Near Death Experiences: Cheating the Ferryman? | Anthony Peake

NDE controversies and 'Cheating the Ferryman'

Matt Colborn

Mar 27, 2025

Transcript

Show Notes

Season 2 Episode 5 ‘Near Death Experiences: Cheating the Ferryman?’

Today my guest is Anthony Peake. Anthony is a writer who deals with borderline areas of human consciousness. At university he specialised in the sociology of religion, the theory of language development and the art of the Italian Renaissance. A post-graduate course in management led Anthony away from his calling as a writer and into a career as a manager in various UK businesses.

In the year 2000 he was able to take a year’s sabbatical from his business career and he decided to research and write a book. This book was a distillation of all his areas of interest, quantum physics, neurology, ancient myths, altered states of consciousness and the mystery of death. Thanks to the help of Professor Bruce Greyson of the University of Virginia, an article based upon Anthony’s Cheating the Ferryman hypothesis was to appear in the Winter 2004 edition of the Journal of Near-Death Studies, the academic periodical of the International Association of Near-Death Studies (IANDS).

Anthony’s first book, Is There Life After Death?, was eventually published by Arcturus books in 2006. This book has now sold over 60,000 copies world-wide and has been translated into various foreign language editions including Spanish, Russian and Polish. Anthony has now written thirteen books. All of them further develop his speculative idea of ‘Cheating the Ferryman’. His latest book, an exhaustive review of the history, anthropology and science of the much-discussed Near-Death Experience (NDE) was published in November 2024.

Today’s dialogue focusses on controversies over Near-Death Experiences. We begin with a look at some of the anomalous features of NDEs, and with the tension between researchers who favour materialistic explanations in terms of brain function and those who advocate afterlife interpretations. We discuss the phenomenon of brain activity surges at the point of death. We also discuss some of the stranger features of NDEs, including commonalities with psychedelic experiences and apparent alien abductions. Anthony then describes his ‘Cheating the Ferryman’ idea. We finish with a critical discussion of the high-profile Pam Reynolds NDE, and the challenge of veridical Out of Body Experiences.

Resources

Anthony’s website:

https://www.anthonypeake.com

Some of his books:

Peake, A. (2024). Near Death Experiences: The Science, Psychology and Anthropology Behind the Phenomenon. Arcturus.

Peake, A. (2022). Cheating the Ferryman: The Revolutionary Science of Life After Death: The Sequel to the Bestselling Is There Life After Death? Arcturus.

Peake. A. (2006/2021). Is There Life After Death?: The Extraordinary Science of What Happens When We Die. Arcturus.

Links for all of Anthony’s books can be found on his website book shop.

NDE topics

1988 BBC QED Documentary ‘Glimpses of Death’, presented by Peter Fenwick

Blackmore, S.J. (1988). Visions from the Dying Brain. New Scientist May 1988. No 1611, pp. 43—46.

Anita Morjani’s TEDx talk where she discusses her NDE.

Vicente paper on brain activity in a dying man:

Vicente, R., Rizzuto, M., Sarica, C., et al. 2022. ‘Enhanced Interplay of Neuronal Coherence and Coupling in the Dying Human Brain’. Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience 14, (21 February). https://doi.org/10.3389/fnagi.2022.813531.

Pam Reynolds case:

https://psi-encyclopedia.spr.ac.uk/articles/pam-reynolds-near-death-experience