These NDE accounts were submitted to our website and are published here anonymously. Minor edits have been made to protect the identity of the experiencer and others who may have been involved with the experience. Note to researchers and authors: IANDS cannot grant permission to publish quotations from these NDE accounts because we have not received permission from the NDE authors to do so. However, we advise authors who wish to use quotations from these accounts to follow the Fair Use Doctrine. See our Copyright Policy for more information. We recommend adopting this practice for quotations from our web site before you have written your book or article.
Recently I purchased a book by P.M.H. Atwater on near-death experiences as it sounded intriguing. While reading through the book, particularly the characteristics of near-death experiencers, I was perplexed. Most of the characteristics sounded like a description of my life. I even commented to my best friend, "Isn't it strange that my life experiences are so closely aligned with those who’ve had near-death experiences, yet I've never had one?"
Over the weeks as I made my way through the book, my fascination grew. One day, while reading the story of a child experience, I felt like a thunderbolt hit me: I remembered an incident from my childhood that I had forgotten all about!
I was fully awake when my heart stopped beating and my last breath passed my lips.
In the spring of 2003, a genetic time bomb went off and my body’s time came to an end. The moment of death was upon me at age 53 and I found it a curious thing indeed. People around me grew quite excited but an untroubled calm came over me, carrying me further and further away from the scene, as if moving me to an invisible but familiar place just sideways to where my body lay. The sirens of the ambulance were soft and melodic, the questions of the emergency room doctors sounded like a different language.
I was a 20-year-old college student with ongoing pelvic pain. I had been treated with ABX for months then DX from ovarian blood clots after a laparscopy. I was treated with Heparin for a few days. I had a sharp pain the third or fourth evening after having a hard stool. Confused that night, I crawled over the bed rails with a swollen abdomen. I didn't feel well. I refused breakfast. The doctor came in that Saturday morning to check my swollen, bruised abdomen and said it was just gas and to get up and move.
I was experiencing tremendous chest pain and difficulty breathing. My chest pain had been noticeable for about a month. I thought I had pulled a muscle. My shortness of breath I thought was due to being out of shape despite the fact that I would run 4 times a week for at least 45 minutes at a time. I had been an endurance athlete, racing bicycles for 25 years. My cholesterol was borderline 204 and blood pressure borderline 140/90. I blocked out my father’s death of heart attack at age 65 and his father’s death at age 69 of the same. I was raised not to complain and not be a problem. So in the middle of the night of June 12th, the pain was too much. I awakened my wife and she took me to the hospital. I staggered in. I remember being put in a wheel chair and wired to an EKG. There was quite a commotion. I recall being put on a gurney and rushed down a hall. The pain was excruciating. Then I remember a doctor telling me not to move or I would not survive.
I began having an allergic reaction to something around noon on Good Friday. By evening my face and hands were swelling, so my parents took me to the emergency room where I was given Benadryl. I slept deeply that night. When I woke in the morning I could barely open my eyes. My whole body was swollen. I called my mother, and she and my father rushed me to our doctor's office. By the time we reached it, I was slipping in and out of consciousness. Later our doctor explained that my heart and brain were swelling along with the rest of my body.
While lying on the examination bed, I remember coming briefly to consciousness, though I wasn't able to open my eyes. I was in a significant amount of pain; it hurt to move. The next thing I recall was being above my body and looking down at it. I was completely free of all pain. In fact, I recall feeling wonderfully light and whole. I saw my parents sitting next to the examination bed holding each other. My mother was crying. I felt a deep compassion, but I knew in some way that they would be fine, even with my being gone.
The next thing I recall was being in a void or in space. It was as if I turned around and went from the physical world into some other reality. I had a vague sense of a tunnel, although that's not the right word. It was more of being pulled along a direction or path. I quickly became aware of someone, or some being, next to me. It was definitely feminine, and it seemed to embrace me with an inexplicably intense love. She seemed vaguely familiar, but full of comfort, peace and joy. We communicated in
some way that didn't require words; however, I have a sense that we had a long conversation. I remember almost nothing of it. I recall being shown stars and galaxies—the universe— and being told that any question I could ask would be known (I say "known" because it felt more like I had access to knowledge rather than someone or something giving me "answers.") I recall asking questions and coming to know so much. Of course, I don't recall what that knowledge was, but I still have the impression that during the experience, I knew more deeply than is possible in this life.
My final recollection of that experience was the pull toward a distant pinpoint of light. I felt myself beginning to move, with my companion next to me, and being filled with a sense of love and peace that is indescribable. I was whole and complete in ways that I could never have imagined, and conscious of being connected to everything and everyone. That's where it ended.
The next thing I knew I was coming back to consciousness in the doctor's office, feeling a lot of pain and very ill. I wanted to go back to where I'd just been. I found out later that our doctor had given me a sizable dose of antihistamines and adrenaline, that my heart and the rest of my organs were swelling and that I was on the verge of cardiac arrest. I stayed in the office for a long time (again, in and out of consciousness), and finally was allowed to go home.
Over the next several days I felt very weak and physically uncomfortable, but I recall feeling very peaceful and happy(though nowhere near to the feelings during my NDE). This lasted several days, but I found that if I wanted, I could close my eyes and call those feelings back. In the nearly forty years since that experience, the memory of my time out of body has hardly diminished. Even as I write this, the memories and feelings are vivid (and I'm one of those people who can't recall what he dreamed upon waking in the morning). The feelings of love, peace and joy are still accessible, and have given me more than a little comfort during difficult times in my life.
However, I think that having the experience at such a young age, and at a time when one couldn't discuss such things (I didn't even tell this story to my parents until years later), made it difficult to assimilate it into my life. After all, at 15 I was still trying to develop my sense of identity, and this was such a powerful, anomalous experience that I had no way to integrate it into my life. I can honestly say that I have struggled all my life with the feeling that there is "something more" that lies just beyond reach. I've been accused many times of being a hopeless idealist, of not being able to just settle down, and it's true. Although I began my adult years working as an electrical and mechanical technician, I eventually went to college to become an English teacher. Although I was born into a somewhat conservative family, I've gradually moved further and further left, becoming involved in peace and justice causes. Even now, in middle age, I find myself continuing to search for ways to express compassion and love for others because I know (not just believe, but know) that this is what life is meant to be about. I trace this all back to that experience.
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