Welcome to another episode of Round Trip Death. I just wanted to give everybody kind of a heads up today.
Some of the guests that we have on have rougher stories than others, and today's is one of the roughest.
Not every story is easy to listen to, but I feel strongly like someone needs to hear this today.
Now let's get right to our guest.
We are going across the pond again today, and we have Jack Gregory with us. Jack, how are you?
Good evening, I'm good, thank you. Great to be here.
Jack, we lately have had really a lot of nice podcasts with beautiful stories of tunnels and white light and all kinds of these beautiful NDEs.
And I'm just warning our audience, this one is not as pleasant today.
No.
But I think it's important that we hear all kinds of experiences.
And before we jump in, why don't you tell us a little bit about you? You had a little rough upbringing as well.
Yes, so I grew up in a small town in West Yorkshire, a small mining town. I grew up during the miners' riots when Prime Minister Henry
and Infinite Wisdom decided that it was cheaper to buy coal from foreign places. So all our miners lost our jobs and the town never recovered.
I was told when I was eight, I was adopted, and that's where my life became difficult, messy, broken.
And I spent many, many years just riding on the wave of that really and trying to find my place in society, which I really struggled to do.
So how did that affect you and your family life?
So as I said, I remember it was my eighth birthday. I was sat at my mum's knee and she told me that her and my dad loved me very much.
But I didn't actually until then belong to them. I was adopted. And for most people, I guess they would take some, you know, some
some niceness out of that, knowing that they're loved by someone, but that it was the totally opposite for me. And I lost my identity.
I didn't know who I was. I thought I knew who I was. I was already different. I already felt different to other people.
I couldn't read or write very well. And I was seen as the special child. I was seen as a bit thick.
You know, the school system that I grew up in called me mildly retarded and said that I would never ever really amount to anything.
So, yeah, it was like everything went for me. So I just, you know, I started to make my own worlds in my imagination.
And I started to pretend to be other people because I didn't know who I was. So I could be anybody I wanted to be.
So did you move out of the house at a young age?
Yeah. So I guess I was 17 when I moved out of the house. You know, I used to go see my nana over in the next town.
And, you know, I used to love going over there and I got on really well. I mean, don't get me wrong.
I had a very loving family, you know, and I was brought up in a nice home. And despite the town not being very affluent,
my dad was a civil engineer and my mum was a social worker. So I always had whatever I wanted.
And, you know, and I grew up in a nice house on a nice estate. I would go over to my nana's house and they were more, you know,
there's more austerity over there, what they call council estates, I guess you would call them projects.
And, you know, I spent some time over there, but I, you know, I love my nana, but I always felt different.
And they were always trying to get me to find my family and marry a family. And at that time, I didn't really want to do it.
But I moved into a bed, sit in that town. A lot of the people that I went to school with came from that town.
My school life, I grew up in the special school system of the UK, which isn't or wasn't back then very easy to navigate.
It was, there was no such thing really as dyslexia. Certainly nothing like ADHD or, you know,
they didn't have the understanding of autism and things like that and neurodivergency.
So I was just seen as stupid and thick, but I always had a head for facts and knowledge.
And I was great with words. I always had my head was filled with words and I couldn't get them out fast enough.
But within the school system, I was abused physically and sexually by the teachers, bullied by the other kids because I was different,
you know, passed around to different people and told that nobody would ever believe me because of this world that I created in my head.
I began to tell lies because, you know, I could because it was who I wanted to be. And I could tell anybody that I was anything.
Yeah, I was abused awfully.
Really rough. So rough upbringing. At what point did you get into drugs?
So I got into drugs at school. One thing I was really good at was running.
And the school that I went to was in the middle of a countryside. So it was like a mile in any direction to any part of the town.
And I quickly found that I could make a lot of money. I was good at the 1500 meters.
I could do a mile just over seven and a half minutes. So I could run things like dope and knock off bootleg VHS, knock off CDs, you know, towards the end of it.
I think the first one that I ever did was fatherland at Prodigy. And I could make a lot of money.
And I used to drink cheap cider, smoke a lot of dope. And, you know, I mean, I drank a lot.
I found myself in various anonymous meetings by the time I was 14 years old.
You know, and that was through social services of the day. You know, and I had a sponsor that was friends with some of the teachers at the school.
So I was bounced around between them all, you know, trafficked around them sexually. And they threw my innocence.
I couldn't talk about it for such a long time. It's only over the past couple of years that I've been able to sort of look into my past like that.
So, yeah, I did drugs on and off. I left school at 16. And, yeah, I mean, a lot of self-medication, a lot of self-medication, smoking cigarettes.
Hashish, you know, this is before like weed weed, really, because hashish was cheaper. It came in via the North Sea and then down through the towns.
A lot of the towns then fell into heroin addiction because that was the next cheap drug.
I had my first hit of heroin at 14. I didn't like it much. I always preferred cocaine and crack cocaine and amphetamines and things like that.
You know, the only downer that I ever really took was alcohol and dope. So I'd moved into a small bed set in the town that I went to school in.
Hung around with some of the people that I went to school with and I really fell into sort of addiction.
I had a guy that lived above me in the Masonettes and his name was Darren, Darren Livesey. And he became my first mentor.
You could see that there was this poet trying to get out but really struggling. So he would teach me to sort of get by in reading and writing.
I remember once he took me from my flat, locked my flat up, carried me upstairs. I mean, this is a six foot four, 20 stone guy.
Took me into his spare bedroom, locked the door. He put wood over the door and made me go through Coltrachy.
And he sat there and held me as I went through Coltrachy for two or three days. I loved him dearly.
He passed away in October 1999 due to a really bad road traffic accident. He'd actually survived it and he was getting better.
He'd smashed his pelvis to pieces and he was in the hospital. He was walking and he said, one day I'm tired.
Went to bed and never woke up and we lost him. I lost my best friend, my big brother.
Things started to fall apart very, very quickly. I had a guy who I used to hang about with called Carl.
Loved him like a brother too. We used to go out on the blitz together.
We went out Thursday, I think it was, and we had eight and a half ecstasy each.
We were drunk and it had been just an almighty long weekend.
We were walking back and we came up to a railway crossing. I had a joint in my mouth and he took his joint out.
He took a mortar blast and then he stuck it back in my mouth. He went, I love you.
He ran and we vaulted railroad gates and threw himself in front of the train and there was nothing that I could do.
I remember people holding me as I was beaten down on the concrete, hands bloodied and just screaming.
I just went into myself and I took whatever I could. I tried suicide and I didn't manage that.
I would wind people up to try to get them to murder me.
In the end, I had a friend that lived in Portsmouth, which is way down south.
I moved away from my West Yorkshire town and I moved to Portsmouth.
I know at one point you got sick, you got pneumonia that led to your near death experience. How old were you then?
That was only coming up to nine years ago.
Can you tell us about that? I had a good life here. I got married, I had children.
My marriage ended because I couldn't handle my own trauma.
I wasn't using or drinking, I wasn't taking drugs.
I couldn't handle my own trauma and I was dry for a long time.
Infidelity, I would cheat on my wife and the marriage ended.
I used that as an excuse to go out back on the blitz.
I went back out for a good two, three years to which I found myself homeless, street homeless, addicted to crack cocaine,
suffering from non-Hodgkin's lymphoma three times while I was on the street, going through chemotherapy,
walking 14 miles a day just to have a relationship with my children and everything just started coming to a close.
I tried to kill myself, I tried to shoot myself, under gun jammed.
I didn't know what to do and I found myself just broke and nobody would listen.
I would sit there, I would rock, I would talk to myself.
I'd been involved in a church that was more of a cult.
They said, you know, we love you, you're family, but when I got made homeless they would even buy me a sandwich.
So I was bitter, full of resentment, full of hate and hurt.
I was contemplating going out and doing crime just to end up back in jail so I could have a warm cell and a roof over my head and food in my belly.
I just didn't know what to do. I couldn't function.
I'd kind of been sort of staying in this guy's spare room and he wasn't good for me and we did a lot of drugs together.
We'd go out and do crime together and I just, I was losing everything.
I was losing my daughter and, you know, so I found myself at a food bank.
Well, Friday morning they had this coffee morning and, you know, I would go there and I met this woman who was lovely.
She was serving behind the counter.
She had a two month old boy, her husband had left her, but she was serving at the food bank.
And we started talking and she took me out for, you know, despite being told not to, she took me out for food and she bought me a tobacco and, you know, a blanket and stuff like that.
And she would, you know, and then I didn't see her for ages.
And I was just going more and more into this spiral of self-destruction, hate and just, I was getting worse and worse and worse and worse.
And on the 26th of June, 2014, I found myself sat in a crack house and I couldn't, I couldn't do it anymore.
Ten o'clock at night and I'm sat there and I'm, you know, I said, God, I don't even know if you exist anymore.
But if you do, either take my life or take away this hunger, take away this thirst for drugs because I can't live like this anymore.
It's killing me.
And I took an almighty hit on this crack pipe.
And I don't know if your listeners know anything about crack cocaine, but the last thing you want to do is sleep.
But I fell asleep and I woke up at four minutes past 12 in the morning on the 27th of June, 2014.
And I haven't used a day since.
And I started, you know, getting better and go, you know, helping out with this food bank and going to, I'd been going to a church in the town that I'm now living.
I'd started dating Joe, who is now my wife.
And I just started getting better.
I started looking at my trauma, but on March the 9th, 2015, I'd been getting, I'd been ill for a few days.
I picked up a cough.
I'd lost a load of weight.
I was six stone.
So you're looking at, well, about 78, 80 pounds.
And I was just getting iller.
I couldn't keep down food.
I had this really bad cough.
This really bad wheeze.
And I woke up on the Sunday morning after only about 45 minutes sleep.
And I said, I can't do this.
I need to go to the hospital.
So I rang my ex-wife and said, can you come and get my daughter?
Because I've got to go to hospital.
You know, I'm really sick.
And she said, I'll come and get you in a little while and I'll take, you know, I'll take you and we'll drop you off so she can see that you're all right.
And that's the last I would see her for a month.
I got there about 20 past four in the afternoon.
By half past seven, I was dead.
You mean clinically dead?
Clinically dead.
Four minutes.
I had type two lung failure.
I had double pneumonia.
I had tuberculosis.
I had pleurisy.
I had an environmental disease that I hadn't seen in about 80 years.
All because of the crap that I'd put into my system for the past few years.
And, you know, I'd managed to get clean, but it had done my body some real damage.
And, you know, going to chemotherapy while you're still on drugs for all the things, it's not good, really.
So it really damaged my body.
And, yeah, I passed away for four minutes and I went to hell.
And I'm not saying that Jesus sent me to hell because, or God sent me to hell because that's not how it works.
You know, God doesn't send you to hell.
Jesus doesn't send you to hell.
He died so we, you know, don't have to, but I hadn't have sent him in my life.
I was going to church, but I wanted to still be naughty.
Or I wanted at least that option of still being a bit naughty, you know, and not being a Mr. Goody Two Shoes, as I thought.
I just, I couldn't.
So I hadn't accepted him and I ended up in hell.
And it felt like months.
And I had this, you know, I was so busy with my life.
Every time I'd messed up, I was shown how I was being poor-mensored.
So when they brought me back, my mind was broken because I was on strong drugs as well that they had me on.
I had this complete and utter psychological breakdown, complete spiritual breakdown.
And physically you were a mess with everything going on.
Yeah, I was, like I say, I was sick stone and I emaciated.
I could barely walk.
I couldn't eat.
I went mute for a while.
How long were you at the hospital?
I was in the hospital for two months.
When I came out of the, when I came back from hell and I had this psychological breakdown,
I was convinced that I'd bred this super virulent form of tuberculosis and people were dying around me.
And they would be replaced by doppelgangers or robots.
And I was, I was being teased and tormented.
I wouldn't eat.
I wouldn't drink.
They sectioned me while I was in the hospital under the Mental Health Act.
I was screaming at people, trying to attack them.
I remember my good friend, Grant Lee, who's the leader of our church, he came in to pray for my soul
because they were told they were going to lose me again.
And they very nearly did.
And through the whole thing, through the, you know, the torment from the demons that were just out of view,
there was this figure stood at the end of the bed and it felt different to all the other figures that were there.
There was this one doctor, a female Asian doctor, and she, she would come in and, you know,
I know that like your hospitals in the US, that in certain parts of the US, it's not a problem praying for people.
And, you know, doctors talk about their faith, but it's illegal here.
But I remember this one doctor, this young female Asian doctor she had a cross on.
And you're allowed to wear a cross when you work for the NHS, but it has to be covered.
But she kept letting me see it.
And then every time she'd see somebody come in, she'd put it away.
And this, whatever it was at the end of my bed, I guess I just said, I can't deal with this anymore.
I can't do this.
I said, you know, have you come to take me back to hell?
And he's like, no, that's not why I'm here.
You know who I am.
And I said, you're Jesus.
And you went, yeah, so what have I got to do in this issue?
Look, you know what you've got to do.
And I went, OK.
Lord, I accept you into my life.
And that darkness that I saw from my eyes, that graininess and all the darkness around, came light again.
I was sat up in my bed.
I hadn't done that in weeks.
And this one nurse walked in and she looked at me and she went white.
And she saw me sitting up in my bed.
And I said, I can have a wash, please.
And she went running out and I could hear all the scarping outside and doctors coming in and pecking me.
And they're like, this is not right.
You know, you sat up and I'm like, oh, yeah, I want a wash.
I felt grotty and dirty.
And this one medication that they'd given me that had given me an adverse reaction, I had a rash from my chin to my torso.
And it was burning.
It was a burning rash.
I literally thought that they covered me with acid to torture me.
And they brought this bowl in and a washcloth.
And I started washing as I was washing this rash just began to peel away from my skin.
You know, I have doctors and nurses who will verify this.
It just began to fall away from my skin.
A miraculous just disappeared.
And I said, I'm hungry.
I hadn't eaten in weeks.
They were shoving pipes up my nose and down my throat just to get anything in me, just to keep me alive.
You know, he probably had a feeding tube of some sort.
Yeah.
I had to learn to eat again.
I'd had these ulcers in my mouth that were really, really bad.
So they gave me this medicine that covered my mouth that stops the ulcers from hurting so I could eat.
I'd had a job before I went into hospital.
You know, I'd started building my life back up.
But while I was in the hospital, I got made redundant.
I got 200 pounds.
And the doctor said to me, if you can get back up to eight stone, you can go home.
And that's about how many pounds?
I guess I should be Googling this right now.
Less than 100 pounds.
I weighed less than 100 pounds.
This is a stone that's 14 pounds.
So you weighed how many stones?
Six stones, six ounces.
So that's 60, 84 pounds.
That is really skinny.
Yeah.
Wow.
And I'm six foot one.
Yeah.
You were wasting away.
I was.
Before we talk about more of your recovery, I want to go back and hear a little bit more about hell.
And I, you know, when I talk to people that have had these wonderful experiences in the spirit world, I love all the details.
I'm not asking you to do that here.
But I do want to hear a little bit about the experience of hell.
Except to tell us as much as you feel like.
One of the things that most people feel in the spirit world is immense love.
Whether they see someone that they feel is God or a loved one or something else, they feel this immense overwhelming love.
The true meaning of hell is without God.
And God was, you know, I didn't feel God there.
It was dark.
It wasn't a fiery inferno.
It wasn't ashes and embers falling down and burning.
It wasn't bridges of razor wire and things like that.
It was exactly like our world, but emptier and darker.
It was kind of like walking around a building at twilight.
So it wasn't totally devoid of light.
There was sunlight there, but it was like very dim.
I could hear the taunts from what I presume were demons.
I could hear the laughter of what I believe to have been the saying himself.
I never saw him, but I heard him and I never saw really the demons, but I heard them.
I was kind of out of phase at a different frequency.
So it was like I wasn't walking, but I wasn't floating.
It was kind of going into different rooms.
At one point I could see myself in the bed.
At one point I could see the nurse's station outside of the room.
I was in this thing called a negative pressure room, which is kind of...
It helps you breathe better when you've got things like pneumonia and tuberculosis and stuff.
It was devoid of love.
I truly felt that God wasn't there.
I kind of had a faith before I'd gone there.
I felt judged. I felt guilt, immense guilt and shame
for some of the things that I'd done in my life.
I felt guilt and shame for the way that I treated my parents.
I felt guilt and shame for when I was in prison.
I did it alone because I felt guilty and ashamed and I couldn't tell my parents I was in prison.
So I had all this just piling on and piling on and piling on.
So I just felt like they were taking bits of my soul at a time until I had nothing left.
And I felt truly soulless.
It was towards the end before I started breathing again.
It felt more ethereal.
I've taken LSD in my time and magic mushrooms and stuff.
It kind of felt a bit like that.
There was no light at the end of the tunnel. There was no tunnel.
All I can describe it as like old VHS.
It kind of looked like old VHS.
When I came out of the hall and I started to get better, it then went back into sort of HD.
That's the only way I can really describe it.
Yeah, like the color came back into the room and into the world.
Yeah, it became normal.
It wasn't grainy. It wasn't dark.
I felt the sunlight coming through the window.
There has to be light to see color as well.
Yeah, yeah.
You thought about that. There's no color without light.
No. And I've heard people describe it as being in the shadows.
I describe it as outside of the periphery, outside of your peripheral vision, just outside.
So you know it's there.
It's kind of in a different phase, a different frequency.
You know it's there, but you can't quite see it.
And that's how I took the whole sort of thing.
I still have flashbacks. I still have nightmares.
It was a traumatic experience.
And then at one point you saw Jesus at the foot of your bed.
I did. He was at the foot of my bed.
And he said, you know who I am.
And he said, you know what you've got to do.
And I said, Jesus, I take you into my life.
Did you see him looking like a person, like some of the paintings maybe that we see of him?
No, he was like how I saw the specialists and the doctors.
He was there. And I knew he was just outside of my line of sight.
But when I did see, I saw this figure.
It wasn't full-bodied, if you know what I mean.
It was kind of transparent.
But it definitely wasn't white Jesus that I was brought up to believe in.
He wasn't the blond hair, blue eyes.
He was definitely an ethnic man.
But it was more the love in his voice that drew me more than anything.
And I'm a logical man.
But this was different.
I would have described myself as an agnostic, not bright enough to be an atheist.
But I knew that by accepting him back into my life,
that that was the only way I would ever get out of the hell that I was in,
the living hell that I was in.
But yeah, he gave me a new life.
I was reborn in that bed that day.
And how is your life different now?
This has been eight years ago.
Yeah, nearly nine years ago.
It's been massively different.
When I was, I guess, about 16, 18 months sober,
I got asked by a friend who is a casting agent to go and speak to a director.
And what I've heard from people in the city of Norwich is that it's very big in the United Kingdom film business,
second only to London.
But they do a lot of filming over here.
So things like Jack the Giant Killer was filmed here.
Stardust was filmed here.
Loads of other things have been filmed there.
We've got two former RAF bases that are now film studios.
And I went home and speak to a director by the name of Joanna Hogg,
who was making a film called The Souvenir, or two films, The Souvenir, part one and two.
And I was asked to go and speak to her because of the life that I'd led because the film was about addiction.
It was partly funded by Martin Scorsese.
And I went to speak to Joe Hogg and we had a chat.
I was only initially going to give a little bit of advice, maybe a small part in the film.
I ended up having a small part in the film.
I'm becoming consultant for both of the films.
I had a cameo in the second film as well.
I turned down a role in Jingle Jangle, which was filmed in Norwich, to go and work on part two.
In 2017, 16, 17, I wrote my first book, A First Mother Apocalypse.
And then 2017, I'd spent six months with escapees of human trafficking, sexual slavery and exploitation.
I decided to write a book about it and that helped me really look at my own trauma and know that I was trafficked.
Because I would never have thought I'd have been trafficked.
I just thought it was abuse.
So I started working on my trauma.
I'd had a relationship with my biological mum over the past sort of two years as well.
And she passed away of the Easter of 2017.
My sister was having a baby.
She had the baby in June of 2017.
And at two days old, my sister had quite a traumatic birth.
So she was in bed sleeping.
Her partner was looking after the baby.
For some reason, he lost his temper, was unable to get the baby to sleep and he beat her to death.
He was sentenced to life with a minimum of 10 years.
But within eight months, he was murdered by his cellmate over a 50 pound drug debt.
So we were left with unanswered questions.
Again, I'd started feeling hate and hurt.
It took a year before we could have the funeral and one of the lead elders from our church,
he took me home back to Yorkshire for the funeral.
And I'd come out of the funeral, back in the day, so I smoked and I lit a cigarette.
And his mum came up to me and she put her arms around me.
And she said, thanks for coming.
And it broke me.
And I started filling up with this anger and this hurt, this hate.
So Chris took me back to the car and I sat in the car and I just broke and I started to cry.
And then I had this...there's this clarity that you only get when you're in pain.
The clarity that you get when you're screaming and screaming and screaming and you're really angry
and you hit something and you hit it a bit too hard and you know you've broken something.
And this calmness just comes over you and it snaps you straight out of it.
Well, that's kind of how it happened in the car.
And Chris looked at me and he said, what's going on?
And I said, I've got to forgive him.
I said, I've got to forgive him.
I said, I can't do this.
I said, I hate him.
And you know, I wanted him dead, but this is tearing me apart.
I can't live like this anymore.
So God's telling me I need to forgive him, not for him.
But I knew that unforgiveness was like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die.
I said, I need to forgive him and I need to love him.
You know, loving somebody doesn't mean that you like them in the biblical sense.
I started this whole new journey of forgiveness.
In 2020, I built a working relationship with the daughters of a Ganlam figure in a place called Salford,
which is in the north of England.
He was slayed by a hitman in 2015.
We needed these answers.
We needed, so I helped him write a book.
It took me quite a while to do because I was suffering with my mental health.
So I worked on the book and yeah, that's basically where I'm at.
Yeah, that's a whole lot.
I appreciate you sharing.
As we wind this down, let's just let people know.
You were telling me earlier you've been sober now for about nine years.
Congratulations. That's fantastic.
I know you've got kids. You've got a nice family life.
I've got a great life.
What else is going on?
I get to occasionally play other people in TV and film.
I get to regularly consult just about to finish book number four.
I'm working with escapees of domestic violence and telling their stories.
I've got probably about a month, a month and a half, and that'll be out.
I have an audio book coming out from the first book and I have a spoken word album coming out,
which is just based on the poetry from the first book.
I'm known as the accidental journalist.
I help people speak their story.
I work with a lot of miscarriages of justice, people that are serving time in prison for murders they did commit.
I get a lot of people on to speak about their sobriety like I'm doing with you now, to share their stories.
I've sat and I've laughed with my guests. I've cried with my guests.
It's been a journey. It's been a massive journey.
My daughter is about to do her GCSEs.
I finished high school, so I'm feeling a little bit old right now.
My stepson will be 17 in May, so that makes me feel even older.
I like to do the occasional podcast where I'm speaking to other people because it helps keep myself grounded and it helps me use my voice.
I'm a big member of my church.
I'm training in ministry and teaching.
I'm part of this thing called School of Supernatural Life, which is basically we believe that God is supernatural and natural is supernatural.
We have gifts that He wants us to have and He wants to give us things like prophecy and one word for other people.
It helps us give gifts to people and just bring a bit of hope back into people's lives with evangelism and stuff like that.
I really appreciate you sharing all of this with us today.
If you think about that young man that you were a few years ago where life was not in a good place,
if that person were listening to you today and there may be somebody out there that is, that's feeling just like you did back then,
what's your message of hope for him or her?
It might feel like it, but you're not alone. You are loved. You're loved by God. You're loved by me.
I know it's going to get dark and it does get darker before the light sets in, but just hold on to that hope because it will get you through.
You will get better. Things will get better. Relationships will get better and you will begin to love yourself.
That trauma that you're living in doesn't belong to you. Trauma is caused by other people. It doesn't belong to you.
So let go and just ride it out because there is a light and it is coming.
Wisdom from someone who's been there and has learned the hard way. Thanks for being with us today, Jack. Appreciate it.
Thank you, mate.
Thanks again for listening. We hope you will share this message with family and friends.
To be notified when the next episode goes live, follow this show on your podcasting app or click over to roundtripdeath.com and sign up for our email newsletter.
Until then, I wish you everything good that you're looking for in this life and the next.
Thank you.