Barbara Harris Whitfield is the author of many published articles and five books, a thanatologist, workshop presenter, near-death experiencer and therapist in private practice in Atlanta, Georgia. She has served on the board of directors for the Kundalini Research Network and also on the faculty of Rutgers University’s Summer School for Alcohol and Drug Studies for 12 years.
Lousia Peck had her near-death experience in November of 1982. A rabid atheist, she was on a path of self-destruction that traced back to her alcoholic family. Drinking and infatuation were the two “twin highs” that dominated her broken life — until a near-death experience, and Alcoholics Anonymous, helped turn everything around.
Dr. George G. Ritchie, M.D. (born September 25, 1923; died October 29, 2007) held positions as president of the Richmond Academy of General Practice; chairman of the Department of Psychiatry of Towers Hospital; and founder and president of the Universal Youth Corps, Inc. for almost 20 years. In 1967, he entered private psychiatry practice in Richmond and in 1983, moved to Anniston, Alabama, to serve as head of the Department of Psychiatry at the Northeast Alabama Regional Medical Center. He returned to Richmond in 1986 to continue in private practice until retirement in 1992. At the age of twenty, George Ritchie died in an army hospital and was pronounced dead twice by the doctor on duty. Nine minutes later he returned to life. Dr. Ritchie wrote of his near-death experience (NDE) in Return from Tomorrow, co-written with Elizabeth Sherrill, in 1978. In Return from Tomorrow, he tells of his out-of-body experience, his meeting with Jesus Christ, and his travel with Christ through different dimensions of time and space. Return from Tomorrow has been translated into nine languages. Ritchie’s story was the first contact Dr. Raymond Moody, PhD had with NDEs, during his undergraduate studies in philosophy at the University of Virginia. This led Moody to investigate over 150 cases of NDEs in his book Life After Life and two other books that followed.
Howard Storm (born October 26, 1946, in Flushing, New York) is a former atheist and art professor and chairman of the art department at the Northern Kentucky University. He is best known as the author of “My Descent Into Death” which details his near-death experience. Storm’s NDE is regarded as one of the most complete accounts of distressing near-death experiences ever recorded. It includes dramatic encounters with evil spirits, a trip to hell, a rescue by Jesus, and extensive conversations with Jesus and a group of angels. Storm’s NDE has been cited frequently in near-death studies literature. His book was originally published in 2000 and re-published as a hardback book in 2005. Storm has told his story to numerous audiences and appeared on NBC’s Today Show, The Oprah Winfrey Show, 48 Hours, Discovery Channel and Coast to Coast AM. Storm was so deeply affected by his near-death experience that he resigned from Northern Kentucky University and became a United Church of Christ minister.
Ed Salisbury is a hospice minister, yoga coach, and funeral director. Having experienced multiple near-death experiences, he’s been drawn to work closely with the dying. In that role, he’s been providing optimal choices in elder care, health challenges and “at death” care for over 20 years. He advises friends, families and organizations in the planning and fulfillment of funeral arrangements. Ed has also served on local and international association boards of directors for grief recovery, near-death experiences (IANDS), funeral consumer, and hospice care organizations.
Twenty years ago, David Milarch, a northern Michigan nurseryman with a penchant for hard living, had a near-death experience. After this experience, angels let him know that the earth was in trouble. Its trees were dying, and without them, human life was in jeopardy. The solution, they told him, was to clone the champion trees of the world — the largest, the hardiest, the ones that had survived millennia and were most resilient to climate change — and create a kind of Noah’s ark of tree genetics. Without knowing if the message had any basis in science, or why he’d been chosen for this task, Milarch began his mission of cloning the world’s great trees. Many scientists and tree experts told him it couldn’t be done, but, twenty years later, his team has successfully cloned some of the world’s oldest trees — among them giant redwoods and sequoias. They have also grown seedlings from the oldest tree in the world, the bristlecone pine Methuselah…
In 1982, after suffering from terminal brain cancer, Mellen-Thomas Benedict “died.” His body was monitored for an hour and a half after he died and showed no vital signs. Miraculously he returned to his body with a complete remission of the disease. While on the other side Mellen journeyed through several realms of consciousness and beyond the light at the end of the tunnel. He was shown during his NDE, in holographic detail, Earth’s past and a beautiful vision of mankind’s future for the next 400 years. He experienced the cosmology of our soul’s connection to Mother Earth (Gaia), our role in the Universe, and was gifted with access to Universal Intelligence. NDE author/researcher Dr. Kenneth Ring says that Benedict’s NDE “is one of the most remarkable I have encountered in extensive research on near-death experiences.”
In 1997, Jeff experienced a horrific automobile accident which inflicted multiple life threatening injuries, including crushing both his legs. He had 18 surgeries and spent six months in the hospital. His left leg was amputated above the knee. The most devastating outcome of the accident was the loss of his wife and youngest son, both killed instantly. Overwhelmed by his own life-threatening injuries, Jeff had a profound near-death experience in which he met his wife on the other side, who told him he couldn’t stay and had to return. Having that glimpse into heaven gave him the courage he needed to carry on and care for his living son. He has since remarried and adopted two more sons. According to Jeff’s website, his greatest joy comes from being a husband and father. His mission is to assist people in consciously embracing who they are and the connection they share with others and the universe.
P. M. H. Atwater, L.H.D. is one of the original researchers in the field of near-death studies, having begun her work in 1978. She has written nine books on her findings, and is now working on her tenth — the final wrapup of her theory about brain shift/spirit shift, straight talk about transformations of consciousness and the future of the human race. Some of her findings have been verified in clinical studies, among them the prospective study done in Holland and published in “Lancet” medical journal (12-15-01). Her The Big Book of Near-Death Experiences brings the entire field up-to-date, and was featured in an online version of Newsweek Magazine. In 2005, she was awarded the Outstanding Service Award from the International Association of Near-Death Studies (IANDS), and the Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Association of Transpersonal Hypnotherapists (NATH). She is also an experiencer, having died three times in three months in 1977, and each time experiencing the phenomenon…
Anita Moorjani was born in Singapore and then lived in Sri Lanka until she was 2 years old. An ethnic Sindhi woman from India, her family then moved to Hong Kong where she grew up speaking fluent Sindhi, Cantonese and English, as well as being conversant with a multitude of cultural idioms. She was educated in English schools in Hong Kong and later studied in England before returning to Hong Kong to take up a senior management position for a French fashion company where she traveled all over the world using her multi-cultural, multilingual background in a variety of business and social settings. In December 1995, she married her husband and soulmate, Danny. In April 2002 she was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s Lymphoma and after nearly 4 years of battling the disease, she was taken to the intensive care unit of her local hospital in February 2006 where she was given less than 36 hours to live. Her remarkable NDE and seeming miraculous recovery from cancer has created enormous interest and commentary on an international scale.
