Shared Near-Death and Related Illness Experiences: Steps on an Unscheduled Journey Glennys Howarth, Ph.D. University of Bath, Bath, England Allan Kellehear, Ph.D. La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia ABSTRACT: This paper discusses the key social features in shared journeys into near-death experiences (NDEs) and related illness experiences of other people. Of special interest in this paper is the way that those persons who are not ill or near death account for their sharing of these experiences. These are often people who are caregivers or intimates of NDErs or dying people but who claim to share part of the NDE or dying experience. We provide case examples to illustrate the essential psychological and social experiences that these people undergo during their joint experiences with NDErs and other seriously ill people. From an analysis of the recurrent themes emergent in these joint experiences we identify and discuss the major conceptual steps in the creation of their personal explanations: (1) Exit the Familiar, (2) Extraordinary Experiences, (3) Extraordinary Experiences End, (4) What Happened to Me? (5) The World Responds, and (6) The Return of the Native. In the final analysis, the processes that these people undergo in the search for explanations is similar in most respects to those at the center of near-death and other related illness experiences. KEY WORDS: near-death experiences; empathy; illness; dying; social re- integration. Glennys Howarth, Ph.D., is Reader in Sociology at the University of Bath, UK. Allan Kellehear, Ph.D., is Professor of Palliative Care at La Trobe University, Australia. The authors wish to acknowledge the generous assistance of Willis Poynton at the Society for Psychical Research in London; The Alister Hardy Trust at Westminster College in Oxford, UK, and especially the Director, Peggy Morgan; and the British Academy for a British Academy Visiting Professorship enabling Dr. Kellehear to collect data, to travel, and to work with Dr. Howarth on the research for this paper. Reprint requests should be addressed to Professor Kellehear, Palliative Care Unit, La Trobe University, 215 Franklin Street, Melbourne, 3000, Australia; e-mail: A.Kellehear@latrobe.edu.au. Journal of Near-Death Studies, 20(2), Winter 2001 C  2001 Human Sciences Press, Inc. 71