At the age of eight, I was having a vacation in Austria with my family. On that day, we were walking a steep walkway in the ‘Watzmannmassiv’, which means ‘High Mountain’ in German.
Like the adults, I got a walking stick. I was very proud, as I got a new stick for every hike. Arriving at the top of the walkway, my walking stick fell from my hand and was rolling down a small part of the mountain. I wanted to get it back and bent down to fetch it. A stone loosened, I slipped and was shooting down a hill on the mountain; somersaulting, faster and faster. At first, there was grass, and then I was tumbling on sharp stones. I was not afraid because I wasn’t aware of the danger in which I was. I only wanted to stop, but at the age 8 years old, I was a bit awkward and I didn’t know how to stop. So, I continued to roll down the mountain.
Suddenly, I was outside of my body and floating above it. I saw myself rolling down the mountain. This was quite steep and very soon I would fall down into the abyss. But there was no fear as I watched, just a matter-of-fact conclusion. I strongly closed my out of body eyes, as I really didn’t want to see this fall. But to no avail, since I still saw my body rolling.
I saw the events of my life passing in front of my eyes. I couldn’t stop this, either. The events were passing in front of me like on a projector. They were going backwards until I was a baby and crawler, which was surprising me very much. The pictures seemed somewhat triangular, as if they were adapting to a triangular tunnel. The pictures scrolled faster and faster as I was rolling down the mountain. But it was very quiet. I didn’t hear anything. Then suddenly there was a loud jerk and a thud. I was back again in my body.
My hand had reached out and got stuck on the last bush in front of the abyss. The abyss was several hundred meters deep. At first, I remained there lying down, in order to process what happened. Then I got up and to my surprise, I noticed there were no scratches, cuts or even a bruise. Then I was crawling back up the mountain. My relatives came to help me, and they couldn’t believe that I had got off so lightly from this fall.
I kept the experience to myself at first. I later tried to talk about it with my parents, but they shrugged it off. Then I did not say anything else about the out of body experience, even though I had to listen to the story of my falling on the mountain for the next thirty years on each of my birthdays.
At the time, I had never dealt with the topic of death, as I had not experienced any of my relatives dying. I never had heard about near death experiences. But the out of body experience is still present with all details until today; I never had had such clear pictures. Until today, I still feel sometimes, as if life down here was somehow ‘fake’. It is hard to put in words. Or it is not as intense as the few minutes that I experienced at that time.