These NDE accounts were submitted to our website and are published here anonymously. Minor edits have been made to protect the identity of the experiencer and others who may have been involved with the experience. Note to researchers and authors: IANDS cannot grant permission to publish quotations from these NDE accounts because we have not received permission from the NDE authors to do so. However, we advise authors who wish to use quotations from these accounts to follow the Fair Use Doctrine. See our Copyright Policy for more information. We recommend adopting this practice for quotations from our web site before you have written your book or article.
With record breaking cold temperatures, my daughter was born into the world on a Saturday afternoon on the second day of January 1982. Seeing how this was my second childbirth, I had past experience to go by, and that gave me no clue of what was to come. My doctor had been out of town for the first birth, and I felt confident since he would be present for the second one. I had a very long labor for 3 days. This was due to what was described as an atrophic uterus.
June 22, 1994, was the beginning of a long journey and, eventually, it came to be held in my heart as the beginning of a new life. I arose early on that day and immediately headed downstairs to fetch my morning coffee and, fortunately, the walls weren't spinning around me like a whirlwind until I'd reached the bottom step. Two of my sons were still living at home. They were out of college for the summer, and still catching up on lost sleep. I remember wondering if they would hear me call to them, but they responded within seconds. A ruptured aneurysm in the brain had caused me to fall down on my living room floor at exactly the same time of morning, and in exactly the same place as their father had died from a massive heart attack five years earlier. A call to 911 had rushed me to the nearest hospital. My sons told the medical team of my life-long sinus headaches and that recently, although the severity was the same, they had been occurring on a more frequent basis.
It was 1969. I was 32 years old, married and the mother of five children, the youngest being 5 and the oldest 14. All the children had had the flu several weeks prior, and while I always caught everything from them, this time I thought I was going to be lucky. I seemed to be beyond the incubation period. I had worked very hard that day cleaning the house, and when I went to pick up my husband from work, I suddenly noticed an unusually extreme tiredness. He dropped me off at home and went to get a hair cut. I had planned to take the children swimming that evening at an indoor pool and was going to show them how to dive, however, with the way I suddenly felt, I decided I better lay down or I would never have the stamina for our swimming excursion.
Originally written 1986-87 Re-edited with addendum 6/1993 by Geraldine Berkheimer.
August 8, 1959, Paris.
I wonder if it was a sunny day? Could it have been a cloudy day? Certainly it wasn't a rainy day, the day I decided to take my roll of film to the Latin Quarter to have it developed. I'd never have ventured into the rain on a Vespa—I had more sense than that. It must have been a good day; Patrick and I would go on a picnic in the afternoon. But the afternoon never came. I can only deduce that I was going to the camera shop from the fact that a roll of film was found in my jacket pocket. At least that's what someone said sometime later.
I spent the first 40 years of my life as an "equal opportunity hater." I was filled with an underlying anger at everyone, including myself. My life had no real direction or purpose except for the gathering of possessions.
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