British Expat Newsletter

29 August 2007

Hello, and welcome to those who have joined up since our last newsletter. Dave's doing most of the work this week.

In this issue

This week: Near-death experiences?
Write for British Expat
Virtual Snacks
Sponsor
Bizarre Searches
Quotation and joke

This week

"Don't die, Shrek! And if you see any long tunnels, stay away from the light!"
(Donkey (voiced by Eddie Murphy) in the film Shrek)

Ever had a near-death experience? I'm not talking here about transport near-misses, or scary incidents where someone's shooting at you, threatening you with a knife or otherwise out to kill you. Nor am I talking about illnesses where medical practitioners have believed you to be on the verge of dying – though hospitals certainly do feature in a large number of the kind of experience I'm talking about.

No, what I'm talking about is the Near Death Experience (NDE), or Out-of-body Experience (OBE or OOBE) as it's also known. Most of us have heard of these, even if we haven't had one ourselves or met anyone who has. Basically, it's a sequence of events where a person near death suddenly appears to be floating above his or her own body, observing what's going on – often in a great deal of detail. Then there's a whooshing noise, and the person sees and feels him or herself rushing up along a tunnel towards a bright light (blue or primrose are among the colours seen), accompanied by a feeling of calm, joy and great love. The person may meet relatives, friends or spiritual figures, and has an encounter with a being of light. The being tells the person that it isn't yet time and that he or she has to return to the world – which causes the person to feel regretful or reluctant to return. Then it's back to the body.

One trivial point: how do the people concerned know they're dying? Calling it a near-death experience suggests that the people to whom it's happening are genuinely about to die and fail to do so only because someone's determined that their number isn't yet up. Very comforting, I'm sure, to know that there's a pleasant experience in wait for us when we peg out. But without the reliable testimony of someone who's actually been through the process and gone the whole hog (ie died), it's difficult to be sure that what's happening is a real experience and not a hallucination. There are several cases documented where the person experiencing an NDE has never actually been in danger of dying – simply the belief that death is imminent has been enough to bring one about.

As for the details observed by the person once out of their body, most of these are generally available to the person through their everyday five senses, particularly through hearing and touch – even under anaesthetic. Tellingly, it's often the visual details that can't possibly have been seen by the subject at any stage that are the shakiest; they tend, too, to be supplied by building on the evidence of what the patient's heard.

The amount of resemblance between these cases – across people from a wide variety of social, ethnic and religious backgrounds – is quite remarkable on the face of things, especially as it's about an experience that none of us has ever been through in the physical world. Then again, is it so very uncanny?

Think about the number of dreams there are that loads of people have had, even though they're not real: the one about floating through the air at will; the one about being unable to run properly or being rooted to the spot in the face of a threat; the one about trying to drive a car from the back seat; the one about falling (and, according to folk wisdom, "if you hit the ground, you die in your sleep". How do they know?!). Many of these dreams are widespread across cultures, although possibly not the car one.

Add to that the likelihood that the researcher is looking for signs that various "classic" symptoms have been experienced (a common failing among researchers into the paranormal or parapsychological), and that the stories most likely to sell papers and magazines are the ones which appear to confirm the existing body of "evidence", and you've got an "unexplained phenomenon" on your hand. Just like "spontaneous human combustion", except that that particular phenomenon is well documented and explained by conventional physics and chemistry; it seems to be only in the English-speaking world that there's still any mystery about it.

Both Kay and I have dreamt about dying. (Kay dreamt that she was in a car that was being slowly crushed; I dreamt that I'd been shot in the chest.) In both cases, there was no pain involved – we simply felt our life ebbing away, with a sort of fatalistic "Oh well, this is it" feeling of regret. And after that, nothing. Just a total shutdown; a sleep without dreams.

So if you see a light at the end of a long tunnel, the chances are that it's either daylight or an oncoming train.

Do you have anything to say about this topic? Or do you have some suggestions for other issues we might discuss in our weekly email? Why not tell us on the forum?
British Expat Forum: BE Newsletter discussion

On the Website

After quite a busy few weeks updating the site, we haven't added quite so much this week as we've had visitors! But we do at least have a new Pic of the Week &ndash: and it's possibly the most disturbing image we've ever used. Taken by Jonathan Taylor, a freelance photographer whose work has appeared in many international news and other publications, it shows two Thai youths, high on speed, brawling while appalled bystanders look on. (We'll be bringing more about Jonathan, his work and his photography school on the main site soon.) Meanwhile, Dave's borrowed Kay's camera to do some photography of his own – adding a couple of photos to illustrate the Belgian Beers feature. Any excuse...

All the new articles and features are listed on our What's New page:
What's New on BE?

If you're looking for travel features on the site, a good place to start is our Expat World page.
Expat World

Write for British Expat

Would you like to write for British Expat? Sorry, we don't pay for articles but if you have a website we'll link to it below any of your articles we publish. We use all sorts of content as long as it's useful and/or interesting to our readership. (No advertorials, please.) You can find out more on the main BE site:
Write for BE

Virtual Snacks

Just a few suggestions if you have a little time to spare:

Dr Susan Blackmore is a former researcher into parapsychology and a Visiting Lecturer at the University of Bristol. Here's what she has to say about NDEs.

Skepdic.com is also pretty good on NDEs.

(We would have included a link to a non-sceptic view on NDEs, but they contained so much bad science that we didn't want to lend them credibility.)

Bizarre Searches

Some strange search terms which have led people to visit British Expat recently:

long haired lover from liverpool chords [Why???]
is black treacle fancy molasses?
malta wether
godzilla e-cards
roll out the barrel german lyrics
british men wax chest
duk sex .com
charlie no bra
what does the word starling symbolise in the silence of the lambs
pink fir apple chips -decadence

Till next time...
Happy surfing!

Kay & Dave
Editor & Deputy Editor
British Expat Magazine

Quotation

"Three bob a day, walking the gutters, street after street. Just keep skin and bone together, bread and skilly... Doesn't bring in any business either."

– James Joyce, Irish author (1882-1941), in Ulysses (about the Hely's sandwich board men).

Joke

An advertising team is working very late at night on a project due the next morning. Suddenly, a genie appears before them and offers each of them one wish.

The copywriter says: "I've always dreamed of writing a monumental novel and having my work acclaimed by critics everywhere. I'd like to go to a tropical island where I can concentrate and write my masterpiece."

The genie says, "No problem!" and poof! The copywriter is gone.

The art director says: "I want to create a painting so beautiful that it would hang in the Louvre for all the world to admire. I want to go to the French countryside to work on my painting."

The genie says, "Your wish is granted!" and poof! The art director is gone.

The genie then turns to the account executive and says, "And what is your wish?"

The account executive says, "I want those two wasters back here right now!"