A study · University of Virginia (United States), published in 2007

Greyson’s study: the same near-death experience, told twice 19 years apart

In the early 1980s, more than a hundred people told the psychiatrist Bruce Greyson about their near-death experience. Each of them filled in a questionnaire about it. About 19 years later, Greyson looked for them again, and 72 filled it in once more. Their answers to the questionnaire barely changed. And the peace and joy they described did not grow over the years. For the author, accounts of these experiences are not embellished over time. He himself acknowledges that they may have been embellished earlier. When he first collected them, the experiences had happened almost 18 years before on average.

The study’s question is: do NDE accounts get embellished as the years go by? We tell it step by step. If you only want to know what it found, go straight to the results.

Step 1

Before the study · The question

A doubt about every NDE account

Almost everything known about NDEs comes from people who tell them years later. And memories change over time. Greyson points out that memories of very unusual or very hard events may be less reliable than others, because emotions distort them.

Some doctors and psychologists had suggested that the memory of an NDE becomes more pleasant over the years. If that were true, accounts collected long afterward would be worth less.

According to Greyson, nobody had used a questionnaire to compare the answers of the same people so many years apart.

Step 2

Early 1980s · As the study tells it

More than a hundred people write to him about their experience

Illustration from Greyson’s study: the same near-death experience, told twice 19 years apart: “More than a hundred people write to him about their experience”

Bruce Greyson is a psychiatrist at the University of Virginia who has studied NDEs since the 1970s. In the early 1980s he gathered the accounts of more than a hundred people who had contacted him to tell him about their experience.

Each of them filled in a questionnaire about what they had lived through. From that questionnaire he created the Greyson scale in 1983. It is a list of questions that gives each experience a score. Today it is used all over the world to decide whether something is an NDE.

Step 3

The method · As the study tells it

16 questions about what was experienced

The Greyson scale has 16 questions, in four groups:

Thinking. For example, whether time changed, whether thoughts ran faster or whether one’s life passed before one’s eyes.
Feelings. For example, whether there was peace or joy, or whether a light was seen.
What seems supernatural. For example, whether one left the body or knew something that was happening somewhere else.
What seems otherworldly. For example, whether one reached another place, sensed a presence, met dead loved ones or came to a limit beyond which there was no return.

Each answer scores 0, 1 or 2 points, so the scale goes from 0 to 32 points. Anyone who scores 7 points or more counts as a person with an NDE.

The scale asks whether there were things like peace or light, not what exactly each person saw.

Step 4

2002 to 2005 · As the study tells it

19 years later, he looks for them again

In 2002, Greyson wrote to all those people at their last known address. Those he could not find he looked for in association membership lists, through personal contacts and on the internet.

Leaving out those he knew had died, 115 people remained. Of those, 72 replied between 2002 and 2005, about 63 in every 100. He sent them the same scale again, without reminding them that they had already filled it in.

When they first filled in the scale, their average age was 47. The second time it was 66.

Step 5

The timing · As the study tells it

The first time, the NDE had already happened almost 18 years earlier

Illustration from Greyson’s study: the same near-death experience, told twice 19 years apart: “The first time, the NDE had already happened almost 18 years earlier”

The NDE was not recent the first time. On average, the NDE had happened almost 18 years before they first filled in the scale.

Another 19 years passed on average between the first time and the second. So by the second time, the NDE had happened almost 37 years earlier.

The study compares the account of an NDE from almost 18 years before with the same account 19 years later.

Step 6

The results · As the study tells it

The score barely changes

The first time, the 72 people scored 14.6 points on average. The second time they scored 14.2 points. According to the author’s analysis, the difference is so small that it may be due to chance.

The four groups of questions barely moved. Thinking went up a little and the other three went down a little. Of the 16 questions, 9 went down and 7 went up. According to Greyson, no change in the groups or in the questions is enough to say the memory changed.

People who scored high the first time tended to score high the second. Those who scored low tended to score low again.

Step 7

The results · As the study tells it

Peace and joy do not grow over the years

Greyson looked above all at feelings, because that was what some expected to grow. They did not grow. The scores for peace, joy and feeling one with everything went down a little. The score for light went up a little. None of these changes was big enough to rule out chance.

He also checked whether the score changes were bigger when more years had passed between the first time and the second. He found no such link.

Over the years, these accounts were not embellished.

Step 8

In the discussion · As the author acknowledges

What the study cannot rule out

Greyson points out four limits of his study:

Everything comes from what people answer about what they experienced.
He does not know whether these 72 people are like the rest of the people who have had an NDE.
Someone may have gone back over their first answers during those years. Even so, nobody said they recognized the questionnaire.
The memory may have been embellished before they first filled in the scale, and then stayed fixed.

He proposes recording the account right after the NDE and asking the same person again 20 years later. That would show whether it was embellished in the first years.

Step 9

2007 · As the author concludes

For the author, the accounts are reliable

Greyson concludes that, contrary to what was expected, NDE accounts are not embellished over time. He believes this means studies that ask about experiences from years before can be trusted.

He adds that these memories seem more stable than memories of other traumatic events. And he notes that two earlier studies, with fewer years between the answers than his, did not find changes either. One was the 1983 study in which Greyson created his scale. There he gave it twice, 2 to 6 months apart. The other was the study by the cardiologist Pim van Lommel. His team spoke to patients in the days after they were resuscitated and spoke to them again 2 and 8 years later.

Let’s see what can and can’t be known from these data.

What is known?

What Greyson’s study found

What it found

The average score barely changed in 19 years. It went from 14.6 to 14.2 points in 72 people.
No group of questions changed clearly. According to the author, none of the 16 questions changed enough to say the memory changed.
Peace and joy did not grow. The scores for peace, joy and feeling one with everything went down a little. The score for light went up a little.
High and low scores tended to repeat. People who scored high the first time tended to score high the second.
A longer gap between the two times did not change the answers more. The changes did not depend on the time between one time and the other.

What it couldn’t find out

Whether the account changed in the first years. The first time, the NDE was already almost 18 years old on average. The author himself acknowledges it may have been embellished before.
Whether the details changed. The scale asks whether there was peace, light or a presence, not what was seen or heard. An account can gain or lose details without its score changing.
How much each person changed. The article gives the group average and shows that people who scored high tended to score high again. It does not say how much each person’s score went up or down.
Whether the same happens with everyone who has an NDE. These were people who had written to Greyson on their own, and the second time only 72 of 115 replied.

How each side interprets it

What the author concludes

Bruce Greyson, psychiatrist at the University of Virginia, in 2007. He believes NDE accounts are not embellished over the years and that this supports studies that ask about old experiences. He thinks these memories are more stable than memories of other very hard events.

What other studies say

We have not found any published criticism of this article.
In the Netherlands, the team of the cardiologist Pim van Lommel followed people who had had an NDE during a cardiac arrest. It spoke to them in the days after they were resuscitated. After 2 and after 8 years, they told their experience almost the same way as in those first days. We tell it in the van Lommel study.
In Belgium, a team at the university hospital of Liège gave the Greyson scale to ICU patients and repeated it a year later. The score of those people did not change clearly, but only 11 of the 19 who had an NDE could be reached. We tell it in the Liège ICU study.

What can be said from the data

The questionnaire answers of these 72 people barely changed in 19 years. Those who scored high the first time usually scored high the second time too. And the accounts were not embellished. That is evidence against the idea that these accounts are embellished over time.

The study does not say what happens in the first years after the NDE, or whether the details change. Nor does it say anything about the cause of the experience. A stable memory does not show whether the NDE is produced by the brain or has another origin, outside the brain.

What would settle it

Greyson himself proposes it. It would take following the same people from the start:

recording what each patient says as soon as they wake up, in their own words;
asking them again many years later, without showing them what they said;
and comparing both the features and the details.

The closest thing done with the Greyson scale is the Liège ICU study. There, a team gave patients the Greyson scale a few days after they left the ICU. A year later it gave them the scale again. Van Lommel’s team followed its patients for 8 years, but it did not use the Greyson scale.

From more than a hundred people to 72, 19 years later

Greyson gave the scale again to 72 people.

Their average score barely changed.

The figures of Greyson’s study
Item	Figure
People still alive, as far as was known	115
People who replied the second time	72
Years between the NDE and the first time, on average	17.7
Years between the first and the second time, on average	19.1
Average score the first time	14.6
Average score the second time	14.2

What these figures don’t tell

They are averages. An average can stay the same even if some people go up and others go down.
They measure features, not details. The scale does not record what was seen, what was heard or who was met.

Frequently asked questions

Does the memory of a near-death experience change over the years?

In a 2007 study, the psychiatrist Bruce Greyson gave the same questionnaire twice to 72 people, 19 years apart. Their answers barely changed. The study measures the features of the experience, such as peace or light, not the details of what was seen.

Are near-death experience accounts embellished over time?

In Bruce Greyson’s 2007 study, they were not. The peace and joy that 72 people reported in a questionnaire did not grow over 19 years, but went down a little. Greyson himself acknowledges that the account may have been embellished earlier. When they first filled in the questionnaire, the experience had happened almost 18 years before on average.

What is the Greyson scale?

It is a 16-question questionnaire created by the psychiatrist Bruce Greyson in 1983 to measure near-death experiences. It asks, for example, whether there was peace, whether a light was seen or whether one left the body. It goes from 0 to 32 points, and anyone who scores 7 or more counts as a person with an NDE.

Does this study prove that near-death experiences are real?

No. Greyson’s 2007 study only measures whether the memory holds over the years. A stable memory does not say whether the experience is created by the brain or has another origin, outside the brain.

Where this page comes from

The study

Bruce Greyson (2007), “Consistency of near-death experience accounts over two decades: Are reports embellished over time?”, Resuscitation 73:407-411Read for free

To learn more

The Murcia MRI study: what the brain does when recalling a near-death experienceRead
The van Lommel study: 344 cardiac arrest survivors in ten hospitalsRead
The Liège ICU study: 126 patients and 19 near-death experiencesRead
The Greyson study: 1,595 heart patients and 27 near-death experiencesRead
What is a near-death experience?Read

Our archive

A full reading of the article, checked on October 23, 2026

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