Overview

Janice Miner Holden has shaped the field of near-death studies through three interconnected roles: researcher, educator, and institutional leader. Her work bridges clinical counseling practice and empirical investigation, addressing both the phenomenology of NDEs and their measurable aftereffects on experiencers’ lives. Her research agenda has consistently focused on questions that matter to NDErs themselves, how to measure their experiences, how to help healthcare providers respond therapeutically, and how to understand the lasting changes NDEs produce.

Holden’s contributions span instrument development, educational intervention research, qualitative case analysis, and systematic literature review. She has been particularly attentive to aftereffects that earlier researchers had overlooked or minimized, bringing visibility to phenomena such as electromagnetic sensitivity and spontaneous mediumship. Her editorial leadership of the Journal of Near-Death Studies since 2008 has positioned her as a curator of the field’s scholarly conversation, and her presidency of IANDS has made her a public voice for post-physicalist perspectives on consciousness and NDEs.

Life and career

Holden began her academic career in counselor education at Northern Illinois University, where she was pursuing her Ed.D. dissertation. Her early research interest centered on a practical problem: how to study veridical perception during near-death out-of-body experiences in hospital settings. This question, rooted in parapsychological precedent, became the foundation for her subsequent three decades of work.

In 1988, she joined the faculty at the University of North Texas in the Counseling Program, where she remained for 31 years until her retirement in 2019 as Professor Emerita. During this period, she established herself as the leading researcher on NDE aftereffects and their counseling implications. Her early work focused on visual perception during naturalistic near-death out-of-body experiences, examining the conditions under which NDErs might accurately perceive their surroundings from a vantage point outside their physical bodies.⁸⁹⁶

In the 1990s and 2000s, Holden expanded her research scope to encompass the broader landscape of NDE aftereffects. She investigated hypnotic recall of NDEs and its psychological impact, finding preliminary evidence of overwhelming psychological benefit when recall occurred under appropriate therapeutic conditions.¹⁰ She also began documenting environmental and electromagnetic effects reported by NDErs, work that would eventually lead to collaborative efforts to clarify terminology and synthesize scattered findings in the literature.⁴

Holden assumed the editorship of the Journal of Near-Death Studies in 2008, succeeding Bruce Greyson. This role has allowed her to shape the field’s scholarly discourse while maintaining her own active research program. She has used her editorial platform to address emerging questions, from the nature of consciousness and post-physicalism to the role of artificial intelligence in scholarship, while continuing to publish her own empirical and theoretical contributions.

In 2019, she retired from full-time faculty status but remained active as editor of the Journal and as a leader within IANDS, serving as the organization’s president. Her retirement did not diminish her research productivity; she has continued to publish and to collaborate on major projects, including the development of the Veridical Near-Death Experience Scale.

Research

Measurement and instrumentation. A hallmark of Holden’s research has been the development of psychometrically sound instruments to measure dimensions of NDEs and their aftereffects. Working with colleagues at the University of North Texas, she led the development of the Knowledge and Attitudes About Near-Death Experiences Scale (KANDES), a 50-item instrument designed to assess healthcare professionals’ knowledge and attitudes about NDEs.¹ This instrument filled a gap in the field by providing a reliable, validated tool for measuring variables that earlier research had identified as critical to therapeutic response.

More recently, Holden co-authored the Veridical Near-Death Experience Scale (vNDE Scale), developed in collaboration with Bruce Greyson, Jeffrey Long, and an international team of researchers. This instrument measures the veridicality of perceptions reported during NDEs, that is, the degree to which experiencers’ reported perceptions correspond to objective reality. The scale was validated with both human raters and artificial intelligence systems, representing a novel methodological approach to a longstanding question in NDE research.⁵

Educational intervention research. Holden recognized early that healthcare providers’ knowledge and attitudes about NDEs directly affect their therapeutic response to patients and clients who disclose NDEs. She conducted a large-scale pre-post study examining the impact of an online educational program on licensed professional counselors’ knowledge and attitudes. Participants who completed the NDE program (n=100) showed significantly more accurate knowledge and more positive attitudes about NDEs compared to a control group (n=112) who completed topically unrelated programs.² This research demonstrated that online training could effectively increase counselors’ competence in responding to NDE disclosures.

Aftereffects and phenomenology. Holden’s research has consistently expanded the documented range of NDE aftereffects. In a quantitative study of spontaneous mediumship experiences (SMEs), phenomena in which NDErs report uninvited visits from deceased persons requesting message delivery, she found that while only 15% of participants reported SMEs prior to their first NDE, 56% reported at least one following their NDE. Participants with deeper NDEs were significantly more likely to report post-NDE SMEs, with a medium effect size. The number of reported post-NDE SMEs ranged from one to over twenty, and only 4% of those reporting SMEs indicated very or extremely distressing experiences.³ This work brought clinical attention to a phenomenon that had been largely absent from the scholarly literature.

Holden and colleagues also investigated electromagnetic aftereffects, conducting a quantitative retrospective study comparing NDErs, people who reported a close brush with death without an NDE, and people who had not been close to death. Results showed greater incidence of reported electromagnetic effects among NDErs than among the other two groups, with electromagnetic effects correlating to NDE depth.⁴ Building on this work, she collaborated with Sarah Blalock and P. M. H. Atwater to produce a comprehensive primer on electromagnetic and other environmental effects following NDEs, proposing more precise terminology to bring order to inconsistent usage in the literature.¹¹

Veridical perception and out-of-body experience. A persistent thread in Holden’s work has been the question of apparently nonphysical veridical perception (AVP) during NDEs, the phenomenon in which NDErs report accurate perceptions of their surroundings from a vantage point outside their physical bodies. She conducted a preliminary analysis of more than 100 cases of out-of-body NDEs, examining the accuracy and completeness of reported perceptions.¹² This work contributed to an ongoing scholarly debate about the nature of consciousness and perception during NDEs.

In collaboration with Jeffrey Long, Holden examined proposed physiological explanations for NDEs, specifically the hypothesis that NDEs result from rapid eye movement (REM) intrusion or arousal system dysfunction. While acknowledging the viability of the hypothesis, they identified substantial weaknesses in the presented evidence and studies, and offered recommendations for future research that would more rigorously test the hypothesis.¹³

Marital and relational aftereffects. Holden and Rozan Christian conducted a preliminary retrospective study examining the relationship between one spouse’s NDE and subsequent marital adjustment and stability. Using John Gottman’s Sound Marital House framework, they analyzed self-reported adjustment in 26 NDE couples compared to 26 couples who had experienced a self-identified life-changing event unrelated to NDEs. Results indicated significant reduction in marital meaning, adjustment, and stability in NDE compared to life-changing-event couples, with 65% of NDE couples’ marriages ending in divorce compared to 35% of the comparison group.¹⁴ This work highlighted a significant but understudied dimension of NDE aftereffects.

After-death communication and systematic review. Holden has also contributed to research on after-death communication (ADC), a related phenomenon in which living persons perceive the presence of deceased persons or animals. In a systematic review of quantitative descriptive studies of ADC published through 2010, she and colleagues analyzed 35 studies and ranked them by methodological quality. Using the methodologically strongest studies, they derived best-estimates of ADC phenomena, finding that 30–35% of people report at least one ADC sometime in their lives, and 70–80% of bereaved people report one or more ADC experiences within months of a loved one’s death.¹⁵

Literature analysis and field mapping. Holden has contributed to understanding the field’s development through systematic analysis of the scholarly literature. In collaboration with Rozan Christian, she analyzed more than 800 articles indexed through 2001, examining patterns related to publication dates, venues, authors, and topics. An updated analysis through 2011, conducted with Saharnaz Loseu and colleagues, examined 892 scholarly articles by 629 authors spanning more than a century, documenting the field’s growth and identifying underaddressed topics.¹⁶⁷

Influence and reception

Holden’s influence on the field of near-death studies operates at multiple levels. Her instrument development work has provided researchers and clinicians with validated tools for measurement and assessment. The KANDES has been adopted by educators and researchers seeking to evaluate knowledge and attitudes about NDEs in healthcare populations. The vNDE Scale represents a significant methodological advance in addressing the longstanding challenge of measuring veridicality in NDE reports.

Her educational intervention research has demonstrated the efficacy of online training in improving healthcare providers’ competence. This work has practical implications for professional education and has informed the development of training programs for counselors, nurses, and other healthcare professionals who encounter NDErs in clinical settings.

As editor of the Journal of Near-Death Studies, Holden has shaped the field’s scholarly conversation. She has used her editorial platform to address emerging methodological questions, to promote rigorous scholarship, and to ensure that diverse perspectives are represented in the journal’s pages. Her editorials have addressed topics ranging from the role of artificial intelligence in scholarship to the question of whether IANDS should endorse a post-physicalist worldview.¹⁷¹⁸

Her leadership within IANDS has positioned her as a public voice for the field. As president of the organization, she has advocated for rigorous research while remaining open to diverse theoretical perspectives. Her work on post-physicalist worldviews has contributed to ongoing discussions about the philosophical implications of NDE research.¹⁹

Holden’s research on previously undocumented aftereffects (particularly spontaneous mediumship experiences and electromagnetic sensitivity) has expanded the field’s understanding of what NDErs experience in the aftermath of their experiences. By bringing clinical attention to these phenomena, she has helped ensure that NDErs’ full range of experiences is acknowledged and addressed in therapeutic contexts.

Her work has also contributed to bridging the gap between near-death studies and related fields. Her research on transpersonal experiences, consciousness, and the integration of spiritually transformative experiences has connections to parapsychology, psychology, neuroscience, and philosophy. Her collaborative work with researchers from diverse disciplines has helped establish near-death studies as a legitimate field of inquiry that engages with fundamental questions about consciousness, perception, and the nature of human experience.