Shared Death Experiences with Grief and Bereavement Therapist William Peters

In 2000, today's special guest William Peters was volunteering at the Zen Hospice Project in San Francisco when he had an extraordinary experience. as he was reading aloud to a patient he suddenly felt himself floating in midair, completely out of his body. The patient, who was also aloft, looked at him and smiled. The next moment, Peters felt himself return to his body…but the patient never regained consciousness and died.

Perplexed and stunned by what had happened, Peters began searching for other people who’d shared similar experiences. He would spend the next twenty years gathering and meticulously categorizing their stories to identify key patterns of what is now known as the “shared crossing” experience. The similarities, which cut across continents and cultures and include awe-inspiring visual and sensory effects, and powerful emotional after-effects, were impossible to ignore.

Long whispered about in the hospice and medical communities, these extraordinary moments of final passage are openly discussed and explained in his book At Heaven’s Door. The book is filled with powerful tales of spouses on departing this earth after decades together and bereaved parents who share their children’s entry into the afterlife. 

William J. Peters is a practicing grief and bereavement therapis. He holds degrees from Harvard’s Graduate School of Education and UC Berkeley. He is the founder of the Shared Crossing Project and director of its Research Initiative. Recognized as a global leader in the field of shared death studies, he has spent decades studying end-of-life experiences.