ABSTRACT
In 1975, at approximately the same time as Raymond Moody’s Life After Life first saw publication, German Lutheran minister Johann Christophe Hampe was working on a similar study of his own that appeared, in English, in 1979 under the title To Die is Gain. Hampe’s book remains little known by near-death researchers and theologians alike, yet it is interesting for a number of reasons. Appearing independently of Moody’s early work, for example, it is unlike other early studies of NDEs in being clearly uninfluenced by Life After Life. Additionally, Hampe’s study is largely based around experiences that had already been published by the time of To Die is Gain, many of them in psychic and paranormal publications and including experiences of victims of mountain climbing accidents and the proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research. Overall, however – and most importantly for the purposes of the current chapter – Hampe’s study represents the very first attempt from within the context of theology to investigate the phenomenon that only later became known as the ‘near-death experience’.
