Last month, the new YouTube channel, Coming Home, dedicated to presenting the experiences of people who’ve had near death experiences (NDE) was launched. The channel is a dream of California-based based brothers Jesse and Eliot Estrin.

Jesse Estrin has been reading about people who’ve had these experiences and their lifelong effects. About three years ago, he read about East Boothbay resident Peter Panagore’s NDE in the book “Heaven Is Beautiful,” written by Panagore in 2015.

“I loved the book,” Estrin said. “When we were getting ready to launch our YouTube channel, we watched videos of people on YouTube to look for candidates. We saw Peter in one and some others, but Peter was at the top of our list.”

The filming happened early last summer. Estrin and project cinematographer/editor Jonathan Hugstead flew to Maine to spend a day with Panagore at his home, and filming at the studio. Eliot Estrin was in California on camera through Panagore’s laptop.

“We all sat down with him and asked him to tell us about it,” Jesse said. “We’d follow up with questions like ’You said it felt like this,’ can you tell us more about that or how do you integrate what happened to you with your day-to-day life?’ Things like that.”

The twins said they are very aware of all the content on YouTube focusing on NDEs, but their intention is to tell each story in a new way – even those that have been seen before.

“We hope to tell the stories in a fresh new way that’s beautiful, high production, and high quality, and do justice to the people and their experience,” Jesse said. “Our goal is to really capture the essence of who every person is and convey it.”

The brothers  are both marriage and family therapists, graduates of Pacifica Grad Institution, which  offers “depth” psychology, the science of the unconscious, covering both psychoanalysis and psychology.

“We think the near death experience really captures that intersection between the trans-personal and spiritual with the psychology,” explained Jesse.

If you haven’t read the book, or heard about Panagore’s experience, here’s a brief synopsis: At 21 and a college senior, Panagore and an experienced ice climber go on trip to do some snow cave camping and then end it with a day climb up the Lower Weeping Wall – famous for 1,000 foot cliffs – in Banff National Park, Alberta, Canada. But that day climb turns into night; and the men fight for their lives as the temperatures drop, frostbite becomes severe and, finally, the two believe they will die on that mountain. One of them does, and “Heaven Is Beautiful,” tagline “How Dying Taught Me That Death Is Just the Beginning,” followed.

The Estrin brothers titled the 30-minute NDE film “Coming Home: Ice climber freezes to death and is shown the purpose of life.”

This film is enhanced with gorgeous clips of snow-covered mountains, stunning visuals of the icy Lower Weeping Wall, interspersed with clips of people walking atop snow-covered mountains, images of space, and meditation. Some photographs were provided by Panagore – family photos, and the Lower Weeping Wall climbing routes and of the place he died.

Panagore called the film a “magical piece.”

After researching the Estrins, Panagore decided to give them something he hadn’t done before. “I laid heavily into my native tongue of poetry. I decided to go into this ‘state of being’ and tell the tale as I’d never told it before,” he said. “Doing this show with these guys changed my relationship with my own self; in a way it allowed me to become present to the Divine that was there. I don’t know how else to say it ...”

The Coming Home channel’s tagline is “Everybody dies. But some die and come back to share their stories from the other side.”

“Peter is a very poetic and incredibly articulate, charismatic storyteller,” Jesse said. “His story was the perfect one to start off with.”

For more information about the film and Panagore, visit www.peterpanagore.love