On Sunday, June 19, 1977, at 1:20 in the morning, I, David Noel Lynch, lay
unconscious in the back of a police car. My nose was nearly torn from my
face, and blood trickled from my right ear. I was being charged with seven
crimes including leaving the roadway, reckless driving, fleeing or
attempting to elude police, DUI, and homicide by vehicle.
Earlier that night, I had been driving down a straight road. I glanced in
my mirror and saw the police officer’s cruiser blow through the stop sign
at the intersection where I had just turned left. Hitting third gear down
the straight away, I quickly accelerated. The car was doing about 80 mph.
My friend couldn’t find the buckle for his seat belt. As I looked down to
help him, the car hit a patch of gravel at 80 mph. The car skidded
violently to the left, spinning towards the trees lining the road.
I desperately tried to counter steer. Ahead, I spotted a driveway and
wrestled the car towards it, hoping to escape the road. I thought we had
made it. The car lurched to a stop. “We made it,” I said, relieved.
But as I looked around, all I could see was darkness. Pitch black. Fear
gripped me. "Where are you?" I asked my friend, my voice trembling. There
was no response. Then, a strange thing happened. I found myself walking
down the middle of the road, as if drawn by an unseen force. Ahead of me
stood an old woman.
"I am a mess. I am a mess. I am a mess," I muttered to myself, my voice
filled with a strange detachment. I reached up to touch my face, which
felt oddly warm and tingly. My finger went straight into my sinus cavity.
At that moment, I began to float away from myself. It was like watching
myself in a movie. My vision was crystal clear, but my body seemed like a
stranger’s. I reached out, trying to grab hold of myself, but my hand
passed right through. I was about three feet behind myself when I saw my
body crumple to the pavement.
For a fleeting instant, my vision snapped back to the perspective of my
body. I saw the asphalt rushing towards my face.
Then, darkness again. The all-encompassing blackness returned, but this
time, there was a flicker of something else. It was like looking down
through the branches of a tree - a fuzzy, indistinct image.
“What is that?” I asked, my voice echoing in the void.
“I don’t know,” my friend’s voice, faint and distant, answered.
I concentrated, focusing all my energy on the image. It shimmered like
sunlight reflecting on the bottom of a pool. The dim shapes became
momentarily clearer, as if illuminated by streaks of light.
"That is my brother's car," I said, recognition dawning. To the left, I
saw a police car, and behind it, a group of people. On the right, there
was an ambulance, with another police car beside it.
“That’s us,” my friend whispered, his voice tinged with disbelief.
And then, in unison, we both breathed, "We are dead.”
As quickly as it had appeared, the image vanished. Darkness swallowed
everything, leaving me with a prickle of fear. Then, a voice, strong and
resonant, boomed from above and to my right.
"Fear not. Do not be afraid." The fear that had been building within me
instantly dissipated. “Who are you?” I asked, my voice barely a whisper.
“Just call me father," the voice replied. And deep within me, I heard
another word: "Christ."
Suddenly, I was surrounded by images, a 360-degree panorama that curved
upward like a bowl. Like the scene with the car, the images were fuzzy and
indistinct. But as I watched, a section brightened, becoming clear. I saw
myself at the age of two.
The images stretched out before me like a corridor, each one leading to
the next. The bright area, like a spotlight, moved from the center to the
left, revealing scenes from my life at three, four, five, six, and on. It
continued until the light reached the three o'clock position to my right.
Then, in a flash, I was standing in my mother's bedroom.
Our dog stirred in his sleep, and I whispered, "Hampton, it is OK."
"Is this not your mother?" The voice, now behind me and to my right,
asked.
"Yes," I answered, turning to look at the woman sleeping peacefully in the
bed.
My vision then shifted to the right, as if I was looking through a wall
into my younger brother's room. "Is this not your brother?" the voice
asked.
"Yes," I confirmed, recognizing my brother beneath the covers. And then,
in the blink of an eye, I was transported twelve miles away, hovering
outside my older brother's apartment.
I looked down through the concrete floor of the second story, my gaze
piercing the steel security door of his apartment. I could see my brother
reaching out to open the door. Beside him stood a shadowy figure I
couldn’t quite make out.
"Is this not your other brother?" the voice behind me inquired. Thinking I
could communicate somehow, I called out, "Charles! Get me out of this!
Charles, get me out of this!"
The voice repeated, its tone flat and unchanging, "Is this not your other
brother?"
Frustration welled up inside me. "Charles! Get me out of this!" I cried
out again.
The voice came once more, fainter now, "Is this not your other brother?"
"Yes," I finally conceded, defeated. In an instant, I was whisked fifteen
miles away to my father's apartment. I was hovering in the parking lot, my
eyes drawn to my father sitting on the couch, engrossed in the newspaper.
I peered through the newspaper, trying to see his face, and I wondered
where his wife was.
“She is in the bedroom,” the voice informed me. “Is this not your father?”
“Yes,” I confirmed. And then I was back in the darkness, surrounded by the
360-degree vision. The last quarter of images flashed by, and then I had a
sense of front and back again. It was as if eight to ten people were all
talking at once; a low murmur of voices behind me.
The voice instructed me to turn around. As I did, I saw an image of myself
clad in a white robe, hanging lifelessly on a hook. My head was bowed, my
right hand clutching my left wrist, my arms resting on my stomach. It was
an image of death.
I turned back, and the voice was gone. In front of me, a bluish-white
speck appeared, like a sesame seed. “What is that?” I wondered.
Previously, the voice had answered every question without hesitation. But
this time, there was only silence.
The seed began to approach me, or perhaps I was moving towards it. A
low-pitched rumble vibrated through me. As we drew closer, the pitch rose,
growing louder and more intense.
And then, the seed and I merged. Light flooded my vision, pouring into my
head like water from a pitcher. The rumbling sound transformed into a
high-pitched ringing, growing more intense as the light intensified.
Suddenly, a chilling sensation shot through my body, like a sword being
drawn from its sheath. People were all around me, their voices pulling me
back to reality. A man’s voice repeatedly asked, "Why did you do it?”
“What did I do?” I stammered, confused.
My father’s voice, sharp with anger, cut through the fog. "Answer the
officer!" he demanded.
"What did I do?" I repeated, my voice thick with confusion.
“You know what you did,” my father said, his voice filled with a mixture
of anger and sorrow. I looked down and saw my hands were handcuffed.
Beside me stood my brother, Charles.
“Charles? Charles, what did I do?" I pleaded, desperate for an answer.
Charles’s face was pale, his eyes filled with a grief I couldn’t
comprehend. “You wrecked my car, David,” he said softly. “Cline is dead.”
At that moment, an excruciating pain erupted from the crown of my head,
like a thousand pins and needles pricking my skin. It spread down my body,
an all-consuming agony that forced me into unconsciousness.
I woke up briefly in a jail cell, the bars cold and unforgiving. The next
time I woke, it was for good. A doctor at West Paces Ferry Hospital was
packing my broken nose, his touch gentle despite my injuries.
"We're going to keep you here for observation,” he explained, his voice
calm and reassuring. As soon as he left the room, I got out of bed. My
body ached, but I needed to leave. I pushed open the double doors of the
emergency room and came face to face with my mother. Her face, etched with
worry and relief, crumpled as she took in my battered appearance.
"Where are you going?" she asked, hurrying towards me. A nurse followed
close behind, telling me I couldn’t leave.
"I'm going home," I said, my voice firm despite the pain.
"You need to stay here," my mother pleaded, her eyes welling with tears.
"No," I insisted, a strange sense of urgency washing over me. "I need to
go home to make sure that I am not dead."
My words hung in the air, stopping my mother in her tracks. I walked out
of the hospital and into the night.
Weeks passed, but the memories of that night, of my death experience,
continued to haunt me. I tried to piece together what was real and what
was a figment of my traumatized mind. It felt like I was living in a hazy
dream.
One evening, desperate for some sense of normalcy, I went to a party. As I
stood in the middle of the crowded room, Leslie Harris spotted me. Her
face lit up, and she rushed over to give me a hug.
"You don't know how good it is to see you," she exclaimed.
"No," I replied, my voice catching in my throat. "You don't know how good
it is to see you."
Her brow furrowed in concern. "I was out with your brother the night of
your car wreck,” she said. “We were getting ready to leave his apartment
when he suddenly stopped and said, 'Something has happened.' He seemed to
know, somehow, that something was wrong.”
Tears welled up in my eyes, and I began to cry, the weight of everything
crashing down on me.
Leslie pulled me close, her voice filled with concern. "What’s wrong? What
is it?”
"It wasn't a dream," I choked out, gripping her arm. "I was there. I tried
to talk to Charles. I died. It wasn't a dream.”
At that moment, I knew, with a certainty that defied all logic, that I had
died that night. The experience, as impossible as it seemed, was seared
into my very being. I had looked into the face of death, and it had
changed me forever.
On 30 Jul 2024, Gemini 1.5 Pro augmented the original best written
recollection of my Death Experience
Robert Kirk Cline 16 Jun 1960~1977 Jun 19
Cline is not
giving a thumbs up, he is getting away from gas splashing from the over
filled tank.
KnoWell: Describe the above text, ChatGPT: The text describes a personal account of a
car accident and subsequent near-death experience. The author recounts
how they were charged with multiple crimes while unconscious in the
back of a police car following the accident. The accident occurred
when the author's car hit gravel while driving at a high speed,
causing the car to slide and crash. The author then describes
experiencing an out-of-body experience, seeing a fuzzy image of their
brother's car and other emergency vehicles, and being told not to be
afraid by a voice that identified itself as "Father". The author then
experienced a series of vivid flashbacks to various moments in their
life before returning to their body.
KnoWell: Please describe David Noel Lynch’s death
experience.
Gemini 1.5 Pro: David Noel Lynch's death experience begins
in the aftermath of a horrific car crash. While unconscious in the
back of a police car, he has an out-of-body experience where he sees
the wreckage of the car and the emergency responders.
He then enters a realm of darkness, where a
voice he identifies as "Father" comforts him. He's shown vivid scenes
from his life and witnesses moments involving his family members.
Throughout this experience, Lynch feels a
sense of detachment from his physical body. He observes himself as if
watching a movie, unable to interact with his surroundings.
The experience culminates with a blue-white
light that envelops him, accompanied by a sound that morphs from a low
rumble to a high-pitched ringing. He's abruptly pulled back to
reality, overwhelmed by pain and the realization of his friend's
death.
Lynch's experience leaves him with lingering
questions about the nature of life and death. He struggles to
reconcile the vividness of his experience with the reality of his
survival. It's only when he learns that his brother had a premonition
of the accident that he fully accepts the profound reality of his
near-death experience.
