There are many accounts of people leaving their bodies and looking down at them from above during a near death experience.
Black feathers and crow are symbols of death in many traditions – particularly among the First Nations in the USA. The Algonquin people say all birds carry souls to the lands of the dead and that crows are the ‘Spirit Messengers’. They speak of crows as seeing the past, present and future all at once. Their sacred texts are ‘under the protection of crows’, bound in crow feathers.