#newjust now
Anonymous Coward
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The case reports on these pages share one weakness: the things the patients saw were things that were going to happen anyway, around their own bodies, in rooms full of noise. The obvious fix is to put something in the room that nobody would mention and that can only be seen from above. This page collects what happened when researchers did that.
If, during a near-death experience, perception really happens from a vantage point near the ceiling, then a picture or symbol placed face up on a high shelf, out of sight of patients and staff, should sometimes be described correctly afterwards. A single clear hit under good conditions would be hard to explain away. Repeated misses would not disprove the idea, but would count against it.
| Study | Setting and method | Result |
|---|---|---|
| Parnia, Waller, Yeates and Fenwick, Resuscitation 48 (2001), 149 to 156 | All cardiac arrest survivors over one year at Southampton General Hospital; figures on boards facing the ceiling | 7 of 63 survivors (11.1%) had memories, 4 with NDE features. None reported leaving the body, so the targets were never tested. |
| Sartori, five-year ITU study, Morriston Hospital, Swansea (2008 monograph; 2006 case paper) | Symbols on brightly coloured paper on top of each patient's cardiac monitor, hidden behind ridges | Her best out-of-body case (Patient 10) did not look at the symbol. |
| Greyson's review, in Cardeña, Lynn and Krippner (eds.), Varieties of Anomalous Experience, 2nd ed. (APA, 2014) | Five prospective hospital studies with unusual targets in places likely to be seen during an NDE | Twelve patients reported leaving their bodies. None described the targets. |
| Parnia et al., AWARE, Resuscitation 85 (2014), 1799 to 1805 | 15 hospitals; 50 to 100 shelves per site, each with one image facing the ceiling | No image identified. The one verified awareness case occurred in an area without a shelf. |
| Parnia et al., AWARE II, Resuscitation 191 (2023), 109903 | 25 sites; image on a tablet above the patient during CPR, plus an audio stimulus | "Nobody identified the visual image, 1/28 (3.5%) identified the auditory stimulus." |
| Tart, with Robert Monroe, University of Virginia, 1965 to 1966 (reported 1967; retold 1998) | Eight night sessions in a hospital EEG lab, with a target number to be read | Monroe reported two OBEs on the final night but did not see the number. See the Monroe file. |
Against this stands one laboratory hit: Charles Tart's Miss Z, who read a five-digit number in 1968 under controls that critics found too loose.
Hidden targets are the only test in this field that does not depend on memory, retelling or the honesty of witnesses. They are also the test that proponents themselves designed and ran. Greyson, a leading researcher in the field and no skeptic, noted in his 2014 review that, small as the sample is, the failure of these patients to describe the hidden targets raises questions about the accuracy of the anecdotal reports.
The defenders' reply is fair as far as it goes. Out-of-body reports are rare among survivors, and most arrests happen in places without targets: by the Psi Encyclopedia's account of AWARE, about 78 per cent of the arrests occurred in areas with no shelves. The handful of patients who did report leaving the body may have had no reason to look up at a cupboard. Patient 10's answer, "I didn't look", is exactly what you would expect from someone absorbed in watching his own body. On this view the tests have simply been underpowered.
That is true, and it cuts both ways. Twelve or so testable reports in decades of hospital research is not many. But the claim being tested is that these perceptions are accurate and detailed, sometimes said to be clearer than normal sight. The specific, checkable thing in the room is the one detail nobody has yet reported.
No published hospital study has produced a hit on a hidden visual target. The samples are too small to rule the phenomenon out, and too consistent to ignore. Any future case that claims veridical perception should be weighed against this record. Rating: Negative result.
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