Now this is really weird!
I guess many of us have heard of people who’ve had “near death experiences”.
In most cases people who’ve reported on such events tell of feelings of total peace and joy, but Howard Storm an atheist father of two and professor and chairman of the art department at North Kentucky University experienced something completely different.
During a trip to Paris in June 1985 he unexpectedly suffered from a perforated duodenum and was told that he would die without immediate surgery.
Waking from unconsciousness, he found himself standing next to his bed, feeling better than he’d ever felt, only then to realise that the lifeless body in the bed was his own.
He said he could hear people outside the room calling him by name in English, which in itself was strange because everybody in the French hospital only spoke French.
The voices were saying, ‘Hurry up. We’ve been waiting for you. We know everything. We’ve been waiting and waiting, and it’s time for you to come with us’.
Believing that they were taking him to the doctor, he left the light of the room and went out into a very grey, dank hallway, where a group of people hovering in the darkness lead him down what he thought was the hallway.
He describes walking for what seemed an eternity whilst being encircled by the dark and increasingly threatening group shouting, ‘This way, keep moving, hurry up’. ‘What’s the matter with you? Move, move faster. You’re too slow”.
Then he felt them kicking, punching, pulling, biting, ripping, and tearing into him, until he felt completely defeated, depressed and in despair.
Unable to think of any way out, he felt that he was trapped with these horrible people for eternity.
Then he says he heard a voice say, ‘Pray to God’.
But he didn’t believe in God, he didn’t pray. Didn’t even know how to!
And then louder than before the voice said, ‘Pray to God,’
At this point he saw an image of himself as a little boy in a Sunday school singing, “Jesus Loves Me”.
He says he could feel it vividly, and that as a little boy, when he’d sung “Jesus Loved Me”, he’d really believed it then!
Realising what he had to do, a tiny light appeared in the darkness which increased in intensity.
After recovery and returning home, and no longer an atheist, Howard resigned his professorship, and his position at the university and became a pastor at a small church.
A Chicago Tribune journalist commented that evidence suggested that this experience was far more than a simple hallucination, as something so profound had occurred which had chilled him to the bone and changed his life forever.
An incredible, and I think you’ll agree, a truly moving story.
In the second hour, I was joined once again by our very own local historian, Margaret Mills, who turned her attention today to piracy off the Essex coast.
But we’re not talking “pop” piracy of the 1960’s with Radio Caroline, Radio London etc., but real “JOLLY ROGER” piracy.
If you missed it you can listen again here to all that Margaret had to say on this subject: –
I very much hope to have the pleasure of your company once again next week,
Scott
