Ghosts See Candlelight

Preface

Experiencing life after death as I was in the intensive care unit (ICU) of Mercy Hospital, in Springfield, Massachusetts, what I witnessed could not have been a vivid dream! What I saw, was the afterlife for only a minute as I lay clinically dead on the operating table. The surgeon refused to give up on me and thus saved my life. However, the span of time I experienced drifting over myself and about the hospital, the morgue, the parking lot, and the streets downtown. To then snapping awake post surgery, my arms instinctively raising to grasp the nurse standing beside my bed. With a scream, she yanked the red string on the wall to call for an emergency and ran out. Staff rushed in and by then I had covered my face with both hands, remembering the candlelight.
Various people from all walks of life that I have told my near death experience to, give their thoughts or criticisms. Some believe me, other’s don’t. But I don’t care if anyone doesn’t believe me, I know what I witnessed.
Dear reader, the afterlife is nothing like you could ever imagine! The preface concluded, we will begin as I was driving down Main street, Springfield, not a care in the world besides my fiance Lindsey. I was heading to the casino downtown there until disaster struck…

***

My Porsche zipped over freshly painted crosswalks and through red lights. It was certainly a night on the town to the casino. My fiance in the passenger seat, pregaming before we would walk into the casino. She was downing nips of whiskey. She was nugding my arm to take one. “No, babe, I’m waiting until we get into the parking garage, where everyone pregames,” I chuckled.
“Oh, come on! Be a badass babe!”
Finally, I conceded. And accepted a nip, twisted off the cap and slug it back. It was first the sensation of some terrible chemicle, like acid, washing down my throat. It tasted awful, I remember. As my hands gripped the wheel and I began to swurve the Porsche, my eyesight became fuzzy from tearing due to the strength of the whiskey…

Then a flash of lightning struck our car, I witnessed the hood crumple into the windshield, shattering it. The thunder was deafening as was Lindsey’s piercing screaming.
Then stillness and a strong hiss from the engine. Screams all around. Then I recall the lightbars of police vehicles and ambulances. Strobing into into what was left of my Porsche. These flashing lights, illuminated Lindsey’s blood-soaked face and I let out a cry of terror before I cried in physical trauma, as both my legs felt crushed together at the knees beneath the steering wheel. And the thick smoke building up made me gasp for whatever air was left inside the vehicle.

Black out…

Then coming to, under heavy sedation I was rolled through what seemed a maze of white-washed hallways. Until finally, I was obviously in a room used for surgery.

Black out…

A dream state it felt like, as if I were floating in mid-air. And seeing the masked faces of nurses and surgeons all gowned up, I instinctively gazed down at my own self. With many tubes and blood-splotched gauze, my eyes aimlessly rolled around. My legs were… crushed.

Black out…

I next remember drifting, without walking that is, down the many halls of the emergency department. Many people passed through me, and it didn’t yet occur to me that I was dead. Dreaming from head trauma, I remember believing. People’s voices were indistinct and sounded gibberish as they rushed around.

Black out…

I made my way into an open elevator and behind me filed in a man and a woman in business attire. The door slid shut and we descended to the basement floor. I was then curious… so I leaned into the man’s ear and asked, “can you hear me?”
The man visibly shivered, and said to the lady standing beside him, “do you feel a frigid draft all of a sudden?”
“I do, yes,” as she crossed her arms to bunch up.
I turned to the lady’s ear and asked, “are you cold, madam?”
And with a violent shiver, she arched over and vomited over herself. The man placed his hand over her back as he soothingly spoke. Then, I positioned my hand over his and he immediately withdrew his hand complaining, “I’m gonna file a complaint with hospital management about the aweful, cold temperature of this elevator!”
When the elevator announced it had arrived to the basement, strange it was as I recognized a familiar odor. So familiar to me yet impossible to remember what it was. My two fellow passengers exited and briskly made their way ahead down a long, green-tiled hall. I exited as well and followed. At the end of the wall was a wooden door, labeled in bold, black lettering: MORGUE. As I drifted behind them, I came to the conclusion I was in fact deceased and may see my own mangled body lid out on a stretcher!
With a heavy knock from the lady, the door swung open by a man in a gown, goggles, and hair net, “Come on in!”
The two ahead of me walked in as I drifted in right after. The door shut heavily and the odor of death everywhere, as is what I recognized before back down the hall!
There was a cadaver, uncovered but not me, laying on a table. I drifted slowly towards it. A young man with a bullet wound to his chest. And scattered over him, were tattoos of a religous nature. Ghosts don’t cry I found that moment.
Turning back to the others now standing, looking at the young man, they sounded like detectives speaking to the mortician. And when I drifted closer, I could make out the steam of their breaths as they again began to visibly shiver.

Black out…

I found myself then drifting out into the parking lot of the hospital. The rain came down in bullets and did not affect me at all. The rain simply went through me to the asphalt. But this point I found myself to be on the brink of insanity, “where’s Lindsey!” I shouted.

Black out…

I then found myself drifting into the intersection of Union and Main street. Emergency vehicles everywhere, police officers directing traffic, their vehicle lights strobed endlessly.
And there was my Porsche, or what was left of it. I drifted over the puddles of the rain water like Jesus Christ with my arms stretched out, not knowing if I would see Lindsey dead inside. Terrified, I peered over the shoulder of an officer and saw nothing but the bloody leather seats. “Babe, you have a chance!” I screamed.

Black out…

Hours must have passed, the hospital graveshift staff was on. I was not in the emergency department but a part of the hospital that was obviously not busy at this time. Drifting without tears, I noticed an open door to what appeared to be a candle-lit chapel of the hospital. It appeared so appealing to me, as I had no idea where else to drift to, to find my fiance.
I entered. Before me a statue of the Virgin Mary cradling her baby Jesus. Flanking me on both sides were stained-glass pictures of Jesus’ birth, to his flogging, to his crucifixion, then in the last picture he rises.
And the candlelight, everywhere. I felt a fresh sense of calm and hope. I drifted to the alter and knelt before a sea of candle flames, which had all danced on their wicks as if so.e cold vreeze had entered the chapel. I rose my head to the Virgin Mary in prayer, for the first time in my sinful life.
Then, an ice-cold hand, so familiar, rested on my shoulder. I turned to be eye to eye with Lindsey. Pale-faced but without a sign of blood or and kind of injury on her. “I though I’d find you here, babe,” she spoke softly into my ear.
“Oh, Lindsey…”
My praying hands unlocked and my warm hand joined her icy one. I was perplexed by the difference of our body temperatures. Which bade me to ask, “is this it, babe? Will we be together forever? Will one of us have to wait for the other?”
She lifted a finger to her lips as she looked at me with love in her eyes as she said, “Dan, my fiance, the one who proposed to me at the foot of our very first Christmas tree…”
I remembered ghosts don’t cry. She continued, “you will live, babe.” And she leaned into my lips with her icy lips, then drew back adding, “I’ll wait for you, and you, Daniel Long, will never age for me!”

Black out…

By some supernatural force, I was sucked out of the chapel’s candlelight at terrifying speed. Finding myself convulsing, gasping for the air of life, and the familiar beeps of a heart rate monitor.

Black out…

The lights were dim in my hospital room, the heart rate monitor beeping, tubes running in and out of me. And then a tear flew down my face, damping the pillow.

“I will never age for the angel in heaven waiting for me!”