People Who Died and Came Back Share Their Terrifying Experience

People Who Died and Came Back Share Their Terrifying Experience

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
People who died and came back share what they saw
and felt. I had an experience. I don't ever share
it because I try not to remember this period in
my life, and because I hold this memory very sacred.
This experience left a lasting impression on my life. In
twenty seventeen, after I drank a bottle of Everclear, followed

(00:23):
by Bleach, Dreno, Ajax and roughly one fifty plus slash,
benzodiazepines and anything else I could find. I don't know
how to fully articulate my experience. It's so hard to
find the right words for what I went through. There
was no pain while consuming this concoction. I just felt
like someone sucked all the air out of my chest
and there was a bubble stuck in my throat. I
had a friend that trusted their instinct and called emergency

(00:45):
services on me. I had passed out and aspirated on
my vomit, which burned through the carpet and the pad
down to the subflooring. I remember paramedics pulling my tongue
out of my mouth and hearing someone say she's not
going to make it. It felt like I just fell asleep,
but like the sleep where you know you're asleep. Initially,
there was nothing. It was darkness. I felt separated from myself,

(01:06):
like I wasn't in my physical form. It's hard to explain,
like I was only my spirit without flesh and blood.
I feel like I was almost teleported or beamed into
a different dimension or world, and somehow I came to
be in this beautiful meadow. The meadow was the most
beautiful scene you could imagine. There was a little stream
in the distance and a forest beyond it. I remember
just enjoying this scene, this moment, and the beauty of

(01:27):
it all. It sounds really fucking corny, but this meadow
was so incredibly beautiful. All I felt was love and
appreciation for everything. I also had a feeling that I
wasn't alone, but it wasn't a bad feeling. I don't
know how it appeared or where it came from, but
there was a really beautiful orb that presented itself. Sounds cliche,
I know this orb to me was love in its

(01:48):
purest form. The orb was able to communicate with me telepathically.
The conversation was something along the lines of me acknowledging
the beauty that surrounded me and feeling like this is
where I wanted to be. I felt like I was
given a choice between staying there or going back to
reality and back to my body. I really wanted to stay,
but I thought of my siblings and how much damage
my death would cause them. The moment I thought of

(02:10):
my siblings, I felt like I was told, you made
your choice. I felt like I was beamed right back
to my body, which had been in the ICU in
a medically induced coma. I really feel like I could
have stayed. I really wanted to stay, and often feel
a sort of homesickness and longing for that place. I
can proudly say I'm glad I didn't stay. I will
also add that was the last time I attempted to

(02:30):
end my life. I woke up someplace that I didn't understand.
It was just like this plane, no structures. It was
just off to the horizon in every direction, and I
was like, okay, this is weird. And there was a
noise kind of like a hum in the background, like
an irritating hum. I don't know something. Then I saw

(02:50):
somebody walking up from a long way away. I thought
I recognized him, but I wasn't sure, and it took
quite a while for him to start getting up to me.
And as he was coming, the hum, the noise, the scratchy,
irritating hum, was getting a little bit louder all the time,
and I realized that this hum was something unpleasant. I
didn't know what it was, and I knew that I
didn't want to know what it was. Then I recognized

(03:12):
the person that was coming up with somebody. I knew
he was my old boss at work that was always
nice to me and looked out for me that died.
As he walked by, he said casually, Oh, that's just Stephen,
He's okay, and the noise went quiet, divided by twenty
three minutes of work on me. If I did not
have my heart attack in my clinic, I would not

(03:32):
be here. I remember talking with one of my friends
at a job we both had in an e R
thirty five years ago, just bullshitting in a doorway. We
looked in the room. There were twelve people in there
working on me. I looked at him and told him
I was going to see what was going on with
the poor bastard in the bed. I walked around, everyone
saw my mom and grandma, both deceased, sitting in front

(03:53):
of the bed. As I walked around, I got to
the other still of the bed, saw it was me.
When a shit, guess I need to go back, leaned
towards myself, had this very realistic dream and woke up
a week later, thought I was in sixth grade for
the next week, then slowly gained my bearings three years
l eight or ninety eight percent rehabbed. They told my
wife I was supposed to be a vegetable. I had

(04:15):
a positive experience. But my favorite nd story is told
on an episode of the podcast euphemat episode ten Lives.
He's not religious, He's describing disconnection and consciousness in a
fascinating and frightening way. As for me, I'm not sure
of my age, but while a very young kid, I
drowned in an apartment pool. There's a docuseries on Prime

(04:37):
Death and Back a woman describes her experience drowning as
a child. What she says is the closest I've ever
heard to my own. I've never heard someone else talk
about the light from below when they were drowning, but
that's how it was for me too. I don't remember
seeing my body, as she says, but I went from
blackness to dark blues and progressively brighter light. I experienced
an energetic warmth and comfort and unconditional love. Brilliant gold

(05:00):
than white replaced the blue. I was met by a
sense of an ethereal awareness, but my memory ends there.
Apart from being revived, since love was as of then
an unfamiliar experience in life. Returning came with very conflicting emotions.
It wasn't too long after that when I impulsively attempted
to jump out of a moving vehicle and off a
cliff as a kid, with no sense of potential consequences,

(05:22):
I just wanted to go back to the peace in
the other existence. I'm thankful to know that we go
to a place of greater connection. The decades since and
a few good trips have shown me that were never
really separated from anything, despite the density between, we just
shift our awareness and the weight we feel inside becomes light.
I had a rather strange near death experience because I

(05:43):
felt things in place of my son. Note that I
don't believe in life after death or spirits at all,
but I am convinced that the brain is an absolutely
fascinating organ capable of very powerful dreams. At the maternity ward.
My son, who was only a few days old, was
very ill that night. I entrusted him to the midwives.
I didn't feel strong enough to watch over him. I

(06:04):
wanted to sleep a little. During the night, I felt
an intense cold, so intense that I could only shake
very heart, much more than a normal shiver from cold.
I couldn't call for help or move. I was paralyzed.
In fact, I thought death is coming for my son.
If I let it pass, it will take him. I
fought as hard as I could to stop the sensation.

(06:24):
I really felt like I had fallen into a frozen lake.
Then it passed and I fell back asleep. Some time later,
a pediatrician woke me up to tell me that my
son was in critical condition and that they had been
trying to save him since the middle of the night
without understanding what was happening. His body was giving up.
He was transferred to the hospital. The emergency doctor told
me later that she thought she wouldn't be able to

(06:46):
save him, and that he held on beyond all expectations.
I also saw him in critical condition, and I still
wonder how he could endure that. Apart from the harrowing situation.
The episode that night made me think a lot. Did
I hear something to inspire the dream? My room was
across from the pediatrician's room. Anyway, I've never found any
other testimonies like this. I died in my shower when

(07:08):
I was in my early twenties while my ex boyfriend
was in there with me. He reported. I collapsed, was
not breathing, and was blue slash gray. He reported it
was quite a while that I was gone to myself
and the paramedics no pulse. What I remember is floating
down a black tunnel with a large square light at
the very far end of it. As I floated closer,
I could see silhouettes of people on both sides of me.

(07:30):
No facial features like eyes or faces, no voices, just
dark silhouettes staring at me. While I floated past the
closer I get to this light, I see it's a
square window, and it's a gorgeous sunny day. On the
opposite side of it, tall grass blowing around from the breeze,
clear bluish skies with clouds. It was beautiful. But the
closer I got I could see my dog that passed

(07:51):
away running down the hill, stopping to look, and seeing me,
he trotted closer to the window. As I was now
at the end of this tunnel, it felt like all
I had to do was climb over and into this
gorgeous scenery, and I intended to do so. But he
came up to me, tilted his head at me, and
all I heard was not now. And that's when I
was flying backwards through the tunnel, flying past the dark silhouettes,

(08:13):
faster and faster, until I flew back into my body,
leaned forward, and heavily vomited the contents of my stomach
in the bath tub while my axe was blinking in bewilderment.
He had called nine one one, and I was so
weak while he tried to get me out of the
tub to put clothes on. The entire time, apparently I
was muttering my dog's name, asking where he was. My
ex said, he's been gone for a long time. To

(08:36):
this day, I know my dog, who was always considered
my sole dog by family and friends, is the reason
I didn't cross the barrier. It wasn't my time. But
I still think about the gorgeous meadow from time to time,
how peaceful and serene it seemed. The feeling it invoked death,
seemed peaceful. I'm agnostic with my fair share of paranormal experiences,
but this one still makes me think of all the

(08:57):
possibilities of what's on the other side. I can share
my experience. I was giving birth and it was going wrong.
I was bleeding out and my baby was showing severe
signs of fetal distress. I thought I was on a boat.
It was on a quiet lake, and I was drifting
further and further out into the silvery white. I could
hear voices off in the distance, but only just It

(09:19):
was very, very peaceful, and I was just drifting away
until I heard my sister's voice saying, we're doing a cesarean.
I didn't care and had no sense of it at all.
Apparently the room was crowded full of people rushing about,
but I honestly thought it was just me and my
sister there. There was a happy outcome, my beautiful girl
and I survived. But I have often thought since that

(09:40):
I really hoped that all the women who died in
childbirth back in the day, and there were so many,
had an experience like mine. They just kept drifting off
into the silver, calm and content not so much that
I died, but I had a near death experience. When
I was nineteen years old, I bought myself a motorcycle.
I had been riding for about six months and felt
pretty calm on it. This confidence is what almost killed

(10:02):
me that day. It was a sunny day in September
two thousand and nine, and I had just gotten out
of my college class around three pm. I put on
my helmet, my gloves, and my backpack, and I thought
to myself that I needed a haircut and started making
my way towards the location, keeping in mind that getting
on the freeway was going to be the quickest way there.
Once I got on the freeway, it was pretty congested,

(10:24):
but I decided I could zoom by the cars and
get there in no time. As I saw my exit
approaching and saw I could possibly pass by the car
in front of me, I sped up and passed the
car at a high rate of speed, making the exit.
Thinking I could maneuver easily around the curved corner that
was about to come, I pressed on my brakes and
my motorcycle went into a high speed wobble. At this point,

(10:45):
I got thrown off the bike and vaguely remember falling off.
I must have hit my head pretty hard because I
blacked out. When I came to I was sliding on
my back, still at a high rate of speed on
the freeway exit. This next part seemed like a movie,
but everything around me seemed to be in slow motion.
As I was sliding, I was passing cars left and right,
and all I could hear was screeching from their tires.

(11:07):
Once my body got more momentum, I rolled several times
until I came to a complete stop. To my left
there was just dirt and grass, and to my right
were the cars on the freeway. As I lay on
the asphalt looking at my injuries, something in me made
me look left. As I did, I saw this blond lady,
blue eyes, all white business attire walking toward me in
the dirt slash grass area. Keep in mind there wasn't

(11:30):
a car anywhere near her. It was just barren land.
As she comes up to me, she asks me, were
you the one that called? I start telling her that
how could I have called? I was just involved in
an accident. She then repeated again, were you the one
that called? Before I could answer her, I heard a
door slam and a man yelling are you all right?
As I turned to my right to tell him I

(11:51):
was okay, I quickly looked back to my left and
that lady was gone. I only lasted three hours in
the hospital with no broken bones, just roade rash. I
believe that if I had told that lady that I
did call, I would have died right there on that freeway.
Not sure if this counts, but I died three times
as a baby. I was born at one pound and

(12:12):
nine ounces and my heart was just well, not winning
any races. I spent my first four months in an
incubator at the Ronald McDonald House, and I'd flatlined randomly
out of the blue just to keep things interesting. At
the hospital, the doctors had to resuscitate me like I
was a broken phone on one percent. So yeah, just
the perks of being an infant sized potato. People loved

(12:34):
to ask did you see God? Did you see the light?
Was there a tunnel? And my answer is always no.
I was a literal baby for crying out loud. I
didn't even know I was alive, let alone what heaven was.
My whole existence was basically just me existing in a
warm plastic box. Trying not to die. Heaven didn't make
the cut on the Things to think about when you're

(12:55):
one pound list. I didn't even know I had fingers
until I was like three. So yeah, no great spiritual awakening,
just a really bad heart and a lot of resuscitations. Yep.
In twenty nineteen, just a few days before Thanksgiving, I
had a late night workout of my office Jim. Afterward,
I decided to use the sauna and take a cold

(13:17):
shower as usual to wake myself up before heading to
my dad's cabin for a discussion. However, the moment I
stepped into the sauna, I felt dizzy and fainted. As
I fell, it felt like I was free falling at
thousands of miles per hour. In that moment, my life
flashed before my eyes and I became an observer of
my past. I recalled several childhood accidents, including a near

(13:39):
miss with boiling milk on the stove where I had
tipped a pan and burned my left hand. I had
to go to the hospital and spend hours alone until
my mom arrived. Another memory was of falling down twenty
four steep concrete stairs where I could clearly see my
older sibling pushing me when I was just four or five.
Although I never went to the hospital for that incident,
I still bear scars from it. The smell of bring

(14:00):
flowers from that hill remains vivid in my memory. During
this experience in the sauna, I felt intense pain on
the right side of my face, neck, shoulder, and hand
as I instinctively protected myself. I had fallen near the
steam pipe and the heater was set high. In that moment,
I was ready to let go of life, but then
I saw the faces of my beautiful wife and our
six year old daughter. It sparked a fierce determination to

(14:23):
fight and escape the sauna. I'm not sure how long
I was unconscious, but when I came to, I had
lost skin on the right side of my head, ear, neck, shoulder,
and arm. I went into shock, but still planned to
make the trip to the cabin. Feeling no pain. For
three days, I resisted going to the hospital, still processing
my childhood memories and feeling a desire to end at all. Eventually,

(14:45):
after my wife's insistence, I went to the hospital. The
experience of having the nurse scrub my wounds was unpleasant,
but I didn't remember the pain It felt like reliving
past trauma in a way that led to a cathartic release.
My life changed drastically after the accident. I went from
running a successful construction business earning three point five million
dollars a year with over twenty employees, to staying home

(15:07):
for two years, focusing on my health and spending time
with my family. While I was physically present, I often
felt emotionally distant. My family became my motivation to keep
going even as I struggled with deep depression and isolation.
Reflecting on my childhood trauma, I now understand that I
had been sexually abused before those accidents, which I had
suppressed for so long. This trauma affected my ability to

(15:29):
connect with others, and I didn't engage in any relationships
until I met my wife at age twenty. She is
the only woman in my life. I watched friends share
stories of their childhood abuse and their struggles with sexual desires,
and I realized I might have followed a similar path
if not for my experiences. In a way, life is
unfolding as it should in the aftermath of the accident.
I used marijuana as a crutch for a while, but

(15:51):
I eventually moved past that. I found joy in doing
labor work again, tapping into a suppressed part of myself. Interestingly,
I had to write with my left hand while my
right arm was bandaged, and now my left handed writing
is beautiful, a stark contrast to my previous handwriting. This
experience has brought me closer to spirituality and a belief
in the afterlife and karma. I now believe that I

(16:13):
don't need anything in life, as desire can be a sin.
I understand that this mindset is essential to avoid being
reincarnated and to find peace in my next life, whatever
that may be. I feel complete and ready to leave
this world without the need to relive this earthly existence.
Each day is a gift from God, and I wake
up prepared for whatever challenges the day may bring. I
live now for my family and serve them wholeheartedly to

(16:35):
the best of my ability. This was forty years ago,
but we were poor, like dirt poor, no car, no money,
extended family, all living in a tiny house. Poor. When
I was ten, my kidneys exploded, water weight ballooned up
like I ate the wrong piece of Wanka candy, and
I had to be rushed to the hospital in the
city an our car ride that we didn't have. I

(16:58):
basically rolled around the back of a cargo until we
got there. I spent weeks in the hospital, and my
mother basically gave them permission to experiment on me new treatments,
et cetera, in lieu of payments they probably knew they
weren't ever going to get. This turned out to be good,
because the treatment they gave me then is now the
sop for my particular flavor of kidney explosion. But I
spent weeks in the hospital, often going several days without

(17:21):
a visitor or family member present because we were poor.
No one had cars or money, and they couldn't take
time from work. About three days in, I went into
failure and had to be resuscitated. Now, obviously, at ten
I didn't know I was dying, and I didn't find
out until I was like fifteen or sixteen what happened.
But this is what I remember. It was like I
was standing to the side of myself. A dozen doctors

(17:43):
and nurses rushed into the room, lifted me into a
sitting position from lying, hooked me up to a million things,
and it was chaos. I wasn't scared, just confused and
trying to be good like a kid would. It was
scary and frightening, and no one was talking to me,
just around me as they flipped me or and did
doctor stuff. Just when I felt myself about to cry,

(18:04):
I noticed a woman in the doorway to my room.
She was dressed in the adult sized version of the
gown that I wore, and she was smiling. She was pretty,
early thirties, with shoulder length brown curly hair, and she waved.
I waved back. She smiled and told me that I
was going to be okay, not to worry. The doctors
were going to help, and if I wanted to, I

(18:24):
should close my eyes and rest. She was an adult,
so I did. When I woke up, I was alone
in the room and a day had passed and my
family was there. I couldn't talk with everything on my face,
but when I finally could, I told them everything. They
chalked it up to me being in toxic shock, confused, scared,
and dreaming. But I kept asking about the woman because

(18:45):
she felt like a mother, warm, soothing, calm, everything a
motherly figure should be. But I got told that I
was dreaming or it was another patient because of how
she was dressed, so I chalked it up to that
as a child. But another patient just hanging out in
the doorway as I died and a dozen medical professionals
buzzed around the room never made sense. Why could I

(19:06):
hear her but not the doctors. Why did she never
look at them, only me? Why would they let her
stand there and watch? Then I found out that I
had to be resuscitated that day, and it kind of clicked,
and I had a million questions. Was it toxicity in
the blood? Possibly? Was it a dream I did wake
up a day later. Was it the body shutting everything
off to give me a peaceful death that is what happens.

(19:29):
Was it a kind but nosy patient who wanted to
calm a dying scared kid could be Was it the
ghost of a former patient? I can't say, but I
do believe in spirits, ghosts, et cetera, and have seen
things I can't explain or people I couldn't find. But
I can still see her face even forty years later.
I don't remember being brought back to life. I just

(19:51):
remember feeling really at peace, knowing that I couldn't get
to the air that I needed, and that I had
no options left. I was really quite calm about it.
I took a big breath of water and watch everything
fade away. No panic, no struggle, just peacefulness. Everything faded
to black, and that was pretty much it. I drowned
when I was just about four years old. My mother
found me floating in my grandparents pool, face down. She

(20:13):
jumped in, dragged me out, checked for pulse, and started CPR.
She was a nurse. I had no pulse and was
turning blue. The only really bad thing that occurred was
that my sternam broke while CPR was being administered, which
is common when small children received CPR. So two days
before my seventeenth birthday, my sister overdosed and killed herself.

(20:34):
I was distraught, as anyone would be, and struggling to sleep.
I had a bunk bed and slept on the bottom bunk.
The first night of her suicide, I was emotional and restless,
and I rolled over and looked at my chair and
she was there. She was sitting on my chair with
her head down, hair in front of her face, arms
splayed on the arm rest, wearing some sort of gown.
I froze and stared at her until the sun rose,

(20:56):
and once the light made it into my room, poof
she was going on. I don't know how to describe it.
She just wasn't there anymore. I would have recognized her anywhere,
so I was sure it was her. The next night,
I slept on the top bunk, but I was scared
and struggling to sleep. As I was still struggling to sleep,
I just wanted to make sure she wasn't in the
chair again. So I peeked over the bed and she

(21:18):
wasn't in the chair. She was splay out on the ground,
hair in front of her face again looking up in
the same gown. I watched her again until the sun rose,
and just like that, she was gone. I don't know
why she would just disappear. I blinked and she was gone.
The third night, I was lying on the top bunk
and too scared to look over the railing again to

(21:38):
see if she was there, so I tried to sleep
and finally did. My dream was strange, though I was
in a doctor's office from the nineties. There were two
rows of blue cushioned seats in the middle, with some
on the opposite wall and some on the wall I
was against. They had the round wooden arm rests and feet.
The walls were white and plain and bare. There was
only one door near the far right corner of the

(21:59):
wall that was blue, that had a small window in
it that shone the brightest, whitest light I've ever seen.
There was a receptionist desk right next to it with
the large glass windows that also had the same light
shining through. But no one was there, just light. I
looked across the room and saw a man sitting in
a chair across the room. He hadn't been there before.
He was wearing a medical gown, the one with the

(22:20):
little blue and red triangle shapes. His head was shaved,
but not bald. He was looking at the door. He
slowly turned to look at me, and his irises were gold,
not like shining brightly video game or cartoon gold, just
normal iris brightness, but gold. He tilted his head like
he was curious about me, and he said, pizza pressure,
Why aren't you breathing with the calmest voice. I immediately

(22:43):
took the biggest, deepest breath of my life and woke up.
I guess I had stopped breathing in my sleep at
some point. I'll never forget him, or the room or
my sister those nights. I never saw my sister again
after that. About fourteen years ago, I was in Mexico
with my family, the first time all four of us
had gone on a vacation together. On Christmas Day, my

(23:04):
cousin comes and wakes me up and asks if I
want to go up on the mountains with her ATVs.
My family owns this local shop where they deliver water
jugs milk cartons had set her up to the folks
who live up there for an added fee. My mom
was like, don't get on that. Foolishly, I said, I'm
on vacation, first time on a manual ATV, so I
took the ride up to get used to it. Long

(23:25):
story short. On the way down, thought I was good,
and my cousin said, let's race. Of course, I said, LFG.
I accidentally geared up instead of down and ended up
doing a wheelly of sorts off the cliff and fell
about forty to fifty feet, broke my wrist, a bone
popped out so my wrist thumb was actually touching my forearm,
broke my elbow, and ultimately the ATV rolled onto my neck.

(23:47):
I was in a coma for just under two weeks.
But here's the strange part. I remember all of it everything.
The best way to describe it is I was in
the vicinity of my body, but watching it from the outside.
I guess. When we get to the hospital, all I
can see is the back of my family's heads and
see my body on the hospital beds. There was this
one guy who had been in a horse accident racing
and fucked up his knees from the fall. When I

(24:09):
came back, I asked my mom how the guy's surgery went,
and she was shocked that I knew about that. I
don't know if I died for sure, but I passed
out while driving sober for an unknown reason. The last
thing I remember is my head hitting the driver's side
door window and screaming. Can still hear the scream. Then
everything was black, and I heard a voice asking me
if I wanted to stay or go, and in line

(24:31):
with my personality, I kept responding in my head, I
don't know, I don't know. It kept asking and I
said stay. Woke up car fresh out of the ditch
on the opposite side of the road, ditch almost in
line with the middle of the rear bumper car straddling
it headlights on, in front of a large rock. Got
out and checked the ditch, all torn up, about six

(24:51):
to eight feet deep, with tire marks and ruts, not
one dent or mud caked running board or will well.
It was wild. I didn't tell anyone for a week.
When I finally again on par with my ADHD decision making,
LOLL decided to take my sister to the ditch so
she could be a witness to the aftermath of whatever happened.
I've only told about three people this story, and it
was twenty years ago. So there I was sitting in

(25:14):
the hospital waiting room. I was with my then fiance,
her referred to as H. I was scheduled to get
an MRI from my back due to a work injury.
I'm sitting there filling out paperwork. Next thing I know,
H is shaking me and saying, wake up. I feel
really nauseous, and we're both confused about how I just
fell asleep. H was saying she was shaking me for

(25:34):
a while. I asked the person at the counter for
a sick bag because I feel like I'm going to vomit.
The country people say, I can't do an MRI if
I'm feeling sick. I'm upset but can't do anything. H says,
no way, are we riding my moto home? Call Pops.
He brings his truck and takes my bike head out
of town to my friend. He will be called t one.

(25:55):
Some people are swimming. I'm still dizzy, so I opt
to just sit inside. I h D One and a
few others are talking about earlier at the hospital. He
is saying, how I just slumped over, like I fell
asleep in a chair. T One goes pointing at me
sort of like that. Because it happened again again. I
wake up being violently shaken again. Ask for a trash

(26:17):
can mention. I want to go home. T One flat
out says no, She's taking you to the hospital. Something
isn't right. Herp dirp over to the local er, get
checked in, wait and get put in a room. La
la lie in my head because I'm bored. Then I
feel at this time I'm about to pass out right
Then a nurse walks by. The Last thing I remember

(26:39):
is I try to call out hey with a weak
attempt at an arm wave to get her attention. Next
thing I know I'm lying flat on the bed, hospital
gown pulled open, big electric pads on my chest. The
first thing I think is you're about to get FNZ apped.
So I tell her I'm awake. I'm awake. They just
look at me and deadpan say your heart stopping. The

(27:01):
doctor will be in shortly. While waiting, I pass out
die one more time, but I'm awake. As the nurses
come in. This time, I'm hooked up to monitors and
they say it was twelve seconds with no beat. I'm like, oh,
that's not good. It was the shortest, So to this
day I wonder what the longest was. It had to
be over thirty seconds. It seems short but forever long

(27:22):
at the same time. So the dr comes in and
just says, mister l you're getting a pacemaker. I ask
if we're going to talk options first. He's all, no,
we will install a temporary one right now, and then
you will have surgery tomorrow. Every time I passed out,
it was just like falling asleep and not dreaming conscious
one second, then not then awake again. I always joked

(27:45):
about my bad luck, but I can't in this situation.
My heart auto restarted, not once, but four times. This
was about twelve years ago. New pacemaker installed just last year.
See one just the other weekend, while helping run a
moto dirt bike race, said an older dude was riding
towards him. Then the throttle cut and the dude and
the bike just fell over. The dude didn't brace for

(28:06):
the fall, just sitting upright and he and the bike
fell over. CPR by a few people four I think,
he said, over an hour. The ambulance is over four
hours away. They are in the middle of the desert.
The dude never came back. His heart stopped and he died.
I told T one that being around two people when
their heart just stopped as a coincidence. But if it
happens a third, I'm going to start asking questions. I

(28:29):
found out months after I got my pacemaker that h
refused to let one of my good friends in to
visit me. T two slash f because of jealousy. He
is rightfully so. Now my ex wife, I was hospitalized
with acute pancreatitis, undiagnosed diabetes and drinking. I was in
the hospital one hundred and fifty four days due to
the swelling of my pancreas. My diaphragm was pushed up

(28:51):
into my lungs, causing respiratory distress. Two weeks in I
went into respiratory arrest. It was a dark, cloudy morning
when it happened. I remember the nurse coming in and
hitting the cold button, and then everything went gray and
then black. Next thing I know, I am back in
my room, but it was bright, like some one opened
the curtains on a bright sunny morning. I heard footsteps

(29:12):
clicking down the tile floor of the hospital, stop and
enter my room. It was my grandmother that had passed
away twenty eight years before. She was wearing the dress
we buried her in, but she was how she looked
when she was in her forties, and not the old
woman I knew. She touched my forehead and said, your
parents can't be here, so I will stay with you.
My you're burning up. She went and soaked a cloth

(29:34):
in cold water and placed it on my forehead. My
other grandmother and my father had both passed away in
the previous ten years, and I asked if they were there.
She said, yes, but they can't be here right now.
She was a staunch Irish Catholic lady and asked, have
you made your confession. I told her I was truly
sorry to any one I hurt during my life. My
wife and I had a stillborn baby a few years before,

(29:56):
and I asked if she was there. She said yes,
and that she was beautiful and happy. I asked her
if I was dead, and she said, I can't answer
that now. We talked for what seemed like a couple
of hours, like we were catching up from the last
time we were together. In the end, she stood up
and said, you are going to be fine, and it's
supper time and I have to go back to my family.
I then heard her shoes clicking on the floor as

(30:18):
she left. The footsteps stopped and I heard John, you
have to breathe. It was the er resuscitation specialist urging
me to come back and start breathing. I didn't tell
anyone about this for about six months. I didn't believe it.
One night, lying in bed with my wife, I was
unusually agitated. My wife wouldn't let it go until I
told her what was bothering me. All she said was,

(30:40):
you were with your grandmother. I firmly believe when you
die and pass to the other life, a loved one
who passed before you will come find you and guide
you across. You can believe it or not. At first
I didn't either. I brought back for me. It was
my life that was saved. I was a child drowning
in a swimming pool. To keep it brief, I experienced
a lot of what I can to read after I

(31:00):
grew up. I was too young to have ever heard
of nds. This was the late sixties early seventies elementary school.
A friend's house in her outdoor pool, and her grandmother
had gone inside to answer a phone call. I couldn't
swim and somehow ended up in the deep end, where
I lost my grip on the side of the pool.
I went under and stayed thrashing around, holding my breath,

(31:21):
feeling like i'd burst. At one point I floated up
out of my body and saw my body struggling in
the water down below under me. I was so high
over the trees I could see downtown building some distance away.
I had a life review where I felt all the
feelings of anyone I'd ever impacted, whether sadness, anger, or whatever.
Everything was shown to me in a film strip in
front of my eyes that moved right to left, one

(31:43):
thing after another, only I was made to feel how
I'd made others feel by my words or actions. Eventually
I was in a tunnel, fastly moving up. It was iridescent,
mainly white, but also made of all colors, and it
seemed to go on forever. I got to the top,
where it was blindingly bright. There was a presence that
said I had to decide to live or die. I
was taking too long to decide, and it said to hurry.

(32:06):
I think it may have given me a time limit.
I decided to live. Then immediately whatever this was had
me move downward again real fast, and this is where
I got scared I was going to fall. I remember
trying to grab at the sides of this tunnel to
see if I could slow my fall, but I couldn't.
I just slipped down faster and further. The next thing
I knew, my friend's grandmother had me by the scruff

(32:27):
of my neck, pulling me up out of the water,
then put me on the side of the pool on
the cement. I lay there. She'd put me on the ground,
so I was facing the pool, and the first thing
I thought was, I will never go in water again.
Lots of after effects from the experience I won't go into.
If I had to guess now over half a century later,
it's because something wanted to show me there was hope ahead,
and that the abuse, which was so bad I wanted

(32:48):
to die at such a young age, wasn't the end
all and be all of life. If I had to
do it all again, I'd not have come back, no way.
It was all non judgmental about whatever I'd made people
feel in my short life life. It was all loving,
not a negative, malignant bone in whatever presence this was
I'd faced. What survives memory two is the very very

(33:09):
short fuse or distance between life and death. It's such
a thin veil if we only knew how thin, and
that fear is the main human condition, but ultimately there's
absolutely zero reason for all that fear as an emotion
each of us carries around. Drowned in the center of
the Atlantic, I was diving off our sailboat on a
calm day, holding my breath, and when I rose to

(33:30):
take a breath, I inhaled water from a wave. It
had grown choppy. Suddenly, while I was below, passed out
floated for a bit before I'm told they realized there
was a problem que dramatics of yelling my name, slapping
me on the back see et cetera. I woke up laughing.
I remember not so much a tunnel as much as
broad blackness everywhere except directly in front of me, which

(33:53):
was bright yellow light. I moved maybe three steps forward,
stepping forward into the light, and I was met with
a crowd of people, none of whom I recognized, All
turned away from me and focused on one person, one
man in their presence. It felt very communal, like a
family picnic when you're a child. I felt slash knew
that even though I didn't recognize them, these people loved me,

(34:14):
and they noticed me then and welcomed me happily, greeting
me as if they knew me. And the man in
their midst turned toward me and moved through the crowd
to get to me and stretched out his hands to me,
and I knew that while the others loved me, this
man was in love with me. And then, just before
I leapt into his arms, I heard my name being
called from elsewhere above and all around loudly, and I
recognized the voice of one of my friends who I

(34:36):
was swimming with, and I was yanked back to my body.
It definitely felt like back to my body, like I
was arriving to a new place, which was my body,
and I opened my eyes. I felt a flash of
irritation at being pulled away, but they tell me I
woke up laughing. I still love the water. I've only
been truly unconscious once, and that was from accidentally taking
two blood pressure pills. I got up in the middle

(34:59):
of the night to take a PI felt nauseous, and
my last thought was I'm going to puke. What the fuck?
Then I woke up with my wife patting my face.
I was out for only about half a minute. On
the way down, I apparently hit the countertop, but didn't
feel a thing. I was simply not there. And this
is different from both sleep and medical anesthesia. I was
in oblivion for what could have been a few seconds

(35:20):
or a few trillion years. It would make no difference whatsoever,
because there was no meed there to experience anything in
any way. When I came to, I felt like I
was somehow reborn. I thought this was the oddest thing
because it was the closest thing to a religious experience
I've ever had. My father has an implanted pacemaker slash defibrillator.
He had it for over a decade before it finally activated.

(35:42):
He was sitting around with his brother and sisters having
a wonderful evening when they say he simply went blank
in the middle of a sentence. Then his arms lifted
slightly three x until they were almost directly over his head,
and he came back to life. He had died and
the defibrillator brought him back. He mentioned the exact same
feeling of being red, and I understood that to be
the same thing that happened to me. So it's literally oblivion.

(36:05):
Where you are, we are not. Where we are, you
are not. It's that simple, and it gives me immense
peace to know that when my time to live is over,
however my end might come, there is a promise of
truly being gone and not eternal suffering of hell fire
as promised by the LCMS church I grew up in.
I understand this might horrify some people, but for me
it came as a huge relief to have touched death.