Near Death Experiences

[gravitysurfer 0]

..use your next six wisely!

glad your still here with us brother!

aloha.

[downwardspiral 0]

Ok here's mine

My first deployment as a Marine Ch-53 Crew Chief was an annual trip to Bridgeport, CA where the Marines hold their mountain terrain training course. My squadron was deployed there for 21 days during February and March to support the grunts going through their training. It was also intended for us to learn/practice our operations in the miserable enviroment that the 10k foot high snowy mountains are. As many of you may know, helicopters do not perform well at around 10k feet. The year prior a helicopter crashed due to lack of lift during takeoff causing them to hit a huge tree they were desperately trying to get over. A pilot died in that incident so needless to say I was scared shitless during the entire 21 days stay.

We were there for about 10 days when two of our most experienced pilots were flown out to get some mountain operations flight time. Their first flight there, called an indoctrination flight, was intended for them to get familiar with flying in the snow and landing in all the LZ's before actually allowing them to fly grunts around. I was scheduled, along with two other much more experienced crew chiefs (since I was still a newbie), to accompany them on this flight.

The thing about landing a helicopter in the snow is that when coming in, the rotorwash picks up the loose surface snow and causes whats called a white out. In the middle of a white out its scary as hell, visibility is minimal and exactly like being in a cloud except we are close as hell to the ground. The trick is to land as close as possible to trees (I know, its seems unnatural) so that there is a reference to the ground that you might be able to see through the white out.

So there I am with a pair of extremely experienced pilots and a pair of extremely experienced crew chiefs. What can go wrong? The first LZ they decide to land in happens to be huge because they want to play it safe. The night prior it snowed so its fresh and about 4-6 feet deep and of course, as we are coming in for a landing, the pilot at the controls heads straight for the middle of this huge LZ. I think to myself that was an odd thing to do. Since I am with such experienced people it must not be as odd as I think. As soon as we get to down to 50 feet AGL the snow picks up and everything instantly goes white. I look out the left side, I look out the right side, I look out the front....no point of reference to the ground anywhere. Just complete freakin white! Again nobody is showing any concern and continue as normal. The crew chief in charge (CCIC) had his head completely out of the open upper half of the right side crew door searching for the ground. Being useless I figure I can at least watch and learn so I go over there and stick my head out as well. Sticking my head out I still can't see anything but white. I remember thinking how surprised I was that I wasn't getting vertigo.

Suddenly, I see what I think is the ground and estimate that we were close to being at about 10 ft AGL. At 10 feet the crew chief's responsibility is to notify the pilot at the controls of the helicopter's altitude because the altimeter is unreliable at that point. Just as I was about to point out the ground to the CCIC, he says over the intercommunication system (ICS),"I got sight of the ground. Calling down from 10 feet. 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 foot." The whole time I had my eyes fixed on the surface snow. When he says 1 foot I actually do see the ground and its fucking moving! Oh shit! No time to do anything. No time to say anything. We just plow in. My knees buckle and my face hits the crew door. The CCIC's head hits the door frame before he gets thrown against the forward wall directly behind the right side pilot. The other crew chief had the same thing happen to him because he was on the left side with his head completely out of the open window. After hitting the crew door I slam into CCIC and crumble at his feet.

During the split second that this happened I'm imagining the CH-53 indo'ing up on its nose and the rotor blades sheering off after hitting the ground. I'm imagining the carnage and panic I'm gonna see when our momentum stops. I'm imagining how much pain I'm gonna be in. I'm imaging us sitting out in the freezing fucking cold ass snow waiting for a medivac.

I open my eyes and thank our lucky stars there's no carnage. Both the CCIC are moving, although very slowly. I hear the pilot asking if everyone is ok and there is nothing but silence because the three of us got our bells rung hardcore. The CCIC says he's ok, so does the other crew chief and they both look at me. I'm freaking out because I know I took some damage when my face hit the crew door but can't feel anything. I put my hand to my mouth only to find it full of blood when I pull my hand away. The CCIC sees me about to freak and says,"Its just your fucking lip you pussy. Your ok." The pilot says,"What? Is he bleeding?""Yeah he just busted his lip." "You ok Lance Corporal?" Still shakin up I respond with,"Yes sir."

It turned out all the damage to the helicopter, as well as my lip, was minor. At that point on, every landing, I sinched up my gunners belt (a safetly belt that wraps around the chest and attaches to the ceiling)as short as it would go. Another lesson learned the hardway.

For those of you that do not know what a CH-53 looks like, here ya go
http://millerswebsite5.tripod.com/53pics.html

I have many crazy near carnage incidents involving the CH-53. If you want to hear more, bring beer.

www.FourWheelerHB.com

[peacefuljeffrey 0]

I'm glad to say that my near-death experience, if it qualifies, had nothing to do with either flying or skydiving (I do both). It was on a kayak.

My brother and I were both living in Florida (I still do), and we used to surf our sit-on-top kayaks on the Atlantic off Singer Island in Palm Beach County. I still have the kayak but don't get out much.

We were riding some swells about 100 yards off the beach one day. We don't ride -- or require -- really huge waves to surf the kayaks. We can even do it on waves as small as what, one or two feet! But some days we were out in head-high waves, which when you see them from a seat on a kayak, seem f'in HUGE. Many's the time I was trying to head out past breakers and found that the wave had started to curl, was way too steep (like, back over my head steep) and I went right over backward with a 45 pound plastic kayak coming down on me.

Now, my brother and I generally would wear a rubber/plastic surf leash velcroed to our ankle and the bow of the kayak. Who wants to be out 100 yards in heavy, wind-blown surf without a kayak, even if you're wearing a PFD? I hate thinking about sharks under my feet, but I sure as hell know we got 'em here.

Well, I was starting a ride on a medium sized wave, but it had caught me wrong, and I wasn't heading down it at the right angle. I can't remember for sure, but I think that my bow stuck down into the water (we used to call this "purling" or something, never sure where we picked up that word, either). I ended up just getting flung into the water, a huge wave piling tons of water down on top of me, but here's the kicker:

The boat is getting carried off toward shore by the wave, and I'm getting dragged behind it by my ankle! Forget the PFD, it's not keeping me out of the water. It's like I'm water skiing behind my kayak, but I'm being pulled at an angle down into the water. Since this is a horizontal pull, I'm not able to get closer to the surface.

I was down under the water for what seemed maybe only part of a minute (it definitely wasn't longer than a minute because I simply would not have been able to hold my breath that long. On a good day, sitting in a chair relaxed, I can hold it for about 1.75 minutes. Here I was exerting and scared.)

Down under the water, I realized I was getting desperate for breath. I kept holding. A short time later, the desperation was worse, and I actually opened my eyes under the ocean water, something I'd never done, just because I desperately needed to see how much distance there was between me and sky through the water. It turned out to be only about another foot, so I closed my eyes, miraculously not losing either contact lense, and clawed my way to air.

I still, though, had a kayak dragging me through the water. It was acting like a big sail with the continual waves pushing it. I looked east and saw ANOTHER wave come down ON me, and I was buried again, with barely enough breath regained from before. I was down again, and dragged through the underside again once the wave hit the kayak. When I popped back up, I yanked on my ankle to bring the boat closer (or me closer to it), and managed to scramble aboard. (A sit-on-top kayak does not fill with water: it is self-draining.) I had somehow retained my paddle! (There's a hundred or so bucks saved!) I began to paddle toward shore. Didn't even know if my brother had seen my trial. I got half way there and realized that I would not like myself if I just gave up for the day because of a scare that I had in the end survived, so I turned around and rode more waves. It wasn't a bad day after all.

No, I didn't see any angels or white lights or my body from afar. I think those things are biological in nature, like when you see swimming flashes of light after a bop on the head or a loss of breath. Certain types of near-death will cause a sort of euphoria that corresponds with the things people say they've seen. Me, I was just still there in the moment, eyes closed so it was dark, alone with my relatively focused "get me to where I can breathe" thoughts. If I had died right then, it would have been while I wasn't even thinking about death enough to really fear it, much less welcome it. It was just a bunch of stuff that happened.

I've had a LOT of dreams -- very vivid dreams -- in which I died and was aware of dying. In many or most of them, I find that I am conscious on the other side of death; many times when this happens, I am invulnerable and omnipotent. In one, it turned into a lucid dream. I made the sudden realization, after Patrick Stewart (Capt. Picard, Charles Xavier) executed me in a chamber that focused the sun's rays through a lens in the ceiling to incinerate me, that I was in a dream. The death was painless, as it generally is in my dreams. After I knew I was dead, I was still there in the room with Stewart. I was standing right in front of his face, but he could not see me! I gestured in front of him to check. Then I, in my dream, realized that this couldn't be real, and started to sing to myself happily, "I'm having a lucid dreammm! I'm having a lucid dreammm!" I started to levitate myself by willing it, and found myself floating toward the ceiling of a room that seemed like a barren, leaden-gray box. As I reached the ceiling I passed through the plane of it, but then the dream ended and I woke up.

I'd rather dream than die. But the best is dreaming OF dying. It's actually really exhilarating and a pleasant thing to remember on waking.

---Jeffrey

-Jeffrey
"With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

[jams 0]

Dang there are some fantastic experiences posted here. As if life was ever booring!
Without too much detail, the last thing i remember in my body was the warm wet salty taste of blood pouring down the side of my head as i fell to the ground, feeling numb from the impact, and as i lay on the pavement, i looked up at a street light and thought "ah what a way to go, i haven't even been in love yet".....
i was in a comma for 8 days, very out of body. In a kind of tribunal, as i remember what seemed like a tall granite dais, and above it were beings of light, or beings that could be sensed only by the light their body emitted. Behind me were about 60,000 beings also in their light bodies. I had an undeniable impression that i was being evaluated, or "judged." However the only feeling i had was that everything is perfect. like Everything is Perfect! No shoulds, or wishes, or desires, or regrets. The only emotion present was Agape, universal Love. Then i woke up in the hospital, and started the long path to healing. It occurred to me at the time that there was some kind of willing that kept me attached to life in this body. Like some kind of task i was here to complete. Not that i ever saw the manifest.....
I've read some of the research and while it is possible that this experience was just a biological event, isn't this life just a biological event? There are huge systems of theology, and ideologies that say that life is just a dream. In the end, it is only our actions that we truely own, and take with us when we leave.
I don't know what is on the other side of the doorway, or where all those light beings exist, but i have seen them on other occasions, even more bizarre experiences, and not at all connected to death. But that is another story

m
~ a temporary reconfiguration of stardust

[PhillyKev 0]

Too many to count...

...gun to my head...spin out in car doing 120...falling off of 2nd story roof...getting caught by a rip tide and taking an hour and a half to get back to shore...knife pulled on me...

That's all I can think of off the top of my head.

[caress 0]

I have had a couple near death experiences. Not in skydiving. I am however convinced that I am here for a reason(don't know what it is) When I was really little, my mom says I walked straight into the ocean, and was missing for 45 minutes. 2 scuba divers brought me out and I lived. when I was about 7, I fell out of a tree from pretty high up, and caught on the last branch with my feet with my head hanging over cement. Does that count? I've done other stupid stuff, like jumping off a roof and landing on my face. But I don't count that as a near death thing, just a stupid thing. I also count trying to drink myself to death as stupid too(well for me it was) I am completely responsable for every grey hair on my parents head.-Caress

I've learned.... That being kind is more important than being
right.

[Luv2Fall 0]

I think that is what Sheenster is looking for.

[weegegirl 2]

I was 5 years old in the backyard woods doing an obstacle course. Part of it included an old rolled up wire fence. Crawling through it, I lifted my head into a bees nest.

One of the neighbor kids commented that dead bees were falling from my hair (some bees die after they sting). Tears immediately began to flow and I ran inside to Mom.

Mom took one look at me and called the emergency room to see what she should do. As she was on the phone, my throat began to swell shut. When she told the nurse that, the nurse exclaimed "don't wait for the ambulance - drive as fast as you can to the nearest hospital."

Mom grabbed me and my older sister and drove 100 mph to the ER. I had stopped breathing by the time we got there.

What I was experiencing was Anaphalctic Shock. The doctors immediately shot me up with tons of adrenaline. Had it been just a minute later - I would have died.

I remember them yelling at me not to fall asleep while ten doctors hovered over me. I remember fading in and out. That's it.

[GARYC24 3]

I had two canopies out once on a CRW jump at 7000'
When I cutted away and the main would have tangled with the reserve and cause a big mess, I guess I could have died..but it all cleared..
Would that qualify for a near death? hahaha

[Sheenster303 0]

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I think that is what Sheenster is looking for.

That is certainly what I was looking for. Back in 1967, my dad was in a very bad car accident where he was in a coma for 3 months. After he came out of the coma, he told my mom that he had lifted above his body and was looking down on himself being taken out of the car. Then he remembered going down this tunnel toward a light, but he didn't want to go through it. He remembered seeing beings of light and he was shown three small beings of light whom he believes now were my brother, my sister and me. According to my professor, only one to two percent of people experience life preview in a near death experience. I think that's pretty cool that he was able to see what lied ahead of him in his life.

I'm so funny I crack my head open!

P.M.S. #102

[freeflir29 0]

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I have many crazy near carnage incidents involving the CH-53. If you want to hear more, bring beer.

I didn't even count that one. I have one very similar except it involves a UH-60, an attempted take off, and sand instead instead of snow. I was just a passenger though. Luckily I had a Scout detachment to break my fall.

[TribalTalon 0]

you know what, that kayak story reminded me of my absolute closest call yet. I was like 12-13 at the time and we were at the Guadalupe river, tubing. anyway, there's this chute that winds to the left and right and then dumps into a big opening that has a bunch of whirlpools in it, and then continues on with the normal river flow. If you're in a tube, you get spun around by the whirlpools and then continue on. Well, me being really stupid and daredevil-ish, i went through that chute without a tube, and immediately got sucked down into a whirlpool, and got shot back out, when i came up i took a huge breath of air and got sucked back under, and i remember being dragged along the river bottom, which sucked cuz it was all rugged and full of basketball size rocks. It must have been about a minute and a half because i was starting to run out of air and really started to worry about getting back up, i was just letting the water carry me and i was hoping i'd get spit out. Anyway, so i started to run out of air and started to get this panicky feeling in my chest, so i started fighting to get to the surface, made it up, and hit the wall on the other side so hard i got the air knocked out of me completely, and sank back down. i was REALLY worried by that point because i was starting to tire and was having a hard time swimming. i managed to claw myself up that wall until my head got out of the water and yelled help to the lifeguards who were sitting on top of that wall. the first time i yelled, they just kinda casually looked at me, and turned back around. the next time, i yelled again and this time a guy in a tube saw me holding onto the wall and he screamed at the lifeguards who then threw this PUNY, and i mean friggin PUNY little donut of a tube at me. I doubt even a midget could float on this little thing. So i grab it and let go of the wall and immediately sink as this thing is of course, worthless. At that point i was extremely worried as i had no strength left in my arms and the lifeguard was busy flirting with some chicks or something, i dunno. The guy that had screamed at the lifeguard jumped off his tube and swam over to me and grabbed me and pulled me over to the shallow end, by that time i was so weak i couldnt even stand up. lol. I thanked him and took a moment to get my air back and as soon as i did, i took that little frickin tube i still had and let all the air out of it and threw it into the woods as far as i could and flipped that life guard off. after that i just swam down river and that was it.

[Sheenster303 0]

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When I was really little, my mom says I walked straight into the ocean, and was missing for 45 minutes. 2 scuba divers brought me out and I lived.

I had almost the same thing happen to me when I was little too. Except I floated out into the ocean on a raft and just kind of floated away. I didn't fall into the water or anything but these 2 scuba divers found me a mile from the shore just floating along. Kinda weird.............

I'm so funny I crack my head open!

P.M.S. #102

[freeflir29 0]

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these 2 scuba divers found me a mile from the shore just floating along. Kinda weird............

It's amazing the survival rate for kids is so high.

[Muenkel 0]

I experienced an out of body experience when I fell down the stairs. I didn't remember it, until some months later. I never saw a bright light. I was just floating over my body as it layed on the floor. Very freaky experience. I do believe I started a thread about that very topic a couple of months ago, but it was titled "Out of body experiences."

Chris

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Chris