Thirteen-year-old Harmony “H-Money” Samuels was crossing the road when a passing car threw him into the air. His face hit the windshield and split open. A sudden sleepiness overtook him; he closed his eyes and woke up inside a dream. He felt himself floating over the scene of the accident. He watched his sister run over to him, screaming; he saw the crowd form around him. He was filled with awe, his fear entirely gone, and a sweet voice told him, “It’s not yet time.” He woke up beneath a sheet, to the shock of the paramedics who had thought him dead.

The now-famous producer and songwriter shared this story on Oprah’s podcast, in an episode devoted to near-death experiences (NDEs). Through Samuels’s account and several others, the episode lingered on those strange moments when people find themselves dancing on the border between life and death—a border that feels, for some, like little more than a thin, easily crossed veil.

Some psychologists explain NDEs as a defense mechanism put forth by the brain in the face of an extreme crisis as a way to disassociate.

Actor Jeremy Renner described a similar experience. A snowplough accident in 2023 crushed more than thirty bones in his face, skull, and body and stopped…