Life After Death

I met Dr. George Ritchie in 1965, twen­ty-two years after he died of dou­ble lobar pneu­mo­nia.  I was in the audi­ence at Wes­ley Memo­r­i­al Church in Char­lottesville, Vir­ginia, when he spoke about his death, and I met with him after his talk. 

In 1943, when he was a sol­dier sta­tioned at Camp Barke­ley, Texas, he was hos­pi­tal­ized with pneu­mo­nia. An order­ly found him unre­spon­sive, with no pulse, res­pi­ra­tion rate, or blood pres­sure. The doc­tor on duty (“O.D.”) con­firmed that Ritchie was dead, and told the order­ly to move the corpse to the morgue when he fin­ished his rounds. When the order­ly returned to Ritchie’s room, the O.D. exam­ined him again and found no signs of life. By then, Ritchie had flat-lined for almost ten minutes.

In the past, the O.D. had used adren­a­line shots to kick-start a heart­beat inter­rupt­ed by a trau­mat­ic injury. He had nev­er seen one revive a heart stopped by a debil­i­tat­ing ill­ness, espe­cial­ly after so much time had passed. On a whim, he nev­er­the­less plunged a nee­dle into Ritchie’s heart.

To the O.D.’s great sur­prise, Ritchie’s heart began to beat errat­i­cal­ly. Irreg­u­lar res­pi­ra­tion com­menced. His blood pres­sure rose. Three days lat­er he regained consciousness.

The hospital’s com­mand­ing M.D. said Ritchie’s recov­ery was “the most amaz­ing med­ical case I ever encoun­tered… (It) has to be explained in terms oth­er than nat­ur­al means.”

I was eigh­teen when Dr. Ritchie spoke at the church. My father became a preach­er in 1960. Five years lat­er, the pow­er of his faith was clear to me, but I couldn’t seem to embrace it. I strug­gled with a boat-load of doubt. Just before I left home for col­lege, my father asked me to attend a dis­trict youth group meet­ing. I tried to beg off, but he insisted. 

So I sat in the audi­ence that night as Dr. Ritchie turned to the meat of his talk – the events he claimed occurred while he was dead. The gist of it was this. His spir­it (my word, not his) left his corpse. A light appeared and grew in bright­ness until it over­whelmed all else. Its source was a being of infi­nite love, whom Ritchie believed to be the Son of God. The being showed Ritchie a panora­ma of scenes from his life, took him to oth­er-world­ly places sim­i­lar to pur­ga­to­ry (my word again), and then guid­ed him to the edge of par­adise. There, he told Ritchie he must go back, and Ritchie reen­tered his body in the hospital.

It sounds crazy as I write it here, but Dr. Ritchie wasn’t crazy. He was a prac­tic­ing psy­chi­a­trist with an M.D. from the Med­ical Col­lege of Vir­ginia and a psy­chi­atric res­i­den­cy at UVA Hos­pi­tal. He lat­er became the Chair­man of Psy­chi­a­try of Tow­ers Hos­pi­tal and Pres­i­dent of the Rich­mond Acad­e­my of Gen­er­al Prac­tice. Soft-spo­ken and artic­u­late, he told his sto­ry dis­pas­sion­ate­ly, with no hint of mis­sion­ary zeal. 

Today, there are thou­sands of reports of near death expe­ri­ences (NDE’s), but Dr. Ritchie’s sto­ry was one of the ear­li­est, and I was moved by it. At the end of the meet­ing, I stood at the door, hop­ing to speak to him. To my sur­prise, when he left the podi­um he sought me out.

“Would you like to talk?” he said. He guid­ed me into a lit­tle room and we sat down. I asked ques­tions about the details of his sto­ry. He answered patient­ly, with humor and warmth. My ques­tions tailed off and I stared at him uncomfortably. 

“Did you believe in God before this hap­pened?” I asked.

“No.”

I paused. “Do you real­ly think you met Jesus?”

“Yes.”

“You’re sure?”

“I’m cer­tain.”

We fell silent. I felt great­ly unset­tled. He was so obvi­ous­ly at peace and I was not.

He put his hand on my shoul­der. “You’ll be all right,” he said. “He loves you.”

He walked me out into the hall where my father wait­ed. When he and Dr. Ritchie shook hands and exchanged know­ing looks, I real­ized they had set me up. Dr. Ritchie’s per­son­al atten­tion was a favor to my dad. 

I wasn’t the only one Dr. Ritchie moved that sum­mer. One of his talks inspired Dr. Ray­mond Moody to spend his life inves­ti­gat­ing NDE’s. Moody’s book in 1975, Life After Life, ded­i­cat­ed to Dr. Ritchie, dis­cuss­es Moody’s meet­ings with more than 150 peo­ple, who returned from a clin­i­cal death. Their sto­ries dif­fered, but Moody noticed some gen­er­al­ly repeat­ing traits. The most preva­lent were an out-of-body expe­ri­ence, an encounter with a being of bright­ness, a sense of uncon­di­tion­al love, and a review of the person’s life.

The study of NDE’s took off after Moody’s book. The sci­en­tif­ic com­mu­ni­ty ini­tial­ly regard­ed them as fab­ri­ca­tions, but after thou­sands of sto­ries with sim­i­lar pat­terns emerged, the reac­tion shift­ed to pro­vid­ing sci­en­tif­ic ratio­nales for them. Today, scores of peer-reviewed stud­ies offer bio­log­i­cal and neu­ro­log­i­cal explanations. 

On the oth­er side of the debate, tak­ing the posi­tion that NDE’s are gen­uine spir­i­tu­al occur­rences, two heav­i­ly cre­den­tialed doc­tors pub­lished accounts of their own NDE’s. Dr. Mary Neal, the for­mer direc­tor of spine surgery at USC, drowned in a kayak acci­dent in Chile. To Heav­en and Back tells the sto­ry of her ardu­ous recov­ery and her claim that she went to heaven.

Proof of Heav­en, by Dr. Eben Alexan­der, was a N.Y. Times best sell­er for 60 weeks. His sto­ry is dif­fi­cult to dis­miss. He is a neu­ro­sur­geon who was edu­cat­ed in thecountry’s most elite insti­tu­tions. He taught at Duke, Har­vard, and UVA. He devot­ed his life to sci­ence; he did not believe in God or an after­life; and he viewed NDE’s as pure fantasy.

Then, at age 54, he con­tract­ed E coli bac­te­r­i­al menin­gi­tis, a rare dis­ease that eats the brain’s cor­tex. It should have killed him, and it almost did. He lan­guished in a coma for sev­en days. His doc­tors gave up hope and rec­om­mend­ed to his wife that she pull the plug. At that moment he regained consciousness.

He should be a veg­etable today, but he recov­ered ful­ly. That much is beyond astound­ing, but his sto­ry doesn’t end there. This for­mer­ly faith­less man of sci­ence claims that he expe­ri­enced a rich­ly-detailed, lengthy encounter with God in heav­en. As a lead­ing neu­ro­sur­geon, he read his own med­ical charts and con­clud­ed that his brain reg­is­tered no activ­i­ty dur­ing his NDE, prov­ing to him that it was not a cere­bral hal­lu­ci­na­tion. Con­scious­ness exists inde­pen­dent of the body, he asserts.

Dr. Alexander’s claims have drawn enthu­si­as­tic crit­ics. They gen­er­al­ly accept the sin­cer­i­ty of his sto­ry and his exper­tise in inter­pret­ing his charts, but they argue that he could have expe­ri­enced his NDE before his brain shut down or while it was com­ing back up, or that parts of his brain may have been inter­mit­tent­ly active dur­ing his coma.

So what does all this boil down to? Is there reli­able evi­dence of an afterlife?

I’m a skep­tic, by nature. As with my dad’s faith, I’d like to believe, but my Inner Lawyer whis­pers in my ear, “We need proof beyond a rea­son­able doubt.”

Dr. Ritchie believed “with stu­pen­dous cer­tain­ty” that he’d met the Son of God, but his sin­cer­i­ty isn’t proof. Dr. Alexander’s brain-wave charts come close, but there’s still wig­gle room.

In research­ing NDE’s for this post, I was sur­prised by the sci­en­tif­ic community’s intense inter­est in this debate. That, along with the rapid advance of med­ical tech­nol­o­gy, will like­ly pro­vide irrefutable answers to these ques­tions soon. 

Until that day comes, my Inner Lawyer and I will con­tin­ue to float along with our boat-load of doubts.

Post Script: Dr. Ritchie died for the last time in 2007 at his home in Irv­ing­ton, Vir­ginia, after a long bat­tle with can­cer. He was unafraid. “Death is noth­ing more than a door­way, some­thing you walk through.” His words, not mine.