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Tricia Barker was depressed. She was 21 years old, in college studying English, unsure what career would follow, and generally feeling that life was hopeless and painful. She tried to take her own life by washing a handful of pills down with alcohol.
She woke up 36 hours later still in her own room. She didn’t tell anyone she had attempted suicide, but decided to move forward with her life. As a symbol of getting her life back on track, she started training to run a 10-kilometer marathon.
After a suicide attempt, Barker trained to run a marathon as a way to recover from deep depression. On the way to the marathon, she had a terrible car accident.
After weeks of training she was on her way to run the marathon when she had a head-on collision. Her back was broken in several places, she couldn’t feel her legs, and she had internal injuries. Without health insurance, it took nearly 20 hours to find a surgeon who would operate on her. She spent those 20 hours lying in the hospital without painkillers or any relief.
Finally on the operating table, Barker was anesthetized.
In an instant, her spirit left her body.
“The anesthesiologist put the mask over me and then I was out of my body,” she said, snapping her fingers to show how quickly it happened.
“At the time, I was agnostic and so I was so shocked the spirit goes on. I wanted to pop back in my body, wake up, and tell all my friends, ‘Hey, we do go on!’” she said in a video she made about her experience.
She saw her own body on the table, with her back opened up and blood everywhere. Two angels came to her and calmed her. She saw them send light through the surgeons and into her body.
At that moment, she knew the surgeons would be able to remove the debris from her back and she would walk again.
But that’s when she saw the monitor flatline.
While her body lay there dead, she visited her loved ones and saw events that were later verified to have really happened.
Distressed at seeing her body there dead, unsure how the doctors could revive her, she didn’t want to view the scene any longer. With that thought, she was instantly in the hallway.
This is where something happened that has made her case of great interest to near-death experience (NDE) researchers. She saw her stepfather, a health nut who would never touch sweets, getting a candy bar from a vending machine in the hallway of the hospital and eating it. This was later verified to have really happened.
Such an event is called a “veridical perception.” Veridical perceptions are observations a person remembers from an out-of-body experience that can be independently verified. These are things that they could not have known through ordinary means.
Some scientists, like neurologist Kevin Nelson at the University of Kentucky, try to explain NDEs as processes in the brain similar to those that occur when a person dreams or suddenly loses oxygen.
Scientists have tried to explain NDEs as processes in the brain, but Dr. Jan Holden says none of those explanations can account for the phenomenon.
Distressed at seeing her body there dead, unsure how the doctors could revive her, she didn’t want to view the scene any longer. With that thought, she was instantly in the hallway.
This is where something happened that has made her case of great interest to near-death experience (NDE) researchers. She saw her stepfather, a health nut who would never touch sweets, getting a candy bar from a vending machine in the hallway of the hospital and eating it. This was later verified to have really happened.
Such an event is called a “veridical perception.” Veridical perceptions are observations a person remembers from an out-of-body experience that can be independently verified. These are things that they could not have known through ordinary means.
Some scientists, like neurologist Kevin Nelson at the University of Kentucky, try to explain NDEs as processes in the brain similar to those that occur when a person dreams or suddenly loses oxygen.
Scientists have tried to explain NDEs as processes in the brain, but Dr. Jan Holden says none of those explanations can account for the phenomenon.
Yet Dr. Jan Holden, a professor at the University of North Texas and a long-time NDE researcher, has identified about 100 cases of veridical perception. She has determined through her examination of hundreds of NDE cases that this common phenomenon cannot be explained through the kind of ordinary processes proposed by Nelson.
“Any material explanation that’s been attempted doesn’t account for some of the things that happen in NDEs,” Holden said in a recorded lecture she gave to present her book, “The Handbook of Near-Death Experiences.”
“None of those models can explain how Tricia knew that her stepfather was vending a candy bar while she was unconscious and flatlined in the surgical room,” Holden said. Barker’s is one of the many NDE cases Holden has investigated.
Holden has found that about one out of every five people who have a brush with death have a similarly profound out-of-body experience. Many people don’t discuss them openly, for fear of ridicule. Some NDEers have even been put in psychiatric care because of talking about their experiences.
But Holden has found that the mental health of NDEers reflects that of the population at large. These people are as sane and rational as anyone else. The impacts of these experiences are vastly positive. About 90 percent of people who have an NDE find it a pleasant experience, and many of them come back happier and with a strong sense of purpose.
‘I had never felt any love like that—a mom’s love, romantic love, nothing could compare.’
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