"Violently Thrown Back Into My Body," Terrence's NDE

0:03 From the time that they pronounced me dead was a good 45 minutes. They cut my clothes and then they paddled my heart, my heart had stopped and I could see people screaming and crying but I didn't realize that was actually my physical body because I was somewhere else. The only thing that I could feel if you could imagine absolute love and peace there wasn't anything else to be felt. I was greeted by people I'd known in the past. I'm back home again. Incredibly safe and felt at home. Welcome, welcome to Round Trip Death, everybody. And hey, we have a cool guest today, Terrence Sheehan. Yeah, Sheehan, S -H -E -E -H -A -N. Terrence Sheehan coming to us all the way from Michigan in the United States.

0:52 And Terrence, how you doing today? Doing well. Glad to be here. Good. Well... Wow, you had a dramatic car crash we're going to be talking about in just a minute, and an NDE, and before we jump into that, who is Terrence? Let our audience get to know you a little bit. Music's been a big part of my life. I went to Full Sail in 1992 and graduated in 1993 with an audiovisual degree. Music and technology has been a big part of my life. So during the early 90s through the 90s to about 2000, I did recording for bands and things like that. And then as that kind of dried up, as people started to go to the home recording studios, I went into more of a website based business and did SEO. And so my business now is I'm an SEO consultant for Google. I also do multimedia productions for businesses and things like that. But I still have the music going always on the side. Okay, just in case people want it want to reach out to you whether it's for that or anything else If you don't mind we'll stick a link in the show notes later on so people can reach out to you, but Let's jump into it. Let's go back a few years. Well about 20 years. You know Tell me what led up to this tragic day where you had this horrific accident Okay, so just a little of that day, which was June 16th 2004 I was just recently separated from my wife at the time and I had just gone to Davison, which

2:24 is about 20 miles from Grand Blanc to pick up my son to bring him over for the weekend. And we were, it was a bright sunny day and we were on a road called McCandlish Road in Grand Blanc, which is, it's got hills up and down the road and it's a 55 mile an hour two lane road, a rural road that is paved. We were coming towards Grand Blanc towards our place. I came over a hill and there was a Lowe's truck parked on the side of the road, the opposite side. unloading furniture and the view was kind of obscured and the truck was partially in the road so it had I assume it had its you know little adult warning thing up in behind it so it was partially though in the other lane of traffic. Well when we came over the hill there was the truck there and out of the blue I mean I was going 55 miles an hour a full -size Yukon and we were in a two -door Saturn coupe I'll just add an SC2 Saturn so it was a two -door car and a full -size Yukon Apparently she lost her attention span or whatever and crossed across the center line and I maybe had one second of braking and then we hit full impact 55 miles an hour each way. the car did a 360 in the air from what the witnesses said and my son was in the car with me so you know it was a day I'll never forget. At the time of the accident when I came to and we'll get through whatever questions you want to know about that but I didn't even know he was in the car once I finally came came to in the car you know when I finally came back to my senses which I wouldn't call my senses I was not for a serious loop obviously from that

3:55 impact and lucky to be here so every day is a blessing from there. That was one of the things actually that caught my attention in the email that you sent me was that you had a two -year -old son in the car Yeah, and after your experience and you're kind of waking up. It's almost like a computer reset I think when our brains have to figure out what's going on. What did your two -year -old say to you? Okay, so here's how it went you know from my recollection so like I remember I remember maybe having one second to break and and I the car was on me you know it just out of nowhere was there it was and what happened was is all of a sudden I just I remember a white flash I know you hear this a lot but there was a white flash of light at that point now I've since come to understand what actually happened but as I mentioned to you in our conversation I had a perspective of being over the vehicle Sort of like a drone view, but I could see down on the accident I could see my car kind of in the middle of the road people kind of milling around I could see that the Yukon was in the ditch I could see people that were looking but not really getting too close because you know It was a fresh accident the next thing that I actually remember after that. I've mentioned this to many people It's like I was out of body experience there and then the next thing I remember, you know in this process is I was violently thrown back into my body. It wasn't like, you know, I came to in the car and I was just there. My soul was out of body was like thrown back into

5:27 my body. It was like a violent experience. I mean, that's how I remember it. So after that happened, I came to and it gets me kind of worked up just thinking about this, but I came to in the car and I didn't know where I was. I had no idea or any idea what was going on. I just thought maybe I was in a dream. You know, that's kind of how it felt to me. As I started to realize I wasn't in a dream I could see there was smoke, milling around in the cabin of the car. And I realized I was in a car accident or in a car that was smoking and I didn't know how I got there or anything at that point. So I immediately panicked because it seemed like maybe a fire was on in it. And so for God knows why I was able to get my car door open. It's still even after that huge impact that I was able to get my door open on my driver's side. I tried to get out but I didn't realize all my ribs are broken, both my hands are broken, my hip was shattered, all my ribs, closed head injury. I was able to try to get out of the car but since my hip was shattered I couldn't stand up or anything so I fell out with my legs still in the car onto the pavement. Once I got the door open I fell butt first onto the pavement with my legs still in the car. this is where it gets really crazy is I was on the ground you know kind of coming to and I could see people are in the in the vicinity you know looking around and I realized that you know I was at that point I finally put two and two together I was in a car accident from the backseat I heard and my son was too I heard daddy are you all right and I was like what is that

6:59 and you know and then again he said it daddy are you all right so It was a two -door coupe so I looked behind the seat and I could see he was in his baby seat and his whole face was full of blood and he was asking me if I was alright. So that put me into another panic because I realized he was in the car and the car was smoking like I said so I was already very fearful about a fire and there was a guy that I said was a bystander standing maybe 20 yards from me looking right at me and I said please help me get my son out of the car there's going to be a fire. Please help me get him out of the car. But you know how people are. They're hesitant to help. So he didn't initially. And then I really forcefully somehow connected with him spiritually. And I said, please help me get my son out of the car.

7:43 You know, it's going to be a fire. I need to get him out. So he came over and got my son out of the car. And as soon as Gavin is my son's name, as soon as he got out of the car, I passed out. As soon as I knew he was safe out of the car, I just, all everything, the trauma hit me at that point. At that point, I don't remember a lot about the scene other than I know they showed up and the paramedics were working on me and got us in the ambulance and all that. And Gavin rode in the ambulance and one of the paramedics held him. For that time between the time that they got me prepared to get in the ambulance and then we started to go to the hospital, there's kind of a blackout period there. And then I wake up in the ambulance and I realize we're on the way to the hospital. I have asthma.

8:24 All my ribs were broken and it just felt like mush in my chest. So I was pretty sure I wasn't going to make it. You know, I was just, they were asking me questions and things. And Gavin was really traumatized by just seeing me injured. The fact that he didn't sustain major, huge injuries is, I have no idea how, you know, we had a great baby seat, but I have no idea how he ended up being able to get out of the hospital later that same day. He just had a broken lip where his teeth went through his lip and they were able to stitch that back up. But I wasn't so fortunate. Well, yeah, I was just going to ask you about the injuries to your son. That's yeah, those child seats are awesome. And that's fantastic that he wasn't hurt worse. It's a total miracle without a doubt. I mean, I have a picture that I don't know if you can see on the screen there.

9:13 There's the there's the car. you know, after the accident. But I have some other pictures I can share with you later. Yeah, it's a total miracle. And if anything would have happened to him, he's my only son. So I don't know what my life would have become if something had happened to him. But just the experience of having him say, daddy, are you all right? Now we're talking about a two -year -old. He was about to be three. His birthday is June 28th. So he was just about to be three years old. He was born in 2001. And I can't imagine how helpless of a feeling that must have been when you're barely conscious, you can't stand up. So there's no way you can help your own child. And thankfully, someone was willing to respond and help out. Exactly and the thing that they say about the spirit being able to connect now i know no one really wants to get involved in an accident scene but the person that i don't even know the guy is if i could ever thank him you know i would love to i don't know who is maybe someday reach out to see the show or something spirit to spirit i was able to connect with them and get him to do what i need done. Alright let's get to the point of this show which is the near -death experience part which. You talked about coming out of your body. Did you have any kind of feeling for time, like how long you think you were above looking down on the scene? Not really, except it probably wasn't a super long time because I have just this vision of the exact scene. I had enough time to look around and know that where I was, I knew the location. I knew my car, you know,

10:47 so I would say it was a short period of time. I wouldn't say it was a tremendously long period of time, probably under a minute or 10, you know, in 10 to 30 seconds, maybe just enough to get an idea visually of that. I was not in the car and that my that I was above it. Sort of like I mentioned to you, like a drone view, but I saw it completely clearly and I could tell it, you know. That was my car and I could see the Yukon in the ditch and like I said, some of it seemed like a dream, but you know, that part is distinctly in my mind as far as a memory of seeing down on the accident. And the next thing I remember, like I mentioned to you earlier, was just like violently being thrown back into my body. Although, you know, I can't say that I was aware of what was going on, but I just remember. I just remember that feeling of like, it's almost like a second car accident when I feel like my soul came back into my body. It was like, it was not a gentle thing. It was very powerful. And it was like, I don't know if there was a message being sent by, you know, the maker above. I'm spiritual. I'm not hugely religious, but I feel like maybe I could have left this world, but maybe I wasn't done doing whatever I had to do. And also that maybe when I was throwing back my body, I was he was letting me know that maybe I hadn't lived correctly up to that point and that I had something else that I needed to do, which I've always contemplated might have been, you know, raising my son or, you know, the things I've done for people or music or whatever my life has went. But from that day forward and

12:18 that moment forward, I've always felt like I was almost like a different person. That's that's cool. We'll talk about those changes in just a second. I want to stick with this being put back in your body for just a second. I don't know if you've studied many near -death experiences, but... I have not. It's a fairly typical thing for that to be sort of like you explained. The term that I hear the most is I was slammed back into my body. That is very accurate. That is very, very accurate. That is very typical. So I don't think I would interpret that as something from God saying, boom, I'm going to make this uncomfortable for you. I think that's a normal way of coming back into the body. It seems to be much softer and nicer coming out if people even remember the coming out part. I haven't really studied a lot in your death experiences.

13:10 I'll be honest with you, I'm very interested to do so. And I would look forward to hearing your episodes and your show. It's very interesting. My sister mentioned it to me. And I just didn't wanna look at it beforehand, but I haven't really studied it, but I have watched some shows on Netflix and things regarding that. I don't know, there's a couple shows on there that deal with that topic. I've watched some of those. Yeah, I mean, I think the way you described it is perfect. It was a, I would almost call it violent. Like, slammed is a great way to describe it. Yeah, just the term that I hear the most. While you were out of your body, Did you feel like you were dead? Did you feel pain? What did you feel?

13:51 I didn't feel any pain or anything at that time. I always describe it as a light. I lost my wife to cancer about five or six years ago now. She always asked me before she passed, what did I remember? Because I actually feel like I died for a period of time. The experience makes me think that I did. What was your exact question? Just so you answer it correctly again. Well, just how did you feel out of body? Did it feel normal? Did you feel pain? I didn't feel pain. I felt like light, luminous, like a luminous presence, no pain, like I was in the light, like, or I was the light. it felt like I was obviously I was a flying in a sense and so my soul was light I don't recall any pain at the at all about it was more or less just like an observation nothing about that was any pain or any knowledge even that I was that I was in a car accident other than I was looking at it I don't know that I'd even put it together at that point, but it wasn't a very long time, but the way I always describe that part of it was I've always kind of experienced this, through this experience, felt like there's something about it that has to do with light, if that makes any sense, you know? Like a luminous presence where maybe the soul is out of body, maybe it doesn't require a body. I felt free. I can't say there was any pain that I recall at all about it. Did you feel

15:21 like you were looking down on the accident itself or after that? You know that's been asked to me and and I don't know that and that's a tough question to answer you know when did I realize that that had happened obviously that happened and I remember it okay so I'm assuming that it happened before I came to in the car and I remember being slammed back into my body as you described it I started coming to after that these things happen before I started to real come to in the car as it is in my memory, right? Now, my mom asked me that because I was mentioning I was going to be on the show and she said, well, do you remember it before or after? And I can only assume it's before. I mean, then I'm remembering what happened before, but it was definitely in my memory after, you know, when I finally came to in the car, I didn't know where I was because I had a closed head injury. I didn't really know where I was until I think the time when I finally realized where I was was when I was out on the cement. Like I said, after I realized I couldn't walk and I saw the blood everywhere and I knew I started to figure it out. You know, I could see my car was crushed. But I mean, it was it was such a violent accident that I was I can't say that I really was pulling any kind of memories together at that point. Well, I don't think you have to have the kind of near death experience where you travel. off to some kind of heavenly place to have profound changes in your life.

16:49 And I know you mentioned to me that your life really changed after this. Let's talk about that for a minute. The way that it originally changed was, and this is a kind of cool experience, because I played in a band with a guy named Randy Frunch as a friend of mine. And we played in high school back in the late 80s, mid 80s, after the car accident, which First of all, I went to the hospital and they couldn't fix me at the grand blank, so they had to send me to Beaumont down in Detroit because the surgeons couldn't do the repair to my hip and the injuries I had were so horrific. My friend, after I was recovering at home and I got back home, he came over and he had been in a similar near -death experience. He had his back broken at work and he ended up getting pneumonia at his house. So he had a near -death experience as well. Now, I don't know how those two connect for his near -death experience story. other than the fact that he had one. He had a similar experience, and his was through pneumonia. He said when the paramedics came that once he got oxygen, he thought he was going to die, and then he got oxygen, and he said he was speaking in tongues is how he described it. He didn't know what he was saying, but he thought that he was speaking in some language that he didn't have a clue what it was. So he came and saw me afterwards, and we were musicians and played music together in band in the 80s.

18:04 And we both just decided my parents had a place up in the empire michigan which is up by the sleeping bear dunes in michigan on the west coast and we said hey let's go up there both of us were messed up he had his back was broken he was in a turtle you know the turtle shell thing that they put around you when you have your back broken and i was so messed up with my hips shattered and we're like let's just go up there and my brother played drums he was already up there. And we were like, let's just go up there and have some fun and play some music. And that whole experience was like a two, we did two separate weekends and we went up and I was a recording engineer. So I had, you know, a Tascam M238 for people that are geeks out there that want to know about how we did it. But it was analog and I had that recorder in a road case and a CD recorder.

18:50 We had no intentions of ever doing anything and putting it out, but. The first thing I noticed after the car accident in the hospital, my mom brought me a fan, which was like life -saving, because I couldn't believe how great it felt to have a fan. I was just so uncomfortable. And she also brought a clock radio. And as soon as I heard music after the car accident, once I was in the hospital, and I mean I was so messed up, she brought me just a little clock radio, and I mean it was tiny. But as soon as I heard music, and I tell everyone, it sounded like the music was coming out of the speakers like powdered sugar. I'd never heard anything like that i'm a musician i had a degree in audio recording engineering but nothing ever sounded like the way that i heard music. In the hospital was like literally maybe hearing it for the first time or hearing angels could be a way to describe it but just hearing the music in a way that i'd never heard it before that was the beginning of us starting this journey in the music. I didn't realize that anyway they were connected but so we ended up taking this trip down and empire and we recorded over the course of. two weekends and then we made a CD out of the tapes we made and we showed them to people and they're like, man, you guys should release this stuff. It's really good. We had no intentions of doing so, but when we were urged by our friends to do it, we finally ended up putting that stuff onto a CD. Our band was called Three Piece. It's all one word. It's T -H -R -E -E -P -E -A -C -E.

20:17 So it's all one word. It's the number three and I'm peace altogether. And that's on Spotify and all those albums. We ended up doing seven albums together in the long run. But the connection of Big R, it's his name in the band and mine's Lefty, L -E -F -T -E -E, not the way you usually spell it, because that has to do with golf. You see these golf flags. That was my nickname in golf. But the thing is, music became this catalyst. And at the time, like I say, I was just coming out of this accident. I had no idea of how profound the music would be. Both of us We were like brothers back in the 80s. He's like my other brother. But the connection that we shared through this near -death experience and the music kind of set us off on this little journey, which it was dictating itself as it went along. I didn't really start to realize some of these things and these changes that happened to me until we got into doing these songs and the music. And then it kind of turned into a mission, which has nothing to do with anything I ever did before, which was like promoting the good ideas of the world and peace. Not something I would choose to do because in this day and age, as you know, with many pop artists and things that social critics aren't really embraced anymore. So we spoke out against things that we didn't think were right.

21:35 It wasn't really political or religious, but we would just, if there was a song we felt needed to be addressed, we would sing it. But this first album, is kind of strange because as we moved on to the other music, the first one was more or less a venting of all of our troubles. As I look back on it, I mean, we sang about 9 -11, I sang about the fresh feelings of divorce. There was a lot of pain on that record and it was like a purging of that car accident. In fact, I think we mentioned the surgeons on the thanks for the record, you know, but music. ended up being this huge catalyst for this change that was about to happen in my life and I was already into music so I kind of wasn't even thinking that way but it just ended up being that this music gave us an avenue to express and excise the demons of our pain and of this near -death experience.

22:26 We both shared a similar, you know, thing. I don't know exact details of how his near -death experience other than I know he had one. So the music was very healing it sounds like. Absolutely but you know until we got into doing it i already played i'm a drummer i play i couldn't play drums cuz my hip was shared but luckily my brother was drummer and so he played drums on those recordings and i played bass i had played bass in the band previously so at that time i couldn't play drum so i played bass and did some vocals. and played a little guitar on the record but i couldn't play drums so it just kind of happened we were all together as a band in the eighties and my brother played drums i played bass and randy played guitar and. Twenty years later here we are both of us completely messed up and we're back together and it felt like a reunion but it also felt like a new journey. That we were on but we did we didn't really realize that at the time when we were recording those first tracks we did it over two weekends like I said it was kind of like we were just putting it together and I was recording engineer so I was just making sure we got the stuff recorded because it was really for our own love of the music but that kind of set us on to a journey. Which it became something totally different like I say when I came back I started to realize that I probably wasn't the same person that I was previously is not. I'm just saying I didn't have as much concern for others and care about people. I was starting to understand that I had this mission to do, which was nothing to do with my personal vanity, but it was to give to others. And that's

23:58 something I never thought about ever before. And it just felt like that wasn't me. And although I still have memories of everything that I did when I was younger, those memories weren't necessarily of a person that I really was proud of. This accident. and the music set us off on this direction, which was a thing of positivity. So this message, this mission of giving to others, how are you living that now? What kinds of things are you doing right now? Personally, I work from home. I do the SEO consulting, as we mentioned, and I'm an SEO, a Google consultant, and I still do the multimedia of films. But I work from home and I'm caregiver for my mom who has Parkinson's. And she's a quadriplegic with Parkinson's. She's nine years old. So she gave to me after the car accident and she's like the hugest reason that I made it through the car accident. And instead of putting her in a nursing home, a place for mom or wherever they people put their parents, I just felt like it's my duty. So this is something very important to me. And sometimes she feels like she's a burden and my dad passed of Alzheimer's.

24:59 So for the last eight to 10 years, I've been caregiving for them. and working full time, but I'm glad to do it. It's not a burden to me. A lot of people feel that it probably would be, and maybe it does take, it is taxing, but I feel just absolutely fortunate. Every day is a bonus since the car accident. That's another thing that I probably should lay out right here. It's been 7 ,600 in some days. I usually check it every once in a while. Because every day is a bonus been for me and i'm not afraid of death anymore at all and i used to be like a worry war i used to my mom used to have this book this physician's desk reference and like everything in there like had a flow chart that led to your dying possibly I remember that great big book back in the pre -Google days, the PDR. It was about two inches thick. I think it was red even.

25:46 It was red. That's it. Yeah, it was red and it had flow charts. You could easily look. I think what it was was a thing to get you to go to your doctor and make the doctor lots of money. But every single thing that I would look at, if I took the right flow chart, it led to, oh, you might be dying. So I had this super huge phobia of dying. But after the car accident, I have There's no fear of dying at all because there's nothing about that experience that was painful except the recovery afterwards. There's nothing like you were asking me, did I feel pain? No, there was no pain. The pain came after I came back. Every day since then has been a huge bonus spin and I always think twice about whether I'm doing something for myself or for others and I try to be unselfish and... in what I do. I'm not perfect, but I definitely am, I think, a better representation of who I want to be than what I was before. Yeah. One other little thing, and this may not be important at all, but I had it in my notes that you had mentioned this in your email, that taking a shower after this experience was... Completely different which you explain what in the world that means. Well, there was a couple Let me also tell you the both and once one's kind of funny so in the hospital I don't know everyone that's ever been in the hospital knows you've got like there's two different types of nurses. There's like the There's like the nurse ratchet tough one and then there's the loving ones and you get one or the other, you know, the story that starts out with with the nurse. OK, so the first time I came to and in the hospital I was OK. Well, she was really a

27:19 pretty young nurse and I, you know, I was probably in my 30s or whatever and she came in and the other nurses were always were bothering me to like take tests and try to read things. And I was just had a close head injury and I didn't want to like be read a book and have to take a test. Like that's what some of the things they were trying to figure out with my clothes and I was like I was rejecting all of that because I was literally that messed up that I couldn't even put my mind to that but she came in and she said water is medicine too and you know she had a sponge bath for me and I was like this is okay yeah that was good that was really really good then the part that I meant thing I mentioned to you so I already recognized that that like the water was healing okay but after I got home the time that I knew I really still didn't know if I was gonna make it through this thing But when I got, they finally released me from the hospital and I got home and I got the first shower and the water like rinsed all that grime off me and whatever was on my body from the surgeries and stuff. That was the first time I was like, okay, I'm going to make it through this thing.

28:18 I mean, like the water was so healing. It was almost like a baptism of sorts. It was amazing that that stuck in my mind as like a point of like, I knew I was going to, going to make it through this thing. Okay. Blasting that I have for you. And that is that our show is all about hope. And a lot of people are wondering, you know, is there really a life after this and things like that? And you didn't go clear off to a heavenly place, but through your experience, would you say that there is some kind of message that you would like to share with everybody? Yeah, absolutely. And I would say most people would look at this experience and say that it is a negative. Like everyone always hears, oh, how horrific that was. And, you know, yes, it was. And it was awful to to recover from it. But it's made me a much better person. It's made me appreciate life.

29:12 It's made me want to give back as opposed to being selfish in my own personal interests. Just the fact that every day is An important one to me and i think anyone that's been through an experience like this and is maybe fearful about what might come we all have different levels of what we're able to do i've been very blessed to be able to do a lot of things because they did a good job getting me back to being normal golf and everything. I'm able to do a lot but no matter what it is i think. I totally believe that there's life after death. Or even more than that, I feel that the body is like a container for the soul. And having that out -of -body experience, I believe my soul was out of my body. So I definitely believe there is something else to it. Now, where it goes or what it is, I don't know. But definitely, it was for the better, where most people would think it would be absolutely for the worse. So it was a life -changing event. Like I say, it's almost like I'm a different person altogether.

30:10 Although I still have the memories of my past, I don't feel like I'm the same person as I was previous. Terrence, I appreciate you sharing all that and spending time with us today. Oh, absolutely. Glad to be here. Thanks again for listening and sharing this podcast. Don't forget to hit the follow or subscribe button and sign up for our newsletter at RoundTripDest .com. If you want to share your near -death experience, or if you have questions or comments about the show, send an email to eric at roundtripdeath .com. Until then, I wish you everything good that you're looking for in this life and the next.