Background: Shared-death-experiences (SDEs) and after-death-communication-experiences (ADCEs) are non-ordinary mental experiences related to the death of a known or unknown person.
Methods: These experiences were investigated by surveying four samples with different cultural backgrounds: Italian, Mexican, Brazilian and Taiwanese people. One-hundred-twenty-one participants reported 146 experiences of this type.
Results: Among the main characteristics of these experiences, visual, visual-auditory and feeling experiences, which comprised 74% of all experiences, were experienced both in the dream state and a normal state of consciousness. Furthermore, most of these experiences were lived before (47.3%) or after (39%) the death of the person in relationship with the participants. More importantly, these experiences influenced the participants' death interpretation favoring the belief that death affects only the body, but the consciousness of the deceased persons survives in another reality and sometimes can communicate with relatives and friends still alive in this reality. No substantial differences were observed among the different subsamples.
Conclusion: As to the origin of SDEs/ADCEs, we discuss that whereas for most of them, in particular those lived after the death of a relative or a friend, we can assume hallucinatory characteristics triggered by emotional needs, for others, for example those related to unknown individuals and/or those experienced before the death of the person still in good health, it is not possible to exclude their anomalous connections and a real encounter with a deceased person.
Keywords: after death communications; consciousness; death; mourning; shared death experiences.