“Many patients whose hearts have stopped beating claim to have hovered above their bodies and looked down on themselves as others worked to resuscitate them. Mainstream scientists believe these visions are a fabrication of the mind. Dr Peter Fenwick, from the Institute of Psychiatry in London, plans to test this view at 25 hospitals across the UK.

He wants to place suspended pictures from the ceilings of accident and emergency units that only someone high up in the room will be able to see. Patients that survive cardiac arrest will be interviewed to see if they have had an out-of-body experience and whether they saw the pictures.” BBC Fenwick is a neuropsychiatrist in London with a background in epilepsy research and treatment and an abiding interest in anomalous experiences like the NDE (near-death experience). The alterations in consciousness and subjective experience during certain epileptic states have, in my opinion, much to do with anomalous experience, although most epilepsy specialists stay away from “flaky” topics scrupulously. Another psychiatrist who considers the anomalous is VM Neppe of the Pacific Neuropsychiatric Institute, to which my very first weblog entry in November 1999 pointed.