In early 1988, British neuropsychiatrist Peter Fenwick found himself drowning in letters from people who believed they had survived an encounter with death.
“I floated slowly through a tunnel, not afraid in any way, but looking forward to something,” one man wrote to him. “When it came, I was perfectly at peace and going towards the most wonderful light. Trust me, it was great. No worries, problems or anything, just great.”
In another letter, a woman described walking down a country lane and coming across golden gates.
“Inside was the most beautiful garden, without lawn, path, or anything, but flowers of every kind,” he wrote. “The ones that attracted me the most were the Madonna lilies, the dolphins and the roses, but there were many, many more.”
The letters were among more than 2,000 received by Dr. Fenwick shortly after appearing in a BBC documentary, Glimpses of Death, in which he commented on near-death visions of people who had apparently been dead for a while or nearly died and then came back to life.
“These letters were written by people who had never told anyone about their experiences,” said Dr. Fenwick in a 2012 TEDxBerlin lecture. “Why? Because they’re so scared. They told their wives or their husbands. They said they don’t care. They told their friends. They said, ‘You’re crazy.’
But Dr. Fenwick, an expert on consciousness, was keenly interested. Scientifically more open-minded than many of his peers, he had begun to study near-death experiences—a controversial topic in neuroscience—in the mid-1970s. He believed that consciousness existed beyond physical death and believed that the letters would help strengthen his position.
Dr. Fenwick sent the letter writers an extensive questionnaire to categorize their experiences. He presented his findings, along with excerpts from the letters, in The Truth in the Light: An Investigation of Over 300 Near-Death Experiences (1995), which he wrote with his wife, Elizabeth Fenwick. The book established him as a leading authority on near-death studies.
Dr Fenwick died on November 22 at his home in London, his daughter Annabelle Fenwick said. It was 89.
“The Truth in the Light” revealed surprising similarities between the letter writers. More than 50 percent of them reported traveling in a tunnel. Seventy-two percent saw a bright light. Almost 40 percent met someone they knew, including deceased relatives. Impressively, 72 percent reported that they had made the decision to return.
A woman who was involved in a horrific car accident recalled being “encouraged by a strong feeling to step into the light” through a tunnel.
“I was at peace, completely content, and realized that I was born on earth and knew the answer to every mystery – I wasn’t told, I just knew, the light held all the answers,” she wrote. “Then there was sudden confusion. I had to get back to the tunnel quickly. something was wrong.”
Suddenly, he continued, “I regained my body and all my feelings. I panicked and felt pain, terrible pain, all over my body. I believe I died for a while.”
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Neuroscientists have for decades dismissed near-death experiences, or NDEs, as symptoms of anoxia — a lack of oxygen flowing to the brain. Dr. Fenwick countered this assessment in “The Truth in the Light”, showing the pilots’ instructions.
“Pilots in training are routinely subjected to acute anoxia in simulators to ensure they can put on their oxygen masks in time,” Dr. Fenwick wrote. “Those who fail to do so do not have NDEs. they either pass out or get so confused that they try to land their planes in the clouds.”
He also rejected another common criticism of near-death experiences: that they are hallucinations, like those experienced by people with a high fever.
“But describing it as a hallucination does not explain the underlying mechanism and leaves many of the same old questions unanswered,” Dr. Fenwick wrote. “Why should everyone have more or less the same illusion under the same circumstances? And why does it seem so real?’
Peter Brooke Cadogan Fenwick was born on 25 May 1935 in Nairobi, Kenya, where his father, Anthony Fenwick, had been sent by his family to northern England to grow coffee. His mother, Betty (Darling) Fenwick, was an Australian-born doctor and director of surgery at Nairobi Hospital.
Peter was a strange and mischievous boy. He enjoyed building things, including the occasional small bomb. One night, while his parents were preparing to host dinner guests, Peter quietly left a trail of gunpowder around the table in hopes of lighting it for fun. His father interrupted the plot.
“I think he was clearly one of those kids who is incredibly smart, but maybe not always so smart at reading the room,” his daughter Annabelle said in an interview. He added: “He did things because he could.”
After graduating from Stowe School, a prestigious boarding school in the English countryside, Dr. Fenwick studied natural sciences at Cambridge University. He graduated in 1957 and then continued his studies there, receiving his medical degree in 1960.
Dr. Fenwick aspired to be a brain surgeon, but changed his mind after observing a brain operation.
“I suddenly realized that if you were a brain surgeon, you were looking down a deep, dark hole in the brain and I could see that there was no fun in it,” he told Britain’s The Telegraph newspaper last year. “I realized I didn’t want to be a neurosurgeon, I wanted to be a neuropsychiatrist so I could talk to people and knock them unconscious while I was looking down this deep, dark hole.”
He joined the Maudsley Hospital in London, the largest psychiatric teaching hospital in Britain, where he initially specialized in epilepsy. He also studied sleepwalking, dreams and meditation. (One of his first meditation research subjects was George Harrison of the Beatles.)
In 1975, American philosopher and psychiatrist Raymond A. Moody Jr. published Life After Life, one of the first books by a doctor about near-death experiences. It was an international bestseller, but Dr. Fenwick, like many other readers, was skeptical about the deathbed visions recounted in the book.
Then, the following year, a patient told him he had seen a bright light through a tunnel while he was experiencing near-fatal complications during heart surgery.
“I could look at him, talk about it with him and actually see that this wasn’t mind-blowing – it was a real experience,” Dr Fenwick told The Telegraph. “That was extremely important.”
Dr. Fenwick was a founder of the International Association for Near-Death Studies in the UK. He was also president of the Science and Medicine Network, an organization that supports research into the connections between science, philosophy, and spirituality.
In addition to his daughter Annabelle, Dr. Fenwick is survived by his wife, Elizabeth (Roberts) Fenwick, with whom he wrote four books in addition to “The Truth in the Light,” including “The Art of Dying” (2008). about the process of death; another daughter, Natasha Lowe; a son, Tristam. and nine grandchildren.
In “The Truth in the Light,” Dr. Fenwick revealed that 82 percent of the people he surveyed were less afraid of death as a result of their near-death experiences, and that 42 percent reported being more spiritual. Forty-eight percent, he wrote, were “convinced” that there was “survival after death.”
“Once you have that experience, you change, whether you like it or not,” he told the Telegraph.
His conviction that there was death of the body, but not of the individual, erased any fear he had of death.
“Actually,” he said, “I’m looking forward to it.”
