Shared Crossings & Shared Death Experiences
A Shared Crossing is a special experience at the end of a life that suggests loving connection and communication with loved ones beyond this human realm
The term “shared crossing” broadly refers to an experience that one or more people may have before, during, or after a death. A shared crossing typically includes receiving information about dying or the continuation of consciousness, and it may include the appearance of the dying and/or deceased loved ones, which provides comfort and support. Experiencers report that they have received a healing gift, crafted especially for them, that has resulted in a significant shift in their grief. They also report being wholly transformed by the experience.
The Spectrum of End-of-Life Experiences (SELE) illustrates the range of shared crossing types and when they can occur in the death and dying process. Our Research team studies this range of experiences from one year before to one year after the end of life:
Types of Shared Crossings
A Shared Death Experience (SDE) is a specific term for a unique and profound type of shared crossing
SDEs can be experienced by one or more loved ones, caregivers, or even bystanders and they feature what people describe as sharing in a dying person’s journey or transition to the initial stages of a benevolent afterlife.
SDEs can be experienced at the bedside of a dying person or remotely, and they can occur at the time of a death, any time in days before or after a death, or they can occur even gradually over the course of one or more days. They can also occur whether one is awake or asleep.
An SDE is not an NDE (Near-Death Experience). As many people know, an NDE is a profound event that happens when someone almost dies. A person who experiences an SDE, on the other hand, is a caregiver or loved one to a dying person.
Features of Shared Death Experiences
There are several features that commonly appear in reports of shared death experiences. Some of these include visions of the dying, previously deceased loved ones, or mystical beings; a transcendent light; heavenly realms; a tunnel or vortex; and undergoing a life review where key moments of a dying person’s life are experienced. In fact, many SDE features are nearly identical those found in near-death experiences (NDEs). However, unlike NDEs, SDEs occur around an actual death, and they appear to consist of sharing in the dying experience of another.
Shared Crossing Story Collection
Shared Crossing & SDE Aftereffects
People reporting shared crossings overwhelmingly consider these experiences to be gifts of love and healing. These experiences are often so moving that they lead people to re-evaluate their previous thoughts about life, death and dying.
Some of the most common aftereffects of having a shared crossing experience include:
Being convinced of an afterlife.
Knowing that they will be reunited with their loved ones again;
Finding that one’s fears or anxieties about death and dying disappear; and
Improvement in the reconciliation of one’s grief over the loss of a loved one.
