peters talking about shared death experiences.
Speaker 1 (13:49):
Most previous work done by primarily doctor Raymond Moody, found
that SDEs were bedside phenomena.
Speaker 4 (13:55):
Well.
Speaker 1 (13:55):
Our research suggested that almost two thirds sixty four percent
occurred remotely. That means not at bedside, down the hall,
across town, other side of the globe. Here's another fascinating finding.
Sixty seven percent, more than two thirds of our respondents
engaged in some type of meditative activity. So this suggests
(14:17):
that meditation, prayer, contemplation, yoga, consistent practices of being in
nature as well helped or seem to enable the SD.
We need to keep that in mind. There are two
types of SDEs there's bedside and then there's remote. There
(14:37):
are two subtypes, and this is fascinating because the time
of death does not seem to be required to have
an SDE. In other words, about nine percent of our
SDEs happened a few moments, hours, and a few cases
a day or two in front of the actual medically
determined time of death that is stopping of heart, con
(14:59):
cessation of brainway. We also have another fourteen percent that
happened after death a few minutes, hours, and in some
cases a few days. We also have gradual SDEs, which
happen over hours and in some cases days and seem
to ebb and flow, so time seems not to be
a determining factor in the SDE. We also have more
(15:22):
than one person having an SDE. We call this some
multi person SDE, so you can imagine family members at bedsides,
family members of another part of the world having an
sd as well near or at the time of death.
And the SDE phenomena can be similar, but it can
also be a bit vary. What is the actual experience
(15:43):
of the SD experiencer. There are four basic modes that
are non exclusive. There's remotely sensing at a distance, there's
witnessing unusual phenomena, there's accompanying the dying, and there's assisting
the dying and transitioning. The first is sensing the death.
This is twenty five percent of our cases. This is
(16:05):
brief thoughts, feelings, a sense of presence of the time
of death, and also a sudden onset of sympathetic physical symptoms.
Don is going to be sharing an sd she had
with her son, very sad situation. Sean was going to
get married. He was struck by a car and died.
But listen to Don describe what she experienced at the
(16:26):
moment of death of her Sunshine.
Speaker 5 (16:28):
I truly had the physical symptoms, being nauseated, almost passed out,
couldn't see, took off my glasses, everything went black.
Speaker 1 (16:38):
Then it came back right away.
Speaker 3 (16:40):
Just happened so fast.
Speaker 5 (16:42):
But within four minutes, I'm getting a phone call that
he was hit.
Speaker 1 (16:47):
And then just right after that, Oh my.
Speaker 5 (16:49):
Gosh, that's so weird. I felt what happened, had a premonition.
I felt my kid the moment he died. And I
always say, if I don't get any other blessings, I'm okay,
because I have this blessing that I think really truly
has helped me walk a different path, a better healing path,
(17:09):
a more coping path.
Speaker 1 (17:11):
So there you hear don really giving a powerful testimony
really to this sense that at the moment of death
or soon after, she felt her son Sean leave this
earth and she felt an energetic She has a little
bit more detail in other parts of the interview, but
she basically feels like Sean kind of went through her
(17:34):
and left his body. This is what we call sensing
a death at a distance. It's the most basic, if
you will, type of sde but the experiencer has a
sense that someone they know and care about has died,
and it's an energetic it says felt sense. And the
term we here all the time is I just knew,
(17:54):
I just knew, I had a knowing that my loved
one had died. The second type of mode of participation
is witnessing unusual phenomena. Eighty four percent of our participants,
in terms of our interviewees express some of these phenomena,
and the most common one being the vision of the dying.
(18:15):
So that is that the share death experiencer sees the dying,
primarily sees the dying, not just senses the dying. That
would be mode of participation number one. No, this is
a visual capturing or witnessing of the dying moving along
this journey in the afterlife. So we're going to listen
(18:36):
now to Sally Light. This case is a very specific
type of phenomena. She's going to be seeing the spirit
of her mother departing from her mother's body, and she's
right at bedside. Sally gives a really beautiful description of this.
So let's listen and we'll come back on the flip side.
Speaker 4 (18:58):
This membranous thing come away from the whole periphery of
her body. It was defined and as it came apart,
coming up from the body to fill this thing was
like this gray stuff. And I say stuff because you
know foggy. No, it had a little more particulate stuff
(19:21):
to it. It was something in this form at this time,
solid enough that it was still in a three dimensional
thing for me to see. So it moved though, it
congealed slowly came together around her and this membrane and
I think this well had to be three dimensional, but
(19:42):
I could only see two dimensions in this thing. So
this membrane opened and started going up towards the corner,
like a feather edge. The grayish stuff started going up
with the tunnel. I called it a tunnel. And as
it started to go up, the rest started to follows
more solid. Now I'm picturing the room. I'd say about
(20:05):
halfway up to that corner, it started going a little
faster from the body and a little less fast up
to the corner where it started to disappear. It just
kept going up, and soon it was all out of
her body and almost all disappeared at the top until
the very last bit went just went up fast. Once
(20:29):
she's up in the corner there, I'm looking up there,
just I know she's up there, and I feel this
love come into my body. It just was so wonderful,
pour it into my body. It just was love and
filled me totally, and I smiled, and I know I
was extremely happy, extremely happy. After a while, she came
(20:54):
back to me and she sent me a message. It
wasn't just the love that I felt before. It was different.
It was like, oh, I am soul full of joy.
I'm so happy this is her, and I felt that
I felt her.
Speaker 1 (21:09):
So Sally does a really eloquent job of sharing her
relationship with what she calls a membranous grayish structure that
we call in the research kind of manifestation or representation
of soul spirit leaving body. And she follows it up
the wall, up to the ceiling, and then she has
(21:31):
a relationship, a communication contact with her mother. But the
substrate of this relationship is love. What she knows her
mother's feeling, because her mother's kind of communicates to her
energetically that she's so happy and so filled with joy.
So this is a second mode of participation. This is
the sense of experiencing or witnessing or feeling these profound
(21:56):
phenomena associated with death. The third to participation, and this
is accompanying the dying into the afterlife. What really happens
is the shared death experiencer now participates in this journey
accompanying the dying, and they are often in a visionary realm,
a heavenly realm, and they're progressing along with the dying
(22:20):
on this journey. And the key themes here are ascension
are movement, typically upwards and towards a light. The landscape
is almost always beautiful. It can be more earthly landscapes
of meadows and pastors, that's the most common thing we
see as meadows and pastors with forests heading into the forest.
(22:43):
We also see galactical realms, galaxy realms. But they also
have this sense while they're accompanying the dying of acquiring
special types of knowledge insight into the nature of reality.
More than anything else, this accompanying with the dying provides
this acquiring a special knowledge. There's also a border of
(23:04):
boundary by which the experiencer is not able to pass through,
but of course the dying does. They do transgress that
and of course do not return to their human life.
So this case is a really vivid one, vivid because
it's described very well by Cynthia. Cynthia's gonna be talking
about experience she had with her husband. This happened about
(23:28):
fifteen twenty minutes after her husband had actually died. Through
medical terms, he stopped breathing, but she's meditating right next
to his body.
Speaker 6 (23:39):
So I remember lifting up out of my body and
then taking my husband his name was Shara, by the
hand and pulling him up, and then I pulled him
up past me, and then he pulled me up past him.
And we kept doing that for a long time, and
the sensation was very freeing. He was fully intact, you know,
he wasn't mentally compromised. Then is no sensation of constraint
(24:02):
or discomfort from anybody's body. And then I saw the light,
and you know, and it's not like a pinpoint light.
Speaker 1 (24:10):
It's a huge light.
Speaker 6 (24:12):
And we both turned towards it and went towards it,
and then his mother appeared. The experience of the light,
there was a complete wholeness sensation for me, a lot
of freedom, you know, any of my own psychology wasn't there.
And then his mother reached to him, and then he
reached to her and he looked it was still holding
my hand, and he looked back at me and said,
(24:33):
but I want to stay with you, and then he
slipped away, and I think that was it.
Speaker 1 (24:39):
I don't remember too much after that. So Cynthia describes
our third mode of participation, in which she actually accompanies
her husband Shah Indian initial stages of the afterlife once
again main themes ascension, moving towards the light. With Cynthia,
she's more of a research in geology actually is her specialty,
(25:02):
so she's more scientifically oriented. So she's a little uncomfortable
with more of these, you know, kind of new age
thoughts if you will, about the afterlife. And then Cynthia
sees Shar's mother, so this is a vision of a
deceased relative in the afterlife. And then she hands off
(25:23):
Shar in a certain way. We call this the handoff,
when the shared of experiencer hands off the departing love
one to another loved one in the afterlife. So yeah,
beautiful case. And it's very similar to the next mode
of participation.
Speaker 3 (25:38):
It's time for our break, but there's so much more
coming up with my friend William Peters and the Shared
Death Experience. You're listening to Shades of the Afterlife on
the iHeartRadio and Coast to Coast AM Paranormal Podcast Network.
(26:09):
Welcome back to Shades of the Afterlife. I'm Sandra Champlain
and our topic today has Shared Death Experiences SDEs with
our guest William Peters. And yes, it's possible that we
can see loved ones greeting our loved one as they pass.
Speaker 1 (26:25):
Let's continue the next mode of participation which we're going
to go into, which is assisting the dying, very similar
to accompaniment, but the participants or the sde experiencers report
that they felt like they were called in to help
assist or guide the dying in the transition, and in
(26:45):
many cases, the SDE experiencer finds themselves in the afterlife
with their departing dying loved one, and then they realize
they're there to help, but they may not even have
any idea how to help, and the wisdom and knowledge
for how to assist comes to them in that moment. Now,
Mark is actually in New Jersey, having just finished a
(27:09):
week of having led a group of people in a
kind of outdoor education program. He's in the passenger seat
and tired and reflecting. When he has this experience, he
knows his father is not doing well in a hospital
in Canada, but he doesn't know that his father's dying
(27:29):
at this moment.
Speaker 7 (27:31):
You know, there's that connection that we have with other
people that we love, you know, Like in particular with
my father, I had that connection and I still do.
Speaker 1 (27:37):
Right.
Speaker 7 (27:38):
I could feel my father as like I need to
check in on him, so I sent my spirit to
the hospital where I knew he was. I remember going
to him as bedside and speaking to him and saying,
you know, Dad, why don't you just let go Mom's
going to be all right, all his kids are going
to be all right. You know, you can go like
there's nothing holding you here anymore.
Speaker 1 (27:58):
And he looks at me.
Speaker 7 (27:59):
Huzzle was in his face as he said, I don't
know how I knew right away. As soon as I
was there with my dad, picked him up. I started
that meditation, you know, walking down this particular trail, then
a certain point turn and step up these stairs and
walking towards the light. So we're walking side by side,
and I took him to the light. My father and
(28:20):
my grandmother had a really really close and beautiful and
amazing magical relationship. As we got close to the light,
hand there's like a door where the numinosity of the
light coming out of there was just unbelievable. And my
grandmother steps out of that light and she's standing there
and my dad look out of his face was just
(28:41):
so peaceful and beautiful.
Speaker 1 (28:44):
And as we approached the light, my.
Speaker 7 (28:46):
Grandmother and my uncle both first my grandmother stepped out
of the light and they were very very close. So
again that's the look of joy in his face when
he saw my grandmother was just like the look I
had seen in his face in years, years and years,
and he just went and hugged her and hugged her.
And my uncle came out of the light at that
point and he joined the fray and the three of
(29:07):
them did joy.
Speaker 1 (29:07):
Was just unbelievable.
Speaker 7 (29:09):
And none of them touched me. Clearly, I wasn't part
of that group, but you know, my job was done.
I brought my dad there and now like they had it,
it was really how it felt, and they didn't speak
to me either. And then my dad he just turns
and looks me and it's just a huge smile on
his face and just said, I didn't know that it
was this eazy. I woke the next morning and the
(29:31):
phone rang and it was for me, and I answered
the phone as my brother and he said, you know,
Dad passed away, and I said, yeah, I know.
Speaker 1 (29:42):
So Mark shares an experience with his father. This is
a remote sde. It is the fourth mode of participation,
which we call guiding the dying through the transition process.
You see a number of key themes here. One is
that obviously Mark sees his father clearly. He then is
(30:04):
communicating with his father dialogue in the afterlife here, and
he understands his father needs help because his father expresses
that he doesn't know how to do the transition, and
Mark begins to help him. Mark picks him up, as
he says, and he starts walking, and notice the way
(30:25):
that he's walking. He talks about walking upward. We see
the theme of ascension again. We also see the theme
of moving towards the light because Mark's grandmother comes out
of that light appears, and then there's this reunion between
Mark's father and his grandmother. Keep in mind what's interesting
(30:48):
here is Mark is not seeming to have much of
a dialogue or conversation with the deceased relatives. This is
very common. The focus is almost always on conducting the
transition and all that appears in the afterlife in terms
of spirit beings and deceased relatives are focused on this
(31:09):
great event of facilitating the transition and lovingly welcoming the
dying home in a certain way. The embrace that Mark
describes between his father and his father's mother is just
so filled with joy and love and it's beautiful. And
(31:30):
then the uncle, another deceased relative, comes out and also
joins in the welcoming. We call this a type of
welcoming party, very common in the share death experience, and
then Mark says that they go into the light, but
he realizes he can't go any further. In fact, as
(31:50):
he's observing this, he realizes he's at the end of
his line, and he even says, I'm kind of don't
what I was supposed to do, and he's back in
his body. So profound experience. That's our fourth mode of participation,
and now we're going to go into the after effect. So,
as I've said all along, the value in the st
(32:11):
for all its spectacular phenomena, is dwarfed by the positive
after facts, money of which are therapeutically beneficial. These are
unsolicited responses. So sixty seven percent over two thirds believe
that their loved one is alive, and well eighty seven
(32:31):
percent we're convinced of an afterlife, and they often came
out of nowhere just saying I'm absolutely convinced. I know
that's a term we hear all the time. I know
there's an afterlife. And in fact they often say things like, oh,
that realm I was in is more real than this
human existence, Like this human existence is a dream. It
(32:51):
sits inside the greater reality of that afterlife dimension I
was in. We also find that almost just seventy sixty
nine percent exactly express a grief process, a process of
grief that is more beneficial or more enhanced than a
typical grief. Now, as a psychotherapist, I did this assessment
(33:14):
because I know what typical grief processes are, and I
ask certain questions, and what we realize is that our
SD experiencers were expressing grief patterns that were while they
had a heartache and were breft at the loss of
a loved one, they also had a larger context of
(33:36):
meaning and understanding to hold the loss in, and so
their grief reconciliation as we call it, was much improved.
The next element we hear is fifty two percent reported
reduced fear of death. I am sure that's much higher.
It's closer to eighty ninety percent, but we didn't ask
that question specifically, And for those of you who do
(33:58):
near death experience research, you'll know that is a key
finding as an impact of NDEs as a reduction in
fear and anxiety about death, renewed life purpose. This is
something we thought was fascinating that often our respondents would say,
you know, I came back from that experience, and I
changed everything. I felt like my life had meaning. I
(34:18):
understood why I was in this life. I changed my work.
I reviewed my relationships and I let go of relationships
that weren't meaningful to me, and I focused on other
new relationships or deepening others. And so we call this
renewed life purpose. The key after effect also is this
sense that people are sure, they're certain they're going to
(34:40):
see their loved one again. So here's the cutting edge
of the research right now. We have not published on
this yet, but this is an aspect of the SD
that I find the most fascinating. It seems that there
is a force in the afterlife, or at least at
the moment of transition, that is guiding, managing, and facilitating
(35:03):
this process of a soul departing or dropping a human
body and entering into the initial stages of the afterlife.
In other words, it's the continuation of consciousness beyond human death,
and it appears to take some management. And that's the conductor.
That's the term I named, because they seem like they're
(35:24):
conducting a variety of influences or forces or elements to
make this transition smooth and peaceful. So The conductor appears
in a variety of forms. It can appear as a human,
a larger than life human. Typically, it can also appear
as an angel. And sometimes the conductor is not seen,
(35:46):
its sensed. It's like I felt there was a force
operative there. I felt like there was some other energy
that was managing or driving this process of transition. The
conductor when scene seems to have a sense of urgency.
It's purposeful. It can rush, it can direct other spirit
(36:08):
beings around it, or a can even give directions to
the loved ones. Angela H. She is with her mother
in law, and she is at bedside when two angels appear,
one larger and the second seeming to be what I
would call an apprentice learning how to be a conductor
(36:29):
of sorts.
Speaker 3 (36:31):
I'll read to you the story of Angela H because
the sound quality isn't so great. My mother in law, Jean,
was completely unconscious and on heavy medication. As I glanced
into her room, I noticed it had taken on a
welcoming golden color, and it felt as though the whole
room was inside of a sacred bubble which I shouldn't enter.
(36:53):
Then I saw a translucent form moving out from the
center of Jean's body. In the corner of the stood
a massive being of light with huge white wings. It
didn't have a head, but I knew it was an angel.
Its wings were moving with a beckoning motion, drawing Jane's
translucent spirit upward. Beside it was a smaller angelic being
(37:16):
mirroring the same movement. The air was filled with a
very high pitched tone. The larger angel, though it had
no head, turned its attention to me. I heard a
clear telepathic message in my mind. Wait. Wait. At that moment,
the smaller angel seemed to panic, and both beings began
(37:37):
their movements with more urgency, going faster and faster. Just
then another person barged past me into the room, and
the entire vision the angels, Jeane, the golden light, the
high pitched tone vanished completely into the corner of the room,
and I knew Jeane had died. We'll head off for
(37:57):
our break now, but when we get back, William Peters
reveals the mysterious being he calls the Conductor. He'll also
share his own shared death experience at his father's bedside.
We'll be right back. You're listening to Shades of the
Afterlife on the iHeartRadio and Coast to Coast am Paranormal
(38:18):
Podcast Network. Welcome back to Shades of the Afterlife. I'm
(38:43):
Sandra Champlain and you're hearing my good friend William Peters,
author of the book At Heaven's Door, what Shared Journeys
to the Afterlife teach about dying well and living better.
You can find his website shared crossing dot com. There
are upcoming retreats, a symposium with William and doctors such
(39:07):
as Emen Alexander Raymond Moody. Also, if you're interested in
learning more about share death experiences, you can take a
course to discover all the nuances and what practices you
may do now that will leave an opening to perhaps
having one of these experiences with your loved one. Again
(39:28):
Shared crossing dot com. Let's continue with another story from William.
Speaker 1 (39:33):
Okay, next one here. My father died about two years ago,
in fact two years ago on September the twentieth, and
I was at bedside, on one side of bed with
my mother, and then my sister was on my mother's side,
and he was very close to death. And I was
doing what I typically do when I'm with the dying,
and that is I was gently holding my father's hand
(39:56):
on my hand on his pulse, and then I close
my eyes and I'm my breathing to his breathing, and
his breathing was getting labored. And at one moment I
had a vision to the left side, above the foot
of the bed. I saw my grandmother and my aunt,
both who had predeceased, and then I saw my grandfather
(40:16):
as well, my grandfather, who I had never met, but
I knew it was my grandfather. There are a number
of details, but the piece I want to share with
you is that I was clear that my father was
ready to die, and I was talking to my grandmothers
and to my aunt. They were right next to meich
I was saying, why aren't you taking him? I could
see this beautiful cylinder of light coming down like a stairway,
(40:38):
about a quarter of the way down from where they were,
in a slanted direction to my father, which would be
to my father's heart or head, And I said, why
aren't you taking him? He's ready to go, And my
grandmother and aunt in unison kind of looked at me
and then averted their gaze to draw my attention to
(40:58):
just over the top of my father's bed. Right over
his heart, but about four feet above, even higher than
they were. But the point being is I moved my
attention over and when I locked my attention to where
they were directing me, it wasn't that I tried to lock,
except I kind of resonated with this in a gravitational way,
(41:20):
and I felt a pull on my heart. And you know,
some people talk about this electromagnetic nature of our soul spirit,
and I felt that resonating in pool and come alive.
And then I realized, Oh, they were averting my gaze
as if to say he's in charge or she's in charge,
(41:41):
but it felt like a he, and I was taken back,
and I thought, that's the conductor. And I felt the
power and force and strength to the conductor who was waiting.
It was clearly it was not quite my father's time.
And then about twenty minutes later there was this kind
(42:02):
of gentle whush upward, and my father was gone. And
the room does what it does is the way I
feel it. It kind of empties out energetically. There's even
a feeling of coolness after the death of somebody. And
I learned this from my years working in hospice, so
that's what I want to share with you. I go
into it in more detail in my book At Heaven's Door,
(42:24):
but there's a bit of a summary about it. So
I want to say a few more things by way
of closing. So you may be asking, well, how does
a healthcare system response to SDEs? And the truth of
the matter is our current healthcare system does not know
much about the SDEs at all. They're just finally getting
used to near death experiences. I think most people in
the healthcare system are familiar with near death experiences, but
(42:47):
there's no understanding for SDEs. And if they do happen,
you're likely to get one of three responses. A healthcare
provider that's curious but neutral but unable to be supportive
because they don't want to be seen as supporting hallucinations
or delusions or psychotic problematic expressions. They can also be dismissive.
(43:09):
This is very common where they can just simply say, oh,
you're under a great deal of stress, your loved ones
dying or died or what have you, and you know,
go home and get some rest, and I think you'll
realize those experiences are hallucinations. Sometimes they can be downright harmful,
and they can basically say I think you need a
psychological evaluation, and in which cases they get a psychological
(43:33):
evaluation and they're diagnosed with some form of psychoses or
grief hallucinations or delusional disorder or something like that. These
are all highly problematic and harmful to the experiencer because
it then forces them to interpret this most profound spiritual
experience as a delusion of their brain, and that is
(43:56):
highly problematic. So why is this well, our current view
of medical sciences of consciousness is that consciousness is created
by the brain, and when the human body dies, the
brain dies with it, and therefore there can be no
communication or connection with the consciousness, soul, spirit, call whatever
(44:19):
you want, with the deceased person. So we have a
fundamental problem with medical sciences when it comes to the SDE,
because the SDE would assert that the consciousness of the
dying has survived human death and is now seeking to
or at least available to be in relationship with departed
(44:43):
loved ones and healthcare providers. Even so, this is the
stumbling block we have, and I think there is some
movement here, though. I think that the newer forms of
appreciation of consciousness are evolving, and I think you're going
to see certainly more progressive provider making space for these
types of experiences. But what's really important is that there
(45:05):
is incredible therapeutic value when somebody shares a story like
an SDE or other shared crossings and they feel supported. Unfortunately,
thirty eight percent reported a concern about sharing their story
for being dismissed or ridiculed. So this is why a
lot of people have these experiences and don't share them.
(45:26):
Every interviewee in our study express gratitude and appreciation for
the opportunity to share their story and it affirmed them.
Then they felt empowered to go out and share their
story with others, which is great. So in conclusion, remote
share death experiences are more common than bedside ones. They
are highly beneficial because they yield in the SD experience
(45:50):
or a certainty of the afterlife, a benevolent afterlife, and
a knowing that they'll be reunited with their loved ones.
Over forty percent of our SD experiences reported having more
than one, that suggests there's a capacity to have an SD,
and seventy eight percent of our experiences had other shared
(46:11):
crossings That means that they typically had other after death
forms of communications like post death visions, visitations, direct communication,
and other synchronicities suggesting communication across the veil. Finally, twenty
five percent a quarter of our interviewees reported ongoing relationships
with the departed. So if you want to learn more
(46:34):
about SDEs, I suggest you come to our story library
on our Shared Crossing dot com. You could hear video
accounts of other people's SDEs. Also, my book At Heaven's Door.
This is the seminal book that's research based on the
shared Death experience. There will be more coming, I can
tell you my colleagues are writing books right now, but
(46:55):
this is the first one that has twenty eight really
wonderful stories pulled from over one hundred and fifty cases.
The reviews have been thankfully quite good. I want to
say that if you've had an experience, you can submit
it to the Shared Crossing Research Initiative. We are always
collecting cases and we would appreciate you submitting because they
(47:17):
help others learn about it. And finally, the flagship program
that we offer the Shared Crossing Pathways. It is a
program that teaches you how to have the SDE a company,
a loved one into a beautiful end of life and afterlife.
Speaker 3 (47:34):
Thank you, William, and we will always support your work.
One of the common questions is why do some people
have shared death experiences and others don't. I own William's
book At Heaven's Door, and in the final chapter he
talks about his two decades of research and that there
isn't a magic formula, but there are some common themes
(47:56):
and conditions that make a shared death experience more likely.
He breaks it down between our own openness, the wishes
of our dying loved one, and the deeper purpose of
the experience itself. William's research shows that the most common
factor among sde experiencers is their openness and availability. This
(48:19):
can happen in a few ways, be physically and mentally present.
Many SDEs occur when a person is simply not distracted.
They are sitting quietly at the bedside, or taking a
walk in nature, or even sound asleep. They're all states
where our busy, multitasking minds are at rest, which seems
(48:43):
to create the space for our consciousness to participate in
the experience. As one experiencer, Sonya perfectly put it, thinking back,
I guess I felt like in a weird way I
was available to help, so my loved one nabbed me.
(49:04):
We can practice mindfulness, while not a requirement, many experiencers
have a background in practices like meditation, yoga or prayer.
These activities train the mind to be quiet and receptive,
making it easier to perceive the subtle energies of a
shared crossing giving permission to go. The act of telling
(49:29):
a dying loved one that it's okay for them to leave,
that you will be all right can be incredibly powerful.
This release of earthly attachment and tension can sometimes be
the very thing that opens the door to a spiritual connection.
Of course, we know there's much more to it than that,
(49:50):
so again you can find William's book at Heaven's Door
What Shared Journeys to the Afterlife teach about dying well
and lif living better, and I always recommend that you
get a little taste of how your soul perceives information
from the afterlife. Come join us on one of our
psychic medium classes. We have the greatest tutors Kerrie McLeod
(50:14):
and Phil Dykes, and also friend Scott Milligan teaches trance
and the Altered States. When we can have these what
seem like supernatural experiences. We realize that we can create
the space to have a shared death experience again. We
Don't Die dot com. That's where you'll find me and
(50:35):
you can come join me for a free Sunday gathering
inspirational service with medium demonstration included. I'm Sandra Champlain. Thank
you so much for taking your precious time and listening
to Shades of the Afterlife on the iHeartRadio and Coast
to Coast AM Paranormal Podcast Network.
Speaker 2 (51:02):
Thanks for listening to the iHeartRadio and Coast to Coast
A and Paranormal Podcast Network. Make sure and check out
all our shows on the iHeartRadio app or by going
to iHeartRadio dot com.
And you're here.
Speaker 2 (00:01):
Thanks for choosing the iHeartRadio and Coast to Ghost Day
and Paranormal Podcast Network. Your quest for podcasts of the paranormal, supernatural,
and the unexplained ends here. They invite you to enjoy
all our shows we have on this network, and right now,
let's start with.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
Chase of the Afterlife with Sandra Champlain.
Speaker 3 (00:21):
Welcome to our podcast. Please be aware the thoughts and
opinions expressed by the host are their thoughts and opinions
only and do not reflect those of iHeartMedia, iHeartRadio, Coast
to Coast AM employees of Premiere Networks, or their sponsors
and associates. We would like to encourage you to do
(00:42):
your own research and discover the subject matter for yourself. Hi,
I'm Sandra Champlain. For over twenty five years, I've been
on a journey to prove the existence of life after death.
On each episode, we'll discuss the reasons.
Speaker 1 (01:04):
We now know that our loved ones.
Speaker 3 (01:06):
Have survived physical death and so will we Welcome to
Shades of the Afterlife. We've heard of NDEs that's near
death experiences, but have you ever heard of an SDE
that is a shared death experience? Today you'll hear from
William Peters, author of the book At Heaven's Door, what
(01:29):
Shared Journeys to the Afterlife teach about dying well and
living better. You can find out more at Sharedcrossing dot com.
Here's William Peters.
Speaker 1 (01:40):
I am a psycho therapist by training. I work at
the Family Therapy Institute in Santa Barbara, California. I'm a
senior staff member there. I specialize in end of life
counseling and I also have worked as a trans personal
a psychotherapist. And that is that people with spiritual issues
premiere relating to extraordinary experiences. Currently, our medical system and
(02:06):
healthcare system doesn't have an accurate perception of what's really
going on for people. I shall also say I am
an experience or I had two near death experiences myself
and also worked in hospice for a good period of time.
So everything I'm sharing with you today I have personal
experience with as well as a good deal research on it.
So with dat, I want to introduce the Shared Crossing
(02:29):
Project and its research initiative and the study we recently
have published. I'm going to introduce shared death experience. We
call those SDE typologies. These are the first typologies that
have ever been presented back by rigorous academic research. There
seems to be a force during a transition that we
see in the SD that tends to be managing the
(02:52):
transition of souls from this human life into an afterlife.
So here's the Shared Crossing Project. I started this project
in eleven to transform people's relationships to death and dying
through education and raising awareness about these shared crossing experiences
and their healing benefits. Doctor Monica Williams is a medical
(03:14):
director and she is an emergency department physician, so she
looks at this from a very medical perspective. We have
doctor Michael Kinsella. He has a PhD in Religious studies
and cognitive sciences and he's our chief of research. And
then you have me as the director and principal investigator,
and I come at this from a mental health background,
(03:35):
so you see, we really try to cover it from
a variety of different disciplinary angles. We collect and he
analyze these shared crossing accounts. It's all about the therapeutic benefits.
We would not be doing this work based on just
the fascination or stimulation of the phenomena because it is
absolutely spellbinding and onspiring the phenomena, but we're not so
(03:59):
much interested in that. We are interested in the therapeutic
value the way this improves people's quality of life and
their relationships with their loved ones. We advocate for education
about shared crossings, and we provide education about shared crossings.
So generally, speaking of shared crossing is an end of
life phenomena that suggests loving communication across the veil, an
(04:25):
ongoing connection with our departed loved ones. My talk today
is really about the shared death experience, but all these
other experiences come up, and they're all quite frankly, very meaningful,
and in many ways sit outside of our understanding from
a healthcare perspective of what's possible for the human experience.
(04:48):
So the first is pre depth premonitions. This is knowing
in advance that you or someone you love are going
to die. These can happen years in advance, but we
see them mostly a few months in advance. Pre death
visions and visitations. These are well known in the field
of psychotherapy and anthropology and religious studies. These are visions
(05:12):
or visitations from the deceased or spirit beings who come
to the dying to tell them your time is coming.
Get ready. We're going to be here for you. We're
waiting for you, but get ready to begin this journey.
We see pre death and at death and after death
(05:33):
synchronicities of all kinds. Take a post death situation where
your relative has died, a love what has died. You're
driving in your car and you hear a song come
on and you think of your loved one, and then
you say to yourself, Wow, that's his favorite song. And
then his second favorite song comes on, and then you say, wow,
(05:54):
if I hear this song, then I know he's talking
to me. And his third favorite song comes on. No,
that comes right out of our research. We have people
who literally say, when I'm thinking of my loved one,
this music comes on. And other experiences like electrical phenomena
are extremely common. So you may see digital displays, ovens,
(06:19):
clock radios, car displays, what have you, flash birth dates,
anniversaries with frequencies that go far above the reasonable probability,
and so the sense of coincidence is logically replaced by
a sense of this is synchronistic. There's more going on
(06:39):
here than just chance. There's a whole group of researchers
who are saying that at the time of death and
around death, there are supernatural experiences, unexplainable that seem to
suggest something beyond what we would call normal. And what
we call that is a shared crossing, a sense that
our deceased level are trying to reach out to us. Okay,
(07:02):
moving on terminal lucidity. These are physiologically unexplainable behaviors at
the end of life. So persons with Alzheimer's who have
been unresponsive for months suddenly a few hours or days
before they actually transition, open their eyes, look around the room,
and recount to their loved ones. In other words, they
(07:22):
say to a grandson, Hey, how's your baseball team doing?
Because I know that you guys are doing better than
you thought. And I'm so sorry to hear that Johnny
hurt himself in the game last week. And You're like, what, Grandma,
we thought you were unconscious, And in fact, terminal lucidity
suggests that the dying in this case with Alzheimer's seems
(07:44):
to have a consciousness that's very much aware of the
people in his or her life. The direct post deaf communication.
These are communications that happened soon after the death of
a loved one where the experiencer that being the surviving
loved one, will say, I know, I was just thinking
about the funeral, for example, and all of a sudden,
(08:05):
my mother's voice came into my mind, saying, I think
your need to seat Uncle Harry next to Aunt Marge.
And by the way, when you give your eulogy, I
want you to talk about the times we had in
Hawaii together. The experience says, it was like my deceased
loved one was in my mind answering questions I didn't
(08:27):
even know I had. And then we have post that
visions and visitations, and these are very common. I'd say
about forty percent of all persons who get interviewed in
grief and breathment report that they feel that their deceased
loved one has visited them, either visually or in some
(08:48):
significant way. The most common way we see in our
research is the deceased appear at the foot of the
surviving loved one's bed or up in the ceiling. They
look younger, they're vital, and they come with a very
clear message. You see that I'm alive and well, I
love you. Go on with your life. I'll help and
(09:09):
I will see you again. And these are what we
see in our visitation. The Spectrum of under life Experiences
was recently published in the OMEGA, the Journal of Death
and Dying. This is the leading academic journal in the
world on pretty much anything having to do with death
and dying, but it tends to be focused on death
education and hospice care, and we submitted this as a
(09:31):
tool for advancing death education to be used in hospice,
in gerontology, to be used wherever people are dying, and
we suggest it should be used well in advance, but
our culture is not quite ready for that. This is
where our research goes and we support the growing understanding
for these phenomena. So what's a share death experience. It's
(09:54):
an experience in which a loved one, caregiver, a bystander
feels that they're sharing in the dying person's transition and
into a benevolent afterlife. Now I use the term benevolent
because that's what comes out in our research, expressed in
different ways. A glorious afterlife, a realm that I couldn't
even imagine, so beautiful. I felt like I was one
(10:14):
with everyone. These are the terms we hear to describe
what our share death experiencers report during their journey into
the afterlife the initial stages of the afterlife with their
departing loved ones. The dominant motif is journey. The themes
are love and understanding. This heightened sense of awareness or
(10:34):
wisdom or consciousness that's often expressed as when I was
in that state, I had answers to all of my questions,
I knew the meaning of life and the deepest mysteries
of the universe. Relationships appear to be central. That is
to say, the bond between the share death experiencer and
the dying is really important. Typically, this is why I
(10:57):
loved ones how these experiences, but we all so see
hospice workers who bond deeply with their patients in their
moment of need, who also have the share death experience.
The features are almost identical to the near death experience.
Both the SD and the ND are looking at the
(11:17):
same landscape, the same afterlife or initial stages of the
afterlife geography. What's different is the vantage point. The share
death experiencer is not having a brush with death. They
are hitching a ride with the dying, and they are
viewing the initial stages of the afterlife as shown to
(11:39):
them in the journey being experienced by the person who's dying.
NDE experiencers are actually having an experience of a brush
with death. They're leaving their physical body and they're entering
into the next dimension. The share death experience is completely
different in terms of the status in the health of
(12:00):
the experiencer. To be clear, the SDE experiencer is healthy
in mind and body. They are simply at the bedside
or remote. Most of our cases are remote at the
time of death of a loved one. We published the
first academic article ever in medical sciences and we were
quite honestly blessed and fortunate that the leading journal known
(12:25):
as the American Journal of Hospice and palladi Medicine published
our research on the sd I was quite frankly blown
away by the responses of the reviewers because the reviewers
said things like, thank you for conducting this research. We
all know these experiences happened, but no one was ever
able to up to this point gather enough cases. And
(12:48):
we suspect this is going to open up more research
in an aspect of hospice and palliative care that has
been lacking in attention.
Speaker 3 (12:56):
I'm going to take a moment here we're going to
go to our break and when we get back, well,
here's some examples and research of these shared death experiences.
How we might be able to hitch a ride with
our loved one and see what they see when they
depart from this life. We'll be right back. You're listening
to Shades of the Afterlife on the iHeartRadio and Coast
(13:17):
to Coast AM Paranormal Podcast Network. Welcome back to Shades
(13:41):
of the Afterlife. I'm Sandra Champlain. Let's continue with William
Peters talking about shared death experiences.
Speaker 1 (13:49):
Most previous work done by primarily doctor Raymond Moody, found
that SDEs were bedside phenomena.
Speaker 4 (13:55):
Well.
Speaker 1 (13:55):
Our research suggested that almost two thirds sixty four percent
occurred remotely. That means not at bedside, down the hall,
across town, other side of the globe. Here's another fascinating finding.
Sixty seven percent, more than two thirds of our respondents
engaged in some type of meditative activity. So this suggests
(14:17):
that meditation, prayer, contemplation, yoga, consistent practices of being in
nature as well helped or seem to enable the SD.
We need to keep that in mind. There are two
types of SDEs there's bedside and then there's remote. There
(14:37):
are two subtypes, and this is fascinating because the time
of death does not seem to be required to have
an SDE. In other words, about nine percent of our
SDEs happened a few moments, hours, and a few cases
a day or two in front of the actual medically
determined time of death that is stopping of heart, con
(14:59):
cessation of brainway. We also have another fourteen percent that
happened after death a few minutes, hours, and in some
cases a few days. We also have gradual SDEs, which
happen over hours and in some cases days and seem
to ebb and flow, so time seems not to be
a determining factor in the SDE. We also have more
(15:22):
than one person having an SDE. We call this some
multi person SDE, so you can imagine family members at bedsides,
family members of another part of the world having an
sd as well near or at the time of death.
And the SDE phenomena can be similar, but it can
also be a bit vary. What is the actual experience
(15:43):
of the SD experiencer. There are four basic modes that
are non exclusive. There's remotely sensing at a distance, there's
witnessing unusual phenomena, there's accompanying the dying, and there's assisting
the dying and transitioning. The first is sensing the death.
This is twenty five percent of our cases. This is
(16:05):
brief thoughts, feelings, a sense of presence of the time
of death, and also a sudden onset of sympathetic physical symptoms.
Don is going to be sharing an sd she had
with her son, very sad situation. Sean was going to
get married. He was struck by a car and died.
But listen to Don describe what she experienced at the
(16:26):
moment of death of her Sunshine.
Speaker 5 (16:28):
I truly had the physical symptoms, being nauseated, almost passed out,
couldn't see, took off my glasses, everything went black.
Speaker 1 (16:38):
Then it came back right away.
Speaker 3 (16:40):
Just happened so fast.
Speaker 5 (16:42):
But within four minutes, I'm getting a phone call that
he was hit.
Speaker 1 (16:47):
And then just right after that, Oh my.
Speaker 5 (16:49):
Gosh, that's so weird. I felt what happened, had a premonition.
I felt my kid the moment he died. And I
always say, if I don't get any other blessings, I'm okay,
because I have this blessing that I think really truly
has helped me walk a different path, a better healing path,
(17:09):
a more coping path.
Speaker 1 (17:11):
So there you hear don really giving a powerful testimony
really to this sense that at the moment of death
or soon after, she felt her son Sean leave this
earth and she felt an energetic She has a little
bit more detail in other parts of the interview, but
she basically feels like Sean kind of went through her
(17:34):
and left his body. This is what we call sensing
a death at a distance. It's the most basic, if
you will, type of sde but the experiencer has a
sense that someone they know and care about has died,
and it's an energetic it says felt sense. And the
term we here all the time is I just knew,
(17:54):
I just knew, I had a knowing that my loved
one had died. The second type of mode of participation
is witnessing unusual phenomena. Eighty four percent of our participants,
in terms of our interviewees express some of these phenomena,
and the most common one being the vision of the dying.
(18:15):
So that is that the share death experiencer sees the dying,
primarily sees the dying, not just senses the dying. That
would be mode of participation number one. No, this is
a visual capturing or witnessing of the dying moving along
this journey in the afterlife. So we're going to listen
(18:36):
now to Sally Light. This case is a very specific
type of phenomena. She's going to be seeing the spirit
of her mother departing from her mother's body, and she's
right at bedside. Sally gives a really beautiful description of this.
So let's listen and we'll come back on the flip side.
Speaker 4 (18:58):
This membranous thing come away from the whole periphery of
her body. It was defined and as it came apart,
coming up from the body to fill this thing was
like this gray stuff. And I say stuff because you
know foggy. No, it had a little more particulate stuff
(19:21):
to it. It was something in this form at this time,
solid enough that it was still in a three dimensional
thing for me to see. So it moved though, it
congealed slowly came together around her and this membrane and
I think this well had to be three dimensional, but
(19:42):
I could only see two dimensions in this thing. So
this membrane opened and started going up towards the corner,
like a feather edge. The grayish stuff started going up
with the tunnel. I called it a tunnel. And as
it started to go up, the rest started to follows
more solid. Now I'm picturing the room. I'd say about
(20:05):
halfway up to that corner, it started going a little
faster from the body and a little less fast up
to the corner where it started to disappear. It just
kept going up, and soon it was all out of
her body and almost all disappeared at the top until
the very last bit went just went up fast. Once
(20:29):
she's up in the corner there, I'm looking up there,
just I know she's up there, and I feel this
love come into my body. It just was so wonderful,
pour it into my body. It just was love and
filled me totally, and I smiled, and I know I
was extremely happy, extremely happy. After a while, she came
(20:54):
back to me and she sent me a message. It
wasn't just the love that I felt before. It was different.
It was like, oh, I am soul full of joy.
I'm so happy this is her, and I felt that
I felt her.
Speaker 1 (21:09):
So Sally does a really eloquent job of sharing her
relationship with what she calls a membranous grayish structure that
we call in the research kind of manifestation or representation
of soul spirit leaving body. And she follows it up
the wall, up to the ceiling, and then she has
(21:31):
a relationship, a communication contact with her mother. But the
substrate of this relationship is love. What she knows her
mother's feeling, because her mother's kind of communicates to her
energetically that she's so happy and so filled with joy.
So this is a second mode of participation. This is
the sense of experiencing or witnessing or feeling these profound
(21:56):
phenomena associated with death. The third to participation, and this
is accompanying the dying into the afterlife. What really happens
is the shared death experiencer now participates in this journey
accompanying the dying, and they are often in a visionary realm,
a heavenly realm, and they're progressing along with the dying
(22:20):
on this journey. And the key themes here are ascension
are movement, typically upwards and towards a light. The landscape
is almost always beautiful. It can be more earthly landscapes
of meadows and pastors, that's the most common thing we
see as meadows and pastors with forests heading into the forest.
(22:43):
We also see galactical realms, galaxy realms. But they also
have this sense while they're accompanying the dying of acquiring
special types of knowledge insight into the nature of reality.
More than anything else, this accompanying with the dying provides
this acquiring a special knowledge. There's also a border of
(23:04):
boundary by which the experiencer is not able to pass through,
but of course the dying does. They do transgress that
and of course do not return to their human life.
So this case is a really vivid one, vivid because
it's described very well by Cynthia. Cynthia's gonna be talking
about experience she had with her husband. This happened about
(23:28):
fifteen twenty minutes after her husband had actually died. Through
medical terms, he stopped breathing, but she's meditating right next
to his body.
Speaker 6 (23:39):
So I remember lifting up out of my body and
then taking my husband his name was Shara, by the
hand and pulling him up, and then I pulled him
up past me, and then he pulled me up past him.
And we kept doing that for a long time, and
the sensation was very freeing. He was fully intact, you know,
he wasn't mentally compromised. Then is no sensation of constraint
(24:02):
or discomfort from anybody's body. And then I saw the light,
and you know, and it's not like a pinpoint light.
Speaker 1 (24:10):
It's a huge light.
Speaker 6 (24:12):
And we both turned towards it and went towards it,
and then his mother appeared. The experience of the light,
there was a complete wholeness sensation for me, a lot
of freedom, you know, any of my own psychology wasn't there.
And then his mother reached to him, and then he
reached to her and he looked it was still holding
my hand, and he looked back at me and said,
(24:33):
but I want to stay with you, and then he
slipped away, and I think that was it.
Speaker 1 (24:39):
I don't remember too much after that. So Cynthia describes
our third mode of participation, in which she actually accompanies
her husband Shah Indian initial stages of the afterlife once
again main themes ascension, moving towards the light. With Cynthia,
she's more of a research in geology actually is her specialty,
(25:02):
so she's more scientifically oriented. So she's a little uncomfortable
with more of these, you know, kind of new age
thoughts if you will, about the afterlife. And then Cynthia
sees Shar's mother, so this is a vision of a
deceased relative in the afterlife. And then she hands off
(25:23):
Shar in a certain way. We call this the handoff,
when the shared of experiencer hands off the departing love
one to another loved one in the afterlife. So yeah,
beautiful case. And it's very similar to the next mode
of participation.
Speaker 3 (25:38):
It's time for our break, but there's so much more
coming up with my friend William Peters and the Shared
Death Experience. You're listening to Shades of the Afterlife on
the iHeartRadio and Coast to Coast AM Paranormal Podcast Network.
(26:09):
Welcome back to Shades of the Afterlife. I'm Sandra Champlain
and our topic today has Shared Death Experiences SDEs with
our guest William Peters. And yes, it's possible that we
can see loved ones greeting our loved one as they pass.
Speaker 1 (26:25):
Let's continue the next mode of participation which we're going
to go into, which is assisting the dying, very similar
to accompaniment, but the participants or the sde experiencers report
that they felt like they were called in to help
assist or guide the dying in the transition, and in
(26:45):
many cases, the SDE experiencer finds themselves in the afterlife
with their departing dying loved one, and then they realize
they're there to help, but they may not even have
any idea how to help, and the wisdom and knowledge
for how to assist comes to them in that moment. Now,
Mark is actually in New Jersey, having just finished a
(27:09):
week of having led a group of people in a
kind of outdoor education program. He's in the passenger seat
and tired and reflecting. When he has this experience, he
knows his father is not doing well in a hospital
in Canada, but he doesn't know that his father's dying
(27:29):
at this moment.
Speaker 7 (27:31):
You know, there's that connection that we have with other
people that we love, you know, Like in particular with
my father, I had that connection and I still do.
Speaker 1 (27:37):
Right.
Speaker 7 (27:38):
I could feel my father as like I need to
check in on him, so I sent my spirit to
the hospital where I knew he was. I remember going
to him as bedside and speaking to him and saying,
you know, Dad, why don't you just let go Mom's
going to be all right, all his kids are going
to be all right. You know, you can go like
there's nothing holding you here anymore.
Speaker 1 (27:58):
And he looks at me.
Speaker 7 (27:59):
Huzzle was in his face as he said, I don't
know how I knew right away. As soon as I
was there with my dad, picked him up. I started
that meditation, you know, walking down this particular trail, then
a certain point turn and step up these stairs and
walking towards the light. So we're walking side by side,
and I took him to the light. My father and
(28:20):
my grandmother had a really really close and beautiful and
amazing magical relationship. As we got close to the light,
hand there's like a door where the numinosity of the
light coming out of there was just unbelievable. And my
grandmother steps out of that light and she's standing there
and my dad look out of his face was just
(28:41):
so peaceful and beautiful.
Speaker 1 (28:44):
And as we approached the light, my.
Speaker 7 (28:46):
Grandmother and my uncle both first my grandmother stepped out
of the light and they were very very close. So
again that's the look of joy in his face when
he saw my grandmother was just like the look I
had seen in his face in years, years and years,
and he just went and hugged her and hugged her.
And my uncle came out of the light at that
point and he joined the fray and the three of
(29:07):
them did joy.
Speaker 1 (29:07):
Was just unbelievable.
Speaker 7 (29:09):
And none of them touched me. Clearly, I wasn't part
of that group, but you know, my job was done.
I brought my dad there and now like they had it,
it was really how it felt, and they didn't speak
to me either. And then my dad he just turns
and looks me and it's just a huge smile on
his face and just said, I didn't know that it
was this eazy. I woke the next morning and the
(29:31):
phone rang and it was for me, and I answered
the phone as my brother and he said, you know,
Dad passed away, and I said, yeah, I know.
Speaker 1 (29:42):
So Mark shares an experience with his father. This is
a remote sde. It is the fourth mode of participation,
which we call guiding the dying through the transition process.
You see a number of key themes here. One is
that obviously Mark sees his father clearly. He then is
(30:04):
communicating with his father dialogue in the afterlife here, and
he understands his father needs help because his father expresses
that he doesn't know how to do the transition, and
Mark begins to help him. Mark picks him up, as
he says, and he starts walking, and notice the way
(30:25):
that he's walking. He talks about walking upward. We see
the theme of ascension again. We also see the theme
of moving towards the light because Mark's grandmother comes out
of that light appears, and then there's this reunion between
Mark's father and his grandmother. Keep in mind what's interesting
(30:48):
here is Mark is not seeming to have much of
a dialogue or conversation with the deceased relatives. This is
very common. The focus is almost always on conducting the
transition and all that appears in the afterlife in terms
of spirit beings and deceased relatives are focused on this
(31:09):
great event of facilitating the transition and lovingly welcoming the
dying home in a certain way. The embrace that Mark
describes between his father and his father's mother is just
so filled with joy and love and it's beautiful. And
(31:30):
then the uncle, another deceased relative, comes out and also
joins in the welcoming. We call this a type of
welcoming party, very common in the share death experience, and
then Mark says that they go into the light, but
he realizes he can't go any further. In fact, as
(31:50):
he's observing this, he realizes he's at the end of
his line, and he even says, I'm kind of don't
what I was supposed to do, and he's back in
his body. So profound experience. That's our fourth mode of participation,
and now we're going to go into the after effect. So,
as I've said all along, the value in the st
(32:11):
for all its spectacular phenomena, is dwarfed by the positive
after facts, money of which are therapeutically beneficial. These are
unsolicited responses. So sixty seven percent over two thirds believe
that their loved one is alive, and well eighty seven
(32:31):
percent we're convinced of an afterlife, and they often came
out of nowhere just saying I'm absolutely convinced. I know
that's a term we hear all the time. I know
there's an afterlife. And in fact they often say things like, oh,
that realm I was in is more real than this
human existence, Like this human existence is a dream. It
(32:51):
sits inside the greater reality of that afterlife dimension I
was in. We also find that almost just seventy sixty
nine percent exactly express a grief process, a process of
grief that is more beneficial or more enhanced than a
typical grief. Now, as a psychotherapist, I did this assessment
(33:14):
because I know what typical grief processes are, and I
ask certain questions, and what we realize is that our
SD experiencers were expressing grief patterns that were while they
had a heartache and were breft at the loss of
a loved one, they also had a larger context of
(33:36):
meaning and understanding to hold the loss in, and so
their grief reconciliation as we call it, was much improved.
The next element we hear is fifty two percent reported
reduced fear of death. I am sure that's much higher.
It's closer to eighty ninety percent, but we didn't ask
that question specifically, And for those of you who do
(33:58):
near death experience research, you'll know that is a key
finding as an impact of NDEs as a reduction in
fear and anxiety about death, renewed life purpose. This is
something we thought was fascinating that often our respondents would say,
you know, I came back from that experience, and I
changed everything. I felt like my life had meaning. I
(34:18):
understood why I was in this life. I changed my work.
I reviewed my relationships and I let go of relationships
that weren't meaningful to me, and I focused on other
new relationships or deepening others. And so we call this
renewed life purpose. The key after effect also is this
sense that people are sure, they're certain they're going to
(34:40):
see their loved one again. So here's the cutting edge
of the research right now. We have not published on
this yet, but this is an aspect of the SD
that I find the most fascinating. It seems that there
is a force in the afterlife, or at least at
the moment of transition, that is guiding, managing, and facilitating
(35:03):
this process of a soul departing or dropping a human
body and entering into the initial stages of the afterlife.
In other words, it's the continuation of consciousness beyond human death,
and it appears to take some management. And that's the conductor.
That's the term I named, because they seem like they're
(35:24):
conducting a variety of influences or forces or elements to
make this transition smooth and peaceful. So The conductor appears
in a variety of forms. It can appear as a human,
a larger than life human. Typically, it can also appear
as an angel. And sometimes the conductor is not seen,
(35:46):
its sensed. It's like I felt there was a force
operative there. I felt like there was some other energy
that was managing or driving this process of transition. The
conductor when scene seems to have a sense of urgency.
It's purposeful. It can rush, it can direct other spirit
(36:08):
beings around it, or a can even give directions to
the loved ones. Angela H. She is with her mother
in law, and she is at bedside when two angels appear,
one larger and the second seeming to be what I
would call an apprentice learning how to be a conductor
(36:29):
of sorts.
Speaker 3 (36:31):
I'll read to you the story of Angela H because
the sound quality isn't so great. My mother in law, Jean,
was completely unconscious and on heavy medication. As I glanced
into her room, I noticed it had taken on a
welcoming golden color, and it felt as though the whole
room was inside of a sacred bubble which I shouldn't enter.
(36:53):
Then I saw a translucent form moving out from the
center of Jean's body. In the corner of the stood
a massive being of light with huge white wings. It
didn't have a head, but I knew it was an angel.
Its wings were moving with a beckoning motion, drawing Jane's
translucent spirit upward. Beside it was a smaller angelic being
(37:16):
mirroring the same movement. The air was filled with a
very high pitched tone. The larger angel, though it had
no head, turned its attention to me. I heard a
clear telepathic message in my mind. Wait. Wait. At that moment,
the smaller angel seemed to panic, and both beings began
(37:37):
their movements with more urgency, going faster and faster. Just
then another person barged past me into the room, and
the entire vision the angels, Jeane, the golden light, the
high pitched tone vanished completely into the corner of the room,
and I knew Jeane had died. We'll head off for
(37:57):
our break now, but when we get back, William Peters
reveals the mysterious being he calls the Conductor. He'll also
share his own shared death experience at his father's bedside.
We'll be right back. You're listening to Shades of the
Afterlife on the iHeartRadio and Coast to Coast am Paranormal
(38:18):
Podcast Network. Welcome back to Shades of the Afterlife. I'm
(38:43):
Sandra Champlain and you're hearing my good friend William Peters,
author of the book At Heaven's Door, what Shared Journeys
to the Afterlife teach about dying well and living better.
You can find his website shared crossing dot com. There
are upcoming retreats, a symposium with William and doctors such
(39:07):
as Emen Alexander Raymond Moody. Also, if you're interested in
learning more about share death experiences, you can take a
course to discover all the nuances and what practices you
may do now that will leave an opening to perhaps
having one of these experiences with your loved one. Again
(39:28):
Shared crossing dot com. Let's continue with another story from William.
Speaker 1 (39:33):
Okay, next one here. My father died about two years ago,
in fact two years ago on September the twentieth, and
I was at bedside, on one side of bed with
my mother, and then my sister was on my mother's side,
and he was very close to death. And I was
doing what I typically do when I'm with the dying,
and that is I was gently holding my father's hand
(39:56):
on my hand on his pulse, and then I close
my eyes and I'm my breathing to his breathing, and
his breathing was getting labored. And at one moment I
had a vision to the left side, above the foot
of the bed. I saw my grandmother and my aunt,
both who had predeceased, and then I saw my grandfather
(40:16):
as well, my grandfather, who I had never met, but
I knew it was my grandfather. There are a number
of details, but the piece I want to share with
you is that I was clear that my father was
ready to die, and I was talking to my grandmothers
and to my aunt. They were right next to meich
I was saying, why aren't you taking him? I could
see this beautiful cylinder of light coming down like a stairway,
(40:38):
about a quarter of the way down from where they were,
in a slanted direction to my father, which would be
to my father's heart or head, And I said, why
aren't you taking him? He's ready to go, And my
grandmother and aunt in unison kind of looked at me
and then averted their gaze to draw my attention to
(40:58):
just over the top of my father's bed. Right over
his heart, but about four feet above, even higher than
they were. But the point being is I moved my
attention over and when I locked my attention to where
they were directing me, it wasn't that I tried to lock,
except I kind of resonated with this in a gravitational way,
(41:20):
and I felt a pull on my heart. And you know,
some people talk about this electromagnetic nature of our soul spirit,
and I felt that resonating in pool and come alive.
And then I realized, Oh, they were averting my gaze
as if to say he's in charge or she's in charge,
(41:41):
but it felt like a he, and I was taken back,
and I thought, that's the conductor. And I felt the
power and force and strength to the conductor who was waiting.
It was clearly it was not quite my father's time.
And then about twenty minutes later there was this kind
(42:02):
of gentle whush upward, and my father was gone. And
the room does what it does is the way I
feel it. It kind of empties out energetically. There's even
a feeling of coolness after the death of somebody. And
I learned this from my years working in hospice, so
that's what I want to share with you. I go
into it in more detail in my book At Heaven's Door,
(42:24):
but there's a bit of a summary about it. So
I want to say a few more things by way
of closing. So you may be asking, well, how does
a healthcare system response to SDEs? And the truth of
the matter is our current healthcare system does not know
much about the SDEs at all. They're just finally getting
used to near death experiences. I think most people in
the healthcare system are familiar with near death experiences, but
(42:47):
there's no understanding for SDEs. And if they do happen,
you're likely to get one of three responses. A healthcare
provider that's curious but neutral but unable to be supportive
because they don't want to be seen as supporting hallucinations
or delusions or psychotic problematic expressions. They can also be dismissive.
(43:09):
This is very common where they can just simply say, oh,
you're under a great deal of stress, your loved ones
dying or died or what have you, and you know,
go home and get some rest, and I think you'll
realize those experiences are hallucinations. Sometimes they can be downright harmful,
and they can basically say I think you need a
psychological evaluation, and in which cases they get a psychological
(43:33):
evaluation and they're diagnosed with some form of psychoses or
grief hallucinations or delusional disorder or something like that. These
are all highly problematic and harmful to the experiencer because
it then forces them to interpret this most profound spiritual
experience as a delusion of their brain, and that is
(43:56):
highly problematic. So why is this well, our current view
of medical sciences of consciousness is that consciousness is created
by the brain, and when the human body dies, the
brain dies with it, and therefore there can be no
communication or connection with the consciousness, soul, spirit, call whatever
(44:19):
you want, with the deceased person. So we have a
fundamental problem with medical sciences when it comes to the SDE,
because the SDE would assert that the consciousness of the
dying has survived human death and is now seeking to
or at least available to be in relationship with departed
(44:43):
loved ones and healthcare providers. Even so, this is the
stumbling block we have, and I think there is some
movement here, though. I think that the newer forms of
appreciation of consciousness are evolving, and I think you're going
to see certainly more progressive provider making space for these
types of experiences. But what's really important is that there
(45:05):
is incredible therapeutic value when somebody shares a story like
an SDE or other shared crossings and they feel supported. Unfortunately,
thirty eight percent reported a concern about sharing their story
for being dismissed or ridiculed. So this is why a
lot of people have these experiences and don't share them.
(45:26):
Every interviewee in our study express gratitude and appreciation for
the opportunity to share their story and it affirmed them.
Then they felt empowered to go out and share their
story with others, which is great. So in conclusion, remote
share death experiences are more common than bedside ones. They
are highly beneficial because they yield in the SD experience
(45:50):
or a certainty of the afterlife, a benevolent afterlife, and
a knowing that they'll be reunited with their loved ones.
Over forty percent of our SD experiences reported having more
than one, that suggests there's a capacity to have an SD,
and seventy eight percent of our experiences had other shared
(46:11):
crossings That means that they typically had other after death
forms of communications like post death visions, visitations, direct communication,
and other synchronicities suggesting communication across the veil. Finally, twenty
five percent a quarter of our interviewees reported ongoing relationships
with the departed. So if you want to learn more
(46:34):
about SDEs, I suggest you come to our story library
on our Shared Crossing dot com. You could hear video
accounts of other people's SDEs. Also, my book At Heaven's Door.
This is the seminal book that's research based on the
shared Death experience. There will be more coming, I can
tell you my colleagues are writing books right now, but
(46:55):
this is the first one that has twenty eight really
wonderful stories pulled from over one hundred and fifty cases.
The reviews have been thankfully quite good. I want to
say that if you've had an experience, you can submit
it to the Shared Crossing Research Initiative. We are always
collecting cases and we would appreciate you submitting because they
(47:17):
help others learn about it. And finally, the flagship program
that we offer the Shared Crossing Pathways. It is a
program that teaches you how to have the SDE a company,
a loved one into a beautiful end of life and afterlife.
Speaker 3 (47:34):
Thank you, William, and we will always support your work.
One of the common questions is why do some people
have shared death experiences and others don't. I own William's
book At Heaven's Door, and in the final chapter he
talks about his two decades of research and that there
isn't a magic formula, but there are some common themes
(47:56):
and conditions that make a shared death experience more likely.
He breaks it down between our own openness, the wishes
of our dying loved one, and the deeper purpose of
the experience itself. William's research shows that the most common
factor among sde experiencers is their openness and availability. This
(48:19):
can happen in a few ways, be physically and mentally present.
Many SDEs occur when a person is simply not distracted.
They are sitting quietly at the bedside, or taking a
walk in nature, or even sound asleep. They're all states
where our busy, multitasking minds are at rest, which seems
(48:43):
to create the space for our consciousness to participate in
the experience. As one experiencer, Sonya perfectly put it, thinking back,
I guess I felt like in a weird way I
was available to help, so my loved one nabbed me.
(49:04):
We can practice mindfulness, while not a requirement, many experiencers
have a background in practices like meditation, yoga or prayer.
These activities train the mind to be quiet and receptive,
making it easier to perceive the subtle energies of a
shared crossing giving permission to go. The act of telling
(49:29):
a dying loved one that it's okay for them to leave,
that you will be all right can be incredibly powerful.
This release of earthly attachment and tension can sometimes be
the very thing that opens the door to a spiritual connection.
Of course, we know there's much more to it than that,
(49:50):
so again you can find William's book at Heaven's Door
What Shared Journeys to the Afterlife teach about dying well
and lif living better, and I always recommend that you
get a little taste of how your soul perceives information
from the afterlife. Come join us on one of our
psychic medium classes. We have the greatest tutors Kerrie McLeod
(50:14):
and Phil Dykes, and also friend Scott Milligan teaches trance
and the Altered States. When we can have these what
seem like supernatural experiences. We realize that we can create
the space to have a shared death experience again. We
Don't Die dot com. That's where you'll find me and
(50:35):
you can come join me for a free Sunday gathering
inspirational service with medium demonstration included. I'm Sandra Champlain. Thank
you so much for taking your precious time and listening
to Shades of the Afterlife on the iHeartRadio and Coast
to Coast AM Paranormal Podcast Network.
Speaker 2 (51:02):
Thanks for listening to the iHeartRadio and Coast to Coast
A and Paranormal Podcast Network. Make sure and check out
all our shows on the iHeartRadio app or by going
to iHeartRadio dot com.
Host
Sandra Champlain
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Cardiac Cowboys
The heart was always off-limits to surgeons. Cutting into it spelled instant death for the patient. That is, until a ragtag group of doctors scattered across the Midwest and Texas decided to throw out the rule book. Working in makeshift laboratories and home garages, using medical devices made from scavenged machine parts and beer tubes, these men and women invented the field of open heart surgery. Odds are, someone you know is alive because of them. So why has history left them behind? Presented by Chris Pine, CARDIAC COWBOYS tells the gripping true story behind the birth of heart surgery, and the young, Greatest Generation doctors who made it happen. For years, they competed and feuded, racing to be the first, the best, and the most prolific. Some appeared on the cover of Time Magazine, operated on kings and advised presidents. Others ended up disgraced, penniless, and convicted of felonies. Together, they ignited a revolution in medicine, and changed the world.
The Joe Rogan Experience
The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.