Free Fringe-ology by Steve Volk

study, claiming it as an explanation for the NDE. Alex Tsakiris invited him on his podcast, Skeptiko , to discuss why he granted so much authority to research with so little actual weight. For the most part, the discussion was completely cordial. But toward the end, after Tsakiris had gently schooled Wise for about twenty minutes, the reporter broke in with a question of his own. “Are you,” he asked Tsakiris, “a creationist?”
    His implication was clear: anyone arguing that the NDE remains unexplained must not believe in evolution, must be anti-science. And that pretty much captures the tenor of the debate between believers and skeptics, each side harboring ill opinions of the other, each side making strange assumptions about the other’s beliefs.
    Elisabeth Kübler-Ross made history by initially avoiding such debates altogether. But before long, she would be drawn into them. And the personal consequences she suffered were tremendous.
    W HEN O N D EATH AND D YING was published, the changes in Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’s life came quickly. She had written an unlikely bestseller, a book that became, seemingly overnight, part of the canon of course work for medical and nursing students; and, she reached the people who watched loved ones die in a soulless, dehumanizing fashion. Everyone wanted a piece of her. And in time, she visited nearly every continent and received twenty honorary degrees.
    Her son Ken remembers the biggest change came in the form of a giant U.S. Postal Service sack that arrived every few days, bearing hundreds of letters. “My mother thought it was important to respond to every letter, personally,” he said. “I didn’t feel abandoned. She took me on trips with her when I was out of school. But it was different. She tried to do all the things we did before, and called us on the phone every night when she was gone.”
    Speaking to Ken Ross, I can’t help but notice that his normally ebullient tone drops an octave when he talks about those days. Kübler-Ross’s sudden, international celebrity created a massive strain on her marriage. And she had also developed a kind of paranormal problem. She didn’t publish her own experiences with NDEs in On Death and Dying . But she kept working at the bedsides of the sick, and strange events did not seem to leave her be. Less than two years later, in fact, she had her strangest experience of all, which she documents in Wheel of Life .
    The constant lectures, seminars, and out of town speaking engagements, the hours spent attending to the dying, had worn her down. She was considering giving up the work.
    She stood in the Chicago hospital where she became famous, talking to a colleague, when she noticed a woman near the bank of elevators. Kübler-Ross had been deep in thought. But this woman caught her attention. She thought she had seen her, somewhere, before. Then she noticed something alarming.
    The woman was semi-transparent.
    After Kübler-Ross ended the conversation with her colleague, the woman approached her, not walking so much as floating. “Do you mind if we walk to your office?” the apparition asked.
    Kübler-Ross said yes, and started the strangest walk of her life, a few dozen yards to her office. Inside, she remembered the woman’s face. It was Mrs. Schwartz. She sat down, thinking she might faint. Schwartz had died some ten months earlier.
    Kübler-Ross questioned her own sanity.
    In the course of her work she had counseled schizophrenics. And when they saw something that wasn’t there, she didn’t feed their fantasies. She told them they were hallucinating. So she reached for her pen, her papers, her coffee cup. She tried to tether herself, through touch, to the real world. But the apparition didn’t fade at the great lady’s attempts to make her go away. In fact, the spook spoke. “I had to come back,” Schwartz told her, “for two reasons. Number