Nancy Evans Bush, MA, President Emerita of the International Association for Near-Death Studies (IANDS), has for almost forty years been a voice for the substantial minority of near-death experiencers who encounter fear, guilt, and even terror rather than heavenly realms. A long-time editor of the IANDS magazine, Vital Signs, and author of the first study of children's NDEs and numerous articles for the Journal of Near-Death Studies and other publications, she is the author of Dancing Past the Dark: Distressing Near-Death Experiences and The Buddha in Hell and Other Alarms: Distressing and Hellish Near-Death Experience in Perspective. She holds a BA in English from SUNY (Albany) and an MA in Pastoral Ministry from St. Joseph University (Connecticut). The mother of three adult children and grandmother of seven, she is now semi-retired and lives in coastal North Carolina, USA.