From the time that they pronounced me deaf 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.
Welcome, welcome to Round Trip Death, everybody.
And I'd like to welcome our very special guest today, Harry.
How are you, Harry?
I'm doing fine.
Good.
We're here with Harry.
We're just using his first name to give him a bit of anonymity.
He's only shared his story with a couple of people and there's reasons why he needs
to be a little bit anonymous.
But Harry, thanks so much for being on with us today.
Would you mind just giving our listeners an idea of who you are?
Tell us a little bit about you before we get into your experience.
Okay.
My whole life in a nutshell.
I was born in Germany.
I grew up in New York and I moved down here to Washington to take on a job as a government
cartographer.
And I've been around the country a bit.
I've lived in St. Louis and Rhode Island.
I consider myself just an ordinary person.
There's nothing really special about me and just, you know, one of those government bureaucrats.
And I've been delving into like dreams and things like that.
Ever since I was a kid, I had a lot of dreams, like movie length dreams, nightmares, lucid
dreams, about a year and a half ago in October 2022.
I came down with COVID.
My wife did too.
And she was sick pretty bad for about a week.
Having health problems myself, something weird happened on the, about the seventh night that
I had tested positive for COVID.
And I had checked with my doctor and he thought it was a medical emergency.
I should have run to the emergency room.
My blood pressure apparently cratered during the night.
And I'm still trying to figure out what exactly happened to me.
What happened to my mind?
This was not a dream.
This was something that was totally, I would say, in another reality.
Let me just, let me just interject here.
That what we refer to as near death experiences, I used to think, oh, your heart had to stop
and you had to actually be dead.
And visit the other side and come back.
I have since learned from the IONS group.
The definition is a little looser than that.
People can be in comas.
People can be very sick or in some kind of trauma.
And for some reason, having out of body spiritual experience.
And there's different terms for all of these various gray area kind of things.
But I'm not concerned with that today.
We just want to hear about your experience.
So by the way, how sick were you?
Were you in the hospital?
Were you at home still?
I was home.
The first day or two, I had very mild cold symptoms.
I was pretty much asymptomatic the whole week.
I've had episodes of low blood pressure before where I'm literally at the point of passing
out.
As a matter of fact, I have passed out.
But this happened during the night.
I was fine otherwise.
And when I woke up in the morning, I woke up and I was nauseous.
I went upstairs to get breakfast and I was like in a daze and I couldn't believe what
had happened.
I just sort of, my head was spinning from it.
And I was ready to pass out again.
My wife took my blood pressure and it was like 60 over 40 something.
So we called my doctor and he said, well, go to the emergency room.
We didn't do that.
And I just had some salt water and the blood pressure went back up during the day.
I related this to, I believe it was Dr. Moody at University of Virginia.
And I wanted to find out what had happened.
And he actually, I managed to get his email and I wrote to him and he wrote back and he
said, yeah, I did seem to have a lot of elements of a near death experience.
So I'm still wondering, was this a near death or it leads me to come up with a lot of theories
for myself about what does near death actually consists of.
Because I feel the near death is more of a hallucinogenic reaction to the body dying.
But what happened to me, everything was very abstract.
It involved memories.
And I went on a journey, not to the tunnel and the pearly gates, but something very similar.
I believe I went beyond that experience where it was just completely unexplainable what I
was experiencing.
I don't even have words for it.
Well, let's do this.
Let me make sure I understand.
So this was sometime during the night, you mentioned that your blood pressure cratered.
Yeah.
So you probably didn't take it at that time.
It was later in the morning that you did.
Exactly, yeah.
So this happened during the night you may have been in and out of consciousness.
Anyway, you say you went beyond.
Could you explain that?
I know you said you don't have words.
I'm going to push you to try to put it into words.
Start from the beginning.
I can relate before I start.
I can relate to the story called Flatland.
I don't know if you've ever heard of it or read it.
It's a novel by Edwin Abbott.
He's got two last names.
I remember a movie called Flatliners.
Is that the same thing?
No.
This brought back a memory when I was younger.
I read this book.
It's called Flatland.
It's supposedly written by a two-dimensional square.
He doesn't identify his name.
And he lives in what's essentially a flat existence, like a piece of paper.
And he goes on to describe his whole universe, his whole everything that's flat.
And he has a meeting with a sphere from the third dimension.
And that sphere tries to explain to the Flatlander what the third dimension is.
And he tries everything.
He tries passing through the second dimension to show that he can appear and disappear by
traveling through the second dimension.
But the second dimension square cannot understand what this third dimension is.
There's no words for it.
There's no explanation for it.
And I think that's what happened with me.
So what happened was I tend to have very vivid dreams all my life, full movie-length
dreams, all senses active, I can feel, touch, smell.
I dreamt I was back in one of my apartments when I was little younger.
I guess I was sick in that dream as well.
I was in a bed and there was a girl who was making a meal for me.
And she brought the meal out and sat on the bed with me.
She started telling me a story.
I don't remember the story.
She touched my hand.
And I get kind of emotional when I start explaining this.
She said, I have to go now, but I'll be back for you someday.
And if she got up and left, I was very disappointed.
I was in a panic almost like, why she just got up and left?
So I stood up out of the bed and all of a sudden, this was no longer a dream now.
My mind was wide awake.
I stood up.
It was no longer a dream.
To me, it was a reality.
And I found myself, I was standing in a ferry boat, an interior lower level.
It was packed with people.
And later on, in retrospect, I realized all these people were actually souls, dead souls,
very quiet.
And the memory of the boat comes from earlier times in my life when I grew up near the ocean
and I used to take the ferry a lot.
We were heading toward a port and it was at night.
And I could see in the port, there were all these flashing emergency vehicle lights in
the port.
And they were waiting for the ferry boat and I thought that was kind of odd, like what's
going on.
And I knew I wasn't asleep and it wasn't a lucid dream.
This was different from a lucid dream.
So I remembered I was going to look for the girl that had walked out.
So I looked around and I saw her.
She was standing at the back.
I pushed through the crowd.
Everybody was very quiet and silent, a lot of sadness in there.
And as I approached her, I noticed she had an accompaniment of three men, sort of like
a biblical, relates to the biblical trinity.
And they were watching me as I approached her and they were sort of like bodyguards
or something of this sort.
And I went up to her and she was cocked against this post, her eyes closed.
She opened her eyes and looked shocked.
She said, how did you find me?
So I don't recall the exact conversation.
I think I complained about why did she break off the story she was telling me.
She moved out of the view of the three men, moved around the post a little bit.
And she looked at me and she said, you shouldn't be here.
I get emotional when I recall this.
It's okay.
Take your time.
I realized she was, she wasn't just a person.
She was an angelic being.
And she came into my dream and she said, it's not your time.
I'll be back for you someday.
And I thought that that was very, very touching.
And she touched my arm and she projected this glow of love.
Now you hear about people who have these near death experiences, what they talk about this
cosmic love.
This is where it's impossible to describe.
It's just this feeling of like being bathed in like a force.
I reached out to embrace her because I knew that she didn't want me to be there.
We embraced and she looked up at me and I got a laugh out of this from a religious friend
of mine.
I kissed her very lovingly and she looked shocked.
All of a sudden something was unleashed in this angel.
Everything around us disappeared, turned white.
It was a glowing fog and all of a sudden, like I noticed her face, she got pale looking.
She started, it looked like it was raining in her face.
Her face was dripping wet.
She held onto me tight and all of a sudden like an explosion of this feeling of love
came pouring out of her chest into mine.
And it was overwhelming.
There's no words that can describe this feeling.
It was love, peace.
And I grew up religious as a kid and I believe we have a soul.
We don't really know what a soul is, but I believe we do have a soul.
It felt like our souls merged.
I was one with the angel.
Everything about my existence had just completely washed away.
I went beyond this whatever hallucinogenic state.
All that was left was just light, love, peace and bliss like you can't believe.
I had never even imagined such a thing was like possible.
It was just unexplainable.
There's no words for it.
And I think if what transpired next hadn't happened, I might have not come back.
I might have had cardiac arrest in my sleep.
The ferry boat that we were on suddenly reached port and it was a surge.
The crowd on the boat surged toward the entrance or the exit of the boat and I was caught up
in the surge.
I was separated from my angel friend and I felt our soul connection.
I still felt connected with stretching and it snapped.
It felt like a big rubber band had snapped and it felt like a piece of her soul was actually
snapped off inside me.
I was swept up in this crowd heading toward the exit of the boat and there was a man standing
there on the landing.
He was the portmaster.
He was wearing a hat and had a uniform.
He held up his hands and he said to everybody, he said, you should not be here.
Go back if you can.
There was another, I take it to be an angelic being at the front of this crowd.
She had silver hair.
She had like a silvery white silvery gown, beautiful woman.
She held up some kind of pass to the portmaster and he opened up this big huge gate.
It was not the pearly gates, it was some big rusty green gates weathered from being on
the shore and everybody passed through the gate.
I didn't.
I went off to the side, I was still looking for my angel friend as I wanted to be with
her and I walked into this field.
It was daytime now.
It was the most beautiful field I had ever seen, all flowers, colors beyond the imagination,
beyond what you see in the rainbow.
I looked up in the sky and the sky was pure white.
There was no sun, but it was a blinding light.
I stood there alone in this field and I sensed I was being judged by the sky.
I had the impression the sky had a million voices.
I couldn't hear them, but I knew there was this life in the sky and I thought, is this
the edge of the afterlife?
I got in a panic and I thought, am I looking into the face of God?
It does just pure white light with love and peace and bliss.
I ran out of the field and there was actually a building at the edge of the field.
This goes back into the dream state.
I ran into the building and there were three stylists and three clients.
It goes back to this biblical Trinity thing.
I looked at each one in the face and they all looked kind of like my angel, but none
were.
Then I woke up and that's where I went upstairs and I was like, something had hit me and it
had just like, what just happened?
I had a lot of things in retrospect.
We could go into that, but I'll leave it to you right now.
That's pretty much my experience.
That's really beautiful.
Could you clarify something for me?
You were talking about this time a year and a half ago with COVID, but you also referred
to a time a few years ago, I don't know when it was, when you saw this same angel.
Were we talking about two different experiences here?
I did have an experience a month later where she actually returned in a dream.
Hold that thought.
Let's come back to that.
This was the first experience then, the first time that you met her.
I just wanted to make sure I was clear.
I have a few questions up to this point and then let's talk about what happens after.
You said you looked up in the sky and you felt judged, but you also felt all this love
and bliss.
Was the judgment a negative thing or was it a positive thing and how so?
It felt neutral.
It felt like a very objective judgment of, I suppose, my life, just my entire being.
But there was no voice, no feedback or anything, but I had a distinct feeling that this sky
was judging me.
Again, it's hard to explain that feeling, but that's the feeling I had.
Let's move on to the angel.
Do you have any idea who she was?
In other words, do you feel like maybe she had some relationship to you or she was assigned
to you?
Give me your thoughts.
I had talked to a friend at West.
He was one of the few people I related this to.
He's very religious.
He thought, yes, we all have spirit guides assigned to each of us, and she was the one
assigned to me.
I had never met her before in a dream.
I had never even thought about her.
Even my thoughts of death were kind of mixed.
I had mixed beliefs as to whether you die, you pull the plug, and that's it.
You never even existed.
I also had beliefs that maybe your afterlife experiences, your dream world, your dream
world is a window to your afterlife that when you die, you live with all your senses
being cut off as your body is dying.
You go to live in your dream world and time becomes irrelevant, and that's your heaven.
That's your eternity.
I had mixed views.
I did not have a religious view of the afterlife.
There was no Jesus there.
The angel that came to me, although she was more beautiful than any person I'd ever met,
she was rather plain.
She had dark hair.
She wore a pantsuit.
She had no wings.
My religious friend thought that he related that to the movie.
It's a wonderful life where she came.
I guess in my state with the COVID and the blood pressure drop, she probably saved me
from passing on.
That pretty much sums up my first experience.
Why do you think she saved you from passing on?
You said it wasn't your time, but do you just have any feeling more than that?
I feel like my current life is not yet complete.
If I can put in another 10 years, I'll be happy.
I have an avocation, besides being a government bureaucrat for my whole life.
My hobby, as I mentioned to you before, is a butterfly study.
I'm currently working on a number of studies that I initiated myself with a group of other
entomologists.
I need more time to finish these studies.
One of my concerns, and I always relate to these people, I've got a number of severe
health issues.
I've got, I've had, I'm in remission, three different cancers.
Failing kidneys, I'm in a final stages of kidney failure.
I've got diabetes real bad.
I've got a number of other health issues.
If I can hang on another 10 years to finish my, my avocational research, I'd be more than
happy.
Hey, just a quick interruption.
This month we're asking for your support for the show.
It's definitely a labor of love for Will and I, but it takes a ton of time and money,
and we need donations to keep things going.
For those that donated last week, we thank you from the bottom of our hearts.
For everyone else, it's easy.
Go to roundtripdeath.com, click on the little donation button in the upper right hand corner.
You can show your support for the podcast and help us move forward.
We have had requests for video interviews.
That's something that we'll be unveiling soon, as well as other improvements.
Thank you.
Thank you in advance.
Now, back to the guest.
I'm satisfied, I'm comfortable knowing that she'll be waiting for me.
I always relate back to my, my thoughts about the afterlife.
I feel like I'm even ready right now.
If somebody told me I only had a day to live, I would just consider, consider it a joyous
passing, nothing to be afraid of.
The experiences that you have had, while lots of other people have had them, they're still
very rare and it's still a small minority of people that have had these experiences.
Do you have any feeling for why you were given these experiences, you personally?
That is a mystery to me.
You know, I'm not that religious.
Perhaps it's just a luck of the draw.
I have a spiritual guide who saw that, you know, my body was probably in a state of failing
that night at the end of my COVID, a week of COVID, and she probably thought that to
give me some hope into, you know, with all the circumstances of that dream experience,
you know, I would wake up and continue on for a couple more years.
But what was amazing, and this makes me think that we have more of a connection to this
afterlife, this other world than people may realize, even the experts, from when I went
through, I think we have a connection to these spirit beings.
But what happened was about a month after I had this experience, and I call it a near
near death because I still don't know what in the world happened to me.
I had a dream, and it was one of my lucid dreams.
I was in a bar, it was with my wife and family and some friends, and we were sitting at a
bench, a table in the bar listening to loud, loud live music, and everybody was happy and
talking.
And like out of the twilight zone, the dream just froze, it turned black and white, nothing
moved, there was a deafening silence.
And my wife had gotten up before the dream froze, she went and got up and went to get
a drink, so there was nobody sitting next to me.
The dream froze, and I was sitting there wondering like, what is going on?
Everything is black and white, no sound, no movement, and all of a sudden I felt somebody
bump me on my left side, and I looked over, and it was my angel.
And I get very emotional when I think back on this, she looked at me, and she was wearing
a beautiful white gown.
There was all made up, and she reached over, and she touched my mid abdomen, and she said,
you have a piece of me in you.
I didn't say anything, and then she said, I'm always by your side, I will never leave
you.
And then the dream resumed, the noise was back, everything was back.
And it was like, this is odd to happen in a dream, to have a message like that.
So I maintained the connection, and I know she's there.
And as I go about my day to day activities, especially in the weeks following my first
experience in the dream, she's always there in my mind.
I always see her, if I'm sitting alone, quiet, I can just see her right in front of me.
There you have it, that's what I experienced.
And it changed my complete outlook toward what life is, what's out there.
There's a lot out there that we just don't understand as mortal human beings.
There is something to an afterlife.
I believe in the theory that we're all connected.
God is everywhere, God is everything, God is a force that it's the life force in the
entire universe.
And when I experienced this love and this light, I went right to that cosmic source.
There was nothing there, nothing physical, just love, peace, bliss.
And I think that's the ultimate source where we all go.
We're all one, we're all part of this universal God force.
People may disagree, people may say, well, you know, they're going to see Jesus and they're
going to be in the presence of Jesus and heaven and all that.
But I think that's all part of that hallucinogenic travel to the afterlife.
I didn't go through the tunnel.
I went on a ferry boat ride.
It's got a humerus.
Everybody's experience is different.
You'd be surprised how many people, Harry, don't go through a tunnel.
They just find themselves in another place.
Or the journey takes place some other way.
That's a beautiful story.
With all of the health problems that you have and going through cancer and things like that,
sounds like because of this, you don't have very much fear of death.
Would that be the case?
Absolutely.
I'm ready to go.
You know, I don't mean to sound like suicidal or anything like that.
I am happy with my life.
I have a lot to give to this world.
And to butterflies.
I've discovered actually a few butterflies right here in the eastern U.S. with co-authors
right under our very noses.
Butterflies never thought known to exist.
And I have a few more in the works and study and I need a little more time.
You need time to get your name on a species.
How's that?
Yeah.
The Harry butterflies that aren't Harry.
Would you mind telling us, and you don't have to go into any personal detail, but telling
us why you need to remain a bit anonymous with this.
Have you tried sharing this with loved ones before?
I've shared it with, I believe it was Dr. Moody at UVA.
I actually did a little bit of stalking.
I found his email address through the staff directory and I emailed him.
They have a link where you can submit your NDEs, which is what I did, but I never got
much of a response.
So I emailed him and he actually did email me back and he said, yeah, you had elements
of a near-death experience.
I shared it with a doctor friend of mine who really didn't respond, but I related it to
a friend in California.
He's very religious and he related back and he said, yeah, he believed exactly what I experienced.
Dr. Moody is awesome, by the way.
He's been on the show.
We had a great discussion.
I thoroughly enjoyed him.
For those that aren't familiar with him, he's sort of the, I guess you could call him the
godfather of near-death experiences.
He coined the term way back in the 1970s and has written multiple books and done tons of
research on it, et cetera, very highly respected.
So I'm glad you had a chance to communicate with him some.
He's a great guy.
I still need to read his book.
Well, he has a few of them.
I haven't read them all yet.
But yeah, if anyone wants to hear that episode, by the way, go to roundtriptdeath.com.
There is a little search tool and you can just search Dr. Raymond Moody and his episode
will come up.
Was there a problem telling close loved ones?
Did they believe what happened to you?
I had not related it to my family.
My wife, she doesn't believe in that kind of stuff.
She wouldn't understand.
We have issues about seeing eye to eye on things like that.
My daughter who lives with us, she, I think she would go into a panic and be too overly
concerned about my frailty as being near-death.
My wife actually, even though I'm only 69 years old, my wife treats me like I'm 90 years
old.
She's afraid of me falling, she's afraid of me going outside for a walk.
I don't want to introduce any kind of unfounded concerns on their part.
So I haven't related it to my wife and daughter here.
Although I do have a daughter who actually lives in Colorado and she's starting to go
into, she's starting to come around to talk about afterlife and things like that.
So I may relate to her.
I think she's more open-minded about it.
And I'm curious to see how she'll react to my story.
I feel kind of embarrassed about going to tears when I tell her.
But when I woke up from my first experience, from my NDE, was as soon as I came to my senses,
I went to my computer and I sat there for about two hours typing up every little detail
that I could remember, which is how I remember it to this day.
Otherwise, it would start to fade in my memory.
I often go to tears reading it.
I'm glad you've done that.
That'll be of great worth to your posterity when they read that someday.
They're not going to think you're crazy.
They're going to understand.
I hope not.
No.
Well, this is all so beautiful.
And I really appreciate your time today.
And before I let you go, give a plug for the butterflies.
So I'm a hobby beekeeper.
I'm not that into butterflies, but I like bees.
So let's talk pollinators in general because this is actually pollinator month, as you
probably know.
Oh, yes.
Exactly.
So give a plug for the pollinators.
What should people do and not do in their yards?
Well, when I tell friends, I have a small group here of friends that we share information.
One of the things I recommend that people do is go online, do a little bit of research,
googling, or duck duck going as I do.
Look up what food plants the butterfly caterpillars like to eat.
That's very important.
A lot of people plant beautiful gardens, which I encourage.
And I tell people, plant a lot of attractive flowers.
Look online.
Try to get a book on butterfly gardening or nature gardening.
And combine the flowers with host plants.
So when the butterflies come into your garden, depending on the species, if you have their
particular host plants there, there's a good chance to lay eggs.
And you'll be helping their population to survive.
Like with the monarchs, people encourage to plant milkweeds.
Because I know in the Midwest, the farmers there, they're trying to eradicate the milkweed
because I forget the whole story, but they don't like it growing in their crops.
I guess they consider it a weed and they spray all the weeds and they spray for the milkweed.
And what's happening is the monarch population is declining, at least in the Midwest from
what I hear.
Eastern is a different story.
We don't have as much agriculture as out West.
And a lot of people here are planting lots of milkweeds.
And I have a small garden now.
We used to have another house and I had a huge garden with lots of flowers.
I had butterflies that were not supposed to be there.
Two species I came from out of the mountains to my garden.
I had their host plants and they found them.
I had colonies of these mountain butterflies in my suburban butterfly garden in Northern
Virginia.
So, that's what I tell people and not to use insecticides, not to spray.
Many of the herbicides will kill pollinators as well.
Most people are unaware of that.
Your roundups and things like that don't sue me roundup.
But yeah, it's proven that the glyphosate is killing bees and all kinds of other good
pollinators too.
Relating back to butterflies, when I was younger, when I first moved down here, I had described
a butterfly in New England with a co-author.
It's called the Cherrygall Azure.
It's a small blue butterfly that nobody had recognized as a species.
And we wrote up the study and published it, peer-reviewed science.
I moved down here and nobody knew about it down here.
I went up in the mountains and I found a small colony of this butterfly up on Skyline Drive
in Shenandoah National Park, which was very unusual because we had only known them to
be up in New England and New York, Pennsylvania, that area.
So I had studied them for about a year or two.
I went back up to see them and I was kind of happy to see them flying around.
And then the gypsy moth started moving south into the mountains here.
And of course, leave it to the government.
They decided to spray everything within a mile of Skyline Drive with this gyp-check,
which kills not only every gypsy moth, but every butterfly and moth caterpillar and I
believe literally every insect.
In the years following, that butterfly disappeared, they killed it off with the gyp-check.
And it's very sad that that happened.
That's really sad.
Well, listeners, I'm sorry to get off on this tangent.
It was my fault.
I brought it up.
Harry is so passionate about butterflies.
I love it.
But Harry, one day, years from now, when we're both on the other side, please bring your
angel to meet me.
I would love to meet her.
Okay?
My pleasure.
So Harry, before we go, I'd love to leave everybody with a message of hope, something
positive, something to brighten their day.
What have you got for us today?
My message to people who go through their life, they look at their lives and they think
back, was I a good person?
Was I a bad person?
Did I have a good life?
Did I contribute something to this world?
I think we all contribute something positive to this world.
We build up our experiences.
And I think that's the bottom line about this going to the afterlife.
We take these experiences with us.
And we each have our own experiences.
A lot of us may be religious, a lot of us may be new earthers and they don't believe
in Jesus.
We take all these experiences with us and knowing that your life's some leaves this
earth on a positive note.
If you can gather up all your positive experiences and thoughts and dreams and everything and
hang on to those, knowing that when you're in your death bed or you have an accidental
death that you're taking those positive experiences with you.
And those make your afterlife or your journey to the afterlife.
That's what my message would be.
For people that don't believe in God, why should they believe in an afterlife?
I often questioned about is there really a God?
Is God just a made up fable from the early writers of the Bible?
I've delved into various writings and radio broadcasts in the past about the afterlife.
I think that people don't understand what God is.
I don't think God is a human or has human characteristics.
They say God made our minds in the image of his mind, but I'm convinced that God is not
a person.
God is everything.
God is the universe.
God is the life force that binds everything together.
When we go, like I experienced, you ultimately wind up in this state of unexplainable, unbelievable
bliss.
If you're positive about your life and you're positive about what you've contributed to
this world, I think that experience will be the best thing for you.
It'll contribute to the overall God force.
I think all of our experiences we built to this God force.
Who knows where this is all leading in humanity?
You talk about the universe expanding and what becomes of the universe someday.
To me, that's all part of God.
That's what He is.
He's everywhere.
He's everything.
We experience that when we pass.
All right.
Thanks again for being with me today.
Okay.
Thanks.
Thanks, Eric.
It was a pleasure talking to you.
Thank you so much for listening and supporting the show.
Just a reminder, click on over to roundtripdeath.com to make a donation, and we'll put a link
in the show notes.
Until then, I wish you every good thing that you're looking for in this life and the next.