Finally after 30 years of carrying a secret and a burden, I have a platform to discuss my experience, without people judging me and thinking I’m crazy.

As a teenager, around 14, I started to have out of body experiences. I would go to bed in the middle of the day, feeling exhausted and would realise I had left my body, but always got “stopped” by the ceiling. I was aware of my physical body on the bed below me but could never turn to look at it. It was possible to see the room I was in, so I knew I was still in my room (but stuck on the ceiling) and I could see out of the bedroom window and still hear the daily background noise as it happened. I would either get frustrated by my lack of movement or get anxious I was free from my body, which would cause me to return to my body and would wake me up with a jolt.

Then on one day of these naps I had a daydream (I’m not convinced it was an out of body) were I made my way to the top of the stairs (where I lived) and when I got there, I saw the figure of “death” in the hallway. It was as if the figure had just passed through the (closed) front door and was passing through the (closed) door into the living room. This ignited a sense of fear and panic and a feeling that it had come looking for me. I may have woken up in a jolt, and I felt terribly afraid and never experienced an out of body after that.

My near death experience felt very different from the out of body sensation. This happened to me at night. I don’t recall what happened the day before, probably just another mundane cycle of events. I know I had gone to sleep but was awoken by a feeling of being watched and irritated by a pin-prick of light in the corner of my room, where the ceiling met the wall.

Thinking it was some reflection, and puzzled where it could be coming from, as there was no other light source to create it, I felt myself get out of bed and move towards it to examine it. As I got closer to it, it got bigger and bigger until I found myself totally absorbed by the light, and realising I was no longer at home or in my room or on earth, I felt some sort of struggle and panic. I was no longer in my body and I didn’t know what was happening. I then became aware of a commotion in the light further ahead of me and sensed I was causing concern and disturbance to those in the light. I had the feeling of them saying what is he doing here, he shouldn’t be here yet. I felt I knew some of the voices but others, I didn’t know, but yet they knew me.

Then as if the penny finally dropped, my being realised I was dying and I remember shouting, “Oh God I’m not ready for this!” which, with a heavy thrusting sensation, resulted in my spirit being returned to earth, into my bedroom and back into my body.

I sat up bolt right, sobbing my eyes out, after a complete profound and emotional roller coaster of a journey. Confused, bewildered, moved, loved, a whole cacophony of emotions swirling throughout my teenage self.

Later in life, on reflection, I felt those unknown beings must have been ancestors who knew me, so that encouraged me to trace who they had been on this earthly plane and to honour their memory. This in turn gave me the ability to cope through chronic mental health issues which emerged from about the age of 24 years.

I now, at 44, have terminal physical health issues and long to be taken in my sleep by the white light. I just hope, should it happen again, that I accept it openly and not with fear or confusion, as happened on my first experience.