Welcome, welcome to Round Trip Death. In this bonus episode where we're going to pick up our
interview from earlier this week with Randy Schieffer. There's a whole lot more to talk about.
If you remember, he's a forensic investigator who needs proof. He needs evidence even of something
that happened to himself. If you haven't heard part one yet of Randy's interview,
it's episode number 422 was just out earlier this week and I recommend you start there.
But now let's jump right back into it.
From the time that they pronounced me death was a good 45 minutes.
They cut my clothes and then they paddled my heart. My heart had stopped and I could see people
screaming and crying but I didn't realize that was actually my physical body because I was somewhere
else. The only thing that I could feel if you could imagine absolute love and peace. There wasn't
anything else to be felt. I was greeted by people I'd known in the past. I'm back home again.
Incredibly safe and felt at home. I learned from the nurses and the doctors
that something that they didn't want to discuss, that they weren't interested.
I just knew I didn't need to talk to them about it. So I didn't mention anything more to them
about it until my daughter came in because that's she was somebody that I really trusted and I knew
that would understand. And I told her, I said, Lisa, I said something happened to me. I said,
I'm not sure what happened. She goes, what are you talking about? I said, Lisa, I said, I traveled.
I said, I would, she said, dad, you were in a coma for four weeks. What do you mean you traveled?
I said, I was in some big, beautiful city. I said, Paris, London, it was beautiful. I said,
it was so clean and vibrant. And she says, you weren't in London or Paris if it was that clean
and vibrant and beautiful. And I said, I don't know where I was. So I told her about Madison.
And she said, well, who's Madison? I said, I don't know of Madison. I have no idea.
And she said, well, who is the man that gave you? I said, again, I have no clue what this man is.
I don't, I didn't know. And she tell you, you talk to her, she'll tell you that she was a bit
skeptic that she really thought it was just the drugs that I was on. Sure. And she was a bit
skeptic. So I was released. I had to learn to walk again. I had to learn to swallow. I have a damaged
vocal cord still, but I had to learn to swallow. I was very, very weak. So I came home in a wheelchair.
They wanted to send me to a rehabilitation center because I was still on some pretty heavy blood
gunners. And they wanted to send me to a rehabilitation center. And I just said, no, I'm going home.
And they said, well, the only way you can go home is if you have nursing care.
I looked at my daughter and I said, she'll take care of me, you know. So she moved home. She was
up in Mississippi at the time. So she moved back here to take care of me. I remember being back
here in my bedroom and in my wheelchair watching TV, I went over to a junk, my junk drawer in
my dresser. And I started rummaging through this drunk drawer. No idea what I was looking for.
I was just rummaging through it. And I found a business card to a local barber shop that I had
been to before. And I said, I don't know, been eight weeks, nine weeks, I'm going to get my hair cut.
So I went out to the living room and I gave my, I gave this business card to my wife.
And I said, could you call and see about making me an appointment to get my hair cut?
And I said, I don't know what the restrictions are, you know, with COVID, I said, but I like to get my
hair cut. He back into the room didn't think anything of it. Suddenly my daughter comes in.
And now remember I was in law enforcement. I was the investigator of the family. And I was the
interrogator, you know, I asked the questions. I'll bet your daughters love that the interrogator dad,
where the boyfriends loved it more than them. I thought I was bad. You're, you were probably worse.
Oh, I got stories. Trust me, my daughters could tell some too, I'm sure.
So she came back in the room and she starts asking me, she said, dad, where did you get this card?
And that's why I found it in my junk drawer. She's no, where did you get the card? And I said,
I don't know. I said, I must have picked it up. And he said, how long have you had it?
I said, I have no clue. I said, it looks tattered. I said, must have been in that bed
drawer for a while. I don't know. So she asked, where did I get it? How long did I, you know,
all these questions? And I finally just said, Lisa, what are you getting at? And she said, dad,
look at the card. So I take the card, you look at the card, she was, I think we found your Madison.
And I look at the card, find his day just like anybody else, business card, Madison Logan.
So it was her card or, or that was handwritten on a business card?
And I figured it was her card. But I then, and later she, her and I figured out that she did
cut my hair a couple of times, but she didn't know my name. I didn't know her name. I must have picked
up the card and just threw it in the dresser at some point in time. Didn't pay any attention to it.
I certainly didn't know, you know, yeah, goose bump time to say, Oh, Madison. Yeah. Oh, Madison.
She works at now. So I said, okay, make me an appointment. So my wife said, I,
emotionally, I can't do this. She says, you two go down and do this. My daughter takes me down and
I'm in a walker. And the manager, everybody else is waiting outside because of COVID. And they're
taking people in one at a time. And the manager saw me there in the, in the walker. And she says,
Hey, you can come in and sit down. She says, there's no need for you to, you know, sit out here. So
we went inside and my daughter says, which one is Madison dad? And I said, I don't have a clue
which one Madison is after a few minutes, this little girl dark hair walks up and she says,
hi, I'm Madison. She said, I think you're my next appointment. She said, you're Randy. And I said,
yeah, and she said, okay, you're my next appointment. So we go back and she starts cutting my hair.
You know, I tell her what I want. So my daughter starts telling her that I had COVID and I had
COVID and I had just gotten out of the hospital, but I'm better now. And, and didn't say anything about
what I experienced, just the fact that I was really sick and was in the hospital. As she's
cutting my hair, I said, Madison, I can ask you some personal questions. And she says,
yeah, I don't mind. Go ahead. I said, if you don't want to answer, we don't have to.
And I said, but are both your grandfather still alive? She kind of give me a funny look like,
this guy asking me, you know, but she said, no, she said, my grandfather that I was closest with
passed away. Now this is in May of 2020. He passed away in June of 2019. And she said,
you know, one next year or next month will be one year, you know, since he has died.
And I said, Oh, I said, well, does he live locally? Did I see this guy around town?
Make did I run into him somewhere around town before? Have I seen him before? He's going
through my mind. And she was no, no, she says, my whole family lives in Iowa.
And I said, Oh, I said, so has he visited? Has your grandfather visit this area? Did he come
down to see you? She goes, no, she's, she says, we have only been here. My husband and I,
fiance at the time, my fiance, I have only been down here a short period of time. He just graduated
from college and he's a doctor of physical therapy came down here for his first job.
So we haven't been here very long, but no, she said, he's never been down to,
to Florida that I, you know, that I know of. So you, the investigator is trying to put this whole
thing together. I can tell you're almost interrogating yourself to make sure you've never met this guy
before. Correct. Because if I've seen him before subconsciously, then that's probably what happened
to me. You know, I remember seeing the guy as on drugs. He came back and that's some of the
information that I needed to find out. Had I ever seen this person, have I talked to him,
have I encountered him someplace and it all came back. No, I've never seen him. I've never
encountered him, never talked to him. He's never been to Florida. I've never been to Iowa.
He was a veteran, served in Vietnam. He was in the army and serving Vietnam,
but he wasn't a career military person like I was. So he got out of the military,
I think even before I entered the military and he was in the army and I was in the Air Force or
I passed there and never crossed. But yeah, he's a veteran, served in Vietnam, never been to Florida.
So I figured I had the right girl and I said to him, I said, Madison, I said, I think your grandfather
came to me. He has a message for you. Now she's really looking at me strange. And I said, your
grandfather wants you to know that he is okay. His exact words were told Madison at the salon,
her grandfather is okay. And I said, so, you know, that the message that he wants to get to you. And
I said, no, Madison, she's crying by this time. I'm crying, my daughter's crying. People in the
barbershop are all looking at us, probably saying, what the heck did she do to upset him? But I said,
Madison, she's obviously stopped cutting my hair at this point. And I said, Madison, I said, he
moved on to a white porch. Is that significant? And she said that would have been his home in Iowa.
She said it has a white porch that he loved sitting on the porch, talking to people as they went by.
He lived downtown in their little town. He talked to people as they walked by. And what he were
would sit out there after he retired, worked on his computer, love sitting on the white porch.
And I saw he was making, he showed me red, white, and blue ribbons and American flags.
I said, is that somehow connected? And she looked at me like I was an alien. I mean, her
eye was just as white as they could be. And she said he belonged to the local VFW.
Every Veterans Day, the whole family, her whole family would go down to the VFW
and make red, white, and blue ribbons and American flags for the Veterans Grades.
There had to have been a big pause at this point. Oh, it was she was just, holy cow.
She was just beside herself at that point. Because how would I know that information?
I mean, that's personal information. Sure. That's not privy to. The white porch.
You know what I'd get on Google Earth and look at the house and there's a white porch, you know?
As if you had the address. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So she took a break. We went in the back,
just talked a little bit and exchanged phone numbers. And I apologize for doing it right in
the middle of her work. She called me a couple of weeks later. And she says my grandmother
would like to talk to you. I said, I'd love to talk to her. So I called her and we had a
beautiful conversation. And that's Ferris name was John. John was in the Army. He went to Vietnam,
retired, lived in Iowa his whole life. She told me the only time they ever made it to Florida
was for a couple of weeks that they went over to Cocoa Beach, which was on the east coast of Florida.
A good six, seven hour drive from where I'm at. We never made it up into the panhandle.
And that was the only time they've ever been to Florida. We're seeing their talking and she said,
when I told her that he materialized very, very briefly, very quickly. She says describing.
And I said, well, I said, what I remember is a much younger man. I say, kind of olive skin,
dark hair. And I said, I think a mustache. I said, I'm not sure, but I think he had a mustache.
She said, can I send you a picture? I said, sure. So we had our conversation and
my phone went off and I picked up my phone and I called her right back. And I said, I got your
picture. And I said, that's who I saw. I said, that's who I saw.
How did she react? Was she comforted? Was she crying?
Well, she was crying at that point. I'm crying. I'm almost crying again. Yeah, she was crying,
but it's not the first time. She is ranting. She said, you're going to find this very strange.
She says, but it's not the, you're not the first person that told me something about John.
Wow. And I said, please, Kath, tell me the story. And I guess after he passed away,
she was going through some of his personal belongings and found a business card. And on the
back of the business card, her business card was to an insurance company. And on the back of the card
was an individual's name and phone number. So she thought, well, maybe he had an insurance
policy that she didn't know about. So she called this phone number and she said she had to call
two or three times before a man answered. And she goes, hi, she says, I'm Kathy. Last name.
She said, I'm calling from Iowa. And on behalf of John, and he passed away. And, you know,
I want to see it in the guy stopped her. And he goes, no, he says, I'm sorry. He says, you must
have the wrong phone number. He said, what number did you call? So she read it off. She goes, I'm
not calling here in Iowa. She says, no, he says, you're calling California. He said, that's a California
phone number. And she goes, oh, I'm so sorry. She said, my past away recently. And she's like,
I found this business card and it has this name on it, a phone number. And she says, you know, and
he stopped and he says, what did you say your name was? And she goes, my name's Kathy. And she says,
you're calling from Iowa. She says, yes. He goes, Kathy from Iowa, I'm going to tell you a story.
He says, now, this must have been the fall of 2019, I would say, because she said true four months ago.
But that would have been right after John died. He says, I was in a very terrible motorcycle accident.
And he said, the paramedics said that I was dead when they scraped me off the pavement.
And he is the only thing that I can remember is somebody screaming at me. Tell Kathy from Iowa,
John is okay. And he kept repeating it and repeating it. And he goes, I was screaming back to him.
I don't know anybody in Iowa. And he kept telling tell Kathy from Iowa, John is okay. I said, well,
John is one pesky spirit. And I said, because he must have loved you very deeply that he wanted to get
you and his granddaughter, the message that he is okay. That is so cool. That just blows me away.
That's awesome. He died of a heart attack, massive heart attack. Kathy was not home when he died.
His granddaughter wasn't home when he died. So nobody got a chance to say goodbye.
And he died in their house. And some similar circumstances to where my dad died, died of a
heart attack, massive, didn't get a chance to say goodbye, died in my arms. There are some similarities
there. But boy, John wanted to get that message through. But when you think about it, how did John
know that I had a remote connection? How did he even know of that connection between me and Madison,
that we lived in the same town? And I went to a barbershop a couple of times, her salon, which a
term I never used. So how did he knew that exists? How did he know that I was in heaven? And how did
he know that I wasn't going to be staying in? That I was going to go to the barbershop? And
how did he know that I wasn't going to be staying in? That I was going to go back. And I was the
right person to deliver that message. And that third thing is the one that stands out to me,
between you and the guy in California, the commonality is somehow John knew both of you were
only there temporarily. Yeah. And who knows how many other people like you too, he tried to send a
message through. It haven't been able to deliver it yet. Zero other people, hundred other people,
who knows? Yeah. We don't know. But that, yeah, that's fascinating. It blew me away when she
told me that story. Because when I came home from the hospital, again, I had no clue. I wasn't
totally naive of a near death experience definition, because you see the movies and
you hear, you know, different things of people having these experiences. But I certainly didn't
know what I experienced because I started to Google, Golden City, after death communication,
all of these things, and I still kept coming back to near death experiences, near death experience,
seeing relatives, seeing dead relatives, come back to near death experiences. So I started to dive
into those a little bit more. The religious side, I wanted to, I figured that a priest
has got to know what I experienced and where I was. I hope you weren't too disappointed there.
Yeah. Go ahead. What happened? One of them hung up on me. Yeah. Literally hung up on me.
The other one wouldn't talk to me, wouldn't take my phone call when they told him what it was about.
There was a lady on the street that I live on. She asked me if I'd be a guest speaker
at their luncheon, at their Catholic ladies' luncheon. And I said, I'd love to be. I said,
but I said, you need to check with your priest and how he feels about near death experiences
in me talking about being in heaven and what I experienced. Two, three weeks later, I see her.
And I said, hey, I said, when is that luncheon? I said, I'd like to get a pen on my calendar.
And she goes, oh, I'm sorry, we decided to go with somebody else. Okay. Now, I will say there is one
preacher in community church here, very large community church. My daughter goes to it, my oldest
daughter, and she went to hit him, I guess, a lot when I was in the hospital for prayer and
and just comfort. And he heard what I had experienced. And he told my daughter, because I have to talk
to him, because I want to talk to your dad. And he was very open and very understanding.
As a matter of fact, I later went down and gave a presentation to their senior ministry group.
He has been very open and honest with me about what I experienced and possibly where I was
and able to help me put some meaning to where I was. Because I wasn't really religious. I never
grew up religious like before. I mean, we stopped going to church. The church just didn't give me
what I needed for that proof that I needed that this existed after I'm gone. There is life after
death. Because like I said before, I just feared it.
Let's talk about proof and evidence for a minute. We teased that we would come back to this.
After your near death experience and you get out of the hospital and everything,
were you in some way doubting what really happened to you? Did you need more evidence?
I wanted somehow to validate what I experienced. Yes, I needed more evidence. Because I was a
hallucination. Was it just a very, very vivid dream? Or did it actually happen? I felt that it
actually happened. I felt that way, but I didn't know what I experienced. I didn't know the meaning
behind it. So was the Madison and John experience enough evidence for you to know it really happened?
Yes, that gave me my proof that there is life after death. So what about people that haven't had that
proof? What can you give them? I think this is some of the reasons why that I was allowed to come back.
I was a lost sheep. I was someone that didn't go to church. I still don't go to church, but I'm very,
very spiritual now. I have my own personal relationship with God. He and I talk every day.
And I thank Him every day for giving me this opportunity to share with people my truth. What
happened to me? That there is hope, that there is something after we leave here. I really think
we're here for a purpose. It's for learning, learning about life, learning how to love,
learning how to get along with people. Because that's really what I felt the strongest in heaven
was that love and that warmth and acceptance. No judgment. I wasn't judged for anything.
So it gives us great hope. Madison, he gave me that proof that I needed. He knew that I needed it.
He just says, Randy's not going to go back with visiting a city and we were a little boy,
whoever that was, telling me, you know, time is up. He had to send John to me so I can sit there and
validate exactly what happened. I experienced it and it was real. I mean, there's no other explanation
for it. John helped you and you helped him. Okay, I know we're running awfully long here today. Not
your fault at all. But I have a couple of other questions, maybe some advice that you can give.
First, medical staff. When they hear a story like this from a patient, yeah, what's your advice for
them? How can they better? I don't know. You know, just not poo poo what maybe happened to somebody,
just because they don't understand it. Let me share something with the families
of someone who's in a coma first. Because I know this is so important and I know the medical staff
tells the family member, talk to them, talk to that person, he or she that is in that coma.
They can hear you, they can feel you. And I'm telling you here as a person that have been in a coma,
that is true. Not all the time was I present that I could hear my nurses and doctors talking,
but there was one particular nurse named as Madison. So another Madison? I'm sorry, Mallory.
I'm sorry, Mallory. She was my angel. Yeah, sorry, I got emotional. I got, yeah, Mallory was one of
my critical care nurses and she wore a big black, heavy M1 mask, you know, for COVID. Whenever she
was there, I heard her voice because she always would come up to me and say, Mr. Randy, you know,
I'm here, I'm here today. Mallory, I'm with you. And I knew right away that it was going to be a good
day, that I was going to be safe. Because I knew Mallory was there. And I remember opening my eyes
and seeing her. Now I'm in a coma. And she told me this before. I said, Mallory, you know, this,
this and if she was Mr. Sheifer, how do you know that? I said, I saw you. I urge you. He was,
she was in a coma, big dark mask. You know, she always wore a dark blue gown. I saw those things.
And I heard her. So always talking because they're going to be in and out, but they can't hear you.
As far as the nursing staff, if someone is that close of death, and I know hospice nurses
experience this a lot more than a nurse in a hospital, because I've talked to a lot of hospice
nurses that have experienced right before an individual dies that process. Yeah. And we've
heard that on this show too. We've had nurse Hadley was on here last year and gave a beautiful
account of some experiences when they were very close to death. But I'm sorry, you keep going.
But for the medical staff, the doctors and nurses, I know it goes against all of their science,
especially the doctors. I think the nurses are a little bit more understanding, but the doctors
really go by the science of it. I have one doctor that does really believe me in my respiratory
care therapist. He really believes what I had gone through, but he is also a very religious person.
So if you don't have that religious side, what I experience and what I try to translate,
no, it can't happen. It can't happen. They become the doubter. They become the skeptic that I was,
because they don't want to hear it. And a lot of, like I said, a lot of the pastors that I've talked
to, there's a lot of people that I have talked to that don't want to hear it. Yeah. They just,
nope, nope, nope. That didn't happen. That didn't happen. That couldn't have happened.
I get hate mail. No one goes to heaven to God. No one is, you've got to wait for God to bring
you to heaven, the judgment day, and that's their belief. I'm not going to change it.
That's their belief, but let's all remember to just not judge each other.
Yeah, exactly. Well, God doesn't.
Not for me to judge you and what happened to you. There's a lot of people that have experienced
total life reviews. Yes. You've heard of those? Sure.
I don't think I was allowed to go deep enough, because I knew I wasn't supposed to be there
to begin with. So I wasn't allowed to go deep enough into heaven to get a total life review.
I would have loved to. My life has changed since my near death experience. I'm much more accepting.
I am totally less sentimental. My kids and my family tell me all the time, you know,
I'm just a different person than what I was before, because before I was at hard nose,
top by the book. Interrogate evidence proof.
Right. Period. Right.
So a follow-up question to that is what advice do you have for families? Not just while someone's
in a coma, but if someone has had an experience and they come to you and say, yeah, you know,
I was in heaven or I was in hell, there are some of those too.
Yeah, but then? What advice do you have for the family members who are hearing this and are maybe
skeptical? Help them research it. Why not? There's a lot of websites and a lot of information out there.
I've been, don't judge, don't be judgmental. Listen to what they say, because they experience
something that is very meaningful to them, whatever it may be. You may disagree with it.
You may believe that it didn't happen. But for whatever reason, they knew that they experienced
something. So why not help them to try to understand what they experienced, what they went through?
There's a lot of resources that you can reach out to.
And may I just add, there are resources out there like ION's International Association for
Near Death Studies. There are a lot of things online. There are a lot of books. But for family
members, I would say just remember, if they feel like it happened to them, let's accept that. Let's
love them. The last thing they need after something medically or physically traumatic has happened,
and they're trying to process, the last thing they need is you doubting, judging and other
things like that. I 100%. I couldn't have said that better. You said it much better than I did.
Like I said, Lisa was skeptical. She even asked me why I would want to find somebody.
And I said, well, a veteran gave another veteran a message. I feel I have a responsibility to
write a finder. We had that long conversation. I was hesitant to even say anything to my family
initially other than Lisa because I really wasn't sure what happened to me either. But I took it
upon myself to research it, be accepting, be open. Like you said, love them and help them
understand what they went through. Well, I'm happy you had such a beautiful experience.
Randy, thanks so much for being with me today. I enjoyed it. Thank you, sir. I appreciate the
opportunity. Thank you so much. Thanks again for listening and sharing this podcast. Don't forget
to hit the follow or subscribe button and sign up for our newsletter at roundtripdeath.com.
If you want to share your near-death experience or if you have questions or comments about the show,
send an email to ericatroundtripdeath.com. Until then, I wish you everything good that you're
looking for in this life and the next.