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Near-Death Clairvoyance: Difference between revisions

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Near-Death Clairvoyance (view source)

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== Literature ==
 
* ''[[Anansi Boys (Literature)|Anansi Boys]]'', by Neil Gaiman, which contains a subplot of the ghost of Maeve Livingstone watching the investigations of her own murder.
* Setup of ''[[The Lovely Bones]]''.
* The [[Christopher Pike]] novel ''Remember Me'' is about a girl who wakes up as a ghost after she is killed by {{spoiler|one of her friends.}} She sees her family finding out about her death, her funeral, and then spends the rest of the book trying to figure out who killed her. After her murder is solved, she proceedes to the afterlife.
* This troper read a book about a kid who was murdered, but his ghost didn't realize it. He went through an entire school day wondering why nobody could see him or hear him, and then he found out about his murder. The rest of the book was spent with him observing the investigation of his murder and how those he knew reacted to his death. It took place in Canada, this troper thinks. Anybody know what this troper's talking about?
* In ''[[Discworld (Literature)/Moving Pictures|Moving Pictures]]'', Gaspode is having one when rescued.
 
 
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* The last episode of season five of ''[[Curb Your Enthusiasm]]'' has Larry David (playing himself) dying and going to Heaven. He eventually proves so annoying that his guardian angels send him back into his body, much to the disappointment of his friends and family.
* ''[[Mr. Belvedere]]'' had the titular character experiencing this; at first, it seems that everything's going comedically wrong without him, but it turns out that life goes on.
* The [[Darker and Edgier|bleak]] ''[[Doctor Who]]'' spinoff ''[[Torchwood (TV)|Torchwood]]'' tried [[Something Completely Different]] with the more lighthearted, sentimental episode "Random Shoes", in which a recently deceased character observes (and subconsciously influences) the protagonist Gwen as she investigates his death.
* Subverted in an episode of ''[[Scrubs]]'': as various doctors are around a man's body (masking it from view) and finally saying that they lost him, a man walks up and begins to talk about how seeing himself die like that was strange. He even starts giving a speech about death itself...until J.D. comes up and angrily reminds him that he's not dead, just insane.
** However, there is also an episode that plays it straight: J.D. gets sick and has to undergo surgery where he has an out-of-body experience looking over Turk's shoulder as he's operating. Turk asks him (though "the ghost" isn't seen) to go away because he can't concentrate.
* The season two episode "Epiphanies" gave ''[[Battlestar Galactica]]'''s on-the-brink-of-death Laura Roslin the chance to remember [[The End of the World Asas We Know It]]. It was the day she got told she had terminal breast cancer, got dumped ''and'' fired by the former President, stopped a union crisis, listened as the Cylons nuked her homeworld, got sworn in as the new President, and left a whole bunch of people in the hands of the Cylons. Oh, and she figured out Gaius Baltar betrayed everyone because he was making out with a known Cylon. 'Cept she can't prove it. {{spoiler|Luckily, she said [[Screw Destiny]] and woke the heck up due to some hybrid blood from the extra-special baby Sharon was carrying.}}
* Dean of ''[[Supernatural]]'' did this while in a coma in the season 2 premiere, and his brother used a Ouija board to communicate with him.
* In ''[[Stargate SG-1]]'', episode "Meridian", Dr. Jackson lies dying of radiation poisoning. While the other characters take turns sitting at his bedside, he is in deep conversation with [[Energy Beings|Oma Desala]] about whether he is satisfied with the life he led or not. Eventually, he makes himself visible to Jack to tell him to let him die. Then he walks through the active Stargate and [[Ascend to Aa Higher Plane of Existence|ascends.]]
* An episode of ''[[House (TV series)|House]]'' (''Three Stories'') involves him almost dying and having flashes of the other two patients he was talking about, as well as their eventual fates in regards to the legs they were worried about losing. Interestingly, he then claims that it certainly didn't make him believe in anything like God or the afterlife or even life flashing before his eye, just that his mind was creating a hallucination as he died to make him feel better.
* In ''Kingdom Hospital'', Stephen King's [[Author Avatar]] spends nearly the whole series slipping in and out of a ghostly duplicate of the hospital, halfway between life and true death, while his body lies comatose.
 
== Tabletop Games ==
 
* [[Geist: The Sin Eaters (Tabletop Game)|Sin-Eaters]] who bear one of the [[Elemental Powers|Elemental Keys]] and the Oracle Manifestation get a fun variant of this -- they're able to undergo an out-of-body experience and travel wherever they wish. Thing is, to do so, they must take damage in one form or another. Depending on the Key in question, this may involve being buried alive, setting yourself on fire, getting strangled, or drowning yourself in the bathtub. Mind you, if you successfully pull it off, you're healed of all damage once you "snap back."
* Similarly, ''[[Orpheus]]'' split the "Laments" between actual ghosts and living people who were able to project their soul out of their body. Skimmers could do it through meditation, but Sleepers required cryogenic tanks to bring their body to a state of "death" that would allow them to "vacate the premises." In fact, that's how Orpheus got into the "post-life management" business -- they were doing extensive research into cryogenics, and discovered an interesting side effect...
 
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