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1. About P.M.H. Atwater
P.M.H. Atwater, L.H.D., Ph.D. (Hon.) (pmhatwater.hypermart.net) survived three death events that produced three different near-death experiences (NDEs) in 1977. Visit Atwater’s Q & A Blog and her NDE News Blog. Sign up for her free online newsletter. She is one of the original researchers of the near-death phenomenon, having begun her work in 1978. Today, her contribution to the field of near-death studies is considered on par with those of Raymond Moody and Kenneth Ring. Her first two books, Coming Back to Life (2008) and Beyond the Light (2009), are considered the “Bibles” of the NDE. She is the author of many other wonderful books which can be found on her Amazon author page. The following are P.M.H. Atwater’s insights into the NDE from her book, Beyond the Light What follows are some of the childhood NDEs profiled in her book, Children of the New Millennium reprinted by permission.
2. Laura’s NDE (age 3 ½ )
My father, in a blind drunken rage, raped and sodomized and beat me to death in the middle of the night. At the most extreme outpost of pain, I cried out to God and in that moment I was torn from life.
As I died I felt myself raised up by angels in robes of many colors. I did not know where they were taking me as they flew, carrying me up higher and higher in the sky. Finally, we reached a place where emptiness gave way to form, and form took the shape of huge cloud-like masses on which other angels seemed to be walking, although they too floated through the air.
The angels carrying me lay me at the feet of a beautiful female angel whose radiating love was more powerful than any of those around her. She said to me in a voice whose sweetness and tone are unknown here on Earth, “Tell me your story.”
I said to her, not in spoken words but in thoughts, “I will, but now I need to rest.”
My spirit had no energy, even to answer this loving lady.
God in the manifestation of infinite light appeared off to my left, and I was engulfed in a form of all-powerful, all-nourishing love. That divine being appeared as a massive column of golden light, with the suggestion of a human shape inside. I both saw and felt his light, feeling as if I were in a warm bath that completely healed and protected me. I never wanted to leave. No conversation passed between us, but in those infinite moments I acquired the knowledge that allowed me to go back to Earth to complete my life.
After this infinite moment had passed, there began a battle for my life between the angels in heaven and the doctors on Earth. Every time the doctors pounded on my chest, my spirit was sucked into my body for a split second, only to be pulled back again by the angels. They held me by my feet, struggling to keep me from coming back. Finally, the doctors pounded one last time. I heard an angel say, “They’re stronger than we are,” and I was sucked back into my body, sat up, screamed, and passed out.
To this day, I always have the feeling that I need to go back, that there was something more I was meant to do there before returning. That feeling of incompleteness keeps me half in the other world all the time.
3. Clara’s NDE (age 10)
I was in the fifth grade when I became sick with extreme pain in my lower right side. My teacher thought it was only a stomach ache and ignored it. Two hours later I was rushed to the hospital. I was terrified and begged to go home. I was fighting the ether mask when it happened. One second I was awake, scared to death, the next second I was falling straight down a dark hole as if in a well.
There were loud sounds like buzzing and ringing and metal scraping together, then I was up by the ceiling looking down on myself. I felt as though I was spread out all over the room like vapor or a cloud. I watched as the doctor had a square green machine wheeled into the room by a nurse, and then worked on me using it. There were several nurses there.
Suddenly I was standing alone in a room with large, heavy doors leading into other rooms. Someone came to me. I didn’t see him; I only heard his voice. He led me up through what seemed like a tunnel. I seemed to be walking, but my feet didn’t touch a floor. Suddenly I heard what sounded like a city-sized playground full of kids, laughing and playing. Hearing them calmed me. Another man came to meet us. I didn’t see him either. He asked the one leading me who I was, then he went away. When he returned he told the man with me that I had to go back, that they weren’t ready for me yet.
I was led up a sidewalk to a large building with large doors. I walked inside and saw people all around working and doing things. I was taken to a huge iridescent white room and told to sit down on some steps that led up to a large white chair, and wait there for someone who was to talk to me. He came out a door at the other end of the steps, walked to the chair above me, and sat down. He was dressed in a white, long-sleeved, floor-length robe with a wide gold band around the mid-section. He wore sandals. His dark brown hair was shoulder length; he had a long face, broad chin, dark eyes with black around both eyelids, like eyeliner pencil, but it wasn’t. His skin was olive colored and his eyes were as liquid love. He communicated by looking at me. No words had to be spoken, as we could hear each other’s thoughts. He told me what I had to do in life and had me go to the other side of the room and look down into something like a TV set so I could see my future. What I saw made me very happy. This man, who I believe is Jesus Christ, said that once I woke up in the hospital I would forget what I was supposed to do in life.
“Nothing can happen before its time,” he cautioned.
As I was leaving the room he said I must obey his commandments if I wanted to come back.
When I revived, a nurse was sitting beside my bed and she said, “Thank God you finally woke up.”
I told the doctor that I had watched him work on me and the color of the machine brought into the surgery room. He didn’t know what to say.
4. Cecil’s NDE (age 11)
My brother and I went swimming. He had a problem. I tried to get him out of the water, but in his panic he pulled me under several times. We both drowned. He died and I came back. I can remember it all like yesterday. Just as I could no longer stay afloat, a strange sound like ringing in my ears started. A peaceful feeling came over me. I felt my spirit come out of my body and I went into a black void. That was a little frightening.
A long way off there was a pinprick of light. I moved toward it, slowly at first, then faster and faster as if I were on top of a train accelerating. Then I stopped and stepped fully into the light. I noticed everything – sky, buildings, glass – emitted its own light and everything was much more colorful than what we see here. A river meandered around. On the other side was a city, and a road running through it to another city, and another city and another and another.
Right in front of me but across the river were three men. They projected themselves to me. They didn’t walk or fly; they projected over. I didn’t recognize them, yet I knew one was Lynn Bibb. (I was named after him. He died a matter of weeks before I was born.) I knew these three men were looking out for me, like a welcoming committee to escort me over the river to the first city. I had the feeling that if I went with them, there would be no coming back, so I hesitated.
The first city was like first grade. People stayed there until they were ready to go to the next city – your eternal progression, from city to city. Behind me and to the left was a strong light source, very brilliant and filled with love. I knew it was a person. I called it God for lack of a better term. I could not see it; I felt what seemed like a male presence. He communicated to me, not so much in words but telepathically, and he asked, “Why did you hesitate?”
I replied, “Well, I’m kind of young to die.”
He chuckled. “We have babies die.”
I said, “Well, there’s some things I want to know first.”
He replied, “What do you want to know?”
“What is death?” I asked.
He said, “Turn and look to one side.”
As I did, I saw a bad car wreck. Several people had been killed. Out of some of the bodies a spirit came up to progress on.
Some who did not believe it was possible stayed in their bodies and would not emerge. I asked if they could be reached and he said, “Yes, some more quickly than others and some maybe never.” Death, then, is not believing in anything.
I asked, “What is hell?”
He said, “Turn and look again.”
I saw an old woman in a rocking chair determined to sit and rock and worry about children and grandchildren and everything else. Hell is therefore a lack of wisdom and not moving on, choosing not to go any further, sitting there and doing nothing. Hell is not a place.
I asked if there was a Devil or Satan.
He said to me, “Would God allow that?” He continued, “If I made you God for just a few seconds, what would you do first?”
I knew my first act would be to eliminate any Devil or Satan. I asked, “How do I know right from wrong?”
He replied, “Right is helping and being kind. Wrong is not only hurting someone but not helping when you can.”
We walked as I asked about the universe and reasons for everything. All of these things were shown to me. Then he wondered if I still wanted to return to the physical world.
“I do want to return.”
He asked, “Why?”
I said I would help my mother whom my father had left with four children and one on the way. God kind of chuckled and asked me for the real reason. I said I would leave the Earth a little better than I found it.
Then you may return with some of the knowledge of the things you have learned, but the rest will be veiled for a time. Live in such a way that you will not be going back when you return here again.
I woke up face down in the mud of the river bottom and was ‘lifted’ to the top. I threw up great amounts of water, then pulled myself out of the river only to discover my brother had died.
5. Brad Steiger’s NDE (age 11)
Brad Steiger was a famous author of paranormal books such as Real Ghosts, Restless Spirits, and Haunted Places (2003), Mysteries of Time and Space (2016), Project Blue Book (2019), and Dog Miracles: Inspirational and Heroic True Stories (2002).
On an August day in 1947, 11-year-old Brad Steiger nearly died of multiple skull fractures after being caught in the metallic blades of a piece of machinery on his family’s Iowa farm. He felt his “essential self” drift away from his body. He watched his sister run for help and realized he was simultaneously in his father’s arms being carried from the field, and above himself, observing.
While “out” of his body he was shown a geometric design of colors and seemed to see the patterns inherent in all of life. He came back to his body just as the surgeons were about to operate.
Although he did not understand it, he felt he had been shown a plan of the universe, and that he had a mission “to testify to others that the human spirit is eternal and that we are not alone in the cosmic scheme of things.”
Children report being taken on a tour of heaven, seeing angels, colorful geometric patterns, and dead relatives and pets. One 9-year-old boy, after 36 hours in a life-threatening fever, reported seeing his sister during a tour of heaven. It was she who told him he had to come back to life. His father assured him he couldn’t have seen her there as she was safely away at college. The following morning they found out that the daughter had died the night before in a car crash.
One of her professors at the Chicago Theological Seminary once told of a girl who was dying and reported seeing her brother right in front of her in the hospital, telling her it was “OK.”
When told of this after her death her parents were stunned. They had never told her she had had a brother who died years before she was born.
