I Accidentally overdosed on pain meds I was given because I had broken my left ankle, leg bone had to have surgery (plate and screws were put in). I also had nerve damage (Reflex Sympathetic Dystrophy 3rd stage) I was in excruciating pain (accident happened June 4th, 2001).

On July 12th 2002 at 1am my husband found me in bed, blue, making a gurgling sound, not breathing just exhaling. He called 911 and started full CPR. I had to be shocked twice in my bedroom, bagged. I flatlined in the ambulance in my driveway, Paramedics had to start chest massages again off and on for about 35 minutes.

At the hospital I was put on a respirator and transferred to a trauma I.C.U. The E.R. Doc. told my husband she didn’t know if I would live or not or if I did, what the extent of brain damage I would have. That it would be at least 48hrs. before they would know. The CAT scan results were good. I woke up 15 hrs later (to the amazement of the ICU Doctor) confused but, in good health. I was taken off the respirator a few hours later. The ICU Doctor told me and my family that I definitely had some help from God. That he had never seen anyone in the shape I was in come out of it as early as I did and totally unscathed. I was given a paralyzing drug to stop my thrashing before I was transferred by ambulance to the Trauma Center of a different hospital.

Okay, this is hard for me (I am crying), this is what I dreamed? While I was unconscious. In the beginning I was walking somewhere and it was dark, it looks like a different Town or City. Someone is with me but I cannot see who. I now feel I cannot breath nor move, I am terrified, then I calm down and I am thinking where am I. At first I tell myself I must be dreaming. I think I am in a movie theater. It is so dark I can see nothing. Sounds crazy I know, but then I realize or I am thinking I have died. I am now in a house or building or something, there are other people but they do not notice me or speak to me. I am thinking that this is some sort of waiting room or purgatory. The noise I hear I cannot describe it is so loud, deafening! I am suddenly outside the place looking at some water, a lake I think, there are what looks like little demons of some sort, but they don’t scare me I ignore them. Then I am then in a different room with others and again I feel like I am waiting to go to heaven and the noise is still so loud. I am confused. I don’t feel I belong here and I am wanting God. I suddenly began to move (sort of like floating) towards a tunnel, the others I sense are mad because I am going ahead of them. I am sucked up into a tunnel that feels like and I get the sudden knowledge that I am in a birth canal heading toward a light, it is very quick and when I get to the light I see a woman in an ambulance. I am thinking that I am to be reincarnated as her child. I have never believed in reincarnation. She is African American and I am white. (I know that I am white and I am thinking how can this be how can I become her child now). The race difference doesn't matter to me. I am thinking she is a nice person I would like to be her child. But then I have a baby in my arms I know that it is her child and at first I am thinking that I am bringing her, her baby. I know that I am taking her baby to Heaven. I go through the light with her child and I come back through the light and now I am walking down the tunnel again I have a little girl of about five years of age holding my right hand and walking with me. I pass two women and it is the first time someone notices me, they smile. I pass a man who looks at me and says angrily why does she get to go! I ignore him I don’t know who he is referring to, the little girl or me and I don’t care. I go through the birth canal feeling again (it is painful both times) towards a bright light. I go through with the little girl when I come back through she isn't with me. I am scared because I don't know where she is, then I realize she is with Jesus. I feel good that she is with Jesus, but I feel sorrow for her mother. Then I walked back passed the three people and I myself. I am walking towards a light there is a woman with long dark hair in the light I am thinking that she is my grandmother only she isn't old anymore. She looks at me and tells me "It’s not your time, it just isn't your time". She is smiling. Then I am seeing a woman (she is beautiful with long brown hair) at the end of my hospital bed, and I can see myself lying in the bed, I am confused, I look at her and I am speaking to her and I don't know how because I can see myself in the hospital bed with tubes down my throat, hooked to machines. I am trying to convey to her the dream I had but she already knows and asks me while smiling "did you see the light". I answer “yes”. I look at myself in the hospital bed, then look back towards her and she is gone. Then I wake up.

I can't move yet because of the paralyzing drug. I hear my husbands voice but I can't raise my eyelids to see him. When I can move he realizes I am awake and tells me I am in the ICU at the hospital and that I overdosed on the medication, I don’t know how but I already knew what had happened to me. My leg that had been extremely swollen and red and purple and glassy for the passed 13 months including the day of July 12th from the nerve damage was now perfectly normal! No pain, just normal! My Doctor had no explanation other than by the grace of God.

I can't stop thinking about it. When I told my husband about the "dream" he asked me if I could think of him or our kids. I didn't. I could only think that I didn't belong there. Was it a near death experience or was I dreaming? I am very confused. I wish someone could help me understand one way or another. I have also suffered from Cluster headaches for the passed 22yrs once a year for 6 to 12wks. I was expecting them in November this year. I didn't get them. I don't know if I will get them but I am thinking that they are gone forever now. Any info. would be greatly appreciated. Thanks for listening. P.S., Please, I don't want anyone to think that I was or am a drug addict, I am not. It was a terrible accident and I am thankful to God for my second chance.

I saw myself on a couch.

I had lost alot of blood because of internal hemorrhaging.

I saw a bright light, and I had never had such a feeling of complete peace. I did not know who I could tell this event to. It was such an incredible experience.

I sometimes feel that I should tell people so that they would know how wonderful it was.

Dec. 27, 1977 I was a self employed Stained Glass contractor. I'd had a call to bid on some new stained glass windows for a Church. I left home approx. 7 AM. I was headed around a curve and saw a log truck in the opposite lane. All of a sudden a car passed the log truck coming into my lane. I hit the brakes.

Next thing I'm floating and watching two ambulance attendants pulling me out of my pickup. I remember hearing "Well, we don't have to worry about this one." It started getting darker and I started moving faster and faster and still darker, like being in a tunnel. In the distance I saw a light, brighter and brighter. I was completely at peace and wanted to go to the light. Then I'm standing in front of a man. The most perfect man ever seen. The light surrounding everything. He was the light. Then he said, "You can't stay, there is something you must do".

Next, I woke up in the emergency room in the Hospital. I didn't know who I was. Now I laugh about it, but I pulled out my wallet, looked at my driver’s lic. and said “Hey I know what my name is. I've been in a head on collision.” After a conversation with the nurse and realizing what had happened, I had the nurse call my wife so I had a ride home. My face was cut pretty good and they took me by ambulance to see a specialist. Again I called my wife and told her where I was. I was angry because she wasn't there to give me a ride home. The doctor sewed up my face and wanted to put me in a room for the night. I told him my wife was on the way and I was going home.

We stopped on the way home to pick up my briefcase and my hearing aid from my pickup. I was shocked at the amount of blood in the pickup. Back home at 7 p.m. and back to work the next day. Afternoon of the 28th I went to the Medical Center for a complete checkup. Spent several days being sore and had the sutures out.

I have told my story many times and still wonder what it is that I must do.

I suffer from sleep apnea. Momentarily, I'll stop breathing for a few seconds then gasp for breath (my wife of 18 years has related this to me many times). This time I must have forgotten to breathe.

I also have very vivid dreams in color about flying (like a bird) and, ordinary life experiences, not of this life but, another in the past or the future. I can't be sure.

I dreamed I was driving a car, and crashed. I could feel myself slipping away. My sight faded to black. Then I saw my body lying on my bed as if I where floating above the bed. I became aware I was surrounded by the blue sky and a feeling of complete relaxation, without any fears. There was a rope I was following that looked to be made out of long strands of hair, twisted together. I think I was moving up as I could see the rope stretching into the distance above me to a brighter light and, below me to darkness. After awhile, I could see what seemed to be the edge of a city in the distance and I could here voices calling to me! I came up to a figure who was standing beside my rope path; he had long dark hair, curly at the ends, a full beard on his face. He was dressed in a purple robe, or coat with trousers or pants, flared out at the ends of the sleeves and pant legs. His clothes looked to be edged in ornate gold embroidery and he was surrounded by a large halo of soft light. He was holding a large and very old looking book and was smiling at me. He opened the book about half way though, moved his fingers down the page like he was looking for a name. Then he spoke to me, saying that I was there much too soon and that I should go back, but he would see me in awhile. He didn't say my name though, as if he knew exactly who I was, and we'd been friends a long time. So, I followed the rope back to the darkness; then I could see the earth below me (the same way it would look to someone in space I think, with the clouds, oceans and landmasses. I followed the rope right into my bedroom, and re-entered my body (weird feeling)! That’s when I woke up and jumped out of bed, shaking, and covered with a cold sweat.

Do I believe in an afterlife? Completely. I now think that we occupy our bodies here on this plane of existence and will be all going to a far better place when we leave this life. I don't believe in the idea that there's a 'HELL'-- I think this is something the churches dreamed up a long time ago in order to keep people in line and to always have a captive audience that would and does support them. That may seem like blasphemy to many religious people but I don't really care, not anymore.

I know where I was, and where I'll be going in awhile and I'm no longer afraid of death. Death is merely a step to a higher plane of existence for the spirit. And, when my time does come to pass I will welcome it, because that's when I'll be able to enter "That Great City in the Sky".

Thank-You for having a place to tell this.

I had bronchitis, what my parents thought was a very bad cold. I remember being on the couch in the living room. Later on that evening my parents put me to bed, but I don't remember getting there.

During the night, my mother came to check on me. I remember her shaking me. I was barely breathing.

Then I remember being in the car for a moment and then I was in the hospital.

I was out of my body in the corner of the room looking down at the doctors and myself. They were all running around me franticly. I remember shouting and people moving fast. But there I was above it all and it was peaceful and interesting more than scary. I was wondering what was going on.

While floating there, there was a something behind me, not so much a person but maybe a void or a strange warmth. It’s the kind of warmth that you get from a heat lamp, if you’re right in it its warm but, if you’re just outside, it is cold again.

Then there was a feeling or a voice, like when you're visiting and your mom calls out, “OK, time to go home”. And then, that was it. When I woke up I was in an oxygen tent.

Years later my mom told me that I was just squeaking air into my body and that the doctors said that if they had gotten me there 5 mins. later there would have been nothing that they could have done.

I always felt different as a child and even now. Although as a child you don't know why. At this point in my life I have more of an understanding.

I've always had a deep connection to animals. As a child I had a recurring dream that I was told by God that this was my job. That I was to take care of any hurt animal that came my way and he would always take care of me.

I was diagnosed with severe allergies after my first asthma attack, and animals were on the top of the list. We had 2 cats and a bird at the time and we had to get rid of them. I couldn't even go to a house that had a dog or cat without taking medication before hand. But as I promised, if I found a hurt animal, it came home with me. If it had fur or feathers it couldn't come in the house but we always made a warm home for it in the garage. My poor mom even helped me set up a tank for a bunch of baby snakes I found. The mother had just been run over by a car. The babies were squished out, still in their birth sacks, I got them out and put them in my pocket to bring home.

My love for animals continued, I took every medication known and even did years of painful allergy shots. I would get welts 4 in. across from the shots. I got thru college with a major of Animal Science, it wasn't easy. When I got out I took a job with a vet and then with a pet shop. I was having 2 of 3 asthma attacks a night, my doctor advised get a new job or get a coffin. I was on my way to a doozie of an attack. I got a new (non Animal) job.

My allergies have gotten better thru the years, and so has medication. Cats can still kill me though. cut my air right off. But I do have dogs at the moment. But...anything that has come my way and needed help has gotten it. It’s a vow I feel compelled to keep.

In August 1964 my daughter had just been born.

I hemorrhaged and lost three pints of blood, which the midwife had just been weighing and had left the room.

As I was lying there I started to leave my body. I floated above the bed gradually seeing my body growing smaller and smaller. I kept on looking at it as though I was viewing the inside of a doll's house with the roof off.

There was darkness all around me, no white lights and tunnels, just blackness. When my body on the bed was a tiny speck it was as though I realized what was happening and I told myself that it was not my time to go, and just as I thought this, I whooshed straight down into my body.

I was never given a blood transfusion and it took nearly two weeks before I was strong enough to walk.

Two years later I had a son in hospital and was given a drug to stop me from hemorrhaging again, and 17 months after that I had another son, again in the hospital.

My daughter has since had two daughters of her own, but five years ago
Contracted meningitis, was in a semi-coma for a month, and experienced the same NDE, but hers was slightly different to mine.

I didn't know I'd had a NDE till a long time later but always knew something had stopped me from dying.

Brought Back From the Brink of Death. Saved By the Holy Spirit.


My new house was built in Oswego Illinois on January 1995. I bought new
Furniture and decorated the outside with new shrubs and trees. On May 25th 1995 I was going to the hardware store when I tried to avoid another car merging into my lane. I swerved out of control, ended up going in the opposite direction. I hit an oncoming ambulance and a large tree.

Another ambulance was summoned; it took them many hours to stabilize me before transporting me to the hospital. I was unconscious at the scene and remained comatose for over 2.5 weeks. Injuries included acute respiratory failure requiring respiratory ventilator for 10 days, collapsed lung, multiple rib fractures and Traumatic brain injury. I was initially very impaired unable to walk, talk, swallow and the use of my right hand.

On June 12, 1995 I almost slipped the surely bonds on earth to touch
The face of God, but my spirit was caught by Jesus Christ who brought me back to earth. He gave me the power and strength to rebuild my body and spirit.

I first went to the rehabilitation hospital, I was there for seven months, and this was the first stage of my recovery. After the rehabilitation center, I started walking around the subdivision for about 2 years.

In 1998 I went religiously to the athletic club and started to rebuild my body and mind.

In the year 2000 I started doing water aerobics, yoga, kung fu in the sauna. By doing all this stretching my recovery has been accelerated to full recovery!

On November 9, 2002, I was whitewater kayaking on the Medina River in the Texas hill country with four other paddlers. As we approached what appeared to be a low-water dam, I went ahead to scout it. Then I saw a Ford Expedition drive across it, so I knew it was a low-water-crossing road. There was water on top of the road, so I tried to scoot my kayak across it, with me in it, but the water wasn't deep enough. I slid off the road, and turned sideways, with the road on my left. The boat capsized to my right, and I was upside down, held in the boat by my spray skirt. Since I had not yet learned to roll up, I pulled the spray skirt, intending to swim back up to the surface, but a strong current grabbed me.

I was pulled underwater and into a pipe (about four feet in diameter), which ran under the road. There was no air in the pipe. The water was running very fast, and it was very turbulent. I was trying to figure out what was happening, and I'd figured out I was in something, and opened my eyes just a bit and saw daylight, then I was spit out the other end.

My main concern as I stood up in waist-high water was my contact lenses, which were still in my eyes, but re-arranged. After blinking a few times, and having the lenses go back to where they should be, I realized what had happened, and then I got scared. The other four kayakers saw the incident and thought I was gone and would die. We found my boat and paddle downstream, but I don't know if they went through the pipe before or after me, or if they went over the road.
I never lost consciousness, and I didn't have time to be terrified while it was happening to me--I was still trying to figure out what was happening when the pipe spit me out.

When I went home, I had a strong sense of being glad to see my home, husband, dogs, and cats again. In the days to come, I developed whiplash in my neck, which my chiropractor fixed. I can only guess that it came from being knocked around in the pipe, but I don't remember. I was wearing a Kevlar-reinforced whitewater helmet and a PFD (life preserver vest.)

I'm not sure if this counts as a bona-fide NDE--please let me know! Everyone I tell about it, especially experienced whitewater kayakers, gets very wide eyes when they hear about it, and mentions that half the time those pipes are clogged with debris (which would have trapped and drowned me), and tells me I'm very lucky to be alive. I feel very lucky, and I thank God.

My sixth year of camp, my group was separated from the rest of the buses and put into a bus that would fit 15 people because there was no more room on the others.

It was the older group so of course we were jokers with the counselors that were with us for those two weeks.
My counselor said the next time we rode in the van I would be able to sit in the passenger seat because I hated the music that they would play, but he said: "No, sorry not this time sweetie". It wasn't that big of a deal anyway. So I sat on the first bench in the middle seat. We waved our goodbyes to the others at the camp and I was sad as usual.

We were on our way about 15 minutes behind the other busers so the counselor that was driving was speeding. I had known this guy for several years as he was there most of the years I was and he was a pretty crazy driver/person.

I was not wearing my seat belt at that time, never at camp and never driving with him. I suddenly felt like something terrible was about to happen and I put on my seat belt.

Let us call the driver Collin.
Well Collin thought he would put the van on cruise control at 140mph and then take a dare by putting both his feet on the dashboard. I screamed at him to stop and so did the counselor in the passenger seat. As he was taking his left leg down from the dashboard it appeared to be stuck, then suddenly a squirrel ran by us. Collin decided to swerve the van and so we hit the ditch straight on , bounced on impact 5 times and rolled another 100 yards.

It was amazing. I remember swerving off the rode and just taking a deep breath, thinking that this was it and squeezed my eyes shut. My entire life flew before me. I saw myself as a child, things I had never known
previously to me. As this was happening I saw someone smiling at me the whole time. I saw a golden light that made me blind but kept on seeing even though it was blinding even to the sun if it had eyes.

I then awoke hanging upside down in a state that was sort of a fuzzy haze.. I saw bodies everywhere, which I thought were dead. One person next to me had his foot caught in the seat which broke it and the other was bleeding from the head.

The guy who saved my life was lying there moaning from the pain. I later found out that he had broken an arm, a broken leg , stitches from head to toe, three broken vertebrae’s, broken ribs, you name it...But he lived, we all did.

My mother later told me that a police officer had said we were all suppose to be dead. The roof of the van was completely caved in and upside down mangled and crushed in all places. It's miraculous.

All I can say is that if I hadn't of worn my seat belt I would have gone through the window and died, or if my counselor had decided to let me sit in the front seat I would have died. But, something saved me from that...something that wouldn't let anything happen to me because something would have without me knowing it.

I was experiencing the third day of chest pain. It felt like something was trying to come out from my collarbone on the left side of my neck.

I do not remember out of body occurring before I was at the hospital though my memory during the hours before being taken to emergency were sketchy. The first out of body experience occurred while I was sitting in a wheelchair waiting to be admitted. I remember looking down and seeing myself hunched over in the wheel chair. The I was back in myself and remember looking up from the gurney, from my own eyes...but there seemed like allot of "interference" like when the TV is scratchy, the noise. The attending physician gave me something and everything became black. I was looking down on myself again. There is a chunk of time I don't recall. During that time I was taken from the emergency room to ICU. During that time I had my Experience.

I remember seeing these sparkles like jewels before my eyes. I remember trying to focus on the sparkles and as I did, this wall came into focus. The wall was alive with blues, purples, reds and oranges sparkling on it. I became aware of this golden sandy floor. My perception was of seeing from a height taller than my physical being. So in some part of my thought I knew I was floating. I looked around at the place I was and saw that I was in what appeared to be a huge cave or cavern. To my left and slightly behind me was this field of golden, sandy, boulders and beyond the boulders was this cliff wall that went so far up that the top was lost in the gloom above. I saw what appeared to be my physical self lying naked on the cavern floor leaning up against a boulder. And yet, I knew "me" too and, I was levitating above the ground.

I became aware of the light at the same time that I saw this coweled being appear. His cowl was of this strange sort of bluish gray color. I say "His" because the voice he would speak to me in was masculine and had the sense of being ancient. ... I do not remember if I approached the being or if He approached me but, I remember trying to levitate up to look in the opening of His coweled hood and this voice in my head telling me it wasn't important, and then dropping down and yet still trying to look up the sleeves for His hands. I do not remember clearly all the words that were given me. I know I was given a choice to remain or to return to my body. There was a task that needed doing that I was especially well suited to but that, if I chose to remain another could do that thing. (I don't remember or if I ever knew what the thing or things were). I saw past Him and there was a tunnel leading toward the dark and I remember the fear of that way.

And I remember the light far down the cavern whose shine was the source for all the light in the cavern and I remember a sense of yearning for that way. But, I chose to return.

I remember a whirlpool of sludge type composition, like the mud-laden water of a flood and there were large objects in that whirlpool.

The next thing I remember was hearing the nurses say that I would not be coming to for some time yet because of the morphine they had given me. The doctor walked over to check on me and leaning over me...I reached out and grabbed hold of His necktie... In that place where I had there was no pain and the temperature was just right. I had a sense of well being. I knew who I was though it was not important. I remember the sense of innocence and child like curiosity that I felt. I was definitely not afraid. Even when looking down the dark tunnel.

I was finally able to begin articulating about this place after I found a rock, calco-pyrite, while walking through a toy store with my children. The colors and the way it refracted light reminded me of my experience. I bought the rock and went home and drew a picture of the place I had been. I also looked up about the rock and found that it develops from iron pyrite being exposed to great heat and is often associated with sandstone.

I want to go back to where I was and look forward to the day that the tasks that I returned to this life to conclude are finished.

I had been sick with the flu for days and I wasn't taking very good care of myself. (I have a history of S.V.T's (super ventricular tacnycardia sp?).

On the forth day I felt better and I ate a piece of pizza with my family and friends. It didn't 'sit' well and I was soon in the bathroom. I was very hot and I took off my sweater. (I call my experience my Elvis Presley impersonation.) I was sitting on the toilet feeling very faint, I never feel faint, and I have never fainted. I yelled for my spouse, Dave. He didn't hear me so I yelled louder. I heard my friend Sheila tell Dave that I sounded weird and he better go see if I was alright. Dave came up and stood in the doorway looking at me. I told him that my heart felt funny. That is the last thing I remember of a 'physical sensation'. I guess after I said this I went stiff and started convulsing. I fell off the toilet and got wedged in between it and the standing shower. Dave said that my eyes were in the back of my head and my lips were blue. He yelled for Sheila to come help. Sheila worked as a nursing assistant. They got me 'un-stuck' and they got my pants up. They had me in a sitting position on the floor. Sheila said that she could not find a pulse.

What I remember:
It was completely black. I had no sense of a body. I was very confused. I explain it as the feeling you get if you’re very little and you lose your mom in a crowd. It was total fear and aloneness. For a second I thought I might be in hell, it was so empty. Then a PEACE came over me. I felt like I was totally loved, totally happy. I had no fears or worries or pains. It was wonderful. I started hearing music. Beautiful music and, I started seeing a mirage of colors. Suddenly I heard a faint voice. It felt like apparently I had been "moving" because I started to feel like I was coming down, like a helium balloon being pulled. I heard Dave and then Sheila, they were saying: “COME BACK” “COME BACK”!!!!" I was hearing this very quietly at first and than as I 'sank', it got louder and louder. I then felt my body and knew that Dave was screaming in one ear and Shelia in the other. They were inches from my head. I felt groggy and light and I said, "I want to go back” and Sheila said, "You aren't going any where but the hospital." They said I was very dehydrated and they gave me an I.V of fluids, they told me to rest. I didn't care. I didn't care about anything the rest of the day.

I was almost giddy for months, because I KNEW that there was something better after this. I have no doubts about death. I don't have any fears about what happens when this body is done here. I have a sense of Underlining peace in my life now. I'm thankful.

My near death experience happened after cardiac surgery.

At the time of surgery I was already critically ill in fact, I was dying from congestive heart failure caused by congenital cardiac problems associated with Holt–Oram syndrome. I had not experienced any major problems with my heart up until about roughly a year before my surgery.

I have been told since that the doctors involved in my case were not overly confident that I would make it through surgery because even as I was being anaesthetized, I was turning blue and my breathing was erratic. However the surgery itself went well and I was moved to the cardiac intensive care unit and all seemed well until I was extubated and allowed to breath on my own.

I began having breathing difficulties soon after and had to be re- incubated. To cut a very long story short, this happened three times in total over a six week period and I needed to have a tube with a balloon on the end inserted into my groin which went up to my heart and pulsated with every heart beat. During this time I did have brief moments of consciousness as the doctors took me off life support periodically to see if I was able to breath on my own but I think for the most part I was unconscious.

Firstly, I would like to share with you a rather odd experience I had during one of the times when was I conscious. I had only been breathing on my own for a short time and started to have difficulties, I was gasping for breath and getting quite anxious. As you can imagine it is very frightening when you can’t breath properly. I think I actually blacked out for a moment and when I came to there was a nurse with short black hair and features that could have been male or female, wearing a white uniform standing by my bed holding my hand and telling me to breath. The nurse kept saying “ Breath, breath with me, that’s right, big breath in and then out” This went on for a while and I think I dozed off and when I woke the nurse was gone but, came back a little while later and held my hand and told me to keep breathing. I went to sleep again and when I woke this time there were doctors all around me and I was put back onto life support. I never saw the nurse again but I remembered her/him when I woke up properly and wanted to thank her/him personally for being there and getting me through that rough patch. I described him/her to the nursing staff, my husband and family but everyone said the same. There was no one working there that fitted the description besides, all staff including most of the doctors wear blue theatre gowns with blue pants. Not one of them wears white top and pants. After much thought I realized that I had never actually heard the nurse’s voice, he/she didn’t speak out loud. I only heard the voice in my head. The hospital I was in was quite old and used to be an old quarantine station and it has been suggested that the person who looked after me was a ghost. Who knows? I do know I was awake and I vividly remember the nurse being there and what he/she looked like.

I also remember having what I can only describe as extremely vivid dreams. For instance, I can remember being in an ambulance in the hospital car park and hearing the heart monitor I was attached to beeping. I distinctly remember becoming irate with a nurse and hitting, scratching and yelling at her. There was also the time when I was planning to escape from the hospital but was aware of having tubes in my neck and elsewhere which would make it difficult to get out. I was also moved to other hospitals, including a psychiatric hospital and left on a trolley outside a hospital dinning area. None of this stuff actually happened. It was all just in my mind. Fortunately apart from somehow managing to pull out the urinary catheter with my foot, I didn’t do any damage to myself or anyone else.

During all this I was critically ill, doctors had told my family I had about a 25% chance of surviving and if I did make it through there was a high chance I would have sustained major brain damage.

At some stage, although I know I wasn’t conscious, I too had the thought that I was going to die. I remember hearing myself say, “ I’m going to die.” I wasn’t at all upset by this thought. Then there was a brief moment of darkness and next thing, I could see myself lying in what I think was a room. This room was full of light and even though it was a bright light it wasn’t like glaring sunlight more of a pleasant golden- white light. I felt very loved at that moment, very much at peace and even though I couldn’t see anyone else, I knew I wasn’t alone. After a little while I heard a gentle male voice tell me “ You are going to be alright, you are not going to die.” I should clarify that when I say I heard a voice, I didn’t actually ‘hear’ it with my ears, it was in my mind, more like a thought. That is all I can remember of the experience, except that it wasn’t at all upsetting or frightening in any way.


Straight after this experience I started to regain consciousness and was able to breath on my own. Sometime during the time I was ‘ waking up’ I had another experience I’d like to share with you. A couple of years before I became ill our 2 ½ year old son, Daniel had died from complications due to the same surgery which I have had. When I was still coming in and out of consciousness, I had the strong feeling he was with me, on one occasion my husband was with me and he said, I suddenly opened my eyes and was looking at something and reached out. I had reached out for Daniel, I couldn’t see him but I knew he was there, sitting on the bed with me, near my box of tissues. I continued to have the feelings after I was fully awake and even now it still happens occasionally.

My recovery was quite quick, within a couple of days I was out of bed and standing with support. I had this indescribable urge to go outside, it was strange really but I just needed to be out in the open air. It was an unbelievable feeling when I was finally well enough to sit on the verandah outside the ward. In fact I spent most of my waking hours outside, just sitting, watching the birds, the rain and people go by. I have never been a morning person but during those first few weeks of ‘ being back’ I would sit outside and watch the sun coming up and if it rained I couldn’t wait to get outside, just to watch it fall and feel it on my hands. I also took more interest in the sky and clouds and the beauty of a thunderstorm it was like I was really seeing and experiencing all these things for the first time. I must say, before this experience I was terrified of thunder and particularly lightening. I would hide wherever I could during a storm but now it doesn’t bother me half as much. I am much more in tune with nature and my surroundings now and take much more notice of even the smallest things.

I did go through a period of depression when I went home and for several years after on and off. Even now I have the odd bout of feeling down, usually during these times I have the feeling that something is missing in my life and that I am not fulfilling my purpose here on earth. I don’t really understand why I feel this way because I’m the happiest I have ever been in my whole life. My life has changed, my outlook has changed and I feel different about everything in general. I am no longer judgmental or cynical, there is no room in my life for the word hate, I’m a much warmer loving, kind, understanding and caring individual. I take one day at a time and I love my life!

The strange thing in my opinion, is that I do not remember anything about leaving my body and any tunnel effect. I only remember I was there in a complete internal light environment. I did not see any related person. I "communicated" with "something" that I did not really see but, it was there and told me that I had to return. I remember that I wanted to stay (I did not feel any connection with my family and found it completely irrelevant as an argument to return) It was not my time and I had still to do something on earth. Without telling me what and so, I still ask myself what I have to do. But, it will be clear when the time is there as I was told me.

Before sending me back I was allowed to ask something and I remember very well. I asked how the universe was composed and it was explained to me in all details. I remember that it was extremely beautiful and extremely simple and said to myself this information I must remember when I am sent back.

Being sent back, I remember very well that it was a very painful
experience to be put in a tunnel that becomes more and more narrow and also when dimensions more and more became restricted, I lost control over the information I got earlier (it felt as if my head was crashed).

I woke up in my bed and found the earth a terrible dark place that really frightened me at that moment.

Sometimes I think it was simply a dream but, the experience was so realistic. Especially returning was so painful that I am convinced it was a real NDE.

There doesn't pass almost a day in my life I do not think about it. I really am not afraid anymore to die but, you still can be afraid how to die.

About the knowledge I got there, I sometimes have the impression to have it in my fingers. I also have some unusual ideas/concepts about the universe. Not having physical and/or mathematical background enough I can not do anything with it. I suppose it is not really important or perhaps in the future I will remember something at the right moment (who knows).

I am trying to find an answer to, have I had a near death experience? If not, have you any idea what happened to me? I am Reiki practitioner master teacher in Australia. Before I had the experience I started to hear voices in my head, they wanted me to go and see a doctor and get help when the voices got out of hand. I did go to the hospital and they told me that I developed a disassociate disorder quiet common among energy workers, he said that it would pass shortly and prescribed medication for me.

Then a few months later I found myself sitting on the couch, when everything went frozen white, I was consciousness but I had no thoughts at all, I couldn't move, I know my eyes were open but all I could see was the frozen light. I could not see my surroundings at all. I could not hear anything or speak, as much as I tried. I knew that I was not breathing and had no heartbeat. I live alone and I have no idea how long I remained in that state. When I started to become conscious again, I felt as if I was dead. I somehow got to bed and stayed there for days. It took several hours to have a flow of thoughts in my head.

Three years have past since that event: I haven't told people about it. I still feel unreal and my body temperature is cold most of the time. Before this happened, I began to develope clairsentience. But, after the event I developed clairaudience, aura sight, past life recall, other people's as well as my own, a fairly good level of telepathy, and I can foresee future events, and have communicated with spirits. I now use all this in my healing work and I do psychic work and a little medium work.

Every day is a hard day to get by because I don't feel alive. I feel I am in a body but not alive.

As an energy worker I came to this conclusion. I feel as if I had died but either my spirit or crown chakra shut down so, I could not leave my body. I did not leave the body and return like most cases of NDE. I was trapped in it and could not get out. When I came to life I was so shocked, I just went to bed.

I know this does not fit in with NDE, can you tell me what happened to me? Is there a way I can feel alive again instead of a walking corpse?

Our family was going on an outing. My mother was driving, because my father is afraid to drive. My father is directing. They actually both drive the car--my mother on the left side of the front seat, my father on the right. My brother, two sisters, and myself were in the car. I was sitting left side, rear seat. The car was in the left lane, preparing to make a left-hand turn across the highway. I was dressed in my new plaid shirt and new rolled-to-the-top-of-the-knee cream-colored jeans. I was so happy we were going to the park. It was 1965, and I was 13 years of age.

The next earthly thing that happened when I was back in my body was an intense feeling of pain and a woman's voice by my left ear saying, "This one's awake." I tried to open my eyes and they opened. I saw blood on my lap. All over my new pants. I saw glass on my lap. I closed my eyes and started to cry. And the earthly drama continued. (I'm back. I just took a break.)

My thoughts will seem, actually be, disconnected during this writing. I've never been able to find anyone to talk to about this experience that even remotely understands what I am going through. This thing is like a thing that I've been carrying around for years that I do not know what to do with. I do not know what to do, how to live my life. Nothing on earth matters to me except my children and grandchildren. Today (I am 50 now. This happened when I was 13) I am on disability for depression and anxiety. I have a history of alcoholism and other addictions. Namely, benziodeazapines, smoking, food, credit cards. I probably could get addicted to anything that will alter my reality. I've been diagnosed with avoidant personality disorder, social phobia, obsessive, compulsive personality disorder (intrusive thoughts).
Now remember, these scenarios are put into earthly words for want of a word. There are no earthly words to describe some things, such as tunnel, colors, light, etc.

I was speeding through a black tunnel with reddish colors--so fast. (Now that's weird, I'm on the internet, but yet the phone rang three times, and I only have one line. I have to tell myself that there is a logical explanation somewhere. )I felt scared. I had no control, and the experience was horrible. It ended and I find myself in a place of black. A void. Time went on forever, but there was no time. Space went on forever, but there was no space. Time and space were one. Time and space did not exist. I felt scared. I called out. I realized there was no way out. I prayed. I couldn't kill myself, because I was already dead. (There is no earthly record that I was dead. I may not have had an earthly death.) I realized I had no control. I was to be there forever. I curled up in a fetal position. That soon, I'm in another place, walking (floating) with, I think it was, two "beings," for want of a better word. A place of great "light". It is soooooooooooooooooo beautiful. I feel so wonderful. I feel happy. I feel sooooooooooooooo much love. It is indescribable. There is so much love. The outstanding feature of this entire experience is the feeling?, knowing?, no , it's the love itself. A love I've never experienced on this earth. Never in my earthly life have I experienced the pure love. Not pure love. Maybe it was pure love. Or maybe it was "full" love of which we experience only minute aspects of it on earth. (See what this has done to me?) We were in this great light. But, it was different than the light on earth. I didn't feel it like the heat of the sun, and I love the sun. Nor was it like I had to shield my eyes. But, it was a great, magnificent light. We were walking, floating, over a field of wheat. We were "talking." (Another break. This is heavy stuff for me.) Much talk. Back and forth. I had sooo many questions. I was soooo happy and at peace. I can't say I felt like these beings were old friends, but I had the feeling of love and safety with them. Again, for want of a better description. We talked and talked and talked as we walked. I kept asking questions, and they kept answering my questions, as we kept walking. I'll mention that our talking was done by thinking. But, it wasn't intruding on ones thoughts. It was just the way we talked. We talked just by asking. But, it was all done without our mouths. The part I find sad, is that I cannot remember one thing that I asked or one thing that they said to me. I do know they were telling me about a place we were going to. I could see a (again, for want of a better word.) line, or border. Like a horizon, for want of a better word. It was a place of even greater light. We were headed there, and they were excited about it. Then they turned to me and told me I had to go back. We were still in the place of light. I told them I wouldn't go. They tried to convince me to go back. I was adamant. I was staying. Then, another being showed up out of nowhere. I had the feeling he was stronger, or had more authority than the others. Or was different in some way. He talked to me and tried to convince me to return. I still refused, and was steadfast in my decision. I was staying, and they couldn't do anything about it. I was staying. All of a sudden, there was this force pulling me backward. I resisted with all my might, but it was no use. It was stronger than I was. I kept being pulled backward. It was quick.

I woke up in my body, which takes you to the beginning of this writing. I had a broken neck. Where, I don't know. It doesn't show up on the x-rays. Everyone was so serious about it all during my hospital stay. I was in a neck brace and told to stay on my back. Of course, being thirteen years of age, I didn't listen. I have a scar on my face next to, and under, my eye where it was cut during the accident. When I was in the hospital, my mother was in the next room. She came over to visit me. I tried to tell her what happened. I don't remember what I said to her. She told me not to tell anyone, and that if I did, they would think I was crazy. So, I kept silent.

Time passed. I turned twenty years of age. I was married and living in Japan on an Air Force base with my husband and two daughters. My husband and I were looking at Johnny Carson on the Far East Network. A man by the name of Dr. Moody was on. He kept talking. I got so excited. I jumped up on the bed and said excitedly to my husband, "That's what happened to me." It was out. I wasn't crazy. Other people have gone through this. My husband just didn't understand. That's how it’s been whenever I try to process this "experience." They either want to hear the story for entertainment. If they want to hear the story, they want me to have special powers now. Or, they think I'm crazy. Or, they lend a caring ear, but don't know what to say. When I say I need help with this, they do not know how to help, and I do not know exactly what king of help I need. There are plenty of books on the issue, but I feel lonely because I haven't found an understanding pulse to talk to. So, where do I go from here?

During a difficult labour, trying to deliver a stillborn baby I was given a drug that I was highly sensitive to. Scoline, a muscle relaxant, derived from Curare. I reacted as if it were Curare and I became paralyzed for a long period of time. I only survived the experience on a heart/ lung machine. I was asked to sign the permission to have surgery in extreme pain after two days in labour. I was lucid at the point of signing and attempted to ask if they were about to administer the drug I had told them I was allergic to. I decided that I no longer cared if they 'killed' me since I had reached a point where I could no longer cope with pain.

The rest of the narrative is an attempt to describe 'feelings' rather than events. I 'found' myself floating in a dark void. I was conscious that I had no physical body. My thought processes were excited about my current location and attempted to validate it by answering questions which I perceived were coming from 'somewhere else' "How do you feel? " I feel like ...like a contented smile, not a laugh or a giggle. A contented smile." I perceived that the questions were coming from my dead baby. We spoke mentally back and fourth and I can't remember now the conversation but feel as if it still resides in my subconscious. The feeling I get was that the conversation was about what life is all about and is hard to put into words that justify it. The essence of the conversation was that we are all one thing.

I saw a light ahead of me that was getting larger. I perceived this as movement on my part. As I came closer to the light, the feeling of contentment was replaced with fear. The voice asked me again what I felt and I answered ; “fear”, "Why" the voice asked. I tried to understand the shape of the fear. I felt afraid to be absorbed into the light. I felt afraid of the loss of my ego and myself.

At this point I began to think of the people I had left behind. My husband and parents and, I saw them weeping. (Later my sister said that at the moment of my 'death' my mother, waiting at home jumped to her feet and shouted, "Ann's gone.") With this thought about my parents came a feeling of tumbling downward and I was conscious again.

I learnt later that it was at this point I was given an antidote to Scoline. After, the team had rushed in a consultant anesthesiologist. At first at my collapse they had not identified the problem, because the reason for emergency surgery was my very high blood pressure. My heart had stopped, but I was resuscitated and put onto a ventilator.

From that moment I felt as if the person I had been did die and that another person was sent to recovery. An older person perhaps.

A few days later I was emotional about the loss of my baby and felt a presence in my room. I felt as if I was awake in my bed, but fear of this presence paralyzed me. The presence, which seemed to be that of a very old woman, approached the bed and I tried to cry out but felt frozen. I felt as if her hand touched my face that, I would dissolve into fear/ madness. She reached out and I heard a voice say, "It's alright. It’s only Alice." I relaxed and she vanished. I was fully awake now, as if I had been asleep then, but it didn't feel as if I was.

When I was 12 I fell approximately 20-25 feet from a tree. The second I let go of the branch I blacked out.

The next thing I recall I'm standing on a ladder going up.

I looked above me and I saw a faceless being looking down at me. There was a bright, goldish/yellow light behind him, so maybe that's why it was faceless.

I heard my sister calling my name from below me, but don't remember seeing her. I may have.

I then looked over to my right and I saw my sister and my dad attempting to pull my body up the hill towards home. My sister was holding my hands and my dad my feet.

I then heard a voice in my head say "You can go or you can stay". I was in no way ready to die, so I thought, "I want to stay".

The next thing I know I was floating over my body looking down from behind my sister. I saw my dad attempting to go to his left, so they could pull me up the hill side ways but she told him to just hold my feet. I didn't hear her literally, just they were communicating.

I then started to sink back into my body. I was told that they walked me around the house, but I don't remember any of that.

I woke up in the ambulance and saw the male nurse at my feet; I was really dizzy and just messed up, so I went back to sleep. I didn't wake up again until in the hospital bed a few hours later.

First of all I am a diabetic. On Friday, November 19, 1999, I felt fluish. By Saturday I was vomiting and experiencing what I felt was only the flu.
(I had a strong need to be at my parent’s home.) Since my meter read good numbers I promised my mom if I was still the same on Sunday we could go to the emergency room.
As the night went on I asked my dad to please get my mom. I for some reason had a strong desire to have her near me. (I was on the couch) She came down and slept on the couch with me.

I felt my breathing hurting and becoming harder. I felt extreme pain all over my body and I couldn't stand straight. At one point I remember grabbing an alarm clock and thinking it was my glass of water. I fell asleep to suddenly waking up at about 8:10 a.m. That's when I told my mother it was time for me to go. That I loved her very much and not to feel bad because I never really got to be a happy girl. I also noticed a boy (about in upper teens) waiting by the coffee table. He kept trying to hurry me along with my mom. I kept saying things like (please excuse my French but I m telling you the whole thing) “---- off and give me another minute!”. My mom kept asking who I was talking to and tried to quiet me down. My sister upstairs said that I woke her and she thought to herself "what's up with her" to only have a voice go off in her head and say, "she's dying". She dismissed it and fell back to sleep. I kept telling my mom how much I loved her and had to go now. She only dismissed and said yes you need to sleep now and well go to the clinic later. Well, she laid next to me on the couch and said "god you’re cold" and rubbed my legs and feet.

By 10:00 a.m. my mom got up to use the bathroom and I followed. When she came out we both noticed how my arm was hanging funny off the couch. How I was ashed colored. In case you didn't notice I said: “I was on the couch” but, also next to my mom looking at myself too. She tried to wake me, checked for a pulse, shook me and began yelling at me. That brought my sister downstairs to only look at me and say "Mom, she's dead". My mom yelled at her to never say that and told her to call 911 and she ran upstairs to get my dad. I followed my sister to the phone and watched her and listened to her on the Tele with the 911 lady. (The whole time that boy is with me and telling me we had to go).

Next, my dad came down and started to shake and yell at me to wake up. Then my parents went into action and started CPR. My sister couldn't hack hearing the air come back up like it did. (She said that was the scariest sound she'd ever heard) I followed her out to the porch. She was waiting for the paramedics. They came and shocked me and then, I don't remember again until the ride in the ambulance when I say my dad in the front passenger seat of the ambulance looking back and watching the men work on me.

Then we made it to the hospital and I followed the doctor in where he told my parents that I was down to long and I would not regain and if I did it would be at what quality of life. Hell, they had the Red Cross on stand by for organs and a Reverend wanting to give me last rights. I remember hearing the prayers people would say in their heads as the Reverend prayed over me. I heard people’s personal thoughts about me. As all this was going on I m begging to please not let me go back because I loved it where I was and my life back there was such crap.

I remember being told that I was very much loved and believed in many wrong people and beliefs. I was shown who was true and who was not to me. I was told that I was beautiful and loved and would be missed. One thing I will always remember is being told how my mom was not ready for this. I was shown what would take place if I were not to come back. I saw her sitting in her bedroom with nothing but the feeling of dread and sadness. It's very hard to describe all the things that were taking place all at once. Then I remember my brother (he's in the Navy and was stationed in Chicago at the time) coming in the room and saying how he felt like someone just kicked him in the stomach.

Then , I just suddenly woke up from my coma that they claimed I never would wake up from and, if I did I'd be a veggie. I held out my hand to my parents who sat at my bedside day and night. They jumped out of their skin and they looked shocked to see me awake.

I remember reading the little board on the wall where the nurses of the shift would write their names. I remember reading Teri and Teresa and the day was Monday, November 22, 1999. I tried to ask “what happened to Sunday” but, the breathing tube kind of got in the way. I spent Thanksgiving in the ICU and had surgery that day too. I was exhausted like never before but I never felt the feeling I had before either. It's hard to explain but , I felt very peaceful, clean and content. I felt new in a way I guess you could say, I felt like no one or nothing could touch me and hurt me in anyway. I spent 11 days in the hospital. I was very weak but always demanded to go home. I became depressed a little and talked a lot about "my experience".

Then one day my sister and I were on the computer and she was blowing up a picture of what she said “had ghosts in it”. It was a picture of me at a cemetery by a witch’s ball. Well guess what, she was right about the picture and ghosts. One ghost got my attention though. It was the boy who was at my house the day I died. (The picture was taken 2 wks before my ordeal).

I went to the cemetery and right to his grave. Then I went to the library and looked up his name on the stone because I was interested on how he died. After that even more changed for me.

I just needed some to talk to that had been where I was. Of course I had no one so I pushed it aside and gave it a rest because everyone thought I was being too involved in the nde. But to this day, almost three years later, I still have the need to find out more about my nde and be told , I m not crazy and that yes nde’s do exist and not some brain flash or whatever critics are calling it now.

I’m sorry. I know what I know and it wasn't a dream. I have so much more I could say. I probably skipped over some things but, it's hard to write it all down. I would be more than happy to speak to anyone about this at anytime.

My life has truly changed. I even listened to some of the knowledge I was given and I’m not perfect but, have tried to hold on to that extreme patience I had when I first came back.

Thank you for allowing me to share this.

I was extremely depressed and unhappy in my marriage, friendships and job.

I actually broke the law by stealing from my boss in an effort to be heard.

No one listened to me so I finally ran away from my husband and two beautiful children and attempted suicide.

This attempt resulted in clinical death and I experienced myself looking at my body from what felt like above the bed. The last I remember before waking up was blackness and a feeling of nothingness. I woke up in the Intensive Care Unit. I was at that time despondent because death is what I still wanted at that time. I finally did realize that I needed help and against my husbands wishes I checked myself into the Psych Unit of the hospital. Even though I went willingly I fought treatment the whole way. I was angry and still wanted death.

Slowly I began to emerge from the depression and began to want life again. I had to fight with my husband to be able to go back to school, but fight I did and I am now an RN.

I also ended up pleading guilty to charges of theft of property. I received a suspended imposition of sentence, which I had to clear before taking my nursing boards. My record at this time is clear of any criminal doings. This has been a blessing. I have been so honest my whole life that the guilt over what I had done was almost unbearable. Through therapy I realized that the events that had led to this were the result of Childhood Sexual Abuse that I was just starting to remember at the time of the Suicide Attempt.

My life now is nothing like I ever imagined it could be. I began to have psychic visions and premonitions and my family thought I was totally crazy. As a result I left my adult children and my husband and moved to the Eastern US to start a new life. I had a friend that I had met online and she gave me a safe haven until I could get a job and start over. I am now a level 2 Reiki healer and very spiritual. I have daily contact with spirit guides and angels who help me with my healing.

I am the Director of Nursing in a Long Term Care Facility and feel that I am on the path that I am meant to be on. My life is so drastically changed and I am not the same person who made that suicide attempt. My life is spent in healing and loving. Meditation and prayer are daily necessities for me. I have no fear of death and have helped many to pass over in a much easier way than I ever thought possible. Even though my job is stressful and hectic many people tell me that I have a look of serenity about me and I have never been happier.

In November 1986 I was anxiously awaiting the birth of my first child. I had mixed feelings when I finally went into labor. When my water broke, it was not clear as it should be but me conium filled, meaning my baby was showing signs of distress. My doctor told me this is not uncommon.


As the hours went by, the pain increased. I was finally wheeled into the delivery room. By this time, the pain was almost unbearable. Again, a few hours went by and still no baby. Upon examination by my doctor it was determined that the umbilical cord was wrapped around my baby's neck. She attached a monitor to my baby's head and had some kind of monitor strapped onto my upper leg. When my baby stopped breathing, my doctor had to act fast. She said, "We have to get this baby out now!" Unfortunately, my tailbone was in the way. While pulling my baby out with forceps, my doctor broke my tailbone. By this point, the pain was so excruciating, I couldn't believe a body could survive.

I then felt "sparks" shooting out of my leg where the monitor was attached. I asked my doctor to "loosen" the strap, but she couldn't hear me -- in fact no one in the room could hear me. I know I was screaming, so why couldn't anyone hear me?

The next thing I know, a mask was put on my face. Then, the pain was gone. My baby hadn't been born yet, so how could the pain be gone? All of a sudden, I was looking around the room, but it looked different, I was looking at it from the ceiling. I watched as a doctor was working on me and as my obstetrician was pulling my baby out. I saw my daughter being born, not breathing. I made an agreement with my daughter at that time, I told her that if "she would start breathing, I would be there to take care of her." With that, I was back in my aching body "torn & bleeding" and my daughter let out the most wonderful cry.

Next month, my daughter will be a teenager (13) and I thank God for her everyday. I still have pain from this experience from the tailbone breakage (I still can't sit for a long period of time without pain). My daughter suffers from "Obsessive Compulsive Disorder" which her doctors have attributed from the lack of oxygen she suffered when the umbilical chord was wrapped around her neck. However, this disorder is being treated successfully with medication. I would go through the same thing all over again for my daughter. Two years after my daughter’s birth, I gave birth to another daughter. I went into labor at 11:45 pm. Had one contraction, and she was born at midnight. I was up walking around less than 15 minutes after that.

I had been ill for a few days and it seemed to worsen, yet I was getting sicker and sicker and didn't realize it. Symptoms of my illness...it turns out I was slipping into septic shock from a severe urinary tract infection...worsened, but my mind was clouded. Finally I slipped into and out of a coma. A few hours later my sister discovered me and called an ambulance. At this time, I was having severe convulsions then lapsing back into unconsciousness.

I was taken by ambulance to the ER at the local hospital and was vaguely aware of my surroundings. My mother and sister were in the room along with the medical team. Finally, I lapsed back into unconsciousness and all sensation disappeared; yet I was alert to what was going on around me. I was slowly enveloped in red and felt as if I were floating, suspended in a reddish gelatin. A warm, glow came from outside the glow. There was no fear or no terror and I do not think the red was a bad omen. It was all so very comforting.

Sounds in the room around me became muffled and began to recede into the background and finally into the far, far distance. I was suspended in a state of pure light and moving away from any of my surroundings when my mother reached down and took hold of my big toe. She said, "Doug, are you still there?"

At that moment I stopped slipping away and slowly came back into the room. As I awoke I felt aware of my surroundings and the pain, but I knew somehow I would be OK.

I actually think that if my mother had not taken my toe, I would have been gone, but she brought me back.

I have since recovered but remember the profound experience as if it happened this morning.

Early in the morning on the Saturday following Thanksgiving 1967, I was squirrel hunting with two friends. We were all 13 years old and originally were going to be hunting with one of my friend’s grandfather. His grandfather was unable to go and we decided to go by ourselves.

We came upon an oak tree that had what appeared to be a squirrel convention going on. We triangled the trunk of this tree while the squirrels scattered in all directions. I had aimed at a squirrel in the tree top and was in the process of pulling my shotguns trigger when I was suddenly stunned by a huge concussion. I have always compared it to being slapped by the Jolly Green Giant. As I stood there stunned my first thought was that my gun had exploded. I remember looking down and seeing my green plaid shirt covered in blood. I then heard one of my friends yelling, " you've shot him". At that point it didn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that I was the one shot. The boy who shot me decided to run to a nearby house to get help.

I then laid down to wait for help and while laying there it occurred to me that an ambulance would have a hard time getting to me in the woods, so I decided to get up walk to the same house he had run to so I could meet the ambulance. The other friend followed me and kept asking over and over if I was alright. We came to a wooden fence on the edge of the man's yard that, I then had to climb over. The friend went to help me but got blood on his gloves and just stood there looking at his hands. I'll never forget the look on his face.

As I walked across the yard toward the house I could see the friend who shot me beating on the door and yelling. About this time the door opened and Mr. Davis & his oldest son appeared. (We all knew the people who lived there). He took one look at me and yelled to everyone to put me in his car so he could take me to the hospital. The car was a red 2door Ford fastback and I was put in the middle of the back seat. As we took off for the hospital, which was only a few miles away, Mr. Davis realized that he did not have enough gas to get there. At this time I became aware of the pain and a great difficulty breathing.

Suddenly, all the pain was gone and I no longer felt the need to breathe. I don't think that I was breathing at that point. The peacefulness of it all still gives me goose bumps to this day. I remember looking down and seeing this car pull into the gas station. I was looking through the back window and realized that I could see myself or body sitting in the back seat. While up above the car I could see the station attendant open the gas tank door and remove the gas cap and put a small amount of gas into the car. In his haste he never replaced the gas cap or closed the gas tank door. I know this because I watched it all. As we pulled out of the gas station I became aware of the pain and difficulty breathing again. This only lasted a short time before I found myself above the car again and in utter peacefulness. I looked at myself through the rear window once again. As we approached the hospital I found myself returning to the car. Once again I became aware of the pain and the difficulty of breathing. I did not understand what was happening but knew at that time that there was life after death. I turned to the friend who had shot me and told him that if I died I would haunt him. I did not mean it in a bad way, I was trying to tell him that there was more to life and I would be OK, though it was a poor choice of words. I just knew that I would still be me, in spirit or body.

I never talked about my experience for years, even though it was constantly on my mind. I was afraid people would laugh or think I was crazy. Then one day I read an article about a Doctor at Duke University who was studying near death experiences and I knew what had happened and that I wasn't alone. Over the years I have talked to a few people about it and most of them listened quietly and accepted what I said, but a few thought I was crazy. No matter how hard you try to explain it no one will really understand until they experience it on their own.

A few final words before I close. I was shot in the head from about 20-25 feet with a 16ga shotgun, #6 shot. They doctors estimated that I received 95% of the load. I was not knocked out, nor off my feet. In my youthful ignorance I did not even think I was seriously injured, much less near death. At the time I did not even realize that my left eye had been destroyed. The doctors could not believe that I had walked out of the woods with my injuries, nor that I wasn't knocked out by them. My friends were questioned about this afterwards and confirmed the facts. When I finally left the hospital I had a doctor tell me that I shouldn't ever feel sorry for myself about losing my left eye because statistically I was dead. I still have the pellets in my head and a few years ago a doctor did an x-ray because I was having sinus problems. After seeing the x-ray he returned and asked me "how did you survive that?" He then took me back to see it for myself and when I walked into the room all the other doctors in the clinic were standing there looking at my x-ray. He introduced me as the survivor and they proceeded to show me how close I really came to dying that day.

I cannot tell you the exact day, exact month, and I even have to think to tell the exact year, but the experience is with me in a complete sense and I can recall it in the smallest detail.

I was taken to the hospital suffering from severe asthma, and was basically drowning in my own fluids.

I knew I was leaving...I was going "home", not heaven, not hell, but "home".... it was so peaceful, so serene so beautiful. And I was given this knowledge that I was intrinsically a good person with a pure heart, and that I was very much loved. I knew this without the slightest doubt. It was so strong and so clear. And the feeling was of this overwhelming sense of acceptance, embracing pure love.... then there was this void that filled with light, not a tunnel, but as if in my mindsky was this all encompassing light, it did not hurt the eyes, though, it was diffused, but brilliant, and there appeared a spiritual being. She filled the space with her being, not in the physical sense but in her spiritual sense.... and on her face was serene beauty, but she did not have precise features...just this sense. Then, she reached out her hand to me, and I still remember her hand, her fingers just touching mine.... our fingers touched...and my life has never been the same...I wanted to go, but I wasn't ready yet, thinking of my daughter, and I spoke to her in a spirit sense and told her so, and she smiled this very accepting smile and I knew it would was acceptable that I stay, and that in some way I had been chosen and touched in a very profound way.

Since that time, I have begun writing poetry.... very powerful and good and people are amazed I have not been writing for years, but it is a feeling I must do it, that somehow there is this purpose this reason for it.

I know now there is such a thing as pure love...and am able to love in that sense, I know this without a doubt and understand faith and what it is, not logically, but in my heart

I know that we are all connected on this earth, in a way that perhaps we do not understand but we are.

I now believe in reincarnation and I question whether the spirit part of us ever truly dies.

I quite literally take on the pain of others now, I feel their pain with my whole being, and I do not always understand this, but I know it is real.

I feel young inside, very young, like a child at times, just learning about the world all over again; it is like the outside no longer matches the inside...that I have this young spirit trapped in an older body....
people think by my poetry I am 25-30 years old, which is what I feel.

I smoked before that. Even with asthma. I never even desired a cigarette after that time. Not once.

I know I am going to live to be very old. That my mind will not deteriorate, if anything, my lifeshell will. And that is another thing, I have noticed...I do not say body any longer, I say lifeshell. I no longer suffer from asthma, though my lungs are scarred. I no longer take medication of any kind.

Life flows through me now. I do not shut it out, nor deny it. I let it be what it is meant to be. I no longer have doubts of any kind about myself. I never felt such self-acceptance. I have traveled and found beauty even in darkness and wonder at it all and have such passion for life.

People tell me I am unique, different, spiritual, and sometimes I know they are frightened of what they do not understand, and I do not know how to tell them sometimes I am frightened too...

I cannot describe in words no matter how hard I try, the beauty the completeness, the overwhelming ness of it, and how life changing it was, and the loneliness of it sometimes, the feeling of being so all alone, knowing it is true, and knowing I will not let it be denied.

My mother and her friend drove me to a Hospital in Chicago to have a tonsillectomy in 1941. I was taken to the operating room by the nurse and placed on the operating table. The nurse placed a cotton mask over my nose and mouth and sprayed it with ether.

The next thing that happened, my mind left my body and I drifted up from the table and then through the skylight, still seeing the nurse and doctor over me. I then went upward over Chicago through the sky and drifted past star after star until, I suddenly woke up coughing and vomiting blood.

The same nurse then came with ice cream for me to soothe my throat.

Even though my parents later became "born again" Christians, I have realized that all religions are based on myth because I felt so wonderful drifting through space and never saw "heaven".

This occurred 61 years ago and I remember it as if it occurred yesterday.

I began to feel ill at work. I went home and threw up again and then, realized my heart had stopped. That was a strange feeling all by itself. I lost consciousness at 7:15 p.m. I was alone.

I found myself out of my body and in a new environment. A dark haired gentleman met me at the door of a very large complex and invited me in. It wasn't a dream. I remember every detail still, 10 months later.
He took me through the building and showed me different areas. He showed me a classroom and I saw a few people sitting at desks.
He took me to a room filled with ball gowns and he showed me a rack of them that belonged to me. He took me up on a roof and showed me many people out there. I told him I felt great fear in the people. He said they had come from the September 11th incident and they wouldn't come indoors yet.
He took me to a room that looked like a lodge kitchen. It had lots of card tables and a stove and cooking area. There was a grand looking Grey haired man making baked goods. I believe he was the head of the lodge or wherever I was. He looked like a fit Santa Claus. He was very loving and smiled at me. He communicated telepathically. He showed me a vision of my ex husband hiding stocks in the sand. Then, I was sent back.

I woke up thirteen hours later, still numb from the nose down and unable to get up. I called my friend who is a cardiologist and we took it from there.

I am not sure how to go about this, so I am just writing my memories surrounding the wonderful event. Here goes:

I was the COO of a complex homeopathic manufacturing firm. I chose to go to Sri Lanka to present this remedy to a M.D. who is a phenomenal professor of all forms of medicine. Whilst in Sri Lanka, I studied and became an Acupuncturist. The remedy was used with the acupuncture points to produce phenomenal cures. Unfortunately, there was alot of negative feedback of my work coming from my CEO. I placed myself in an internally suppressed frustrated mode, which built in intensity.

On the night of December 7, 1997, I had reached the apex of this internal frustration. I left the clinic early (about 10:00pm) and took a tuk-tuk back to my monk-like room. I showered, trying to shake the heaviness, which was weighing my head. I went up to the roof-top restaurant to have some nutrition and then chose not to. My colleagues had arrived and wanted to sit about and chat about the cases. I excused myself due to fatigue and went down to my room to sleep.

I slowly undressed and climbed into my bed [which was a foam mattress on boards] and placed the overhead mosquito netting about the bed. I was so frustrated and didn't know where to turn. I am a highly positive thinking, feeling, living and spiritual person, and have only the highest respect for the Universe/Mother-Father-GOD, and have turned to this source for guidance on a continual basis my entire life. IT has been my parent, mentor, guide, since my last parent's death when I was 3. That night my frustration with negativity exploded. And I shouted from the depths of my soul, under the loud drone of the window air-conditioner. I shouted: "GOD, I have had enough! I am sick and tired of all the negativity in my life!" Then I raised my fist for emphasis and continued with: "So I want this negativity to stop! And I want it to stop NOW! NOW! No more! Enough! STOP IT NOW!" Having expelled this fury from my heart and soul, and for some reason not feeling the least bit guilty for screaming at my source of direction, only feeling strangely justified in my anger, I laid down and closed my eyes. Normally, it takes me a long while to drift off to sleep. This night was different.

After closing my eyes, the next recollection was myself being in the presence of, in the arena of, enveloped in, PURE UNCONDITIONAL LOVE. Re-reading this, it sounds so lame. How can I explain? For all these years I just have not been able to describe this to fully honour its incredibleness, it's ISNESS.

A communication occurred, through instantaneous osmosis, rather than our human verbalization. The communication concerned my pre-natal chosen human life's work as well as some basic universal laws, which I had overlooked in my human form. Then it was time for me to return. I did not want to return to my human form. I wanted to stay enveloped in that phenomenal dimension of unconditional love. I argued. I shook my head at my nerve. I was gently overruled. I was still communicating my desire to stay home [for I felt I was home] when I received the communication that it was time for me to return. And God then gently "placed" his Energy at my thymus, and I was on my way back to my human form. I found myself crying out "nooo" as I glided backwards through the Universe. My "nooo" instantaneously changed to silent awe as I observed my breathtaking and radiant surroundings. I joyfully swirled earthbound and then, alas, the journey was much too short.

I arrived back into my human form with an ear piercing crash; the bed boards crashing loudly against one another. Within nanoseconds, I sat up in a lazy lotus position. I was laughing. Joyously, loudly and from the depths of my heart and soul. I was still connected with "God", still felt in direct communication, and placed my hands on my hips and stated: "God, that was very unceremonious of you!" My joy was almost overwhelming. Then as I looked around I slowly felt the "presence" leave, leaving me seemingly alone back on this earth's plane. I felt immense sadness. However, the anger was gone. I laid down, and shed quiet tears of sadness before entering a sleep state. When I awoke the following morning, I was not in top form. I was dizzy and my head, on my left side was in excruciating, pulsating knife-like pain cutting into my ear. My left arm and hand was numb and tingling. I arose and took care of an elderly female patient, which came to my room at 7:30 every morning before I headed to the hospital. I told her she would have to go to the hospital or the clinic from then forward, as I was not feeling well. I then informed the hospital through a colleague, that I was taking some time off. I then went back to my room and laid down. I do not know how long I visited "God". I stayed in my room for a week, barely able to eat, and unable to walk. I swore a colleague to confidence and had him administer to me my complex homeopathic to certain acupuncture points. He was concerned and wanted me to go to the hospital for a CAT Scan. I refused to go. He tried to scare me into going by saying I could die. I responded with: "I already have and was sent back. I have no fear of death. I would welcome it. I just choose to go this route for some reason. It is something I need to experience for some reason." So he kept my confidence and attended to me. It took two weeks before I could walk to the beach, which was about 1/2 kilometer away. Then I walked to the doctor and asked him to check me out, without telling him why I wanted the check up. After doing so, he asked me what happened, because everyone of my systems was almost defunct. He said I was almost the walking dead. I then told him what happened. He prescribed some homeopathic pills for my cardiovascular system, and performed critical moxibustion and acupuncture on all my systems. After three of his sessions, along with the continual complex homeopuncture, my systems were back on line. The only physical issue was my left hand and arm. So I had an American M.D./Acupuncturist, administer the painful point I knew had to be done. Immediately, my hand and arm became unblocked and back to normal functioning.

It took three years for me to not be homesick. It took four years for me to recall my communiqué. The changes in my life are delightful.

When I heard you on Coast to Coast I felt so relieved to hear that others are out there on this planet earth going through the same. I still find it so difficult to explain, because there are no English words to aptly describe the experience. I cherish my experience and find strength in the knowledge I therein gained. Also, is the intense loneliness due to not being able to share a common experience, along with the loneliness due to having a different slant on life that does not include the negativity and games with which we humans are so adept.

I'd like to share one of my major lessons. I learnt from my beatific communiqué one answer, which is directly related to the preamble to this experience. It's the old adage, "be careful what you ask for." Negativity. My old nemesis. A very simple answer. I learnt that according to Universal Law, this planet is based on duality. Hence negativity exists. When negativity no longer exists, one is no longer a resident of this planet as it presently works. The formula is for each of us to acknowledge the existence of this duality and then choose to disallow its existence to damage our individual paths. For each of us to instead use the negativity to help our awareness of the need for positive action, and to consciously work at infusing each of our lives with only the positive. In thus doing so, when each of us reaches this epitome of life, at some time in space, our planet will naturally shift from duality to understanding and living in unconditional love and harmony with all life, as we will have effectively removed the need for negativity.

Thank you for this opportunity to express, without feeling the condemnation of absurdity.

Who am I? An orphan who became woman, mother, grandmother, accountant (since age 20), Reiki teacher, Acupuncturist, numerous other natural health and life interests, Certified Metaphysical teacher, present student of Homeopathy whilst driving my own truck to pay for my past world travels and tuition, and living on 50 acres of land. Also a human being filled with Unconditional Love and Joy.

Namaste

I never talked about this in all these years. It was the most terrifying experience I have ever had.

Suddenly, I was falling down this pitch black pit. My stomach felt as if I was on a roller coaster, the speed I was travelling at had to be tremendous. It sounded very echoey. At my left side was a wolf. It was snarling and growling and foaming at the mouth like a rabid animal. I could feel its breath and spittle flying into my face. I knew this wolf was going to tear me limb from limb. I remember screaming for my father to help me over and over.

I realize all this took place in a very short period of time but it seemed I was there for a long time.

This experience is as real today as the day it happened even after all these years.

In 1989, a female friend of mine whom I had known since I was 5, died in a car accident. I was very upset. I went to the funeral and decided that at a later date I would return there with flowers to pay my respects. However, I became involved with a bad crew and my social life took over everything. Much to the detriment of everything else.

One night while asleep in 1992 I saw my deceased friend while I was out of my body in a room that had rows of church pew style seats. There was another person there, a male. He was holding out a white coat towards me saying if I wanted to be with her then I had to put it on. The coat was like dentists, whereby you put your arms in first and it fastens up the back.

As I began putting my arms in I felt frightened and quickly pulled them back out. I then "traveled" approximately 6 feet above the ground down a path with tall trees on both sides. Everything glowed with silver light; rocks, trees, plants etc.

I then woke up in my bedroom with massive chest pains and my pillow wet through with tears. It took me about 5 minutes to be able to get out of bed. It felt like someone had been stood on my chest.

I was very distraught and went to see the parents of my deceased friend to find out exactly where her headstone was as I felt she was reminding me not to forget her. As I arrived, her brother told me that the stone was not at the place where the service had took place but, was at a small chapel a few miles away.

As I approached the chapel I immediately recognized the row of tall trees and I walked into the churchyard and found her stone almost immediately.

I feel I was given the choice to pass over and that the post mortem for me would probably have read heart attack.

A few nights later I had another experience, this time involving a story about a whale, which seemed so real to me that, when I woke, I thought I had actually seen it on TV. This "dream" inspired me to learn (almost obsessively) about the natural environment. I turned the dream into a story, which I typed out, on a clunky old typewriter, sometimes for 8 hours a day. Towards the end my parents were worried because I was reading a lot of books and absorbing information like a sponge. I needed "input". I had no time for idle chat or banter. I wanted facts.

My knowledge base grew very rapidly and I decided to apply for an under-graduate degree in environmental studies. My own reading since the dream had given me the knowledge I needed to apply and I was successful in my application. This astonished a lot of people since I had originally studied construction at college. From this course I went onto do a teacher training course, however there were few jobs. I found myself quite unexpectedly applying for and getting a job working with children with disabilities. If you had said a few years earlier that I would be doing this job I probably would have laughed in your face but my whole outlook had changed literally overnight and these young people seemed to be the perfect teachers for things such as tolerance, compassion and the limits of the human experience.

I am a changed man. There is no doubting that. I feel I occasionally anticipate events. These are always serious or bad in nature. I don’t know why this is but it seems to be the pattern.

I recently learned that at approximately the same time I was having my "white coat experience" my cousin whom I had not seen for a long time was also undergoing similar experiences. He told his partner at the time that someone was offering him a “white coat to put on” in his dreams and that this had been happening for a few nights running. He told her that on this night he “would put the coat on”. So they went to sleep. My cousin woke with his partner slapping his face and shouting “breathe!”. He had stopped breathing and his lips had gone blue. Eventually he did breathe and he came round with no damage. He explained to her that he had put one arm fully in the sleeve of the white coat-that was all. He had not experienced any physical discomfort at all until he woke.

It was a few years later when I told him of my experience. When he was telling me about his, I interrupted him and said, " before you tell me what the white coat was like-I’ll bet it was one that you put your arms into first”. He was gobsmacked and shocked by what I said.

We feel we both had the chance to pass over because at the time, neither of us was helping anyone other than ourselves and hurting people along the way.

We have both changed a lot since then and feel the experiences were beneficial in many ways.

I had just come off the mid-night watch, taken a quick cold shower. I lay down for a few minutes as reveille would sound at 5:30 a.m., and I would have to get up again.

My neck and shoulders had not yet hit the pillow, when I realized, that as I touched my eyes, I was no longer myself. I was a presence, aware of the yellow lined green clouds and, was being invited to jump into the turquoise sky. I did have a feeling like a golden spider web that vibrated to the universal sounds and feelings. I was in love. I heard a voice tell me, I could “not remain” there, I would “have to go back”. I asked “why not” and was told that I would “have to finish what I had started out to accomplish”. I acknowledged okay and was back in the rack.

I noted the 1st class EM cover his eyes and head with his blanket and as he turned over. I noted his disbelief of what he had just seen. I had had a NDE without the aspect of Death.

I went on to finish the full week with less than an hours sleep daily.

I go there regularly and commune with God directly as the Presence plays with my hair and drops down to observe through my eyes at will. When I direct its attention to some problem or health problem someone has, I move out of its way and channel. The Healing takes place between it and the objective.

I have slipped on Ice and been lifted and set back very gently. I talk to God and a softbluish light appears in my cab and, when I try to shut off the light with the switch I note that it is not physical in our terms. It is the Quetzal of the Aztec's, The presence of James Redfield's Book Secrets of Shambahala.

Sometimes children that are not able to get out of their strollers, looking with focused intent, look around for someone and emphatically exclaim while pointing with their finger "GOD!" –

Today I teach others to see life through the point of the brain that does imagination and seeking. To use the Amegdela switch and attuning their attention become one with their brushes, medium and canvass. Allow their emotional energy to arise, with their spirituality. Intentionally focus with that feeling and wait. The Presence will transform it into 100% Time and Reality. I love it.

The Me in You, the You in Me, There is only "I AM.'

I was shot point blank with a 357 magnum & it hit below my right breast.
The bleeding was sucking chest wound. A person there had been born with an extra large thumb & he stuck his thumb in the wound -that was squirting out about a foot.
While I was on the ground a being that looked like a beautiful
angel came to me, above my head & asked me "are you ready to go?"
I answered “no I have too many things I have to do” & the angel said
"alright, I'll see you again" then I was taken to the hospital.

I had another nde later about 1986 related to internal bleeding.
I was taken to a hospital in California - they tell me I was dead 12 minutes.
I was supposed to be in a coma for the rest of my life.
During this time I left my body and went above the cities around the world then I went into the firmament in space.
Then, I came to a beautiful cloud in the midst of the dark space.
In the middle of the cloud was a massive marble table.
On the right of the table were three people dressed in robes.
On the other side of the table there were 5 people dressed the same way.
One of them seemed to be in charge & they were talking to each other.
Then they turned to me & the one in charge motioned for me to come over.
I don’t understand what happened then - it seemed like part of me stayed there & part of me went over to him & the others came over too.
The talking seemed to go on for a while & then I left & came back to my body. At that time a pastor friend was praying for me, holding my hand,
he felt my hand move & I came out of the coma!

In the years following I became a chaplain & had spiritual experiences
with people I was praying for & with.
One time I was praying for a lady that was near death - as I was praying for her I felt like electricity going through my arms.
Another time the same thing when I was leading a group in prayer.
And one time a man was praying for me in church & I had like a ray going from the bottom of my body going slowly all the way to the top of my head.
Once while walking in the back yard- I seemed to walk into another dimension- everything was so bright & beautiful & I had a great feeling of being in total peace- this has happened two times.
Another time I was praying for a disabled veteran- an amputee-
they were supposed to amputate more of his leg & after praying for him I found out later that they did not amputate anymore of his leg! Praise be to God!
I haven't heard of other experiences like this ndr.
I met my wife in a way I know god was involved & he sends us on what I call assignments. God puts us in situations where people need prayer & god, then we seem to go to a different areas of the country to a new assignment
I believe our biggest assignment is still to come.
I now know that there is a God & we all have a particular job to do! I hope I did a good job describing this.

My life is completely changed- what matters most now are spiritual matters.
And, I believe god has given me my job.

I was lying on the procedure gurney in the hospital. I was undergoing a cardiac catherization to determine if my arteries leading to the heart were blocked from cholesterol/plaque. (I was experiencing chest pains the whole week). I was not under anesthesia or sedation of any kind.

As I laid on this bed, the doctor and the team of assistants/medical technicians were inserting catheters into my groin area, all the while injecting contrast into my arteries and taking a series of pictures that would later be studied to determine if blockage indeed was present.

The doctor inserted the first set, went in, and took his pictures. He repeated this process two other times. The second time, as with the first, the catheter went in and came out effortlessly. I was wide awake the whole time and had not felt discomfort nor uneasiness the first two times.

As he inserted the catheter a third time, I began to sense a problem. The doctor snapped orders to his staff: "get me a _______, I need a #6 blah blah blah. Quickly" As I listened to all this commotion, I felt a slight fluttering of my heart. No pain, but anticipation.

Suddenly, I found myself in a dark space that quickly became a bright, diffused white room. I was in this place that seemed to be a room, in the presence of a being that I felt was a man. Although I could not make out any distinctive features, his figure was definitely that of a man. There was a feeling of peace, of well-being, of comfort. No sound was heard, he did not speak to me.

Just at the point that I was realizing that I was in this room (at first it was surreal, then, I defined the place more accurately), I felt a horrible pain all around my chest, and a strange smell. It was as if two burning stakes had been thrust into my heart. I opened my eyes, and heard a man's voice screaming my name in the distance. “Speak to me!”.... I remember being upset that I had been awoken from this place. I had no idea where I was. All I felt was this terrible pain in my chest. As I looked around, I noticed that the man that was calling my name was the medical technician. Slowly, I spoke. My first words were: "Where am I?" As I regained full consciousness, I realized I was still in the procedure room, and recognized the doctor. I asked him what happened, and he responded: "I'll tell you later". He left the room.

They hooked me up to various machines and stabilized me. After I was fully stable, the doctor came back in and explained what happened:
As he inserted the catheter in the third artery, he maneuvered it towards the heart. As he reached an intersection and injected dye to take pictures, the size of the catheter, coupled with plaque that was blocking that artery completely cut the flow of blood to the heart. My heart went into fibrillation and I flatlined. I died. He told me that he poked my face, no response. They had to use the defibrillator paddles, and administered 300 joules of electrical current to my heart. (That explained the pain I felt). He said I was dead for approximately one minute, no more.

Upon listening to this, I remember a series of emotions running through my mind. I was fearful that I would die again, and recalled asking for my wife, to say "goodbye". I recall thinking that I was not ready to die. I was very depressed.

This occurred on August 9, 2002 (Just last week). I haven't been the same since. What did I experience? Was it just the last dream of a dying brain? Or was it the prelude of the afterlife? Has anyone else had similar experiences, I mean of being in this white room with another presence?
It certainly didn't feel spiritual, but maybe I was dead for too short a period. Instead of having answers, I'm more confused than ever.

My family and I went to Florida on vacation. We were swimming on the Atlantic side. There was some undertow. My family were the only ones on the beach.

I was in about waist deep water and riding in the waves when I went under. I did not feel anything. I did not know anything was happening to me. I remember a swirling sensation. It was dark. When some people say it’s a tunnel, I can relate to that. I felt happy. I remember saying to myself, "I must be drowning. This is not bad at all." Then I heard a voice. A man's voice saying very direct and clear, "Not now". Then I remember thinking, why, must I get up. Then I felt the water as I lay on the bottom of the ocean. I pushed myself up and started to cough. No one noticed that I almost drowned.

It seemed like I was down there a long time. But, I guess not, since no one noticed I was gone.

I had the feeling that drowning was the way to go. No fear, no pain. This experience made me happy. I knew that there was more.

I don't know why I couldn't continue my journey. I question what do I have left here on earth to do.

This experience happened thirty some years ago but I can still remember it like it was yesterday.

I know this may sound strange, but I heard that same voice another time in my life. When I was about 13 years old, I had an eating disorder. I remember that same voice saying to me, "Stop, you are dying" and I did stop.

One time my mother's heart stopped and I didn't know it. I remember getting a feeling that I should send an angel. I saw a very stern looking angel. Just like an icon from Russia. I sent it to my mother. This was very strange for me to do. I found out years later that my mother saw that angel too and, her heart started beating again after 5 mins of being dead.

I had to go under surgery, because my tonsils had to come out. The surgeon and his assistants put me on a leather chair. I was very afraid, when they put a big nose cap on my nose and mouth, so that I could not breathe. I was around 5, 6 years then. I did not know what was going to happen with me. They told me to breathe, but I refused because there was a nasty smell coming out of the cap. Laughing gas I learned later.

I can remember everything exactly, like it happened a minute ago!
Finally, I breathed in and I felt myself sinking in a kind of dark spiral.

Then suddenly there is a kind of yellowish light, bright. It is all around me, it is like I see it without eyes. At the right there are light concentric circles, which are turning against each other. I notice there are small, very dark symbolic figures inside the circles, which are also turning with the movement of these circles. I am a little bit afraid of those figures.

Then I hear on the left very, very beautiful music, coming from far away. It is really a kind of angel’s choir, very warm.

Then I see, suddenly, from a birds eye view, a few doctors in green with lots of blood on their hands bending over something. I had no self-consciousness then. It was me.

I think to myself, “something has gone VERY wrong there!”

And then, I am in myself again and there is a burning pain in my throat and, much blood.

I sensed, I was only a young child, that something almost got out of hand. I am now thinking that maybe I got out of the narcoses too soon because, I felt a lot of pain and the surgeons were still busy with me.

When all was over, my parents gave me a pluche seagull and all was forgotten. I was a happy child!

I'd been spending alot of time with my mom in her final time and she spoke often of "Doug and Helen" who would come to visit her. Doug was almost always there, Helen only some of the time. These did not seem to be anyone we were aware of her knowing in her past. It got to where I could recognize when they were in the room, even where they were in the room as I could sense their energy and I could "see" them. Best description would be a displacement, kind of like when you see heat rising up off a pavement. But they felt different. I would notice them and then she would say, "Oh, Doug is here". In February (she died in April) her brother died. She had no short-term memory so telling her wouldn't have made a difference so we hadn't really told her and the day of his death she said "oh, Peter's here!". Prior to that she had mentioned many of her other siblings presence there, but never him. Again, it got to where I could recognize whom was there and when and then, she would comment on it.

As her condition degenerated and communication became more difficult for her, I began having dreams where she would come to me and talk about things only she was young and whole. Somehow in all of this she told me when she was going to die, and I told friends that she would cross over on April 19th. This is indeed when she died.

I was sitting in the chair one night just holding her hand as she slept. My Father was at the other end of the house watching TV. All the lights were off. As I sat there, I heard someone coming down the hall and come into the room...my back was to the door. They put their hand on my shoulder as if to comfort me. I assumed it was my dad. When I reached up to put my hand on his there was no physical hand there, yet I could feel it as if it were. These types of experiences continued daily.

In March, about a month before she crossed, it was during the day, I stood by her bed as she slept. I had been chanting over her. She started to breathe heavier and a light began to radiate out from her and encircle the two of us. It seemed to be whirling, for lack of a better way to describe it. Then, as it seemed to get thicker, she took a big gasp and arched her back and a red swirling light began to rise up out of her, around the area of her first or second chakra. As it rose up, it whirled around faster and got wider and a white whirling light came down from above and met it. They whirled together and expanded wider and wider until they both engulfed both of us, whirling faster and getting bigger. I felt nervous, but I stayed put, watching and feeling this intense energy pulse through me. This continued for several minutes until finally she gasped again, and it was like she was being lifted from her center in an arch and with that both lights, separate but combined, went up with a whoosh and she dropped back on the bed and slept as if nothing happened. I still felt like I was vibrating. I just stood there wondering what had just happened. Her condition began the final decline after this.

Within a couple of days I notice on my belly where there had been nothing before, I was developing a couple of moles...these were HER moles. My mom had always distinctly had these moles on the R side of her belly and now they were showing up on my abdomen. They are still there now. Also, My mom always painted and was quite creative, artsy. All the painting in our house were her works. I had never had much talent...perhaps more than average, but nothing to speak of. Since her death, I have discovered that I have quite an artistic talent. I have never had any art class, yet I am quite a skilled charcoal artist now. Charcoal was a favorite of hers, even though she was a better painter. Her talent has manifested in me as a charcoal artist. She also sewed all my clothing as a child. I have developed an uncanny ability to sew without patterns even. I can picture the patterns in my head. I just seem to know how to do all kinds of crafts now that I never had a clue about before.

About a month after her death, a small white light appeared in my room. It grew nightly from about the size of a tennis ball to that of oh, a basketball. I tried to figure out what source it had, if it was being reflected off of something or coming though the window and best as I could figure it was independent. It seemed to have a presence. I just watched it intently. After a couple of weeks I started to see faces in it. Vague but distinct at the same time. They didn't really have structure or definition yet there they were as real as I was. I just watched. The light began to get bigger again and then move from over in the corner to closer to where I slept, then adjacent to my bed, then hovering over my bed. The faces became more prominent and it would hang closer to me until finally one night it floated directly over me and an arm and hand reached out to me as if to take my hand. Unfortunately, I panicked and pulled the blanket up over my head. Then when I peaked out finally, it had moved back over to the side of my bed. There was a feeling of disappointment, but it wasn't mine. Over the next few days/weeks the light still lingered but the faces got fainter and the ball got smaller until it totally disappeared.

The day after the reaching incident, I was driving in a community I didn't normally visit and I saw a sign that said “Institute of Light” or something like that. I stopped and went in. The receptionist was on the phone and when she looked up and saw me she stopped short and told the other person she had to go. She didn't take her eyes off of me. When she hung up she just said (I hadn't said a word as of yet) "you just had a visit didn't you?" then "they thought you were ready, but apparently you weren't. They wanted to take you to show you the other side. It’s a rare thing that you can do this without actually dying. They thought you were ready to see. But apparently you need to learn to trust more. Don’t worry. You will have a chance again. They will make sure you are ready next time. Oh, and your mother wants you to know that she did some things with the way she raised you.... you know what she is referring to...things that she is sorry for. She sees now the impact it’s had and she wants you to know she meant well. She loves you and will be with you. And she wants you to know that you are following the correct path. Your beliefs are correct. Your understanding is correct. Your "knowing" is real. You really do "know". Believe in it. Trust it. Trust what you know. That is what she came to tell you about. Trust yourself. You know. You know. Keep practicing as you are and you will reach your destiny. Your path is changing. You will be practicing the metaphysical. That is your path. There are many lessons, it will be difficult, but you will do well. You will be a healer. You are a healer. Know this." I just thanked her and left. The interesting thing is that at the time, I had just started practicing Buddhism and was catching alot of flack from my family about not being a good Christian. I was also a scientist and this was ruffling my world. I had always believed in the metaphysical but there was no way I could openly admit this to my scientist friends. I could not be open about who I was and what I believed. It was a secret life. I was afraid of being laughed at. And here she was telling me I would practice the metaphysical. There was about as much chance of that as my becoming President.

Since moving 5 1/2 years ago, I was pushed and pushed and pushed until finally I enrolled in massage school. I have evolved significantly and am a practicing therapist. I focus on energetic healing and it has been phenomenal in my life. I am sensitive to "the other side" and the divine. None of my scientific friends laugh. They see how this is a part of me. It is who I was always meant to be. But mom is more than just with me. She is physically a part me. Sometimes I laugh and its her laugh...things like that.

(Sorry for my English as it is not my native language).
When I was about 20 years old I still lived with my father and my sister. I recently had lost my mother and for this reason I was very stressed. Since when I was I child I always have been sensitive and I could "feel" that God existed. In that period of my life I approached God in a stronger way, as I wanted to be happier and more serene (my relationships with my father and my sister weren't ok - they had a different mind, they were more "material" than I was).

One night, after a strong quarrel with them, I closed me in my room and, starting to cry, I began praying to God, asking for his help.I had all the eyes opened and suddenly I saw the Light coming to me from "inside of me" and from "outside" (it is difficult to explain, but I think Light is as inside as outside of me). I was very frightened, as I could realize it wasn't a dream. But after a few seconds Light began to "speak" and I understood I should not be afraid, as Light was the Being nearest to me. I understood that Light was God. The Light said that it is the Being with more power and beauty, the Being above everyone and everything.
The Light said to me that I had loved my deceased mother too much: it isn't good to love a human being more than God, as God is the more important aspect in our life. The Light said also that I am not like my mother, my father and my sister: She saw me different places where people go after their death and told me that She wanted me in a good place, assigned to what here we name "angels" = beings who work for the Light. Light told me that I am an angel.
I expressed my wish to "die", to go in the New World I could see, but She/He/It said that I had to wait more years before "dying".

That experience lasted here a few times (some seconds or one minute), but in reality in that moment I could feel the time disappearing. The Light then, went away saying that She “will always be near” me “during my life”.
After His "physical" abandon, I suddenly felt very angry with my mother, guilty of a too intensive relationship with her when she was alive (the "funny" thing is that before my contact with the Light I could never feel negative feelings for my mother!).

After that contact, I have abandoned the Catholic religion, as now I feel the Light and I don't need a religion any more.

I sometimes can speak with the Light, inside of me, especially when I am stressed: I feel Her presence and I immediately feel better. I sometimes express a wish to Her and it often becomes granted.

One scientist who phoned me (I wrote to an Italian NDE study group some time ago) told me that mine wasn't an NDE - as I wasn't in danger of life, but a "Spiritual emergency" - suggesting me to buy a book by Groff, who utilizes this term.

My life is better now. I don't live any more with my family. I have bought a house, I have a girlfriend, a solid job, and a big reptile house on the second floor, as I love reptiles and in particular snakes (that I like to breed and to study).

Even now that I am independent sometimes, I am depressed as I feel like a wall between me and other people. I sometimes understand how caged is my soul in this world (I feel many aspects of my life - certain social rules, some duties - very far from my spirituality): I would like to escape, but I am here and I have to wait.

At the opposite of these bad feelings, other times I live the happiness to have been contacted by the Light.
I hope to live all my life as Light would like and my biggest fear is to make some mistakes.

I was driving toward Pittsfield Mass. from Albany N.Y. to work in that area for the day. It was a beautiful spring day and I drove without really being aware of the trip--much like you can sometimes walk several blocks without being aware of even passing the corners.

Somewhere in the mountains (and while really driving without a thought), I heard a voice. It was as clear as any normal voice (not a thought or idea), and seemed gender neuter. The voice said "There is a God --- everything will be alright." (Although I heard this voice seemingly through my ears, it was totally non directional.) The following sequence of events then occurred, although the order may be slightly different than I relate here. I knew with absolute certainty that the words I heard were true. I then experienced an unconditional love of God for "me". This love is absolute.
It truly passes all understanding. It is the single thing in life I can really be sure of; and, it means " EVERTHING WILL BE ALRIGHT." "GOD IS IN CHARGE."

I never had the experience again, although I have recalled it many many times. An absolute joy accompanied this episode, of course. And, yes, I have related it on many occasions to friends and family. I am not a religious person but am convinced we have a creator who is a personal and unconditionally loving God to everything he creates.


P.S. The proceeding occurred long before I was ever aware of a NDE.
And although I suffered no trauma of any kind it seems similar in some respects to what I read happening in NDEs.

I was married May 1981 and working in a pulp mill in, B.C., Canada. It was in Feb 1982 and a Friday day shift. I was cleaning lime kilns by adding water to the lime dust and sucking it up with a giant truck mounted vacuum cleaner. The truck operator had wandered off and the 10 inch hose had sucked up against the side of the lime pit. I climbed down the ladder to try and kick the hose away (I did not know how to turn the unit off). I slipped off the ladder and the lime slurry went over my boots and filled them. I then made my way to a water hose and doused both boots with cold water. Next, I dried things off the best I could since it was almost quitting time.

Well, my legs began to tingle then, itch then, they really began to hurt. By the time my wife had picked me up I was in agony, my legs felt on fire. I went straight to the shower and turned on the water and started to peel clothes off. With my socks came full thickness of skin.

To shorten this narrative, I did go to the hospital and was sent home that night. The next morning the bed was soaked, my dressings were a straw color, and no, my wife would not let me go flying when I had trouble navigating my way to the bathroom.

So, back to the hospital at my wife's insistence and the same doctor was there. They started to slowly remove the old dressings and I can remember telling the nurse to let me do it as she was going too slow, next, I began to feel nauseous and laid back on the stretcher. My wife then noticed that I was no longer breathing and a Code Blue was called (cardiac arrest).

As for me, I remember the sensation of floating up to the florescent lights, warmly wrapped in a sheet. Before I went into the light I became aware of the resuscitation effort below me and a vague memory of me lying there with CPR being done. Next I traveled up through the light and now very clearly remember saying " Wow this is great! This is better than any drugs that I took in college! I more or less repeated this a few times as I continued upwards until I became aware of human forms off to my left with one standing right beside me. I could not make out features as it was to bright behind them. The person beside me put out his hand over my crossed hands on my chest and said to me " you have to go back, your time is not yet" I argued with him saying that it was to beautiful here and I did not want to go back. He then said " yes you have to go back, you have a wife and child, you have to go back" He kept repeating this until my mother ran into the ER.

The doctor said, "it was no use. He’s dead”. My mom screamed “NO!” and grabbed me by the shoulders and slammed me down on to the bed. I woke up to find my mom crying over me and, her tears landing in my eyes and stinging.

It felt as if my spirit slowly entered my body. When I was fully aware and telling my mom and wife what happened, I could see the staff looking at me funny as if I was crazy, That stopped me from talking about it for years.

It wasn't until I became a Resp therapist and found out that other people had had the same experience. By the way, that was how I found out my wife was pregnant. I kept saying to her "you are pregnant!" My daughter was born in June that year and got married Aug 3/02.

I honestly feel that I was not meant to die that day as I have since helped save many others, and have witnessed to many others that were dying. From all this I got one very important "thing". I now believe in a spiritual existence or God where before, I did not have any faith and that has carried me farther than I thought I could ever go.

Since that time I have experienced some strange but amazing things working as part of the Code Blue team as a Respiratory Therapist, but that is a whole story in itself. Thank you.

I had been in labour with our first child for almost 18 hours. I was like most first time mums, exited.

I cannot forget what happened after giving birth to our son.

I suddenly found myself looking down at myself and my husband who was very distressed. I could clearly remember him shouting at the doctors and nurses asking what was wrong.

Apparently I had suffered a hemorrhage and went into what they described as shock. I recall wondering what all of the fuss was about as, I felt so calm and relaxed. I remember thinking I must go back because my newborn son needed me.

To this day I can vividly recall this experience and wonder what it means.

However, I feel it is important to mention that when I was pregnant with our son, I had seen what I can only describe as a ghost or similar. Since this experience I have been somewhat scared of certain things that I have seen and basically told my self that I do not want to see things that I cannot explain .I feel that this experience has some meaning and in a way feel fortunate that it happened. However, I am still not sure what it means and have basically shut down on receiving any other messages ,or whatever they may be .

Thanks for enabling me to share this with you.

July 12th, 2002,I went to the hospital for surgery on my foot. I came home about 7:00CST,became very sick, vomiting off and on all night till about 4:00 in the morn. I was so tired I only wanted to sleep. I thought I went to sleep. The last thing I remembered was, my daughter Michelle telling me, “Mom we can't give you anymore pain meds we do not know how much you still have in you."

I came to realize I am speeding through this long dark tunnel and the speed of light. Toward the end of the tunnel I can see the brightest most beautiful light, there is nothing like this here on earth. Between the light and me are this electricity colored green and amber. I feel cold, extreme cold, the nearer this electricity comes to me I am afraid. I am so cold, the light is getting nearer and so bright. I am warming up so warm the glow is absolutely brilliant. I feel so much love so safe, so protected. I heard myself saying "God please don't make me go back I am so warm. I have never had this feeling before, don't let me go". I see my life unfold. Everything I did or said to anyone is being shown to me. Everything someone else did to me I see. I then see my husband and myself sitting there. I see what I have said and done to him. I then see, what he has said and done to me. Somehow in my head comes these thoughts through this electricity," Life does not begin and end here on earth, your priorities are in the wrong place, its not the best car or house that counts its all about love for man and animal. Love your fellow man go to the four corners of the earth and express love is what is important not religion. Love thy neighbor, needy, homeless, sinners those that cannot do for themselves or know any better. Our creatures large and small are put here for a reason. It being to teach love, compassion, and respect. They know everything from the beginning of time to the end. If you cannot love and respect my creatures how can you love one another? How can you love me? Teach the world love, friends kindness goodness, and giving." I awoke gasping for air, my body burning, sitting straight up on my den sofa, screaming I couldn’t get enough air. I was afraid to tell anyone. People would say I was insane, I was scared.

My life has changed forever.

Although I had lots of dreams like lots of children do, my real dream was to be a world-class athlete. A gymnast, a track star, and even a bodybuilder, it didn't seem to matter at the time, but I knew I wanted to compete physically. My Dad knew too, that's why we raced up and down the Street, he was challenging me, developing me physically, supporting my real dream the only way he knew how. He supported me in everything I did. Even in Speech recitals, he wrote most of my speeches and would coach me as I recited them, another one of my child hood goals. Still, at twelve, my speech skills were being developed along with my athlete coordination.

When his mother died that year, I lost his support. I lost him. I don't know why. Maybe it was the way she suffered from lung cancer. Maybe it was because her death caused him to reflect on his own life. I loved her too. She was my friend and my grandmother. Hindsight is never gratifying and it doesn't make any difference. Our family life went downhill and within months my parents divorced. I lost my grandmother and my Dad the same year. I never raced up and down that Street again.

My hopes and dreams seemed to disappear. The loss of my grandmother and my parent's divorce created a void and sickness within me that I would not be able to correct for many years to come. I thought that all this had something to do with me. So in order to deal with my pain and loneliness and disapproval of myself I found my outlet through food, outside I struggled with the same old feeling of wishing for acceptance, love, to achieve my dreams and goals, to be liked and thought of as athletic, beautiful and popular like the other girls, the road to perfection. Inside I tore myself apart calling myself fat and ugly. I began to gain weight rapidly over the years using food to replace the pain and sorrow I felt inside.

At 15 I found an answer to achieve some of the outward appearance I was looking for. I met a girlfriend at work who loved food as much as I did. She said let's just eat as much as we want and throw it up. So started my years of Bulimia. During these years I fought a battle I did not think was possible to overcome. I dreamed of being like everyone else and wished with all my heart that it would be possible to eat whatever I wanted, like so many of the girls I knew. It seemed that if you were pretty and thin, you would get all the cute boys and find total happiness.

When I was 18 I met my husband to be, who was a good looking, avid athlete and bodybuilder, whom I spent the next 10 years of my life trying to reach the level of perfection and acceptance he thought I should be at. He was not really willing to give me guidance and show me the right way to accomplish these goals. His answer was that I should already be there. At 21 my husband was stationed in Germany on a military tour. It was here I started the quest for status; I was approached one day by the coach of the army powerlifting team whom asked me if I had ever considered weight training. Had I ever, I replied that I had wanted to with all my heart but my husband just expected me to know how. The next couple of years were spent off and on the army powerlifting team and having a baby.

After I had my baby my food habits did not change and I found myself constantly fighting the battle of confusion between what I saw on the outside and what I felt on the inside. It did not help that my husband had now given me an ultimatum (TO get my fat # in shape in three months or he was leaving) I struggled with this for many years until I found myself pregnant with my second child and going through a divorce. I decided while I was pregnant with my son I was going to achieve my dream. I did not understand the first step I needed to take was to ask myself whom was I doing this for (myself or acceptance from society) so I surrounded myself with people I thought would help me achieve this status. I wanted to be loved and thought of as beautiful so bad that I was willing to do whatever it took to reach this level of perfection. The trouble was that I didn't question my values, so when people said jump I said how high. I searched for the answers by what every one else told me was real. I was told drugs and steroids were the only way to achieve this level, so I believed what I was told. I had never really experimented with drugs or steroids before so my answer was to try whatever they suggest. What I didn't realize is that they didn't really know either. It was all about ego. So I blew up and got bigger; all I wanted was to be beautiful and thin, then I would be loved. I couldn't seem to reach this level of perfection.

So I was introduced to a drug that would make it easy for me to never eat if I didn't want too. I now had brought Methamphetamine into my life and moved forward on my quest for perfection by never eating at all. I was going to achieve fitness status. This phase of my life had brought a new understanding of how the world views each other, by what they see with their eyes. I was hooked! My perception and reality of life was distorted because I lived through the worlds eyes and not my own. I was so obsessed with thinness that I stopped eating at all. My game became harder and harder to keep up with. In the mirror all I could see was fat but in reality the world saw me as slipping away. I could not get thin enough.

I remember my mother saw me once after not seeing her for about three months; she starting crying her eyes out! She said, Sherry Marie, you are a skeleton! What are you doing to yourself? What has happened to you? I became very angry and told her that she did not know what she was talking about.

It was just about this time when I had made a decision to move to Las Vegas Nevada. I just knew I was going to be famous. I was going to go out there and be discovered. Now, I had been competing and doing some magazine photo shoots at this point but as fast as I achieved the status I lost it. I felt very lonely and empty inside. My passion for life began to dissolve into a darkness I could not seem to escape from. I started to get very sick; my tolerance for small circumstances in life became harder and harder to deal with. My children didn't understand what I was going through and every time I looked in the mirror I saw the image of a fat girl. I had walked over the edge of life and began to beg to die. What was this world about? Why are we here? Does happiness exist? I hate life! People are out to destroy each other! This is the dialog that started to run through my head.

There were experiences and events that began to happen that all I can do today is share with you. These events and experiences were very real and began to open me up to the reason for us all being here. I mentioned that I no longer wanted to live. I was not able to interact with the world any longer. I could not stand to be in another person's presence. I could not even stand the sound of my own daughter's voice. I very rarely left the house these days and every window and curtain in the house was closed.

When it became time to leave the house because I absolutely had too. The children needed food and whatever I had to get, I started to have experiences that I can only describe like this; it did not matter where I was at the grocery store, the gas station, or the gym. People would come up to me and tell me that God told them to speak to me. It started to happen so often that I thought I was going crazy. I began to beg God more often to kill me.

It was not much longer that I started to experience the visitation of spirits. How can I describe this other then to share it for what it is, the truth! I had had a best friend who had died the year before of drug overdose. He was very close to my children and me but he had begun to escape the pain of the world through drugs. His spirit began to visit me everyday and often. His spirit would plead with me, not to let happen to me what had happened to him. He would share with me my inner beauty and love for the world. He would tell me that I had much to share with the world.

It was not long after this when another spirit would visit me and share the same simple wisdom. I was here for a reason. I could not give up! Her spirit had once been a powerful figure in the world of the physical, but she too had been overcome by her own self-destruction. This spirit was that of Marylyn Monroe. At this point your mind might be thinking how could this be possible? I tell you this is true. I can only share with you the reality of my experience and the effect that it had on me. So strong was her spiritual influence on me, that she would visit me all hours of the day for those weeks before my NDE. It did not matter which room I was in at the time. She would speak to me through the TV, in the kitchen, stairway, and my room. When I would go to the turn the television on, there would be a documentary about her life on the TV.

What she would share with me was her wisdom from life. She told me that my life was very similar to her life. She told me that she too searched for love and acceptance through the world's eyes and through their acceptance. She too lived through the darkness of being surrounded by high powerful people in Las Vegas and other parts of the world. The world of darkness and the status that beauty can bring surrounded by high powerful men. What she began to share with me for the next couple of weeks was her wisdom of life. She told me that love was the only way. She told me always hold on to the love, never forget the love. For Love was our only answer for survival as a human. She told me not to let happen to me what had happened to her. She said that I still had a chance. She told me that Joe Dimaggio had been the love of her life in the time of her human experience. Once again she would share with me her love.

I am sure there will be much to be said about what I have just shared with you. I can tell you this; at this point I thought I was going insane. The events that happened next were two weeks before my NDE are what I still hold dear to my heart until this day. Some of this you might not grasp, but that is ok. I know what is part of me.

It was super Bowl Sunday 1997. I had spent a lot of my time in Las Vegas attracting High Powerful people from New York. They would travel to Las Vegas and I would hang out with them for dinner and company. I had recently started to experience another event in my life that I could not describe. I could read people’s thoughts. I could stand in a room with these men and telepathically read their minds. I could hold a conversation with one man, and hear the conversations of the rest of the group throughout the room. This confused me and I did not understand it at he time.

One of them men in the group that weekend asked me to visit him in his penthouse; he wanted to talk to me. When I arrived at his room he opened the door and asked me to sit down. He stared at me in the eyes for a few minutes, which made me uncomfortable. He then said to me; it's all in your eyes how much you love and care about people but you're a scared little girl. You don't even know who you are, do you? You are a bright star! You search for fame and fortune from the world. But until you can hold your head high and say; I don't care what the world thinks! You'll never be a star; you'll never be anything. Because, you will always care about what the world thinks! Be yourself! I looked into this mans eyes and I could swear I was looking into God's eyes. I could swear that God was speaking to me himself. Two weeks later the answer I found was self-destruction.

On February 13, 1997 I was given a wake up call, a second chance. I nearly lost my life due to bulimia, anorexia and drugs in which I experienced what we would call a near death experience. I like a lot of people who have told similar stories, was shown and told I was being given a second chance to finish my purpose. I was given a gift that no words can ever be spoken to tell you how grateful I am for the chance to share my story with you. I hope that my message will reach out to the people who need to hear it most.

I had found LOVE! I watched my spirit leave my body and release itself from this world of flesh. I could see myself traveling through a tunnel of light that was a freedom it is hard to describe in physical terms. I was moving freely at a high rate of speed, like a bird. Ahead the light became brighter and brighter until it overtook the darkness and left me feeling like I was in a fairy tale of brilliant light. This was the brightest light I had ever seen, but in spite of that. Unlike the pain one might feel when walking into sunlight from a dark room, this light was complete love and soft to my eyes.

It was everything all at once, love, freedom, release, and the oneness of all that we are. Suddenly I was in the presence of powerful spirits and love. I could feel them comforting me and preparing me for what was to come. Their love was that of complete serenity.

Then there was off to my left the source of all power. A powerful Being of Light was in front of me. As I gazed into its essence I could see all shades of color, as if a rainbow had exploded. I thought I was hugged with such a powerful source of love. Like a child held in its mother’s arms.

I felt comfortable in it’s presence, a knowingness that made me believe this energy had felt every feeling I had ever had. Looking at this Being I had the feeling that no one could love me more, no one could have more empathy, sympathy, encouragement, and nonjudgmental compassion for me than this Being. This being Was Love!

The source that was before me knew the pain I had experienced, knew that I wanted nothing more then to help others.

It was there that the source of God communicated with me. The communication was not that of what I could describe the way that you and I communicate here on this planet. But that of power. The knowingness of communication telepathically. I could hear everything through the senses. Spirits whom had lived my life with me in the physical flesh and had passed on before me were there to comfort and love me, as well as a group of spirits, guides and teachers whom all had been there with me to complete my journey and purpose for being on the planet.

Suddenly I was told by the strongest source of energy and love that I had much work to still do on earth. That I had not yet finished my purpose that I was being given the choice of destruction or that of my dreams and goals, my purpose. I was then shown what I can describe today of my life review. Everything that I had experienced in my life as a human up until that point. What I now believe to be what the bible speaks of as judgment day. It is not the brim and fire that seems scary in the bible, but that of an experience of you judging you. The reliving of all your choices, love, hate, anger, infliction on others. The difference is that in those moments that you created pain for others. You relive it as if you were inside them. You feel what it was like to feel the pain from their eyes. I was then given it seemed like a time of reflection on the events of my life. Some time to decide which choice to make.

I was then told that I was being given the choice to stay or to be given a second chance to complete my purpose. I was told that my purpose was a big mission. I was then told that I was being given a blessing to be shown that which I had not yet finished. At this point I could feel this group of beings eliminate or pull from me the negative energy of my life in the physical world and fill me with love beyond what I can describe I remember the scene was shown to me in a fairy tale city and setting. Somewhat like I had always wished for in my life while alive. It was so beautiful, How could I not try? She was so kind and beautiful. I could feel her heart.

At this point I watched a future that began to pass before my eyes as if it were a movie made to describe a fairytale and all that the princess ever wished for was granted. I was told that I was meant to lead that I was a healer sent to earth to pave the way for others to live. I was shown a movie of a woman who came to earth to help people find their own individual greatness. She would become very well known in life for helping people to discover their own uniqueness, movies, TV, publishing, changing the idea of how the world looks at women, opening up spiritual schools for children, helping the world to understand death, the importance of our internal power. I would become a trendsetter, travel to third world countries and open up humanitarian foundations for the homeless and people in tragedy and need.

My greatest creations would be that of opening healing centers for women and children. I would speak all over the world to large groups of people on topics like anorexia, bulimia, drug abuse, sobriety, and how to discover that unique power within.

This whole time I was comforted by the enormous love of the other beings. The spirit of my grandmother was also there. When she was alive, during the last year of her life in physical form. I had been afraid of her. I watched her go from a beautiful woman into a lifeless skeleton. She had died of lung cancer. During her last days, I was afraid to be around her, because she was not the woman I had known. She was frail and scary looking. After her death I had dreams for along time, as if she was haunting me. At twelve years old I had to sleep with my parents. I was sure she was haunting me for me being afraid of her. In my moment of awakening, she was there too. She communicated this memory to me by sharing with me her reason for being there. My grandmother’s spirit shared with me that she was watching over me and protecting me.

The next version the beings showed me was that of a man that was part of my life during these days of darkness. His name was Phil; I was told that I was to share with Phil possibilities that would happen in his own life. Phil was given the same choice as I here in the physical world.

I was then shown, why we are all here. We are here to experience the human experience. I was told if it were religion, we would all be hoping the religion we chose was the right one. We are not here to kill each other. We are here to help each other rise to the higher level of love. I was told I would leave a lasting impression on the world that the world would never forget. My whole life I was taught that sin and Satan was going to come get me if I did something bad. I was told that the sin and Satan we live is that of our own creation. That we are the true essence of God. That we are God creating God. "Ye are Gods." God lives within us and through us. God experiences it all right along with us. This is called free will that the greatest gift we were ever given was to create our own reality. To experience the biggest, grandest version of ourselves.

Teach the world to play, teach them to rediscover the children in themselves, teach the children to love each other and find the power of using their unique greatness together. I obviously chose to try again. I heard in my head that I had made the promise to return and share with the world my story. I was told to tell. I also remember the beings continually spoke to me through the words I AM. The last thing that happened was when I watched my spirit descend back into my body. I could suddenly see myself lying on my bed. I could feel a light coming through the window that was so powerful beyond words. As I watched my spirit return to this body on the bed. I could hear the last words spoken to me; "You must help the world to understand, that they must give of themselves freely without expecting and love is all there is!

When I recovered the people I had surrounded myself with no longer understood me, nor were they willing to grasp the connection we all have with each other. Phil called me crazy and now began to call me Scary . I was shown that Phil would leave me but that he would come back someday, sometime, and somewhere. One month before a court case of Phil's I described to him what would happen in this court case. Guess what? It happened just like I said it would. This only made Phil more afraid of me.

So as painful as it was I took responsibility for my actions and myself. I lost my hair; I went from 100 lbs. to tipping the scale at a whopping 190- lbs. I did not realize that I would not have these promises happen that day. I truly thought the promise the source gave me; that if I came back, all those events would happen that day. I was also told that I would become a very wealthy woman one-day, and that when I was, I would know exactly what to do with the money. I was told by one of the beings that I would never have to worry. That all the right people would come into my life at the right moment to help me move forward. A promise was a promise! Never did I expect to experience the opposite of this vision first. The world deserted me, laughed me called me crazy. I can only share the pain that I felt from this, but I had been given a blessing that no one or no thing can take away. So I decided to let go. I had suddenly recovered, lost all my possessions, my hair fell out from lack of nutrition, I gained almost 90 pounds in two months and I was currently homeless on the streets because my family and friends said; You made your bed, you lie in it. I did not like what I saw or, what I felt inside.

What I felt after kept me going for awhile. The state of absolute bliss I experienced was a feeling of oneness with all things. Once again, the negative energy from the experience of this world was eliminated from in the light. I was filled with love. How do I describe the feeling? Other then to say it is kind of like the movie the Highlander. I am everything, I know everything, and I am one with everything. From the day I recovered and up until now, my gift has been to experience the mystical. The blessing to be in tune with the almighty source of all things. I experience the mystical or my own description of it, is events that occur in our lives that are not easily explained. It could be something as simple as meeting someone in the moment and hearing them say things to you as if God were speaking to you directly through this individual, or hearing people’s thoughts in your head. Another thing I experienced after is I could be in someone’s presence and know what level of love he or she was at. I would know if they were lying or insecure or full of hate. I would have this prickly intense energy shoot up my neck.

An event I can describe in detail is of an experience I had six weeks after my recovery. I had a fitness event to attend in Palm Springs. Now, I had hardly any money left to attend this event but I went anyway. The promoter of the event gave me twenty dollars for gas to drive back to Las Vegas with. I stopped to get gas and realized I was not sure how to drive back to Las Vegas. I asked a man I saw standing on the side of the road if he knew which route to take to get to Las Vegas. He told me to take highway 10 back to Las Vegas.

Now in this day, I was still very new to all this, and in a sense a baby reborn. I drove for quite awhile lost in my own thoughts, when I saw a sign that read Arizona. I thought Arizona! I looked at my gas gage at that moment to see that I was almost out of gas. I knew that I had no money in my bank account and wondered what I was going to do. I pulled over at a gas station just to try and use my ATM card anyway. It read insufficient funds. So what did I do? I started to share my story with people. Yes, many thought I was crazy! I was still very thin at this point. Some people would throw 67 cents at me or 2.00 at me. I would of course put this in the gas tank. I still could not seem to get the right directions from anyone to get back to Las Vegas.

During this experience, I could hear the spirit speak to me and share with me great things I would do in the future. That I would help a lot of people to discover there true selves. I had now been lost for about 10 hours in the desert and seemed to be getting more and more lost. When I came to a gas station in which I heard in my head, try your ATM card. At this point I had just had a man throw 4 dollars worth of quarters at me and tell me I was tweaking! I said to the man, I was tweaking once but now I am high on life. I walked into the gas station store to a least try my ATM card again. I handed the clerk my card to discover that the card gave me $13.00 worth of gas.

I once again got into the car and traveled a distance when I came across a gas station out in the middle of nowhere. There were two old men sitting outside on lounge chairs in front t of the gas station. I pulled up and started crying. I told one of the men that I was lost, hungry, tired and could not seem to get the right directions to get home. He just stared at me for a moment and looked right into my eyes and said; I was sent to give you a message and the message is, "Tell your story, tell it lightly, don't be pushy, but leave an everlasting example and the world will never forget you." I started to cry again and did not know what to think of all of this. I could share many stories of these types of events in my life but this small description is just a simple story of what is going on all the time in our lives that just pass us by, or we neglect to see as reality.
I realized the denial, the blame, and the procrastination had to end. I needed to take control of my life. I had been given a gift, that gift was a second chance. It was about making a personal commitment to myself.

During the next 4 years I experienced adversity more then I can describe. The anger I felt at this source of energy I felt was enormous. I thought, I could I have been shown this to come back and experience ever loving hell. But, just when I was feeling these emotions some message, a person or an experience would happen to give me hope. What continued to drive me was the promise. The possibility of what I was shown. I wanted to be her. She was beautiful and loved people for who they were.

There are two motivating factors that drive us: Seeking pleasure and avoiding pain. This is the underlying picture that drives our attitudes and behaviors. A new life plan was in order. Your perception is the agent that will either hinder your growth or promote it. I needed to wake up and take a good look at myself. There was a whole world just waiting for me to enjoy. It was time for me to start really living and enjoying life. I began to look at my situation as a challenge. Many people think of change as too troublesome. They believe it's a negative aspect of life. Motivation means movement! Motivation means going places, not standing still.

My real challenge was to stick to my goal. When you look at life and it's many challenges as a test, you begin to see each issue you face as an opportunity to grow. I began to make decisions based on personal growth rather than in response to fear or necessity. I spent hours in the library researching religion and trying to understand why there were so many. I realized it doesn't have to take a miracle like I was given to make a change. It takes a little faith, willingness to trust you and the commitment to try something new. We are destined to grow mentally, physically, emotionally, and spiritually. If you convince yourself that change is bad, you are poisoning your future.

I have worked very hard to learn to love and accept myself for who I am on the inside. It has not been easy; it takes hard work! It takes allowing yourself to be human. It takes knowing that you are able, possible and willing. I would tell myself I could be victorious over weight or anything else in life. It has all been done one step at a time. My dream is to be a true role model to women and children and help people realize that anything is achievable at any age when you create from your heart and believe in yourself. When you are ready the teachers will come. The teachers have come one at a time.

I always ask myself; what example do you wish to represent in society? If you were to leave us today, did you accomplish what you set out to do? So here I am, finally here again 5 1/2 years later. I lost 70 lbs. two years ago and competed in my first all natural bodybuilding show in which I placed first in the Ms. Fitness model search and won the pro World Natural Ms. Figure 2000, along with many other dreams and goals.

I have finally learned to be myself at all costs, to trust my higher power to guide me in all circumstances and to surround myself with light like people who are stepping out to take up the important mission of role model in the next millennium to help create a world of unlimited potential full of love. I have recently decided to begin my project of opening women's healing and rejuvenation centers that will target all levels of fitness and brings a variety of fun and challenge to the spirit.

It is definitely 5 ½ years later and I am following my heart. I now know that all this has been for a reason. How could I have been that beautiful woman that day of recovery? She had to experience, heal and grow to share the message. I realize today, I am not here to convince anyone of my reality or what happened to me. I am here to offer hope, spread the message and teach others of what unlimited opportunities live inside them.

Hello. I found your site and am glad that I have
someone I can tell my experience to, it has haunted me
for more than 15 years.

I was living in Greece. While there, I frequently
visited an elderly relative who had in her living room
a large picture of Christ walking with two disciples
in the forest, one could only see the figures from the
back, I presume it is a well-known picture. She used
to grow ivy all around it and I remember thinking: how
tacky....

In August 1985 I had to have gallbladder surgery, also
in Greece. I "awakened" from the anesthesia in a
room, which I presume, was the "recovery" room, quite
primitive. I was in there by myself, no other
patients, and just two nurses. There was a large clock on
the wall and it said the time was 1:20 PM. I was
awake but I was very heavy and I could not breathe.
For a moment it panicked me and then suddenly I no
longer had the need to breathe. I saw the picture I
had previously described come alive, He was walking
with His two deciples and I wanted to go with them.
He suddenly turned around and with his finger motioned
to me to come to Him. I was thinking "Yes, wait for
me, I am coming" I felt euphoric. I was not
breathing and I heard a nurse say in Greek: She is
turning blue.... I felt an oxygen mask on my nose, I
struggled, I did not want it, I wanted to go to where
I was beckoned to come - I felt angry that they
brought me back.

This experience scared me so much that I was not able
to talk about it to anyone for a long time. Finally,
I asked a Greek priest here in town what he thought,
was I to die at that moment? He replied that if it
was a nice experience I should not worry about it.

About 3 years later I mentioned it to a Catholic
Father and told him how scared I was that maybe I had
cheated death. He said to me: "Have you ever thought
that He meant to say: Come walk with me?"
This did make sense and I am convinced He wanted to
tell me to believe in Him and walk with Him. I am
trying to do that and I just wanted to share this
experience with someone who has more knowledge about
these things. I have had anesthesia since and it has
never happened again. I now believe, however, that
there is someone out there looking out for us.
Thank you for letting me share this with you.

While being sedated for knee surgery something went wrong with the anesthesia causing me to go into cardiac arrest. I remember feeling very cold and then very quickly feeling free, carefree, and curious. I was watching the nurses and anesthesiologist talk and work on me from a corner of the OR. The only bright light was the bank of lights in the operating theater. I watched for what seemed like 5 -10 minutes but what was more likely less than a minute. I felt like I was being kept inside the OR though I was curious what was outside.

Then, with no voice nor instruction I felt it was time to go back down to the table and let them see I was OK. I have had no fear of death since then. The next morning the anesthesiologist came to talk to me to tell me I gave her quite a scare. I had seen her at work and knew how she had reacted, I had very pleasant feelings towards her. I pretended I knew nothing of the event.

The experience made me seriously question my religious belief, and gave me the impression that my soul is eternal. I told no one about the experience until 2 years ago when I confided in someone very special to me.

After the experience I have closely watched and listened to others who have had similar experiences and have always felt that mine was somehow incomplete in that I was not attracted to any bright light nor down a corridor or tunnel. I heard no voices and saw no one. I knew it affected me spiritually, but others have had more 'complete' experiences.

I have died twice - both as a result of undergoing, and during, gut surgery. Each was a powerful, renewing experience. I have been left in both instances with the question as to why I came back, since my physical health has been poor since before my first surgery in 1972. By Social Security's definition; I was completely disabled physically 30 years ago, and then again nine years ago when I became officially disabled/retired.

My experiences were both identical. I was drawn into an extremely intense light that is of a power not available to a human world. There was a deep sense of peace, coming home and renewal. Both times, although immersed in the light, I returned to life in response to a call from a source I don't understand today. I know I am here for a reason. Part of that may be sharing something I have learned others would like to know. I'm here today to "help", whatever that means. Understanding the meaning and contributing what I have to give has become my quest and aim.

I had only been married for a short time and was not wanting any more children at the time (I had a daughter, age 10 at this time, from another marriage). I had a IUD in order to prevent getting pregnant. During the night, I woke up, very ill and with high fever. I remember going into the bathroom and passing out. When I came to, my husband was standing over me. I was in the bed and he was screaming at me, and telling me to wake up. He was very scared and later told me he knew I had died.

I remember floating out of my body, toward a bright and beautiful light, feeling such wonderful peace and then I heard a beautiful voice ask me"Do you want to stay or go back" I answered "go back to take care of my daughter". Then I was awake and saw my husband standing over me, scared beyond words.

The ambulance attendants came later and took me to the hospital. I was in the hospital for 10 days and had a severe infection from the IUD. I never forgot that NDE experience and told no one for years.

Sometime later, I got pregnant and had a baby boy. His father and I divorced and I was granted custody of my son. The summer of 1989, I let him go stay with his dad and while riding his bike, my son was hit and killed instantly. I was out fishing when I saw the sheriff and some friends driving up. I knew right then before they arrived, that it was for me, that they were coming to tell me something about my children. The sheriff told me that my son had died and how. It was very bad. The minute I was told about his death and the circumstances, I had some sort of a peace, knowing how death really was--peaceful, serene, and glorious. That is the only reason I probably did not completely lose my mind from knowing the circumstances of his death.

I have since related this story to a magazine (maybe Life) years ago when they did a study about NDE’s. I have talked to many groups of parents since then that have also lost children and am able to tell them about my experience in hopes of giving them some comfort. I do not mind if you tell my story in the hopes that it can help others. I think I have described about all the details that I can remember and as accurate as I can remember. This is one thing I do know--I will never doubt that this was a true experience and that "strange" things like this do happen.

Why me, I do not know. I do know, that because of different things my son had said to me as he was growing up, I sometimes suspected that he was not going to stay long on earth. I would tell myself I was crazy and would forget about it or at least try to.

One thing that I did do because of this experience,.. My uncle was dying a very painful and horrible death. I stood at his bedside and talked to him, telling him to go ahead and cross over, that it was okay and he would be at peace. He died right then and looked very peaceful. A nurse was with us and she witnessed this experience. Thanks and hope this can be of some use to you.

I can remember it as yesterday. Me and my cousins were playing by the pool and they pushed me in. I remember struggling to stay afloat.

Then I was looking down at my reflection. It was so calm and peaceful as I slowly sank to the bottom of the pool. I could hear my heart beat. I saw my aunt come out of the house and running towards me.

As soon as she grabbed me I blanked out. As I came to she had given me CPR. I remember people's voices during the time she was giving me CPR.

On Aug 25, 1998 I had spinal surgery to correct flatback syndrome. A condition caused by the Harrington rods I had placed in my spine to correct scoliosis some twenty years before. My surgery was planned to be two procedures lasting approximately 10-12 hours where my surgeons were to access the back and later front of my body. Five hours into the posterior procedure something went wrong. I started to have excessive bleeding. To try to stabilize me the doctors started to give me large amounts of fluids, blood, and blood by-products. When it was all over I had received 9 liters of saline, 15 units of blood, platelets, albumin, clotting factors, and fresh frozen plasma. Still my heart rate was 240 beats per minute and my blood pressure was only 70 palp. My lungs filled with fluid and I was literally drowning. My doctors terminated the procedure and were not sure whether I would survive. I awoke many times that night choking on the fluid in my lungs, needing to have it suctioned out.

The next morning, I know it was morning because I could see the sunlight from windows in my room. I was looking around when a very strange feeling overcame me. At first I felt a bit cold, especially in my legs. The coldness seemed to start there and move up my body. Once the coldness covered me a feeling of peace, comfort and love encompassed me. I had NEVER felt anything like this before. There are not words to describe just how I felt. It was the absolute best feeling I had ever experienced.

I closed my eyes and was emersed in a state of total peace. I had no pain. I could no longer feel the respirator breathing for me, I no longer felt my many incisions, nor was I any longer aware of having my hands tied to the bed. It was as if none of what had happened to me existed. All the tubes and drains, all the machines and noise where gone.

God then started talking to me. He told me all that had gone wrong. He told me just how sick I was. He told me he knew I had wanted to end my life before the surgery and that he understood how much pain, disability and depression, I had suffered. He let me know he was very aware of how hard I had fought. He offered me a choice. He told me he had come to me to show me what death was like, that there was nothing to be afraid of. He said, the way I was feeling would be how I would feel for all of eternity. He told me all the pain and suffering would be over. I could rest if I were to follow him. The feeling was so wonderful, so peaceful, so calm, SO perfect.

The other choice was, I could return to the world and work my way through the pain and the long recovery. If I decided to do that, he said he would always be with me and nothing else would go wrong. It was my choice to make. He did make it clear that what ever I decided he would stand by me. He was satisfied, and I could be also, that I had tried my best. I was so overwhelmed by this wonderful state there was NO way I was going to turn my back on it. Yes, I was ready to die! Yes, I had had enough! Yes, I had fought the best fight I could and was more than willing to follow and enjoy this fantastic new experience.

He then instructed me to just close my eyes. Funny, they were already closed, but I did as instructed and imagined them closing. Just as my lids were coming together the face of my, eight year old, daughter flashed in front of my eyes. I had had a brief thought of my husband before that but, I discounted it immediately. He was a grown man and though my leaving him would be hard he would be able to survive without me. My daughter, no! My eyes flew open in my mind and I started to scream in my head. NO, NO, NO, I will NOT!!! leave my children alone, I also had an 11 year old son. Do not ask me how I know, but at that moment God smiled at me. I did not see a face or a form but I felt the smile and its warmth radiate through my whole body. God had not influenced me directly he had let me make my own decision. Maybe he put the image of my daughter before my eyes. I will never know. All I DO know is he was happy with my decision and I could feel it. I had become rather self-centered before the surgery, the struggle to live was my entire focus and my family had taken a back seat.

The warmth stayed with me a short time. Then suddenly with a jolt I could hear and feel all the machines again. The pain had returned. My hands were tired. The respirator whooshed. I opened my eyes and could see the hospital room. The first real day of my long recovery had begun. I spent several more days on the respirator till the fluid cleared from my lungs. A week after the first surgery I returned to the operating room and they finished the anterior portion. I bled again and needed six more units of blood but I knew I was in no real danger. God was present all of the time watching over me.

I went home from the hospital 4 days post op to celebrate my daughters ninth birthday.
Then three weeks post-op, while rolling over in bed, I dislocated two disks in my neck. I returned to the hospital. This pain was terrible and nothing controlled it. They tried morphine and trigger point injections. I screamed at God that he had lied to me. I was angry and very disappointed in him. He had not told me the whole truth. He had said my recovery would be long and hard. He had told me it was going to take all my strength to accomplish, but he had said nothing else would go wrong and here I was three weeks post-op and in terrible shape. Looking at another fusion surgery. How could he let this happen? How could he have abandoned me so soon?

It took me months to realize he had not abandoned me at all. He was giving me a reminder. I had been treated to a special gift. I had lived through it and forgotten about it as soon as it was over. I had not learned my lesson. I was embarrassed to tell others what had happened to me. I thought it was hokey. Being an ER nurse I had always wondered if near death experiences were real and here I had had one and wanted to forget about it.

Finally I spoke to the hospital chaplain. She told me indeed what I had experienced was just what I thought it was. We talked a long time. Still it took me many more months before I could tell others or share my experience.

God and I have had many discussions since that time, many good ones and many angry ones. The hard part of my recovery took over two and a half years. I am now almost 4 years post op and still struggle some days but have come to terms with my new life and the fact that I have a very special relationship with God.

I have returned to work, doing clinical research, and have told some of my patients, their families and/or other staff members about what happened to me. Assuring those facing possible death there is nothing to fear. The comfort I see in their faces as I describe the sensations and peace, as my tears flow down my cheeks, is what I was meant to do with my return. I reassure them grieving is for the living not the dead. We all miss those we loose. That pain is real, but those who go with God enjoy a state few of us living will ever know.

I will try to be as brief as possible.

In June of 1991, I was bitten by a brown recluse spider. I was hospitalized the day after and treatment began. I proved to be allergic to the medication used and my condition worsened. I started massive hemorrhaging and was transferred to another facility, which was better equipped to handle the situation. I was placed in Medical ICU and transfusions were started to replace the lost blood. I was comatose during all this time. I was not aware of being moved to another hospital until awakening five days later.

At some point during this time, I found myself crossing a bridge. I seemed to be leaving an area of darkness and the bridge led to a place of brilliant white light. On reaching the halfway point of the bridge, I observed a group of people in white clothing, possibly robes, who seemed to be engaged in a discussion of some sort. They were bathed in this white light which seemed to have no particular source. Everything on the light side of the bridge seemed to have the glow about it. As I paused on the bridge, one of the people looked up at me. I recognized him as a man I had met about three year’s prior. He held up his hand as if wishing me to stop my approach. He stepped away from the group who continued their activity, whatever it might have been. The man did not approach, but spoke to me and told me that my work was not complete and that I must return for a time.

At some point after this, I regained consciousness. My wife told me that the doctors were considering stopping my heart and putting me on life support to give my body a chance to rest. They were afraid I would exhaust all possibility of surviving if this were not done. Before they could proceed, I began to show improvement. This came within minutes of the procedure being started.

I was eventually moved to a room where I could have visitors. Two friends of mine who were mutually acquainted with the person I had seen informed me of his death, which had occurred a few days before I was hospitalized. Since he lived in another state there had been no communication between us in at least two years. I was unaware of his death until they told me about it.

I cut and pasted this from my online diary...I never spoke of this experience before writing it there this year. I wonder why I waited so long?
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3/9/2002

When I was in my early twenties, I had something resembling a 'cancer scare'. I had precancerous cells on the cervix of my uterus, and I required a procedure called a 'cone biopsy'. This is typically not a dangerous procedure, but one must take care, afterwards, to avoid interfering with the surgery site...no bathes, no sex, no heavy lifting......


You'd think these were simple instructions, eh?


The 'No Bath' directive was easy....showers could take care of the daily requirement for cleanliness.


'No sex' seemed like a no brainer (“Are you nuts!"), after genital surgery...

but as the week wore on, and the initial discomfort gave way to a low ache and swelling in my vagina, I had a crazy, reminiscent quality to my walk... somewhat like a female cat, after a great night on the town. I sauntered around, 4 or 5 days after the fact, purring.


Life should always be like that...lol....


The prohibition I had difficulty sticking to was the 'No heavy lifting".

I had a toddler.

We heated the house by wood.

7 days after the surgery, I was hitching the baby on one hip, and loading in the wood on the other... absolute Earth Mother....if I had been an Aboriginal woman, I'd have been doing it half-hour after the surgery. (That's the stereotype, eh?. That's the illusion, lol...)


I went to bed that night, and awakened (luckily) in a small pool of blood. When I stood, the flood of red grew.

I held sanitary pads to myself, but they were spent in a very short time. I held baby diapers, and then towels, and then glasses from the cupboard to myself, to catch the flow. I realized I was bleeding to death. I called the ambulance, set out a flashing light on the rural road, and awakened a neighbor to watch my child.

The emergency folk arrived, took my story, and we set out for the 1 hour drive to the hospital.

On the way I lost about half my blood before losing consciousness.


Dying.... Or dead?


All I know, is I went from being terribly bone deep chatteringly cold and bleeding in an ambulance, to the brightest and warmest place imaginable. These are not facile descriptors... the light was like an explosion of golden yellow, accompanied by the most exquisite warmth. It is not enough to say it enveloped me...it WAS me, a mellow sun, a languorous day, a paradise of contentment. All was one. It was the most sublime pleasure I have ever felt. I basked in this place, even as I thought... "I am dying"....

I thought of my death at the same time

I thought of my life...but I was not thinking. Everything was happening at the same time... the sensuous basking in this beautiful light, my death, my life...


I was afraid for my daughter...


the EMT waved an ammonia ampule under my nose, I came back to the ambulance, and I gave them the phone number for my parents.

We arrived at the hospital, they repaired the erupted cervical artery, and took me off the oxygen. My blood was drawn, my values were low, and they gave me 2 units of packed cells.


I think of this as the time I almost died, or the time I decided not to die.

I am fascinated by the near death experiences of others. The random firings of an underperfused brain or Heaven?

Tales of the light and the tunnel and the beckoning figures....

And even as I vote in favour of the 'lack of oxygenated blood to the brain' Vs 'Heaven', I wonder...


What benevolent thing makes our last minutes like this:

welcoming

light

warm

and full of joy?

I had been suffering from depression for about a year. After 3 months of the diagnosis, I had my first overdose. However, it was nothing serious.

Six months later my boyfriend of a year and half finished with me. I had no money, no place to go, no friends . I was far from close to my family. My dad had been beating me up for 12 years since the age of six. I was really upset about the whole situation. My boyfriend could not handle my depression anymore. I could not handle dragging him down with me anymore. I knew that never in this world could I let him live his life cause I loved him too much . I didn't want to be a burden on anyone so, I decided that there was nothing left for me here. All I had was an underpaid job, no friends, no family and now no one who loves me anymore. I had to face facts that I’ve done my job here, worked hard to get somewhere in life but, always to no avail.

I tried calling 4 people. I could not get through to any of them and took that as a sign. I didn't call my boyfriend cause he would think I was doing that for attention cause he was out with his mates (we were living together).
Since there was no one to help me out, I decided it was time to die. I wrote a note to my family saying that I love them and to my boyfriend saying that I did this for me not for him cause I needed to rest. (Which none of them read it anyway cause the police have it and still no one knows about it)

I got myself forty two (42) ecstasy pills went back home put a Daft Punk CD full on, it was Monday September 17 2001 06.00am, put the pills on the bed and counted them again. I was sure it was going to be over soon.
I took twenty then five mins later took another 20. I was dancing really fast and went on the bed, found another 2 and took them as well.

Till then the only effect I was feeling was from the xtc pills so I called my mum to tell her I love her cause I knew that she was going to be really hurt. She told me 'come and visit tonight yeah?' That broke my heart but still didn't change my mind . I started feeling weaker and my knees were shaking uncontrollably and I was crawling on the floor to the settee. I managed to lie down I was feeling good, really good. My whole body was shaking like crazy. Four hours later my boyfriend and two friends came in, he was hysterical and I was reassuring him that I was fine and I knew what I was doing and that he should continue his life alone as he really wished and that I did this for me.
He called his mum and the ambulance.

While waiting, there was this sound in my head like really strong wind and I started seeing nice things which I don't have a clue what they were. There was a force that was like pulling me out of my body and I felt calm just calm. I knew it was time to go and it felt nice all I had in mind was no more rent to
pay, no more car installments no more hard work for pay, no more heartbreaks, no more problems. People will get hurt by what I did but, time will heal everything.

The ambulance took ages so my boyfriend decided to go with my car. I was slipping away, the light was getting brighter and his friend was slapping me so I would stay awake.

Last thing I remember was going to the hospital. The light was getting brighter. The force was pulling me up and even though doctors were calling my name I felt I had to go.

Then I woke up 3 days later and doctors said it was a miracle they were just waiting for me to die!

As a precursor to the story below, I feel that I should mention that I don't have a history of mental illness in my family. I have never acted in a manner described below before this experience. I had been depressed, but was feeling alot better. My wife and I had had marital problems, and divorce was something I often thought about.

---

After the fireworks show on July 4th 2002, My wife (who was pregnant and not feeling well) and I returned home. Just before she retired to the bedroom to go to sleep, She reminded me to take my Prozac--, as I had been bad about NOT taking in the past weeks. I did as she requested, then went to our family room to watch some television.

Some time passed, and I realized that my wife had fallen asleep. I decided to walk down our neighborhood street to see if some friends were having a party-- Highly likely since most Friday and Saturday nights warrant a party at their home.

There were several new faces at the party... and most were under the influence of alcohol, pot, or both. It appeared that I had some catching up to do--- and the beer had run dry.

I have only ever used illicit drugs on two occasions: this particular night... and one night about a month preceding (same person's home-- both during parties, both times=just pot).

It wasn't long before the pipe made it's way to me. I decided that if I were going to stay, I had to join in-- so I took my first hit.

The party went pretty much as parties go... Jokes, talk of buying more beer, horsing around, etc. From what I can remember, the pipe made it's way to me between 2 and 5 times. At some point, one of the guys rolled a joint-- and I took 2 or 3 drags of it. Next came the invitation to go inside for hits off the bong-- and mixed drinks.

Someone mixed up a rum and coke for me while I used the bathroom. I got lucky to get a seat at the table, as there were several folks standing. While I drank, the bong made its way to me 2 or 3 times. The Last time, I took a very large drag--- and wound up having a coughing fit afterwards.

As the last hit had its effects on me, I sat looking at the faces around the room. I noticed that I hadn't moved my entire body for quite some time-- only looking around with my eyes. I decided it would be fun to see how long it would be before someone noticed that I hadn't moved... so much time had passed, without being noticed, that eventually I worried that I couldn't move. With that, I made an effort, and got up.

It couldn't have been 3 minutes after I stood up that the party all of a sudden ended. I felt worried that I wasn't going to be able to make it home (only living 6-ish houses down the well lit street). I finally mustered the courage to walk home-- but only after the last folks left.

My walk home was uneventful-- I made it OK enough. I walked upstairs to the family room, removed my belongings from my pockets, undressed, and laid myself in the reclining chair to go to sleep.

As I lay in the chair, I felt as if every thing that I did required a deliberate action--- even breathing. I decided that before I closed my eyes to sleep, that a prayer was in order, so I proceeded to say the "Our Father"......

While saying my prayer, I either fell asleep or passed away-- I am not sure which. I remember saying "Lord forgive me for I have sinned" over and over. Eventually I realized that these words were not part of the "Our Father"... I tried to stop, and I couldn't. I could only keep repeating "Lord forgive me for I have sinned" in a pathetic tone over and over and over and over. After what seemed like repeating this phrase several hundred or thousand times, I feared that I was dead.

All around me was pitch darkness. I felt as if I was swimming endlessly upwards and if I was being constricted. All the time ...Lord forgive me for I have sinned. Lord forgive me for I have sinned... I thought of my family. This wasn't how I wanted to die! I thought about my pregnant wife, and my 2 children who were visiting grandparents in another state. OH how it saddened me to think of these things!

My next conclusion was that I was in Purgatory- a place that isn't Heaven nor Hell... but where souls go to be punished for their sins before being let into Heaven.

As this thought sunk in, I started to deliberately change the tone of my speech- "Lord FORGIVE ME for I have sinned". The more I thought about God and faith and my family, the more passionate I became in my efforts of saying "Lord FORGIVE ME FOR I HAVE SINNED".

During this entire time, I kept thinking about my family. About how I hadn't seen my children in 2 weeks. Although I couldn't change what I said, I had control over my thoughts. As I was yelling with fierce anger and passion; I thought to myself "Lord please give me another chance".

With that, I Yelled as loud as I could "LORD FORGIVE ME FOR I HAVE SINNED!!!!!" it sounded as if a choir-boy had yelled it in song-- and for a split second I saw an orangish-yellowish light, and I woke up in the Chair, still yelling at the top of my lungs the phrase I had repeated what seemed like millions or billions of times.

After yelling 3 or 4 more times, I realized that I was standing in the darkness of our family room. I stopped yelling and asked, "Alicia, are you awake?"

From the bedroom in a sleepy/irritable voice "Yes..?..!"

"Have you heard what I've been saying?"

"Yes... God forgive me for I have sinned. You were yelling it. Why were you yelling it?"

>From here I proceeded to explain the night's events and my dream/experience (?) to her.

As I explained to her, I felt as If the words I said were not controlled by myself. I felt an urgency to talk-- and all she wanted to do was sleep!

She told me over and over that I was frightening her, and to let her sleep. I didn't want to frighten her, but felt as though I MUST keep talking.

I asked about calling our Priest... she mentioned that there was a Mass at 9 in the morning, and I could talk to him then-- That wasn't acceptable, I had to keep talking!

She suggested that I call my Sister on the West Coast (a source of religious advice-- most of the time unwanted). I exclaimed, "That's a GOOD idea."

I sought out the phone... Changing my actions seemed deliberate, and my body felt as though it badly wanted to rest-- but I feared that I would surely perish if I didn't stay awake.

I used the caller-id phone to redial her number. My sister's husband answered the phone-- where I proceeded to tell my entire story again.

I kept them on the phone for 2 or 3 hours, sometimes yelling, sometimes crying... all the time praising the Lord, and insisting that I had been granted a special grace by God. At some point I concluded that the only reason that I was alive was because I asked for a second chance.

I still felt as though my words and actions were not being controlled by myself. At the time, I was positive that God was speaking though me. Looking back at the situation, it's possible (perhaps likely) that the drugs controlled my actions.

My wife, sister, and brother-in-law kept insisting that I get some sleep. And my wife desperately wanted to talk to my family without talking to me. I suggested that they call the police, surely I had gone mad-- and I thought that that would give me a fresh audience (as I wasn't getting through to them).

After what I guess I felt was too much hesitation, or perhaps losing control of the conversation, I walked out the front door (now 3ish AM) and proceeded to ring doorbells and bang on the front doors of my neighbors.

>From here the story only gets worse. I did many irrational things that night/morning.

I had convinced myself that I was a prophet, or saint... and that I would save the world. My tiresome neighbors didn't appear to believe me, so I convinced myself that I could not die-- and threw myself at an oncoming car.

There's a whole lot more to the story, but the significant parts have all been mentioned. The events that followed included the police, an ambulance and fire-crew, ..Trip to the hospital, and a trip to the psychiatric emergency room. I was released the on the 5th at 2:30PM after being determined to be sane. The Doctor that examined me concluded that the pot must have been laced with something

It was a gorgeous summer day and traffic was heavy on the freeway. I was driving our mini-van. I was pretty stressed. My husband and I had just returned from out of state the night before with his mom, dad and their 3 dogs. His dad had a stroke the week before and they were going to stay with us while he recovered. (It ended up being a whole year.) I should probably tell you we had 6 children living at home (between the ages of 17 thru 5) and a dog of our own at the time. Life had thrown us all a curve but we were handling things as they came along. We have always taught our children that family is important. I had to pick up my paycheck so I could go food shopping before going to work at 3p.m. I was on a tight but doable schedule. God had a different plan and a wonderful sense of humor…

A car was in the median strip (on the left) with a flat tire and a group of Boy Scouts was sitting on the grass. I had been going with the flow of traffic in the high-speed lane when the car in front of me slowed to go into the grassy median to help them. As I put my foot on the brake to slow down I looked in my rearview mirror and saw the grille of a semi. Not the semi …the grille of the semi.

It was literally, my worst nightmare. I was horrified and panicked. I remember saying out loud “I cannot believe I’m going to die today!” It was about 3 seconds from the time I saw him until I was hit but those 3 seconds changed my life and me completely.

Immediately time stopped …it became eternal. I was alert, oriented and still driving throughout the entire process. I was in my body but was taken out of Earths time frame. There was no sound …all was quiet and calm. I spoke out loud throughout the entire conversation while His replies were in the form of thoughts placed in my head. With time stopping came a huge feeling of enormous love that just kept growing stronger and stronger. The panic was replaced with love that gave me such a calm feeling and I was no longer afraid. I was being hugged, big time! I had never felt love like this before. Instinctively, I knew this was God. Think of someone who loves you dearly… now multiply that feeling by about a million and maybe you will come close to how loved I felt. I could feel that there were also 2 others with me. I can’t explain how I know this but one was my grandmother. It took 7 years to figure out who the other was. I didn’t know who it was at the time!
and I will share how I found out later in this story. I really wanted to cry but there was no time.

Most of us go through our lives being taught to believe in God. I was brought up in a very strict Catholic household by parents who did not live what they demanded from us. OK… I did believe, but I was very angry with him because of my abusive childhood and life in general. Now I had been given proof (enough for me) that there really is a God. The next words out of my mouth were “Oh, sh#*! I screwed this up! There really is a God!” I was mortified at my language and this knowledge. I quickly said “Oh …sorry!” His reply to me was even greater love and a feeling of “My child, calm down, everything is just fine.” I actually felt like His child and it was a very safe and warm place. He has very loving and gentle hands.

With that, placed in front of me to see and feel was a review of my life … in color. I had to see and feel all the good I had done (and the good I didn’t even know I did). I actually could feel the joy each person felt when I touched their life in a loving way. I was getting “caught” doing something right for once in my life. During the good he was telling me “I am so proud of you!” I felt such joy for making Him so proud because I never realized what that felt like because I always felt like I couldn’t do anything right. Reviewing my random acts of kindness gave me the most joy because I was able to feel the difference I made in someone’s life that I hadn’t realized at the time …and I didn’t even know them. Little acts of kindness mean so much to God.

Also, I had to see and feel all the hurtful things I had done (even the hurtful things I didn’t know I did). I had to feel the persons’ hurt I caused. But… you know how they say in prayers that we will stand before God and be judged one day? …God was not judging me. I was looking at my actions…with God at my side loving me while I was judging myself …and believe me, no one can judge me any harsher than I already judge myself. It was like getting “caught” by my parents when doing something wrong. During the hurtful review I was so ashamed and there was no hiding. He was asking me “What different choices could you have made? What are you learning from this?” Not yelling at me and saying “How could you do that!?” or, “You’re going to Hell!” This was clearly not the punishing God I had been taught to believe in. The hardest part of this was realizing He had already forgiven me …I was having a hard time forgiving myself. He showed me how I couldn’t let His love in!
without, first, forgiving myself. Punishing myself didn’t make me better in His eyes, accepting His love was what He wanted from me. Once I was able to accept that God only loved, it was easier for me to openly and honestly look at my life. I wanted to learn as much as I could… I had so many questions. God loves me the way I love my children. Even when they do something wrong I still love them. I’m not happy with their actions but that doesn’t change my love for them. I hurt for them and …I make them take responsibility for their actions.

I had taken parenting classes and read all I could find so I wouldn’t make the same mistakes my parents did raising kids. He showed me that even though I wasn’t physically abusing my kids, I was killing them with my words. That is just a bad. I could feel their pain. I felt like such a failure. I just kept repeating, “I’m so sorry” over and over again. He just kept on loving me.

When the Life Review was over He placed in front of me why I came to Earth. I was so amazed. I was floored at how important we all are to God …especially how important I was to God. I didn’t think He knew I even existed. All the years I was beating myself up and His question to me was “Why would I go through all the trouble to make you just the way you are if I wanted you to try and be like someone else?” No one else could do the job I came here to do the way He wanted me to do it! That is why it is so important that we not be so judgemental of each other. Some of us are here to teach, some to learn and some to do both. He let me ask him questions. My first one was how could He give me the parents I had? I was shown why I had the parents, childhood and life I had. I asked for it!!! It was so clear to me …I had to go through it all to learn what I needed to learn and be able to continue my work here. I was making a lot of wrong choices because I wasn’t list!
ening to or trusting myself. I was doing what I thought I was supposed to be doing. I felt like a little mouse in a maze trying to find my way but I wasn’t getting anywhere. I understood that Earth is school and when we are done we take a final exam (the life review) and then we get to graduate and go back home. Everything made so much sense. The lesson was so simple ...it's all about love. How much God loves us and how well we love ourselves and others.

Finally, He showed me what I still had left to do. I remember saying so matter of factly “I can do that!” I really wanted to do it. I believe I was shown this to help me make a decision because the next thing in front of me was “Do you want to stay or go?” Wow, I get a choice?

Even though my good far outweighed my bad (and I wanted to stay in His loving embrace) I desperately needed to fix the hurtful things if I had a chance to. I didn’t want to leave so many things undone before I had to leave. I also wanted to live on this Earth knowing God loved me. I replied, almost in a whisper and very very reluctantly, “But I have to stay.”

My only regret is that I said that statement so fast because the second I said that the whole “movie” in front of me closed up and my conversation with God was over. One second I was having a wonderful visit with God, my grandmother and a friend from the other side. I could even picture us having a cup of coffee together during this conversation. Only …my hands were gripped tightly on the steering wheel of the van, I was still driving and I was thinking, “I cannot believe this is happening to me!!!!” I couldn’t believe how much I had learned in 3 seconds. I had so many unanswered questions. I wanted more time. I wanted more love. I didn’t want this to end. I couldn’t believe all the things my brain could do at one time. I was disappointed that I didn’t get to “see the light” because I could feel the edges all around me …but I had made my choice. Suddenly it was over.

I was literally forced (pushed) back into reality ...Earths’ time. Everything but His love, my grandmother and friend was gone. “Gee whiz!” In my head I was told, “Take your foot off the brake and floor the gas.” I didn’t ask any questions and just did as I was told. As I hit the car in front of me the semi hit me. I clipped the car and sent it safely into the median. The truck did not jackknife. I drove about 100 feet more and went into the median and stopped because I wasn’t sure what was going to happen and didn’t want to be in the middle of it.

The thing I want to stress here is that if I had said I wanted to go, I would have been gone before the accident even happened. My family would have thought I died a horrible death being run over by a semi. The reality was that my body would have died a horrible death, not me. At the point of impact I was still being hugged safely in my cocoon of God’s love. I did not feel the accident at all. It was a different story a few hours later … I refused to go to the hospital because I felt fine. NEVER make that stupid decision. It is always a good idea to be checked out after an accident.

I sat in my van with the whole back blown out of it and kept hugging myself because I didn’t want to lose the feeling of tremendous love I had been given by God because it was still with me. I was also afraid to look back and see what had happened. Being a nurse, I felt it was my duty to help with the injured but I just couldn’t handle one more thing.

I have no idea how long it took for the police to get there but when the policeman opened the door of my van (I was still trying to breathe) I burst into tears. The cocoon of love evaporated when he opened the door. It took him awhile to figure out I was physically unhurt. The feeling of God’s love was just a memory now and emotionally I fell apart. His comment was “I don’t know how you did it, but you saved a lot of lives today because no one is hurt.” I couldn’t tell him what happened. It was hard for me to believe it myself. For once in my life I was speechless and that doesn’t happen very often to me. Just ask anyone who knows me.

Hours after the accident I started to hurt all over my body and I couldn’t move my neck. My husband took me to the emergency room that night. The doctor was surprised that I “only had whiplash”. The staff was marveling at why I was still here. I knew exactly why I was still here. I chose it. I didn’t say one word to anybody (not even my husband) because I knew if I told them what had happened to me they would admit me to the psychiatric floor! I didn’t think anyone would believe me.

Also, I said earlier that I was clearly shown my purpose here on Earth and the work I had left to do, during my Life Review. When the accident was over I couldn’t remember why I chose to come here or what I had left to do. It’s still, right on the tip of my tongue. The knowledge was taken away as soon as I said "I have to stay". So I am back to a little mouse in a maze with everybody else trying to find my way.

When things get really tough I remember what I said that day “I can do that.” It keeps me grounded and moving forward. I know for a fact that God is really watching me and I love to make him proud.

I keep a first grade picture of myself at my bedside to remind me every morning that I am a child of God. When I am faced with a difficult situation I stop a second to decide what I am going to do because I do not want to review it in a hurtful way again. I’m not perfect but I really try hard to do the right thing.

As a postscript you need to know that my husband totaled my car 7 days before this accident with me in the car. We both walked away from that accident unhurt. There was no Near Death Experience for either one of us that day. I was still pretty upset with him about losing the car. It was my first car, the one I picked out and the registration had my name on it. I loved that car. Talk about screwed up priorities. If he had not totaled my car… instead of driving an Astro Van I would have been driving a Mazda 323. This is just more proof of why I believe everything happens for a reason. There would have been no choices that day. That semi would have gone right over the top of me.

Before the accident, I had a hard time praying. Now I talk to Him the same way I carry on a conversation with anybody else (anytime and anywhere). In fact, after the first accident a week before the truck accident, I walked out to the middle of my front yard. I screamed at the sky “I know they say that God doesn’t give us anything more than we can handle. But you are blowing it, big time, right now. So just come down here and tell me what you want me to do and I will do it so you can leave me the hell alone!” My poor husband took me by the arm saying, “Come inside, the neighbors are watching.” I really had no idea He was listening to me so be careful what you ask for because I found out, very unexpectedly, just how much He cared about me. I don’t need to scream at Him anymore. I understand what he was trying to tell me now. I received his answer loud and clear.

The whole year after my accident was probably one of the hardest years of my life and I often wondered why I was stupid enough to stay here and not leave when I had the chance. I kept yelling at myself “What the heck were you thinking!?” Now, looking back at what I learned and how blessed I am today, I am so glad I stayed. When I see the rays of sun stream through the clouds (The Holy Spirit) sometimes I get really homesick. To me, God is The Light. That is Him reminding me to remember how much He loves me and I am never alone. And one day I’ll get to go back to Him forever. Until then I plan on having a good time. I look at every obstacle as an adventure now and I’m always looking for the lesson. It’s a wonderful game. Life is so much easier this way.

Probably the toughest thing for me after my NDE and working with the dying is that I am a church orphan. It is so difficult for me to sit still during the mass and not stand up and scream "No, you guys, he's lying ...this isn't how it works!" I have tried quite a few different religious services but I haven't found one that feels like home. Actually I feel like I go to church 12 hours, 2 days a week (at work). I would love to find a church where other people understand what I understand.

About my friend from the other side:
Two days after the accident, with my cervical collar on and a very sore body, I went to church. I had some serious thanking to do. Before mass, a lady I know came up to me and asked me about my accident. One of her questions to me was “Who was with you?” I replied timidly “uh …God and my grandmother.” She smiled and asked “Who else?” I was very reluctant to tell her, but I told her about my mystery friend from the other side anyway. She didn’t think I was nuts and told me I could find out their name by asking. I was very skeptical but I felt much better after talking with her. After mass another lady I didn’t know came up to me and asked me about the accident …we had almost the same conversation! I was not the only one this had happened to. We were connected by a shared experience... a Near Death Experience. They knew what I knew! They both had the names of the persons with them.

Well, I asked on a daily basis for a while and finally gave up trying to get the name of this person who is actually still with me. Seven years later I was watching a TV program that was about Near Death Experiences and our Spirit Guides from the other side. They explained a different way of asking for a name. That night before I went to bed I asked, out loud, to be given their name in a dream and please help me remember it in the morning. My brain woke up first before my eyes opened and I had a name in my head just like the conversation I had with God during my Life Review. I was given the name Amy. How I knew this was real is that when I tried to argue with it, it just kept getting louder and more insistent in my head. Most of my family and friends all have names now. Some have more than one and a few were given the names by just asking (like I was told to do 7 years before). The more I am open to the possibility of help from the other side, the more help I a!
m given. I stopped trying to explain everything away. I talk to Amy all the time. If you are not sure you have someone with you, let me explain it this way. When I am having a problem with something, I go to sleep and dream about it and when I wake up in the morning I have an answer to my problem. That is Amy helping me. There are a lot of times that I don’t even have to go to sleep to get an answer now. Her help has been, and still is, priceless to me. I look forward to seeing her again, one day.

I was having an Asthma attack, and got steadily worse WITHOUT REALISING IT. I eventually reached a point where I knew I was in trouble, so I lay down in front of my door so that my body would be found, and a being of light that glowed like the sun appeared in front of me. The background was a pure white, and gave off the occasional flash of what looked like lightning. The being was a male. He told me by THOUGHT that the World was now in the time called Armageddon, and few people knew it. I then saw a Chinese soldier in a state of hell. I had the STRONG impression that the end of the World culture as we know it was coming to a spectacular end VERY SOON.

I climbed out of my crib in the middle of the night. I remember falling and hitting the floor. The next thing I remember is watching my mother and father run into the room and pick me up. I was watching from higher up, kind of like I was back in my crib looking down at myself. I never talked about this until I was in my teens (not for any specific reason), and I can describe exactly what happened (how my body was laying on the ground, who came in the room first, etc.) to my parents. When my mother picked me up, is pretty much the end of the experience. She did say I was not breathing when she picked me up. She shook me and I started breathing again. I saw no bright lights or people or anything. I just felt like I was in my room at night looking down at myself from my crib.

Sometimes I wonder if I just over heard someone talking about this and I generated the imagery in my head????

Hard to explain, remember dieing but, not a near death. It was death and knowing I was dead.

It was dark and I saw the light .I was wondering why I died. What happened? And, thinking it must have been a fast death, then a fear that if I didn’t go into the light I would be lost. And that I remember someone or a feeling to go to the light or something bad might happen.

Then I went to the light. Don’t know how long I was in the light. The light was instant to me.

I opened my eyes. I was lying on someone’s lap. I was lost and scared. Wondering who this person is where am I? I was in a new body. New place. A new life.
I had hard time with all of it. I was starting over.

There is a big curiosity about life after death /near death/I had death and life and every thing in between.

The mind is not the person. It’s the electricity that makes the body work?

I have feelings and scared about my past life. My mind has stored the things I liked and what scared me or killed me in past life. And they haunt me every day.

It’s just what I know. Take it as you wish.

I had been fighting depression and bodily changes due to menopause for approximately three years. On hindsight, I now believe my battle with aging was mainly due to the fact that my husband was eight years younger than I and, he was coming home to the children and me less and less. At the time I was "focused on the family" and began to educate myself on the family problems in hopes of solving some of the problems facing my two young boys and the fear of a failing marriage. I was under the impression I could not "make it" on my own. Later, after the near death experience, I would have to focus on myself, which was something I rarely did.

Depression consumed me as attempts to mend my marriage and fear of what the children might suffer. It seemed I would never stop crying. I was prescribed estrogen, Xnax, and anti-depressants. I was diagnosed as Attention Deficit, I counseled with church friends, and I prayed. Mostly, I feared. I had become a millionaire with a high school GPA of 1.9 and had felt I was at the peak of my life. I had overcome so many obstacles to get to where I was. I had become successful which was a feeling I never experienced in my academic schooling.

Although I could not imagine the thought at the time, my husband was preoccupied in affairs not totally pertaining to our jointly owned business. I began to lose control. Focus on my children faded as did housework and hobbies. I had lost all "my happy thoughts."

After putting the children to bed early January, 1995, I closed and locked my bedroom door with a bottle of merlot, a bottle of Xanex and a bottle of Ritalin. I kept taking Ritalin to focus, but the more I focused the more I began to panic uncontrollably. To counter the panic, I would take Xanax. I began to write and drink wine. I wrote what I now recall a "suicide note." My speech was slurred. I called my husband who was vacationing at a ski resort in an attempt for rescue. He did not want to talk to me. I had lost hope. I had "failed," as if I had failed a test once again. I was broken.

After hanging up the phone, I went into my private bathroom and locked the door. I went into my walk-in closet, closed the louvered doors, lit candles and prayed in Jesus' name that God would take care of my children. At one point, I went back out into my bathroom to drink another glass of wine when a voice inside my head said,” You drink one more sip of wine and you are dead." Looking in the mirror, I saw myself imaged and poured the wine down the sink. Back in the walk-in closet I laid down on the floor and drifted in and out of consciousness. There came a point in time where the sequences of the experience are unclear. But this I clearly remember. I was everywhere. Although in the walk-in closet, I saw the light coming in the bay window into my bathroom. It filtered through the louvered slats of the walk-in closet. I became aware of someone bodily standing over me near the ceiling of the closet. As I became aware of the being, I lifted myself out of my body sitting in complete surprise uttering, "!@#$! I'm going to die." The being came level with me on the floor and began to lift me up into space. It was an angel with huge, magnificent wings. I was held tight and secure to it's chest and covered by the down in the feathered wings. I was free, and I was comforted, as I had never felt in my life. Before we exited the ceiling another angel came with us. An intense buzzing took over my head and there was nothing I could do about anything. Anything that could have been "me" was gone.

I remember rushing through the dark tunnel hearing voices as we sped by. I remember seeing the light waiting my turn. Somehow I was "told" it was not my turn. Arguing that I was in line waiting, I was taken from the end of the line and showed a tour of a city of light, a library filled with an unfathomable quantity of books. I was shown a river like glass. I was shown an immense door with symbols and I remember knowing one of them, although I could not tell anyone now what that symbol was. It seemed that I died over and over again that night while I drifted in and out of consciousness. I believe I experienced my death over many past lives.

I met my relatives over and over again. I was at a "birthday" party with my father's family in a house I lived in from ages 4 to 7. I remember gambling and learning how to control my facial expressions from my grandmother. I was in a dark cave and called out to the outside to step into the light. In the cave I was afraid to step outside until I heard the voice of my great aunt, someone who had never hurt me, say, "What
about me? Don't you trust me?" And then I stepped out of the cave. I remember being very small in the hand of Buddha. I felt a tugging at my spine and a rushing of energy shoot out of my spine and something gagging in my mouth. The last I remember was being six years old and sitting on Santa Claus' lap. He was telling me that returning was my choice. I did not have to if I didn't want to. He told me it would be very difficult for me. Somehow I got the message that my children needed me. And I decided to return to life with them as my purpose, my meaning.

I had also had a life review and a life preview. I had a memory of being with aliens on a spacecraft.

At one point before out-of-body I had intense pain start at my toes and work it's way to my knees; the pain so bad I lost consciousness.

After returning to life, I became intensely focused on learning. Poetry just started coming out of me as an expression.

I did have revelatory impressions and would want to share them but will just submit this information now as I have tried many times to write an explanation and this is the first time I have been able to complete this narrative.

There is more, should you want it.

I purposefully and soberly took an overdose of tranquilizers, due to extreme depression and a sense of hopelessness. I was told that I took 1 1/2 time the lethal dose (doxepin), and should have been dead in 4-5 hrs. I was found unconscious in my room approx. 9 hrs later.


I awoke briefly in the emergency room of the hospital with paramedics yelling at me to turn my head and throw up (they had put a tube through my throat into my stomach filled with a charcoal mixture). I slowly faded out of consciousness again hearing their faint yelling "get the paddles...he's code blue".


I then remember a great flash of bright light and sense of traveling a great distance in what seemed almost instantaneous.


I found myself standing on bright green grass completely surrounded by a red-brick circular structure approx. 50 ft. high, with no roof...the sky was clear and bright blue. Looking around the circumference from within, I saw 5 doors of what appeared to be thick reddish oak (each door was about ten feet high by 5 ft. wide, and each had a silver handle). There were no markings on the doors...they were all identical. I chose a door by what I thought was a random choice, opened it, and walked into a vacuum of gently swirling white and pale yellow light, accompanied by the absolute knowledge of serenity and peace.

I immediately knew that my soul would have to return to its earthly plane, but I was (and remain) absolutely convinced that the soul is eternal, and when it is our time to pass on it is the individual's choice to remain in whatever their belief "heaven" is, or to return as a more sensitive, spiritual, evolved person to continue our spiritual fulfillment and become more enlightened. I knew that I would choose to keep coming back and learning more and more, and help others in the process if I could.


Anyway, I faded in and out of consciousness in intensive care for a couple of days. When the doctor and I finally discussed what had happened, he told me I died on the table twice, for a total of approx. 8 minutes.


I told him I had had an epiphany, but did not elaborate. In fact, this is the first time I have told anybody in such detail as to what happened. Not because I care if I am believed or not, but because of my somewhat "shyness to share". Perhaps its because I tried once with my girlfriend and could "feel" her inability to comprehend or truly understand.

However, I know what happened, and I can also see in others their surprise, relief, and happiness at having me near them and "knowing" I can sense their feelings, and give them relief and comfort.

I had been sick for a couple of weeks with a horrible sore throat and fever. I had gone to the ER, but because we had no insurance they wouldn’t take me.

I had a 2 year old son at the time and my husband traveled, so I had to muttle through with this sickness. One night at the peak of the illness, everyone was sleeping. My 2 year old son was in his room and my husband and I were asleep in our bed.

I woke up (or so I thought) to see a tunnel above the bed. The sides were many colors with sparkling orbs of many colors. I was holding my husbands hand, but felt myself being pulled gently up the tunnel. The closer I got to the top the better I felt. It was so very peaceful and the light at the end was a white I had never seen before. I wanted to be there, it was like floating on a perfectly warm ocean. As I got closer to the top a man appeared, I had never seen him before but he had a wonderful smile. He spoke to me but never moved his lips, but I could hear him clearly. He took my hand, and told me I had a choice, I could stay, or go with him. I wanted to go with him. As I moved closer to him I heard my son cry. As I turned to look down, I saw myself below on the bed still holding my husbands hand, but the me who was above the bed, had hold of both hands. (The me on the bed and my husbands) My other hand was still being held by the man. I remember thinking about how my irresponsible husband was going to take care of my son without me, and the next thing I know, the man had let go of my hand. I was very sad that I couldn’t go with him. But I knew I had to take care of my son. I used the 2 hands I was still holding to pull myself down to the bed.

When I looked up the tunnel was gone.

I went to go check on my son who was still fast asleep.

I woke the next morning, perfectly healthy, with no sign of the illness.

A few weeks later, my mom and I were cleaning my grandmothers house when I came upon a picture of the man, and asked my mom who he was and she informed me it was my grandfather who had died when I was 5 and had never met him.

After coming to consciousness, I found myself face to face with my own body hanging lifeless in front of me.

This experience was a bit frightening in the beginning, as I knew this was an accident.

After being swept away into a black void for what seemed like a moment, I found myself traveling down a path where there were lights up ahead. These lights were of burning torchlights and there were people in the distant laughing and what seemed like carousing.

I was met by a young man which seemed to me as if I knew him from somewhere. I told this person I needed to get back to where I came and I knew I wasn't supposed to be here. I could feel such warmth radiating from this person such a comfortable feeling. As I stood there it seemed as if so much information was pouring into my consciousness that it was difficult to remain focused on getting back to where I belonged.

Continuing to move forward, there was a great body of water and I believed the only way to get back to where I came was across the water. He urged me not to go but I insisted on going into the water. I was helpless at that point, unable to swim, I just sank with my arms and legs flailing about. A hand reached in and pulled me from the water and as I stood before this being, he pointed in the opposite direction and told me to hurry, my time was short.

I had a rather large gasp of air and could feel the blood whooshing through my body as I awoke.

The estimated elapsed time was 6 mins.

Afterwards there was a great deal of inner conflict with most every aspect of my life. I don't consider this a particular frightening experience, however after allowing the information I received, one more of a discerning and transcending nature.

What was once important to me is no longer in many aspects.

It remains difficult to talk of this incident to certain people due to manners of myopic thinking.

I had been hospitalized about a month before my baby was born.

I had vaginal bleeding and my water bag had started to leak. On June 6, 2001, my doctor decided to take my 28 week baby out via C Section. I had started to release pieces of tissue, and my doctor suspected a rupture of the placenta.

I was taken to the operating room and I began to get really nervous and felt very cautious about the procedure. (This was unusual because I am usually very carefree and feel that everything is under control.) In fact, I began to look each and every person who was there directly in the face. Kind of like I needed to remember them clearly???

My son was delivered at 7:40 in the evening and everything seemed to be going well. All of a sudden I began to feel very hot. I felt like there was a heavy weight on my chest, and I could not breathe.

My doctor began to raise his voice about getting in touch with the blood bank. My husband was asked to leave the room. I wanted to call out for him to stay, but the words just wouldn't come out. I began to fall into a deep sleep. This is where it gets kind of funky. I felt really light, like the feather that floats around in the movie Forrest Gump. I began to see an ivory light and a maze like shape that kept going around and around, but in a square pattern. I began to see all of my memories. I began to feel a magnetic pull. It was strong. It started off slow, and began to pull with more and more force. I didn't see angels or God, but I was talking to what I believe was God or Jesus. I was really worried about my newborn. I kept asking if he was breathing. I HAD to know if his lungs were working. All I remember after that is repeating, "I have to see if my baby is breathing" over and over.

Then I started hearing strange voices. They were muffled. Then they became clearer and clearer. It was the surgical team cheering. "Here she comes" "She's back" "Good Morning Sleeping Beauty" I remember looking up and seeing blood in a circular IV bag dripping into my IV.

I knew everything before I was even told-maybe because subconsciously I heard EVERYTHING????? All of a sudden I felt like I could read everybody's mind or soul or something? In fact, 11 days later...on Father's Day, my son had to get emergency surgery on his intestines and nearly died of septic shock, I prayed and prayed and he made it thru. I felt really close to God. For a few months after all of that, I felt really pure. Really in balance with nature and emotions.

Unfortunately, I am back to "normal". I mean I don't feel as pure and wholesome anymore. I still get really emotional about it all, but I keep it bottled up. I am so afraid of being called a liar or a drama queen. I am almost embarrassed to send/write this. I feel like I've heard too many stories for it to be real...yet I KNOW it is. I have NO DOUBTS about death anymore. I know I will not rot away in a grave somewhere.

I guess that’s it.

Coming up on the Christmas holidays of 1997, I scratched my shin on the step of the truck I was driving. My right leg was already starting to swell from an old spider bite. (Black Widow)

I was in El Paso, Texas then headed to L.A. By the time I made my delivery I was already feverish, experiencing these fevers before, I wanted to make it back to Oklahoma before I came down ill. This is where my partner was (now my wife), so I could be close to her before I got worse.These fevers were severe, I have hit 106 degrees and wanted to have her near me in case it was my time to pass on.


The company didn't have any loads at the time so I took some Tylenol to calm the fever, usually works but this time it didn't.


Both my legs were swollen and turning blue, I thought I would lay down for a little bit then go see a doctor.


Things didn't go that easy, first I could feel the strength going out of my body. Lying in my bunk in the truck I knew my time was up, I shut my eyes and gave my soul to God. I have accepted Christ as my savior a long time ago, so I wasn't afraid but the question of how vast was God came to mind.


When I woke I realized there was nothing in front of me or behind me, no light was in front of me or my folks that passed on before were not with me. I couldn't see my body because there was no body and actually no thought of mind. My train of thought began coming slowly but there was no worry, just curious.


Then I could see a small pinhole of a light, wanting to know about it, suddenly I was there. Entering into a light but not what I expected, I went through and saw billions of galaxies. Farther than the spiritual eye could see. Thought not really in control but still wanting to know more I spotted a blue planet. I guess I thought it was earth and wanted to go, suddenly I was there and it was not earth.


I was in a city with buildings made of what appeared of glass. There were no seams in the buildings. It was as if a giant glass blower had blown the buildings from ground up.
Wishing I could see home, I began to travel, so fast that all the stars in all the galaxies began to blend together, like one massive tunnel of light.
It took a long while even though I was traveling faster than anything I ever saw on any science fiction movie. Everything blending together so fast I even felt sick.


There was earth in front of me, and thought in more control, I wanted to see my body. Again I began to travel at a high rate of speed with all light blending together. From a great distance I could see my body in the truck, I hit with such an impact that my body raised up of the bunk and I was awake.

I was still ill, and wanted to go back.

If I had the ability to do this again, maybe I could see what I could do for man.


It happened again, I got answers by way of visions.
Those I will tell later the story is to long.

My story is not a long drawn out one. At the age of 48 I came out of the "closet". I was married for 26 years and had two grown sons. When I came out I did so as if there was no tomorrow.

My ex wife...already had a lover, unknown to me. She really got on with her life. My sons and family accepted me fully and happily. I was a happy man. I moved to Houston from a small town. Met the man of my dreams and intended to live happily ever after.

For whatever reason I began to suffer major depression and in no time was in trouble. On the day before Easter I was cleaning house getting ready for company. The last thing I remember is putting out flowers and lighting candles. That was about noon.

My partner came home from work around 7pm and found me not breathing and gray. He called 911 and tried to get me to breath. From what I know now. EMS found me not breathing...they used paddles on me to shock my heart and air to supply the brain. I had taken a lethal amount of sleeping pills, enough to kill many people, hours earlier. I still do not remember taking them.

DURING THIS TIME I HAD A SENSE THEY WERE THERE.... BUT SO FAR AWAY.... WHERE I WAS, WAS ON A WHITE SAND BEACH, STANDING IN THE HOT SAND. THE HOT SUN BEATING DOWN ON ME. THE SKY WAS SO BLUE; THE WATER WAS A CLEAR ICE BLUE. THE TIDE WAS WASHING OVER MY FEET. BEHIND ME A FEW YARDS AWAY WAS A PALM LEAF SHELTER...WITH A COOL JUG OF WATER UNDER IT.... BUT I WAS LOOKING OUT OVER THE WATER WHERE A STARK WHITE BI-PLANE WAS LANDING ON THE WATER.IT GLIDED ON THE WATER TO THE SHORE.WHERE IT SLID UPON THE SAND...WHEN IT STOPPED, THE SIDE DOOR OPENED.THERE WAS NO ONE FLYING THE PLANE.... I REALIZED THAT ALL THIS TIME THERE HAD BEEN NO SOUND AT ALL...NO SOUND OF WIND OR WAVES OR THE GULLS IN THE SKY. I ALSO NOW KNEW THAT IF I GOT INTO THE PLANE THAT I WAS NEVER COMMING BACK. IT WAS UP TO ME TO LIVE OR DIE.


It seems that when they had me in the ambulance they had lost me completely. Only after I was in the emergency room were my vital signs stabilized.
This happened once more...it seems they lost me later that night after they had told my family that I had only 1% chance of waking up and even then I would be very brain damaged.


This time the near death Exp was the exact same except that...this time when the plane glided to a stop on the shore I could hear my own voice saying "NO" out loud and the white plane turned around and flew off onto the very hot, very bright sky...I woke up...Only then did I learn I had been unconscious for seven days.

I truly believe I was given a choice to live or die. It was up to my will!


It has truly changed how I feel about life and death. The Drs were astonished that I pulled through...they had already gathered all my family to be there for my passing. I still feel a very real presence was all around me. I was not alone!

I was twelve years old. I was with my family at the local city swimming pool. It was about 4pm on a Friday in June. I had been swimming for over 4 hours and it was time to go home. I talked my mother into letting me dive off the high dive one last time.

I climbed the ladder, stepped right before the board, my foot slipped off the step and I slid down the ladder about half way down my hands let go and, I fell, hitting the low diving board. I bounced into the air and came down on the side of the concrete pool. Landed in the water of twelve foot and was knocked out.

I went to the bottom of the pool. About 10 minutes later the lifeguard found me on the bottom and pulled me out started C.P.R. and called 911. My mother was a E.M.T. at the time and helped the life guard with C.P.R.. The ambulance came by this time.

I was out of my body and above the whole scene. I heard the lifeguard tell my mother that I was gone. I saw my father who was called to the pool and he was trying to pull my mother off me saying that I was gone to let me go. I heard and saw my mother tell me not to die and then I went to a bright light when the clouds parted there was the pearly gates open and I never felt so much love and safety in my life. There just inside the gates was my great-grand mother who died in 1972 standing there smiling at me I ran to her and tried to go inside the gates and I was not able to cross. Grandma stood there just behind her was a man who looked like Jesus. I told grandma I wanted to stay and she just shook her head no and waved good-bye to me then I came back down.

The next thing I remember was coughing up water.

The nurse's aid spilled anesthetic and I think I was overdosed with ether? Or Chloroform? I shook my head to avoid going under.

I entered a long tunnel, rather like an enclosed child's slide. It was dark. But as I slid down, there was a bright light at the end of the tunnel.

I popped out and there were many people there to greet me. I recognized my sister who had died and my grandfather. I recognized relatives; I KNEW them somehow, even though they were much younger. There was a beautiful scene behind them of a landscape. They might have been behind a fence for they did not come up to me.


Then I saw some sort of being; so bright I could not see a face. I directed my attention to the being. Suddenly, I realized I was a small child and I was re-living my life rapidly but it did not seem to be zipping by. Then it paused at a particularly bad moment. The figure mentally asked me what I thought of that action of mine. I could see a sort of ripple effect on the other person. I immediately was sorry I had done it. Life resumed. Another pause. Again the figure asked in a very kindly way what I thought about it. Again, I regretted doing what I did. Life resumed. At each incident, there was a pause, I could sense how my action affected the person I had hurt or been unkind to. This went on until I came to the present moment and I said I had to go back, I had a husband and a baby to take care of. I must go back.

Suddenly, I was shaking my head from side to side and I came to on a stretcher in the hospital.


That experience was nearly 60 years ago and yet I remember it happening quite vividly. I do not remember details of my life experience except at the time there were things I had forgotten. It was like a movie I was watching, with me as the star. It reviewed every single thing I ever experienced. I have dreams I forget before breakfast. This was not a dream.


The bright figure was very gentle, kind and loving. He/she was dressed in a long white gown. There was no attempt to keep me there.


It did not make me perfect by any means, but it made me treat people in a kinder way.

All I know is that I was asleep, possibly having a dream; then suddenly, as when you switch channels using the remote, I found myself -and I had a very strong feeling of being myself, the real me, not in a dream, not in my body- floating, so to speak, in a very dark environment.

I felt -and knew- that there was no liquid or fluid, no air, where I was; however, I felt no need to breath. But the most extraordinary thing was the feeling of being at peace, no worries, no fear; nothing but the most incredible feeling of being just fine. It was as if I knew where I was and that everything was the way it was supposed to be.

I was pondering about the situation when I noticed light from "above; I looked up and saw a circular opening, as if I were looking up from the bottom of a well; that's where the strong white light was coming from. When I looked up to the light I noticed several human shapes, four or five of them, that were looking down, towards where I was. I could see their heads and shoulders around the rim. When they saw me looking at them, they began to call me, moving their hands -there was no sound- indicating to me to come to them.

I tried to swim or propel myself upwards somehow, but apparently did not know how to, so one of the figures -they all appeared as silhouettes, black against the strong white light- jumped into the dark space I was in, and again motioned for me to come. I did move my arms and legs, as when one is diving, but to no avail. So the one shape began "diving" towards me, with one outstretched arm, trying to reach me. I reached up for that extended hand and, at the very moment that I was about to touch this being's hand, I felt a strong tug downwards. It felt as if my feet had suddenly become heavy. This "heaviness" crept up my legs very fast. I was being pulled away.

At that point I woke up, when I slammed my arm (left) across my poor wife's chest, waking her up. I felt my pulse; my heart was racing, over 120 heartbeats per minute, way over! However, there was no adrenaline rush at all. I was still filled with that incredible sense of peace I'd felt during this... episode. So much so that I wanted to somehow go back, or wished I had not returned. I wanted to explain everything to my wife, and did. But she thought I had had a dream. I know I was not dreaming.

After this incident. Since I knew that I had a problem with snoring; my wife would elbow me, jab me in the ribs, kick even, to get me started again whenever I stopped breathing. My problem was causing me to feel tired every day, always in need of sleep. It got so bad that I stopped driving to work, and began to use a commuter train to get to work.

After the incident, and at my wife's insistence, I went to see a sleep specialist, who had me spend a couple of nights at the hospital, monitoring my breathing. They told me that I stopped breathing close to fifty times every hour, and that I barely ever achieved REM (rapid eye movement) while sleeping. My blood oxygen levels would fall dangerously below 90%, so I could have a heart attack in my sleep, unless I did something about the problem. I ended up attached to a C-PAP machine every night. I feel a lot better now, more rested, more productive. But that is not all.

Up to the point of my "incident", I was an agnostic at best, some would call me an atheist, perhaps. After my experience, I was convinced -and still am- that what I experienced has nothing to do with any religion, per se, that there is an after life and we all will go on living in this other realm, albeit not in our bodies. That doesn't matter, though, because we are not our body, we just inhabit it while we live in this world.

I felt like telling people that they should stop worrying about life and death, that everything will be alright, that the explanations will come afterwards. All we need to know is that yes, there is a plan, and that we will find out what it all means when we go back home. But it is difficult to go about telling people about it. First of all, most people look at you as if you were out of your mind. Then you begin to realize that yes, your experience was quite out of the ordinary, and perhaps you would not have believed anyone who came up to you with such a story.

Before my experience, if someone close to me had told me of a similar experience, I would have worried about that person's mental health. If a stranger approached me with it, I would have tried to put a good distance between me and him. So I don't tell my story to anyone, any longer. There may be about five people I told it to, in all, including my wife and my son.

The sense that I have now is that I know something wonderful, that it is open to all of us to experience it sooner or later, that we somehow are all connected and we should help -and love- each other. I am free now; I have no fear of death at all. I have come to realize that I am (exist) in function of what I do for others. If I had to live my life just for myself, my being alive would have no meaning at all. I am here on a mission, I don't know exactly what that mission is, but I know it has to do with being useful to others and to love everyone as I love those closest to me. I have done a few things in that area, and I am really happy. You can't imagine what a weight has been lifted from my shoulders.

Yes, there is life after death. Yes everything we do and have to go through in life has a meaning. When we die, we actually go back to living, and there is peace and love there; much more than you can imagine. I have joined a church, now, because I do believe now in the existence of a supreme being, but I still think that it is not a matter of which church, or what religion you belong to. We will all go home one day.

I was a little kid (About 7 Or 8 Years Old) living a normal life and had a basic sick day that day. We lived in an apartment and I went to sleep on my parent’s bed. As I was sleeping, all of the sudden I was looking at my self from above my body. I was wondering if I was just dreaming, but it felt so realistic. I was above my body for a while then I started floating out the room slowly toward the dining room. As I was floating, I looked at my self, expecting to see my body but I had nothing. Then I tried moving my arms and legs but there was nothing, it felt like my whole body was tied up together. I couldn’t blink my eyes then I saw my mom in the kitchen washing the dishes, I tried to say something to her but it felt like I had no mouth. Then I wanted to struggle but couldn’t move, I felt that I was about to leave through the kitchen window, I really wanted to open my mouth then when it felt like I did, very quickly, I flew back to my body.

I’m not sure if I woke up right away or not, but I remember after I woke up, thinking about the weird experience I had, I went to the kitchen and my mom was washing the dishes just like I saw her. I never thought about it being a near death experience cause I had no knowledge of such a thing, I just thought maybe My Soul left for a while. I never told anyone for many years, I told my Mom around 14 years old and she said that sometimes she goes through that.

I had another experience, on the same bed around the same age though this time I was looking at my self for less than a minute it felt like and I went back to my body. Both occurred during daytime.

One evening in 1968 I decided to test something my college philosophy professor had said, that we could never see our soul because what did the looking was that which we attempted to see.

Being who I am, I could not accept that without first trying to prove/disprove it myself.

(For the record, I lived at home then in a very strict Catholic family, with an abusive father who would have beaten me to an inch of my life if I ever used or experimented with drugs of any sort. So, no, this was not some 1960's hippie's drug dream or experience. I was simply a naive, but very intelligent and willful young woman.)

I was determined to see if I could "see my soul" or "find myself inside." I closed the door to my room, lay on the bed and relaxed each part of my body. I had never read or had any training in meditative techniques, but I somehow did it instinctively. I looked within, not knowing exactly what I expected to see. Somehow I managed to blank out all thoughts except my desire to see my soul, myself.

After a time I saw a tiny white spot in great darkness. I focused on it, thinking maybe that was my soul. I did my best to "catch up with it" and come closer. At some point I became away of the strangest thing. I was following this spot, but I could see my own body below me on the bed. I knew it was me, but I also knew that "me" was what was doing the looking somehow. I didn't feel like a spirit or anything. I felt just like, well, me. My mind, who I was and always had been, but without the body.

At the moment it struck me that if anyone walked into the room, they would think I was dead. I remember hoping that no one would come in or move my body because I wasn't sure I could find it again if they did. I was certain my body had to stay in that exact place or I would die.

This bothered me a little, but I also still had an intense desire to see that spot up close. I wasn't sure if I had already proved the professor wrong--I was in two places, after all, and I could see me--my body at least--so wasn't it the "I" that was doing the looking at the body below? I still had the feeling that the little spot was my soul, something more of me, the essence perhaps, and I didn't want to leave any stone unturned if the professor questioned me in detail. LOL! Knowing me, I am fairly sure I didn't want to ignore anything he could use to discount my proving him wrong, that we COULD see the looker if we looked.

So, even the sight of my body lying below me couldn't stop me from following that spot of light. I refocused on it and things changed. I sensed that I was beginning to move faster. Quite fast actually. I heard sounds as if I was "whoosing" through air. I got the feeling that it wasn't just my body below me now. Earth was below me and I was in space or something like it and I was going at the speed of light, never taking my eye off that white spot, which now grew larger and brighter.

As I came closer to the light I felt a tremendous feeling--love, something wonderful, a place I could enter that was very good. But a new fear hit me. I understood without a doubt that if I entered that light I would die; the body on my bed would remain exactly that--a dead body. I wasn't afraid of dying, but the Catholic in me wasn't sure if this would be suicide because I had willed it somehow myself. Since suicide was a mortal sin, wouldn't I end up in hell? I understood that it was not my time and I shouldn't be there or go into the light fully. I didn't hear anyone speak to me. I just knew it wasn't my time, that I would die if I went into that light, and this was wrong.

The split second that I decided I wanted to end the experience and "go back home," I found myself back in my body on my bed. No transition or anything like that. I was just back and "awake."

I don't recall coming back from the experience with the knowledge that I "knew" new things. Within a short time, though, I realized my view of the world had changed.

I began telling my friends that we were all one and should never harm each other; that what was done to one was done to all. Some laughed, some asked me to explain, some just figured I had become a "dove" or "peacenik." I don't remember exactly what the philosophy teacher said, but I remember a kind of sarcastic smile, like "Yeah, right!" and feeling put down, that what I had done was not a "valid" testable experiment and I was slightly crazy.

I wrote a paper for my English class that I thought was wonderful. It explained what had happened, what I had learned, that there is nothing to fear in death if my experience was true, but lots to learn from it about life. I still remember the C I got (I was an A student and that disturbed me) because the English professor thought what I had written was unfounded trash with no basis in reality, a waste of my writing skills and his time. From that point on I became much more reticent about speaking of the experience.

Within that paper and to those who asked why I believed we were all one, I explained that everything is "the universe," one thing, made entirely of atoms. Humans, animals, the earth, the stars, things we could feel and touch were areas where the atoms were denser, that's all. It wasn't "empty space" between us, but areas of less concentration, that's all. So, to hurt someone else was to hurt myself, no matter how far about geographically we were in the world.

I don't recall reading anything of the sort elsewhere and it seemed like an entirely new explanation of the world and people to me. Something I was given, not something I had learned. And, yes, it did change my view of the war in Nam. I became, and have remained lifelong, an advocate of non-violence.

I realized in a short time that my very Catholic outlook on life had changed to a more pantheistic one. Not just that God was immanent within His creation, but the creation was all a part of God, maybe God itself. You have to remember this was 1968-69, long before "New Age" theologies began to blossom or anyone--except maybe Moody--had even heard of NDEs. I didn't even know that term until about 8-10 years later when I read Moody's first book, Life After Life.

I was shocked when I did read it--but thrilled that somehow I wasn't alone in this strange experience. I literally had goosebumps and ran downstairs to my girlfriend's apartment to tell her about it and my experience when I was younger.

The book exactly described my experience, something I rarely ever told others about since I was ridiculed when I was 18 for recounting the experience to others. However, I am convinced to this day that it was not something I could have read about or learned about in any other way. As far as I know, Moody's book was the first time I saw the term near death experience and the first time I realized this wasn't some freak thing that had happened to me.

However, I was also struck by the fact that my experience, unlike those retold in the book, had nothing to do with death (except for the feeling I had that others would have thought me dead if they walked into the room while it was happening), illness or accident. I had willed it, chosen it somehow while in a perfectly healthy state--or it had been given to me in my stupidity, desire and single-mindedness. I'm not sure which.

However, I have always wondered if there aren't many more like me who have actively participated in the process; if somehow this possibility might hold a key to explaining what NDE's are.

Over the years, I have thought about trying it again, but never did. I can't say I am afraid because my fear of death left with that experience. I never cry or feel sad at funerals, except for the ones left behind. They are the ones who feel the pain of separation. My belief that we "go" somewhere after death has never left me or wavered in the least.

However, there is an element of fear in that I simply know this shouldn't be done haphazardly. I get a sense of being lucky that time and that I shouldn't press my luck

In the years since, though, I have followed a contemplative sort of prayer life. Seemed natural to me, but I never used prayer time to "see me" or cross that line again. I have since had one experience that Martin Buber might call the "dissolution of the I-Thou relationship," close in nature to my earlier experience, but totally different in the experience. No tunnel, no light, no separation of body/mind/soul. However, I believe it may have been what would have occurred had I entered the Light when I was younger. A perfect understanding that I was Freedom and I was Love, and that was the nature of God. Not just that I understood those concepts, but that I WAS those things in reality. My identity actually became Freedom and love for a short space of time.

I came away from that experience with the knowledge that I am not God, but God is me. For that reason, I believe the two experiences are related. The second clarified the first.

I believe that at that point my search for God was over. I found Hir and the rest of life has been and will be merely living that knowledge as best I can.

I have always been curious if other contemplative, meditative people have had this experience, and what that might mean.

In conclusion, I just wanted to say that I hope someplace someone is studying self-induced NDE's. Studying the experience in healthy people, not induced mechanically or chemically, but by an act of the will. Might add a lot to the research already done.

The chill went up my spine and it awoken me instantly. I knew I was in trouble I had to get up, get warm, to get out of the situation I was in. I couldn't move and the pain was intense and the cold was like a thousand needles (I later found out it dropped to 28 degrees, which is cold in California). All this became too much: the pain of a broken arm and femur (right below my hip), the hypothermia (that was setting in quickly) and the internal bleeding. (I fell at 1 am and was "rescued" at 6 am = 5 hours)
That was the last conscience memory, but not my last memory of that night.........


A dim light appeared and just sat there at the end of a sort of 3 dimensional sphere. As I stared at it, it became brighter and stronger and a lot more "inviting". I felt swept-up in its calming, healing, and comforting effect it had on me. It seemed to take the pain away and give me warmth, not so much physically but more so emotionally, that all was going to be okay if I just let go. Love is all I could describe it as and having lived such a selfish, self-centered life for so long love is the last thing I know about, but it was there. It, the light, was hypnotic in its own way. The way you look at a huge mountain and go "wow, awesome!"


Down from the light came about a dozen opaque, transparent entities I call them, in single file, both left and right of the light. When they reached me they played about on the rocks making me laugh and giving me joy, like a kid in a sandbox. They got my attention and immediately they appeared. They took on the form of my best friend and girlfriend (at the time), but it wasn't them, I knew that. They explained I was a good person that I would be missed and that this (the fall? the experience? the angels? the visions?) was the only way to get my attention because I was pissed-off for being in my situation. I was really angry that they would not let me go on to the light, for it had answers, knowledge, and was so LOVING... they seemed sad and wanted to show me a few things...Some so hellish I wish to forget them, but can not..and prophecies that make me feel crazy at times. Here are a few:

The year was 2053 (I was shot forward) and California is devastated with maybe a nuclear, no an energy catastrophe, there is famine and despair. Despite this, MANS GOOD-WILL is his saving grace. The simple act of helping out when one could.

This is a brief summary of maybe years of existence in 2053. I can describe the smell, my clothes etc..etc..If I went into detail...After reliving this laying in my bed or sitting on my surfboard in the ocean, quiet time alone, I saw these messages...

Also CLONING AND DNA research is going to cause huge problems that are disgusting, I could have cared less about this before my fall, but know I am convinced that we, as humans, must not play with this or we will suffer or more important cause suffering. (again I lived in the future and tried to clone myself and change my DNA, the results were HELLISH) I could go on as I said for days about what I saw, felt and experienced in the future.

I floated, saw my body laying in the fetal position alone, and went to many different LEVELS of space based on my ILLUMINATION (my spiritual condition=emotions)

I spent a lot of time with sad, lost souls that took on the form of animal/human forms, mutants, they were forming above the cities. They seemed to be stuck and very much in sorrow. Was this PURGATORY? I do not know.... I spent so long there cruising around visiting these people trying to give them joy...It was so sad when they fell to earth...

For 2 years after I was very angry and abused alcohol and painkillers, I thought I was crazy...still do, but not as much as before having read BETTY EADIE, ETC....NOW I am trying to determine why I have such different passions and realities...This is no easy thing to live with...

I remember being "up", like I had been propelled upward, into total darkness. Something made me keep my left shoulder close to my body as if I did not want to touch whatever was there...I realized I was starting to fall and feared it was because I could not see my feet. Suddenly, I saw my feet almost waving up and down, and then I knew I would not fall. With that, I wondered where I was, what I was doing there, how I got there, where to go, and had a sense I WAS NOT SUPPOSED TO BE THERE WONDERING WHAT WOULD HAPPEN IF I WAS FOUND OUT.

I then had a choice, go straight or turn to the left and go down a hallway. The brightest white light I have ever seen appeared in my right upper outer field of vision - the size of a baseball - and it drew me toward it. I decided to approach the light hoping to see where I was going. The light was getting bigger and changing positions until finally it was large and like a big circle before my eyes, as if I was in a tube or tunnel and this light was at the opening. At the same time, I saw MYSELF walking UP and incline toward this opening - or room - where the light was coming from. I remember wishing I had brought my sunglasses for I was sure the light would blind me, but it DID NOT.

Next I saw two people in the room of light, just beyond my reach. A man and a woman were holding hands. The man I recognized as my friend Jeff who had died two months prior, dressed in nothing but red shorts - his chest bare - and his hair long, collar/shoulder length - holding MY hands as I stood before him in something white and sheer.

Just then I entered the room of white and looked to my left. There was no scenery and this amazed me. As I turned toward the right I knew I would come face to face with the origin of the light and when I did I WAS NOT BLINDED by it. I was just so amazed. I could hear that Jeff was talking to me and I wanted to hear what he said, and then I felt/saw myself going into my BODY (the one in white), entering through the top of the head and entering like a wisp of smoke - like when the Genie on I Dream of Jeanie would go into her bottle.

Just then I saw two hands in the "sky", one coming down (Jeff's) and one going up (mine) and when we clasped our hands in an embrace I felt pure joy. As I turned to look at Jeff, the origin of the light was in front of me - like a sunburst with colors dispersed from the center white - and it was approaching me. I became fearful and tried to back up. I could not move.

Then the light took shape, like the outline of a person in a robe with a hood, and the light touched me between my breasts. The light entered me and filled me to the point that it began to pour FROM me and I threw my head back in ecstasy, KNOWING IT (LIFE AND ALL IT'S QUESTIONS) WAS ALL SO SIMPLE -- IT WAS JUST THE LITTLE THINGS...I felt a sense of being home (something I had searched for all my life) and a warmth and joy and understanding that I still cannot put into words. I had PEACE OF MIND just KNOWING. There were no more questions.

Then I saw Jeff - he was talking to me and I was telling him how long I had wanted to see him, and wanted to tell him how much I loved him. He said, "I know" and I was amazed that he could talk to me without moving his mouth.

I then realized that all our communication was done without seeing our mouths move and I wanted to be quiet to hear more (at this time it seemed like everything was happening at the exact same time - like space/time was fragmented and this was actually possible - when a woman's voice VERY LOUDLY called "DINA" (that's me). I turned to my left to see who was DISTURBING ME and I said, "I have to go."
When I turned back to see my Jeffrey, all I saw was the site of our two hands parting - his going up and mine going down - and I began to scream "NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, I don't want to go...it took so long to get there. I didn't want to go back. I was mad at myself for saying "I have to go"...with that my eyes opened and an oxygen mask was being put on my face.

I recognized the voice of the woman who disturbed me as the nurse in front of my face telling me to breathe...but I wouldn't listen to her. My throat was clogged by sputum and I didn't want to cough it up. I wanted to go BACK to where I had just been. This place, the recovery room, was COLD, I WAS COLD, SHIVERING, and IN PAIN. I just wanted to take off the oxygen mask but could not move - not a muscle, not a finger, not an eyelash...and then a voice in my head said COUGH. "No" I said, and I remember shaking my head no. COUGH the voice said, COUGH IT OUT, and I tried. The first time it didn't work. The voice SHOUTED COUGH, and as I did, my airway cleared.

The nurse told me to keep breathing and keep my eyes open this time...I had an oxygen sensor (pulse oximetry) on my finger and I remember rubbing it off. I tried to kick over my IV. I refused to cooperate with that •••• nurse who had YANKED me back from ... wherever I was with Jeff...I demanded to see my husband. I was crying, I was shaking, I hurt so bad - like I had taken a kick to the place between my breasts where the white light had entered me. I told my husband what happened between sobs and he tried to tell me it was a dream.

I suddenly thought people would think I was crazy and stopped talking about it to anyone in the ER - when the nurse had asked why I was crying and I told her she JUST WALKED AWAY FROM ME - the witch. Such sympathy, such empathy, I still hate her. Anyway, after a prolonged recovery room stay, they finally let me go home. (My stay was prolonged because I refused to cooperate and urinate for the witch nurse, I wouldn't drink, I wouldn't walk...)

And then for a month I cried and cried and cried. I still cry. Talking about this with you makes me cry. I miss that feeling of peace and happiness and joy.

I did finally seek out a counselor, but I only saw her once. She just happened to be a major in metaphysical studies - how about that - and she assured me that I had indeed had a near death experience. She said she could not help me if I wanted to continue telling myself it was just a dream. Somehow, just hearing someone confirm to me that I was not crazy made me feel somewhat better, and for the first time I started to think of my experience as a gift.

Ten years later, I'm not sure what to call my experience any more. My psychic abilities are to some extent stronger than they were before, but now they seem to be centered on death and dying people -- as if I'm drawn to them. Part of me wants to let them know that there's nothing to be afraid of, but the other part quiets my mouth not wanting to "push" them over to the other side before they're ready if you can understand what I mean. So, usually, I end up doing nothing except knowing that the person is dying because I DON'T KNOW WHAT I AM SUPPOSED TO DO WITH THIS INFORMATION.

One thing, before I end this, upon waking in the recovery room, I had the most profound sense of WARMTH in my right hand, the one that Jeff held, and at times I have had the feeling that the touch from my right hand can produce good effects, i.e., take away pain in particular. I have done this mostly with my arthritic dog, and quietly with my mother after her stroke. I don't tell people what I'm doing... they might think I'm crazy...at least that's what I fear... but I must tell you, I feel very UNEASY being drawn to DYING PEOPLE as I am not exactly sure WHAT I AM SUPPOSED TO DO - like I'm supposed to do SOMETHING and I just don't know what...

Had fallen from a horse that stood on my head.

Rose up in a ray of light, until I was asked, "Do you believe in God?"
I answered, "Yes", and had to leave the light. It was light blue all around me, and I saw my grandmother in an old boat, rather upset at the fact I was a believer. She told me my Dad would look after me, and then I saw him with my brother also in an old boat.

Next thing I remember is him asking me "Do you want to stay or go back?" I did not have time to answer him, finding myself with my daughter, then 10, crying, so upset, having been told that my chances of living were very small. I could not get through to her, she could not hear or feel me. I was upset! I did go to my son, then 14, but with the same result.


I found myself back with Dad who could see I was upset, and thus wanted to return.

On the way back I saw a caterpillar, with a very charming face saying, "Play my music to regain your health", smiled, and I neared my body.

I woke up with the mind of my Dad, calling Mum Carla, and knowing only about myself until I was 23.

A friend and I went to a concert at the Baltimore civic center; it was called at that time. We had both smoked PCP, marijuana, and also ate enough LSD to kill an army of elephants. We were not trying to kill ourselves even though we had done so much.

Then all of a sudden, something in me told me to leave the concert even though it was only half over. I felt like something was compelling me to do what it wanted and I had no power to stop myself. My friend thought I was crazy but followed me anyway.

We walked north on Howard St. and I would not look to see if cars were coming, I just stepped into the street to cross and the light would change so we were safe. My friend really thought I had lost my mind, but he still followed me.

When we reached the top of Howard St. I could feel my heart humming like a humming bird, I stopped to sit on a wall grabbed my chest and that is when it happened. I was immediately bathed in a bright white light; I could hear my friend screaming that my body was glowing like a light bulb. The light was so bright that I hesitated to look, and then I felt something that I will never forget. I felt the warmth of the purest love so strong it is impossible for me to describe. When I turned and looked into the light it did not hurt my eyes at all, and for once in my life I felt free of my body and all the earthly problems I thought I might have, I was floating, it was the most incredible experience.

Then a voice came from the light and asked me what I was doing to myself and that he loved me and did not want me to be hurt or be sad. The voice told me specifically that we are all its children and loves us all the same and just wants our happiness while we are here until it is time to come home.

Then images of my past were shown to me and other times in my life that I was saved from myself. I was also shown some of the future, a wife, children, and a life I had only dreamed of. The voice in the light asked me if I wanted to stay here on earth or come and be with him for all eternity, I said I wanted to stay here.

Then the voice in the light told me to find his people, when I asked how was I to find his people, the reply was that I would know. All the while this was happening I could still hear my friend screaming that I was glowing like a light bulb.

Then the voice asked me one more time did I want to stay here or did I want to be with him for all eternity and I said I wanted to stay here and the light was gone, and I was changed forever.

Since this happened from that night on my friend was so frightened that he never came around me again.

I developed Diabetes in 1989. After a few years of learning how to control this disease, I considered myself average.

In 1995 my Daughter married and the same year she gave birth to my first Grandchild. A little boy which she named Anthony and I branded my, "Charlie Brown." The new light of my life! The first two years of his life was filled with disappointment and turmoil.

My Daughter and her Husband, got involved heavily into drugs, Heroin. They were in and out of our lives and my wife, Peggy, and I had to concentrate on survival for our children. I focused mainly on my Charlie Brown and Peggy searched for answers for our Daughter. At this point in my life, this little member of my family became one of the most important people in my life. I loved and still Love him beyond explanation.

Because of their choices to live as they were I was given the opportunity to teach this little boy how to walk, talk, whistle, everything he needed to learn, Grandpa was given the job of being his Grandpa, Brother and even Dad. When he was 2 years old, his mom and dad was arrested. His Mom only served a few months but his Dad was sentenced to 7 years and is still serving his sentence.

About 2 months after the sentencing, I became very ill. It was just a case of the flu, but every symptom that went with it, I had. I was concerned about not knowing exactly how much sugar was in my system, so I had my wife continually fix me juices and water with sugar added.

I did not know at the time I was doing the wrong thing that is not until Sunday morning at four o'clock. I awoke unable to breath. I woke my wife and her and my son put me in our van and began one of the most incredible journeys I have ever been on.

We were racing down the highway toward the Hospital and I remember drifting in and out. I kept telling my wife I was dieing and she kept talking to me and I kept hanging on.

The last thing I remembered was as we pulled into the emergency room entrance, the nurses were there waiting for me, threw me in a wheel chair and started in the hospital dragging me backwards. That is when I finally couldn't fight it off any longer and I drifted off into a coma.

I will never forget this most amazing event. The first thing I noticed was I had no pain anywhere in my body. The best way to describe my journey is I felt like a rocket blasting off and the sound was that of a rocket. I was jetting towards the brightest light I had ever seen. The brightness was indescribable. As I was jetting I felt as though I was traveling hundreds of miles an hour yet on both sides of me I saw family members which had died earlier in my life, floating by me as in slow motion. They were all smiling at me.

The absence of pain and the presence of past family was not an issue with me. The issue was my Precious Grandson who was about to lose the only father figure he had left.

I began to shout to God. I didn't know Him but I knew if there was one, He was going to hear me. I shouted," Please God, don't take me away from my Grandson, Please, Please. I kept shouting and begging. That is when I promised God if He would not take me I would search for Him and teach my Charlie Brown the way He would show me was right. This went on for a while and then suddenly my eyes popped open.

I looked up and my wife Peggy was standing over the Doctor and me had just told her they lost me. She looked at me and asked if I knew what had happened and my response was, "Yes, but you don't." My Doctor told me when, I was in the coma, my glucose level was 1470. Normal is 80 - 120. He had never seen anyone survive with a level that high.

I still have Diabetes and I keep it under control. My Charlie Brown and I attend Sunday school regular and he is one of the best kids you could ever know. I have kept my Promise and I have found that God I was searching for. We are Best Friends.

I came into a dark room with very few details - a person - unknown to me approached me and told me in a low voice - I am not sure I even heard a voice - to watch carefully and with deep graveness –

Then he showed me an open coffin with a skeleton in it - I think the woodwork was dark - it took a while, none spoke - then it seemed as if the bottom started flowing or something - almost as if it were made of quicksilver - and the bottom of the coffin was raised and lifted in front of me and it became a mirror in which I saw myself standing in front of an large number of people - I couldn’t recognize any - different ages but no faces - it seemed as if they were in dark clothes.

In that moment I had the impression of total knowledge, deep insight, extreme inner calmness and loss of fear for anything. I cannot quite put words on this, but it was a sort of up-lifting feeling. Then the mirror became more enlightened - as if you turn a mirror up the sun and the reflections hit your eyes - then this great white light surrounded me...

This was the very first thing I remembered when I woke up after the operation - when I close my eyes this experience is as clear to me as the breakfast I have just ate or as typing this.

I am a pretty realistic person - I have never experienced anything like this - and I have always considered "believers" to be not in their right mind, crack pots all and every one...
However this has made me reconsider - I am another person today.

I learned after the operation, that it was very, very close that I had died - with an extremely low pressure, and a heart not working.

After I was released from hospital I received phone calls from doctors in the hospital to have further examinations - they were rather concerned about my conditions.
I have since spoken with other people from the operating thatres/anesthetics - whom I know personally - and have learned that they thought they had lost me that day.

My dad passed suddenly in 1993. I had no one to lean on while grieving my loss. Mum was still alive, and dealing with the loss too after 52years of marriage. I went to work one day and felt "funny". Not like when you have flu or a cold, with these you have specific symptoms. I still can’t explain the "funny". I was at a resident’s room and put the emergency bell on to get help and when I went out of the room I looked up the hall and it appeared to be moving. The moving hall appeared to come close then go away as well as around in circles as if it was spinning, and going up and down as if it was an elevator. I then collapsed and was caught by a resident who put me on the floor.

The next part of reality was me fighting the ambulance men who were trying to put an oxygen mask on my face and a fellow nurse saying to me that it is only oxygen and not to fight it. Now while I was unconscious I was in a dark area, I can’t say as it was a tunnel, but there were "walls" and I could see a light straight ahead. There was a calming presence behind my left shoulder. I could not see this presence but knew that it was Jesus. I saw my dad in front of me and he was wearing a peach coloured shirt. Dad said that everything is going to be fine. When I came to, I told mum about seeing dad and the peach shirt, mum then told me they had just bought it and it was still in the drawer. Dad never wore the new shirt while alive.

I have never had another experience like this, but I am no longer afraid to pass over when my time comes. The feeling of calm and peace on the other side is not easy to describe.

At five months pregnant, we had re-located to Greenville, Miss. with my husband's employer. I had tried to set up appt. at local OB/GYN office. It was the only office and my appt was set for several weeks later. On one particular day, I noticed that I was passing blood and cramping. I notified the doctor office and was told to come in. I did so and received an injection and was told that the injection would either help me or it wouldn't. I was told to stay in bed, off my feet, and take aspirin for the cramping. The next day, the cramping worsened and so did the bleeding. I was forced to continue making trips to the bathroom and began passing clots. The dr's office was called and I was told the drs were in a meeting and would contact me when they were out of it. I told my husband I was very lightheaded and dizzy. I went back to bed. A few minutes later, I rushed to the bathroom and as I sat down, I felt overwhelmingly faint. I called out for my husband just as I passed out. The sink cabinet was inches from my head as I fell forward......

The next thing I realized was that the floor was cool beneath my feet. I looked down and found myself barefooted. I noticed the white tile-like structure of the floor. I looked up and noticed a wall to my left, which was going straightforward and then taking a turn to the left just ahead. The entire hallway was white and white light permeated the entire area. I wondered what was just around the corner and then I wondered where I was. I again looked downward and found myself wearing a white garment that came to just below my knees. It was then that I realized that I was not alone. I was being supported by someone next to me on my right side as I walked. I looked from my knees towards the being next to me and noted they, too, were wearing a white garment coming to just below their knees and they, too, were barefoot. As I began to move my gaze upwards to discover the identity of the one beside me, I had just gotten to their waist when I heard my husband's voice coming from behind me. I halted in mid-step and spoke, "Wait. My husband is calling me."

At that moment, I opened my eyes and found myself in my husband's arms out in the hallway and a medic standing over me. I was told that I had just exhibited a thready pulse at the point when I opened my eyes. They transported me to the hospital and once more, I heard the medic state he had lost my pulse. A few minutes later, we arrived at the hospital and in the emergency room, they once again lost my pulse. They were unable to initiate IV fluid therapy for lack of adequate vein. They were talking around me and I could hear everything but I was unconscious. They had gone to my ankles and were talking about a cut-down procedure to locate a vein for the IV when someone else found a pulse. I then feel asleep.

Later, in the room, I was told I was to undergo D/C. A tech was sent in to crossmatch for blood and returned saying my red cell count was 7 so the surgery was put off until the next day and 3 liters of blood were given me. Following the surgery, the doctor told me that they could find no sign of the fetus but I was told to sign a death certificate and name the baby. I was also told that the fetus had quit developing at four months according to the size of the uterus so she must have died earlier. The doctor said the hospital would be sending me a counselor to speak with to work through my grief. I told him it wouldn't be necessary...there was no grief...there was in its place, an understanding. A peaceful resolution. A knowledge that it was as it should be.

I found myself more fully grounded in my faith. I developed sensitivity to psychic manifestations. I could feel whenever something was wrong and totally describe what was happening.... long before it was verified by the other party. I also find myself extremely sensitive to light and have been recently diagnosed with a hole in my heart, a collapsed mitral valve, and a tilted optic nerve.

Last year, my husband told me I had been in a seizure when he caught me in the bathroom and moved me into the hallway. My eyes had rolled back in my head, my jaw was firmly set and my back arched. He had been rocking me and crying while calling out my name. My friend, also in the house, had called the ambulance. For several minutes, I had remained in the tight grip of the seizure. And then I had relaxed, and he heard me say, "Wait. My husband is calling me." And then I had opened my eyes.

I have been able to share my experience with my family and a few close friends and have found that through my relating the events...I have comforted those who are dying or the loved ones caring for them. I now facilitate a bereavement group for my church community and hope to share my experience with many others.... my message: do not fear death. Validate the living while they are here AND after they are gone. Because they are at peace and can hear what is going on after they are gone...and they are concerned and connected...even beyond death.

When I was 14 years old, I got a pony from my parent’s which I was very fond of. Just a few months later, on a rainy day, I got in an accident with her.

My leg was broken and I had it taped in gypsum for a few weeks. Then it occurred that it wasn't done right and that it had to be broken again. So, I went to the hospital and had my leg broken under complete anesthesia. I had to count to ten and I was gone when I was at 7 or 8.

Just a few moments later I saw two men working on my leg. I first didn't realize it was me that was lying there and I thought that I just saw some kind of operation going on. The two doctors were pulling and pushing on the leg and it didn't really work out. At a certain point then I realized it was me and that they were breaking my leg. I sort of panicked and I didn't want them to break my leg, and somehow they couldn't.

Then one of the doctors called an assistant that was standing in the operation room a few meters away. When he called he looked up. When I looked at him I immediately was only 1 millimeter away from him, standing right in front of his face. When he walked at the table he went right through me. I remember I was confused and I didn't understand where he went. When I heard the speaking behind me, I immediately was back at my position behind my head at the operation table. I saw the three man doing their best on my leg and I still didn't want them break it. Just a few moments later I realized that it had to broken because the first time the gypsum wasn't correctly taped around my leg. So I think I somehow gave them the permission to break my leg and promptly it broke. The doctors were satisfied, but I began to panic again. How could I have let this happen? I heard the machine that was connected to my heart (I don't recall the English word for that) go beeping faster and that one of the doctors called the anesthetist. He hurried to me and did something with the machinery.

I passed away and woke up when I was in the "sleep out" room. I remember I had to cry but didn't have any pain. The nurse came by and she asked me if I had any pain. I said no, I don't think so, but she came back and gave me some morphine. I fell asleep.

The next day the doctor came to see me and asked me how I was feeling. I said fine, and asked him how the operation went. He said everything had gone really well and that my leg would grow okay now. I asked if the breaking didn't give any trouble to him. He said there were no difficulties. So, I said that they couldn't do it with two and that even with a third assistant it gave some trouble before it broke. He looked a little confused to me and then said that it indeed gave little trouble and that they had to work hard on it, but that they did the job anyway.

Further, I remember that I said to my mother that I had eye-witnessed the operation, but after 14 years she cannot recall that.

It only happened two nights ago, and so I am able to recall much of the detail. To make it more understandable, I will list my experience in point form:

- I didn't hear anything by the silence seemed to be loud??? So as to give me a headache.

- I felt my heart beat, and the blood run through my veins.

- I was racing through a very bright medium with no features... it was sort of like the speed of a spacecraft in those star wars movies, except instead of stars, I saw an extremely intense white light.

- I knew that I had to wake up, or else I would crush, it was almost my conscious effort to wake up and I needed to struggle with this will.

- Deeply inside, I felt sorrow for my parents and saw glimpses of their emotions as they would, find me in the morning.

- Upon struggling to wake, I felt a shiver and my whole body contracting...the kind of effort that you experience when trying to lift too heavy of a weight, but in my case it was every part of my body and no weights to lift.

- Right after achieving almost impossible consciousness, I felt a deep sense of relief, however as drained and tired as I was from this experience, I had to stop myself from even blinking as I feared that the next time I would not be able to open my eyes.

- Feeling like I have lost the sense of reality...I really didn't know whether I was still asleep or not... I made my way downstairs to get a drink of water.

- Only then did I realize what has just happened to me.... although I know I can't compare it with any of my other experiences, I know deep down that this could have had a different outcome.

- I still felt a bit dizzy, and quite refusing to go back to my own bed...so as bizarre as this may seem, I went to my parents bed saying that I had a terrible dream and could not sleep in my own bed. I slept between my mom and dad that night, but I couldn't really call it sleeping. I just lay there enjoying their warm presence beside me.

- The one very important feature of this experience that has not left my mind, is the struggle to wake up...I can say that it was as though I was splitting into two entities...one sleeping passively, while the other fighting to wake up.

As a background, I do not drink alcohol, or smoke or practice any unsafe habits towards my health...excluding off course, my eating disorder.

I laid in the bath tub of my apt. After taking a bottle of sleeping pills, Tylenol pm and washing it down with a fifth of vodka. I got in the tub with a razor blade and began by cutting my right wrist. It was harder than I anticipated so I had to cut several times before I felt it was enough. I then switched hands and, by the time I was ready to cut my left wrist I was angry at how long this process seem to be taking. I gave a heavy handed slice and there it was.

I watched with my eyes open wide, not blinking. I watched the vertical gash of skin literally part away for each side. The blood seemed to pour out in slow motion and finally, I could lay back and close my eyes. I remember feeling very cold. That was the last thought in my head before seeing a set of what I recognized to be headlights. They seemed so far away. They got closer and brighter and stayed suspended. I clearly remember waiting to see Jesus. Suddenly the lights went into a reverse pattern. I watched as they slowly extinguished.

Two hours after I got into that bathtub I was discovered by my roommate who had gotten off of work early. I was rushed to the emergency room for sutures, a transfusion and, a 4 week stay in the phsyc. ward.

Since that experience I have a heightened awareness and keen intuitive skills that I respect and listen to, finally.

I realized laying in the E.R. holding down the charcole cocktail that I had forgotten to fill the tub with water. Had I remembered my wrists would not have been able to clot slowing the bleeding. How could you have been so stupid, I thought to myself.

7 years later I am a successful businesswoman, living in a new town, and I have a beautiful little 16 month girl. I have finally accepted that the pain of the past doesn't ever move you forward until you let God and let go. I am not a religious person, but what other explanation could there be for the road I have traveled?

Very pleasant, peaceful, knowing, loving. I wanted so badly to stay.
Communication without speaking, telepathic. I was assured by loved ones
who passed away years prior. It was wonderful.

I was traveling in India in 1972 when I became ill with a kidney disease of some kind. It was quite frightening because there was blood in my urine and I imagined all kinds of dire consequences. We were in Kashmir and there were very few English-speaking people but I somehow managed to make my concerns known and to be directed towards a physician's office. At the physician's office I was horrified by the general conditions and by the number of terribly sick people squatting on the dirt floor waiting to be seen by the doctor.

When I was taken to see the doctor I was even more disturbed. The conditions in his inner office reminded me very much of the granary on my uncle's farm when I was a kid. It was a wooden office but dirty and unpainted boards like you'd find in a barn along with cobwebs and dust and ancient porcelain medical instruments that looked like they pre-dated the twentieth century.

It soon became clear that I could not communicate with the old bearded man who was apparently the doctor, but it was equally clear that I could not have heeded any advice that he could give me.

Back home on the houseboat that I was sharing with a friend my condition deteriorated rapidly and I began to experience alternating hot flashes and terrible chills. It was in the course of this illness in which I was becoming quite frightened of dying on the other side of the world without ever seeing my family again that I suddenly found myself looking down upon my thrashing body and my friend struggling to keep my body covered with blankets.

That phase lasted only a moment and then I was transported towards what is colloquially described as a great light but which was much more than that. I felt bathed not only in light but also in this transcendent energy and very much in the presence of a very powerful "being". The next thing I recall is being wordlessly invited to look back upon my experiences to that date and was able to see them "objectively" for the first time.

My sense was that many trivial events in my past towards which I harbored resentment or held grudges or remembered being injured somehow were actually very different than the way I remembered them. I had a clear sense that many of these things not only didn't happen in the way that I remembered them but in fact may well have been due to my shortcomings such as anger, selfishness, greed etc etc..

I remember being very moved by this knowledge and quite taken aback. There was a moment when I seemed to be challenged (again wordlessly) to think about what I'd seen and then invited to make a decision whether I wanted to go forward and continue on my journey or go back and try again.

I made the obvious choice and was immediately back in my body and listening to my friend asking what was wrong and what he could do. In the meantime I remember thinking that I had things I needed to do; that my work wasn't finished or that somehow I hadn't discovered my true purpose.

I was given a chance to come back and find out what it was. That's a gift.

For most of the last thirty years I've felt as though I've been governed not only by that experience but by my desire to live up to that experience. It's only in the last ten years or so that I seem to have lost the focus that that provided.

I'm anxious to find a way to try and get it back.

I had four triple heart by-pass, four years ago in Ottawa.

After moving from Canada to Belgium I had to change my Canadian cardiologist for a Belgian, who advised me to have a catheterization to check the bypasses condition after three years.

The procedure was done on a late Friday afternoon. I had one before my surgery in Canada and it was alright, nothing happened.

The first coronary was fine but with the second something bad occurred which induced a cardiac arrest for about a minute.

I knew something wrong was going on because I remembered what was happening just a moment before and, then that darkness and noise. There was that pulsating sound, very loud in my head, complete darkness and a strong anxiety feeling. Actually, it was not a pleasant experience; it was frightening, disturbing. I heard no "heavenly music", neither I saw "angels" or felt at peace or my "soul" left the body. After I was brought back with several electro-shocks, I kept feeling scary and disturbed.
Particularly when the doctor told me what happened.


I keep now remembering this experience and thinking that when the day of my departure will come, I will know exactly that my death is beginning...

I fell off my bicycle and injured myself to the face and head VERY badly. My friends who were with me were trained in first aid and removed a t-shirt to place over my head, as I was not breathing - I had died.

I remember a man dressed very smartly, in a suit, who spoke calmly and told me to "come with me". I remember saying that I couldn’t go with him as I had grit in my eye due to my injury. He asked me to go with him several times and I refused. I then woke in hospital.

About 2 weeks later I saw my friends and asked them who the man was. They answered that there was no such man.

Since then I have considered myself to be a bit psychic, and until one day I thought nothing of it.

I was asleep in bed one night when all of a sudden I woke sharply. I got up, leaving my girlfriend in bed, and went to watch TV in another room. Normally I would have given her a hug and fell back to sleep.

I turned on the TV and flicked through the channels. It was about 3.30 am so there wasn’t much on (only 5 channels in UK). I came across a program that was just starting - it was about NDE's and a connection with the Para-normal. I watched the program for about 30 mins then it clicked. I had had a NDE - I thought myself as psychic - It all fell into place.

Since then I KNOW that I am truly special, that I have experienced God and that I will go to another place when I die. It is only because I told God that I was not ready that he let me continue on earth.

Sometimes I think I might be a bit crazy, but when I think hard I know the answer.

I hope you find this of interest.

I had what I later learned to be an appendicitis attack. I was a college student and sought treatment at the student health center on a Thursday or Friday afternoon. The diagnosis was missed, and I was sent home.

On Saturday morning, my appendix ruptured. I was taken to a local hospital emergency room (in a small town) and the diagnosis, which was now more difficult to pinpoint, was again missed.

I was admitted to the hospital over the Labor Day holiday weekend and given medicines for pain and fever. On Tuesday, the physician who admitted me had a surgeon examine me. I was immediately taken to surgery for exploratory surgery where they found a "grapefruit size" abscess, which had resulted from my ruptured appendix. I spent the next 3 1/2 weeks in the ICU. I was what they called "septic". I remember very little of the specific events in the ICU. I was in a lot of pain and still full of infection.

I reached a point where I felt no more pain. I felt like I was no longer in my body but was keenly aware of what was going on in the room. I sensed that I was dying, but did not think about it in terms of death.

I felt like I was moving through a dark tunnel and felt a sensation of warmth and the presence of light. It felt like a good place to be. Although I had a 9 month old son who was weighing heavily on my mind, I was willing to accept the idea of going/leaving/not returning.

I reached a point where I sort of hung in limbo. I didn't move forward but I also did not move backwards. I just hung out there in that place and looked back on my life and became reconciled with the idea of leaving my son to be raised by others. I did not hear voices per se, but in my mind I finally became aware that I had to go back. I could not stay. The place was not yet meant to be mine. I did not want to leave.

I began to feel pain again. I survived. My surgeon told me afterwards that he had been certain I would die.

I eventually left the hospital and began to be aware of the changes within myself. It was initially very disturbing. I felt that I no longer knew who I was. It was very difficult to describe. I thought I was a little crazy. I hoped that it was a hangover from all the pain medicines/narcotics. I cried for the loss of myself. I would drive to work and sit at traffic lights looking at all the people in their cars in such a hurry to get to work. I would think to myself, 'these people have no idea that we are all going to die someday. If they did, they wouldn't be in such a hurry to get to work.'

I would sit and think and think and think.

I reprioritized things in my life that have stuck with me through all the years. I am not materialistic. I like nice things, but they are not what makes me happy. I could lose all my material goods tomorrow, and I will still be me and can still be happy. I feel driven to connect with people in a positive way. It is what matters most in life. I have a strong spiritual belief that how we live is what matters.

I do not prescribe to any organized religion. I have a tolerance for all faiths, but find that my own beliefs are more along the lines of Buddhism. I find the idea of reincarnation believable. I think it is a strong possibility that we keep coming back until we have learned all the lessons and get it "right".

I don't think it really matters what we call ourselves in regards to religious beliefs. I don't think one is any better nor will accomplish anything that the others won't. I believe in looking for the good in others and living by the "golden rule".

I was only 21 when my NDE occurred. I was just getting started in my adult life. I don't know who I would be if I had not had the experience. I like myself and am glad for the experience. I am a changed person.

I was 13 years old. My life at the time was destitute and impoverished, and I was suffering from depression. I had decided that I would commit suicide several days before that, and on the day I had it planned, I carried it out. It was an overdose, and it took place soon after my father left for work, on a day he was to work a double-shift, thus leaving sufficient time for the drugs to take effect.

The drugs set in and took their effect, but my father came home several hours early and called the paramedics. I was flat-lined all the way to the hospital, and soon after my arrival the doctor was in the process of "pronouncing" me dead when I regained a pulse. I remained in a coma for several days following the incident.

My experience of death is something that has changed my life in many ways. And my experience of death itself is nothing like I have ever heard before. It was a complete void, and I do mean complete. I cannot say it was "dark" because that implies duality; for there to be dark, there must be light to offer an opposite for Darkness to be defined BY. There was not. This "Place" was void of these simple dualistic principals, which we live by, i.e. Dark/Light, Hot/Cold, Good/Evil, Life/Death. In this "place" there was no semblance of these concepts at all. But the only way my mind can conceive of this experience in a language, even though it woefully falls short of the experience, is to say in my experience of Death, there was only one thing: Complete Darkness.


I can not say that I was alone, nor can I say I was not. The only way I can describe this, is by saying that I was in no way able to perceive the presence of others if there were. It was as if my own identity, my own "Self" was nearly non-existent. I was possessed of only enough conscious mind to perceive of this "Place", and nothing more. Like I was an entity possessed of only one ability; to know this place and that this place was the embodiment of death itself, nothing more, not even to know myself.

This was not frightening at all to me, and to look back on the experience, brings to bear a feeling, though dark, of total comfort. But it’s a bittersweet memory however. Though I am in no hurry to pass from this life, I miss that feeling; I miss greatly being enveloped in deaths presence. It permeated my very being, and has changed me forever.

People fear Death, as if it is a monster come to steal them or their loved ones from them, like a thief in the night no one can avoid. To most, it is some hideous thing that "lives" in dark places, and is akin only to evil, and to some, Death is a specter that is the embodiment of evil itself. I "know" this to be farthest from the truth. Within Death, there is a complete cleansing of the spirit, a "washing away" of our realities of the "flesh", and an awakening of the spirit to truths no language can begin to describe. It is a beginning, not a destination.

Death to me was "Dark" yes, it was "Melancholy" yes, but within that was a beauty no words can command. And I will never be the same. It has changed me in other ways, very "special" ways I hesitate to attempt to describe. Ways I can hardly believe for myself at times. Death is not a "Thing" that "Happens" to people, nor is it just a "Place" of being. It is a very real spiritual essence, a spirit if you will. Almost every religion has a name for this "Spirit", but to me it has none, I know it by the feeling of "knowing" when I am in its presence: in a cemetery, in a crumbling and vacant building, when the leaves are falling from the trees when there is hardly enough light in the sky to see them by, and sometimes, he can be felt when a dieing person or animal walks near. This I keep very close to myself, for (to me) very obvious reasons. And save for a select very few people, this is the only time I have voiced this.

When I was in junior high school I developed a blood disorder and was put on the steroid prednisone to help raise my blood platelets. Over the course of a few months, my platelet count got better, but my overall health seemed to deteriorate. Finally, after about a week of feeling more and more tired every day and losing weight very rapidly although I ate nearly constantly, I found myself too weak to get up off the couch.

My parents rushed me to the doctor who noted that I was in ketoacidosis and was at risk for lapsing into a coma. They then rushed me to a children's hospital, and on the way there I vaguely remember passing out in the back seat.

I then remember seeing my father carry me in to the emergency room, as if I was already there waiting. I then watched as the nurses and ER doctors rushed me into a room, and the door shut in my face. I turned around and ahead of me was a cave-like tunnel, very cool inside with water dripping down the sides. I began to walk the slight incline and realized a dim light was sparkling off the water on the walls, so I walked a little further. I stopped when I noticed a figure standing against the wall about 10 feet in front of me, the light I had been following was directly behind the figure, casting a silhouette with yellowish bands shooting out all around.

I then heard what I can only say was my recently deceased grandfather, or maybe I just sensed somehow that it was him communicating to me, "What do you think you're doing here?" And I couldn't reply, I tried opening my mouth but something held it together. He spoke again, "Well? You're not supposed to be here yet. Go back. You'll know when it's your time. Now get!"

The light was then directly over my face, and a cold spray of oxygen was blowing from a mask around my mouth (explaining to me why I couldn't speak), and a doctor was leaning over me. When he saw my eyes open he said, "Well, there you are. Glad to have you back."

I spent the next month in the hospital. The entire experience was gone from my mind for years after it had actually happened. Then one night after my grandmother died, about 14 years later, as I tried to sleep, I saw my grandfather in my near-sleep vision, and he was hugging my grandmother. They turned and looked at me and smiled. When they vanished I suddenly remembered my experience in the hospital.

I was a freshman in high school and it was in March.

I had taken around fifty sleeping pills (crushed because at the time I couldn't swallow pills). I lay in bed for a few hours and then starting from the tips of my fingers and toes, I went numb. It was so numb it hurt just thinking of moving even one muscle.

The music I had chosen to kill myself to faded and my vision was reduced to strobe light flashes in weird shapes. I saw darkness and felt cold emanating from what was in front of me. I knew part of me but not all of me had gone somewhere other than my bedroom and that where I was now I wasn't welcome.

The next thing I know, I am back in my bed, sort of convulsing. I feel extremely nauseated and (over the course of fifteen minutes) slithered to the bathroom, walking into everything possible because my sight hadn't come back and my hearing was in small bursts. I puked for a while and slurred to my mom that I shouldn't go to school the next day.

Approximately ten years ago I suddenly one day, experienced horrible hallucinations and messages and incredible paranoia.
I was out at the time and when I came home days went by when I neither slept nor ate.

I was lying down when suddenly the room was full of light, it was the warmest softest most comforting light I ever saw and I thought I was in heaven.

Soon after I was in a hospital and diagnosed with Manic Depression but honestly to this day I feel it was a near-death experience.

I have taken medication for years now and I would just like to get insight on what other people have experienced or think of my experience. Thank You.

I was in 5th grade and very very ill for days. My grandmother took me to the local physician several times and, he could find nothing wrong . I couldn’t walk, had a temp of 108...then, the miracle...my brother who was 1 year older than me broke his arm at school. While in the emergency room my grandmother told the doctor about me and my symptoms ect.. He sent for an ambulance to be sent to pick me up immediately.

When I got into the e.r. I saw my brother and I felt so bad for him and they rushed me to a room to wait because he already had me scheduled for surgery. While I was in the room laying in bed waiting, the last thing I remember is my dad putting a cold rag on my head and then a bright bright light surrounding me but I wasn’t in bed. I was walking and going towards the source of the light. I had no pain, and had the feeling of right on finally this is over!

I felt anxious to go wherever it was I was going and happy about it, then I remember someone, a being, I guess, not really a face just, a presence and, with no words stopped me in my tracks and, let me know I had to go back. It wasn’t time yet. The presence gave me the greatest feeling of unconditional love I have ever felt and, sent me back without ever speaking a word.

Within a second I remember, waking up on a table seeing the doctor poke me with a huge needle in my hip (where the infection was). I watched the infection just shoot out across the room and everyone in the room sort of panicked and tried to get it to stop somehow, by this time I was standing next to the doctor watching him try to get everything under control. I had the feeling of WOW that was unexpected what was it ect... and I wanted to see better so, I floated up to the ceiling and watched as they raced around the room frantically trying to do things to me one nurse was pinching me so hard on my neck that it was about to bleed.

I didn’t understand that until later when I was recovering in my room.She came in to see me and, told me that the reason she had done that was because, I had lost my pulse and they were trying to like shock me back!!?? Weird...but it worked I guess because, the next thing I remember is being in a quarantined room with my grandma, grandpa and dad looking in the window at me. Then the long process of recovery.

I had a staph infection in my hip and the doctor said that they had lost me on the operating table and it was a miracle that I got there in time thanks to my brother breaking his arm. If that hadn’t happened I would have been dead by the time they got back from the hospital.

I knew then that it happened for a reason and death is not a scary thing to me at all. Since that time, I have, believe it or not, had 2 more nde's resulting from an auto accident...but that’s another story.

I was about 10 years old and I remember I was falling asleep. I begin to sink deeper and deeper into what I thought was sleep. But my...spirit?...began to drift down out of my body and then, rose up. I remember feeling a bit confused and decided to go upstairs to talk to my parents, but when I got to the door, I realized I couldn't reach for the doorknob.

It frightened me and the desperation to try and get their help grew, so I begin to force myself through the door. It felt as if I was pressing through a cotton ball. Some resistance. I then floated upstairs to see my parents watching television (watching the Late Night Show - important for later)

I screamed, but nothing came out. I didn't have a mouth. It was at that moment that I realized I did not have my shell. My body. And that made my fear worse. However, I could see. I don't know how if I didn't have eyes, but whatever!

I looked down and saw that I was this energy...greenish hue...(I know sounds monsterish and silly) my confusion and panic was incredible! It was then that the room begin fill with this bright light and I not only was calmed down, but also was filled with this feeling of love and I wanted to be immersed into the light. I pulled towards it but felt this binding strength pulling back. I looked back and saw that my energy was continued into a long string like tail and it was resisting like a rubber band.

The bright light was not pulling on me, but I wanted to go towards it.
I finally became exhausted and gave up. At that moment I was pulled back and slammed into my body.

I flashed awake. Feeling cold, yet amazed, I ran upstairs. My parents were sitting watching the Late night show (My bedroom is on the farthest side downstairs away from the upstairs TV and could not hear anything...so I can't explain this away with audio)

I told them about my "dream" and I don't remember what they said but I do remember that at least to me they didn't make a big deal out of it. They let me stay up to calm down.

Though it was a frightening experience because let's face it...it's pretty freaky stuff. But the end results were wonderful for me at the time.

In 1972 I was 19 years old. I was living a sort of hippy life and no longer attended the Protestant church I was raised in. I spent the summer of 1972 hitchhiking around the country. During one of the last rides the man who picked me up attacked me. He strangled me until I passed out & then raped me at gunpoint.

While I was passed out I found myself in a dark void. There was no end to it and there was no one but me, not even God. I was completely and utterly alone. I felt that I would be there for eternity.

It seems surprising to me now, but at the time the experience did not change my behavior for good. My risky behavior actually increased. I was terrified of death, yet obsessed by it. Eventually I felt drawn by the Holy Spirit to the Catholic Church.

As my knowledge and faith increased I became less afraid, but still had periods of depression, sometimes with suicidal thoughts. I take an anti-depressant now, which has helped a lot.

I have always believed that I experienced Hell. I really think that would be the ultimate punishment - to be completely alone without other people or God.

I was dreaming that I was attending a psychological conference in Bedford (a neighboring town in Massachusetts) Center when, I became conscious that I was, in fact, dreaming. I remember saying to myself "now I can experiment"! (I had read Robert Monroe's Journeys Out of The Body and Patricia Garfield's Creative Dreaming).

I was lying in a reclining position and stretched out my feet, pointing my toes forward. As I did, I accelerated at tremendous speed, understanding (intuiting) that I was traveling at the speed of light! I quickly found myself inside a tunnel and heard crackling, snapping, electrical sounds all around me as I continued to accelerate (I experienced no fear and was totally caught up in the experience).

When I burst out on the other side, I felt like I was truly alive. Words cannot adequately express what I felt or describe the experience. I can best describe the feeling as ecstatic. I felt all the emotions simultaneously. I felt my being/consciousness had expanded, much larger than in physical life. The feeling was so wonderful, so ecstatic, that the nearest I can come to describing the joy of it is to think of the greatest •••••• you ever had and multiply it a billion times!

After hovering, floating, just being in space, I noticed my house below me in the distance and saw my physical body lying in bed beside my wife. As soon as I saw my physical body, I was immediately drawn back down to it and could feel myself click back into it. I got up from bed elated from the experience but saddened to be back in my physical body (being back in the physical felt like being dead in comparison to the experience I just had)! The experience was so powerful, that, on the following day, I shared it with anyone who would listen.

In retrospect, I consider the experience a wonderful gift. I know that consciousness exists beyond the physical body, that death is but a door we pass through, and that we are all one river.

I was 9 yrs old and lived in South Vancouver on the Fraser River. I was playing with the neighbor’s kids on the log booms one day jumping from log to log and lost track of time. When I decided to go home I jumped in the water to walk to shore and the tide had come in and the water was over my head. I could not swim. I remember going down 2 times and the third time I went down I saw my life pass in front of my eyes like a book when you fan the pages. They were very vivid pictures of my life up to that time. The next thing I knew, one of the kids I was playing with grabbed me out of the water and laid me over a log until I caught my breath and then helped me get to the shore. The images I saw have faded over the years but I still remember one vividly like it happened yesterday. It was an amazing experience and one I will never forget as long as I live.

Please be advised that I was not brought up with a religious background except my mother’s guidance to be good, fair, kind and honest. I have checked liberal because that is the closest I could come.

I was cleaning glue off a rubberized wet suit, for scuba diving, I used carbon tetrachloride...

My doctor told me some months later., when I complained that' I wasn't getting better...He said " I should have died. The decent thing for me to have done was to die. Instead I bring the mess to him to clean up.... then complain.

My blood pressure would not stabilize. It dropped out...
I found myself in a beautiful light...I saw a building. The building was like a City Hall. Made of white stone with a tower...many steps up to the door. I don't remember walking up the steps.
I was inside. There was a man. He was engulfed in light. I couldn’t make out his features. Later I called him Luke the Physician...I think because I was so sick and Luke was the only one that could help me...Luke never spoke to me. He motioned to a doorway. I walked thru it. Luke followed me...A room like a library...floor to ceiling books, on three walls...the books were stone...Luke motioned for me to touch the books. I do not remember learning anything from the books at that time. I do remember, I was awed... I had touched two or three books, when I could hear my Mother and Doctor calling me. I ignored them for as long as I could. I told Luke, I have to go, see what they want, I'll be back...Luke motioned to the door...I was awake...

A few days later my blood pressure dropped out again...I was with Luke in a Senate chamber. It resembled the U.S senate...there were men sitting at these seats...Large chamber. Many men. With one man standing behind a pulpit...There was allot of activity going on between the men and Luke...I do not remember what was said. I was asking questions ... I remember being told that any gifts, I want to give back, I can. I could come back and see them any time. I could not stay any longer.... I never felt that I had died it was more like an experience.

Well I was with 2 other men and drinking allot and I was driving. I realy don’t know what happen but, from what I understand we were going at least 100mph and hit a bank head on. The other 2 were just banged up thanks to air bags in my 2000 S10 pickup. I guess I missed the air bag. I had a head tremor, a broken arm and a smashed knee as well as a broken tibia and collapsed lung. The police said there was no pulse, heartbeat or anything so, he helped the other 2.

A passer by got me going again they got me out. I went again. I was airlifted to the hospital then in the sky they had to zap me with the pattles.

What I saw was a very bright light and then it kind of looked like an endless sky and, at the left I could see a face like outlines of a mans face. Never felt so good in my life no pain, nothing.

I woke up in the hospital after 8 days.

Then dreams 1 or 2 mos. later. Dreams about floating in the air seeing my family.

Why am I still here?

As an apprentice electrician in coal mining...I worked along-side a 5th deg...black belt judo champion...he had an ego and constantly picked on older workers...one day I suggested he pick on someone his own age and size...so he came after me...before I knew it I was in a strangle hold...and he was asking me to submit.... never in my life till that point had I ever submitted to anyone...so I would not...he continued to apply pressure till my head was ready to explode...and I would gladly have submitted...but since he had cut off my air supply to my wind pipe and the blood supply to my jugular and was holding me down...there was no way to indicate to him that I was ready to give up....I next found myself in a dark tunnel.....at the end of the tunnel was a bright light...I headed towards the light...then I realized that someone...or...something was closing the door and the light was disappearing...so I ran towards the light...I just managed to put my hand on the door and push !
It opened in time.... as I was being revived...I came around shouting.... I can see you...the after effects were not pleasant at the time.... a flood of realization that this man could have killed me....anger/hostility.

The question which I have till this day is.... when you hear of all these others who have experienced something near death.... why am I the only one that sees the experience the way I do?

I am extremely strong in my belief system and could talk about it and my life’s experiences for days. But your readers would think I am nuts...so I will share one little bit with you...I remember the time prior to my birth...I was in a huge room...it was dimly lit...a voice called me and I went towards it...the voice came from a radiant light...the closer I got the more wondrous was the feeling that became part of me.... the voice said to me.... it’s your turn.... go down and give them a message from me.... tell them I am alive and well.... the next thing I knew I was involved!
I was in an argument with other beings similar to me...over whose turn it was...I remember saying...I was told it was my turn...and the next thing I knew I was being born.... when people would come to look at me I would become extremely excited and try to tell them...I have a message for you...but I could not communicate with them...this happened over and over till one day I got tired of trying and gave up.

I lead a charmed life in many ways growing up...but to cut to the chase...I was 15 and was having all kinds of experiences...when I remembered everything.....since that time I have continued to lead what many would call a charmed life.


I am able to foresee lots of things...but since you are working on the specifics of near death...let me tell you.... god is alive and well...and this is a super holiday we are on...make sure you give more than you take...and hell could only be...to be kept from the light...perhaps you can remember what your message is.

When I was 22, I literally believe today that my body was being torn apart. I was abused sexually as a young girl, and I was trying to figure out what was "wrong" with me. There were some memories I had always known, and some that I had repressed for years. I think this was tearing me apart inside. I developed (undiagnosed at the time) Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. I got to the point where trying to sleep sent me into a panic. My fiancé couldn't even touch me without filling me with loathing and disgust. I was forgetting to eat, drink fluids, or sleep.


I went for 5 nights without sleeping or eating. I may have had some fluids in this time, but it was not very much...not enough to keep me alive at any rate. On the fifth day I tried to go to my classes at the university. I felt so sick. I was not able to think clearly at all and I was in a panic. I tried to call my mother to come get me, but she was at work and I could not remember her work phone number.

There was this group on campus who was really a religious cult. I did not know this at the time and they offered to help me. They took me to their house and told me that I was "possessed." They held me in their house and performed exorcisms on me during my 6th night without sleep. I went once again without food or water or sleep. When they had finally fallen asleep, I called my mother. She immediately sent the cops to the house. The police came and took me to our clinic. I was then sent to the hospital. They never told me at the time, but the doctors told my mom they were not sure if I would make it or not.

While I was in the hospital room, I started to feel the most overwhelming peace I had ever experienced in my lifetime. It simply filled my heart to overflowing. No words can describe it, it was so incredibly beautiful. There was overwhelming light and I started to feel myself headed towards it. I wanted to go!! It was so incredible, but then I heard the nurse start screaming that I must take the medicine. I didn't want it...she was threatening to force it down my throat...I took it and then BAM! I was back in my body altogether...The light started to fade and I HATED it. I hated them for bringing me back. It was at that point I felt "somethings" come into my body. I am part American Indian and I have always believed in the presence of guardians or helpers. It was like they came into me in order to keep me alive. I thought I was in hell, quite frankly. It was as though every single negative emotion I ever had and had repressed took over. I felt like destroying something I was!


So filled with rage. I tried without success to recapture that feeling I had during the NDE. Because I couldn't do it, I thought I was a "bad" person. But recently, I have been feeling that feeling again, not always, but at times, and when I do it is beautiful.

I have to deal with my past and through dealing with the pain I am restored to that state which I believe is all of humanity's natural state...once of bliss and joy!

I cannot put things into my body that are harmful---smoking, drinking, drugs, non-organic foods, caffeine--without feeling sick...I can "sense" things about other people...their emotions---sometimes even dead relatives or spirits around them. I have seen spirits since my NDE.

I know my purpose...simply to heal myself and to help heal other people and restore us to our natural state.

We as humans are so out of balance and we need to become in balance to achieve our full potential.

http://www.near-death.com/wwwboard/messages/178.html

I was hospitalized following a miscarriage for what is considered a very routine surgical procedure, a "D & C". Prior to the surgery I was concerned that my blood pressure was extremely low, but no one else appeared to be that concerned. Anyhow, during the surgery, my heart stopped for approximately 2 and 1/2 minutes to 3.

However, as many of us have experienced, time is not the same in the other dimension. I found myself in a lovely, peaceful meadow or field. The grass/flowers were about waist high to me. I remember seeing myself in a long, flowing skirt. I knew that I was all alone, however, I was not alarmed. Now, this sounds ever so simple, but being left alone was always a tough issue for me as our mother abandoned my twin brother and me when we were 18 months old. We were separated and placed in foster homes. Unfortunately, my childhood situation was not always so pleasant; my "family" would not allow me to be a real member and I always struggled with wanting to fit in and be a member. There was alcohol, physical and emotional abuse and it took years of therapy to undo the damage.

So, here I was, all alone and totally at peace with it. What I perceived was an atmosphere of love. I could inhale, hear, feel and touch a palpable sense of being loved. I also knew that there was some type of kind and gentle presence with whom I could communicate mentally, but did not find the need to at that time. I knew that I was loved completely and there was no doubt in my mind. I knew that I was alone and I accepted that and was very calm. I think that there was a tree and I was moving towards the tree (The Tree of Life perhaps?) At some point I felt the sunshine warming the back of my head and I began to slowing turn towards the sunlight to bathe my face in its warmth. I believe that if I had remained in that environment perhaps I would have moved towards the light and had more of an encounter.

Now, I know that my experience is not as profound as some folks. And yet, I think that the two most important issues I had, that of loneliness and worthiness are not my issues alone. I sense that we all have these at the core of our being and it is what motivates many of us to do many things; destructive and otherwise. So I look upon this experience as a real gift. No longer do I fear death. (I'm not thrilled about sustained pain, but I know that it is transitory.) As I mature in my understanding of spiritual matters, I realize that the fears of being unloved and unlovable and the fear of being rejected by others kept me bound up and depressed. I am being more and more liberated each day. I am looking into the eyes of others, whether at the grocery store or at PTA meetings and seeing God's love reflected back. I am taking the time to say, "Hello in there".

Since this experience, my husband, who is an attorney and is wonderfully pragmatic, appeared to also have a newfound appreciation of our marriage and me. I have always been the one on a spiritual path while he is more earthbound. (Together; we make a healthy balance for our children.) He tracked down the medical records because we wanted to be sure of what had happened. I knew, but he needed "proof". I remember that as I was coming to in the O.R., I could feel or hear the panic and concern in the attending physician's voice as he frantically called my name. When I responded to him, I told him that he would never guess where I had been. He had just called a "code blue" and was poised with the blade at my neck, ready to do a tracheotomy. I began to cry then, as I was humbled by the intensity and the gravity of what I had experienced. I kept it to myself for a while, as I thought most people would just think I was oxygen deprived and goofy and would make light of what had!


Been a very precious gift that I had been given. I think that I had been over anesthetized, however that is a moot point because I feel no need to place blame.

I was given a special Valentine that I could tuck away in my heart and take it out and view it anytime. Prior to my experience and since then I have read every book that I could that had to do with NDEs. Just recently I attended an intimate workshop hosted by Dannion Brinkley who emphasized that it is what we do, and how we treat others, that makes the difference in this world and the next.

I will continue to find ways to spread God's endless love in whatever ways I am inspired to do.

I was 8 years old and went to have my tonsils out. I had received a bad burn at the beach the day before and was uncomfortable with that.

The doctors put a cloth over my nose and mouth and I was instructed to breath in through my nose and out my mouth.

I was scarred at the feeling that I had.

I was in a long black tunnel or vanishing cone with a screaming neon purple light at the end that seemed to draw me in. The sound was like the scream of electrical wires - high pitch and absorbing. I was very scared.
Then I was back.

I have often felt a confusion or sadness that my experience was not of wondrous light and good feelings. But have justified it by the stand that it was not yet my time.

Thank you for this opportunity to share my story.

Was up at neighborhood park with my young son; had a cyst burst on my ovary and started heavy bleeding; the ambulance took me to the hospital and the fire chief took my young son there also and then called my mother to tell her that I was there; had high fever of 104; remember seeing clouds moving very rapidly and seeing a bright light. Remember a crystal like city and that is all I can remember.

After 4 month's of heavy drug abuse (speed, XTC, Marihuana, Psilocibee, LSD and Micro trips. I started to have unpleasant experiences on LSD.

I thought that I was able to play with my life. But I would go on. And one day in the highest point of my use (abuse) I took that LSD trip in a small room filled with 4 ore 5 persons. After a little moment I was completely gone out of reality. The persons who I was with tried to wake me but no response. I did not move for about 3 hours. My experience: I think that I had an Out-of-body experience but I do not remember seeing myself. After that, and this I do remember very well, saw flashes of things that I had done in my life, those flashes came with comments if I was good or bad, I was very afraid at the time. Then everything calmed down. And then came the very clear white light, closer and closer at this moment. I heard voices and it was like they were arguing if they would let me in yes or no some said "no, he is not ready yet".
Hers said yes let him in" and as I came closer to the light the voices became clearer, and I started to see a small black hole in the big clear light. I think that I went thru the black hole and then I woke up. And I found myself at the same spot in the same position as I had left this materialistic world. I had peed in my pants. I felt very scared and did not realize what had happened to me.

I still don't really know if it was just hallucinations or something else. But I know that at the end it is beautiful, that if you live a good life it will even be better, and that I am not afraid to die although I love life
even as it is a hard time out here!

I hope this info has been useful for you. I am sorry for my written
English I know it is very bad!

If you know what happened to me this day please let me know.

Have a great life! You really deserve it if you're good to the other.