This month I’d like to share with you an extended excerpt from a newly reprinted classic in this rarefied field: The North American Indian Orpheus Tradition: Native Afterlife Myths and Their Origins by Åke Hultkrantz. This excerpt summarizes Hultkrantz’s thinking on the relationship between these kinds of extraordinary phenomena and beliefs in an afterlife — and he gives numerous examples of accounts. Keep in mind that this book was written in 1957 — long the modern “discovery” of near-death experiences and their cementing within the popular consciousness.