This birth is one that I would not wish on a dog. The then Hospital had transformed the 7th floor mental ward into a large common labor room.  All the women were in one room, using one toilet.  There were hooks on the ceilings left over from where pads had been at one time, and there were bars on the windows.  As other women would scream in labor, you would lay there in wonder how long it might be before you progressed to that, and due to the pain that was already evident. I did not know how I would live through the pain.  The staff was flippant.  The doctor, now deceased, appeared in his kelly green sport coat at 4:00PM to say he was inducing me, so that he'd still have time to make 9 holes at the golf course.  Soon after the inducement, they followed with a horse size shot to put me to sleep.  All during this time, the only place my husband was welcome in the hospital was at the pay desk, but given his lack of empathy, that was the best place for him.

After the birth, and after being wheeled out of recovery, I was in a 4 bed ward and I did get to see my baby on the next day after his birth, but then a fever set in.  I recall having my fever break, and I was looking forward to going home by the next day.  I had a stay for roughly a week.  The next day after the fever broke, I was totally awake and conscious and they brought a new mother into the room and put her in the 4th bed. This was shortly after lunch, around mid afternoon.  I looked over to my right to check on a girl that had a baby by cesarean that had labored in a bed across from mine days before.  She was totally out of it, and I was sort of keeping check on her because I was worried about her.

I glanced out the hospital window that was across the room, and thought about the changes in my life in the last year, and as I looked away from the window, a large circle of light appeared near the ceiling, but reached into eternity.  I felt speechless and in awe and wonder as the next events unfolded right before me, yet I was the event.  My spirit got up out of my body, starting from my head.  I floated above my body and looked down on my lifeless self and wondered if anyone would care if they found my lifeless body in the bed. I was drawn by the warmth and light upward into this tunnel.  The light was goodness. 

As I floated toward the light, I looked over to the side and saw the forms of people I sort of recognized, such as a girl that I barely knew as a child that had died under the age of six. She was running along smiling a radiant smile at me as I floated deeper into this radiant place. I felt the spirit of my Grandmother's sister, as I passed along this path into the light.  And as I got fairly near this light, and felt the overwhelming spirit of something totally heavenly, something compelled me to go back.  I sort of lost my ability to float as well, and back tracked through this tunnel and went back into my body. If I recall correctly, something told me it was not my time. 

I will never forget how totally depressed I was at that moment because it was as if my bones and flesh were now like terrible weights that I had to be trapped inside.  And, by comparison just being on this bed in the hospital was hell compared to where I had just been.  I was now trapped, back in the human condition.  I laid there in despair, totally conscious, rested, and trying to grasp what had just happen. 

I looked around at the three other women in the room, all sleeping, and I thought, I know things you do not know.  About that time, the "ghost" of my deceased beloved Grandfather entered the room.  He glowed and was radiant with a light that emitted the same heavenly feeling that was in the tunnel.  He had died at the age of 69.  Yet, in standing there at the foot of my bed, he did not have age in his face.  I will never forget that I drew a breath from shock and was afraid to say a word or move, much as you would be if you were trying to catch a one of a kind butterfly that you knew might flutter off.  He had on his old fishing clothes.  He sat on the foot of my bed, and I felt the weight of a real body, although he was a spirit.  He told me not to be blue because there was a great purpose I had as a mother, and I would live a worthwhile life.  But, that if I wanted to see him again, I needed to live better than I had in past years. He told me that my son would be special and there were other things I needed to be alive to do.  I wanted to lean up in bed and touch him, but I was afraid to say anything, and he stood up and smiled at me, and as he walked out of the room, he dissipated (disappeared) before he actually reached the door. 

Soon after, a nurse entered with some mundane unimportant comment like, "Oh, I see you are so better.  Let's get you some food."  From that moment, I recovered miraculously fast. 

I taught my son to read at a very early age. I poured a bunch of love on the little guy.  Today, he is one of the youngest professors at a university in N.Y., soon to move to Duke.  He is known all over the world as an Economist and expert in the field of labor laws.  He also is a near concert level pianist.  I used to turn the pages for him for hours as he'd practice as much as seven hours a day.  They used to say they'd never seen a faster learner. 

In 1977, I gave birth to a little girl.  She defied all odds against a pre-mature delivery, and came on her due date.  She is as smart as a whip, and very loving.  She has so many friends, that if she died, you'd have to rent a stadium to accommodate the people that would come.  I am not kidding.  Although she is dynamic in her field as a job placement account manager, she is more known for the human touch she gives to her job and her friendships.  She will work tirelessly to find a job for a needy person.  She always goes the extra mile to give her time to her family members, even if she has to travel a great distance to see them on a birthday.  There has indeed been purpose to my life. 

     Thank you for the opportunity to tell my story.

Any associated medications or substances with the potential to affect the experience?     No

Was the kind of experience difficult to express in words? Yes

Because there are no words in the dictionary for the depth of the experience, and to describe it to someone in 1969, would make me sound like a crazy person.  I described this two years before I had ever heard about an out of body experience, which I first heard described on the Mike Douglas Show regarding the writings of a Kathryn Kubler Ross (not sure about her first name).

At the time of this experience, was there an associated life threatening event?          Uncertain

I gave birth to a 9 pound son on July 7th.  I had pre-eclampsia.  They put me to sleep to deliver the baby, and then took him using a now outlawed procedure called "high forceps delivery."  They had made an incision in my cervix, fit a cuff around the baby's head, made another incision through the perideum (wall between the birth canal and rectum, and pulled the baby out. (Instead now, they do cesareans due to a lower death rate.)  I caught a staph infection, plus the incision site got infected.  At one point in the following 48 hours or so, my fever shot up to 104, but I recovered from that to have a nurse standing over me telling me that if I had given birth 100 years ago, I would have died of pluplural fever.  My out of body experience occurred about 48 hrs. after this fever broke, and I was not on morphine.  The sodium penethol that I was given to go to sleep during the birth, had worn off, it was now about day 5 or 6 in the hospital.  In fact, it was the day before I went home with my baby.

What was your level of consciousness and alertness during the experience?           I was totally conscious and very alert, just exhausted from giving birth.

            Was the experience dream like in any way?   Not at all.  It was the reality that "this is no dream" that made it change my life.

Did you experience a separation of your consciousness from your body?     Uncertain

Not sure what you mean by that.  My spirit left my body, and I looked down on the lifeless, empty frame of bones and flesh that used to be myself, then I re-entered myself later.

What emotions did you feel during the experience?            Hard to explain the depth of these emotions but I will try.  Profound joy, awe, shock, reverence.  Then, upon return to my body, depressed to have to return.  Then, after seeing my dead grandfather, untold peace.  And, confusion as to what exactly had happened to me relative to the world I had known up to that point.  And, a feeling of not being like other people, who had no clue, and I did not tell more than two people about this event for about 10 years because I thought they would think I am a fruit cake....especially since I knew full well what did in fact happen.

Did you hear any unusual sounds or noises?           Ascending toward the light, I heard happy laughter of a child running beside me, and the faint voices, almost whispers, that filled my soul...of other familiar spirits of then deceased.  I was awe struck.  One can barely wrap their brain around what has happen, why to them, and grasp the magnitude of the reverence of the event.

LOCATION DESCRIPTION:  Did you recognize any familiar locations or any locations from familiar religious teachings or encounter any locations inhabited by incredible or amazing creatures?            Uncertain

I thought I sensed pastoral beauty, and I was brought up in the NC mountains with my grandparents.  I felt like I was drawing near a place where the grass was like emeralds, but mostly there was light.

Did you see a light?           No, I have fully explained in the previous entries.

Did you meet or see any other beings?           No, All covered in the previous remarks.

Did you observe or hear anything regarding people or events during your experience that could be verified later? Uncertain

Well, I know that I was not on morphine or some mind altering drug in the hospital, except for about 5 days prior to this, when I was put to sleep for my delivery of my baby.

Did you notice how your 5 senses were working, and if so, how were they different?          Yes

Well, I was aware that I was seeing light, as well as experiencing it all on some emotional level.  I heard the soft voices in the tunnel.  I heard what my grandfather said.

Did you have any sense of altered space or time?   Uncertain

I am not sure what you mean by this.  The event happened, and I never checked a clock to see how long it took.  I don't know what you mean.

Did you have a sense of knowing, special knowledge, universal order and/or purpose?    Yes

All of the above:  sense of knowing, special knowledge, universal order, and purpose.  You described it perfectly.  I came to know that people walking around here on earth and caught up in the daily events that they are living, are simply here for some reason having to do with serving others, or some greater cause, and that we are part of a greater plan, and even greater place.  At times I feel isolated to know that I know something that the average person evidently doesn't know.  It's not like you can just talk about this event with your neighbor over the fence.  Yet, it's a special knowing that takes me beyond the mundane of this life.  Many years later, I tried to talk to my son about it, and it was evident by the look on his face that he thought I'd been under the influence of some drug during this medical event, and that I possibly hallucinated.  Well, nothing could be further from the truth, because in 1990, I was given morphine for pain, and THAT gave me a hallucination, but this out of body event in 1969 was in no way the same.

Did you reach a boundary or limiting physical structure?             Uncertain

Well, I came close to a point where I went totally into this light and it seemed that if I had gone that far I would not have been able to return, but there was no physical boundary like a wall.  It was spiritual.

Did you become aware of future events?       Uncertain

I did not see future events.  I was only told by my grandfather that I had a purpose to live and needed to stay in this life.

Were you involved in or aware of a decision regarding your return to the body?       Yes

Already described in the above comments before I got to this question.

Did you have any psychic, paranormal or other special gifts following the experience that you did not have prior to the experience?         Uncertain

Well, actually, as a child I had some psychic things happen, and AFTER this out of body experience, I have tremendous powers of intuition, but not like the psychic ability I had in my youth.  With one exception.  I did have both before and after, on rare occasions a dream that is very real in which my grandmother comes to the front door wearing the dress she was buried in, and she has come in times of deep trouble in my life to comfort me, and I always have a deep peace and can go on after this happens...but it doesn't happen often.  Maybe 3 total times in my life.  Twice before the out of body experience, and once after.

You may be interested to know about these two events.  Once when I was about 7 years old, I told my mother that I had dreamed that the B store in our town had burned to the ground and a lady was screaming for help in the upstairs.  That was on a Thursday.  In the Sunday paper, on that Saturday that followed that Thursday, B's had a tragic fire where a night maid was trapped and burned in the upstairs.  Also, when I was 7, my grandmother died.  She was recovering from a heart attack and was about to come home.  The phone rang at her mountain house where all the kids were waiting.  I turned to my cousin and said, "That's the hospital, and Mammy has died."

Did you have any changes of attitudes or beliefs following the experience?   Yes

Totally resolute in my belief in a life hereafter.

How has the experience affected your relationships? Daily life? Religious practices? Career choices?       Well, I need to join a group of people who have been through this.  I think my family "thinks I think" this happened, but it really did happen, and other people that have experienced the same thing would best be able to relate.

Has your life changed specifically as a result of your experience?         Yes

For one thing, when deeply meaningful events happen in my life, I have the insight to realize their importance.

Have you shared this experience with others?         Yes

Mixed.  My former husband blew it off.  My mother in law did not know what to think, "Well, you were exhausted; that's for sure."  Years later, I told my son, they believe I experienced it, but I think they think I had some type of hallucination from a bad birth experience.  Or, they may question if I was/am stable.  I am totally stable and don't even take any drugs....and wasn't then.

What emotions did you experience following your experience?  I have already covered that in previous answers.

What was the best and worst part of your experience?      Being given a special knowledge.  In a way, it's not good to have it.  I don't study the bible any longer.  What would be the point.  I already know there is a heaven.  If you told me that the Shroud of Turin was being shown across the street, why would I walk over to see it.  I already know that my faith is real for real reasons.  Another way it's not good is that I am sort of marking time until I "check out."

Is there anything else you would like to add concerning the experience?        I was shown that the grace of God is with us and around us.  I don't fear death, cancer, anything.

Following the experience, have you had any other events in your life, medications or substances which reproduced any part of the experience?         No

Did the questions asked and information you provided accurately and comprehensively describe your experience?               Uncertain

One almost cannot fully explain the intensity of this experience.  There are no words, but I tried.

Please offer any suggestions you may have to improve this questionnaire.    I think you pretty well covered it.