General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20266 min read

Surviving Death

Surviving Death is a 2021 American documentary television series released on Netflix that investigates the possibility of an afterlife through near-death experiences, mediumship, claimed signs from the dead, and cases of children who appear to remember previous lives. Directed and executive produced by Ricki Stern, the six-part series is based on the 2017 book of the same name by journalist and author Leslie Kean, who also appears on screen as a guide.¹^•²

Key fact	Detail
Format	Six-part Netflix documentary series, TV-MA rating, all episodes released January 6, 2021³
Director	Ricki Stern, whose prior documentaries include Reversing Roe and Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work¹
Source book	Surviving Death: A Journalist Investigates Evidence for an Afterlife (2017) by Leslie Kean²
Episode topics	Near-death experiences, mediums (two episodes), signs from the dead, apparitions and deathbed visions, and reincarnation³
Featured researchers	Bruce Greyson (Episode 1) and Jim B. Tucker (Episode 6) of the University of Virginia's Division of Perceptual Studies, founded in 1967⁴
Critical scores	80% on the Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer from 5 reviews; 64% audience score from 50+ ratings⁵
Status	Ended after one season of six episodes; produced by Break Thru Films⁶

Spoilers

Episodes

All six episodes were released on January 6, 2021, each roughly an hour long.³

Near-Death Experiences (51 min). A doctor is found lifeless after going over a waterfall; she and others share their near-death experiences and the question of whether consciousness expands after death.³
Mediums: Part 1 (57 min). Mediums promise a chance to commune with the departed, and seekers try to cultivate that ability for solace and healing.³
Mediums: Part 2 (50 min). A medium leads a séance, and plaster casts of "spirit" hands, presented as physical manifestations of the dead, are explored.³
Signs from the Dead (48 min). Mourners look for ways to communicate through what mediums describe as signs and messages from the dead, such as a bird, a dancing light, or a caress.³
Seeing Dead People (53 min). An investigator records sounds at a historic site, and a doctor discusses encounters with the dying.³
Reincarnation (52 min). A child psychiatrist studies cases of past-life memories, including a 5-year-old child's vivid details.³

Featured research

The series draws substantially on the University of Virginia's Division of Perceptual Studies (DOPS), a research group founded in 1967 that studies the relationship between brain and mind and the possibility that something of a person survives bodily death.⁴ Bruce Greyson, whose research appears in Episode 1, defines a near-death experience as a profound experience many people report when close to death and estimates that probably between 10 and 20 percent of people whose hearts actually stop will report such dramatic experiences.⁴

The reincarnation episode follows children in the United States who speak about previous lives and the researchers who study them, with Jim B. Tucker, a child psychiatrist at the University of Virginia, as the featured investigator.⁷^•⁴ Three cases are presented. Ryan Hammons, as a young boy in Oklahoma, described a life in 1930s Hollywood as a film extra who went on to run a talent agency, details Tucker's team matched to the agent Marty Martyn. The James Leininger case concerns a boy whose statements were matched to James Huston, a navy pilot killed near Iwo Jima in 1945, and Tucker later published a report on it. A third child, Atlas, told his mother at age five about a former name and family, and said someone had killed him as a child; his mother found a 2005 newspaper report of a Brooklyn toddler killed by a babysitter whose names matched, and in a test filmed for the episode Atlas picked out photographs of the toddler's mother, home, and nearby park.⁷ The Hammons and Leininger cases have been investigated and published in detail, and the Leininger case has also drawn published criticism, while the Atlas case has been presented only on screen and in press coverage.⁷

Reception and criticism

Professional reception was mixed. On Rotten Tomatoes the season holds an 80% Tomatometer from five critics and a 64% audience score.⁵ Joel Keller of Decider praised its journalistic approach, saying it favors scientific voices over "believers," while Marty Brown of Common Sense Media gave it 3 out of 5 and called it a shallow docuseries that explores the afterlife and grief.⁸ Common Sense Media's fuller review judged that the series presents its subjects' beliefs and experiences rather than trying to prove them true or false, and functions mainly as a documentary about unusual ways people cope with trauma and grief.⁹

Scientific criticism focused on how the series handles evidence. According to Live Science, Sam Parnia, a critical care researcher who investigates the recalled experience of death, said he declined to take part after the producers failed to separate rigorous science on subjects like the recalled experience of death from pseudoscientific claims involving ghosts and mediums.¹⁰ The same report noted that while near-death experiences can be studied with the tools of science, other sections of the series, such as belief in reincarnation or sensing the presence of a deceased loved one, sit in the realm of faith, and that the documentary omits limitations of the experiments it presents, such as the absence of searches of the medium Kluski before séances and the testimony of magicians who demonstrated how "spirit hands" could be faked with rubber gloves.¹⁰ A Daily Beast review called the series' evidence pseudo-scientific, anecdotal, or fanciful, and noted that it opens with the near-death experience of orthopedic surgeon Mary Neal, who was pinned underwater without oxygen for 30 minutes during a 1999 kayaking trip in Chile.²

The director's stance. Stern described herself to The Guardian as "a sort of non-believer, but someone who was open to it," and said the show does not shy away from cross-examining mediums and witnesses, never dismissing the possibility that a séance uses lighting tricks or that a medium passes off information found on Facebook as communication from the dead.¹¹ The Guardian's review observed that the series builds a provocative case that consciousness can continue beyond life while leaving such skeptical possibilities in view.¹¹

A 2021 essay by researchers associated with parapsychology scholarship described the series as a step toward public education that gave a good popular-level overview of some relevant evidence, while noting it did not focus on the challenges of deciding whether a reported phenomenon is evidence for psi or survival.¹²

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Series and fictional screen worlds › Unscripted, reality, and web-native series › Documentary, docudrama, and lifestyle series › Nature, wildlife, and science documentary series

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 21, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

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