In his book Life at Death, Dr. Kenneth Ring analyzed the near-death experiences of 24 people who attempted suicide. Among them, no one reported the tunnel phenomenon, or saw a brilliant but comforting light, or encountered a presence, or was temporarily reunited with loved ones who had died, or entered into a transcendent world of heavenly beauty. Instead, the suicide-related near-death experience tends to be truncated, aborted, damped down. It does begin with a feeling of relief or peace and continues with a sense of bodily detachment to the same degree as non-suicide-related near-death experiences. But it tends to end, if it gets this far at all, with a feeling of confused drifting in a dark or murky void – a sort of "twilight zone". Dr. Ring’s research strongly suggests that the suicide-related near-death experience does not reach completion; instead, it tends simply to fade out before the transcendent elements characteristic of non-suicide related near-death experiences make their appearance.

One young man tried to kill himself by taking an assortment of pills – Librium, Demerol, Valium, Dilantin. As a result of this ingestion, he remained unconscious for four days. He remembers finding himself in a "gray area":

"The only thing that I can remember about this is just grayness. Like I was in gray water or something. I couldn’t really see anything. I couldn’t see myself there, either. It was just like my mind was there. And no body."

While he was in this state, he felt good:

"Normally, I’m a very anxious, a very nervous person – a lot of fears and things like that. And during this, all the fear was gone. I had no fear whatsoever. Almost an adventurous feeling. Excitement." (Did you want to stay in that condition?) "Yeah. It was a very good feeling."

He also was aware of music:

"I also heard music – different music." (Tell me what it was like.) "It was usually like classical music; I like classical music. It wasn’t exactly the music I’ve heard, but it was along that line." (Do you recall how the music made you feel?) "It made me relaxed. The fears went away when I listened to it. Again, the feeling of hope, that there’s something better somewhere else."

He also reported that everything, including the music, sounded "hollow and metallic – echoey" and that these acoustical sensations were associated with the watery grayness. He felt the grayness going through him, filling him and this felt good to him. After a while, he became aware of a voice:

"I think [it was] a woman’s voice, but [pause] I didn’t recognize the voice." (Do you recall now what she said to you?) "No. I just remember that it was a soothing voice. I kind of remember that with the grayness – her voice kind of calling, my moving toward it." (This was a friendly voice, a reassuring voice in some way?) "Yeah." (... and you felt [drawn] to it?) "Yeah. Right. Like that was the place to be."

He tried to get to where the voice was:

"It seemed like I kept trying to get to where the voice was, but something was holding me back. I know I wanted to be there; I knew once I was there everything would be fine. I was sure of this. No question about it. But there was still like something holding me back from getting there."

During his experience he had seen images of people he knew. These people somehow seemed to represent the possibility of a good life; they seemed to care. He described this as "like playing back a recording of my life." The issue was joined:

"It felt like the woman’s was stronger. I wanted to get there but there was just some part of me that wanted to [pause] go back with these images."

And resolved:

"The thing I remember most is a falling feeling. Like I was coming down really fast and then hit. And then I woke up with a jolt."

And afterward:

"When I woke up, the first thing I thought was Oh, God. Thank you. I made it, and I was extremely happy. [He had been severely depressed before his suicide attempt.] I was just sitting there thinking about it and I felt this – I don’t know – warmth filling my body. I was very happy, very excited, but then [pause] it was more than contented – it was rapture, I guess. But I couldn’t explain it to anybody at the time. It was just beyond words."

These passages sum up the essential features of his experience. In the course of his interview, he also indicated that although he never clearly saw his physical body on the bed, he did have a sense of bodily detachment and felt he had no weight at all – he was just "pure mind." Neither did he have any sense of time. When he momentarily returned to body consciousness (before drifting back into the grayness), he found the sensory world greatly enhanced – the colors were clearer and more vibrant. The only thing scary about his experience was his fear (which was eventually vanquished) of returning to his body. His experience "in the grayness" was decidedly pleasant and, judging from its immediate aftereffect, very positive and powerful in its emotional impact.

This particular experience includes many features that are common with non-suicide-attempt experiences: drifting through a vast space, feeling good, hearing music and a comforting voice, hearing sounds magnified, seeing a series of flashbacks of one’s life, and so forth.

In Dr. Ring’s study, he found that no one who had attempted suicide reported that it was predominately unpleasant. The only possible exception is that a few people did describe some unsettling hallucinatory images, but these appear to have been qualitatively different from the feeling-tone of non-suicidal experiences. Certainly, no one felt that he was either in or was on his way to hell. This is not to say that suicide attempts never lead to unpleasant experiences, only that there is no strong evidence for this proposition among the 24 suicide near-death experiences of Dr. Ring’s study.