Near-death experiences are a type of human experience known around the world and throughout history. Commonly understood as "spiritual" episodes reported by individuals undergoing periods of clinical death or near-death, they typically feature sensations of leaving the body, entering and emerging from darkness, meeting deceased friends and relatives, encountering beings of light, judgment of one's earthly life, feelings of oneness, and reaching barriers, only to return to the body. In this book, Gregory Shushan explores the relationship between NDEs and beliefs about the afterlife in traditional indigenous societies in Africa, North America, and the Pacific. Drawing on historical accounts of the earliest encounters with explorers, missionaries, and ethnologists, this study addresses questions such as: Do ideas about the afterlife commonly originate in NDEs? What role does culture play in how people experience and interpret NDEs? How can we account for cross-cultural similarities and differences between afterlife beliefs? Though NDEs are universal, Shushan shows that how they are actually experienced and interpreted varies by region and culture. In North America, they were commonly valorized, and attempts were made to replicate them through shamanic rituals. In Africa, however, they were largely considered aberrational events with links to possession or sorcery. In the Pacific they were almost casually accepted at face value, and incorporated into numerous myths and legends. This study examines the continuum of similarities and differences between these three strands of belief and experience, and in the process makes a valuable contribution to our knowledge about the origins of afterlife beliefs around the world and the significance of related experiences in human history.