Those of you who have had a near death experience...

[NorwegianMoon]

I know from first hand experience how personal and life changing it can be so I am not asking you to explain what happened unless of course you want to as its sooo interesting (to me anyway).

But I have one question, was there anything the other size, were you greeted by a relative or anything? any higher being?

I ask because when it happened to me there was nothing there, I was completly alone and it really worries me. I feel there should have been an angel or something.

I watched my mother find my dead body in my bed but there was nothing.

feel free not to comment if its too personal

Hello

Back in 1987 when I was 16 years I had just been into town with my mum to get new clothes to take to Ireland to see my BF. We had to park at the top of the hill and it was the day of the hurricane (hurricane came that night).

As we got out of the car it was v windy and we found it funny walking against the wind. Suddenly we were both lifted off our feet, my mum into the road and I was blown into a brick wall. I thought bugger I've dropped all my shopping then a split second later I realised I might die. My dad had recently died and I thought it would be good to see him again.

Haven't thought about this in a long time. Perhaps it wasn't near death enough for him to get to me? I am a lapsed Catholic and religion confuses the hell out of me.

Hope you get some more responses which help.........unlike mine

Not a near death experience but I was taken through a death when I had past life regression.

It was as an old lady and ready to die, which I presume makes a difference, but I can remember the overwhelming feeling of peace that I felt. There was a light but it wasn't a bright white light like on the tv but warmer and more like sunlight radiating.

I remember looking down on my daughter who was crying but I didn't feel any sadness.

I can't recall anybody being there to meet me but I do know that I wasn't scared.

Someone wrote a book about this recently - google near death experiences and Dr Sam Parnia who is a UK consultant conducting experiments on it. Intriguing.

I don't remember anything at all after I was hit by a car.

I was seriously injured and my mum and now DH were told to come in and say their goodbyes as I was not expected to survive the night. I had been resusitated and was very hurt. Luckily I survived but I do remember during my recovery I had very intense conversations with my dad (died many years ago). Don't know if that really happened or if it was the morphine making me hallucinate the conversations.

Sorry not much clearer!

I have PMd you, NorwegianMoon.

I haven't had a near death experience, but I have been in a situation where I could have died if that makes sense! I don't want to say wht it was because I will out myself, I've told the story to almost everyone I know!

Anyway, I believe that 'something', probably an angel, told me what I needed to do to save my life. I wouldn't have known otherwise, and it was a very clear instruction. I did it, and I was fine, rescued shortly after.

I think in your situation, nobdy was there because you weren't ready to die, it simply wasn't your time. When it is, I think someone will be there waiting.

I think curlymama is right. Read some betty Shine or Doris Stokes.

I don't remember anything about my near-death experience (I was in a serious car accident; had to be resuscitated at the scene)

However, I did discover religion as a result;a sort of low-level Damascene conversion from hard-bitten atheist to wooly agnostic.

Thank you for replying! GentleOtter I will msg you back once my daughter is asleep and I can concentrate. She is currently at the milk bar...

Il explain what happened to me in more detail.

Id been having heart palputations for a couple of nights, really awful ones accompanied by violent images in my mind. It was so hard to wake up and throw myself of the bed and it was really hurting my heart. Everytime i closed my eyes they started again. I was seizuring quite badly and all my muscles tensed up and I was trying to get to my phone to call for help before slipping back to these images.
I was getting tired of fighting and as I started to stop fighting this calm feeling slipped over my body and I thought that maybe it would just be easier to follow the calm feeling and I sort of felt myself drifting away.
All of a sudden it was morning and I was standing accross the room next to the window watching myself laying in bed. The sun was shining a the birds were singing and it was such a beautiful day. I heard my mum calling my name from the hallway and I didnt wake up to reply, she called again and then I realised I was dead. She knocked on the door and still I didnt stir, then she came in to wake me and started screaming hysterically as I was dead. I KNEW in that moment that if i followed that peaceful feeling I would never wake up again and shed find me dead the next day. Next thing i knew i was back in my body fighting again and I fought so hard, threw myself out of bed crawled accross the door managed to shake myself out of it and didnt go back to sleep that night.

There were no angels, my family were not there. There was no god. Thinking back the lovely day and the sun might have meant soemthing and i am more inclined to think that had i given up something else more holy might have happened. I just wish someone had been there to greet me. Im terrified of pergatory.

I nearly drowned. Was swimming in the sea where I couldn't stand (v deep part) and a surfer went over my head and the board hit me on my head and knocked me out.

All the air came out of my lungs and I sank. I hit the bottom and must have come to in a few seconds and realised I didn't know where the surface was. I know this sounds strange but it wasn't a sunny day. The sky was very very grey and it was drizzling. When that happens, if you are quite deep under the sea, you can't actually see the surface. Because all the air had been knocked out of my lungs, I couldn't float up naturally.

I started swimming but had no real idea which direction I was heading in (I know it seems logical to think you could just say swim up but once you push off the ground, if you have a long way to swim, you lose direction v quickly).

I panicked for about 10 seconds then became very very calm, almost peaceful. I didn't see anything but weirdly did suddenly feel warm and did see a light but I expect those were both symptoms of impending unconsciousness.

Next thing I remember was lying on my side on the beach and having the water smacked out of my lungs. A lifeguard had seen what had happened and had swum out and dived down several times till he found me and dragged me up.

I've heard other people who have nearly drowned saying how calm they were just before they thought they were going to die. it was very very strange.

Sorry no near death experiences for me - but I do find this all v. interesting!

Norwegian are you SURE that was a NDE????,

I ask because I've not had an NDE, but have had a few out of body experiences, & have looked down on my sleeping, or distressed self, & then been able to move away......I felt calm & there was no-one there for me either, but I wasn't dead, or dying, though was on 2 occasions in big time distress due to medical procedures........so I didn't even consider it to be an NDE

my reply wasn't clear, .....I meant the twice I've had OoBE whilst physically distressed, there was no one there, but

though on another occasion when it happened whilst sleeping, my then recently dead Grandmother was there & I left the room with her, everything that happened after that more than proved to me & my family it was no dream

I had a nearly fatal illness a few years ago and the hospital were struggling to keep me alive.
I remember wanting all the pain to stop and relaxing but I couldn't bear the thought of my DS growing up with out me and not seeing how he turned out. I conciously chose pain over calm because I knew it that the calm meant I would never wake up.
It was bizzare, such a very clear thought process which I now know was going on for over 8 hours while I hovered between life and death

im absolutly sure. i just KNOW i cant explain it.
Because i was sure that it was showing me what would happen if i didnt fight. if i had been watching over myself in bed that night i waould argue not, but it was the next day my mother who is very much alive walked in and tried to wake me.

if you found out that you were seriously ill, then maybe, you obviously know you're own situation better than anyone, so I can't argue

but I wondered as I've had OoBE happen where I have passed out during a botched medical procedure & watched from above whilst the doctors who were already in the room, call in help & revived me, & a similar one with a Dentist, but I didn't pass out, just wanted the pain to stop & it suddenly did, but I was looking down on myself again, so in a way similar to yours

I also remember on all occasions I've had this, it was somehow brighter & warmer, can't quite explain it, as the 2 medical ones were indoors all of the time, but sunny would be a good description otherwise

thing is it was in the future not watching over myself at that time it was happening.

i suppose it was a blessing as im sure il be going to hell!

ah, that was the bit I misunderstood, I read it as happening, so thought it was similar to my own experience.....not part happening & part premonition of happening (If I now understand it correctly)

& I'm sure you're not going to hell, personally I believe there are lot of layers to this world of ours that we don't really understand or see until we actually need to, I think I'd drive myself nuts trying to fathom some of my own experience, but I do believe what we FEEL is the key, & as you felt calm, I suspect theres nothing for you to fear, its that immense feeling of calm, that I experienced myself that makes me have no fear at all of death....not ready for it of course, but I don't fear it at all :)

I haven't had an OoB experience, but certainly a 'near death' experience - the second one happened only a week or so ago. I feel stupid for admitting it, but it has made me believe that there is something there watching over us.
In each case, as I neared the point of no return (rupturing appendix, then recently a run in with swine flu with unexpected and serious comlplications) there was a calm voice that switched on and gave me clear instructions on what to do.
I am a lapsed catholic, mainly caused by having a rational and scientific mind, and feeling that there is too little proof for a divine being in the nature of an all-seeing paternal god.
However, in each case I cannot deny this voice, very clear and not my own internal voice, that took over.
I didn't think I would believe in the concept of a guardian angel, but I cannot explain this voice away rationally. It was not my own internal voice. For me it was enough proof that there is something else - I would not have made it either time had 'the voice' not been there. That is a fact.

I can't believe someone has cited Doris Stokes as recommended reading. The woman was a fake (no surprise there; all "mediums" are) but more to the point, she was an EXPOSED fake!

foxinsox that makes me feel so much better about my worries. Two years ago on holiday I realised my ds (then 8) had got out of his depth in the sea. I swam to try and help him but he was struggling so much he kept pulling us both under. I honestly thought we were both going to die it was horrific.
Two men saw us and swam out to get my son then I was able to swim back myself. Ever since I have had terrible dreams about how drowning would be the worst way possible to die.

When I was a child, I was in a pick-up truck with my folks (sitting in between mum and dad in front seat, like you can with those cars). I remember seeing a car coming towards us driving in the wrong lane, and my parents each putting an arm across my body to brace me. We had nowhere to go as there was oncoming traffic in the other lane, and a sheer cliff-face on the other side of the car, so we just had to stop and wait for him to hit us.

After that, I remember walking away from the car into field. The field was where the cliff face would have been. The field was lit up in a way that I can only describe as being quite close to night lights at a cricket game, and there was a man and a woman standing there, beckoning to me. They told me to come with them, and I told them I couldn't and that I had to stay with my parents (I could see our car and the ambulance and someone being loaded into the ambulance). They told me again to come with them, and this time I ran away from them.

The next thing I remember is my aunt lifting me up in front of the mirror in my hospital room so I could see me stitches and black eye.

I had apparently died for 2 minutes, and my mother unfortunately lost one of her unborn twins in the accident. My father suffered a broken arm.

The whole thing is still so clear to me, like I'm watching it on a movie, or like it happened yesterday. My mother tells me that I've told the same story about the accident since it happened, and I personally believe that I was too young to have understood a "near-death" experience and therefore couldn't have filled in the blanks with my own ideas.

I'm not scared of dying, as I know I'm going to a better place, but I am still absolutely terrified of dying in a car wreck, really slowly and painfully. I pray it never happens!!

oh poor you mumofloads

it is very frightening when you are trying to rescue someone and they keep pulling you under

a lot of people who are frightened of drowing have said that to me when I've told them the story!

Thats awful for you mumofloads, but I can relate to it in a way, & its apparently normal post traumatic stress, & I wonder if some sort of therapy or counseling might help you with it

I was locked in a house fire in my early 20s, thankfully I got out safely & unharmed, but a lot of damage done & pets killed, & it felt like it took forever to get out, it turned out to be the result of an electrical fault, I spent the next 2 years dreaming of being burnt alive, & waking up up to 6 times a night & not being able to rest until I'd got up & checked all the plugs etc were safely off (daft really as it was caused by a dodgy light fitting) it did gradually lessen, in that I dreamt it & needed to get up & check less & less over time, but it still came back if I was under any stress

Several years ago, for other health reasons, I went to see a private therapist for Myofascial release, medically recognised in the US apparently, but not yet properly here....anyway, its very much a physical massage therapy, which made a lot of sense reading up on it as regards after effects of accidents etc, but I was a bit dubious about some of the claims, as regards the bodies fascia storing memories of emotional trauma & it later causing physical symptoms, & that this massages would release these "snags" & you might experience flash backs etc

I'd pretty much forgotten about the fire, but my 1st session had me smelling smoke & coughing violently, & again spent a few days up & checking plugs again, the Therapist told me it was clearing the blocked memory

I've never had it again since, even during times of stress

Just over a year ago my exH had a psychotic episode and strangled me. Totally out of the blue. I passed out several times before he finally got his hands firmly around my windpipe.

During the initial fight I was terrified. But once his grip was firm and I couldn't breath I suddenly felt very calm. I remember thinking "this is it" and then slipping unconscious. I can't remember if I "saw" anything - I don't recall it - but I remember coming around a little while after and still feeling calm - until I realised I was still alive and then went totally hysterical.

I had panic attacks (not huge ones thankfully that I know some people have - but still not pleasant) for months after - over random things - anything could trigger it - though not talking about what had happened. I was fine with that - it was like my feelings/emotions about it were detached from my memory - if that makes sense?? So I could talk about the memory of it without any problems. But as soon as something triggered an emotion linked to it I freaked out.

They're mostly gone now - though once in a while I get caught off guard and something makes me feel uneasy - though nothing on the scale of what I had earlier last year.

It feels almost surreal thinking back on it now - almost like it never happened - or it happened to someone else and I just witnessed it. I don't know its hard to explain really.

All I know is that I'm not worried about dying any more - I used to be scared, well not scared - more worried about what it would be like -the actual dying - not how it happened (as obviously the initial few minutes of me fighting was awful) but the actual final moments where you slipped from life to death I used to wonder/worry about a bit. But not now. I just remember the calm, the peace, the lack of fear as it came so close that I could nearly touch it.