Not every dark experience means the same thing — and discernment matters most where the stakes are highest.
A nurse who attempted suicide later described what she saw on the other side. Things were "all over me," she said. "I was screaming. Everything was dark. Then I actually saw these things, like horrible human beings, their teeth were all ugly and twisted. The eyes were bulging. There must have been at least fifty, everywhere, all around me. I went to hell! I went to hell! Personally, I never believed in hell. I believed that hell was not being able to see God. But after this, I believe in hell."1
That account is hard to read. It is harder still to know what to make of it. Was she really in hell? In Hades, the temporary waiting place? Encountering demons? Was her own terror painting the experience? We cannot tell from a single quote. We need a framework. That is what this chapter aims to give.
The thesis is simple but important. A meaningful minority of near-death experiences are distressing rather than pleasant, and these distressing NDEs are not a single category. Some are genuine encounters with the biblical Hades. Some are demonic encounters. Some are neutral or positive experiences distorted by the experiencer's fear. Some appear to be God's loving discipline of a believer. And a smaller number may be fully demonic deceptions designed to terrorize. Sorting which is which is the work of careful discernment — and getting it wrong, in either direction, has real pastoral cost.
For the first decade or so of NDE research, the field was dominated by glowing reports — light, love, peace, deceased relatives, beings of brightness. Raymond Moody, in his foundational Life After Life (1975), claimed that no one in his sample had described "a hell of flames and demons with pitchforks."2 Many readers concluded that NDEs were universally pleasant.
That conclusion was premature. Later research showed that distressing NDEs are far more common than early studies suggested. Nancy Evans Bush, the leading authority on the topic, estimates that at least one in five NDEs contain distressing elements — somewhere in the 15-to-23 percent range, depending on how the survey is conducted.3 Some studies show even higher rates when researchers ask the right questions or interview patients shortly after resuscitation.
Why are they underreported? Three reasons stand out. First, shame. Experiencers are often deeply embarrassed by what they saw and reluctant to share it. Second, repression. Maurice Rawlings, a Christian cardiologist, documented patients who described horrifying experiences between cardiac arrests, only to have no memory of them days later.4 Third, framing. Many researchers ask questions that prime experiencers toward positive descriptions ("Did you feel peaceful?") rather than neutral ones. Jeffrey Long's NDERF survey, which used more open-ended language, found that about 64 percent of experiencers described the contents of their NDE as "wonderful," 32 percent as "mixed," and around 4 percent as "frightening."5 The "mixed" category alone suggests that distressing elements are far more common than earlier work admitted.
So I want to put a stake in the ground. Distressing NDEs are real. They are not anomalies. They are not always demonic. They are not all the same thing. Any biblical theology of NDEs has to take them seriously.
Bush's classic work, Dancing Past the Dark, identifies several patterns within distressing NDE reports. I'll group them into three clusters here.
The first cluster is what Bush calls inverse NDEs. These have all the familiar features of a pleasant NDE — the tunnel, the light, the beings, the life review — but the experiencer feels them as terrifying rather than loving. The light feels exposing rather than welcoming. The beings feel menacing rather than kind. The life review feels accusing rather than restorative. The phenomenology is the same; the felt-meaning is reversed.
The second cluster is the void or eternal-nothingness NDE. The experiencer encounters absolute emptiness, isolation, a sense that nothing is real and never was. Bush's own NDE was of this type. Voices told her, "You are not real. You never were real. You never existed. Your life never existed. The world never existed. It was a game you were allowed to invent." She was told the whole thing was a cosmic joke.6 The pain here is not fire; it is annihilation, mockery, meaninglessness.
The third cluster is the hellish NDE proper — encounters with darkness, fire, tormented souls, demonic beings, a pit, foul smells, screams. These are the closest analogue to popular images of hell. Long estimates that hellish NDEs make up only about 1 percent of all NDEs shared with NDERF.7 They are rare but vivid, and they get most of the attention.
Some experiences combine elements from more than one cluster. Some begin distressingly and end pleasantly — Howard Storm is the most famous example, and we'll come back to him. The phenomenology is varied. So is the theology behind it.
Bush's typology describes what the experience looks like. The Christian theologian asks another question: what is actually going on? What spiritual reality is the experiencer encountering? Here are five possibilities, each grounded in Scripture, each requiring different pastoral responses.
Scripture teaches that the unsaved dead, between death and the final judgment, exist in a place called ᾅδης (hadēs) in the New Testament — the Greek equivalent of the Old Testament שְׁאוֹל (sheol), the realm of the dead. The clearest biblical picture is Luke 16:19-31:
"And in Hades, being in torment, he lifted up his eyes and saw Abraham far off and Lazarus at his side. And he called out, 'Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus to dip the end of his finger in water and cool my tongue, for I am in anguish in this flame'" (Luke 16:23-24, ESV).
The rich man is conscious. He is in torment. He can perceive Lazarus and Abraham across a great chasm. He still loves his brothers and wants them warned. This is the intermediate state — not the final state — of the unsaved dead.8
Here a careful biblical distinction matters. Hades is not the same as Gehenna or the Lake of Fire. Hades is the temporary waiting place. The Lake of Fire is the final destination after the last judgment. Revelation 20:13-14 makes the distinction explicit: "And the sea gave up the dead who were in it, Death and Hades gave up the dead who were in them. . . . Then Death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire" (ESV). Hades itself, in the end, is destroyed. So when an NDEr describes a distressing waiting place — darkness, isolation, sorrow, even some kind of torment — they are most plausibly describing Hades, not Gehenna. The final judgment has not yet occurred.9
This distinction is not academic hairsplitting. It changes what we say to readers and grieving families. It also opens theological room for what some call a final-judgment opportunity — the possibility that the experience the NDEr had was a real glimpse of the present condition of those who have rejected God, but not necessarily a description of their irrevocable fate. That question deserves its own treatment elsewhere.
Scripture is clear that personal evil exists and sometimes interacts with humans. Demons accuse, mock, and attack (Job 1-2; Ephesians 6:12; 1 Peter 5:8). An NDE encounter with menacing beings that accuse the experiencer, mock God, and try to provoke fear or despair fits exactly the biblical profile of demonic activity. Researchers at Washington State went so far as to define negative NDEs as those that "may also contain visions of demonic creatures that threaten or taunt the subject."10
Howard Storm's experience offers a clear example. Before Jesus rescued him, Storm was set upon by beings who mocked his prayers. When he muttered the Twenty-Third Psalm and "God Bless America" — anything with the word "God" in it — they "screamed at me, 'There is no God! Nobody can hear you! Now we are really going to hurt you.'" Yet they backed away as he prayed.11 That is the recognizable behavior of fallen spirits in Scripture: they hate the name of God, they flee resistance in faith (James 4:7), and they cannot ultimately oppose Christ's authority.
Some distressing NDEs may be neutral or even positive at the spiritual level but filtered through the experiencer's fear, guilt, or unfamiliarity with divine reality. An atheist who encounters genuine divine holiness for the first time may experience it as terrifying — not because the encounter was evil, but because they were unprepared. Holiness is heavy, and a soul without Christ may experience the weight as crushing.
Howard Storm's initial descent may include this dynamic. Storm was a militant atheist who had built his life around self. When he stepped out of his body, he found himself in a fog, drawn toward voices that initially seemed friendly but turned vicious. His own moral life caught up with him. Was the darkness an objective place? Possibly Hades. Was the cruelty of the beings demonic? Almost certainly. But part of what made the experience hellish was Storm's own unprepared soul colliding with spiritual reality. The terror was not all from outside.
Hebrews 12:5-11 teaches that "the Lord disciplines the one he loves" (ESV). Discipline is not punishment for the believer; it is the loving correction of a Father who refuses to lose his child to sin. Some believers report distressing NDEs that seem to have functioned as exactly that — a sharp confrontation with their own complacency, hidden sin, or self-trust, producing genuine repentance. The experience felt frightening, but the fruit was sanctification.
This category is sometimes missed. Christians often assume that if a believer has a distressing experience, something must be wrong — either the experience was demonic, or the person was not really a Christian. Scripture leaves room for a third option: the loving discipline of the Father. The proof is in the fruit. If the experience produced deeper love for Christ and a holier life, that is the discipline of love.
Finally, a smaller number of distressing NDEs may be fully constructed by deceiving spirits — not encounters with Hades and not the Father's discipline, but counterfeit experiences designed to traumatize or to plant false theology. Tabatt argues that the enemy actively seeks to hijack what God intends for good in the NDE phenomenon, including its frightening dimension.12 This category is rarer than some Christian writers suggest, but it is real. The clearest tell is theological content: a distressing NDE that "teaches" the experiencer something contrary to Scripture (for example, "you are damned forever no matter what you do," or "all gods are equal in their punishments") is almost certainly contaminated by deceptive influence.
Hades is not Gehenna. The Bible distinguishes between the present, intermediate state of the unsaved dead and the final state after the last judgment. Distressing NDEs that report a place of waiting, darkness, or sorrow are most plausibly glimpses of Hades — not portraits of the eternal Lake of Fire.
In real life, these five types blur into each other. Any given distressing NDE may have elements of two or three types at once. Several markers help tell them apart.
Did the encounter eventually involve rescue by Jesus or another clearly heavenly figure? If yes, the experience was probably Type 3 or Type 4 — a genuine encounter with the spiritual realm in which God's redemptive purpose was at work. Howard Storm's account fits this perfectly. He cried out the name of Jesus, and Jesus came.13
Did the experience produce repentance and faith over the long term? If yes, the experience served a redemptive purpose regardless of which specific type it was. The fruit test (Matthew 7:16-20) applies here as everywhere.
Did the experience teach specific theology that contradicts Scripture? If the distressing NDE included clear "teaching" — voices announcing universalist or pantheist doctrines, beings revealing pre-life "soul contracts," instructions to seek wisdom from spirit guides — the experience contains significant Type 5 elements, regardless of what else may be present.
What fruit emerged over years, not days? Initial experiences are easy to misread. A decade later, the pattern becomes clearer. A genuine disciplinary or rescuing encounter produces sanctified fruit: deeper holiness, greater love for Christ, gospel boldness. A demonic encounter, even if it shocks the experiencer into temporary religion, tends to leave them ungrounded, anxious, or drawn toward occult exploration of the experience.
Christians make four predictable mistakes when handling distressing NDEs. I want to name them so we can avoid them.
Error one: "All distressing NDEs are demonic deceptions designed to terrify." This is the wholesale-skepticism error. It collapses all five categories into one. It cannot account for the biblical Hades, the discipline of believers, or the genuine variety in the literature. It also tends to make the Christian afraid of every dark NDE, when most of them are actually evidence for the spiritual realm rather than against it.
Error two: "All distressing NDEs prove the experiencer was unsaved." This is the judgmental error. Believers can have distressing NDEs (Type 4). Howard Storm's experience began as a hellish encounter and became conversion. We do not have the authority to look at someone's terrifying glimpse and pronounce on their eternal destiny.
Error three: "Distressing NDEs are the only real NDEs because pleasant ones are too comforting to be from God." Some revivalist-style teachers suggest that God mainly works by terror, and so any pleasant NDE is suspect. Scripture does not support this. The God of the Bible meets people both ways — the angel at the empty tomb says, "Do not be afraid" (Matthew 28:5), and Saul on the Damascus road is knocked down in glory (Acts 9:3-6). Comfort and confrontation are both biblical postures of God.
Error four: "Distressing NDEs are just bad brain chemistry — the dying brain on a bad trip." This is the naturalist error, common among secular researchers. It ignores the veridical evidence for NDE reality, the moral and theological coherence of distressing encounters with biblical teaching, and the long-term transformation many experiencers undergo. A bad trip does not turn an atheist art professor into a pastor.
Distressing NDEs are not all the same thing. Treating every dark experience as straightforwardly "hell" — or as straightforwardly demonic — is a discernment failure. Sort the five types. Ask the diagnostic questions. Watch the long-term fruit.
Two Christian voices have shaped popular thinking about distressing NDEs more than any others. Both deserve a fair hearing.
Maurice Rawlings was a cardiologist and a committed Christian. In Beyond Death's Door (1978) and To Hell and Back (1993), he argued that distressing NDEs are far more common than the public realizes and are systematically underreported because experiencers repress them.14 Rawlings claimed that around half of his cardiac patients, when interviewed immediately after resuscitation, reported hellish experiences — but most denied them later. Some of his statistical claims have been critiqued. But his core observation has been confirmed by later research. Read Rawlings as a pioneer making a real point, even if some details are contested.
Bill Wiese, a real estate professional, wrote 23 Minutes in Hell (2006), describing what he says was a vision of hell — fire, torment, demonic beings, utter darkness, overwhelming thirst. The book has sold millions and shaped many readers' picture of the afterlife. Several things are worth noting from a discernment standpoint. First, Wiese's experience was a vision, not a cardiac-arrest NDE; he was not clinically dead but describes being suddenly transported in his sleep. Second, much of the content — torment, separation from God, demonic presence — fits the biblical picture of suffering in Hades. Third, Wiese consistently calls the place "hell," using a popular word that conflates Hades and Gehenna. Fourth, the long-term fruit of Wiese's experience has been an urgent evangelistic ministry.
I would treat Wiese's account as most likely a Type 1 experience (a real encounter with Hades or with a vision of it), with some Type 5 elements possible — meaning specific theological claims he draws from the experience need to be tested against Scripture rather than accepted on the experience's authority. The experience itself may have been from God; some interpretations built on it are the experiencer's own theology and may need adjustment. This is the experience-interpretation distinction we use throughout the book.
Storm's NDE in 1985 began as a Type 2 demonic encounter. Tormenting beings mocked him, drew him deeper into darkness, and laughed at his fragmentary prayers. But when Storm cried out the name of Jesus, Jesus came — lifted him up, bathed him in light, and showed him the heavenly city. The experience that began as hellish became the most significant evangelism event of his life: an atheist art professor became a Christian pastor. Storm's case shows that distressing NDEs and rescuing NDEs are not mutually exclusive. Sometimes the rescue requires the descent first.15
How should we respond when someone we love shares a distressing NDE? Here are the things not to do, and the things to do.
Do not dismiss the experience as a hallucination or a "bad trip." That response shuts down the conversation and disrespects what the experiencer felt was real.
Do not rush to diagnosis. You do not need to label the experience as Type 1 versus Type 2 in the first conversation. Listen first. The diagnostic work comes later, and it comes patiently.
Do not pronounce on their eternal destiny. A distressing NDE is not a verdict from heaven. It may be a wake-up call, a glimpse of Hades, an attack of the enemy, or the discipline of the Father. None of those mean the experiencer is going to be lost.
Do take the experience seriously. Take it as real, even if you are not yet sure what kind of real it is. Trust the experiencer enough to listen long.
Do ask gentle, open questions. What did you see? What did you hear? Was anyone there with you? Did anything change after the experience? How are you feeling about it now?
Do help them evaluate against Scripture. The seven tests laid out earlier in the book (Chapter 10) work for distressing NDEs as well as pleasant ones. The fruit test, the Christ test, and the gospel test are especially diagnostic.
Do offer pastoral care. If the experience contains demonic elements, pray with them for protection and healing. If it contains rebuke, walk them through repentance and assurance in Christ. If it contains glimpses of Hades, help them see it as a mercy that drove them toward Jesus.
For experiencers who are deeply shaken: the gospel speaks directly. Whatever you saw, however dark, it does not get the last word in your life. Christ has the last word. He has been to the realm of the dead and back (Acts 2:31). He holds the keys of Death and Hades (Revelation 1:18). Whoever calls on his name is rescued. Howard Storm did. The dying thief on the cross did. You can.
· · ·
Distressing NDEs are a minority of the phenomenon, but a meaningful minority. They are not a single category. They include encounters with the biblical Hades, demonic encounters, fear-distorted experiences, the discipline of believers, and demonic deceptions. Distinguishing among these requires patience, Scripture, and the diagnostic questions we have walked through.
The Christian response is neither paranoia nor dismissal. We do not have to choose between "every dark NDE is hell" and "no dark NDE is real." Both extremes fail the evidence, and both fail the people involved. Scripture calls us to discerning engagement, anchored in the gospel.
I want to leave the reader with one final word. The same Jesus who said, "Be afraid of him who, after he has killed, has authority to cast into hell" (Luke 12:5, ESV) also said, "Whoever comes to me I will never cast out" (John 6:37, ESV). Both are true. The reality of Hades is part of why the cross matters so much. And the reality of the rescue is part of why no one who has had a distressing NDE — believer or unbeliever, atheist or seeker — should think their case is closed. The next chapter takes up a related puzzle: NDErs whose own theology does not match the experience they actually had.
Burke, John. Imagine Heaven: Near-Death Experiences, God's Promises, and the Exhilarating Future That Awaits You. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2015.
Bush, Nancy Evans. Dancing Past the Dark: Distressing Near-Death Experiences. n.p.: Nancy Evans Bush, 2012.
Cooper, John W. Body, Soul, and Life Everlasting: Biblical Anthropology and the Monism-Dualism Debate. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2000.
Lindley, J., S. Bryan, and B. Conley. "Near-Death Experiences in a Pacific Northwest American Population: The Evergreen Study." Anabiosis 1, no. 2 (December 1981): 104-124.
Long, Jeffrey. God and the Afterlife: The Groundbreaking New Evidence for God and Near-Death Experience. New York: HarperOne, 2016.
Miller, J. Steve. Is Christianity Compatible with Deathbed and Near-Death Experiences? The Surprising Presence of Jesus, Scarcity of Anti-Christian Elements, and Compatibility with Historic Christian Teachings. Acworth, GA: Wisdom Creek Press, 2023.
Moody, Raymond A. Life After Life: The Investigation of a Phenomenon — Survival of Bodily Death. Atlanta: Mockingbird Books, 1975.
Rawlings, Maurice. Beyond Death's Door. Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1978.
Rawlings, Maurice. To Hell and Back: Life After Death — Startling New Evidence. Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1993.
Rommer, Barbara R. Blessing in Disguise: Another Side of the Near-Death Experience. St. Paul, MN: Llewellyn Publications, 2000.
Storm, Howard. My Descent into Death: A Second Chance at Life. New York: Doubleday, 2005.
Tabatt, Shaun. The NDE Conspiracy. Shippensburg, PA: Destiny Image, 2025.
Wiese, Bill. 23 Minutes in Hell: One Man's Story About What He Saw, Heard, and Felt in That Place of Torment. Lake Mary, FL: Charisma House, 2006.