Virginia Davies, a graduate student in history is embroiled in an unclassic adventure involving a hoard of gold, thieves and a ring of smugglers in a plot that almost costs Virginia and her friends their lives. Laguna Treasure begins in 1933 in a watery cave in the coastal mountains of Southern California. Sixty plus years later, an antique dealer friend of Virginia’s, Abbey McQueen, provides a clue that launches Virginia on a perilous adventure. Virginia finds her life is placed in jeopardy by a group of thieves interested in gaining her treasure at any cost. People she contacts keep turning up dead. She and Dr. Andy Clark, her boyfriend and Professor of Engineering, plunge headlong into a vicious, no-holds-bared, seemingly non-ending struggle to what could be a one way journey to survive.

Near-death experiences are known around the world and throughout human history. They are sometimes reported by individuals who have revived from a period of clinical death or near-death and they typically feature sensations of leaving the body, entering and emerging from darkness, meeting deceased friends and relatives, encountering beings of light, judgment of one's earthly life, feelings of oneness, and reaching barriers, only to return to the body. Those who have NDEs almost invariably understand them as having profound spiritual or religious significance. In this book, Gregory Shushan explores the relationship between NDEs, shamanism, and beliefs about the afterlife in traditional indigenous societies in Africa, North America, and Oceania. Drawing on historical accounts of the earliest encounters with explorers, missionaries, and ethnologists, this study addresses questions such as: Do ideas about the afterlife commonly originate in NDEs? What role does culture play in how people experience and interpret NDEs? How can we account for cross-cultural similarities and differences between afterlife beliefs? Though NDEs are universal, Shushan shows that how they are actually experienced and interpreted varies by region and culture. In North America, they were commonly valorized, and attempts were made to replicate them through shamanic rituals. In Africa, however, they were largely considered aberrational events with links to possession or sorcery. In Oceania, Micronesia corresponded more to the African model, while Australia had a greater focus on afterlife journey shamanism, and Polynesia and Melanesia showed an almost casual acceptance of the phenomenon as reflected in numerous myths, legends, and historical accounts. This study examines the continuum of similarities and differences between NDEs, shamanism, and afterlife beliefs in dozens of cultures throughout these regions. In the process, it makes a valuable contribution to our knowledge about the origins of afterlife beliefs around the world and the significance of related experiences in human history.