The Near-Death Journey

Carol Zaleski's 1987 comparison found medieval returners met hell and a punishing review of deeds; modern ones rarely meet hell, and their life review teaches rather than judges.

Carol Zaleski, Otherworld Journeys: Accounts of Near-Death Experience in Medieval and Modern Times (Oxford University Press, 1987), as summarised in KM Wehrstein, 'Medieval Near-Death Experiences', Psi Encyclopedia (Society for Psychical Research, 2018)

Accounts of people who die, see the other world and come back, told for centuries before the modern NDE.

Sources3 sources

Primary source

Bede, trans. A. M. Sellar, Bede's Ecclesiastical History of England: A Revised Translation, 1907, Book V, chapter 12Bede's purpose in telling Drythelm's death and return (c. 696): to rouse the living; Drythelm divided his goods and entered Melrose.
to the end that the living might be roused from the death of the soul

Scholarship

Carol Zaleski, Otherworld Journeys: Accounts of Near-Death Experience in Medieval and Modern Times, 1987Zaleski's comparison of medieval and modern accounts: medieval ones focus on hell and a punitive life review, modern ones are optimistic and their review educational.