Alternate Perceptions Magazine, April 2026
My Life-changing encounter with the Great God Pan during a Near-Death Experience
By: JB
This might not be what you would usually be interested in, but it was my introduction to the supernatural, February 6th, 2011, Province of Québec: After a six-hour long near-death experience (in which I entered a state of indescribable communion with the Great God Pan in his highest cosmic form, looking as if he was made of all of the stars and galaxies in the Universe), my mother told me that the first time she came to visit me at the hospital, right after surgery when I was practically comatose, she clearly heard her sister's voice in the room with us. My aunt was telling her "I'm so sorry, I was so selfish, I'm so sorry..." over and over again. That freaked my mother the f**k out, so much so that she was still very deeply disturbed even a year afterwards.
I naturally DIDN'T tell her about my whole experience on the other side, the part where Pan looked at me from the corner of his eye and smiled upon me knowingly, and I then fell into his endlessly spiraling ram's horns, literally made of the fabric of the cosmos, and ended up walking down a spiral staircase made of black stone. Not a proper staircase really, simply steps made of probably onyx, floating above oblivion. After quite some time walking down the onyx steps, I found my aunt completely listless on the stairs (she had violently put an end to her life five years earlier), and she said, "I'm more lost than ever, this is the Abyss, I'm more lost than ever". Without thinking, I took her hand and replied, "You're not lost anymore, I've found you." She looked up, her eyes full of life again, and that was it. Next thing I remember was waking up at the hospital days later.
About a month later, I was at the public library, when I noticed a tall, young, beautiful woman looking at me, smiling. She looked familiar, but I couldn't remember who she was. It suddenly hit me that she obviously was my aunt, looking as she did in my childhood, when she was in her twenties. When I turned around, she literally disappeared. I rationalized it as an unintentional "Orpheus travelling to the Underworld to rescue the soul of a loved one" sort of journey. In this day and age, for f**k's sake. I haven't seen her since. And my life now, from waking to sleep, is devoted to the mysteries of Pan.
Editor’s Note: Curious I immediately replied to the author of this article inquiring as to if he’d previously read or thought much about the ancient Pan prior to his NDE. He replied: “No, Pan was not very relevant in my life, apart from a few ordinary mythological and popular culture references. I was raised Christian, but never had any faith, and when I died I didn't have any real expectations. I figured I might simply "fall asleep and never wake up".
“As far as the ‘mysteries of Pan’ are concerned, I'm simply amazed at how omni-present the archetype of the "god of nature" or the "great horned one of paganism" is present in history, if you look at everything objectively. Someone could even argue that Jesus and Satan are two separate halves of Pan, one being the Good Shepherd, the other being the Evil Goat. Not to mention that during the reign of the Roman Emperor Tiberius, supposedly at the moment of the crucifixion of Christ, a terrible voice was heard all across the Mediterranean saying "The Great Pan is dead! The Great Pan is dead!"
“To me, Pan seems to be the sum total of existence, beyond human or moral judgment.”
