Researchers from Denmark and Norway found that one in 10 people has had a near death experience.

The new study found that people across 35 different countries have experienced unusual physical and spiritual symptoms. These occurred in life-threatening situations including heart attacks, near drownings and car crashes.

Many who participated in the study who had experienced a NDE said they felt total peace, while others spoke of being aware of another’s presence before entering sleep. There was even a report that a person could feel a demon sitting on their chest while they lay paralyzed unable to move.

One interesting finding was that nine in 10 people who had a near death experience shared that they experienced abnormal time perception while two thirds enjoyed vivid thoughts and incredible speed of thought.

Researchers found evidence that NDE’s may be linked to a sleep disorder known as Rapid Eye Movement (REM) sleep intrusion in which people’s brains are still asleep while they are awake.

People have reported visual and auditory hallucinations and other symptoms such as sleep paralysis where they feel conscious but can’t move.

“Our central finding is that we confirmed the association of near-death experiences with REM sleep intrusion,” Lead researcher Dr. Daniel Kondziella, a neurologist at the University of Copenhagen, said.

“Although association is not causality, identifying the physiological mechanisms behind REM sleep intrusion into wakefulness might advance our understanding of near-death experiences.”

Medically speaking, near-death experiences should be impossible. NDEs generally occur when a person is so physically compromised that they are unconscious, comatose or clinically dead.

From both a medical and a logical perspective, it should be impossible for people who are unconscious to have highly lucid experiences that are clear and logically organized. However, lucid experiences do occur at this time, and the level of consciousness and alertness that they experience is usually even greater than what people experience in everyday life.

While some believe NDEs are a medical phenomenon, others believe these experiences are connected with God.

NDEs fulfill a basic scientific principle: What is real is consistently observed.

For believers of God, these accounts offer a profound message of reassurance, hope and comfort with the evidence-based conclusion that God is real.