One of the earliest cases of veridical near-death experiences (those in which experiencers acquire verifiable information that they could not have obtained by any normal means) was the case of the blue sneaker. Maria, a patient, said that she saw it during her NDE and described it to her social worker, Kimberly Clark Sharp. Kimberly went upstairs to the other side of the building and looked on the outside ledge. There she found the sneaker just as Maria described it. Skeptics tried to debunk the case but Kimberly wrote a spirited defence. In the video below, she puts more details of the case on record.

THINGS MUCH IMPROVED FOR THOSE WHO HAVE NDEs.

In the video above (at 9 mins 42 seconds) Kimberly Clark Sharp describes the situation of people who joined her Seattle IANDS organsiation in the early 1980s.
"Some had been institutionalised in mental institutes mind you. Some had been ravaged by their church community - if you didn't see the fact of Christ first, then you were in hell. You're crazy, you're evil. It was horrible. People came in emotionally haemorrhaging. That has changed. Now near-death experiencers come in. There's plenty of resources. There's scientific backup - not across the board- there's plenty of ways to go yet, but now they're coming in because they want to share. They want to give back."

MARY HELEN HENSLEY SHARES HER NDE AT IANDS CONFERENCE

Born and raised by a Southern Baptist minister, Dr. Mary Helen Hensley's life was completely transformed by her near-death experience in 1991. She realised that she had planned her own life and was fully responsible for her accident. She also shares how her father had a profound experience at the age of 85 as he approached his death, "After seeing a vision of his deceased father, who he was sure didn't qualify for heaven, he turned to his wife and said, "I've had it wrong all along. Everybody gets to go. You can't mess this thing up."