Halloween tales from the darkside: near-death experiences in hell

October 31, 11:01 AMNear Death Experiences ExaminerAlan Hippleheuser

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A vision of Hell from Dante’s Divine Comedy. Illustration by Gustave Doré.
 

Near-death experiences (NDEs) sometimes take people to hell. At least that is the case with some reports from people who have died and come back to tell us about what they saw.   (read “What is an NDE” here…)

Tall Monsters
For example, Bill Wiese reports suddenly being sent to hell in his book, 23 Minutes in Hell. He says that he arrived there naked, held in a cell, and consumed in darkness. Monsters came that were “ten to thirteen foot tall” with razor-sharp appendages, stinking beyond the worst smell imaginable and cursing God in a hateful language. They appeared to be focused on torturing Wiese for their own amusement.

In hell, Wiese felt tired with no rest, incredibly thirsty. To add to his tortured state, the creatures pierced his body numerous times. He was also taken to a huge fiery pit with monsters on the sides keeping thousands of souls inside who were howling in agony. He remembers his trip to hell as lonely and without any human to speak with: he wrote that he was “truly alone among a sea of souls.” He later was taken away by an entity he called Jesus and told to get the word out: “Tell them I am coming very, very soon.” Wiese’s website is at www.soulchoiceministries.org.

Addicts in hell
George Ritchie in Return from Tomorrow ( read more about the book here... ) realized he was seeing hell during his near-death experience from pneumonia. He saw people trying to satisfy addictions in the spirit and get sexual gratification to no avail. He believed that these were spirits obsessed with some earthly desire that went beyond the physical and which they could not satisfy in the spirit. (source: http://www.near-death.com/ritch.html )

Inspiration from hell
A greatly inspiring account of a trip to hell came from author Howard Storm in his book My Descent Into Death: A Second Chance at Life (read more about the book here... ) In this book, Storm reports that during a European tour nearly 20 years ago, Storm, then an atheist and art professor at northern Kentucky University, fell critically ill. A punctured intestine could not be treated and Storm lost consciousness, finding himself standing next to his body, and then being pursued by beings bent on taunting him, eating and clawing his flesh. Storm describes incredibly horrible and excruciating pain from experiences with beings that tear his flesh apart. Then, this atheist was told to pray, and was soon taken by a “friend” to another realm where he is shown how life on planet Earth works, and how love in all of our actions is incredibly important. And we are not to fear nuclear war because “it will not happen.” See more on Storm’s book at Examiner.com’s top ten books on near-death experiences.

Cubes in hell
B. W. Melvin writes about his near-death experience trip to hell in A Land Unknown: Hell’s Dominion. He died from cholera an agnostic/atheist and came back to life, and claims that the experience lasted around four hours. He reports a horrible creature walking him in a place with burial “cubes” that contained people being shown parts of their life, where they, “…restlessly rest experiencing recompense for his or her deeds performed on earth.”
(source: http://bibleprobe.com/hells-dominion.htm )

Lord of Death
In the 16th century, Lingz Chokli reported that she died and saw a bridge to hell where the Lord of death was counting the good and bad deeds of the dead. Her experience was reported in the book Delog: Journey to Realms Beyond Death, by Dawa Drolma.
(source: http://www.near-death.com/experiences/buddhism02.html )

Certainty of hell?
P.M.H. Atwater, author of numerous books (read more about P.M.H. Atwater here... ) on near-death experiences, wrote an article that implies that there are many more near-death experiences that involve hell or unpleasant places than are reported. She also states a personal experience:

"Once, when I was autographing copies of my book in a shopping mall, a man in his middle thirties stopped at my table, looked me straight in the eye, and with tight lips declared, "You've got to tell people about hell. There is one. I know. I've been there. All them experiencers on television telling their pretty stories about heaven -that's not the way it is. There's a hell, and people go there." I could not calm this man or the piercing power of his words, nor could I inspire him to consider other ways of interpreting his experience. He was adamant and firm. To him hell was real and to be avoided, no matter what.” (from http://www.cinemind.com/atwater/hell.html by P.M.H. Atwater with permission from the author.)

Is hell a place in our spirit or a real place? We will present evidence for both sides of this question from near-death experiences in future articles. And please share your thoughts.  And Happy Halloween!

How many people have near-death experiences?  Read the answer here...

If you like this article, you might also enjoy these:

*Don Piper interviewed this morning on NBC's Today Show about near-death experience (NDE) *"Local woman writes inspirational book after Near Death Experience (NDE)" describing the NDE of Indiana native Betty Malz. *This week's guide to near-death experience websites
*What is a "near-death experience" (NDE)? Dr. Raymond A. Moody's definition;   *Near-death association seeks original stories;   *Near death experiences in the news for July, 2009