Episode 125. A Discussion with Author Kathy McDaniel on Her Book About Her N.D.E.
CONTACT US: Email: paranaughtica@gmail.com Twitter: @paranaughtica Facebook: The Paranaughtica PodcastContact Cricket: Website: www.theindividuale.com Twitter: @Individualethe Howdie-Hoh, friendo’lino’s,We sincerely hope that you all had a spectacular time over this last weekend. Summer is nearly hear and may summer bring us happy times.Ladies and gentlemen, we have with us today a first time author, Kathy McDaniel. She is here with us today to talk about her first book that she just had published called, “Misfit In Hell To Heaven Expat”.This will be a fun show as we talk about our experiences together, mostly Kathy’s and thank God. Seriously though, this is a great episode. Lots of humor, lots of information, and lots of ‘holy sh*ts!’ I don’t want to say much more about it because I’ll give too much away and I cant have that on my hands, makes for sleepless nights. So, let’s get into it! Strap-up your velcrow chin-straps, pull those shoe-straps nice and tight, and do the same with those velcrow garters. Let’s get into this. To Reach M.K. McDaniel:Email: mkm@heavenexpat.comWebsite: http://www.misfitinhelltoheavenexpat.com/Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/KathyMcDaniel.FoxIsTwitter: https://twitter.com/MKMcDaniel3Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kathymcdaniel.foxis To check out a small batch of Coops’ music, go to this this link — https://on.soundcloud.com/Q1XRaY9WSpzawV9r7 PATREON:http://tiny.cc/tule001 ***If you’d like to help out with a donation and you’re currently listening on Spotify, you can simply scroll down on my page and you’ll see a button to help us out with either a one-time donation or you can set up a monthly recurring donation. ko-fi.com/paranaughticapodcast Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Quantum Santa has a one to the power of end chance of coming this year.
Santa. No, leave me alone.
He will punish you with indeterminacy.
There you go.
They need to create a god of crappy electronical interfaces so that you can invoke them to make interactions online, not break.
Yeah. Yeah, big time.
Okay, come on.
Just work.
See, we can pray too.
Just work, please.
Yeah, I have an unstable internet connection right now.
This is impossible.
Why is it doing that?
I have nothing open.
I don't need open.
I don't know what's going on.
The numbers are all over the place.
Really good.
I said please, please, please, please numerous times.
That was three in a row right there.
Alright, let's get into this.
Misfit in Hell to Heaven Expat.
Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to the Paranautica Podcast.
We have a guest with us today, a first-time author of the book, Misfit in Hell to Heaven Expat.
It's the number one best-selling memoir about our guest's near-death experience.
Currently, it's got four out of five stars in Amazon Books.
And you can get a hold of our guest.
You can find her on Facebook,
under Kathy McDaniel.
On Twitter.
What's your Twitter handle here?
MKMcDaniel3? Yeah, I think so.
MKMcDaniel3. Instagram, KathyMcDaniel.
And so, Kathy, how are you doing today?
Thank you for joining us.
You're welcome.
Glad to be here.
Yeah, of course.
We have technical problems, as usual.
As usual.
Can't get away from that.
Yeah. So, a little bit about the book and why you're here.
So, in 1999, Kathy McDaniel was placed on a ventilator due to lung failure resulting from a severe flu.
She fought for her life while in a drug-induced coma for three weeks, during which she encountered a perilous and unfamiliar realm.
Misfit in Hell to Heaven Expat is a memoir that chronicles MK's tumultuous journey before...
During and after her profound near-death experience.
Now, do you just want to go by Kathy?
Sure. That's fine.
What do you prefer?
Kathy's fine.
MK is just my nom de plume.
Okay. Okay.
And this experience that she had prompted to reevaluate her beliefs about reality and truth.
As a disillusioned heaven expat, Kathy grappled with her sense of identity and purpose throughout the remainder of her life on Earth to the present time.
Throughout her extensive recovery, Kathy contemplated the significance of her afterlife experiences, giant inspiration from the struggles and resilience of her ancestors.
Their ability to surmount formidable challenges instilled in her the belief that she, too, could prevail.
As Kathy recalled her past traumatic experiences, which seemed to resonate with her encounters in hell, she sought out others who shared similar narratives.
She ultimately found comfort, hope, and understanding at the International Association of Near-Death Studies, some meetings there in Seattle.
Misfit in Hell to Heaven Expat is an uplifting, sometimes dark, sometimes humorous, Chilling narrative that invites the readers to ponder and explore both their human and otherworldly dimensions.
Ladies and gentlemen, we have with us first-time author Kathy McDaniel.
She's here with us to explain these experiences and help us understand the world within us and the world without.
So again, welcome to the show.
How are you doing?
I'm doing great.
How about you?
We're getting through this technical stuff and now we can talk, huh?
Now we can talk, which is what we love to do.
I actually personally do not like talking.
A lot of people think I'm not telling the truth there, but I really, I'm not a talker.
I've always despised talking.
I hated public speaking in school.
I hated it all.
But I do a podcast.
I don't know.
I don't know.
Call me crazy.
No, I'm the same way.
I hated speech class.
And now I do it all the time.
I don't know.
I don't know.
Public speaking was always something I had a real hard time with.
But at the same time, I always loved acting.
That's pretty interesting.
That's different, I guess, because they give you the words.
There you go.
Yeah, because then you don't have to be spontaneous and witty and brilliant.
Somebody else has to do them for you.
That's awesome.
And you never suck.
Someone else's writing sucks.
Oh, yeah.
It's not your fault.
I'm not a bad actor.
I just have to read your bad writing.
Exactly. That's pretty good.
Yeah. Kathy, you're here with us to talk about near-death experiences in your specific one that your book is about, but why don't we talk about what a near-death experience is, or an NDE in short?
Well, near-death is not like somebody said not too long ago, yeah, I stepped off the curb in front of a bus, I had a near-death experience.
No. A near-death experience is...
When you are either, you know, dying of a heart attack or you are bleeding to death or you're in a coma because you are near death and somehow you just kind of slip out of your body and your consciousness wanders is the best I can come up with and you don't ever feel dead or dead.
disconnected unless some of these people that are operated on and, you know, float up to the ceiling and look down on their bodies and,
It's very trippy.
And then in a coma, I didn't feel like I was ever dead, but I knew I was just, you know, not in Kansas anymore.
I share the same kind of scenario you have with the...
A coma, like I was saying before we started recording here.
I was also in a three-week coma, medically induced.
Essentially, I asphyxiated on my own vomit.
It was asleep on my back.
I vomited and asphyxiated on it.
Thank you, Guy.
We got one of them there, Gaps.
Oh, well.
We'll see what happens.
But yeah, I mean, I remember everything up to the moment of falling asleep.
We're laying down to go to sleep.
And then I woke up in a hospital.
But in my mind, I thought it was in Japan.
Everything was in Japanese handwriting.
And I thought I was in some little clinic just right off the side of the road in the street.
Because I could see people walking outside.
It was like a glass door.
And I could see people walking by.
And I'm like, what is this?
How did I get here?
What is happening?
But I knew I was alive.
So I was like, okay, at least I'm alive.
I know I'm alive.
And at the foot of the bed was just my mom staring at me.
And she just had the most concerned look on her face.
And they were shoving a tube down my throat, and I didn't understand what was happening.
And I yanked it out, and then they sedated me.
And I just remember looking at my mom and thinking, why aren't you doing anything?
And I said some bad things.
I was like, why aren't you doing something, Mom?
You know, but really angry.
And they had strapped me down and then like, you know, sedated me and that was it.
And I woke up later and yeah, I had to learn how to, you know, put a fork to a plate and lift it up to my mouth again.
I had to learn to walk again, you know, how to do basic problem solving things like open up a phone book in the Yellow Pages and find a specific name or something.
I had to do all of that.
And it was just so crazy how in three weeks, you completely forget things like that.
The muscle memory's gone.
You must have lost a lot of weight, too.
Yeah. Anyway, sorry.
That was my...
No, it sucks.
To come back to that, I mean, you're already confused and upset.
And like you say, you can't even breathe by yourself or turn over.
I could only blink and move one finger.
It was terrible.
Yeah. No, it's bad.
So I just have this little description of like an NDE.
Because they can be both positive and negative.
In a near-death experience, individuals often encounter a strikingly vivid and emotionally charged episode in which they perceive the physical world from an external vantage point, kind of like you were saying, kind of detached from your physical body.
And they may also engage with entities and realms that transcend...
It's still real.
It's just...
Most of the people do have pleasant experiences, about 80%.
And then there's about 20% of us that don't.
And it's been kind of a mystery as to why a person will go one way or another.
They pretty much determined it has nothing to do with this.
Is it a bad person, has a bad experience, a good person, a good one?
That's been thrown out the window.
But it's just trying to decipher what it meant.
Because most of us are either, we choose to come back or they force you back.
And I was...
I did not want to come back at all because at the end of my distressing experience, I like burst into this place of joy and light and just total happiness.
And I got to see my best friend who had died the month before.
I'd been caring for him while he was having treatments for leukemia.
And he looked great.
He looked younger.
He was happy.
He was so happy to see me.
I thought, oh shit, he doesn't...
Oh, excuse me.
I probably shouldn't say that.
Oh, that's fine.
Actually, I'm glad you cursed because that opens up the doors.
So we're good.
We're good to go.
I thought, he doesn't know he's dead.
Yeah. Yeah, well, I mean, it was surprising that this guy was dead a month ago and now he looks better than he ever did.
And I thought, oh no, he doesn't know he's dead and I'm not going to be the one to tell him.
And he just really started really laughing then.
And I thought, wait a minute.
If he's dead, then guess what?
You are dead.
So I thought, wow, this is the best news ever.
I mean, I'm in heaven with my best friend.
And I said, show me around.
What are we doing here?
You know, just standing around.
And he says, no, Mary Kay.
That's what he called me.
You've got too much left to do.
And I thought, what?
They're throwing me out?
And I just said, no.
I stamped my foot, which probably wasn't even there, and said, no, I'm not.
And boy, I had a little...
Time out room.
I think I kind of wandered around down this stream.
It was trying to calm me down, I'm sure.
And then, boom, I opened my eyes and it's, you know, people milling around is too hot.
And I thought, oh, crap, I'm back in hell again.
And it was my daughter turned around and says, hey, mom's back.
And I thought, what happened?
Of course, like you, you probably know, you can't move.
You got the thing in your throat.
Yeah. It's so...
You can't figure out what happened.
And for me, I was scared to death I was going to go lapsed back into that place.
And I'm being figuratively tied to a bed.
So, yeah, it was not a pleasant experience.
Yikes. What, 10 years of trying to figure out what happened and nobody to talk to?
My shrink just says, well, I don't know how to help you, but I'll put PTSD on your chart for you.
And I thought, well, thanks a lot.
Thanks. You know?
And then my family didn't want to hear about it.
Nobody thought I was either crazy or made it up.
So it was like being...
I don't know, like moving to Mars or something.
You just don't fit in anymore.
Wow, how helpful.
You seem upset by almost dying.
You know, I'm glad I'm back, but I wasn't the same person, you know?
And anyway, it was good to find the IONS meetings.
A series of synchronicities drug me up there to Seattle through the traffic.
But of course, a couple of meetings, you know, they had the puppies and the rainbows and all that stuff.
And I'm going, yeah, that's not what happened to me.
Weird. Yeah, so they finally dug out on me that I'd had, they called it disturbing back then, a distressing one.
And they said, great, you got to tell us about it.
We never get to hear these.
They're rare.
And I thought, these are strange people.
But I did tell the story for the first time.
And it was great because I had a boy in the palm of my hand, you know, we were all going through hell together.
And then, bingo, at the end, we got out, and it was applause.
Yay! And I thought, well, gee, that wasn't so bad.
And so I've been with that group 15 years now, and I've got a monthly sharing group through IONS for people that have had the distressing ones.
And last week, we had 18 people show up from all over, you know, all over the country, Canada.
I mean, lots of people have had these experiences.
Millions, you know.
So it's cool to be able to sit down, be able to tell your story in a non-judgmental environment, people that understand it.
And it's just, it's a second lease on life for a lot of people.
It's been very helpful and fun.
Yeah. I mean, I could definitely understand there being an initial reluctance to share the story.
I mean, You were mentioning, you know, like it not having anything to do with morality, but I imagine the first thing you think is you're ashamed of the fact that you went to hell.
Yeah, it doesn't play.
Like, wait, I deserve to go to hell?
Yeah, after all this stuff, man, I was a devoted Catholic.
I did everything right, the rosaries, the novenas, you know, all that stuff.
And I thought, how did I get here?
But it took a long time, but I now believe...
I don't know about you guys, but I believe that after talking to lots and lots of people, that we start off as spirit in heaven, wherever you want to call it, choose to come to earth to learn things,
have experiences, because in heaven everything's perfect, and we choose our lives.
And I, for some reason, yet to be determined, I was a brave soul that says, oh, I'll go down and do this particular thing.
Go to what I consider hell and come back and tell people that I made that up myself, I think, because I had been taught my whole life that I was going to go to purgatory when I died.
And there isn't one, so I made one.
And in that, I was able to come back and after 15 years and lots of talking to other people say, whoa, I made that.
Those experiences, they came like in segments out of things that actually happened in my life, but I just made them a hell of a lot worse.
And then when I got to, you know, when you get to heaven, whatever you want to call it, the joy and peace and this experience of being home, you're back where you started and we're all just part of God.
God is energy.
God is love.
There's no judgment.
There's no hell.
There's nothing but a life review.
I didn't get one because I wasn't there long enough.
But people say it's very interesting.
You get to see your whole life and each experience and interaction with other people and dogs and trees.
And then you get to understand.
When they turn this whole thing around and run it again, how it felt to interact with you.
So you get to feel it's kind of like a karma thing.
If you were snarky to somebody, you get to feel their, you know, their humiliation or their sorrow.
And it's not a judgment.
It's just a, you know, how do I do?
It's a report card that you get to see.
But with no judgment.
Of all the millions of people that have had these things, there's been no reports of a judgment.
And I think people need to know that.
Skip the trip.
Don't make your own hell.
I think, really, that people that go over don't experience this hellish stuff.
It's just the ones that come back.
For some reason, they come back.
I mean, I was told I had to come back, and I wasn't happy about it.
But, you know, it's so much bigger than we as little human beings with these little brains can comprehend.
It really is.
I imagine even after you work it out, it's probably upsetting working out psychologically.
Like, I believe I deserve to go to hell.
Like, believing in purgatory...
Is almost a little bit nicer, and you still made it pretty miserable for yourself.
Yeah, well, purgatory, we were taught, is hell, except you get out after you pay for your sins, you know, with the burning and all that stuff, which is a terrible thing to teach children.
That is.
And, you know, I would say...
A great percentage of the people that have these experiences and come back ditch their religions.
We go to spirituality because if a religion's teaching you, you do this, you go to hell, you do that, you go to hell, it's bullshit, number one.
And number two, it's just a way to control people.
Big time.
I think we see a reduction of the religions, I think, in the world now.
I think more people are having these experiences and sharing them via you wonderful podcast people.
I mean, you're doing such a service to this planet.
I really applaud you and thank you.
Absolutely. Thank you for that.
To go to your theory, I've read so many different theories on what...
This consciousness is on what this soul is and I've heard that, you know, we do choose to come here.
We choose our parents.
We choose the people that we want our families to be, essentially.
And we come down and we do all of that.
Oops, dead zone.
Oh, yeah.
Series on the afterlife, presumably.
Yes. I think so.
I'm getting a lot of internet interruptions.
A lot of the push towards the organization and the religion seems to be based on a misguided notion that scaring people away from doing ill is the best way to get humans to act the best they can.
And honestly, I think people would be less fatalistic and less inclined to just say, screw it, I'm going to hell anyways.
If they came to the realization that wasn't where things stopped.
Right. Right.
Yeah, I mean, people ask about, well, wait a minute, you mean Hitler didn't go to hell?
And I thought, you know, if he is feeling every bit of the pain and horror and tragedy and, you know...
So he's got a whole lot of miserable lifetimes to live.
Well, he's just going to endure all that, you know, until it's all gone.
He's probably halfway through his life review by now, if that.
Yeah, I was about to say, that's a pretty miserable review.
It's pretty hellish, trust me.
Yeah, what else can you do to the guy?
I mean, karma works a lot better than this other thing.
You know, you get back what you put out.
See, peace doesn't require effort.
Punishment requires effort, and effort can't be eternal.
So, you know, the notion of eternal punishment, you've got to keep putting forth the effort forever?
But they only temporarily sinned.
Yeah. You didn't eternally sin.
Yeah, no, it's true.
That's so true.
Yeah, yeah, it doesn't make sense.
We try and make God a human.
And God is not a human.
God is all love.
And humans are less than perfect.
Less than perfect.
Yeah, much less than perfect.
It's fun.
I mean, and I love to...
We don't want to settle for the life review later on to punish them.
We'll just say that.
Yeah, right.
Exactly. That's why you don't have to worry about retaliating because these people are going to...
Re-put the soul and get over it.
Reincarnation is supposedly a real thing and we all have thousands of incarnations and not just on Earth.
You can go all different.
Look at all the universes and stuff out there.
There's all kinds of places we can go.
It's a very potentially depressing and also liberating concept depending on how you treat it.
That's very true.
It's said that, what, 10 to 20% of people who survive a close brush with death report a near-death experience, and an estimated 5% of the world's population has actually had a near-death experience.
Oh, yeah.
So out of the, I don't know, 8 billion people, 5% of those.
Yeah. Cricket, how much is that, man?
5% of 8 billion.
5% of 8 billion.
10% of 8 billion would be, what, 800 million?
So 400 million people have experienced an NDE.
400 million people.
I mean, I technically would have on a few different occasions.
It's just mine didn't involve any recollection, so I don't have anything to tell anyone.
I did come pretty close to dying.
Yeah, but you know, sometimes they do a mind wipe.
Yeah. You're not allowed to remember what happened.
They tell you on the other side.
I mean, when I was there, I saw this big, huge book.
It was open about halfway, and I knew my friend had been showing me something in there.
And I said, oh no, that's going to be too hard.
I want to stay with you.
And that's when I got thrown out.
So then you come back, and you can't remember it.
Because that's cheating.
You know, that's cheating.
It's funny what happened to me.
Yeah? I can't remember anything.
Right. Other than, like, really weird, like, everything was very advanced, like, technologically.
Like, I remember in the corner of the room, I saw this weird, like...
From ceiling to floor, this tube-like thing, but in the middle was one of those steel wool things that you scrub dishes with.
It looked like one of those in the middle of this tube thing, just floating up and down.
It was floating in the center of it.
That was an air filter.
It was really weird.
Very strange.
That's funny because you associate it with...
With Japan, which I automatically associate with futuristic and high technology.
Right. Exactly.
So, you know, your futuristic look is like, I must be in Japan.
Yeah. So then your brain makes Japan for you out of this futuristic setting.
It was.
It was so weird because everything, the writing, I could perfectly see Japanese writing.
Wow. It was just so strange.
So strange.
It fills in the holes of the narrative in your brain as you go.
Also, during my experience, I also thought that it was my dad that was in a hospital and it wasn't me.
He was of old age.
My father actually just passed away two days after my birthday this year from lung cancer.
It was just fast.
Just turbo cancer.
Within five months, it was just done.
But yeah, in my dream thing, it was so crazy.
And on top of all that, and I've said this before, but I just need to mention this to you.
Before he had been diagnosed with lung cancer, I actually had this dream that somebody died in my family.
Someone really close to me died in our family.
And everybody in my dream was super sad and depressed.
And I just knew someone died, but nobody could tell me who died or how they died.
Everyone knew someone died.
And then, fast forward, like, maybe a month and my dad gets diagnosed with lung cancer, and then five months later, he's dead.
Yeah, premonition.
So crazy.
Yeah, it was a premonition.
Yeah. Interesting.
But to bring it back to you, let's get into this.
So, start at the very beginning.
How did this all play out?
Which part?
Let's go to, you were suffering from...
Lung disease, right?
Failure. Yeah, it was like I got, it was, well, a terrible flu went around.
I got pneumonia and then it went into this ARDS syndrome and they said they had to put me out.
So you mean what happened when I was in the coma?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So you get put into a coma and then...
So the doctor says, I'm going to give you something called white amnesia.
You will be completely unable to remember anything that happens to you.
We're taking your brain offline.
You're just going to go to sleep.
That's it.
And then you'll wake up or you won't.
And so I went out.
And I don't know how long I was out.
There's no time on the other side.
But it was just, I woke up and I thought, what?
You know, WTF.
And it was totally black.
No sound.
I didn't know if I was sitting or standing or what.
I was afraid to move.
And, you know, you think somebody's playing a trick on you or something.
But I thought, well, I'll just hang out.
I mean, it's not uncomfortable or anything, but whoa.
It started to kind of get a little more light to it.
And it was kind of this reddish glow thing.
And I thought the sun was coming up.
Maybe I could see where I was.
But it was kind of swirling fog, which I thought was weird.
And then it kind of got warm, a little too warm, and then it started to smell really bad.
And then I started hearing these people moaning and shrieking in the background.
And I thought, wow, this can't be good.
And then this voice just boomed out of the fog that said, do you know where you are?
That would be pretty creepy.
Yeah. I'm sitting there in the darkness and I said, uh, hell?
And then it went, just like one of those spooky movies that me and my brother and sister used to listen to all the time.
It was like a...
One of those?
I thought it was just awful scared.
That's horrible.
I just turned and I ran into the darkness.
I didn't care if I fell in a hole or hit a wall.
I had to get away from whatever that was.
And that's when it started.
And like I say to segments, it started with the lights just coming up real quick.
And it startled me and I stopped.
And I took in this panorama.
It looked like a movie set.
Like somebody had bombed New York City.
And the skyscrapers, some of them had fallen down.
It looked like the Twin Towers kind of thing.
And big, big chunks of concrete and rebar sticking out of it.
People screaming and running.
There's fires.
It was at night.
And I thought...
You know, boom, you're dropped into this situation.
And I, you know, I'm looking around thinking, wow, I have to get someplace safer than this.
So I kind of tucked into a piece of concrete, you know, and was looking around.
And, oh, I had this thing with some sort of, like, not homeless, cross between homeless and zombie people started coming at, you know, kind of floating over to me to see.
What was going on?
And I was scared, but I thought, well, at least not everybody died.
And anyway, they didn't think I was going to be anything fun, so they wandered off, and I was running to try and get inside a building.
I thought maybe people would be there.
It would be food or water.
I mean, survival instinct just kicked in, and I tried to climb up this.
Big piece of concrete using the rebar kind of to get up.
And I got to the top and my fingers started scritching down.
I couldn't get a hold and I fell backwards.
And I thought, oh man, this is going to hurt.
And then the lights went out.
And then the lights came up.
And I was someplace completely different.
Interesting. One of the times it came up, and there's this huge, like, yeti demon thing standing in front of me.
It had to be, you know, 10 feet tall, huge, furry, and ugly.
And I thought, holy cow, what the hell's that?
And he said, hey, you want to get out of here?
And I thought, wow, that was perfect English.
I thought it would be kind of a grunt.
And I said, yes, I do.
And he says, well, I got a job for you.
And I said, you do?
And he said, yes.
If you've got to do one favor for me, you get this done, and I will see personally that you get out.
And I thought, I have no idea where I am.
This is just too weird, but I got no choice.
So I said, okay, fine.
So he raises his arm.
It had been dark behind him.
And now I can see, as far as I can see, is this huge patch of blackberry vines, just twisted and turned, 20 feet tall.
Thorns all over the place, and I just thought, huh?
And he gave me a pair of those scissors they give the kids in kindergarten to cut paper.
He said, you just cut all that down for me, and I'll see you get out.
With snub scissors that barely fit around your fingers.
Right. Those scissors.
And I look at him like, you jerk.
You're just playing with me here.
He's belly laughing, thinking it's funny.
And so I just...
I was mad.
That's the misfit and hell thing.
Every time they gave me one of these impossible tasks or whatever it was, I just bucked them.
And I grabbed the scissors and I reached down in there.
I'm all covered with this darn vines.
And I hack and hack and hack on this one vine.
It's probably an inch and a half thick, you know.
And I finally broke it free.
And I put it behind me and I turned back around and it grew back all the way.
All the way back.
And I just looked up at this creature and he is laughing so hard.
And I thought, you know, I was angry.
And I just went down and I started cutting again.
But then the lights went out.
The lights came up.
There was a lot of time I spent on this road.
Just dirt and rocks.
It looked like a road.
It was a trail.
But it was like a moonscape.
There was nothing except at the edge of the horizon.
It was like a reddish glow, like fire was coming up over the top or wherever it was.
No stars, no nothing.
And I would just get on the road and start walking.
And the good thing was I could see 180 degrees around me, so nothing was going to creep up on me without me knowing it.
And so I had several interactions with...
Creatures with people.
Actually, I saw two living people.
I'm the only person I know that's had an NDE and saw living people.
And it turned out to be people I needed to give a message to when I got back.
It's a real icebreaker to say, hey, I was in hell.
I saw you.
And you've got to change your ways on this particular item or you're not going to have a happy ending.
The first one...
Who was a very good friend and relative.
He got very angry with me and I haven't talked to her in 25 years.
The other one...
Took it to heart.
She was in a really, really bad relationship.
I told her what I saw that was happening with that relationship in hell.
And she got the guts to break it off.
And a year later came and said...
She gave me a glass of wine.
It was Christmas.
She says, sit down and tell me about that hell thing again.
And I did.
And she says, you were right on.
You were...
She says, I...
Because you told me that, I had the guts to actually get out of that, and I've never been happier, and I want to thank you.
So that was, you know, 50. That worked out well.
And then at the very end, after all, it seemed like, really, it seemed like a couple of years when I got back laying there in the hospital, unable to move.
You know, I kept recreating it in my head, and it was a long freaking time, but there's no time over there, so it's kind of hard to tell.
So, quick question.
Yes. When this was going on, were there any, like, you know, when you're dreaming, and sometimes you know you're dreaming, were there any moments like that during this?
Period where all these things were happening and you're like, this can't be real.
This is a dream.
Like, did anything like that ever happen?
No. The thing with the NDEs is, they say realer than real.
I don't even know what that means, but it's real.
Yeah, that makes sense, yeah.
There's no, it's not so weird like in a dream, I don't know, you're flying or things.
This is like happening to you.
Right. And there's no way to...
Wake yourself up or anything.
It's just, you just don't know how you got there.
That's all.
And how are you going to get away?
I mean, I had to get out of there.
I thought, you know, I don't deserve to be here.
And somebody else will say, well, why didn't you call on your Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, to get you out of there?
That's not a place where God resides.
God's not welcome there, so God's not there.
But at the very end, I did happen to come upon the magic way out, and it was time for me to get out of there, I guess.
I got gang raped by these damn zombies, and then with a bunch of other women, we were drug through the...
Tundra and the snow into this cabin where we were going to wait for customers with this demon lady.
And I said to her, you know, I've been here a long time and this is a particularly bad day.
Anything I don't know?
And she says, well, it's Christmas on earth.
That's always the worst day in hell.
And I thought, hell?
Oh my gosh, this is really...
I thought, I don't...
And I thought, okay.
She's bugging me.
I'm going to bug her, and I start singing a Christmas carol.
I start singing away in a manger.
No crib for his bed.
The little Lord.
And when I got to just about saying the word Jesus, boom, that's when the explosion happened.
The light came.
I got, like, blown into this joy.
And then I saw my friend, and then I got kicked out.
But it was...
I really believe I made that up because there is no hell on the other side.
And now I've met so many other people that have had the distressing ones.
And so many of them say, hey, I had segments too.
And the other fun fact is at least...
85% of the people I talk to that have the distressing ones are recovering Catholics like myself because I think we were raised with all this guilt and this certitude that we would go to hell or purgatory.
Well, the unavoidability.
I mean, every other religion is like, be good and you won't go to hell.
That one's like, be good and you can get out of hell.
Yeah, yeah.
Guess what you're taught?
So you manifest it.
You believe it so much that you manifest that experience, but they all come back.
That's why I think it's really not true.
We're just here to warn people.
Tell them, don't do these terrible things because you're going to feel what it felt like.
That's all.
But God has nothing to do with that.
I did think it was kind of funny that it was a slow day in hell because of Christmas.
So hell had to wait for customers.
We're not busy today, man.
We've got a sale going on.
Now, the part that really stuck out to me was the two living people that you encountered in Hell, which to me is kind of a notable thing because it says to me that, one, you know, there's no going to Hell.
You're already there.
It's just, you know, you're...
It's just, you know, these people were experiencing it physically, but I'd imagine in their dream state and in their soul sense, they were already in hell.
That's why they could talk to you from there.
Like, this wasn't a future thing they were warning about.
This was their present reality that they were being warned away from.
Yeah, that I tapped into somehow, yeah.
And they were essentially saying, get me out of here.
I'm already in hell.
I didn't realize I could get to hell without dying.
Yeah, exactly.
How do I get out?
Yeah. That's a really good observation.
I like that.
So that says to me that people that think that they can die and get away from their problems are really very misguided.
Yeah. I don't know if you guys, my audio, my internet keeps dropping, so that's going to be an issue.
Okay. Did you guys ever break up with each other?
No, we were contiguous the whole time, so we just kept on rolling.
I was just talking about the two living people she encountered and how notable that is.
They're there now, or they're there now at that moment.
Okay, let's just continue.
I did want to ask, what was your life before this?
Were you religious in any way?
Were you spiritual?
Yeah, I was super religious.
Super, like, Catholic?
Yeah, from day one, all Catholic schools, Catholic college, Catholic church.
I was very devoted to Jesus and I did it all.
And I never quite...
Bought it.
You know, I had problems.
I had my first baby died when she was a couple days old.
Oh, goodness.
Birth defects.
And it was just a horrible experience.
And I had been going to novenas and saying rosaries and everything for this baby to be healthy and all of that.
And then, you know, she died this horrible death.
And, you know, it pissed me off.
I was so mad.
Yeah. So disappointed.
I thought, wait a minute.
This isn't right.
You know, so it took me a long time.
I thought, well, if I give up God, I won't go to heaven and that's where my baby is and I'll never see her.
I felt like, oh, this is a nasty catch-22.
So I had been really struggling with that since I was 20 years old.
Understandably. And I'm sorry for your loss.
You know what the positive thing I've learned about life and things that...
quote, bad things that happen to you, is that you are given the gift of empathy for people that you run into later in life that have the same situation, and now you have the ability to say, you know, I know how you feel.
I'm so sorry.
And it is so healing for someone to hear that rather than to hear, oh, you'll get over it by somebody who hasn't.
You know, but really, like, I'm sorry your dad passed away.
Mine did about three years ago.
But he was the only person that would listen to me.
And he believed me.
And so we had this deal that whoever died first would come back and tell them who...
Greeted them because there's always at least one person, usually two or three, that will meet you, you know.
So he died of COVID at 97. I was in Washington.
He was in California.
The rest of the family got to be around him.
They sent him home and he died with them.
And so at the last minute, he was kind of, you know, taking away his own oxygen and getting ready to go.
And he was a little trepidatious.
And all of a sudden, he looked up in the corner of the room.
That's where they come in.
And his face just lit up like he saw somebody, and then he closed his eyes and died.
And so my family said it was so weird.
It was like he saw somebody.
I thought, oh, shoot, I hope he comes back to tell me who that was.
And it turned out that my lady that published my book was a medium.
So I met her at a conference.
And she, you know, talked to dead people.
So we're in the middle of talking about this very earthy, bookkeeping, you know, problem that we were not agreeing on.
And all of a sudden she goes, oh, your dad's here.
And I said, huh?
I mean, out of nowhere.
I thought she was trying to, you know, lighten up the conversation or something.
She says, no, no, no.
She pretty much says, you know, did you have a grandmother that you were named after?
And I says, yeah.
That was my dad's mom.
And he says, oh, yeah.
And did he have a sister?
She's deceased.
I says, yeah, Virginia.
He says, well, he said to tell you that's who came for him.
Is that too cool or what?
That is cool.
And I know because in the days prior to my dad passing, he was saying that he was seeing his...
His mom and someone else in the room.
Yeah. Yeah.
People that work in hospice report that all the time.
Yeah. In fact, a lot of us that come back go work for hospice.
I did.
Because I was so jealous.
I would tell people, I would trade places with you in a minute.
You are going to heaven.
It is awesome.
And I've been there.
And oh, it would just give them such comfort.
You know, really?
Yeah. Yeah.
That's pretty cool.
Yeah. Did your...
Your daughter that passed, did she ever come into this story when you were going through the near-death experience?
No. You know what?
I think a lot of us reincarnate sometimes because when my niece was born many years later, When my sister was passing her around, I just got this weird feeling.
Oh my gosh.
I think I know who this baby is.
I wasn't really into that stuff at that time.
She and I have been very close.
She looks like my daughter would have.
She's got the brown eyes and brown hair.
And she's a very different little girl.
She was a drummer.
She had tattoos.
Now she's married to this wonderful guy.
They've got two lovely children.
They grow their own food.
They live up in the hills.
She's just real different.
She's a doll.
And out of all the family, she's the one that I just resonate with.
So I have a feeling that's who that is.
Like, I cannot say I know anything, right?
I'm not going to ever say I know this for a fact.
I don't know what happens after life and death and all this stuff.
I can definitely stand behind reincarnation, though.
That only makes sense.
Yeah. Recycle people.
Otherwise, how many souls would they be in there?
Yeah, it's fun.
When you start thinking about it, you chose your life.
You chose your challenges.
You chose that weird woman that you married that you really shouldn't have.
But what you're learning is what you came down to learn.
The fun part, and you come with your soulmates.
I mean, like you and I probably, we know each other from another place, and we said, you know, I'm busy, but you know, sometime in 2025, let's get together for an hour.
That'll be a kick.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
This is like no time.
Time does not exist.
It's just a man-made theory or whatever you want to say.
Yeah, yeah.
And so, yeah.
In that little alternate reality, or maybe the reality, maybe we're living in an alternate reality right now, and the real reality is this timeless void of, we've already been here, we've already done this.
Yeah, and on other planets and other places, and you betcha.
And I love it when people, when they go and stay and then they come back, they always see their pets.
They see their dogs, cats, birds, whatever.
It's just...
Their consciousness, too.
Yeah, 100%.
Like, this dog we have now, my girlfriend, we got it as a puppy, like, a year ago, maybe.
It's about a year.
Probably a little over a year.
But she is such a just wild, out-of-the-hand dog, and it's like, she loves me.
Incredibly, like, just incredibly amount of love for me.
And I don't get it.
Like, she's a very lovable puppy, but, like, she has something with me.
It's this weird connection.
And I always think, like, is that my dog from, like, when I was a kid?
Because we had the exact same type of black lab.
And so I feel like this dog could be reincarnation of this childhood, this puppy we had.
Exactly. I don't know.
The connection is just crazy.
My girlfriend says, like, because she brings the dog to work all the time.
Her and my relationship, completely different than anybody else's, including hers.
Yeah. I could totally see people seeing their dogs up there and their pets and whatnot.
I mean, I can't think of any pets where I'm like, man, I really hope they crossed over because I don't want to see that bastard.
That turtle I had or that pet shrimp.
And then think about it like your obsession with that is going to make sure that you see them.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
You make that reality.
And then they're going to wait to cross over just because they know it annoys you.
Oh, no.
Don't do that.
No doggy biscuit.
I hate it.
you Wow.
Well, you know, and then when stuff happens to you and you think, oh, this is a disaster, and then if you think, I planned that.
Now, what did I want to learn from that?
Well, I know for myself I had to learn patience and I had to be nonjudgmental.
I'm really working on all of that stuff.
I've been given the opportunities now, now that I see them as opportunities rather than annoyances, and it makes it so much more palatable.
You know, you get into the spirit of it.
It's like, oh, this will be fun.
I'll see how I pull this off.
Totally agree.
Yeah. Yeah, when you start looking at things as just...
A means of learning something, you know, just brief experiences that you can either make positive or negative.
And what's helped me through life, because I'm far from perfect, I would never claim I'm the ideal human being, you know?
But like, I just, when things happen, it's like you, it's patience.
You have to really learn patience, because that ultimately comes down to even like dealing with people on a daily basis.
You need to learn patience.
And I fault all the time.
I always lose my patience over certain things.
There's common sense and then there's idiocy.
The things that are so common sense, people seem to not understand these common sense things.
Patience, please help me.
Some people, man, they just get to you.
They're probably really good soulmates of yours.
When you get back, I figured, you know, all my soulmates were going to meet in the bar up there and have, you know, free hors d'oeuvres and just sit around and laugh about all this stuff that, you know, we thought was so dramatic and horrible.
And it's just going to be fun.
And then say, okay, where are we going next time, you know?
Right. Oh, goodness.
Yeah, a couple thousand years from now we'll meet over in Mercury and we'll see, you know, at that cocktail bar we used to always go to.
Like in Star Wars with all the different...
I mean, back when I used to talk with my old spiritual mentors, you said Venus was having the same problems with war and pollution that we were.
Oh, that's too bad.
Yeah, I was like, well, that's a real shame.
I don't want to go there again.
My personal place is fun next time.
That's called a vacation life.
There's people on the planet that have these vacation lives.
You meet them, you know, they live in the same house.
They're married to the same person.
Nothing ever seems to go wrong.
Boring as hell, you know, and they just signed up for a vacation life.
Yeah, they just want to be left alone.
Just leave me alone.
I don't need friends.
I don't need anything.
I just need this time to get over.
It's my vacation.
Yes, right.
When I watch television and raise roses, that's it.
Reruns of Jerry Springer all day.
The part that really sticks in my head is the very beginning of your experience and how it's like you spend a moment sitting in almost like an empty space,
like null space.
It's called The Void, yeah.
Yeah, The Void.
As I've described the Void and the Moo a few times, it scares the hell out of me.
And then it was almost as if you were sitting through some kind of simulated loading screen, and then it started loading in Dante's Purgatorio protocol, and it thought to itself, well, what do you need to be convinced of this?
And it was like, well, you know what?
You need screams and moans, and you're going to need a terrifying You need a narrator.
Right. Because you're in hell, baby.
Figure it out.
And then the craziest thing is, as you're in the experience, you still don't realize that's where you've gone.
I know, not till you're out.
It's like going to a movie, kind of.
You get so enthralled, you're actually part of the movie set.
You come out and you blink a little bit and go, wow, what was that?
Right. Yeah, you get done and you realize, oh, you can't actually curve bullets.
No, I don't wish it on anybody else, but yeah, it's just to come back and say, please, don't believe that stuff.
It's not true.
You know, the universe, God, whatever you want to call it, is all loving and...
Having a good time, you know, experiencing.
And we're just pieces of that, whatever it is, that source that's experiencing.
And we take it all back and share it, you know, with people.
Not people, but other spirits.
But it's so joyful there and so light and so fun.
All of us can't wait to get back.
You know, people say, are you afraid to die?
No. I can't wait to get back.
Once I get everything done, I see this big list of things, like a Christmas list, and I've got to talk to these people, and I've got to do this, and when I get it all done, yay, I get to go home.
It's just so wonderful.
You can't explain it to people.
Our little human brains are so little.
We can't really encompass eternity.
Yeah, something to look forward to, actually.
So, question.
What's your favorite type of movie?
I like sci-fi.
Sci-fi, okay.
Do you like paranormal stuff then?
Ghost stuff?
Yes. Okay.
I don't like it when it's negative.
You can understand how triggered I was yet.
Yeah, oh yeah.
Definitely. Yeah, I would understand that.
Like, what about zombie movies?
Well, that's what I used to watch, see, as a child.
I think that's where the zombie things came in.
That's what I was asking.
Like, where do you think that part came from?
Oh, yeah.
It was my own experience.
I took the worst, scariest stuff I ever experienced, I guess, and just made my own journey.
Yeah, it's like, she's got to love George A. Romero.
Is that a modern thing or not?
No, he did the Night of the Living Dead.
Can't do those.
Can't do the zombie movies anymore.
Oh, no.
I loved those movies when I was a kid.
The best.
You'll have a lot of material for your hell if you ever go.
That's like the worst thing.
It's like the slow moving ones.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah. Night of the Living Dead.
Yeah, all of that stuff.
Well, the great thing is, if you realize this, then you also realize that those cheesy anime movies with their cheesy themes were actually true.
You really do defeat evil through the power of love and friendship.
Somebody else has been that hell.
Yeah. All that time, the power of friendship was what we needed, and the adventure was the friends we made along the way.
That's right.
It's such a cliche, but it actually does.
Yeah. For real.
Yeah. Kind of like on your own in that sort of situation.
That's what's just you.
But that's all right.
I got out.
But you get to run into other people as you go.
Well, it's fun to run into other people who've had the experience and to be able to comfort them and to say, yeah, I was there and what was yours like?
And let them have it, get it out of their psyche a little bit so they can...
You know, put it up on the wall and study it instead of having it be part of you.
You know, be real.
It is real.
I mean, this whole life is not real if you've seen The Matrix.
But, you know, it's just an illusion.
Really, it's very...
That's just part of it.
Otherwise, we'd all be bored, I guess.
I mean, like, yeah.
How many dimensions are there?
Twelve and more?
Twelve or more dimensions?
Oh, yeah.
We've got lots of places to go later.
Yeah, I mean, we're just...
Really, Earth is the toughest gig.
They say this is only for the brave souls.
It doesn't get any worse than this.
Maybe I'll be in this, but I think we're...
No, really, you get some sort of a spiritual badge or something.
People say, oh, crap, you went to Earth?
You're kidding me.
What was it like?
And they say, sit down.
I've got a story for you.
Yeah. You're really going to like this one.
Lordy. Yeah, well, good for you guys for putting this together.
Yes. How did you come to do this, if I could ask?
Well, I mean, so I started it, I don't know, a few years ago.
But like what really got me into all this was just, I've always been interested in like the most bizarre out of the world type of thing since I was a little kid.
As far as I can remember, I've always been interested in like
Yeah. Mysteries of the Unknown.
It was a 33-set edition from Time Life.
And every day I'd go, or every time I'd go to my grandparents' house, I would just be immersing myself in these crazy stories.
So that's what really hit it off.
And then the internet came around, and that just opened up so many more doors, and weirdness, and aliens, and yeah.
I mean, it just stemmed from there.
So, like, fast forward.
30 some odd years, whatever.
I decided, you know what?
I have all the stuff in my head that I would like to talk about.
And like, why not?
Why not just start a podcast, I guess?
And so that's what I did.
Good for you.
And here we are.
Where are we?
And it's been great.
It's been great doing this.
It's a lot of work.
It's hard.
It's not for somebody who thinks they're going to get paid easily and it's going to be a really fun...
Awesome job constantly because it's not.
And you don't get paid because you put out a few hundred episodes, you know, unless you're really, really just going for that.
Yeah. Which I don't.
Like, I'm not going out for the money doing this.
I just want to talk to people, get experiences, get more, you know, just learn about things that other people like to do and enjoy and the stories that we can all share.
I mean, that's what it is.
That's great.
It's kind of like writing the book.
I mean, I had to write the book.
I mean, I was told I had to write the book and all that.
But it was just really an intro into programs like this so that you can share the experience with people.
I've been lucky.
Two of the ones I went on, they were the big ones.
I didn't even know at the time.
But they've each got over a million views.
And it's like, okay, when I woke up out of that coma and they told me I had too much left to do, it's like...
Like, how?
I can't even breathe.
So when the podcast came out, the first gal that called me, she was, well, she emailed me.
She was from New Zealand, and she had had a near-death experience, so she was starting a show.
And she said, I want you on the show.
And I said, well, I don't have the money to get to New Zealand.
She said, no, no, it's a podcast, you know.
That was the first time I'd ever heard of it.
And I thought, wow, this is the way.
That I can get my job done just by talking on shows like yours.
There's people out there that need to hear this stuff.
And, yeah, and you don't make money.
You know, a book, I mean, I'm dead up to my eyeballs with, you know, just publishing a book.
You don't get match back, 97 cents for a Kindle or whatever it is.
But that's not the point, like just what you said.
Point is, we're helping people.
And the thing is, when you find a podcaster who is in it for the money, the content is just so bland and lame.
It's just like they're skipping all of the stuff that's necessary to pique someone's interest.
Unless you're just a narcissistic, money-hungry type of person.
Well, the trick is you're always going to run into the boundaries of acceptable behavior for the sponsors and advertisers, which the more you get, the more NASCAR patches you get on that old shirt of yours,
the harder it is.
It's like, well, let's see.
Is this going to offend Monsanto?
Am I going to piss off Pfizer?
Oh, good.
I don't know.
This real estate company might be attached to BlackRock.
Definitely. Stepping on people's toes every step of the way.
That's what we do.
How wonderful to be able to talk to people from all over the world.
I mean, it's just mind-blowing.
You're raised in a small town and you know everybody in it.
To this, worldwide, it's trippy.
I love it.
Yeah, I mean, we don't self-censor, you know, we don't do that.
Like, we just, we're human beings in this world, and just doing common sense things, you know?
It's pretty interesting.
I mean, yeah, because we did a few shows ago, and I looked at analytics, and we're in like, I don't remember the numbers, like every state, I know that, and like 80 countries.
Oh my gosh!
Yeah, it's pretty crazy.
I got to talk to people that I forgot I'd read about because they've been so shut out of the news.
I'm like, oh yeah, he was a part of this story.
And I'm like, what happened to him?
Oh, God.
A whole lot of suck.
A whole lot of suck.
Well, Kathy, I don't know how much time we have.
I'd like to get more into the near-death experience.
Do you have time?
Okay. Yeah.
I really just wanted to get into how the near-death experience went.
I mean, how long did it last?
I don't know.
It lasted.
I was in the coma almost three weeks.
All of that could have been in one hour, right?
Well, you know, it was interesting because when the part when I got to heaven, my mom had been sitting next to me and she says, you never...
You never did anything.
You just lay there and wasted away.
And she says, all of a sudden, she said, I saw your face light up.
She said, I don't know how else to explain it, but I couldn't move.
But she says, your face just lit up and you were trying to talk.
And you had that thing in your mouth and I had one in my throat.
And she says, you were talking and I knew.
You were talking to Patrick, and that's my friend that I saw in heaven.
And you were trying to talk to him, and I knew it was him, and I started yelling, Patrick, you can't have her.
You send her back.
And I thought that was...
Pretty wild, actually.
That's pretty wild.
Yeah. And then when I got back and they said, oh my God, we had this prayer circle going around the world to bring you back and all that.
And if I thought, oh, if I could just get my hands on that woman.
Right. Oh, that's a crazy thought.
So you're in another world dimension or whatever have you.
And then, like, your family has this prayer circle, and they're, like, trying to bring you back out of this other realm.
And you're like, but you're supposed to be in that other realm?
Right. I know.
Like, you did this to me.
Right. It wasn't working.
And when I finally get to heaven, that's when she's yelling, send her back, send her back.
And they would open it anyway.
But I thought it was interesting because they took turns, or sometimes I wasn't.
But I was glad later that she says, oh, I just knew you were talking to Patrick.
And she knew he was dead, of course, because he'd died the month before.
And yeah, I thought, wow, that's kind of interesting.
Patrick. Patrick, Patrick, Patrick.
Yeah. Good old Patrick.
And he plays tricks on me.
My dad plays tricks on me.
Once you get back, you're really sensitive to electricity and stuff.
And when you're on the other side, that's why a lot of this electrical...
Mayhem happens when you have near-death experience, people.
But my dad, for a while, he was doing this thing.
I would be watching television at night, and precisely at 7 o'clock, the light next to me would go on, the lamp.
And it scared the heck out of me.
And then I would say, Dad, that's not funny.
And he would turn it off.
And then the next night, he did it.
To know that it was not something that was preset.
The next night it was 7.02.
The next night it was 7.04.
7.06.
He got all the way around to 8. And then he stopped every night.
Interesting. Yeah, it was really trippy.
And he's really good at finding things.
If I lose things, I'm running around the house frantic.
I've got to get someplace.
I can't find my car keys.
I'll just get really quiet.
And I say, Dad, I need to find the car keys.
And I'll just get really quiet and I'll just hear Pocket.
And I think, oh, my God, I left my keys in the coat pocket and in the closet.
And I go, and there they are.
So they're right with you.
All you've got to do is think of them, and their spirit will be right with you.
They just love to hang out with us.
It seems like.
Play games with you?
Yeah. They do little tricky things.
Synchronous things where you go, wait a minute.
This is just too much.
This happened and that happened at the same time.
Or numbers or something weird.
Dude. Oh, my synchronicity is the number 58. I see it everywhere.
It's beyond...
Oh, yeah.
58 is...
What's the word?
Yeah, it's not coincidence.
Coincidence, yeah.
No, 58 is too weird a number.
I get a lot of fours and sixes because my birthday is composed of fours and sixes.
So I know that if I see, like, my watch says that or I see something, I think, okay, I'm on the right track.
That's how I take it.
If you see 58, it might be a thing that says, yeah, this is somebody helping you from the other side saying, yeah, you're doing the right thing.
This is the way to go.
And I'm always looking for that.
Like, what's the message here?
But what's crazy about the numbers, I was literally like four years old when I decided I needed a favorite number, and just 58 was the number.
No! Really?
Wow! All through my life, it's just been 58. And it never really occurred to me until maybe seven years ago, six or seven years ago, that I never really noticed it until six or seven years ago.
And now I just see it everywhere.
It doesn't go away.
When I'm driving, I just happen to look up at a license plate and, oh, it's a 58. And it happens way too much, way too much.
For real.
I mean, I picked the number four when I was...
Well, a few years old, because I thought it looked cool.
And there was two different ways to draw it, and I thought they were both neat.
And then, like, you know, 30-some years later, I adopted a spiritual discipline that I call the Four Winds.
So, you know, you never know where the number's coming from.
Yeah. Cricket, you were about to say something about, I don't know if it was...
Coincidence? You were about to say something, but then we started talking about something.
Oh, one of my friends, after his bro passed on, he messed with almost everybody around him for the next few days or so.
He stopped one of his buddy's watches at 420, but he came to visit me personally.
Tried to get me to give him a hit.
What the hell?
How'd that work out?
He walked up.
I asked afterwards, I was like, did he used to wear a pair of black shorts?
Because he had just a pair of black shorts on.
That was it.
And he just reached out to me and then reached through the pipe I was holding and then seemed to get mad and disappeared.
Because he couldn't grab it?
Because he couldn't smoke it.
Couldn't hold the pipe.
Yeah, he reached out and was like, this is some bullshit, and disappeared.
But yeah, he called up another person, or actually, he called up my bro, or his bro, who was on the way back from the funeral.
It showed up on one of their buddies' phone as an unknown number, and it just played Sweet Home Alabama from start to finish.
Oh, how neat.
And then hung up on him.
Interesting. Nothing else.
Just like all kinds of weird supernatural crap for the next week or so.
I love it.
Like, he had a field day with that shit.
That is cool.
So, Kathy, how about you?
Have you had any ghosty-type experiences?
Yeah. After, let's see, one time...
Like I say, my baby died and then I had a son and then I had a daughter.
And one night the daughter was quite young.
She was sleeping.
No, the story is I was sound asleep and I heard her calling mommy, mommy.
And I got up and I thought, oh crap, you know, they get up in the middle of the night.
So I went in her room and she was sound asleep.
And I thought...
That's weird.
I heard that.
It woke me up.
So I went to look in on my son and he was sound asleep.
And so as I stood in the hallway, I thought I said her name and I said, please don't do that again.
You scared mommy.
And she never talked to me again.
And I was so sad about that.
The other time she showed up was when my daughter was small and my mom and I were taking her.
Someplace. And she was in her little car seat.
And she was only about six, seven, eight months old.
Couldn't talk or anything.
And she was kind of fussy and kicking her feet around.
And we came to a stop sign.
And all of a sudden, she looked up at the dashboard.
And she started giggling.
And she started reaching for what was on the dashboard.
And then all of a sudden, she stopped and went back to just wiggling around.
And my mom and I looked at each other.
And we said...
You know, the baby just saw her sister, and we both knew she'd been...
That was trippy, too.
I like that one.
Yeah, it's very trippy.
Oh, man, anything with a kid involved.
That's kind of creepy.
They can see them, you know.
They say that when you first get here, you still remember partly being in the other place, and it takes you a while to get grounded.
But that's when you say they have an imaginary friend that they talk to.
But it really is spirits that they're seeing and talking to.
It's best to say, oh, okay, instead of, you know, don't tell lies.
But they really do see them.
Right. Yeah, children, we're just so much more sensitive for that first period of life, seven years or what have you.
It just kind of goes away.
We become numb to it.
The quote-unquote real world just floods us in.
That's right.
We're told, this is hot, this is solid, this is liquid, you know, we have to learn all that stuff.
Yeah, my filters never fully turned on for me.
tended to notice entities and things.
And unfortunately, as a result, they also noticed me because they notice when you notice them.
That's true.
You can not acknowledge them.
It doesn't matter.
The fact that your brain processed it means they know you know they're there.
And they're going to screw with you now if they want us.
I've dealt with that.
Also, on top of that, you get to deal with the fact that...
You really don't want to share most of these experiences as a whole.
Are people just going to label you as schizophrenic?
Yes, or hearing the voice.
Which makes me feel really bad for schizophrenic people because effectively they're just people whose filters are turned all the way off.
They can't block it out.
No, they can't come back.
That's what it seems like for sure.
That's the trick.
They're seeing things that ain't there and I'm like, no, it's way more terrifying than that.
They're seeing things that they wish weren't there.
Right, or hearing.
When you get back, there's something called the voice.
And it's like your conscience or whatever, but it's really loud.
And that was hard to get used to, but now it's okay with me.
You know, what was it?
One time I was driving down the road and I came to the highway crossing and, and we, you, you had to stop so to let the other people go.
Now I was stopped and I'm telling this voice, I can't turn.
And so I turned my wheel and I went right up on this guy's bumper.
And I look in the rear view mirror and a truck had lost its brakes.
One of those big 18 wheelers and was barreling down behind me, all these cars, we were stopped.
And, um,
I just closed my eyes and I thought, oh, I'm toast.
And it hit the car right next to me, which was like a pool ball shot.
It shot the car in front of it into the middle of the intersection.
It hit another car, spun around, and I heard, go, go, go.
And so I just started weaving my way through the traffic and got to the other side.
But if I hadn't moved over, I'd have been killed.
Damn. Yeah.
When you hear those voices, you better pay attention.
Cricket, have you had anything like that happen?
Well, not the overt loud voice.
Well, actually, I've heard it.
Unfortunately, before death, generally the things that break through are not very positive entities.
Generally, when something like a guide or something is trying to get through, they'll send some kind of signal that they're trying to reach out to you and request communication effectively.
Like a ringing in the ear, some kind of signal that says effectively you need to tune in.
I have tinnitus, so I don't know.
That would make it a little difficult to pick up on.
So, you know, like, the involuntary voice, the ones I've gotten have mostly suggested awful things, and I know they're not good.
So, yeah.
Do you have, like, a specific story?
Well, when I was a kid, I still remember, like, chasing somebody down when I got really mad at them.
They, like, pegged me in the face with a tennis ball.
Hurt really bad, made me angry.
I chased them down.
I was running about three times the speed of them.
They fell on the ground and legitimately put up their hand in fear.
I was so scary.
I laughed because something told me to do way worse stuff to them.
I was like, I am freaking nuts.
Isn't that crazy, though, when you're in a situation like that?
It's like your primal urges come out.
You could rip someone's head off in a fight because you're so angry.
You're just coming from your human self and not your spiritual self.
Yeah, that was a very scary moment.
To think you're capable of that.
That's pretty frightening.
At the same time, I didn't end up hurting him.
I just ended up scaring the hell out of him and laughing.
Getting a good laugh out of him.
I've never had anything like that happen.
But you did earlier mention the voice that, you know, started like laughing at you or whatever.
I had this thing happen to me.
I was actually, I don't know what your stance is on like drug use or whatever, but there's a substance called salvia.
It's like a, I don't know, a leafy plant.
And it has some sort of psychedelic effect.
And it's just like a weird thing.
But we did this a couple of times, like 20 years ago.
And the first time that I did it, we were camping and I had...
They told me to take a hit, blow it out, and then take another hit and just hold it in.
And so I did.
And I was sitting in one of those fold-up camping chairs.
It was like, you know, just basic camping chairs.
And so I did what they said, and I went to a whole other world.
Like, at first it was funny.
I was laughing a little bit and went to a whole other world.
And I was like enveloped in this weird hallway that was a kaleidoscope.
But it was like a perfect circle hallway.
And I was, like, flying through this thing, head over heels, like you're just, like, shooting through space or something, out of control.
And I was like, oh, my God, and everything's just out of control.
And at the very end of this hallway thing, this face came out of it, like a hand would go into a balloon, and you would see on the other side.
But it was a face, and I knew it was like God, you know?
And it just asked me, are you ready?
And I was just like...
Oh, my God.
And I just knew that it was God and was asking me, am I ready to die?
Am I ready to go to the other side?
I mean, that's what I thought in my head.
And I was just like, no, no, no, no.
I'm not ready.
I have so much more I want to do.
I'm not ready.
I'm not ready.
And it just kind of like slowly went back out of the wall.
And I came to.
And my friends standing around me, they're like kind of picking me up.
They're like, dude, are you okay?
You okay?
I'm like, yeah, yeah, yeah.
And I was coming to.
And they're like, dude, what?
I was like, what the fuck happened, man?
Get away from me, everybody.
I was kind of scared.
And I was like, get away from me.
I need to calm down.
Get out of this.
And I was like, what happened?
And they were like, dude, you fell over in the camping chair?
And somehow my leg had actually gotten caught up in the camping chair.
And I was trying to get out of it.
But I couldn't get my leg out of the camping chair.
But man, that trip was insane.
Dang. Yes, I mean, Salvia is probably, I'd argue, like, the most hardcore psychedelic of them all, really.
But more than LSD, more than DMT, more than anything I can think of.
I didn't like it.
I would not call it pleasant.
I didn't like it.
I tried a strong dose exactly one time.
Someone I knew found some in a hotel room they were cleaning out that somebody had left there probably because they got too wasted and forgot about it.
That's weird.
Your friend just smoked some ranch.
You did.
Yeah, I was just like, hell yeah, I'll try it.
I think it was like 25x or something.
Oh, man.
So I decided to take, you know, because I am extreme like that, I thought, well, you know, let's go the extreme route and load it in a gravity bong.
Oh, my God.
So I tried to do that, and I blew it out.
It was so strong.
It just straight out blew me out the matrix.
Like, it was, oh, my God, it was intense.
I was standing in some kind of crazy experimental chamber with these two bug-faced creatures staring at me with all these wires coming down from the ceiling hooked up to my head and arms and shit.
Oh my god.
And they looked kind of alarmed that I could see them and started trying to point angrily at me like, you need to go back in.
And I'm like, what the hell?
Where am I?
What's going on?
And they, like, smack me and put me back into the room that I was in a second before.
And as I watch, like, the room start to come back in as, like, a wave that crashes back down around me.
It's too much.
And, yeah, it was very...
And on top of it, it was accompanied with a very unpleasant, like, otherworldly feeling that I would not call at all.
Joyful or happy.
It was very alien and bizarre.
Maybe you tripped into some sort of alien dimension or something.
You connected the two of them.
It really reminded me of the scene Reptilians.
Oh, the Reptilians.
From the Animatrix where the guy's in the race and he gets to the end of the race and pops out of the Matrix for a few seconds and starts freaking out because he's sitting there hooked up to machines and stuff.
And then this machine head comes down and puts him back in.
It was very much like that except with insectoids.
Weird. Weird.
Fun stuff.
And it really makes you question, like, you know, what is reality and how much of that is actually happening?
And why don't we perceive it all these other times if it is?
Yeah. Seriously.
Yeah. See, and the thing that I think people dismiss it as all in your head and you're just making it up and your mind are missing out on is that to the person experiencing it, that's really irrelevant.
Like, okay, so I'm in a coma, but it's totally in my head?
No way.
So is there a place outside my head I can go for experiences?
Yeah, totally is.
Tell me where that is.
It's real to you.
Yeah, exactly.
An Amon Tobin festival.
So leaving that area of experimental drug use, what was the, I guess, peak of it?
Would you say, like, what was the moment where you're like, I'm never gonna get out of this?
Uh-oh.
We gotta...
Okay, you were dark for a while.
What did you say?
Okay, I think I got the question.
What was the point where you were thinking to yourself during it, I'm never getting out of here?
Probably sitting at the very end there, I thought, I don't know how, nothing I'm doing is working.
I really think I'm stuck.
And so when she told me that thing about hell, it just made me mad.
I thought, I didn't realize.
You know, I thought, wait, I don't know.
It's just like you kind of saying, is this real or what's not real?
And that this can't be happening.
I mean, this isn't.
So I just, I didn't, I knew we were taught as Catholics that despair was the unforgivable sin.
So that was somewhere in my psyche that I could not give up because then I'd be in that kind of trouble forever.
So that's why I kept bucking them.
I was ready to get out, though, I'll tell you.
I was tired.
Yeah. I don't know.
But I did get out.
It's like your purgatory was designed to almost drive recidivism, where it wanted to lock you away with it further by making you give up on it.
Yeah. When you give up, it's not a good thing.
Yeah, you've got to keep fighting no matter...
You know, in this world, too, you can't give up.
I mean, you could be 10 feet away from getting out of purgatory, but you never walk those 10 feet.
That's right.
You'll never know.
You'll never realize that just over that hill is a beautiful green field.
Yeah. Yeah.
But there was just a mirage.
You have to go over the next one.
Oh, you're a lot of fun.
It's the next hill.
You have to go over that next hill, actually.
Just one more.
It's like a...
Like, I've noticed a lot of them, it's like a lot of the metaphors and stuff that people are experiencing is also partly just getting people to come to terms with the fact that they aren't the human being that they were before, that they are now dead, but they are not gone.
And that that's a bit of a shock and, well, what are you having shock in?
Where's that shock even going?
Yeah. There's thoughts that you have that are so abstract that they're almost impossible to hold in your mind.
Real. And that's the other trick.
I was talking about a trick of your brain earlier, and then I thought, but if it's an actual death experience, that's a trick of your mind, not your brain, because your brain is gone, but your mind remains.
Yeah. That doctor told me I'd never be able to remember anything.
And here I am 25 years later, and I remember it all.
All of it.
Yeah. Or do you think...
Do you think there are parts missing or do you think you pretty much have a good understanding of the whole thing?
Yeah, I think the whole thing, I just manifested it.
And it was for a reason that I chose to do that.
And I'm doing right now what I'm supposed to be doing.
And people keep calling me.
I got four of these this week.
Wow. Hot commodity.
Yeah, I think this is number 168, I think this one is.
I mean, it makes sense, you know, unlike dreams, which are kind of meant to give you an experience and then fade away, this one was meant to imprint itself, so you could then pass it on.
Well, it was on my soul.
It was on my soul, not my mind.
So there's no forgetting what's on your soul.
No. No.
That was an experience, yeah.
That's cool.
I mean, I've...
I was so freaked out for the longest time.
For years, I was just freaked out.
But now I'm good with it.
It's nice to have that empathy for people that I meet on these programs that are still in the freaked out stage.
You know, they can't get it out of their minds.
They don't know why it happened and they don't know what to do with it.
Nobody will listen to them.
I mean, so many of the people that come on our sharing group say this is the first time I've ever told this story.
You know, 10, 15 years later, first time they could ever tell it without fear of judgment or ridicule.
And it's just such a sigh of relief and they just feel like, you know.
They can be human again and get on with their lives.
Yeah, or have an interest in learning about something they don't know yet.
Well, you really have to ask yourself, would anybody who hadn't had the experience, are they going to accept this?
Are they going to mock it?
Are they going to belittle it?
I would have a really hard time sharing it with anybody who didn't have personal experience.
Yeah. Yeah, because, I mean, the moment you do, life slaps you in the ass and says, you better back up.
What do you think is the most significant impact on your daily life now that the experience had for you?
Well, just to know that I planned everything and I say whatever a lot.
You know, this is happening, this is happening.
Everybody's running around screaming.
I just say whatever.
Yeah, it's all going to work out.
We'll deal with it.
It's not real.
And we'll have a good laugh about this on the other side.
You know, politics or wars or whatever, it's just all learning experiences and how we deal with them.
And we chose to be here and it's not for a very long time.
When you look at eternity and then you look at...
A hundred years on the planet, it's like a blink of the eye.
I mean, I'll be 79 in a couple of months, and it goes so fast.
Wow. Yeah, it goes so fast.
But that's okay.
Yeah? Yeah.
You made a crazy statement there about we chose our lives, we chose to be here, we chose our experiences, and then politics.
We have a lot of guests on the show.
We do a lot of this, you know.
Fringe stuff.
And we talk about how politics, the politicians, the elite, they know how to manifest back into the same familial lines and are able to come back and continue those roles to control the world, you know?
Any comments on that?
What are your thoughts on that?
Whatever. I don't know.
Yeah, I think people reincarnate.
Maybe they didn't learn the lessons they were supposed to.
And so they got to come back kind of and try it again.
Maybe be more kind or more thoughtful or less selfish.
Yeah, it just kind of goes around and around.
It'll never be perfect on Earth.
People say, oh, if this happened or that happened, it would just be so much better.
But the point is that it's hard, and you do the best you can.
That's the point.
Yeah. If it was easy, it wouldn't be of value.
It sure wouldn't.
It sure wouldn't.
I think Cricket, we dropped Cricket somehow.
Uh-oh.
He's out of...
Something happened.
He's floating in the universe somewhere.
Let me see.
Well, yeah, my picture went away.
I'm looking at my screensaver, so I don't know how to get back to this show.
I don't know.
Let's see here.
Let's see.
I'm afraid to touch anything, or I might get disconnected, so I'll just, as long as you can hear me.
Yeah, I can hear you.
I think we're still good here.
So before this all happened, were you, you're very religious, you know, Catholic, but were you also, was there an element of more occult-ish type of things at the same time?
Were you, like, having any doubts before of, like, religion?
Yeah. I had an experience where I joined a group called, I don't know if I should name it anyway, it was a...
It was a spiritual group, and they did this practice where they got super quiet for like 20 minutes, and then it was God-oriented, spiritually oriented, but then you got really quiet, and then they would say a word to start the practice,
and the women were in one room, and the men are down the hall in another room, and you would just get filled with this spirit.
And people would sing, they'd dance.
You closed your eyes.
You've got a room full of maybe 50 people all with their eyes closed, and they never once bump into each other.
And they were singing and dancing, and what it was was kind of like being in heaven before I even knew about it.
This was like 20 years before I had my experience, maybe more.
So that was kind of, my mom says, you're in a cult, we're going to have to, you know.
Interesting. But it was outside the norm.
But it was wonderful.
It was different.
And I saw a lot of people that were in recovery for drugs and alcohol and all kinds of problems just become calm.
It was like a super meditation on steroids.
But yeah, I was always open.
To that sort of thing.
As a child, I always had a guardian angel.
I knew the guardian angel was always with me.
My best friend was Jesus, you know, and I was just very immersed in that.
And then it was so hard growing up and having the reality of death and terrible things that I started to question God.
So, yeah, I was just a normal person.
The cult that you're part of there, and you don't have to name the name of it, but where was that?
Where was it?
It started in Indonesia, and then people brought it here all over the world.
They were all over the world.
They had conferences in England and Canada, and it was the time of the Maharishis.
Little gurus showing up all over the planet.
It was just after the hippies, you know, it was probably in the 70s, 80s, where people were trying to get back to nature and,
you know, purify themselves from all the BS of grabbing money.
It was a very innocent thing, and I'm glad I experienced it.
So did they dress up in any sort of robes or special attire that they wouldn't...
No. The women just wore skirts, flowing skirts like hippies, and you took your shoes off.
The men just wore regular clothes.
They still have that...
Those groups all over.
There's one in Seattle.
I kind of checked in with them and they still do the practice of Zoom or online or people go there and you don't have to wear dresses anymore.
And it's all people in all walks of society.
It's very benign and gentle.
You'd never know it when you see these people out in the real world.
They got jobs.
Right. Completely natural.
They don't do drugs or alcohol.
And they're just good, kind, spiritual people.
Puritans? No.
More like people that do a lot of meditation.
It's like an extreme meditation.
So it's not really...
Cult? No, that's what my mother called it.
Okay. All right.
It was not going to the Catholic Church, so it was a cult.
Okay. That makes more sense.
Yeah, back in the 80s.
Yeah, okay.
Okay, that makes more sense.
All right.
We've covered a lot of ground.
This has been fun.
Yeah? All right, guys.
Well, let's call it there.
Call it good there.
You don't want to get me on.
It's just been a whole lot of fun.
I've really enjoyed it.
It's been great.
I love having guests on and talking to you, to my guests.
I mean, and I found you through, what was that I found you on?
That's podcastguest.com?
Yeah, yeah, podcastguest.
Yeah, they're super.
They have grown exponentially since I joined.
Oh my gosh, there's hundreds and hundreds of people now.
And it's super simple to use.
And no, they're not a sponsor.
They're not a sponsor.
They should be.
I know.
Yeah, but they're great.
I just love them.
Have you done their mixers where they get together?
I can't remember what they call it.
I'm not sure.
There's two of them I belong to.
So one of them, you go in a virtual room and if you're into spirituality or something, you meet those people and then if they like you, They'll ask you to be on their program, or you can ask them to be on your program.
Yeah, it's fun.
I can't remember the name of that one.
Yeah, I definitely have not participated in that.
I'll just give that a shout, though.
Yeah. One last time, why don't you just give your information out for the listeners so they can find you.
Okay, well, my book's on Amazon, Barnes& Noble, wherever.
It's Misfit in Hell to Have an Expat.
And that's the same for my website.
Just put a.com on it.
And there's a place there if you want to talk to me or ask me a question or whatever, I'll get back to you.
I won't call you, but I'll, you know, if you want an email or something.
Cold call.
Yeah, no, thank you.
Okay. And then if there's a link that comes out, give it to me and I'll put it on social media.
I got a bunch of LinkedIn people.
Oh, perfect.
Yeah, that would be good for you.
Okay? Absolutely.
I appreciate that.
Any last words?
Last words.
When I got back, I said, I don't want to do this again.
What can I do to keep from having it happen?
And the voice told me, be loving, kind, merciful, forgiving.
Encouraging, grateful, non-judgmental, and useful.
And I think being on podcast is proving to be useful.
There you go.
Beautiful. I like that.
That's right.
And it makes life so much easier.
You think that's going to be hard, but it's not.
Because when you're loving and kind to people, they can't help but respond.
Well, there are some of those assholes out there that really hate happiness.
Whatever. Yeah, those are terrible.
Cricket, last words, buddy.
Any last words?
Well, I'd say Death Ain't the End is pretty much what I concluded long before this, but much like every other NDE I've looked at, all of them read the same to me.
They all come back saying, this isn't it, and you're not just stuck there.
And more importantly, you're not permanently anywhere either.
That's true.
And with that said, everybody, take care of yourselves and take care of one another.
