Speaker 1: Now here's a highlight from Coast to coast AM on iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: All Right, we are back live with doctor Jeff O'Driscoll.
Speaker 2: And before the break, we were talking about the difference
Speaker 2: between a near death experience and a share death experience.
Speaker 2: So let's say someone is, you know, a thousand miles
Speaker 2: away from a loved one who is in the process
Speaker 2: of dying, and that loved one who's very much alive.
Speaker 2: They may feel the death throes of the mother again
Speaker 2: even though she's thousands of miles away. Or well, in
Speaker 2: your case, your shared death experience, you would see someone
Speaker 2: coming into the trauma center passing away and you would
Speaker 2: you would see their soul leaving their body, and you're
Speaker 2: the only one in the room that's witnessing this.
Speaker 3: Often I was the only one in the room witnessing
Speaker 3: it on at least one occasion. However, I had a
Speaker 3: nurse standing next to me who experienced the same thing.
Speaker 3: We had a trauma patient flown in from a car
Speaker 3: crash two hundred miles away, and the patient's wife was
Speaker 3: deceased at the scene, And when I went into the
Speaker 3: trauma room with that nurse, we both saw the patient's
Speaker 3: wife standing in the air above the gurney, observing what
Speaker 3: was going on and communicating her gratitude for the care
Speaker 3: that her husband was receiving and her body was still
Speaker 3: two hundred miles away.
Speaker 2: Was this the case of Jeff Olson?
Speaker 3: It is the case of Jeff Olson. Yes, He's spoken
Speaker 3: about it publicly and written a book, and a lot
Speaker 3: of people have heard of it.
Speaker 2: Right, So when this happened to you the first time?
Speaker 2: I mean, was the incident with Jeff Olson seeing his wife?
Speaker 2: Was that the first time that had happened to you
Speaker 2: in a trauma center? Or were there others prior to that.
Speaker 3: Well, it's hard for me to remember the exact chronology
Speaker 3: of events. I had had experiences that began in my
Speaker 3: teenage years. I had a profound voice that spoke to
Speaker 3: me one night when I was driving a Volkswagen Bug
Speaker 3: much too fast after dark on a narrow, windy country
Speaker 3: road with two friends in the car, not any of
Speaker 3: us wearing seat belts, and a voice spoke to me
Speaker 3: and said, you have to slow down. And it wasn't
Speaker 3: just a voice. I didn't just hear it. It was like
Speaker 3: something that wrapped around my soul and I felt it
Speaker 3: more than I heard. It impressed me enough that I
Speaker 3: slowed down and went around a corner hit a Cadillac
Speaker 3: head on. There was a lot of damage to the vehicles,
Speaker 3: but nobody was injured. I think I probably would have
Speaker 3: died that night if I had not heard that voice.
Speaker 3: And I later realized that it was my brother, the
Speaker 3: one that died in a farm accident in a few
Speaker 3: years before. That's who was speaking to me on that occasion.
Speaker 2: Wow, and you want to can we go back to
Speaker 2: the incident on the farm when you lost your older
Speaker 2: brother and the after death communication prior to your hearing
Speaker 2: this voice that. I believe there were others if I
Speaker 2: remember correctly.
Speaker 3: I don't remember hearing other experiences before my brother's death,
Speaker 3: but shortly after he died is when I started having
Speaker 3: the experiences, and a few of them I wrote down,
Speaker 3: and those are the ones I remember. I suspect I
Speaker 3: had others that I don't recall now, but I remember
Speaker 3: about twenty years after my brother passed, he came to
Speaker 3: me in a form that I saw him and heard
Speaker 3: him and experienced his presence, and he looked like my brother.
Speaker 3: When my brother was in a physical form, he told
Speaker 3: me he said, you have to go talk with our
Speaker 3: mother because there's things she's never told you about my death,
Speaker 3: which caught my attention. As you might imagine, I went
Speaker 3: and sat down with my mother, spoke to her, and
Speaker 3: she told me for the very first time, she said,
Speaker 3: I always knew where you were in the house before
Speaker 3: Stan died, because I could hear you singing. When your
Speaker 3: brother died, you stopped singing. And that was the first
Speaker 3: time I realized the impact that his death had had
Speaker 3: on me. It had changed me in some significant way.
Speaker 2: So when you're working in the trauma center and you
Speaker 2: would see a soul leaving a body, what walk us
Speaker 2: through that? Does that? What does that look like? What
Speaker 2: does the soul look like as it leaves the body?
Speaker 3: For me, I can't speak for anyone else, of course,
Speaker 3: but for me, I would see what looked like a
Speaker 3: more refined, more purific fide form of a person's essence
Speaker 3: or consciousness, and they looked very much like their physical body,
Speaker 3: except in a perfected form, and frequently, at least on
Speaker 3: one occasion when it happened with an elderly person, the
Speaker 3: person I saw exit their physical body appeared to be
Speaker 3: half the age of the body, they just come out
Speaker 3: of as if they were in the very prime of
Speaker 3: their existence, in their most perfect state, and just filled
Speaker 3: with this incomprehensible light and love that just radiated and
Speaker 3: filled the room for me, even though everybody standing around
Speaker 3: me was unaware of it.
Speaker 2: And when the soul leaves the body, does it leave
Speaker 2: the room immediately, does it hover over the body, does
Speaker 2: it attempt to communicate with anyone?
Speaker 3: When eyewitnessed it, they stayed in the room or near
Speaker 3: their physical form and communicated, and then when it felt right,
Speaker 3: they left. In fact, on one occasion, there was a
Speaker 3: physician that was resuscitating an elderly woman and I was
Speaker 3: around the corner in a separate room when I felt
Speaker 3: this presence over my shoulder. I'd had enough experiences by
Speaker 3: then I intuitively knew it was the soul or the
Speaker 3: spirit of the person that was being resuscitated. And she
Speaker 3: asked for help, and I walked around the corner and
Speaker 3: into the room. There was another physician there. There was
Speaker 3: a team of people trying to resuscitate this woman who
Speaker 3: was indicated and receiving chest compressions and was completely unconscious,
Speaker 3: And yet I reached over and touched her leg. She
Speaker 3: asked me if she could leave, which I thought was
Speaker 3: a very strange thing for her to ask me, and
Speaker 3: I wondered why she would think I had the answer
Speaker 3: to that question. But even as I thought that, the
Speaker 3: words came to me from some eternal place, and I
Speaker 3: silently communicated back to her, mind you, she's unconscious, she's
Speaker 3: got a tube in her throat. They're doing chest compressions.
Speaker 3: This is all silent telepathic communication. I communicated back to her.
Speaker 3: I said, listen, if you think it's time to go,
Speaker 3: and you feel that that's the right thing to do,
Speaker 3: then I think it's probably okay for you to go.
Speaker 3: And as I communicated that, she rose up out of
Speaker 3: her body, stood in the air above the gurney. She
Speaker 3: thanked me for the help I'd given, which I didn't
Speaker 3: really understand or appreciate because I didn't think I had
Speaker 3: really done anything. And then she left. And a few
Speaker 3: moments later, as I was leaving the room, I heard
Speaker 3: the physician in charge pronounce her time of death in
Speaker 3: military time, and I thought, yeah, I know. I saw
Speaker 3: her leave.
Speaker 2: If the patient is resuscitated, and they do, you see
Speaker 2: the soul go back into the.
Speaker 3: Body on one occasion, I entered a room, and again
Speaker 3: I was not in charge of this patient. I think
Speaker 3: when I was taking care of patients, I think I
Speaker 3: was so consumed with the physical, medical, scientific and necessities
Speaker 3: of providing the care of the patient. But sometimes I
Speaker 3: didn't have these experiences. But when another physician was taking
Speaker 3: care of all that, and I just walked into the
Speaker 3: room while they were necessitating this woman who had drowned
Speaker 3: in a hotel pool. I sensed her presence out of
Speaker 3: her body as her cardiac activity disappeared from the monitor
Speaker 3: that she was on, and she was outside of her body,
Speaker 3: just kind of getting her bearings on what it felt like,
Speaker 3: what this experience was in this new realm. And then
Speaker 3: all of a sudden, she was just gone. And I
Speaker 3: remember thinking, wow, where did she go? And as I
Speaker 3: thought that, I looked up at the cardiac monitor and
Speaker 3: she had a heartbeat again. She hadn't gone anywhere except
Speaker 3: back into her physical form. I suppose.
Speaker 2: When she regained consciousness, were you there? Did she say
Speaker 2: anything to you? Did she remember being out of her body?
Speaker 2: Did she remember seeing and speaking or communicating with you?
Speaker 3: I never spoke with her after she regained consciousness. I
Speaker 3: regret that I didn't follow up more closely with some
Speaker 3: of these patients. But in the emergency department, you assuscitate them,
Speaker 3: you try to stabilize them, you transfer them up to
Speaker 3: the ICU, and often you never see or hear from
Speaker 3: them again. I never would have seen Jeff Oltson again
Speaker 3: after that profound experience I had with him and his
Speaker 3: wife in the trauma room. Had that nurse a month
Speaker 3: later not insisted that we go and talk with you
Speaker 3: about our experience, and she kind of drugged me kicking
Speaker 3: and screaming up to his hospital room to tell him
Speaker 3: what we had experienced. Otherwise I would have never seen
Speaker 3: him again.
Speaker 2: Right, So Jeff Olsen again, He's in a car accident.
Speaker 2: His wife, Tamara, is killed in the car accident. He
Speaker 2: loses his son in the accident. He's left severely injured, maimed.
Speaker 2: I believe he did. He lose a limb, I think
Speaker 2: in that accident.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he lost a leg.
Speaker 2: And you saw the soul of his wife, Tamara. She
Speaker 2: came to you in the emergency room. She thanked you
Speaker 2: for caring for her, for her, for her husband. And
Speaker 2: then the nurse that was in attendance also saw this.
Speaker 2: Did she immediately the nurse that is, did she immediately
Speaker 2: go to you and say? Did you know you saw that?
Speaker 2: Didn't you? You saw what I saw?
Speaker 3: Well, she kind of didn't have to. She was the
Speaker 3: only other person in the emergency department that knew I
Speaker 3: had these experiences because she had pried them out of
Speaker 3: me on a previous occasion when she shared some of
Speaker 3: her own experiences, and so she and I kind of
Speaker 3: had this confidence between us. And I wasn't going to
Speaker 3: actually go into the trauma room that night because there
Speaker 3: was the whole trauma team and the other emergency physician
Speaker 3: to take care of Jeff when he arrived, and I
Speaker 3: wasn't planning on even going in the room. And this
Speaker 3: nurse came and grabbed me by the arm and tugged
Speaker 3: me down to the trauma room and said you have
Speaker 3: to come. And I said why and she said she's there.
Speaker 3: I said who's there? And she said, his wife, she's there.
Speaker 3: And when she said that, it dawned on me what
Speaker 3: she was saying. And I accompanied her to the trauma
Speaker 3: room and we had the experience together, and I think
Speaker 3: we talked about it after that, and then, like I say,
Speaker 3: he went off, had several surgeries, had his leg amputated.
Speaker 3: He was in the ICU for a prolonged period of time.
Speaker 3: It was about a month later that he was conscious
Speaker 3: in speaking, and we went to his hospital room and
Speaker 3: shared with him what had.
Speaker 2: Happened and what was his reaction when you told him
Speaker 2: that his late wife had appeared.
Speaker 3: In the er. Initially he became quite emotionally. He became
Speaker 3: tearful and felt reassured and validated enough that he opened
Speaker 3: up and told us about his experience at the scene
Speaker 3: of the accident. Before his body was even expricated from
Speaker 3: the car, he left his body and he rose up
Speaker 3: above the scene of the accident in this brilliant, inexplicable light,
Speaker 3: where he encountered his wife, and she said, you have
Speaker 3: to go back and raise our other son, because their
Speaker 3: seven year old son had survived the accident. And he
Speaker 3: felt like after we shared our experience, he felt like
Speaker 3: he could share his. And we've been good friends ever since.
Speaker 3: It's been nearly three decades now.
Speaker 2: Why you and that nurse and not anyone else in
Speaker 2: the hospital where you were working, or at least as
Speaker 2: far as you know, there was no one else. What
Speaker 2: is it about you? And this nurse that allows you
Speaker 2: to have these shared death experiences.
Speaker 3: The short answer is, I don't have a clue. I
Speaker 3: don't know. I have learned that sometimes we can be
Speaker 3: more receptive, more open, we can be more believing, we
Speaker 3: can invite that experience into our life. But other than that,
Speaker 3: I don't know. I have one friend who was a
Speaker 3: nurse in Pennsylvania in the er and the patient was
Speaker 3: brought in who was unconscious and receiving chest compressions during
Speaker 3: a cardiac arrest, and during the recuscitation, she looked up
Speaker 3: and saw him standing on the far side of the
Speaker 3: room observing his own recuscitation, and they successfully resuscitated him
Speaker 3: and sent him up to the ICU. She went up
Speaker 3: and visited him a few days later, and he had
Speaker 3: a profound experience outside of his body and believed that
Speaker 3: he had an encounter with the divine being that they
Speaker 3: had a conversation before he was sent back.
Speaker 2: Had you asked other doctors and nurses whether they they
Speaker 2: had witnessed anything like this, do you think they would
Speaker 2: have answered truthfully? Or I mean, do you suspect in
Speaker 2: other words, that that maybe this is more common, but
Speaker 2: people because of a stigma are afraid to admit. Yes,
Speaker 2: I saw you know, I saw the patient's soul leaving
Speaker 2: their body.
Speaker 3: Yes, it's much more common than we generally appreciate. And yes,
Speaker 3: I've spoken to physicians. When I speak, it's not uncommon
Speaker 3: for me to have a physician or two that'll come
Speaker 3: and talk with me afterwards or send me an email
Speaker 3: and share their own experience. I belong to a Facebook
Speaker 3: page that has nearly eighty thousand physicians. It's only physicians
Speaker 3: on the page, and I'd just ask a simple question once,
Speaker 3: Have any of you resuscipated somebody from a cardiac arrest
Speaker 3: and they told you that they had a conscious experience
Speaker 3: during that period. And there were a few people that
Speaker 3: were vocally skeptical about it, but most people were receptive
Speaker 3: to it. And several people started their comment with something
Speaker 3: along the lines of I've never shared this with anyone before,
Speaker 3: but and I actually had a few zoom calls with
Speaker 3: a group of physicians to talk about those experiences more
Speaker 3: they are happening, and physicians are reluctant to speak about it.
Speaker 2: And you didn't speak about it publicly until after you retired,
Speaker 2: Is that correct, right?
Speaker 3: I didn't speak about it for twenty five years, and
Speaker 3: about six months after I stopped seeing patients. One day,
Speaker 3: I just had this feeling click in my heart and
Speaker 3: I understood it was okay to talk about it now,
Speaker 3: and that's when I started to share.
Speaker 2: Did you only see or experience these share death incidents
Speaker 2: or seeing souls leaving bodies and so forth while you
Speaker 2: were in a hospital setting in the er, or did
Speaker 2: you also have shared life experiences in other areas, maybe
Speaker 2: while you were at home.
Speaker 3: I did have some very profound experiences outside the emergency department,
Speaker 3: but most of my experiences happened in the emergency department,
Speaker 3: and I think that was just a matter of proximity
Speaker 3: chronologically and physically, being in the proximity of people who
Speaker 3: were passing away. Most physicians are not in the presence
Speaker 3: of their patients when their patients die, but as an
Speaker 3: emergency physician, frequently when you have a patient that passes away,
Speaker 3: you're at the bedside, You're right there, and I think
Speaker 3: that immediate proximity makes a difference in the experiences one has.
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