About Don Winner
Don Winner is a retired military intelligence analyst, NSA-trained Signals Intelligence (SIGINT) linguist, Special Operations veteran, investigative journalist, and author.
During a career that spanned intelligence, special operations, journalism, and criminal investigations, he earned a Master of Science in Strategic Intelligence from the Joint Military Intelligence College, the Defense Intelligence Agency’s graduate school, graduating second in his class. He later spent five years assigned to U.S. Special Operations Command South (SOCSOUTH), supporting intelligence and operational missions throughout Latin America.
After leaving government service, Winner founded Panama-Guide.com, which became the most widely read English-language news website in the Republic of Panama. His investigative reporting and independent investigations directly contributed to the identification, arrest, and eventual conviction of multiple serial killers and murder suspects.
Several of Winner’s investigations became international news stories and were featured on CBS 48 Hours (twice), Dateline, Nightline, Discovery ID, the BBC, and other major media outlets. CBS News correspondent Peter Van Sant described him as “one of the great investigators on planet earth.”
Throughout his career, Winner’s work has centered on a single discipline: collecting information, separating fact from fiction, identifying patterns, and following the evidence wherever it leads.
That same analytical framework eventually led him to the study of Near-Death Experiences (NDEs).
Conservative estimates suggest that approximately 5% of all people will experience a near-death experience during their lifetime. If correct, that means roughly 410 million people alive today will have an NDE at some point in their lives – a population larger than that of the United States. Spread across an average lifespan, that translates to approximately 15,000 new near-death experiences every day, somewhere on Earth.
What makes those experiences remarkable is not how often they occur, but how consistent they are. Regardless of culture, nationality, race, religion, or lack of religious belief, people repeatedly report the same core experience. The tunnel. The light. The life review. Encounters with deceased relatives. An overwhelming sense of peace, connection, and continued existence.
Winner’s book, You’re Going to Die Someday, Right? Near Death Experiences Reveal What Happens Next, examines this growing body of evidence using the same analytical methods he applied throughout his intelligence and investigative career. The conclusion is straightforward: near-death experiences are real, they reveal a consistent pattern of what people encounter when they come close to death, and they carry profound implications for our understanding of consciousness, the soul, and what happens next.
The broader implications are extraordinary. The same NDE data suggests that many commonly accepted assumptions about death, the afterlife, and religion are incomplete or simply wrong. It also suggests that humanity’s earliest concepts of God, soul, heaven, reincarnation, and the afterlife may have originated in the ancient NDE stories told by people who came close to death and returned.
Winner created Winner NDE to provide carefully researched information, analysis, and commentary on near-death experiences, consciousness, and what the evidence suggests happens after death.
Don Winner
Hudson Valley, New York