The family of Brendan Costello gathered in the hospital half-light. He had overcome so much in life, but the profound damage to his brain meant he would never again be Brendan. It was time. Brendan had spent four months enduring three surgeries and a lengthy rehab after infections further destabilized his damaged spine. He had…
In early 1988, the British neuropsychiatrist Dr. Peter Fenwick, an expert on near-death experiences, appeared in the BBC documentary “Glimpses of Death” to comment on the near-death visions of people who had briefly died, or nearly died, and then come back to life. After it aired, thousands of people wrote him letters describing similar stories….
In early 1988, the British neuropsychiatrist Peter Fenwick found himself drowning in letters from people who believed they had survived an encounter with death. “I slowly floated down a tunnel, not afraid in any way but looking forward to something,” one man wrote to him. “When it came I was absolutely at peace and going…
I didn’t fully understand the limits of my body until this past June, when I fell down my fire escape and floated outside myself in a near-death experience, much like the ones Peter Fenwick — a psychiatrist who researched end-of-life phenomena — documented over the course of his career. (Dr. Fenwick died on Nov. 22…
