Near-Death Experience: Investigating Theoretical Implications

[JSat92]

I've come across a lot of religious claims regarding NDE, and how it's 'spiritual' in nature. I don't buy that bullcrap of course. There are also plenty of fraudulent claims that are allegedly scientific, but upon investigation are found to be fake.

NDEs are possibly misinterpreted notions of explainable psychological phenomena. I'm no expert on the subject, but that's my take on it.

 

[JDStupi]

I simply do not understand why people would be so dismissive towards a psychic phenomena that is by no means outlandish or impossible. Perhaps it is true that the majority of people who experience the phenomena of "NDE's" interpret it as a confirmation of the divine and so the whole phenomena is tangled in a mess of supernatural beliefs and concrete experiences. This, however, says nothing about the existence of the experience, humans routinely fabricate causes for phenomena and it would be important not to dismiss the experience simply because people have conflated its abnormality with the supernatural.

It is quite possible that oxygen deprivation is one way the mind finds itself in such a state, but there are a number of psychic phenomena which seem to operate in the absence of feedback stimuli from the body and this could be a key.

It is known that the mind operates in terms of concepts and abstractions for experiences, it would seem that in the absence of sensory feedback from the body to ground the combination of possible memories and concepts certain scenarios lacking a degree of "reality" could arise.

So we could study NDE's not in terms of "NDE=oxygen deprivation" for this would be insufficient as an explanation of how the experience itself is produced. Why is it that oxygen deprivation does it? What does oxygen deprivation do to overall brain function? Could a similar state be produced in another manner? In other words, how is it that the absence of oxygen gives rise to a situation where these types of mental states arise?

There are many "altered states of consciousness" that exist, and the nature of how they come to be and what it may or may not say about brain function is something which shouldn't simply be dismissed as "not scientific".

 

[Jack21222]

...there are a number of psychic phenomena which seem to operate in the absence of feedback stimuli from the body and this could be a key.

Okay, name one.

Difficulty: Don't pick one that relies on cold reading.

 

[Ryan_m_b]

I simply do not understand why people would be so dismissive towards a psychic phenomena that is by no means outlandish or impossible. Perhaps it is true that the majority of people who experience the phenomena of "NDE's" interpret it as a confirmation of the divine and so the whole phenomena is tangled in a mess of supernatural beliefs and concrete experiences. This, however, says nothing about the existence of the experience, humans routinely fabricate causes for phenomena and it would be important not to dismiss the experience simply because people have conflated its abnormality with the supernatural.

It is quite possible that oxygen deprivation is one way the mind finds itself in such a state, but there are a number of psychic phenomena which seem to operate in the absence of feedback stimuli from the body and this could be a key.

The reason these things are not science is because when they have been tested they have been shown to be false. Please provide one example from a good source that a "psychic phenomenon" has occurred.

It is known that the mind operates in terms of concepts and abstractions for experiences, it would seem that in the absence of sensory feedback from the body to ground the combination of possible memories and concepts certain scenarios lacking a degree of "reality" could arise.

So we could study NDE's not in terms of "NDE=oxygen deprivation" for this would be insufficient as an explanation of how the experience itself is produced. Why is it that oxygen deprivation does it? What does oxygen deprivation do to overall brain function? Could a similar state be produced in another manner? In other words, how is it that the absence of oxygen gives rise to a situation where these types of mental states arise?

There are many "altered states of consciousness" that exist, and the nature of how they come to be and what it may or may not say about brain function is something which shouldn't simply be dismissed as "not scientific".

The biological causes of these feelings are researched, that has nothing to do with their validity.

 

[Tosh5457]

On wikipedia there is very interesting information about http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Near-death_experience" :

A recent study by Dr. Sam Parnia, shows that such patients are "effectively dead", with their brains shut down and no thoughts or feelings possible for the complex brain activity required for dreaming or hallucinating; additionally, to rule out the possibility that near-death experiences resulted from hallucinations after the brain had collapsed through lack of oxygen, Parnia rigorously monitored the concentrations of the vital gas in the patients’ blood, and found that none of those who underwent the experiences had low levels of oxygen.

Dr. Kenneth Ring claims in the book Mindsight: Near-Death and Out-of-Body Experiences in the Blind that up to 80% of his sample studied reported some visual awareness during their NDE or out of body experience.

How can a person who is practically brain dead have visual awareness? How can people in these conditions have hallucinations? Until these questions are answered, explanations like lack of oxigen aren't adequate.

My guess is that hallucinating shows a lot of brain activity, and that's the opposite of what happens on NDEs. And my guess is that people with their eyes closed and almost brain dead cannot see... So the obvious conclusion is that there is an out-of-body consciousness.

 

[Evo]

On wikipedia there is very interesting information about http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Near-death_experience" :





How can a person who is practically brain dead have visual awareness? How can people in these conditions have hallucinations? Until these questions are answered, explanations like lack of oxigen aren't adequate.

My guess is that hallucinating shows a lot of brain activity, and that's the opposite of what happens on NDEs. And my guess is that people with their eyes closed and almost brain dead cannot see... So the obvious conclusion is that there is an out-of-body consciousness.

You need to post scientific studies to back up your claims.

 

[zoobyshoe]

How can a person who is practically brain dead have visual awareness? How can people in these conditions have hallucinations? Until these questions are answered, explanations like lack of oxigen aren't adequate.

My guess is that hallucinating shows a lot of brain activity, and that's the opposite of what happens on NDEs. And my guess is that people with their eyes closed and almost brain dead cannot see... So the obvious conclusion is that there is an out-of-body consciousness.

People don't generally realize how large and specialized the activity picked up by an EEG actually is. All kinds of sub-EEG activity can be going on, not picked up by scalp electrodes. Check out the wiki article on EEG's.

Addtionally, even seizure activity, if it is localized and deep enough, won't register on a surface EEG. Check out the abstract of this paper:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3137487

Overall, among the 87 simple partial seizures, only 18 (21%) revealed ictal EEG changes. Thus, a normal EEG is common during simple partial seizures and does not exclude the diagnosis.

People being prepared for brain surgery to remove a seizure focus often will have depth electrodes implanted in their brains (through small holes in the scull) to help pinpoint the troublesome area. These depth electrodes often record many more simple partial seizures than the surface EEG's ever pick up.

As the wiki article points out, to be picked up by a surface EEG, neuronal activity has to involve "thousands or millions" of neurons firing synchronously.

So, a surface EEG is not a reliable indicator of "brain death", or lack of brain activity. The best that could be claimed for a flat surface EEG is that it is an indicator of low level cortical activity.

As for brain activity during hallucinations, google it and see what you come up with. The couple things I recall reading found the frontal lobes of hallucinating schizophrenics to be just about asleep (but that was specific to schizophrenia). Simple partial seizures (hypersynchronous neuronal firing) can cause all kinds of sensory hallucinations, but, as the paper I linked to points out, only about 20% of simple partial seizures are picked up by a surface EEG.

The OBE with autoscopy comes up fairly often as a simple partial seizure symptom. There are also a lot of examples of plain autoscopy (no floating sensation, just the experience of seeing yourself from the outside.) The NDE is more elaborate, but you should be aware that oxygen deprivation is a common cause of seizures, which ties in for obvious reasons. People with a disorder called syncope, for example, will faint, and some of them will proceed to have grand mal seizures from the oxygen deprivation that caused the faint.

 

[bluey]

Thanks for validating some of my reasons for retiring. It's hard to refute lack of logic. Good luck in all of your endeavors. I'm out.

I don't blame you mate.Gee Whizz!

 

[ViewsofMars]

People don't generally realize how large and specialized the activity picked up by an EEG actually is. All kinds of sub-EEG activity can be going on, not picked up by scalp electrodes. Check out the wiki article on EEG's.

Addtionally, even seizure activity, if it is localized and deep enough, won't register on a surface EEG. Check out the abstract of this paper:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3137487
People being prepared for brain surgery to remove a seizure focus often will have depth electrodes implanted in their brains (through small holes in the scull) to help pinpoint the troublesome area. These depth electrodes often record many more simple partial seizures than the surface EEG's ever pick up.

As the wiki article points out, to be picked up by a surface EEG, neuronal activity has to involve "thousands or millions" of neurons firing synchronously.

So, a surface EEG is not a reliable indicator of "brain death", or lack of brain activity. The best that could be claimed for a flat surface EEG is that it is an indicator of low level cortical activity.

As for brain activity during hallucinations, google it and see what you come up with. The couple things I recall reading found the frontal lobes of hallucinating schizophrenics to be just about asleep (but that was specific to schizophrenia). Simple partial seizures (hypersynchronous neuronal firing) can cause all kinds of sensory hallucinations, but, as the paper I linked to points out, only about 20% of simple partial seizures are picked up by a surface EEG.

The OBE with autoscopy comes up fairly often as a simple partial seizure symptom. There are also a lot of examples of plain autoscopy (no floating sensation, just the experience of seeing yourself from the outside.) The NDE is more elaborate, but you should be aware that oxygen deprivation is a common cause of seizures, which ties in for obvious reasons. People with a disorder called syncope, for example, will faint, and some of them will proceed to have grand mal seizures from the oxygen deprivation that caused the faint.

The Wiki article you presented was from Neurology. 1988 Sep;38(9):1347-52.
Clinical and electroencephalographic features of simple partial seizures.
Devinsky O, Kelley K, Porter RJ, Theodore WH.
Source: Medical Neurology Branch, NINCDS, Bethesda, MD 20892.

This article I'm going to present isn't on Wikipedia as I write this. Look at the date:

The New York Academy of Sciences:

2011 Oct;1234:19-28. doi: 10.1111/j.1749-6632.2011.06080.x.
Near-death experiences: the experience of the self as real and not as an illusion.
van Lommel P.
Source: Department of Cardiology, Rijnstate Hospital, Arnhem, the Netherlands.

Abstract

Because the publication of several prospective studies on near-death experience (NDE) in survivors of cardiac arrest have shown strikingly similar results and conclusions, the phenomenon of the NDE can no longer be scientifically ignored. The NDE is an authentic experience that cannot be simply reduced to imagination, fear of death, hallucination, psychosis, the use of drugs, or oxygen deficiency. Patients appear to be permanently changed by an NDE during a cardiac arrest of only some minutes' duration. It is a scientific challenge to discuss new hypotheses that could explain the possibility of a clear and enhanced consciousness--with memories, self-identity, cognition, and emotions--during a period of apparent coma. The current materialistic view of the relationship between consciousness and the brain, as held by most physicians, philosophers, and psychologists, seems to be too restricted for a proper understanding of this phenomenon. There are good reasons to assume that our consciousness, with the continuous experience of self, does not always coincide with the functioning of our brain: enhanced or nonlocal consciousness, with unaltered self-identity, apparently can be experienced independently from the lifeless body. People are convinced that the self they experienced during their NDE is a reality and not an illusion.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21988246

I wish we would stop using Wikipedia! Bye the way, The New York Academy of Sciences is the creme de la creme as far as research goes.:)

 

[Evo]

The Wiki article you presented was from Neurology. 1988 Sep;38(9):1347-52.
Clinical and electroencephalographic features of simple partial seizures.
Devinsky O, Kelley K, Porter RJ, Theodore WH.
Source: Medical Neurology Branch, NINCDS, Bethesda, MD 20892.

This article I'm going to present isn't on Wikipedia as I write this. Look at the date:

The New York Academy of Sciences:

2011 Oct;1234:19-28. doi: 10.1111/j.1749-6632.2011.06080.x.
Near-death experiences: the experience of the self as real and not as an illusion.
van Lommel P.
Source: Department of Cardiology, Rijnstate Hospital, Arnhem, the Netherlands.



I wish we would stop using Wikipedia! Bye the way, The New York Academy of Sciences is the creme de la creme as far as research goes.:)

Zooby didn't post a wiki article, he was responding to the wiki article posted by tosh.

The article Zooby linked to was in Neurology

Neurology. 1988 Sep;38(9):1347-52.
Clinical and electroencephalographic features of simple partial seizures.
Devinsky O, Kelley K, Porter RJ, Theodore WH.
SourceMedical Neurology Branch, NINCDS, Bethesda, MD 20892.

 

[ViewsofMars]

Zooby didn't post a wiki article, he was responding to the wiki article posted by tosh.

The article Zooby linked to was in Neurology

Well, Zooby gave me the impression that it was from wiki. The main issue is that Zooby should know better than to give us an article from 1988.

 

[zoobyshoe]

Well, Zooby gave me the impression that it was from wiki.

I advised Tosh to check out the wiki article on EEG's. That was separate from the article I linked to.

The main issue is that Zooby should know better than to give us an article from 1988.

Why? The "abstract" you linked to makes a bunch of bald assertions. There's no indication it updates anything what I posted has to say about EEG's.

 

[ViewsofMars]

I advised Tosh to check out the wiki article on EEG's. That was separate from the article I linked to.

Why? The "abstract" you linked to makes a bunch of bald assertions.

Excuse me. but I don't think the New York Academy of Sciences supports 'a bunch of bald assertions'!

 

[zoobyshoe]

Excuse me. but I don't think the New York Academy of Sciences supports 'a bunch of bald assertions'!

Logical fallacy: Appeal to Authority

 

[ViewsofMars]

Logical fallacy: Appeal to Authority

Zooby, apparently I support the New York Academy of Sciences and you don't. That's all I need to know. Thank you.

 

[zoobyshoe]

Zooby, apparently I support the New York Academy of Sciences and you don't. That's all I need to know. Thank you.

I support Galileo Galilei, but only up to a point. He got many things right, but also a lot of things wrong.

Just because an authority asserts something does not make it true. Every assertion has to be considered on its own merits.

 

[Dotini]

http://www.downloadtheuniverse.com/dtu/2012/05/at-the-edge-of-life.html

FYI, a science ebook review of the Kindle book Dead or Alive, a new book about the NDE.

Respectfully submitted,
Steve

 

[bluey]

I had a near death experience 40 years ago a few weeks before my 18th birthday and I can remember most of the details like it happened yesterday it was so real.It was a run of the mill experience as far as NDEs go traveling thru the tunnel seeing my life flashing by on either side,it was terrifying to start with and I was scared out of my wits,eventually I came out into this light where everything was bright without any glare and I was surrounded by exquisite bushland or garden.I had never felt so good in my life up until then, my recently deceased grandfather turned up with two other blokes that I didn't know,I said I thought you were dead and he laughed then I asked where god was and he laughed again,then the three of them had a bit of a talk amongst themselves and said that I had to go back.I said no way am I going back to that,anyway they talked me into it by saying there is something that I had to do I asked a few times but they wouldn't tell me what it was I'm supposed to do?As soon as I thought Oh yeah that sounds interesting,Bang! I was back in my hospital bed.I thought that was strange because it seemed like hours and hours to get there but an instant to return.Oh yeah there was no talking it was like mental telepathy and you could feel what was being said? For years after I tried to come to terms with how real it was,then I read a magazine about others who had exactly the same NDE experience.That was a big shock to find out it was real.I think there should be some serious research conducted into this phenomena.

 

[Rear Naked]

Cool dream.

 

[Number Nine]

Zooby, apparently I support the New York Academy of Sciences and you don't. That's all I need to know. Thank you.

I'm sorry, but this is ridiculous. He made a very specific criticism of the paper that you cited; either respond to the criticism, or don't respond at all.

Bye the way, The New York Academy of Sciences is the creme de la creme as far as research goes.

This is so simplistic an assertion that I'm tempted to conclude that you have never had any exposure to research at all.

 

[bluey]

Logical fallacy: Appeal to Authority

Could you explain precisely what you mean by this statement? It looks like an oxymoron to me.

 

[Number Nine]

Could you explain precisely what you mean by this statement? It looks like an oxymoron to me.

An appeal to authority is a logical fallacy in which a statement is claimed to be true simply because someone in a position of authority has asserted it to be true.

 

[bluey]

An appeal to authority is a logical fallacy in which a statement is claimed to be true simply because someone in a position of authority has asserted it to be true.

According to Funk & Wagnalls Standard Dictionary A logical fallacy is; Any reasoning,exposition,argument,ect... contravening the canons of logic.So the statement itself is a logical fallacy and/or Oxymoron.Could you reply via PM because this has nothing to do with the subject at hand.

 

[zoobyshoe]

Could you explain precisely what you mean by this statement? It looks like an oxymoron to me.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_authority

Number Nine correctly assessed it: I cited it as a logical fallacy in this case.

 

[conradcook]

Cool dream.

Bottom [awakening]: God's my life, stolen
hence, and left me asleep! I have had a most rare
vision. I have had a dream, past the wit of man to
say what dream it was: man is but an a**, if he go
about to expound this dream. Methought I was -- there
is no man can tell what. Methought I was -- and
methought I had -- but man is but a patched fool, if
he will offer to say what methought I had. The eye
of man hath not heard, the ear of man hath not
seen, man's hand is not able to taste, his tongue
to conceive, nor his heart to report, what my dream
was. I will get Peter Quince to write a ballad of
this dream: it shall be called Bottom's Dream,
because it hath no bottom...

- Midsummer Night's Dream Act IV Scene 1

A lit prof once explained that Shakespeare was probably quoting from a [now disused] translation of the Bible, that said, "These belong to the deep things of God: they have no bottom..."Conrad.

PS - Bluey,

Maybe your grandpa just wanted to con you into returning to life...

!-)

C.

 

[bluey]

The skeptic in me wants to dismiss it as a lucid dream! The trouble is I was there and it happened,so I know myself that there is more to it. At face value it seems crazy that this (NDE) could happen and it would probably be near impossible for someone to get a grant for serious research into this phenomena. I can't blame anyone for thinking I'm a crank because that's what I would've thought before it happened to me.LOL

 

[zoobyshoe]

The skeptic in me wants to dismiss it as a lucid dream! The trouble is I was there and it happened,so I know myself that there is more to it. At face value it seems crazy that this (NDE) could happen and it would probably be near impossible for someone to get a grant for serious research into this phenomena. I can't blame anyone for thinking I'm a crank because that's what I would've thought before it happened to me.LOL

I had a bout of sleep paralysis with hallucinations that was unbelievably vivid. I would describe it as more real than reality the experience was so intense. It involved all my senses except taste and smell: vision, touch, balance, hearing. The hallucinations passed all tests of those senses, so to speak. They were so vivid I didn't even think to suppose they were hallucinations at the time. The only thing that tipped me off was the fact they evaporated in an instant and I could move again. Real things don't just evaporate. Regardless, in the absence of an explanation you tend to think you might have experienced the paranormal, and the thing disturbed me for a long time. It was actually years before I heard about sleep paralysis, that it was relatively common, and there was a good explanation for it.

Another case: many years ago I met a guy who told me what happened to him once when he went 4 days without sleep. He was driving down the street with his buddy when he noticed a ten foot tall rabbit sitting in a vacant lot. He had enough presence of mind left to know there was no such thing as a ten foot rabbit, and realized he was hallucinating from sleep deprivation. He pulled over and told his buddy to drive. I asked him how real the rabbit actually looked. He said it was completely real seeming and that he was sure if he went over and touched it he'd feel the fur as vividly as anything else in the vicinity.

How real an experience seems to your senses is not always a reliable indicator of how real it actually was.

 

[conradcook]

How real an experience seems to your senses is not always a reliable indicator of how real it actually was.

OTOH, your reason telling you something is NOT real is not always reliable, either!

Your friend saw a Pooka. I have a friend who started taking psych drugs and reported seeing a little green man tearing around on a motorcycle. She looked it up online and found that people do indeed see little green men sometimes.

Why green? I dunno. An archetype or something.

Big rabbits have been called pookas.


Conrad.

 

[Number Nine]

OTOH, your reason telling you something is NOT real is not always reliable, either!

Your friend saw a Pooka. I have a friend who started taking psych drugs and reported seeing a little green man tearing around on a motorcycle. She looked it up online and found that people do indeed see little green men sometimes.

Why green? I dunno. An archetype or something.

Big rabbits have been called pookas.

Conrad.

People in the West see little green men because little green men are a cultural icon in the West. It's the same reason that Western people see ghosts and not Djinn or Kitsune; which is the same reason that, when people in the West have profound religious experiences, those experiences will inevitably be of the Christian variety.

 

[zoobyshoe]

Big rabbits have been called pookas.

I know. I saw "Harvey" with James Stewart, too. Classifying giant rabbit hallucinations under the category "pooka" does not make giant rabbits real.

If you want to believe in things like that you'll never allow yourself to understand how the brain puts our experience of the environment around us together and how that mechanism can go wrong. We are completely dependent on our brains for every perception of everything you and I would agree is real: a rock, a tree, a car, a book. But the brain is an organ like any other organ in the body, and subject to pathologies and malfunctions. Sensory, emotional, and cognitive distortions happen. Under sensory deprivation, brain damage, drugs, disease, our brains can generate the experience of things that aren't actually present in the external environment: giant rabbits, lilliputian figures, disembodied voices, ghosts.

 

[bluey]

I don't think some of you have read my original post properly, haven't taken in what I have said,are talking from their own prejudice,or just trying to take the piss.What I mean is,thousands of other disparate people through out the world have had this experience,they are from different countries & cultures and lot of them have no way of knowing about other peoples NDEs, yet they are just about all the same?they tell the same story? I don't believe in magic the supernatural,religion,or the tooth fairy,but I do believe that someone with enough smarts and enough funding may be able to make some inroads into explaining this phenomena.

 

[Evo]

I don't think some of you have read my original post properly, haven't taken in what I have said,are talking from their own prejudice,or just trying to take the piss.What I mean is,thousands of other disparate people through out the world have had this experience,they are from different countries & cultures and lot of them have no way of knowing about other peoples NDEs, yet they are just about all the same?they tell the same story? I don't believe in magic the supernatural,religion,or the tooth fairy,but I do believe that someone with enough smarts and enough funding may be able to make some inroads into explaining this phenomena.

My understanding is that NDE's are vastly different from religion to religion and culture to culture. Not all cultures have them. Where are you getting such information that they are "just about the same everywhere" from?

 

[Dotini]

My understanding is that NDE's are vastly different from religion to religion and culture to culture. Not all cultures have them. Where are you getting such information that they are "just about the same everywhere" from?

I have not had an NDE, so I cannot confirm them. However, in the book Evidence of the Afterlife, by Jeffrey Long, MD (Harper, 2010), there is a chapter dealing with worldwide consistency. Based on "the largest cross-cultural study of NDEs ever performed", he makes the following conclusions:

- The core of the NDE experience is the same all over the world. Whether Hindu in India, Muslim in Egypt, or Christian in the US, the core elements of out of body experience, tunnel experience, feelings of peace, beings of light, life review, reluctance to return and transformation after the NDE are all present.

- Preexisting beliefs do not significantly influence the content of the NDE regardless of the culture of the country that the NDErs live in. Children 5 and under who have received less cultural influence than adults have the same NDE content as adults. NDEs occurring under general anesthesia, where cultural influence or past experiences shouldn't matter, are basically the same as all other NDEs.

Some 250 volunteer translators were involved in the study of more than 2000 questionnaires from non-English language speaking peoples.

The chapter is a lengthy one so I won't go on any further at this time.

I'm neither an advocate for or against NDEs. I'm sure Dr Long has his detractors, and I don't want to get involved in defending him since I don't know him. The information I present here is merely FWIW - I don't know. But I'm interested.

Respectfully submitted,
Steve

 

[thorium1010]

The core of the NDE experience is the same all over the world. Whether Hindu in India, Muslim in Egypt, or Christian in the US, the core elements of out of body experience, tunnel experience, feelings of peace, beings of light, life review, reluctance to return and transformation after the NDE are all present.

- Preexisting beliefs do not significantly influence the content of the NDE regardless of the culture of the country that the NDErs live in. Children 5 and under who have received less cultural influence than adults have the same NDE content as adults.

This is not entirely true. While the basic experience such as seeing a light or tunnel may be similar, culture and preexisting beliefs, plays a major role in these cases. People from different cultures experience their deity/god. Also People some of the cases describe meeting one of their relatives rather than a stranger.

 

[zoobyshoe]

To the extent any of the experiences are the same it simply means most human brains are the same. Visual Migraine auras are the same all over the world because all humans have pretty much the same visual cortex which gets disturbed in the same way during Cortical Spreading Depression. Hildegard of Bingan, though, thought her Migraine auras were visions of heaven. Tonic-Clonic seizures are pretty much the same all over the world, and so, if you insist, you can interpret that to mean people are seized by the same sorts of spirits all over the world, or you can interpret it to mean the human brain suffers the same kind of hypersynchronous neuronal firing all over the world. Heart attacks are the same all over the world, does this mean human hearts are all basically the same, or does it mean there are still medieval elves out there throwing elf-shot at people?