‘I SAW MY OWN DEATH’
Premonitions and the afterlife are not simply the stuff of scary flicks – scientists are now taking the supernatural very seriously.
Fabulous investigates...
Stephanie Spencer is adamant that she saw the moment of her death. She can describe in detail how she left her body, which was lifeless on an operating table. And how she was then told, by a panel of mysterious beings, to return to it because it wasn't her time to go.
Sounds crazy? Just a bit. And Stephanie, a very sane 40-year-old PR director and single mum to Lucas, 10, admits it seems a bit bonkers, even to her, when she tries to explain to people that not only did she have a premonition of her death, but that it was followed by a near-death experience.
And she's not the only one it's happened to. In fact, so many people have reported a brush with the afterlife, that medical experts are conducting a three-year investigation into near-death experiences (NDEs).
Stephanie's happened when she went in to hospital for a routine op to have two wisdom teeth removed. The night before, she dreamt that she died on the operating table.
"I told the surgeon about my dream the next day. I was really scared and was convinced I was going to die. The surgeon reassured me, and I decided to go ahead with the operation - although I couldn't shake off the feeling of dread."
As it turns out, her fears were fully justified. Minutes into the operation, Stephanie, from St Albans, Hertfordshire, suffered a massive allergic reaction to the general anaesthetic and her heart stopped beating. Just as it had in her dream.
As doctors struggled to save her, Stephanie believes she saw a glimpse of the afterlife.
"I found myself standing before a panel of five people, with my dead grandmother beside me. I knew intuitively I had left my body. I wasn't scared, I felt very calm.
"The people on the panel weren't physical beings, and I couldn't tell if they were male or female. It was like they were made from shadows," she explains.
"They told me that it wasn't my time to go and I had to return to my body. I was upset that they were sending me back because I wasn't happy in my life at that time. I'd just broken up with my boyfriend and things weren't going right for me. But they said there was a reason I had to go back, although they didn't tell me what it was."
Stephanie woke up on the operating table, surrounded by a crash team of doctors giving her CPR. And while some people might have been terrified, Stephanie now says she finds it incredibly reassuring. "I'm not scared of dying now," she reveals. "I know it's not the end of the journey."
You may think Stephanie is crazy, or her 'vision' was just a hallucination, part of the allergic reaction she suffered. But she's adamant about what she experienced, and she's not alone.
Millions of people across the world claim to have had an NDE, with reports ranging from seeing a bright light at the end of a tunnel to meeting dead relatives. And far from being dismissed as ridiculous, these experiences are being taken seriously by some doctors.
Reports of NDEs are now so common - due partly to the fact that hospital resuscitations are more effective these days, with around 15 per cent of cardiac arrest victims surviving - that a major scientific investigation is underway.
Coordinated by critical care medicine specialist Dr Sam Parnia at Southampton University, the study is taking place at 25 hospitals in the UK and the US.
Over the next three years, about 15,000 patients will be brought to these hospitals suffering from cardiac arrest. Around 1,500 will be resuscitated, and it's expected that hundreds will claim they've had some type of out-of-body experience while they were dead.
Part of Dr Parnia's study will involve hiding objects high up in operating rooms. The idea is that if people really do rise out of their bodies, they will see these 'hidden targets'.
Any reports can then be tested for accuracy.
This would help establish whether these out-of-body experiences are real, and lend weight to the existence of NDEs.
A simple enough idea, but why do it?
"The medical profession takes the study of what happens when we die very seriously, but really we know very little about the dying process," says Dr Parnia. "Although we do know that death is not a specific moment. It's a process that begins when the heart stops beating, the lungs stop working, and the brain ceases functioning - this is clinical death.
"Then there is a period of time, lasting from a few seconds to an hour or more, in which medical efforts may restart the heart. What people experience during this period provides a unique window into what we're likely to experience during the dying process. This study will help us have a better understanding of death."
Despite the fact that her NDE happened 12 years ago, the memory of it is still fresh in Stephanie's mind.
"When I came round I sat bolt upright and said to my surgeon, who was in tears: 'I knew that was going to happen.' I also knew that they'd only taken out one of my two wisdom teeth, which I later found out was correct. There was no way I could have known that as I'd been unconscious when it was removed," says Stephanie.
"I went into shock after that and spent several days in hospital recovering.
"My surgeon and the anaesthetist kept coming to visit me. They just couldn't believe my premonition had come true. We were all really freaked out."
Stephanie later learned that her heart had stopped for nearly 20 minutes. The experience initially left her both worried and confused, but when she started researching the phenomenon of NDEs, she realised the event was far from unusual.
"Until I read about other people having near-death experiences, I felt very alone," she says. "But now I know they happen to lots of people.
"Friends and family believed my story, but there's always the worry people will just think you're a bit of a nutter."
Since then, Stephanie says she's had another terrifying vision of her death.
"In 2007, I had another premonition I would die, this time in a car crash. A few months later, I was involved in a horrific motorway crash with a friend on my way to a work event in Manchester," she says.
"Somehow, we walked away with barely a scratch. I realised it wasn't my time again."
Although Stephanie has come to terms with what she experienced, she's still far from understanding it.
"I'm still trying to fathom what I'm here for - why I was sent back," she says. "Having come so close to death, I often think about how and when I really will die, and whether I'll have another premonition of it."
Opinion is divided among psychologists when it comes to NDEs.
"There's no doubt people have near-death experiences that can be totally life-changing," says psychologist Professor Christopher French.
"But there are two points of view about it. Some people believe NDEs are evidence that the mind or the soul becomes separated from the body, and gives some sort of glimpse of the afterlife.
"On the other side, where I stand, the most plausible explanation is that near-death experiences are essentially visions of a dying brain, and it just feels as though these things are happening, because of strange things happening in the brain.
"Either way, we shouldn't just brush off NDEs. Dying is part of life, and it's something that needs more research so one day we can get a definitive answer."
'I KNEW HE WOULD DIE BUT COULDN'T STOP IT'
Another woman who
claims to have looked into the future and stared death in the face is
30-year-old Sapphira Chapman.
"When I was 21, I dreamt for six nights in a row I was in a car with someone called John. I couldn't see who John was but I knew he was going to be killed in a car accident," says Sapphira, a mum-of-one from Telford, Shropshire.
"I knew this wasn't a nightmare. Instinctively I felt it was a premonition - someone I knew called John was going to die. My cousin's name is John, and I was terrified it was him. I wanted to warn him, but was worried he'd think I was mad, so I kept the premonition to myself."
A week later, Sapphira learned her neighbour had been killed in a car crash - his name was John.
"At first I felt a massive sense of relief that my cousin was safe," says Sapphira. "But as the news sank in that this man had died, I became very upset. Why had I had that premonition when there was nothing I could do to stop it happening?"
Sapphira has had other spooky experiences. One of the strangest was when she believes she was visited by the spirit of an ex who she didn't realise had died from leukaemia.
"Five years ago, I was at home alone doing some ironing in my lounge. Suddenly I felt the hairs on the back of my neck stand up and I began to shiver. I knew someone was watching me and sensed he was male, young and tall," recounts Sapphira. "I was scared. Who was this person and what did they want from me? I shouted: 'I don't know who you are, leave me alone,' and he left the room.
"Two days later, I bumped into a friend who told me my ex-boyfriend Andrew, who I'd dated when I was 17, had died two days before - the day I was visited by the spirit. I knew immediately it was him."
Desperate to understand why, Sapphira consulted psychics and mediums, and even went to a spiritualist meeting.
"The conclusion I've reached is that some people are more open to contact from the spirit world. Spirits know that, and they seek out people like me to try to communicate with," says Sapphira.
"With the premonitions, it's not always a dream like I had about my neighbour. When I moved house six months ago, I saw a set of traffic lights near my 11-year-old daughter Courteney's school, and I was consumed by a terrible feeling that something bad would happen in that place. I sat her down and warned her to be careful crossing the road. Three weeks ago she was hit by a car there, but thankfully only suffered cuts and grazes."
Sapphira firmly believes there is something after death. "I don't think when you die that's the end," she says. "It's comforting to know spirits are around me, watching over me.
"The premonitions do feel like a burden at times, because there hasn't been anything I can do to stop them. But I've accepted that it's part of who I am."
PHOTOGRAPHY: LANCTON, DAVE PIPER HAIR & MAKE-UP: SARA BOWDEN
This article has 15 comments
thought id write to tell you about my daughter clare,shes 28 and was dancing to a michael jackson song when she hurt her leg on a saturday night in march this yr march 25th 09,she thought nothing of it but the pain went worse ,so on the monday she went the docs who sent for a ambulance ,she was taken to hospital and kept there for 2 days ,they said it was a sprain so sent her home with physio ,she got outside the hospital an had what she thought was a pannick attack,but she had had 3 heart attacks,she was in intensive care seriously il,but amazingly came around after a week ,she told me she had seen my uncle ,who was like a grandad to her,she said she was runing along a canal embankment blowing 1 of them white flufy dandelions that coincided with the time of the yr it happend to her,my uncle was gardening an told her to go back as it wasnt her time.she even knew wat clothes he had on including green wellingtons what he had asked me for he yr b4 he died ,and wat she had on,she also seen other people who had died ,and says she will never fear death no more.
By christine rooney. Posted November 8 2009 at 3:11 AM.
few secs after i was born,doctors certified me dead! bt smehw i kame bak to life and am stil alive at 21 and i tank God.eva since i hav been doin tins dat i believe r nt ordinary bt i always kept dis 2my self.wen i was 15 a voice use to kal my name and wen i luk around it stops and am nt scared i jus love it dis way kos deep down inside me i feel i am special bt i thang dat baffles me is my luck.
By franklin. Posted November 7 2009 at 5:39 AM.
Many years ago i dreamt of my mothers passing, i was asleep in bed when i saw myself getting off a bus in bristol,(I was visiting from Frome where i live the next day .) as i walked down the rd around the bend, mum lived at the end of a long street, i could see some lady banging for all her might on the door, then i woke up. The next day i duely got on the bus to bristol with a feeling of dread, as i got off the bus i just knew what was going to happen. It was a terrible feeling but as i rounded the corner ther was a lady banging on my mothers door,. my mother was very private and only saw her daughters, as i approuched it was a meals on wheels lady from the social. I tried the knock but no anserw , mum had a stroke the night before, the police came but she was out of it , she hung on until my sisters were all with her and as she died had a lovely sense of peace come on her face she looked sereen. I have since gone on to learn about thease happenings and agree there is life after death, and will see both mum and dad again (but not too soon ! ).I hope .
By Julie Savage . Posted November 5 2009 at 3:25 PM.
I think everyone stories are amazing & i believe every word of them. There really is a better place our there for all of us. I cant wait to see my loved ones i've lost one day. GOD BLESS YOU ALL. X
By Kayleigh. Posted November 4 2009 at 8:34 PM.
i definitely believe in the NDEs... i am a spiritualist and practising medium so my job is to give evidence of survival after death, which i do many times. i wud also have preminitions when i was younger but i dont anymore, things like NDEs, mediumship and alike are reasurences that there is only psyical death an that the essence of ourselves only leaves our shell we call a body an cross over to be reunited wiv loved ones at home again on the otherside.. im so glad and it fills me with hope that scienctists are investigating NDEs and that more people are finding understanding of the after life, if even from a small point of veiw.. the spirit world wanted to show it exsisted, which it does when things like NDEs happen, yet, its us that need to find faith and belief in ourselves that we do not die, we simply move on..
By Rachel Hodgkinson. Posted November 3 2009 at 5:39 PM.
I don't know why most of the people are so much against the fact that there is spiritual life after death, there are thousands of people all over the world who have experienced some kind of thing like that. That only shows the material approach that people are attached to.
By Cesar Augusto G.Braga. Posted November 2 2009 at 1:35 PM.
In 1998 I was working in GHANA WEST AFRICA, I
came home on leave but unknown to me I had been
Infected with MALARIA ,after i week of leave I was
Taken ill with malaria,I was rushed to my local
Hospital for tests, the malaria was confirmed and I
Was admitted to hospital,I remember one of the
Nurses saying my temperature was 107 degrees,at
That time I was shaking uncontrollabley with the
Symptoms.The next thing I remembered I was in a
Tunnel of very bright light,being drawn towards the
End of it, At the end I saw my wifes father who had
Died 2yrs, before and an aunty of mine who had
Been killed in a road accident 40yrs previous while
Babysitting me for my mother & father who had gone out for the evening, I was about 7yrs old at
That time and had not had any thoughts of my aunt
For all those years.
My wifes father MEYER,& my
Aunty KATY were both smiling and waving to me to
Come over to them, other people were in the back-
Ground, also waving but I could not make out their
Faces. The next thing I remember when I woke up
My wife BARBARA was sitting at my bedside,I told
Her I had seen her father and my aunt KATY,she
Was shocked to hear that and told me not to be
Stupid,
I believe it was not my time to go,but I have
No fear of death as everyone was smiling.
Very Best Regards
Terry Morrow
By terry morrow. Posted November 2 2009 at 12:16 PM.
The first lady saw the beings of light , a higher council of beings,who decide if we have to come back or carry on to the realms of spirit. I have seen them also.
When we see premonitions of terrible things, there are things we can do, and that is to send prayers and thoughts of love, out to the spirit realms to help those who have had tragic passings or sudden ones and don`t understand what has happened to them. We can help by sending out that energy which is a living energy, of positive thoughts, love and compassion and help them to understand what has happened to them and help them cross over. the peace that you will feel after doing that will let you know that it has helped them to cross. Its a peace you will never experience in any other way.
By pat massie. Posted November 2 2009 at 12:15 AM.
i do believe in the afterlife and i myself has had a nde. three years ago i went into hospital to have an opperation two days before going into hospital i had a dream that i was layed in bed with a white sheet covering me up to my neck and surrounded with machines and hearing machines beeping, my family was surounding me and crying and i just lay there.I told some of my family this and they just laughed ,but i was really having second thoughts about having my opp the night before my opp i went out for what i called my last super.i just felt i needed to be surrounded by my family one last time. I had my opp and three days after having it i began to feel unwell. the nurses put it down to having a serious opp and trauma and should recover after rest. i didnt feel as though i would get better infact five days after i deteriated and ended up on life support fighting for my life for five months,after contracting m.r.s.a. this is what i had seen in my dream layed in a bed covered in a white sheet. i remember while asleep i was in a room surrounded by dead people,young and old. i tried waking them but couldnt. i then found myself on the outside of the room looking in on them. there was a bright light shinning behind me and i new i had to go and leave these people behind. i later found out that i had been given 24hrs to live on three occassions. since this has happened i have found myself in situations where i can tell whats goin to happen or feel as though i have been here before.
By elizabeth hudson. Posted November 1 2009 at 10:22 PM.
Although i have not had a nde, i have had a couple of weird things, 1 nite i went 2 bed early wen i had a dream that my son was killed in a car crash, my dream went from him being killed 2 the police knocking at my door 2 inform me, and me being at his grave buring him, at that point i woke clearly feeling distraught as my son was not at home, as i woke he arrived home and i told him of my dream as he was heading back out, he went as white as a ghost and at that point decided not 2 go back out, wen i asked him y he confessed that hes friend was outside in hes mums car that he had taken without her permission and that they had been out in it most of the day, my son also said that on a few occassions he thought hes friend was going 2 crash, i believe had i not had that dream my son wud not b here 2day and that sum sort of spiritual angel was warning me of the danger my son was in. On another occassion i had the strangest dream about my childrens father on mothers day whom i had seperated from many years ago, i dreamt we had got back 2gether and that he wanted 2 know y i had left him ect, woke the next morning and never thoughtr anymore of it, until i got a call that morning from my childrens school saying that their dad had died that sunday afternoon.
By catherine taylor. Posted November 1 2009 at 6:31 PM.
m mmi have copd last time i was taken hospital iwas very ill all my family were called i could see them all sitting and standing there being a catholic i know my family would call a priest while laying in the bed some one was behind my head and then i felt a hand resting on my shoulder now i could see the hand the fingers were long and thin and very white the nails were immaculate and the voice when this person spoke was like velvet i have never heard a voice like it or since he said if saint gregory of norwich nas roo
By maureen charlotte tillcock. Posted November 1 2009 at 4:03 PM.
I have never had an after death expeience but 47 years ago I did see a spirit in my bedroom. I had had to go into my my baby son in the night and when I returned to my bedroom this apparition was by my dressing table - it then moved past my bed to the bedside cabimet then slowly disappeared. This image is as clear to me today as it was all those years ago so I can quite believe that the lady who died can still remeber vividly what happened to her after 12 years.
By Pam Heard. Posted November 1 2009 at 12:20 PM.
I had a motorcycle crash at 19yrs of age In the hospital I can vividly remember leaving mybody and on rising i could see my mother and a policeman in the waiting room and then a long light tunnel but after along time was told to return,since then i have never been afraid of death.
By derek elms. Posted November 1 2009 at 11:14 AM.
I do beleive there is another life out there after death-one night i was sleeping and woke up boltright feeling unsettled and had my first experience of a panic attack i had a very bad feeling that something tragic had happend i for some reason immedeiately turn on the tv to see the news of a famous royal who had passed, i have had exerinces where i have heard spirits talking as no other was there
I PERSONALLY BELIEVE WE ALL HAVE SOME PHYCHIC ABBILITY IT JUST HAPPENS THAT SOME PEOPLE ARE MORE TUNED IN WHICH IS WHY ITS EASIER FOR SPIRIT FORMS TO CONNECT THROUGH MORE EASILY
By maxine. Posted November 1 2009 at 10:24 AM.
I saw an angel when I had an asthma attack and the doctors and nurses where working on me. I saw a face in a white light, but I didn't know who it was. I was very scared but it seemed to be reassuring me I was safe.
A few weeks later I was at my mum's and she showed me picture my uncle had given her when he had just visited.It was a picture of my late grandmother when she was younger. It was her face I saw that day.
I've had loads of psychic experiences. I sometimes see dark shadows and sense a presence. Then I know someone has died. I also have premonitions about future events.
On the other hand, I'm always trying to rationalize these things.
By Curls. Posted November 1 2009 at 2:24 AM.