The afterlife is an enduring source of intrigue and fascination for us humans and none of us can really know for sure until we actually die.  But those who claim to have had near-death experiences (NDEs) paint an intriguing picture of what it's like.  

Most of us will be familiar with stories of people who have seen their lives flashing before them.  But how common is this?

This is one of the questions that a new study into the afterlife by researchers at the University of Liege in Belgium seeks to answer.

They analyzed 154 people who had NDEs and found that they share remarkably similar accounts of what happened, with some experiences being particularly frequent. 

By studying the written accounts of the participants, the researchers narrowed their NDEs down to three key experiences, the Daily Mail reports. 

By far the most common experience of NDEs was a feeling of peacefulness (80 per cent).  That was followed by over two-thirds of people who said they saw a bright light (69 per cent) and encountered other spirits or people (64 per cent). 

A third of participants said they first had an out-of-body experience before experiencing any of the other elements, while 36 per cent reported returning to their body before coming out of the NDE. 

The least common occurances were speeding thoughts (five per cent) and precognitive visions (four per cent)

While the elements of the experience are similar, the study found that the order in which they occurred varied from person to person. 

Lead author of the study, Charlotte Martial, said: 'While near-death-experiences may have a universal character so that they may exhibit enough common features to belong to the same phenomenon, we nevertheless observed a temporal variability within the distribution of reported features.

'This raises significant questions about what specific aspects of near-death-experiences could be considered as universal - and what not.

'Further research is necessary to explore these differences and the precise extent of which content of those experiences reflects their expectations and cultural backgrounds, as well as the neurophysiological mechanisms underlying near-death-experiences.'