At the age of 5 I strayed away from home. Then I got caught in a thunderstorm and drenched. Soon after, I developed such a severe earache that I cried throughout a childrens’ party. I remember having to lay my head down on a table on the afflicted side for comfort. I was taken home early where I swiftly fell ill with double pneumonia. I was told later that penicillin had had no effect on my illness.
As I lay in bed, I suddenly saw my deceased grandmother appear at the foot of the bed. She was nodding and smiling comfortingly. I remember feeling surprised to see her because, even at age 5, I knew that she had gone permanently to heaven. I am not sure of the time frame or order of events, but I remember floating up near the ceiling and looking down at a little figure lying motionless in bed. I saw my mother praying beside the bed. With surprise, I realised the figure was me. I was much smaller than I thought. I remember turning to see the dust on top of the curtain pelmet. I remember going into a dark tunnel and sensing dark figures also travelling down the tunnel. Now I believe they were other departing spirits. I also remember seeing my life flash before me, going backwards. I saw my friend Alan and myself looking down a drain as we thought a dragon lived down there. I remember thinking I had forgotten all about this until it appeared like a film running before me.
Later, my mother told me all the people at our church had prayed for me. I think all the prayers helped me recover. I remained ill for another six months; as in my weakened state, I also caught chickenpox and measles when my sister brought the viruses home from school.
I never forgot the experience as it was so vivid. Afterwards, I tried to tell my mother about entering the dark tunnel but she thought I was talking about the one in our town running beneath a railway line.
As I grew up, I had many spiritual or psychic experiences. For instance: At age 8, I was in Church listening to the vicar praying. My eyes were closed and I felt a feeling like snow dropping gently into my mind. It was white, soft, and pure. I knew it was peace. At the same age, I had a vivid dream on three consecutive nights of a previous life as a young English man in Egypt in the 1920s. I was robbed by a guide and went to the man’s home at night to question him. I remember standing at the door, hearing the strange eerie eastern music coming from inside and pausing before knocking. Each time I woke up but with the sense that if I had knocked at the door, it would have led to my being killed. At about the age of 10, I had a vision of being a knight in medieval times and riding slowly through a wooded area towards the sunset. I was overwhelmed by intense religious ecstasy. But most of my experiences come when I am asleep. Just hours before the birth of my third child, I woke to see a transparent women appear at the foot of my bed pointing to the French windows of the hospital room. She was urging me to look. I saw my baby son who had died 17 months before floating there with his unborn baby brother. To my intense distress, that baby also died within a few hours of his birth. One of the few things that kept me going was that both little boys had come to see me before having to leave.
I witnessed the crash of the British Midlands plane in December 1988 when asleep. My son, just a short time prior to that, had also dreamed of the Lockerbie plane disaster. Both dreams were great detail. I dreamed twice that I met my father soon after he died in an accident. I saw him first in a confused state in a convalescent home. Then secondly, he was laughing at something amusing that had happened to me. Later, I dreamed he was driving me in his car while taking me to another dimension. He was showing me his mother’s old cottage. I instantly knew what he meant. He was showing me the home of the ancestors, such that he was preparing a home for my mother. My mother had a stroke three days later and died six months afterwards. She never properly recovered. I think the reason she didn’t die straightaway was because my daughter had been praying for her. But even before my NDE, I had had similar experiences. My mother would say that there are fairies at the bottom of the garden. I wanted to say, but was too young to find the words, ‘No. But there are angels beside the hollyhocks and golden rod on the left hand side of the garden towards the foot of it. They are why the bees go there.’ I even remember being in the womb and turning against a background of bright red. I won’t go on as it’s not what you want, but I could write thousands of words on the subject. For some years afterwards I had a recurrent dream of flying.