Oh, oh, my dear car!
I was just 17 years old.
I started with a 1951 Olds Super 88 Convertible.
I chopped and channelled it.
So that the windshield was only about that big.
It looked like a bathtub Porsche,
except three times the siZe.
I dropped the biggest block I could find into it,
which was bored, ported and relieved and had the heads milled down and everything.
So it was just turning out enormous horse power
with three four-barrel Webber carburettors on it
and turbo 400 transmission and a leaded frame.
And I could be going down the road at 60, 70 miles an hour,
and floor the thing and lay rubber for a mile down the road.
It was really too much of a car for a kid to have.
I would not recommend that you do this at home.
So I got sideways on...
I hit a patch of black ice and then got on the dry pavement.
That thing started spinning and rolling and...
And off I went. I got propelled through the roof of the car.
And knocked the top off a great big old elm tree about 75 feet up.
I came crashing down to the bottom
and I couldn't see.
I felt around the back of my head.
There was all mushy back there.
There was a hunk of hard stuff
and it was the top of my head.
So I flipped it over.
It was about 20 below
so everything had froZen.
But I still couldn't see.
And then I kind of...
left my body, went into a fog,
and, as I came out of my body,
I could suddenly see down there
at the bottom of the tree where I was.
I was in somebody's front yard.
I could see in the snow reflected at the back of the yard,
a glint of light like somebody was up.
And I flew over the tree
and over the house.
I went through a kind of inverted glove.
This reality unfolded itself from inside
and I went through this...
kind of, cloudy tunnel kind of thing.
And there was a glimmer of light
towards the end of the tunnel.
I floated through
and got closer to the light.
When I got real close to the light,
almost sitting on the edge of the tunnel
and looking in to where the light was.
I couldn't really distinguish detail,
but it was all squirling and pastel colours.
It was just extraordinarily beautiful
and kind of a murmuring of sound.
So I sat there for a while
and got energy from this.
And I realised that I had a choice.
I could either go all the way
and jump off my little ledge,
from the tunnel and into this new place.
Or, I could use the energy that I was getting from it.
It was warm and just wonderful.
I could use that energy and try to get back to this reality.
So I did that.
I came back and, as I was coming back, the glove inverted again.
And there I was over the sea.
I could see that the light at the end,
that I had seen reflected on the snow in the back of the house,
had gone out.
I could see a station wagon parked in the driveway.
And I came back into my body.
And, again I was blind. I couldn't see again.
I had to contact whatever was in that house,
whoever was in that house.
I don't know if I was able to yell very much,
because my left side had been crushed.
My lungs were not really working very well.
But somehow, I was able to get the guy who was in there.
He'd been taking a shower when the crash occurred and hadn't heard anything.
He'd gone to bed
and something motivated him
to get back out of bed
and go out into a 20 below Zero night
and find me there, under his elm tree.
Luckily, he was an off-duty cop.
The station wagon had oxygen, blankets and a radio.
And my life was saved.
That's my near-death story.
That's the most amaZing story I ever heard.
- It's true. - Well, obviously.
Have you approached anything like that again, in your dreams perhaps?
Does it come back to you?
For quite a while afterwards,
I was able to leave my body.
I can't do it very much anymore.
I was mostly really tired
and driving long distances.
And I could leave my body.
And fly above the car, on the freeway,
while I'm down there driving.
That's kind of fun.