May 13, 2025 • 29 mins
After life
The question of the afterlife fascinates us all, whether shaped by science, spirituality or something in between. In this episode, we explore what happens at the end of life, and what might follow, in a conversation with psychic medium Debbie Malone and science writer and journalist Bianca Nogrady.
About the episode – brought to you by Australian Seniors.
Join James Valentine for the sixth season of Life’s Booming: Dying to Know, our most unflinching yet. We’ll have the conversations that are hardest to have, ask the questions that are easy to ignore, and hear stories that will make you think differently about the one thing we’re all guaranteed to experience: Death.
From vivid, near-death experiences to the quiet moments before death, this episode looks at how people make sense of the unknown. You’ll hear how psychic mediums describe receiving messages from those who’ve passed, what it feels like to come back from the brink, and how the scientific community approaches questions of consciousness, the soul, and what defines the moment of death.
Debbie Malone is one of Australia’s most recognised psychic mediums, with over three decades of experience connecting people to their loved ones in spirit. As a medium, author and spiritual teacher, she works with individuals and audiences seeking comfort and closure, and has also assisted police on high-profile investigations involving missing persons and unsolved crimes.
Bianca Nogrady is a journalist, author and science communicator who has spent more than a decade writing about death, dying and what it means to be mortal. Her book The End: The Human Experience of Death explores how cultures, clinicians, and individuals confront the reality of dying, and what we can learn from it.
If you have any thoughts or questions and want to share your story to Life’s Booming, send us a voice note – lifesbooming@seniors.com.au
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For more information visit seniors.com.au/podcast
Produced by Medium Rare Content Agency, in conjunction with Ampel Sonic Experience Agency
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Disclaimer: Please be advised that this episode contains discussions about death, which may be triggering or upsetting for some listeners. Listener discretion is advised.
If you are struggling with the loss of a loved one, please know that you are not alone and there are resources available. For additional support please contact Lifeline on 131 114 or Beyond Blue on 1300 224 636.
TRANSCRIPT:
S06EP07 After life
James: Hello and welcome to Life's Booming. I'm James Valentine and this season we're talking about death. In this episode, well, this is a debate that's been going ever since we were alive. What happens after we die? No matter your religion or spiritual beliefs, the question of the afterlife fasci
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:06):
Hello, and welcome to Life Spooming.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
I'm James Valentine and this season we're talking about death
in this episode. Well, this is a debate that's been
going ever since we were alive what happens after we die?
No matter your religion or spiritual beliefs, the question of
the afterlife fascinates us all but the help of my guests,
I'll explore everything we know or perhaps don't quite know
(00:28):
about it from both a spiritual and scientific perspective. Biancher
no Grady is an award winning science journalist and the
author of The End The Human Experience of Death. And
Debbie Malone is a psychic medium who felt a spiritual
awakening after a series of near death experiences. Biancher, Debbie,
Welcome the Life's Booming. So, Debbie, this starts with you. You've
(00:51):
had a lot of near death experience.
Speaker 3 (00:53):
Yes, I have.
Speaker 4 (00:55):
I had one at three and thirteen that I had
since had another two in my early twenties.
Speaker 3 (01:01):
And then I had a miscarriage.
Speaker 4 (01:02):
And then I woke up and started seeing murders and
it was the backpacker murders was the first thing that
I actually saw.
Speaker 1 (01:08):
What do you mean both see that I was.
Speaker 4 (01:11):
Becoming a victim, and I was being you know, I
was being attacked and murdered in visions and dreams. At
the time, the backpacker murders was a really big thing
on the news, and I just thought I was watching
TV too much. And then I started to see things
before they happened on the news. I used to work
at Fairfax Community Newspapers, and I kept seeing all of
(01:31):
these different visions and I spoke to on the journalists
and he said, why don't we do a story about
you and just see what happens? And then it ended
up Ivan Mallatt's girlfriend, Sheilinda Hughes, contacted the newspaper and
wanted to make contact, and I ended up consequently working
on the case with the Task Force right for quite
a few quite a few years.
Speaker 2 (01:52):
I feel I'm automatically going to go big lid, But
you mean they go okay, So DEBI, what can we
expect this weekend?
Speaker 3 (01:59):
Yeah, And it's.
Speaker 4 (02:00):
Funny because it's not like that, because it's me being
the skeptic. All I wanted to do was to shut
it down. I didn't want to do anything, have anything
to do with it. I'd never had a reading. I didn't,
you know, have tarot cards or anything like that. And
when it started to happen, at first, the police were
quite skeptical and I had to speak to a few
different officers and then they just said, just keep a diary,
and so I just and they said, don't think about
(02:21):
what you see, just write it down, put a date down,
and when I had enough information, I would send it
through to them. I can't say that I have solved cases.
It's more like I'm a profiler, so I can see,
I can describe things. And the thing is with when
it comes through, it can be the past, it can
be the present, or it can be the future. So
it's like pieces of a puzzle. It's was like playing
charades in a way, so you're hearing things and seeing
(02:42):
things and you try and work it out.
Speaker 1 (02:43):
So police weren't skeptical of this.
Speaker 4 (02:46):
Oh somewhere somewhere, And yeah, I've had some I had
some challenging experiences with them, but I've had some incredible
officers that I've worked with, you know, during the time
as well. And I just thought once I did something
with the backpacker meters, it would all go away and
I wouldn't have to deal with it anymore.
Speaker 3 (03:00):
I kind of thought that would be.
Speaker 1 (03:01):
It by all go away.
Speaker 2 (03:03):
You mean the kind of visions you were having or
you were getting a sense of in this sense, are
you someone who's seeing the future, or you someone who's
seeing glimpses of the afterlife or something.
Speaker 3 (03:15):
Like that, all of that.
Speaker 4 (03:16):
So, the victims were coming to me, The two English
girls were coming to me, and one of the visions
was I could see somebody walking them into the forest,
but I couldn't see who he was because I was
seeing through his eyes. So they were walking away from me,
and they were kind of pleading with me to help them,
and then it would stop, and then I would get
a wall full of polaroid images, and then it ended
(03:38):
up most of the images on the pole of the
polaroids were the other victims, but at the time I
didn't know. It was only later on the case became
solved and some of those faces still haven't been they
haven't been linked to the case.
Speaker 3 (03:52):
So I think there's so many more.
Speaker 2 (03:54):
Yeah, So going back to your near death experiences, what
did you see when that happened? What what was your
youd near death experience?
Speaker 4 (04:02):
My most vivid one when I was thirty four. I
had to have a major operation and I told the
doctors that I was going to die, and they thought
I was being stupid that and I said about the
anesthetic and they didn't believe me. Anyway, when I went through,
I woke up after the operation and I was in
a higher dependency. They put me on a morphine drip
and I didn't know I was allergic to morphine, so
(04:23):
they kept telling me to push the button, and when
I did, I ended up having a lot of really
horrible visions.
Speaker 3 (04:30):
To start with. But then I went through to this
beautiful place. It was like.
Speaker 4 (04:34):
It was like a rollercoaster, like I love the night sky,
and it was like I went up. I felt like
I was an astronaut without a craft, and I was
just could see the universe and I felt very calm,
and then was a lot of movement. The movie Contact
for me, is very close to my experience. And then
I suddenly went into like I would call it like
a black hole because I kind of feel I was
a vortex and I got sucked into it. But then
(04:57):
the movement was getting faster and faster. It's a bit
like being on a roller coaster. And then I landed
in this meadow and everything seemed more colorful than it
is here.
Speaker 3 (05:06):
And the stupid part about it, there was.
Speaker 4 (05:08):
A private edge, I remember that, and it was about
this tour and there's this little gate and there was
people in front of me and they all went ahead,
and then there's people on the other side, and they
were all seemed so happy, and you know, it just
seems so beautiful and just I felt so loved and peaceful.
Then I got to my turn to go through the
little gate and they said, no, you can't. And I'm
(05:28):
a bit like, you know, I'm not the person of
that pushes in at the daily line, so it's like,
you know, it's my team. I want to go through.
And they said no, no, no, you can't. Turn around.
So I turned around and was like I was up
in the sky and I could see my It makes
me crying nearly every time I talk about it. I
could see down that my one year old daughter was
in my husband's arm, my three year old son was
beside him, and my and my seven year old was
(05:49):
there and the two boys are saying, where's mummy, where's mummy,
And he said, Mummy's not coming back. Mummy's in heaven now.
And then suddenly I fell back down and I'm back
into the hospital and the nurse is shaking me and
they're pulling the morphine droop out and she and she said,
what are you doing? And I said, you know, I'm
going to the light and she said, not on my shift.
(06:09):
It's too much paperwork.
Speaker 1 (06:13):
Oh the new so public it'll fix any time.
Speaker 3 (06:17):
It's humor.
Speaker 1 (06:18):
When you did your your book, be Aker, did you.
Speaker 2 (06:20):
Do did you talk to people with near death experience
or did you cover that area?
Speaker 3 (06:24):
I did.
Speaker 5 (06:25):
I mean, the aim of my book was really to
take to kind of explore right up to the moment
of death, but not beyond, because I felt that my
skills did not equip me to assess that in any
kind of in any form. But obviously people with near
death experiences did talk talk to me, and also people
who had talked to people with near death experiences. But
because one thing that really struck me with anytime a
(06:47):
his stories like that is the people who've had them
seem to lose their fear of death. You know, I
think we all carry this fear of death in us,
and I think it motivates a lot of what we do.
But I remember one woman to say, it was just
so beautiful. I'm not scared. I'm just not scared of anymore.
Speaker 2 (07:03):
Did you hear any Do people say the kind of
detail the Demi's describing, I've never heard that, I've heard
the light or that's sort of feeling.
Speaker 1 (07:10):
I've never heard of this is it such detail?
Speaker 5 (07:13):
There was actually a study that was done that looked
at a whole range of new death experiences and tried
to I guess, classify some of the common elements to them,
and they sort of that idea of that there's a
journeying you know, it's a tunnel, it's driving down a road,
maybe a roller coaster, that there are there's there's a
journeying process, and then there's a decision point, and at
(07:36):
that decision point or a junction, there is a sense
that what is beyond is wonderful, that it's extraordinary, and
I want to be there. And but then either somebody
says to them, no, it's not your time. There's some
something that turns them back. And I can't remember whether
it's ever something that people someone makes a conscious decision
not to From memory, people want to go forward but
(07:58):
someone else says, no, this is not your time. And
so there's a pattern to those experiences. But in terms
of the individual things, like I remember one of the
stories was a young soldier in World War Major, World Wars,
you know, who thought he was walking with his friends,
and then his friends just all kind of he was
just walking down this road and his friends just gradually disappeared,
(08:21):
and then I think there was a point where someone said, no, soldier,
you've got to stop.
Speaker 3 (08:28):
Go back.
Speaker 5 (08:29):
And so, you know, we bring to it our own
circumstance context to it. But those features are common.
Speaker 2 (08:36):
In all of them, but always always good, always in
a sense of like going towards something good, this is
going to be fine.
Speaker 5 (08:44):
Well, it's interesting because there is a very small, very
small percentage of people who have horrific experiences, terrifying, terrifying experiences.
I didn't hear of any of those stories. I don't
know if you've encountered those. Yeah, I have heard of that.
Speaker 4 (08:59):
Sometimes it's like they feel that that movie What Dreams
May Come, that Robin Williams was in that kind of thing,
kind of being stuck or earth bound. Because a lotther
time when it's sometimes it's someone who's tried to suicide
and that they weren't successful.
Speaker 2 (09:13):
I wonder if the near death experience is a cultural thing,
like did you look at that at all?
Speaker 5 (09:17):
Is it?
Speaker 2 (09:18):
It's that along the ways which we talk about it
seemed to me very Western and almost very English, you know,
like we talk about that sort of that sort of tradition.
Speaker 1 (09:26):
One of the South Americans do one of the what
do the Germans do?
Speaker 5 (09:29):
I think it is a cross cultural phenomenon that I mean,
there's even I think the earliest record of a need
or I think as a record of a new death
experience is actually from ancient Greece and it was a
description of a warrior. I don't know if there has
been any kind of cross cultural comparisons around near death experiences,
it would be really interesting. But I think what seems
(09:49):
to come out is that it is very unique to
that individual what that experience is in terms of what
the time, what form the journey takes.
Speaker 2 (09:57):
You said, Beggie, your your book was you know, I
wanted to up to death, what a decided death was?
Speaker 3 (10:03):
Well, that's a very good question because we don't.
Speaker 5 (10:06):
Actually the definition of death is contested, it's and it
is culturally specific. It's there are whole conferences that are
held still on how we define death, and it's incredibly difficult.
And the thing is, we don't need to define death
unless we are wanting to donate organs. That's essentially the
(10:30):
main reason we need a definition to do. We need
a legal definition of death so that if somebody is
an organ donat we know that removing their organs is
not actually killing them. But it's incredibly complex. It's around
the notion of when your heart stops, are you dead.
But if your heart stops, we can restart your heart.
If you stop breathing, we can ventilate you. If your
(10:53):
brain stops, how do we measure what brain activity? What's
the difference between someone, for example, who's in incredibly deep
versus someone who might be what we now term as
brain dead. And again, those definitions differ in different countries.
I mean, again, if there's no time pressure, such as
there would be with something like organ donation, then we
(11:14):
do have the luxury of time to be able to wait.
But there have been numerous cases where there was one
case in fact, where a surgeon was facing manslaughter charges
because a dispute over whether the person was in fact
dead when he began to remove the organs. So and
it has very specific applications. There's been legal cases around
(11:36):
brain death where two people were involved in a husband
and wife devolved in a car accident, who died first,
because that had implications in terms of the inheritance, and
so there have been very complicated cases. And I mean
we talk about well brain death will loss of activity
in the brain, but there is a state of, for
lack of a better word, chronic brain death where people
(11:58):
The longest I think was somebody who literally survived for
a decade and a half a child who I think
they suffered meningitis, but they were kept on life support breathing,
they went through puberty and then when they finally decided
we're not going to treat or their decision was made
to see treatment for pneumonia for example, which I guess
(12:19):
is you know, usually a common cause of death at
that state. When the autopsy was performed and so I
was a little bit brutal, but the brain was essentially calcified.
Speaker 1 (12:28):
So this this.
Speaker 5 (12:29):
Individual was bi legal definitions, alive up until that point,
but you know, were they there, what had departed?
Speaker 1 (12:40):
If the brain is the seed of consciousness, then they
could not have been conscious. But then is the brain
the seed of consciousness? All sorts of questions there. What
do you think death is debby what's death?
Speaker 4 (12:51):
Yeah, it's a half one because I do believe there
is life after. I suppose the death is the death
of the body, but I don't think it's the death
of the soul and that that's the thing that lives
on And even you can measure like when you make
contacts sometimes with spirit. They were an electromagnetic frequency, so
EMF test is that you'd use to test a Michael
wave will actually indicate when there's a spirit in the room,
(13:14):
you know. But it's when you're talking about transplants. Another
thing that I was thinking. I've done ratings for people
like a lady who'd had a transplant, but she ended
up she was in a coma, but she had had
a transplant from a young man and it was a
lung transplant, I think. And then she was in a
coma and her mum came to see me to see
if like, because when people are in a camera, I
(13:35):
can communicate with them even though they are still physically alive.
And what was interesting the person from the transplant came
through the reading at the same time as the person
who was the recipient, So it's and you think, well
he's passed away, but he's living on through her, you know.
But then he gave life to her to extend her life.
Speaker 3 (13:53):
So fascinating. That's even like that's I suppose that's a
whole other story.
Speaker 1 (13:57):
Well then what's what's the soul? What's the soul? Thing? Understand?
Hanging around? Where is it hanging around?
Speaker 4 (14:02):
What?
Speaker 1 (14:02):
What is it?
Speaker 3 (14:03):
What does it?
Speaker 1 (14:03):
Do you a read? Do you think there's a reincarnation?
Speaker 6 (14:05):
Yeah?
Speaker 5 (14:06):
What what do you?
Speaker 1 (14:06):
What do you? What is you said to have gleaned
a lot of information from the flow? Let us know.
Speaker 4 (14:12):
Well yeah, oh look, I definitely do feel that we
that we do live on and I'm One of the
things that I do is called psychometry. So from holding
or touching something, it's like I can I can see
through my hands kind of thing. So you can touch
an inanimate object like a piece of jewelry. You can
use clothing, but we tend to wash it. But say
I went to Scotland and touched the sacred stones and
(14:32):
I could see back into the past by touching that
or just being in a historical site, and a lot
of people might go to say a battle site or
something and they will feel that energy of sadness or
you know, or it might be a happy place. But
you know, we tend to form we feel that. So
I do feel that that energy does exist. But I
from my own personal experience, I you know, I've had
past life experiences and one thing I did, I've been
(14:56):
underhagnosied quite a lot of times with the police, but
I did it to contact someone through a case, but
it ended up took me back. So I had a
past life and it was I think unless I had
my own proof, I would think, you know, I need
to see it to believe it kind of thing.
Speaker 6 (15:10):
You know.
Speaker 4 (15:11):
I have seen things happen and even like children coming
through and they know all about their great grandfather who
they they got their middle name or something so they
can talk about them.
Speaker 2 (15:20):
Now, you're a science writer, you know, you edit science
journalist science. You know, Debbie, you know this is just rubbish.
Is a much science around this to scientists tend to
just you know, poopoo this stuff.
Speaker 5 (15:32):
It's funny. I always think of that, is it that.
Speaker 3 (15:34):
Line from Hamlets? There are greater things in heaven and.
Speaker 5 (15:37):
Earth and a drepped off in your philosophy. And even
though I you know, I come from a very I guess,
Western scientific paradigm.
Speaker 3 (15:45):
Both my parents were.
Speaker 5 (15:47):
Doctors, I do also, you know, I would define myself
as agnostic. I do have a sense that there is
something greater than good what you know, what exists in
this mortal sphere that we find ourselves in. And in
some ways, I don't know that it's the place of.
Speaker 3 (16:07):
Science to explore that.
Speaker 5 (16:10):
I think, I mean, certainly, with the existing knowledge and
technologies we have, we have no way of necessarily studying this.
Speaker 3 (16:18):
I mean what we can do?
Speaker 5 (16:19):
You know when we talk about near death experiences, and
I'm you know, I know that there's band studies looking
at using, for example, functional magnetic resonance imaging, which is
a kind of imaging where you can look at blood
flow in the brain, you can look at areas of
brain activity. The problem is, you know, I that it'd
be great to study someone having a near death experience,
But how do you get those unique circumstances happen? Can
(16:42):
we schedule one work? I mean, you know, maybe you
could put someone into an induced coma, But I mean,
there's obviously ethical challenges we're doing that, you know, there
are we do understand there are parts of the brain that,
when kind of stimulated, can generate these these kind of
sense of the newminess, the sense of a feeling of
other worlds that our you know, I mean, we are
(17:03):
experiencing these things in this body. There will be things
that are going on in our brain that contribute it
to those emotions, that contribute to those those sensations. But
whether we can say this is whether I can say
and personally this is purely a function of electrical impulses
and neurotransmitters. I can't say that. I can't say yes
or no, And I don't think science has the capacity
(17:25):
said that. You know, I think because so much of
this is is belief. It is faith, which is not
to say that it doesn't exist in the same way
that you know, just because someone is mentally ill, that
doesn't mean that it's not real.
Speaker 3 (17:37):
It is real.
Speaker 5 (17:38):
It is real in every facet that would define realness.
Just because we can't measure it doesn't mean it's not real.
But at the moment we can't measure it.
Speaker 2 (17:45):
But LIKEBI, you've said a couple of times, you know,
or can use electromagnetic something or another to measure presence,
and you can take photos and stuff.
Speaker 1 (17:53):
You would say, actually there is science or there is evidence.
Speaker 3 (17:56):
Yeah there is.
Speaker 4 (17:57):
I think, yeah, getting the images, I think that's part
of it. But I also see when some of that's
the communication with the other side and the proof of
what that person in spirit will come through and say
that someone like myself wouldn't know that I can relay
that to someone what happened. I have a client that
(18:18):
I've seen quite a number of times now. He came
to see me about his father, and he had this
little little toy bulldog that his dad had given him,
and he was a little boy. And the whole time
I didn't know about the dad. I just said, you know,
i'm seeing your dad, and your dad had a heart
attack and he's really worried about you. And he said, oh,
you're going deep sea fishing or going fishing soon. But
he's telling me you can't go. And he said, I
don't know what you're talking about. I said, he's telling
(18:40):
me there's something wrong with your heart. And I could
suddenly see into his heart and I could see there
was these three blockages. So there was two on the front,
one in the back. And I'd proposed to be a
medical person at all, but I was just relaying what
I saw, and I said, have you been having any
heart problems? He said, no, no, I'm all good. And
his wife's a nurse, and I said, look, your dad
just wants you to get checked out. And his dad
had of a heart attack. Anyway, I must have said
(19:02):
it to him about twenty times, and the reading he says, oh,
for goodness sake, so to just stop it. And then
he rang me a week later and he said, well,
I humored you. And he said, I'm not going on
the fishing trip now I'm in hospital. And they gave
him three stints and one of the one of the
blockages with the widow maker, and so his father had
come from the other side to save his son, you know.
(19:22):
And a few times now he sort of said, I'll
have I got any blockages, And another time I'd seen
two more and he had two more subsequently. But yeah,
it's funny, and they if they were nice before they passed,
they can be nice when they go to the other side,
but other times they can be horrible, Like you know,
I had a lady who suffered really badly with fibromillalgia,
and her mother came through sh the reading and she said,
(19:43):
I don't want her here. I hate my mother. She's horrible.
Make her go away. And I said, well, you brought
it with you. I can't anyway. The mother just kept persisting,
and I said, look, just listen to what I say.
Speaker 3 (19:52):
I have to say.
Speaker 4 (19:53):
She wants to tell you she's sorry and acknowledges how
unpleasant she was to you, and you do what you
want to do with it. But you know, I'm just
going to pass the message on and then maybe she'll
be quite anyway, told her the message in it I
saw about a month later, I ran into it Kranella
and she said, you won't believe since I had that reading,
I haven't been sick. And she said, I'm finally well.
And I said, well, maybe all of that stress was
(20:13):
affecting your health.
Speaker 5 (20:15):
That's interesting because fibromyalgia there's the much higher incidents than
people who have experienced childhood abuse.
Speaker 3 (20:21):
Oh well, there you go.
Speaker 1 (20:22):
Yeah, it's not all the time as you're driving the
car or.
Speaker 4 (20:29):
Sometimes sometimes you know, those roadside memorials can be quite
challenging because the persons still standing there, you know, And
I think that makes sense.
Speaker 3 (20:36):
So yeah, that can make it hard.
Speaker 4 (20:38):
Or you can go into an historical location and you know,
you might see someone hanging in from the ceiling and
things like that. So people think it's all rosy and
fun and happy. It's always pretty busy.
Speaker 5 (20:51):
The thing, isn't it We so desperately want to communicate
with the people who we've lost, like it's such a
deep seated need. I don't think there's anybody that wouldn't
it would couldn't think of someone that they would want
to say.
Speaker 3 (21:03):
I miss you, I love you. You know, what should
I do?
Speaker 4 (21:06):
It's increasing and I think the thing is we always
we all want proof, we all hope there's something more,
and it's just it's a hard thing because it's unless
you have your own experience. I'm not someone who wants
to change everybody's mind. I think you need to have
your own experience so that you have your own understanding
and then you make your own decision.
Speaker 2 (21:25):
If there's a spectrum of sensitivity in this kind of way,
then you're one and I am at the other, like
I am zero for any sense of spirituality other sadness,
after life, nothing like I am just zero.
Speaker 1 (21:41):
Where would you sit in me?
Speaker 5 (21:46):
It's hard to know how much is wishful thinking for me.
I mean, I didn't grow up in a religious household.
I don't subscribe.
Speaker 3 (21:53):
To any religion.
Speaker 5 (21:55):
Yes, I guess, as I said, agnostic, I.
Speaker 6 (21:58):
Think I would any moment like I have never had
a single moment that says to me either there's God
or that there's anything, or that there's any experience.
Speaker 2 (22:08):
Which doesn't mean I'm skeptical of your experience, Like there's
lots of other things I haven't experienced either.
Speaker 1 (22:13):
I've grown old enough to understand that, you know.
Speaker 2 (22:16):
But it's like, as I'm fascinated by you to be
quivering like a read in the wind of this sort
of thing where I'm just sort of I'm just a
buried stuff brick.
Speaker 5 (22:31):
I there's I have never had any experience that I
couldn't explain as being merely a product of my emotions
and wish for thinking. You know, I had two wonderful
grandmas who are both very different and who I adored,
and I like to think, you know, there are some
moments that I've had where, you know, I've been really
upset by something and I sort of, you know, I
(22:52):
like to feel that they're there. I draw comfort from
the sense sense of them not watching over me, because
that just as gross, but just you know, they are there.
And you know, I was talking to my signed about
this last night, and you know, when people die, mynd views,
when people died, they live on in US. I mean,
it's so trited, it's so Hollywood, but they do.
Speaker 3 (23:13):
You know. I think often about my two my on
you and my nan.
Speaker 5 (23:18):
You know, I imagine what they would think of my kids
who they never met, for example, or what you know,
what they would do in this situation. And so they're
very much alive in some way in my heart. God
sounds like I'm writing a film, so oh my God,
but it's yeah. I would say, there is nothing.
Speaker 3 (23:35):
I have ever experienced that.
Speaker 5 (23:37):
Would be anything like what you experience. And again I'm
not to say that those things aren't real. It's again
not been my experience. That wasn't just a function of
love and grief.
Speaker 1 (23:50):
Writing a book on death, how has that left you?
How's that? How has that altered your feelings about death
or what is your relationship to death?
Speaker 4 (23:58):
Now?
Speaker 5 (23:59):
It made me afraid of dying in the sense of
it being an end of life. I mean, who knows
how it will happen, But it made me less frightened
of what that's going to be like, because that was
initially what prompted the book was I was with my
nan about half an hour before she died, and she
was clearly dying. She wasn't she was unconscious, and I,
you know, I was in the room with my cousins
(24:20):
and sort of left there thinking, I wonder what that
was like for her, What is she going through?
Speaker 3 (24:24):
Was she in pain?
Speaker 5 (24:25):
Could she hear us? And so really the book was
an attempt to answer those questions. So having done that,
there are many aspects that I think, yeah, you know,
it's probably not the most fun thing. I think there
was one palliade of care doctor who said, look, it's
probably like the worst flu and hangover you've ever experienced.
So well, you know what, I've had the flu and
I've had some pretty horrendous hangovers. So if that's it,
(24:46):
I could deal with that. I think for me, the
fear around death is leaving my children and my husband,
and I know that they would go on define they
would cope, But it's the idea of them growing up
without me and me not being there when they grow up.
Speaker 3 (25:03):
That scares me.
Speaker 5 (25:03):
But you know, they're getting older, and I sort of
I'm more of the view that, okay, you know what,
if I was to depart for whatever reason at this
point in my life, I know they'd be okay and
that so the fear for me is lessening.
Speaker 3 (25:17):
As I get older.
Speaker 5 (25:19):
And I've had a good life, so you know, I
see that with my dad, he's had a good life.
He's outlived a whole lot of you know, his historical ancestors,
and he's got a great kind of collection of kids
and grandkids. So yeah, I think I am content with
my life. So it holds fewer fears for me.
Speaker 1 (25:36):
Now, what's your relationship to death, Deby.
Speaker 4 (25:39):
I'm not frightened at all to pass, But I think
the most important thing for me is to current memories
while I'm here, because I believe that we leave our
memories behind with our loved ones, and then we also
take them with us when we go to the other side,
you know, And I think it's nice to have those
thoughts of me. You know, we do have these experiences
with our loved ones around, so we have them dain
(26:00):
a lot of us take it for granted. We've got
the six sorry, we've got eight psychic sensors, but we've
got the five normal senses. But they actually work and
coincide with it. And there's one called claire aliens where
we smell things. So sometimes you might smell grandma's perfume,
or you might smell someone's smoke and there's no one around,
and you go, that's my imagination, but that's actually one
(26:21):
of the psychic claires. You know, we can have clear
touch when we touch something and we feel something from it.
You might be touching grandma's watch or you know, and
we get a memory from that. You know, the smells,
the sounds that we get, sounds through the music or
their voices, you have visions. There's so many different things
and we get it in our hearts, so clear empathy
and clear sentence. There's gut feelings. It's something. So when
(26:42):
you were talking to me before and asking me was
there anything there, there was a big woosh of sort
of cold energy that sort of appeared in the broom
there and then it's again. But I think, yeah, for me,
I'm not frightened to death. I'm the same as you
it's leaving your children behind and and they'll be all right,
but also wanting them to know. I think we want
(27:03):
them to know that our love lives on. I think
that's the important thing and how love they are. Could
you die tomorrow, Yeah, yep, I could.
Speaker 3 (27:12):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (27:12):
I had a really The last really big near death
experience was in twenty eighteen. I was falsely diagnosed with
carson olympomer and I was told I probably only had
six months to live, and I was going through all
the tests, getting you know, lung washes and you know,
gastroscopes to see where the cancer had been. And then
(27:34):
finally they gave me a PET scan and I didn't
know I'm allergic to a lot of things, and the
way I had the pet skin had the injection was fine.
Speaker 3 (27:41):
They stuck me in a dark room.
Speaker 4 (27:43):
Next thing, you know, I felt myself coming out of
the chair when above the earth, and it was like
again I was above the earth, So it seems to
be for me, that's part of the story. But then
I felt this like angelic beings around me, and they
kind of calmed me down because I could feel my
heart going and because when after the injection, I could
feel the burning goes from my up into my brain.
I felt my brain was on fire, went to my
feet and then came back and I just I'm going
(28:05):
and I just like, this is it.
Speaker 3 (28:07):
And then the nurse came in.
Speaker 4 (28:09):
Because they put me in the dark room, just left
me and then I rang the buzz and no one
came anyway. The nurse came in and said you were right,
and I said no, and she said, just drink this
and she walked off.
Speaker 3 (28:17):
Okay.
Speaker 4 (28:18):
Then they put me in and I had the cat
scan and the guy I was because they'd rushed me in,
so I was a late Friday night one and the
guy sort of had to go at me afterwards and
he says, well, that was a waste of time. You've
wasted my time. And I was like what and he says,
there's nothing wrong with you.
Speaker 3 (28:32):
What are you here for?
Speaker 4 (28:34):
And it was like it was just really weird, and
then he sort of turned everything off and I had
to find my way down three floors because I couldn't see,
probably because of the injection. And I was really sick
for about three weeks and couldn't see properly, but then
after that it all came back normal, so I don't
know what happened, but I'm pretty grateful for that. Yeah,
but I figure I might only have two more goes,
(28:54):
like a cat's I'm just going to make them most
of what I've got.
Speaker 1 (28:57):
Yeah, yeah, probably wise. Yeah, try and land on your paws.
Speaker 3 (29:00):
Yess exactly.
Speaker 2 (29:02):
What a fascinating conversation. I'm very hopeful that all of us,
you know, are not going to die tomorrow or anywhere soon,
but anytime soon. But you know, fantastic to investigate all
of this with you, And thank you so much for
being part of Wife's Permit.
Speaker 3 (29:14):
Thanks, thank you for having this son.
Speaker 2 (29:17):
Thanks to our guests to be anchor No Grady and
Debbie Malone. You've been listening to Season six of Life's
Booming Dying to Know, brought to you by Australian Seniors.
Please leave a review or tell someone about it. Head
to seniors dot com dot au slash podcast for more episodes.
May your life and You're Afterlife Be Booming. I'm James Valentine.
Hello, and welcome to Life Spooming.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
I'm James Valentine and this season we're talking about death
in this episode. Well, this is a debate that's been
going ever since we were alive what happens after we die?
No matter your religion or spiritual beliefs, the question of
the afterlife fascinates us all but the help of my guests,
I'll explore everything we know or perhaps don't quite know
(00:28):
about it from both a spiritual and scientific perspective. Biancher
no Grady is an award winning science journalist and the
author of The End The Human Experience of Death. And
Debbie Malone is a psychic medium who felt a spiritual
awakening after a series of near death experiences. Biancher, Debbie,
Welcome the Life's Booming. So, Debbie, this starts with you. You've
(00:51):
had a lot of near death experience.
Speaker 3 (00:53):
Yes, I have.
Speaker 4 (00:55):
I had one at three and thirteen that I had
since had another two in my early twenties.
Speaker 3 (01:01):
And then I had a miscarriage.
Speaker 4 (01:02):
And then I woke up and started seeing murders and
it was the backpacker murders was the first thing that
I actually saw.
Speaker 1 (01:08):
What do you mean both see that I was.
Speaker 4 (01:11):
Becoming a victim, and I was being you know, I
was being attacked and murdered in visions and dreams. At
the time, the backpacker murders was a really big thing
on the news, and I just thought I was watching
TV too much. And then I started to see things
before they happened on the news. I used to work
at Fairfax Community Newspapers, and I kept seeing all of
(01:31):
these different visions and I spoke to on the journalists
and he said, why don't we do a story about
you and just see what happens? And then it ended
up Ivan Mallatt's girlfriend, Sheilinda Hughes, contacted the newspaper and
wanted to make contact, and I ended up consequently working
on the case with the Task Force right for quite
a few quite a few years.
Speaker 2 (01:52):
I feel I'm automatically going to go big lid, But
you mean they go okay, So DEBI, what can we
expect this weekend?
Speaker 3 (01:59):
Yeah, And it's.
Speaker 4 (02:00):
Funny because it's not like that, because it's me being
the skeptic. All I wanted to do was to shut
it down. I didn't want to do anything, have anything
to do with it. I'd never had a reading. I didn't,
you know, have tarot cards or anything like that. And
when it started to happen, at first, the police were
quite skeptical and I had to speak to a few
different officers and then they just said, just keep a diary,
and so I just and they said, don't think about
(02:21):
what you see, just write it down, put a date down,
and when I had enough information, I would send it
through to them. I can't say that I have solved cases.
It's more like I'm a profiler, so I can see,
I can describe things. And the thing is with when
it comes through, it can be the past, it can
be the present, or it can be the future. So
it's like pieces of a puzzle. It's was like playing
charades in a way, so you're hearing things and seeing
(02:42):
things and you try and work it out.
Speaker 1 (02:43):
So police weren't skeptical of this.
Speaker 4 (02:46):
Oh somewhere somewhere, And yeah, I've had some I had
some challenging experiences with them, but I've had some incredible
officers that I've worked with, you know, during the time
as well. And I just thought once I did something
with the backpacker meters, it would all go away and
I wouldn't have to deal with it anymore.
Speaker 3 (03:00):
I kind of thought that would be.
Speaker 1 (03:01):
It by all go away.
Speaker 2 (03:03):
You mean the kind of visions you were having or
you were getting a sense of in this sense, are
you someone who's seeing the future, or you someone who's
seeing glimpses of the afterlife or something.
Speaker 3 (03:15):
Like that, all of that.
Speaker 4 (03:16):
So, the victims were coming to me, The two English
girls were coming to me, and one of the visions
was I could see somebody walking them into the forest,
but I couldn't see who he was because I was
seeing through his eyes. So they were walking away from me,
and they were kind of pleading with me to help them,
and then it would stop, and then I would get
a wall full of polaroid images, and then it ended
(03:38):
up most of the images on the pole of the
polaroids were the other victims, but at the time I
didn't know. It was only later on the case became
solved and some of those faces still haven't been they
haven't been linked to the case.
Speaker 3 (03:52):
So I think there's so many more.
Speaker 2 (03:54):
Yeah, So going back to your near death experiences, what
did you see when that happened? What what was your
youd near death experience?
Speaker 4 (04:02):
My most vivid one when I was thirty four. I
had to have a major operation and I told the
doctors that I was going to die, and they thought
I was being stupid that and I said about the
anesthetic and they didn't believe me. Anyway, when I went through,
I woke up after the operation and I was in
a higher dependency. They put me on a morphine drip
and I didn't know I was allergic to morphine, so
(04:23):
they kept telling me to push the button, and when
I did, I ended up having a lot of really
horrible visions.
Speaker 3 (04:30):
To start with. But then I went through to this
beautiful place. It was like.
Speaker 4 (04:34):
It was like a rollercoaster, like I love the night sky,
and it was like I went up. I felt like
I was an astronaut without a craft, and I was
just could see the universe and I felt very calm,
and then was a lot of movement. The movie Contact
for me, is very close to my experience. And then
I suddenly went into like I would call it like
a black hole because I kind of feel I was
a vortex and I got sucked into it. But then
(04:57):
the movement was getting faster and faster. It's a bit
like being on a roller coaster. And then I landed
in this meadow and everything seemed more colorful than it
is here.
Speaker 3 (05:06):
And the stupid part about it, there was.
Speaker 4 (05:08):
A private edge, I remember that, and it was about
this tour and there's this little gate and there was
people in front of me and they all went ahead,
and then there's people on the other side, and they
were all seemed so happy, and you know, it just
seems so beautiful and just I felt so loved and peaceful.
Then I got to my turn to go through the
little gate and they said, no, you can't. And I'm
(05:28):
a bit like, you know, I'm not the person of
that pushes in at the daily line, so it's like,
you know, it's my team. I want to go through.
And they said no, no, no, you can't. Turn around.
So I turned around and was like I was up
in the sky and I could see my It makes
me crying nearly every time I talk about it. I
could see down that my one year old daughter was
in my husband's arm, my three year old son was
beside him, and my and my seven year old was
(05:49):
there and the two boys are saying, where's mummy, where's mummy,
And he said, Mummy's not coming back. Mummy's in heaven now.
And then suddenly I fell back down and I'm back
into the hospital and the nurse is shaking me and
they're pulling the morphine droop out and she and she said,
what are you doing? And I said, you know, I'm
going to the light and she said, not on my shift.
(06:09):
It's too much paperwork.
Speaker 1 (06:13):
Oh the new so public it'll fix any time.
Speaker 3 (06:17):
It's humor.
Speaker 1 (06:18):
When you did your your book, be Aker, did you.
Speaker 2 (06:20):
Do did you talk to people with near death experience
or did you cover that area?
Speaker 3 (06:24):
I did.
Speaker 5 (06:25):
I mean, the aim of my book was really to
take to kind of explore right up to the moment
of death, but not beyond, because I felt that my
skills did not equip me to assess that in any
kind of in any form. But obviously people with near
death experiences did talk talk to me, and also people
who had talked to people with near death experiences. But
because one thing that really struck me with anytime a
(06:47):
his stories like that is the people who've had them
seem to lose their fear of death. You know, I
think we all carry this fear of death in us,
and I think it motivates a lot of what we do.
But I remember one woman to say, it was just
so beautiful. I'm not scared. I'm just not scared of anymore.
Speaker 2 (07:03):
Did you hear any Do people say the kind of
detail the Demi's describing, I've never heard that, I've heard
the light or that's sort of feeling.
Speaker 1 (07:10):
I've never heard of this is it such detail?
Speaker 5 (07:13):
There was actually a study that was done that looked
at a whole range of new death experiences and tried
to I guess, classify some of the common elements to them,
and they sort of that idea of that there's a
journeying you know, it's a tunnel, it's driving down a road,
maybe a roller coaster, that there are there's there's a
journeying process, and then there's a decision point, and at
(07:36):
that decision point or a junction, there is a sense
that what is beyond is wonderful, that it's extraordinary, and
I want to be there. And but then either somebody
says to them, no, it's not your time. There's some
something that turns them back. And I can't remember whether
it's ever something that people someone makes a conscious decision
not to From memory, people want to go forward but
(07:58):
someone else says, no, this is not your time. And
so there's a pattern to those experiences. But in terms
of the individual things, like I remember one of the
stories was a young soldier in World War Major, World Wars,
you know, who thought he was walking with his friends,
and then his friends just all kind of he was
just walking down this road and his friends just gradually disappeared,
(08:21):
and then I think there was a point where someone said, no, soldier,
you've got to stop.
Speaker 3 (08:28):
Go back.
Speaker 5 (08:29):
And so, you know, we bring to it our own
circumstance context to it. But those features are common.
Speaker 2 (08:36):
In all of them, but always always good, always in
a sense of like going towards something good, this is
going to be fine.
Speaker 5 (08:44):
Well, it's interesting because there is a very small, very
small percentage of people who have horrific experiences, terrifying, terrifying experiences.
I didn't hear of any of those stories. I don't
know if you've encountered those. Yeah, I have heard of that.
Speaker 4 (08:59):
Sometimes it's like they feel that that movie What Dreams
May Come, that Robin Williams was in that kind of thing,
kind of being stuck or earth bound. Because a lotther
time when it's sometimes it's someone who's tried to suicide
and that they weren't successful.
Speaker 2 (09:13):
I wonder if the near death experience is a cultural thing,
like did you look at that at all?
Speaker 5 (09:17):
Is it?
Speaker 2 (09:18):
It's that along the ways which we talk about it
seemed to me very Western and almost very English, you know,
like we talk about that sort of that sort of tradition.
Speaker 1 (09:26):
One of the South Americans do one of the what
do the Germans do?
Speaker 5 (09:29):
I think it is a cross cultural phenomenon that I mean,
there's even I think the earliest record of a need
or I think as a record of a new death
experience is actually from ancient Greece and it was a
description of a warrior. I don't know if there has
been any kind of cross cultural comparisons around near death experiences,
it would be really interesting. But I think what seems
(09:49):
to come out is that it is very unique to
that individual what that experience is in terms of what
the time, what form the journey takes.
Speaker 2 (09:57):
You said, Beggie, your your book was you know, I
wanted to up to death, what a decided death was?
Speaker 3 (10:03):
Well, that's a very good question because we don't.
Speaker 5 (10:06):
Actually the definition of death is contested, it's and it
is culturally specific. It's there are whole conferences that are
held still on how we define death, and it's incredibly difficult.
And the thing is, we don't need to define death
unless we are wanting to donate organs. That's essentially the
(10:30):
main reason we need a definition to do. We need
a legal definition of death so that if somebody is
an organ donat we know that removing their organs is
not actually killing them. But it's incredibly complex. It's around
the notion of when your heart stops, are you dead.
But if your heart stops, we can restart your heart.
If you stop breathing, we can ventilate you. If your
(10:53):
brain stops, how do we measure what brain activity? What's
the difference between someone, for example, who's in incredibly deep
versus someone who might be what we now term as
brain dead. And again, those definitions differ in different countries.
I mean, again, if there's no time pressure, such as
there would be with something like organ donation, then we
(11:14):
do have the luxury of time to be able to wait.
But there have been numerous cases where there was one
case in fact, where a surgeon was facing manslaughter charges
because a dispute over whether the person was in fact
dead when he began to remove the organs. So and
it has very specific applications. There's been legal cases around
(11:36):
brain death where two people were involved in a husband
and wife devolved in a car accident, who died first,
because that had implications in terms of the inheritance, and
so there have been very complicated cases. And I mean
we talk about well brain death will loss of activity
in the brain, but there is a state of, for
lack of a better word, chronic brain death where people
(11:58):
The longest I think was somebody who literally survived for
a decade and a half a child who I think
they suffered meningitis, but they were kept on life support breathing,
they went through puberty and then when they finally decided
we're not going to treat or their decision was made
to see treatment for pneumonia for example, which I guess
(12:19):
is you know, usually a common cause of death at
that state. When the autopsy was performed and so I
was a little bit brutal, but the brain was essentially calcified.
Speaker 1 (12:28):
So this this.
Speaker 5 (12:29):
Individual was bi legal definitions, alive up until that point,
but you know, were they there, what had departed?
Speaker 1 (12:40):
If the brain is the seed of consciousness, then they
could not have been conscious. But then is the brain
the seed of consciousness? All sorts of questions there. What
do you think death is debby what's death?
Speaker 4 (12:51):
Yeah, it's a half one because I do believe there
is life after. I suppose the death is the death
of the body, but I don't think it's the death
of the soul and that that's the thing that lives
on And even you can measure like when you make
contacts sometimes with spirit. They were an electromagnetic frequency, so
EMF test is that you'd use to test a Michael
wave will actually indicate when there's a spirit in the room,
(13:14):
you know. But it's when you're talking about transplants. Another
thing that I was thinking. I've done ratings for people
like a lady who'd had a transplant, but she ended
up she was in a coma, but she had had
a transplant from a young man and it was a
lung transplant, I think. And then she was in a
coma and her mum came to see me to see
if like, because when people are in a camera, I
(13:35):
can communicate with them even though they are still physically alive.
And what was interesting the person from the transplant came
through the reading at the same time as the person
who was the recipient, So it's and you think, well
he's passed away, but he's living on through her, you know.
But then he gave life to her to extend her life.
Speaker 3 (13:53):
So fascinating. That's even like that's I suppose that's a
whole other story.
Speaker 1 (13:57):
Well then what's what's the soul? What's the soul? Thing? Understand?
Hanging around? Where is it hanging around?
Speaker 4 (14:02):
What?
Speaker 1 (14:02):
What is it?
Speaker 3 (14:03):
What does it?
Speaker 1 (14:03):
Do you a read? Do you think there's a reincarnation?
Speaker 6 (14:05):
Yeah?
Speaker 5 (14:06):
What what do you?
Speaker 1 (14:06):
What do you? What is you said to have gleaned
a lot of information from the flow? Let us know.
Speaker 4 (14:12):
Well yeah, oh look, I definitely do feel that we
that we do live on and I'm One of the
things that I do is called psychometry. So from holding
or touching something, it's like I can I can see
through my hands kind of thing. So you can touch
an inanimate object like a piece of jewelry. You can
use clothing, but we tend to wash it. But say
I went to Scotland and touched the sacred stones and
(14:32):
I could see back into the past by touching that
or just being in a historical site, and a lot
of people might go to say a battle site or
something and they will feel that energy of sadness or
you know, or it might be a happy place. But
you know, we tend to form we feel that. So
I do feel that that energy does exist. But I
from my own personal experience, I you know, I've had
past life experiences and one thing I did, I've been
(14:56):
underhagnosied quite a lot of times with the police, but
I did it to contact someone through a case, but
it ended up took me back. So I had a
past life and it was I think unless I had
my own proof, I would think, you know, I need
to see it to believe it kind of thing.
Speaker 6 (15:10):
You know.
Speaker 4 (15:11):
I have seen things happen and even like children coming
through and they know all about their great grandfather who
they they got their middle name or something so they
can talk about them.
Speaker 2 (15:20):
Now, you're a science writer, you know, you edit science
journalist science. You know, Debbie, you know this is just rubbish.
Is a much science around this to scientists tend to
just you know, poopoo this stuff.
Speaker 5 (15:32):
It's funny. I always think of that, is it that.
Speaker 3 (15:34):
Line from Hamlets? There are greater things in heaven and.
Speaker 5 (15:37):
Earth and a drepped off in your philosophy. And even
though I you know, I come from a very I guess,
Western scientific paradigm.
Speaker 3 (15:45):
Both my parents were.
Speaker 5 (15:47):
Doctors, I do also, you know, I would define myself
as agnostic. I do have a sense that there is
something greater than good what you know, what exists in
this mortal sphere that we find ourselves in. And in
some ways, I don't know that it's the place of.
Speaker 3 (16:07):
Science to explore that.
Speaker 5 (16:10):
I think, I mean, certainly, with the existing knowledge and
technologies we have, we have no way of necessarily studying this.
Speaker 3 (16:18):
I mean what we can do?
Speaker 5 (16:19):
You know when we talk about near death experiences, and
I'm you know, I know that there's band studies looking
at using, for example, functional magnetic resonance imaging, which is
a kind of imaging where you can look at blood
flow in the brain, you can look at areas of
brain activity. The problem is, you know, I that it'd
be great to study someone having a near death experience,
But how do you get those unique circumstances happen? Can
(16:42):
we schedule one work? I mean, you know, maybe you
could put someone into an induced coma, But I mean,
there's obviously ethical challenges we're doing that, you know, there
are we do understand there are parts of the brain that,
when kind of stimulated, can generate these these kind of
sense of the newminess, the sense of a feeling of
other worlds that our you know, I mean, we are
(17:03):
experiencing these things in this body. There will be things
that are going on in our brain that contribute it
to those emotions, that contribute to those those sensations. But
whether we can say this is whether I can say
and personally this is purely a function of electrical impulses
and neurotransmitters. I can't say that. I can't say yes
or no, And I don't think science has the capacity
(17:25):
said that. You know, I think because so much of
this is is belief. It is faith, which is not
to say that it doesn't exist in the same way
that you know, just because someone is mentally ill, that
doesn't mean that it's not real.
Speaker 3 (17:37):
It is real.
Speaker 5 (17:38):
It is real in every facet that would define realness.
Just because we can't measure it doesn't mean it's not real.
But at the moment we can't measure it.
Speaker 2 (17:45):
But LIKEBI, you've said a couple of times, you know,
or can use electromagnetic something or another to measure presence,
and you can take photos and stuff.
Speaker 1 (17:53):
You would say, actually there is science or there is evidence.
Speaker 3 (17:56):
Yeah there is.
Speaker 4 (17:57):
I think, yeah, getting the images, I think that's part
of it. But I also see when some of that's
the communication with the other side and the proof of
what that person in spirit will come through and say
that someone like myself wouldn't know that I can relay
that to someone what happened. I have a client that
(18:18):
I've seen quite a number of times now. He came
to see me about his father, and he had this
little little toy bulldog that his dad had given him,
and he was a little boy. And the whole time
I didn't know about the dad. I just said, you know,
i'm seeing your dad, and your dad had a heart
attack and he's really worried about you. And he said, oh,
you're going deep sea fishing or going fishing soon. But
he's telling me you can't go. And he said, I
don't know what you're talking about. I said, he's telling
(18:40):
me there's something wrong with your heart. And I could
suddenly see into his heart and I could see there
was these three blockages. So there was two on the front,
one in the back. And I'd proposed to be a
medical person at all, but I was just relaying what
I saw, and I said, have you been having any
heart problems? He said, no, no, I'm all good. And
his wife's a nurse, and I said, look, your dad
just wants you to get checked out. And his dad
had of a heart attack. Anyway, I must have said
(19:02):
it to him about twenty times, and the reading he says, oh,
for goodness sake, so to just stop it. And then
he rang me a week later and he said, well,
I humored you. And he said, I'm not going on
the fishing trip now I'm in hospital. And they gave
him three stints and one of the one of the
blockages with the widow maker, and so his father had
come from the other side to save his son, you know.
(19:22):
And a few times now he sort of said, I'll
have I got any blockages, And another time I'd seen
two more and he had two more subsequently. But yeah,
it's funny, and they if they were nice before they passed,
they can be nice when they go to the other side,
but other times they can be horrible, Like you know,
I had a lady who suffered really badly with fibromillalgia,
and her mother came through sh the reading and she said,
(19:43):
I don't want her here. I hate my mother. She's horrible.
Make her go away. And I said, well, you brought
it with you. I can't anyway. The mother just kept persisting,
and I said, look, just listen to what I say.
Speaker 3 (19:52):
I have to say.
Speaker 4 (19:53):
She wants to tell you she's sorry and acknowledges how
unpleasant she was to you, and you do what you
want to do with it. But you know, I'm just
going to pass the message on and then maybe she'll
be quite anyway, told her the message in it I
saw about a month later, I ran into it Kranella
and she said, you won't believe since I had that reading,
I haven't been sick. And she said, I'm finally well.
And I said, well, maybe all of that stress was
(20:13):
affecting your health.
Speaker 5 (20:15):
That's interesting because fibromyalgia there's the much higher incidents than
people who have experienced childhood abuse.
Speaker 3 (20:21):
Oh well, there you go.
Speaker 1 (20:22):
Yeah, it's not all the time as you're driving the
car or.
Speaker 4 (20:29):
Sometimes sometimes you know, those roadside memorials can be quite
challenging because the persons still standing there, you know, And
I think that makes sense.
Speaker 3 (20:36):
So yeah, that can make it hard.
Speaker 4 (20:38):
Or you can go into an historical location and you know,
you might see someone hanging in from the ceiling and
things like that. So people think it's all rosy and
fun and happy. It's always pretty busy.
Speaker 5 (20:51):
The thing, isn't it We so desperately want to communicate
with the people who we've lost, like it's such a
deep seated need. I don't think there's anybody that wouldn't
it would couldn't think of someone that they would want
to say.
Speaker 3 (21:03):
I miss you, I love you. You know, what should
I do?
Speaker 4 (21:06):
It's increasing and I think the thing is we always
we all want proof, we all hope there's something more,
and it's just it's a hard thing because it's unless
you have your own experience. I'm not someone who wants
to change everybody's mind. I think you need to have
your own experience so that you have your own understanding
and then you make your own decision.
Speaker 2 (21:25):
If there's a spectrum of sensitivity in this kind of way,
then you're one and I am at the other, like
I am zero for any sense of spirituality other sadness,
after life, nothing like I am just zero.
Speaker 1 (21:41):
Where would you sit in me?
Speaker 5 (21:46):
It's hard to know how much is wishful thinking for me.
I mean, I didn't grow up in a religious household.
I don't subscribe.
Speaker 3 (21:53):
To any religion.
Speaker 5 (21:55):
Yes, I guess, as I said, agnostic, I.
Speaker 6 (21:58):
Think I would any moment like I have never had
a single moment that says to me either there's God
or that there's anything, or that there's any experience.
Speaker 2 (22:08):
Which doesn't mean I'm skeptical of your experience, Like there's
lots of other things I haven't experienced either.
Speaker 1 (22:13):
I've grown old enough to understand that, you know.
Speaker 2 (22:16):
But it's like, as I'm fascinated by you to be
quivering like a read in the wind of this sort
of thing where I'm just sort of I'm just a
buried stuff brick.
Speaker 5 (22:31):
I there's I have never had any experience that I
couldn't explain as being merely a product of my emotions
and wish for thinking. You know, I had two wonderful
grandmas who are both very different and who I adored,
and I like to think, you know, there are some
moments that I've had where, you know, I've been really
upset by something and I sort of, you know, I
(22:52):
like to feel that they're there. I draw comfort from
the sense sense of them not watching over me, because
that just as gross, but just you know, they are there.
And you know, I was talking to my signed about
this last night, and you know, when people die, mynd views,
when people died, they live on in US. I mean,
it's so trited, it's so Hollywood, but they do.
Speaker 3 (23:13):
You know. I think often about my two my on
you and my nan.
Speaker 5 (23:18):
You know, I imagine what they would think of my kids
who they never met, for example, or what you know,
what they would do in this situation. And so they're
very much alive in some way in my heart. God
sounds like I'm writing a film, so oh my God,
but it's yeah. I would say, there is nothing.
Speaker 3 (23:35):
I have ever experienced that.
Speaker 5 (23:37):
Would be anything like what you experience. And again I'm
not to say that those things aren't real. It's again
not been my experience. That wasn't just a function of
love and grief.
Speaker 1 (23:50):
Writing a book on death, how has that left you?
How's that? How has that altered your feelings about death
or what is your relationship to death?
Speaker 4 (23:58):
Now?
Speaker 5 (23:59):
It made me afraid of dying in the sense of
it being an end of life. I mean, who knows
how it will happen, But it made me less frightened
of what that's going to be like, because that was
initially what prompted the book was I was with my
nan about half an hour before she died, and she
was clearly dying. She wasn't she was unconscious, and I,
you know, I was in the room with my cousins
(24:20):
and sort of left there thinking, I wonder what that
was like for her, What is she going through?
Speaker 3 (24:24):
Was she in pain?
Speaker 5 (24:25):
Could she hear us? And so really the book was
an attempt to answer those questions. So having done that,
there are many aspects that I think, yeah, you know,
it's probably not the most fun thing. I think there
was one palliade of care doctor who said, look, it's
probably like the worst flu and hangover you've ever experienced.
So well, you know what, I've had the flu and
I've had some pretty horrendous hangovers. So if that's it,
(24:46):
I could deal with that. I think for me, the
fear around death is leaving my children and my husband,
and I know that they would go on define they
would cope, But it's the idea of them growing up
without me and me not being there when they grow up.
Speaker 3 (25:03):
That scares me.
Speaker 5 (25:03):
But you know, they're getting older, and I sort of
I'm more of the view that, okay, you know what,
if I was to depart for whatever reason at this
point in my life, I know they'd be okay and
that so the fear for me is lessening.
Speaker 3 (25:17):
As I get older.
Speaker 5 (25:19):
And I've had a good life, so you know, I
see that with my dad, he's had a good life.
He's outlived a whole lot of you know, his historical ancestors,
and he's got a great kind of collection of kids
and grandkids. So yeah, I think I am content with
my life. So it holds fewer fears for me.
Speaker 1 (25:36):
Now, what's your relationship to death, Deby.
Speaker 4 (25:39):
I'm not frightened at all to pass, But I think
the most important thing for me is to current memories
while I'm here, because I believe that we leave our
memories behind with our loved ones, and then we also
take them with us when we go to the other side,
you know, And I think it's nice to have those
thoughts of me. You know, we do have these experiences
with our loved ones around, so we have them dain
(26:00):
a lot of us take it for granted. We've got
the six sorry, we've got eight psychic sensors, but we've
got the five normal senses. But they actually work and
coincide with it. And there's one called claire aliens where
we smell things. So sometimes you might smell grandma's perfume,
or you might smell someone's smoke and there's no one around,
and you go, that's my imagination, but that's actually one
(26:21):
of the psychic claires. You know, we can have clear
touch when we touch something and we feel something from it.
You might be touching grandma's watch or you know, and
we get a memory from that. You know, the smells,
the sounds that we get, sounds through the music or
their voices, you have visions. There's so many different things
and we get it in our hearts, so clear empathy
and clear sentence. There's gut feelings. It's something. So when
(26:42):
you were talking to me before and asking me was
there anything there, there was a big woosh of sort
of cold energy that sort of appeared in the broom
there and then it's again. But I think, yeah, for me,
I'm not frightened to death. I'm the same as you
it's leaving your children behind and and they'll be all right,
but also wanting them to know. I think we want
(27:03):
them to know that our love lives on. I think
that's the important thing and how love they are. Could
you die tomorrow, Yeah, yep, I could.
Speaker 3 (27:12):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (27:12):
I had a really The last really big near death
experience was in twenty eighteen. I was falsely diagnosed with
carson olympomer and I was told I probably only had
six months to live, and I was going through all
the tests, getting you know, lung washes and you know,
gastroscopes to see where the cancer had been. And then
(27:34):
finally they gave me a PET scan and I didn't
know I'm allergic to a lot of things, and the
way I had the pet skin had the injection was fine.
Speaker 3 (27:41):
They stuck me in a dark room.
Speaker 4 (27:43):
Next thing, you know, I felt myself coming out of
the chair when above the earth, and it was like
again I was above the earth, So it seems to
be for me, that's part of the story. But then
I felt this like angelic beings around me, and they
kind of calmed me down because I could feel my
heart going and because when after the injection, I could
feel the burning goes from my up into my brain.
I felt my brain was on fire, went to my
feet and then came back and I just I'm going
(28:05):
and I just like, this is it.
Speaker 3 (28:07):
And then the nurse came in.
Speaker 4 (28:09):
Because they put me in the dark room, just left
me and then I rang the buzz and no one
came anyway. The nurse came in and said you were right,
and I said no, and she said, just drink this
and she walked off.
Speaker 3 (28:17):
Okay.
Speaker 4 (28:18):
Then they put me in and I had the cat
scan and the guy I was because they'd rushed me in,
so I was a late Friday night one and the
guy sort of had to go at me afterwards and
he says, well, that was a waste of time. You've
wasted my time. And I was like what and he says,
there's nothing wrong with you.
Speaker 3 (28:32):
What are you here for?
Speaker 4 (28:34):
And it was like it was just really weird, and
then he sort of turned everything off and I had
to find my way down three floors because I couldn't see,
probably because of the injection. And I was really sick
for about three weeks and couldn't see properly, but then
after that it all came back normal, so I don't
know what happened, but I'm pretty grateful for that. Yeah,
but I figure I might only have two more goes,
(28:54):
like a cat's I'm just going to make them most
of what I've got.
Speaker 1 (28:57):
Yeah, yeah, probably wise. Yeah, try and land on your paws.
Speaker 3 (29:00):
Yess exactly.
Speaker 2 (29:02):
What a fascinating conversation. I'm very hopeful that all of us,
you know, are not going to die tomorrow or anywhere soon,
but anytime soon. But you know, fantastic to investigate all
of this with you, And thank you so much for
being part of Wife's Permit.
Speaker 3 (29:14):
Thanks, thank you for having this son.
Speaker 2 (29:17):
Thanks to our guests to be anchor No Grady and
Debbie Malone. You've been listening to Season six of Life's
Booming Dying to Know, brought to you by Australian Seniors.
Please leave a review or tell someone about it. Head
to seniors dot com dot au slash podcast for more episodes.
May your life and You're Afterlife Be Booming. I'm James Valentine.
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