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Near-Death Experiences
21 Plays2 years ago
This week, there was so much to pack in that it’s a spooky 2-parter, featuring Felicia’s story this week and Lauren’s story next week!
First up this week, Felicia explores the phenomena of NDE’s, or Near-Death Experiences, as she focuses on the story of Pam Reynolds - a singer/songwriter who was knock, knock, knockin' on heaven's door during a brain operation. Her story has been purported as proof for out-body-experiences and life after death, with near-death studies proponents considering her operating table tale “evidence of the survival of consciousness after death.”
Step into the light with us, Carol Anne, to find out in this week’s episode! And tune-in next week as Lauren explores The Lemp Mansion - one of the ten most haunted places in America!
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Transcript
Introduction and Spooky Stories
00:00:12
Speaker
Welcome to the Sinister Sisters podcast. I'm Felicia. I'm Lauren. We're best friends. And we like spooky stuff.
Is Lauren's New Apartment Haunted?
00:00:21
Speaker
Lauren just moved into a new apartment. The burning button. I did. You think it's haunted? OK. So I don't know if I've ever shared this story on this podcast. We were convinced that James's old apartment was haunted because of this one particular cow skull he had. Did I tell you about this whole thing?
00:00:42
Speaker
I don't know. So James is Lauren's boyfriend, to be clear. And this week they moved in together, which is congratulations. Thank you. But yes, tell me about the cow head. So he had this cow skull that he bought at a guitar show and we for some reason got it in our heads. We used to hear scary sounds in his apartment almost constantly. Was it knowing?
00:01:10
Speaker
No, but I wish it was. But we would hear something that sounded like a door closing outside. Rufus never... Okay, this actually is also part of my story and I'm going to try to make it quick. Rufus has never in all of our travel...
00:01:24
Speaker
Like I took him to like this random hotel once. I took him to like my parents' house. That's huge. Like I've taken him many places and he's never damaged any furniture, but he scratched the crap out of James's front door one time. And then he kept scratching at it. And so it was actually kind of bad in the move out, but it ended up being okay. But we are convinced that it was because of the cow skull. He was scared though. Yes.
00:01:51
Speaker
Oh, that's never done it again. Except this time. So we did move into this new apartment. Rufus did scratch the door the first time we left him by himself. What? Did you bring the cow head with you? No, I made James leave the cow head.
00:02:09
Speaker
So I'm like, what is this? What is happening? But we were laying in bed last night. He might be someone stalking James, a ghost, a demon. But we were laying in bed last night and Rufus was with us in the room. And again, out of nowhere, pots in our cabinet made like a pot noise that they were moving. And I was like, it's really haunted. This is terrible.
00:02:36
Speaker
To be truthful, I didn't tell Lauren I was going to ask that question. I'm just, I was just riffing. And little did I know, it is haunted. I can't prove anything. But it is also weirdly the, I will say it's like the loudest apartment complex. I've I mean, I've only lived in one other in Dallas. But there are like a lot of outside noises. And I'm always like, is this a ghost too?
00:03:07
Speaker
But we are very excited. We're very happy. I will keep you posted if there's any more paranormal activity that's not just pots moving. You wake up one day and all the cabinets are open.
00:03:20
Speaker
There was something I can't remember what it was. There was something else that happened while we've been here that I was like, I swear I just put this here. Like why is it over here? And he was like, I moved it. I moved it. I'm the ghost. I'm not used to living with someone. I just want things to be where I leave them. I love the idea. That would be such a funny idea for like,
00:03:45
Speaker
an episode of something where it's like you think the house is haunted, but it's just because you're living with someone for the first time. And so you don't expect things to be a different place. Should I start a TikTok? That's just that.
00:03:55
Speaker
Yes. I mean, oh, yes. Yes. I'll open the fridge and be like, the milk is gone. The milk is gone. Why is it in the trash now? That's good. That's good. I did. I mean, this is not, I have another story too that I thought was, I think I told this on the podcast before where I thought my bathtub
00:04:16
Speaker
Was just didn't get as dirty as my one in New York like I said to James at some point It's so crazy like my tub just doesn't get as dirty as it did in New York and he's like Lauren That's because I clean it once a month for you. Oh He was cleaning your bathtub
00:04:33
Speaker
No, that's a man. That's a good man right there. My mom, I said it in front of my mom because my mom was like, was she floored? Was she floored? She was so offended. She was like, you haven't been cleaning your tub at all. And you just thought magical fairies were taking care of it. And I was like, I guess so. That is.
00:04:53
Speaker
Hilarious. Because part of me would have been like, well, New York's so dirty. Oh, yeah. But I was like, New York's so dirty. Maybe that was true. But that's also like, your brain works how my brain works, which is not a problem. Let's not think about it. I'm like, my tub's clean? Great. Moving on. Perfect. Perfect. That's hilarious. I also was like, when have you been doing it? Like in the night? And he's like, oh, no, you're like in the other room, like there. Wow.
00:05:21
Speaker
Wow. Incredible. Incredible. I'm very lucky. I'm very lucky to have someone that does that and didn't even say a word.
Podcast as a Catch-Up Session
00:05:28
Speaker
Oh, that's nice. That's the thing. Didn't even ask for a promise. I do think for James, but then I'm like, did you see? Did you see this thing that I did? Oh, yeah. I mean, absolutely. I'm like, Travis, did you notice that the dishes were done? Did you notice that I moved that table from here to there? Doesn't it look nice?
00:05:49
Speaker
Did you see the dusting I did earlier? The dusting? Oh, God. I'm sorry. This has been a really long riff, but... No, it's really good. I loved it all. It's nice. As a reminder to all, this is how Lauren and I hang out is doing this podcast. So it's a nice catch up. It's really just a gift to them that we're just looping them in.
Movie Reviews: 'Nope' and 'Vengeance'
00:06:13
Speaker
Okay, back to normal schedule podcast programming. Have you watched anything? Are you watching anything? What do you have? I don't know if we want to talk about this more on the podcast, but I did see nope, which I loved. Me too. Me too. It's a hard movie to talk about without discussing spoilers. But yeah, it's amazing, right?
00:06:40
Speaker
Yeah, I might say my favorite alien movie, which I guess is a spoiler. Oh, I mean, I think it's pretty clear from the trailers and everything that it's like some sort of alien UFO space type situation. Like I think that's pretty clear. But yeah, me too. I mean, I'm not I'm not a huge sci fi horror person myself. Me either. And this I thought was so incredible. So like same. I think also my favorite now.
00:07:11
Speaker
And I thought Kiki Palmer was so amazing. I mean, it was just, I thought the actors were just so good. I really loved him. I also saw vengeance last night, which is the new BJ Novak movie. Have you seen anything? Oh, yeah. He like directed it and he's in it, right? Okay. I don't know anything about it.
00:07:31
Speaker
It's about a New Yorker coming to Texas, so I very much identify. Oh God. And it's a horror movie? It's like a true crime story. Got it. I will say it was one of those classic times that we always talk about where I really wish he had had probably a co-writer and someone else direct it.
00:07:59
Speaker
Cause he directed and wrote it and started it. Don't do it all. Don't do it all. You don't need to. And it makes for a less, it makes everything so one note. I feel like when people do that.
00:08:12
Speaker
I agree. And just like sometimes I think people get like, I mean, in this particular case, I think he kind of got like up his own butt about it a little where I was like, there's a lot of monologues and like a lot of like white dudes talking that I'm like, No, see theater and film are supposed to be a collaboration.
00:08:32
Speaker
And if it's not, it's not going to be as interesting, I don't think. Yeah. And he's difficult for me because obviously like Ryan on the office is always how I'll think of him. Yeah, of course. But I can't tell if he's actually a douche or if he just like consistently plays douches.
00:08:52
Speaker
So that's always difficult for me. Yeah. I don't know. It's like it's always for me. Like I'm like, are we supposed to be like rooting for you or are we not? Interesting. And so I will say the comedy parts of like a New Yorker coming to Texas were all hilarious. And of course he does that so well and like wrote it so well. And it's hilarious. But to me, it was just like such a cool concept and like an interesting idea of basically
00:09:17
Speaker
he hooks up with this girl in New York and he's like a traditional like hooks up with a bunch of girls. And then her family from Texas call him and say that she's been murdered. And he's like, they assume that he's her boyfriend. They're like, she has all these pictures of you. She talked about you all the time, like come to the funeral. And he's like, I didn't know her that well. That's so dark in so many ways.
00:09:45
Speaker
And so sad for that girl. Okay, I'll probably watch it at some point. It's very sad. You should. It's worth
Exploration of Mormon Fundamentalism
00:09:51
Speaker
a watch. I just maybe wouldn't rush to the theater to see it, I guess. Maybe wait for the VOD. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I understand. But anything else you wanted to recommend this week?
00:10:02
Speaker
Yeah, I watched Keep Sweet, Pray and Obey. Did you watch it? Yes. Parts. I kind of fell asleep. I fell asleep. I was like, I started watching it and then I fell asleep and then I kept watching it. Yeah. Well, I mean, I was like obsessed. It's just, it's about these like Mormon
00:10:26
Speaker
fundamentalist something, the men that married the child brides and all the 25 wives and blah, blah, blah out in Salt Lake City. And then eventually Texas. Oh yeah, it's a mess. But that, I mean, that thing was so crazy, so fascinating. And what blew my mind is just how recent it was.
00:10:52
Speaker
Like that was freaking in the early 2000s. I was like, people were doing this in the early 2000s, like burying child brides in pastel dresses in Utah. I don't know. It just like, it's something that in my brain, it was something that happened in like the 70s and 80s, like most cult things in my brain. No, no, it was not that.
00:11:17
Speaker
But it's, I mean, it just feels, I mean, yeah, it feels much worse than like, I feel like my idea of all that is still that TLC show, Sister Wives. Do you ever watch that? Oh, I never did, but go ahead. Yeah. But that's like my idea of like modern that, but you're exactly right. I couldn't believe it was so recent.
00:11:36
Speaker
Yeah, it's very scary. It's very scary in so many ways and scary for all the people that were like born into this cult. Where it's like if you've never known anything else, like when they were like when people were being like rescued from the cult, they were like, please don't.
00:11:55
Speaker
Like we're good. But yeah, like this is what I want because I don't know anything else. It's just so dark. It's so well done. Great documentary. The interviews are like incredible from the people that have left this wild stuff. Wild stuff. And any kind of like collective thought like that really freaks me out where I'm like, isn't that one click from Catholicism?
00:12:16
Speaker
Isn't that one click from, you know, like there's so many things that people are born into that like we don't think about as cults or even like parts of NYU. I don't know. There's like weirdness. Right? Like I'm like, it was like a little culty. I don't know. Absolutely. Absolutely. That's, I mean, that's such a, I mean, absolutely Atlantic. Anyways, not to bring up our own college. We weren't in it. Actually we were kind of in it. Well, it was not our choice.
Investigating Near-Death Experiences
00:12:45
Speaker
That's my recommendation. I probably have others, but that's the one I'll stick with for today. And yeah, anything else or shall I dive in? No, I guess after all that, that chit chat, I'm ready to hear your topic this week. Yeah. So my topic this week is a little conceptual, if you will. I started Googling this idea of the white light that people see in death go towards the white light.
00:13:13
Speaker
Don't go towards it. What are we supposed to do? It's appropriate at the time, depending on your age. But I started looking it up, and I started coming to something that I've already done research on before, and I think have even talked about in some other episodes, the idea of near-death experiences, because the idea of the white light comes from people that survive death, right?
00:13:40
Speaker
somebody sees it, they don't actually end up dying. And they get to tell their experience to us on the side of the living. And so I started looking into it. And the first thing I'll talk about is kind of the all the common
00:13:57
Speaker
things that people feel, experience, and see when they have a near-death experience or when they're in the state of death. So I'm going to go through a bunch of those right now, and you probably heard a lot of them before. So the first one is this kind of understanding that you're dead, and that's like, and kind of being okay with it.
00:14:16
Speaker
a sense of peace or serenity, this like overwhelming of calm, positive feeling inside of yourself. A lot of people describe an out of body experience where they feel like their consciousness, their brain is separate from their body on earth. Sometimes people say like they're floating above themselves, or they come kind of out of the top of their head.
00:14:41
Speaker
or they're watching their body from another place in the room, just strange things like that. That's so creepy. I know. And the reason I was excited about looking it up is just because everyone kind of feels the same stuff. And it's like, OK, so if the human body and mind, it's all kind of going through the same thing around death. What does it mean?
00:15:12
Speaker
So here's a few more. So this idea of a tunnel going into darkness and there being a light at the end of the tunnel or a white light that you're going towards.
00:15:25
Speaker
Oh, some people, the idea of seeing your life flash before your eyes, that saying. So like a bunch of images of your life coming to you very rapidly. Sometimes people feel or see almost what feels like a hallucination of other people that have died. Like you're going to meet those people somehow. You're going towards them. Like there is a
00:15:52
Speaker
I think I might have talked about this on the podcast. It's hard to say. It's been a long podcast. But there was this hospice nurse that I was looking up one time that talked about people seeing their loved ones or even dogs sometime. And that's how she knew they were very close to death because someone had come to get them, basically. I just hope that's true.
00:16:19
Speaker
Right? Oh my God, me too. Like, just like the feeling of like, okay, I'm safe now because I know and see this person that I feel safe with. And so I feel like I can't go with them. Oh man, absolutely. So good.
00:16:31
Speaker
Yeah, and so there's probably others, but those are kind of the main ones. And so some studies have been done on this, but before I go into the studies, I just want to give like a real world example of this idea of a near-death experience. And I went with
00:16:52
Speaker
I went with the Pam Reynolds case. I don't know why I thought you were going to tell your own experience, and I was so scared. I went with my own case of my near-death experience. No, I've never, thankfully, not one had. Has she had one that I forgot? No, I forgot. No, no, no. This is the case of Pam Reynolds, who is actually a singer-songwriter.
00:17:13
Speaker
And she died in 2010 for realsies, but she had a near death experience in 1991 when she was 35. And it's pretty well documented because it happened at a hospital while she was undergoing this brain surgery of some sort. And I'll explain basically what happened. So she had had
00:17:37
Speaker
some neurological issues where she was having a lot of dizziness, her brain was having trouble connecting to the rest of her body so she would have some difficulty moving certain body parts. Her speech was like losing her speech and they were like, okay, you definitely have some brain issues going on. And what they discovered is that she had had an aneurysm
00:18:00
Speaker
close to her brain stem, which, first of all, terrifying. I'm scared. Me too. Already. So they basically were like, we need to remove this thing. And that's basically the only way you're going to be able to survive this and get the life back that you had before.
00:18:15
Speaker
So the surgery was a success and the surgery took around seven hours. There wasn't, there was very few complications. It had gone pretty well. But while she was under for those seven hours, she had a lot of experiences that she was very conscious of that she could remember when she woke up.
00:18:39
Speaker
So the first thing is that she, because she's a singer-songwriter, maybe she has perfect pitch or something, but she said the first thing she remembers is this sound that was a natural D, like the note D. And she could hear the sound and it felt like the sound was pulling her out of her body.
00:19:01
Speaker
And so she so she's being pulled out of her body and eventually she's floating above herself, looking down at herself on the operating table where there's like over like 20 doctors in the room. Like this is a very serious surgery. And she says that while she was floating, she felt like even more aware of herself and her life than when she's awake.
00:19:28
Speaker
She felt very clear. She wasn't like it wasn't like she was like woozy and hallucinating like she felt very clear.
00:19:35
Speaker
Oh, and sorry, I forgot to say this is most important, probably. While she was under while she was on the table, she had something over her eyes so she couldn't see. And she had these very intense like ear plug things in. So there there was no way in which she was hearing or seeing anything from her physical body.
00:19:59
Speaker
Okay, so while she's floating above herself, the first thing she remembers seeing is this saw that she described as looking like an electric toothbrush. And she said she could hear some of the conversations between the doctors,
00:20:18
Speaker
For example, she heard a female doctor say something about her arteries being too small, and the other doctor said, okay, we're going to use the other side, blah, blah, blah. She heard them talk about lowering her body temperature.
00:20:33
Speaker
And sometime during this, she started to notice this tunnel and a bright white light. So she felt compelled to go towards this light. And while she was experiencing this, she flatlined on the table. So she died for a moment.
00:20:57
Speaker
The surgeon, something had happened. There was some kind of bleeding issue. She flatlined, but they did revive her. And she said that after this white light tunnel
00:21:10
Speaker
She had this experience of talking to her dead grandmother and her uncle. And at some point they led her back to the operating room. And when she got back to the operating room, she said she could hear the song Hotel California by the Eagles as they were restarting her heart and reviving her.
00:21:38
Speaker
I wonder if the surgeon was playing that song. It doesn't say that. It doesn't say that. I'll get to the doctor side of it in a hot second. But yeah, hold on.
00:21:50
Speaker
So she said that when she looked down at her body, she looked, I mean, it's a horrifying sight to see. She said her body looks like a train wreck. You have to remember also like her eyes are like taped up her ears. She's like, it's just, she's dead. Like, it's just a bad sight to see. And she didn't want to go back. She was like, I don't want to go back into that body. Like, I'm good. And
00:22:16
Speaker
And then she said that her uncle was the one that pushed her to go back into her body. And she said when she entered her body again, Hotel California is still playing. This is so funny to me. And the part of the song said, you can check out any time you like, but you can never leave. And she said,
00:22:43
Speaker
At that point, she sort of became alert again. And she thought that that was that she said this is in quotes, you know, that is really insensitive to say to someone who just died. Like so she's like having this like very conscious experience of everything that's going on while she is dead on the table. Oh, that's so scary. I know. It's it's it's outrageous.
00:23:10
Speaker
Let's now go to the doctor's side of this. So when she woke up after surgery, she remembered all this, but she also was like, I wonder if I was just hallucinating. Like she didn't really consider any of it to be true.
00:23:25
Speaker
until she started talking to her doctor, whose name was Dr. Spetzler, sorry, Dr. Spetzler. And when she started talking about all the things she remembered from when she was dying, he said, okay, yes, all that was happening. And he says to this day, from a scientific perspective, I have absolutely no explanation about how this could have happened.
00:23:55
Speaker
Wow. Yeah. So they got the records from her surgery. So they talked about the conversation about her arteries. They talked about the saw that indeed does look like an electric toothbrush, which that one for me, like the seeing something that she could never have seen because she was unconscious. Right. That one blows my mind the most. Like hearing things makes me feel like
00:24:24
Speaker
That's like less crazy to me, but seeing something and being able to describe it while you're dead on the table. And she doesn't necessarily know what a saw that the surgeon would use would look like.
00:24:36
Speaker
Exactly. Exactly. She wouldn't know what that is. Yeah, totally. Totally. And then, sorry, coming back to your Hotel California, that they were indeed playing Hotel California, but there's no way, the doctor says there is no way that she could have heard it because of how all the stuff that was in her and around her ears, there is just no world in which she could have heard that going on.
00:25:02
Speaker
That's so crazy. My dad said that to me for the first time. At some point, he was talking about the playlists he plays in surgery. I was like, you should be careful. What if they are somehow conscious of something? I don't know. Wouldn't you be scared if your surgeon was playing heavy metal music or something? Heavy metal. I don't think my dad ever plays anything crazy. Probably not heavy metal, but you never know.
00:25:28
Speaker
Yeah, it's such a weird experience to be like, oh my God, you're cutting open someone and you're just like bopping along to something. To Hotel California? Yeah, Hotel California. Wild. So no one's been able to explain her experience, but I do want to talk now about a study that was done on rats that it's kind of
00:25:57
Speaker
people trying to understand neurologically, why, when your body is shutting down and dying, why everyone is experiencing the same thing. So, and this is, you know, because there's obviously there's also like, you know, the religious perspective on this, the like, you know,
00:26:17
Speaker
just the idea of death and the other side. There's all these kind of spiritual ways to look at it that I'm sure we could go on and on about. But I was curious more about what is the science explanation, if there is one. And so the study was done on rats. And it basically decided that these experiences that people have are sort of an electrical surge that is happening in your brain.
00:26:47
Speaker
So first of all, when you are dying, your brain can experience like REM sleep. It can experience this thing called a REM intrusion, which is basically your brain hallucinating while technically awake. So it's like you're not asleep. Your body is not in a state of sleep. You're actually in a state of consciousness, but you are hallucinating.
00:27:16
Speaker
Another thing that can happen in the brain is this idea of a sensory mix up where you're everything is kind of misfiring with each other, which I'm not super sure how that explains this, but it says that that can explain this idea of a bright light or a dark tunnel. Even when your eyes are closed and you're dying, it's like your brain is like creating things happening.
00:27:40
Speaker
This one I've heard a lot, which is that your brain releases a bunch of endorphins all at once, which I wonder if it's sort of your which I mean, if this just happens, well, it does. So this thing happening naturally is kind of magic, right? Where it's like you're going through like, what will be the most traumatic thing of your life. So your brain releases happy positive endorphins to make that experience. Okay, it kind of reminds me like if you're under
00:28:10
Speaker
This is a dark way to say it, because I've watched too many horror movies. But this idea of if your body is under too much physical pain, you'll pass out. And it's your body's way of protecting your brain from experiencing this horrible thing that's happening to you. So this is kind of a version of that. So it floods endorphins. And then doing these brain scans on these mice, they basically have understood that the brain
00:28:39
Speaker
in the state of dying is more active like off the charts than any other time in your life. Wow, that's so interesting and scary and cool. Yeah, like your brain is just freaking going off in there.
00:28:55
Speaker
And particularly if you think about that idea that like you only use like a very small percentage of your brain at any given time, when you're like in your biggest state of like stress or death or whatever is like the idea of death that your body is like ending, that your brain is just like using so much more power than it typically does on a daily basis, could potentially explain all this crazy stuff that people experience.
00:29:25
Speaker
It's wild. The only thing that doesn't that this still doesn't super explain to me. So the brain, everyone's brain doing the same thing.
00:29:40
Speaker
and using the same imagery is confusing. It doesn't seem to be explained to me in this science way. I understand the release of endorphins. I even understand the idea of your brain hallucinating. But what I don't understand is why, no matter what kind of background or person or part of the world or anything like that, that everyone's brain is using the same images, which are a white light, a long tunnel,
00:30:10
Speaker
Um, and like past loved ones coming to get you like whoever had it first, like it's like, sure.
00:30:19
Speaker
At this point, can I imagine that Lauren's brain to soothe me is like, look at this tunnel and this white lighter, your loved ones or all those things. But it's like whoever started it, like how did they get that? You know what I mean? It's how I always go with this. Yeah. I'm like, but somebody was first to think of this or want this or whatever.
00:30:41
Speaker
Absolutely. And so, like, what is this thing that we're all experiencing? Why is why or why? Why does the human brain choose those things when it could choose anything? If your brain is firing at such a rapid pace and it's going crazy, why does everyone's experience choose the same imagery? That to me, like, I feel like I can't really understand with like the science of it.
00:31:07
Speaker
But yeah, so that's kind of it. That's kind of the white light, near-death experience, things I wanted to research for this week. I thought it was really interesting. I love it. That story, what's her name? The singer-songwriter? Pam Reynolds. Pam Reynolds. That was such a cool, I'd never heard that before. Such a cool story.
00:31:29
Speaker
Every week, no matter what I'm researching, I'm scared that I've already researched it. So I was like, have I talked about Pam Reynolds? And I'm like going through all of our notes. And I'm like, no. But I'm like, are you sure? No. I think we talked about near-death experiences maybe, but not in this way. Yeah. Yeah. I think it was a different episode, but it was in a different perspective. Definitely. And I liked hearing that research. So thank you for doing that.
00:31:57
Speaker
No problem. That's it. Amazing. Hey, guys. This week got a little lengthy, so we decided to split it into two episodes. You'll hear Lauren's story next week. But until then, we hope you have some sweet, sweet nightmares. Bye.