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Posted December 18, 2025 Reviewed by Jessica Schrader
Several years ago, I was approached to write a popular book on terminal lucidity—a near-death phenomenon in which individuals with severe cognitive impairment experience unexpected moments of clarity and connection shortly before death. Our work in this area, including the first large-scale systematic study of contemporary cases published in Psychology of Consciousness (1), attracted considerable media attention. Shortly thereafter, a major publisher offered a substantial six-figure advance for a trade book on the topic. By any measure, this was serious business.
I had written more than a dozen books before, some translated into 14 languages, but these were primarily academic works. Trade publishing, I was told, operates differently—according to its own rhythms, expectations, and assumptions about what readers require.
Recognizing this, I agreed to my agent’s suggestion that I collaborate with an experienced co-author who had worked on bestselling titles in the genre. He would know how to translate my research into an accessible narrative; he knew what sells. The arrangement seemed sensible: He would interview me extensively and then produce drafts that I would review and refine. Naively, I agreed.
The interviews followed. Then came the first chapters—and I barely recognized what we had discussed.
Instead of the material we had covered, I encountered confident descriptions of observations I had never made: ethereal lights, mists rising from the dying, prophetic visions, even claims of “precognitive terminal lucidity.” There were passages speculating—with complete assurance—about the color of a mist allegedly left behind by dying patients, along with other extravagant claims that I had neither observed, heard reported, nor discussed in any of our conversations. None of it was true.
To me, this was patently absurd. Why write and publish under the heading nonfiction when so much of the manuscript consisted of invention and exaggeration? Why interview me at all when the outcome bore so little resemblance to anything I had witnessed, observed, or described? And why assume that I would simply endorse this litany of embellishments and fabrications?
I did not. I requested corrections.
After some back-and-forth, however, it became clear that the project could not be rescued. Nor was I willing to lend my name to what struck me as a fundamentally irresponsible approach to publishing. I withdrew. It was a costly decision, given the advance at stake, but unavoidable. Integrity, once compromised, cannot be edited back into place.
Several unpleasant emails followed, including one informing me that I was hopelessly naïve about the realities of the trade publishing industry.
That word—a term borrowed from manufacturing and commerce—stopped me.
People facing death—their own or that of someone close to them—do not approach these books as casual consumers, nor are they seeking cheap entertainment (2). They come because elsewhere there is often silence. Medicine speaks haltingly about dying, and our culture has largely forgotten how to speak about it at all.
Into this silence, these works speak. What they say matters, because people act on it. The dying attempt to make peace—or fail to do so—partly on the basis of what they believe awaits them. This is therefore not, by any stretch of the imagination, merely an industry, nor are these merely customers.
To be clear: This is a defense of the near-death experience against its commercial exploitation—precisely because I believe there is something worth defending. Through my work on death and dying, I have become increasingly convinced that something genuinely remarkable occurs at the threshold of death—something that casts serious doubt on materialism, both as a theory of consciousness and as a way of life.
And here lies the paradox at the heart of the problem. Multiple studies show that individuals who undergo genuine near-death experiences tend to emerge with diminished materialism—less attachment to possessions, status, and accumulation. The experience often reorients people toward what actually matters (3, 4, 5). Yet around this very phenomenon, a publishing apparatus has developed that appears to be driven by precisely the values near-death experiences tend to dissolve.
Unfortunately, this story extends far beyond a single failed collaboration. My former co-author went on to publish bestsellers, both before and after our aborted project, and in at least some of these works one encounters outlandish claims strikingly similar to those that led me to withdraw.
There are others as well. Consider Embraced by the Light: The Most Profound and Complete Near-Death Experience Ever (6), which curiously exists in several mutually contradictory versions (Abanes, 1994). Or The Boy Who Came Back from Heaven: A True Story (7), another bestseller whose primary author later admitted that the story was not, in fact, true. Or Dannion Brinkley’s Saved by the Light (8), with its astonishing prophecies allegedly received during an NDE—uncannily accurate with respect to past events, yet with not a single prediction about the future ever having come to pass.
Perhaps these are not isolated failures, but symptoms of a system in which the question “Is this true?” has been replaced by “Will this sell?” Can one think of any field to which this substitution is less appropriate?
I wish there were a simple solution—one that could reach both those who commercially exploit the topic and those who genuinely seek reliable information (and, at times, comfort). The former, I fear, are difficult to reach: Strong monetary incentives in publishing are not easily relinquished.
For those searching for trustworthy information about near-death experiences, however, practical alternatives do exist. Many articles from the Journal of Near-Death Studies are freely available open access via the UNT Digital Library.
More generally, a practical guideline may help: Be wary of books that rely on breathless sensationalism or promise “proof” of claims that, by all current scientific standards, cannot yet be proven—even when the empirical indications are striking.
Having observed from within how some of these works are produced, I regret to say that they fail at the very point where responsibility is greatest: in guiding how we live, how we die, and how we accompany others at the end of life.
References
(1) Batthyány, A., & Greyson, B. (2021). Spontaneous remission of dementia before death: Results from a study on paradoxical lucidity. Psychology of Consciousness: Theory, Research, and Practice, 8(1), 1.
(2) Ghasemiannejad Jahromi, A., Qaderi Bagajan, K., Jamshidi, B., & Zakiei, A. (2025). Effects of knowledge of near-death experiences (NDEs) on life changes in people without NDEs. OMEGA-Journal of Death and Dying, 92(2), 894-918.
(3) Martial, C., Fontaine, G., Gosseries, O., Carhart-Harris, R., Timmermann, C., Laureys, S., & Cassol, H. (2021). Losing the self in near-death experiences: the experience of ego-dissolution. Brain Sciences, 11(7), 929.
(4) Tassell-Matamua, N. A., & Steadman, K. L. (2017). ‘I feel more spiritual’. Increased spirituality after a near-death experience. Journal for the Study of Spirituality, 7(1), 35-49.
(5) Groth-Marnat, G., & Summers, R. (1998). Altered beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors following near-death experiences. Journal of Humanistic Psychology, 38(3), 110-125.
(6) Eadie, B. (1994). Embraced by the Light. The Most Profound and Complete Near-Death Experience Ever. Bantam. (I have since learned that this may not have been, or not solely, the responsibility of the author, but of her publisher—yet this hardly alters the underlying reality: sales took precedence over truth.)
(7) Malarkey, K., & Malarkey, A. (2010). The Boy who Came Back from Heaven: A True Story. Tyndale House Publishers.
(8) Brinkley, D., & Perry, P. (1994). Saved by the Light: The True Story of a Man Who Died Twice and the Profound Revelations He Received. Piatkus.
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Alexander Batthyány, Ph.D., is a Professor of Theoretical Psychology and Director of the Viktor Frankl Institute Vienna, where he explores the mind, meaning, and dying.
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The best way to begin something new—in love, work, and life.
Self Tests are all about you. Are you outgoing or introverted? Are you a narcissist? Does perfectionism hold you back? Find out the answers to these questions and more with Psychology Today.