Chapter Five: Alex

“The day science begins to study non-physical phenomena, it will make more progress in one decade than in all the previous centuries of its existence.”

– Nikola Tesla

On a chilly November night in Seattle, Washington, 19-year-old Alex’s life almost ended just as it was getting started. The air was crisp, carrying the scent of fallen leaves and the promise of winter. What began as a typical evening out with friends ended in a near-fatal accident that would forever change his perspective on life, death, and the nature of reality itself.

Alex and his best friend had been at a dance club in downtown Seattle with some female friends. The rhythm of the music still echoed in their ears as they stepped out into the night. When the boys decided to leave, the girls weren’t ready to go, so the two of them decided to walk home. Their path took them across a bridge, the city lights reflecting off the dark water below. As they approached some nearby railroad tracks, the distant rumble of an approaching train filled the air.

“We ended up walking along the tracks,” Alex recounted, his voice steady despite the gravity of the memory. At one point the tracks passed under a highway overpass.  “There was an embankment of loose gravel, so we had to walk really close to the passing train.”

What happened next was a blur of motion and terror. As the passing cars switched from flatbeds to boxcars, the air currents rushed past them.  Alex, walking on the side closer to the train, suddenly felt himself being pulled under. The deafening roar of the train, the scraping of metal against gravel, and the sickening lurch as his body was sucked under the train – these sensations would stay with him for years to come.

“I got caught underneath the train and dragged for about a half a mile,” Alex continued. “My best friend somehow managed to keep up. He pulled me out from underneath the train, carried me up this steep embankment covered in blackberry bushes, put me down, and ran to find a phone. This was before cell phones.”

Alex’s memories of the immediate aftermath are fragmented, like shards of a broken mirror. He recalls flashes of consciousness: the rough texture of the gravel beneath him, the sharp pain coursing through his body, the metallic taste of blood in his mouth. He remembers hearing sirens in the distance, growing louder as they approached. Then, the sensation of being lifted, the world spinning around him as he was loaded into an ambulance.

“I remember staring up at the ceiling with some fluorescent lights,” he said, his eyes distant as he recalled the moment. It was in that ambulance, staring up at those lights, where the things that Alex’s physical body experienced diverged from what his consciousness experienced. 

His battered body was rushed to the nearest hospital. The injuries he had sustained were catastrophic. He had a broken back, all his ribs on the right side were broken, along with his collarbone and tailbone. He suffered a massive head injury, and the entire right side of his body was essentially one large, raw abrasion. The doctors didn’t expect him to survive, let alone recover.

“I died three times,” Alex explained, his tone matter-of-fact. “Well, my heart stopped three times, but I for sure died in that ambulance.”

After extensive efforts by the medical staff to save him, Alex spent the next seven days in a coma, his body broken, tattered and torn, hovering between life and death. The doctors gave his family little hope for his recovery. They told his parents that even if he did wake up, he would likely be in a vegetative state, unable to walk or talk.

But on the eighth day, against all odds, Alex woke up.

“I opened my eyes to fluorescence again, but I could tell that I was in a hospital,” he recounted. “I got up out of bed and walked into the hallway. It looked like something out of a movie – long corridors with flickering lights. I came up to a nurses’ station and they’re all huddled talking to each other. I was like, ‘Can somebody please tell me where I am?’ They all turned around, and some of the nurses started crying.”

The medical staff was astounded. Not only was Alex awake, but he was walking and talking coherently. It seemed nothing short of a miracle. Doctors rushed to his room, their faces a mix of shock and disbelief as they examined him.

One nurse, in particular, seemed to understand the significance of what had happened. She sat down by Alex’s bedside with a notepad and asked him to recount anything he remembered from being in a coma. It seemed Alex had been through what’s known as a near-death experience (NDE). The nurse wrote down everything he described, her hand moving furiously across the page as she tried to capture every detail.

His mind drifted back to that remarkable point of divergence, in the ambulance, where his journey truly began. “I was looking at the lights, and then I just basically melted into them. I became the light,” he recalled. The transition was instantaneous – one moment he was in the ambulance, and the next, he found himself in a realm of pure light and consciousness.

“Everything was illuminated,” Alex recalled, his face brightening with the memory. “It wasn’t just white light, though. It had all the colors of the rainbow in it. And it’s got a feeling to it. If I think about it, it looks white, but also out of the corner of your eye, you can see every color, if that makes any sense at all.”

But it wasn’t just the visual aspect that struck Alex. “The light felt like love,” he said, struggling to find words adequate to describe the experience. “It was like being embraced by the universe itself, accepted completely and without judgment.”

In this realm of light and love, Alex encountered a guide, someone he instinctively called “Uncle Will.” Although he couldn’t recall the exact appearance of this guide later, the presence felt familiar and comforting.

What followed was what Alex refers to as his “life review.” In this review, he was shown the consequences of various actions throughout his life, both positive and negative. The experience was presented to him as a metaphorical tree, with each decision point represented by a branching of the tree.

“It started in my childhood, where the tree was like the trunk, and it’s growing out,” Alex explained. “I’m even seeing things that I did as a child, bad things that affected other people. The tree is growing in front of me, and every time it grows, there’s a branch. It’ll branch off one, maybe two or three different ways. It’ll say this was the correct path, and this is the path that you chose.”

This life review had a profound impact on Alex. He was shown not only how his actions affected others directly, but also the ripple effects of those actions. “I would see pain and suffering that I caused somebody else, and then how it trickled on. Let’s say they took it home and hurt somebody else because of that action, and then it would follow them.”

The experience wasn’t all negative, however. Alex was also shown the positive impacts of his good decisions and how outside influences had converged to help him make those choices. He explained that the branches of the tree would sometimes converge to form another trunk, and then branch off again. He understood that these trunks represented pivotal events in the timeline of his life, indicating that while he had free will,  some events in life were inevitable. 

The overall message was clear: every action has consequences, and we are all interconnected in ways we may not realize. “It was like seeing the butterfly effect in action,” Alex mused. “Every decision, no matter how small, had the potential to change not just my life, but the lives of countless others. It was beautiful and terrifying at the same time.”

After what felt like an eternity but was likely only moments in real-time, Alex returned to his body. The recovery that followed was remarkable. Despite the severity of his injuries, Alex healed in ways the doctors couldn’t easily explain. Within six months, there was little external evidence of the trauma he had endured. The massive abrasion that had covered the right side of his body had healed without a trace. His broken bones knitted together faster than expected.

“I had a softball-sized chunk of meat taken out of the back of my leg,” Alex recalled. “When I looked at it in the mirror, it looked like somebody took a big scooper the size of a softball and just took a scoop out of my leg. It was the grossest thing ever. But that filled in, and you can’t even tell now. It’s just so bizarre.”

However, the physical recovery was only part of Alex’s journey. The real challenge lay in integrating the profound experience he had undergone into his everyday life.

“You would think that if you had something like that happen to you, that you’d just come out a transformed person,” Alex reflected, a hint of regret in his voice. “But I ran from it for years. For eight or nine years, I was not a better person. I was still falling for the ego tricks, manipulating situations. It’s like maybe my brain was used to following that pattern, or I was just running from it.”

This period of running from his experience was challenging for Alex. He knew he had received an important message, a blueprint for how to live his life, but he struggled to fully embrace it. The mundane concerns of everyday life – work, relationships, bills – often seemed to drown out the profound wisdom he had gained.

But Alex’s journey was more than just a struggle for personal transformation. In the years following his NDE, he began to experience a series of strange phenomena that he couldn’t explain. These experiences ranged from surprising synchronicities to UFO sightings to encounters with mysterious shadow figures.

One of the most striking incidents occurred about two years after his NDE. Alex was planning a block barbecue with some friends when they noticed something unusual in the sky.

“We were standing in my front yard, talking. People are having beers or whatever, and I noticed something glowing in the sky,” Alex recalled. “There’s a probably 50-foot tall tree, and just above that was this huge red thing. It was just hovering there, silent and still. The night was clear, stars twinkling above, but this object stood out like a sore thumb.”

Alex and his friends stood transfixed, their conversations forgotten as they stared at the mysterious object. “It felt like it noticed us noticing it,” Alex continued. “We watched it, and then it just shot up into the sky and was gone in the blink of an eye. One second it was there, the next – nothing. We all just stood there, mouths open, trying to process what we’d seen.”

This was just the beginning. Over the years, Alex has witnessed numerous unexplained phenomena, including triangular UFOs, orbs of light, missing time, and even encounters with shadow people. These experiences often occurred when he was with others, providing a level of corroboration that he finds reassuring.

One particularly memorable incident occurred while camping with friends near the Washington-Idaho border. Alex and two friends were brushing their teeth by the side of a river at night when they noticed something strange in the sky.

“It was a beautiful, clear night,” Alex described, his voice filled with awe as he recounted the experience. “There’s a hill, and you could just see the stars were illuminating the hillside. All of a sudden, some of the stars are getting blocked out. They’re slowly moving towards us, like the hugest black triangle you could ever imagine.”

Alex and his friends stood rooted to the spot, toothbrushes forgotten in their hands as they watched the massive object move silently across the sky. “We watched it the whole time we brushed our teeth. We just stood there and watched it. Then it got over the top of us, and that was it. That’s all we remember.”

The next morning, Alex and his friends woke up simultaneously, feeling terrified but unable to recall what had happened after the triangle passed overhead. “We all woke up at the exact same time,” Alex said, a hint of confusion still in his voice years later. “And all you could see were these lights moving side to side out of the tent.” They sat in fear for several minutes, wondering what had happened the night before, and what the lights could be. 

“We were facing towards the river, and it turned out to be trolling lights from a fishing derby,” he recalled with a laugh. “But how did we not hear them loading 30 boats onto the river? Instead, we just woke up terrified.”

In addition to these UFO sightings, Alex has also had encounters with what he describes as shadow people. These entities appear as small, dark figures, about three and a half feet tall. 

“The first time I saw a shadow person, I was in bed with my one-year-old son,” Alex recalled. “It was standing at the end of the bed, just... looking at us. It was wearing what looked like a flat-brimmed hat, almost like something out of an old Western.”

The second encounter happened years later when Alex was in the front room with his wife. “We both saw it,” he said. “It was outside, peering in through the window. Both times, they just seemed to be observing. It was creepy, but I wasn’t scared. I just remember thinking, ‘that’s very strange.’”

Despite the otherworldly nature of these experiences, Alex found that they didn’t frighten him as much as one might expect. “After you’ve died and come back, I guess not much scares you anymore,” he mused. “These experiences were weird, sure, but they also felt – I don’t know, almost familiar in a way – like they were part of the same bigger picture that I’d glimpsed during my NDE.”

These experiences, while fascinating, have also been challenging for Alex. He’s found that many people are skeptical or dismissive when he tries to share his stories, which has led him to be selective about who he opens up to. “You can’t make anything of that when you have no proof of what the heck it is,” Alex reflected.

It wasn’t until about 15 years ago that Alex finally began to fully incorporate the lessons from his NDE into his daily life. The change wasn’t sudden, but rather a gradual shift in perspective and priorities.

This transformation manifested in various ways. In his work life, Alex found himself making decisions based on what felt right rather than what seemed most profitable. He began to prioritize relationships and personal growth over material success. He became more patient, more compassionate, more attuned to the needs of others.

“I remember one time at work,” Alex recalled, “we were about to close a big deal, but something felt off. In the past, I would have pushed it through anyway. But this time, I decided to trust my intuition. I called off the deal, and it turned out the other company was involved in some shady practices. By following that gut feeling, I saved our company from a potential scandal.”

“I started paying attention to synchronicities and just trusting the message that I was given,” he explained. “It was like suddenly seeing the world in a whole new light. Coincidences that I would have dismissed before now seemed full of meaning and guidance.”

“One time,” Alex shared, “I was struggling with a big decision at work. I couldn’t figure out which way to go. I decided to take a walk to clear my head, and as I was walking, I found a playing card on the sidewalk. It was the ace of hearts. Something about that just clicked for me – follow your heart, trust your intuition. I made my decision based on that, and it turned out to be exactly the right choice.”

Alex finds these synchronicities in everyday life – subtle signs and chance encounters that lead to new opportunities. He’s learned to trust these moments, seeing them as guideposts on his journey. “I just follow synchronicity, which is what I was told to do. I had always noticed synchronicities, even when I was running from it. I started paying attention to them, and my life went from an embattled... it always felt like I was fighting for the next thing.  Now, I’m just following the synchronicities and just trusting the message that I was given.”

As Alex embraced this new way of living, he found that life became easier in many ways. “Everything comes easy – money, work, family. Everything’s great,” he said. “It’s not that I don’t face challenges, but I approach them differently now. I trust in the process of life in a way I never did before.”

This approach has led Alex to some remarkable encounters and coincidences. He’s met several prominent researchers and authors in the fields of near-death experiences and UFO phenomena, often in seemingly random ways that he sees as further evidence of the synchronicities guiding his life.

One such encounter occurred when Alex and his wife were on a road trip, listening to an audiobook called “American Cosmic” by Diana Walsh Pasulka. “We’re listening to it, and we’re like, what the hell is this?” Alex recalled. “My wife looks over at me and she’s like, ‘We’re gonna meet this lady someday. I just have this feeling.’ Well, we ended up meeting her a year later.”

This meeting led to Alex attending an online class given by Dr. Pasulka. In the final session, a man spoke up, saying he felt it was important to share his story for some reason. As this man told the story of his own NDE, Alex was stunned. The experience was remarkably similar to his own, particularly the life review being presented in the form of a growing tree, a parallel that Alex finds both fascinating and validating. After the class, Alex scrambled to track down who had been speaking, and they have since become good friends. 

Another synchronistic encounter occurred at an academic conference. “I was sitting next to this friendly, but sort of salty, dude,” Alex said. “We’re talking back and forth, kind of BS-ing through the thing, and he tells me he’s an author. I ask what books he’s written, and he says his most famous one is this book called ‘Communion.’ It was Whitley Strieber, the famous UFO abduction author. I had no idea who he was at the time, but meeting him like that... it felt significant.”

Despite the remarkable nature of his experiences, Alex remains grounded. He’s aware that his stories might sound unbelievable to many, but he’s no longer concerned with convincing others. Instead, he focuses on living according to the insights he gained during his NDE.

“The message itself, I feel like every single person should know it,” Alex said. “And I feel like those of us that get the message, we tell people. But you can only tell people so many times and get side-eyed and scoffed at so many times before you’re like, ‘I’m not even going to waste my time.’ I’d rather just be friends with that person. But it’s an important message.”

This message – of love, interconnectedness, and the far-reaching consequences of our actions – has become the cornerstone of Alex’s life philosophy. He believes that if more people could understand and internalize this message, the world would be a better place.

As Alex reflects on his journey – from a carefree 19-year-old to a man who has glimpsed beyond the veil of death – he expresses a mix of wonder, gratitude, and ongoing curiosity. He doesn’t claim to have all the answers, but he feels he’s on the right path.

“I feel right on the edge of knowing it,” Alex mused. “Because I definitely saw the other side. And so I’m not afraid of death any longer. Which is something that happened pretty immediately. I was just no longer afraid of death. And so then my focus is like, what are we living for? I was sent back here. I was told that I had to come back. And I was told that it was important that I do so. I knew I was coming back. So then it’s like, I must be here to figure this out.”

Alex’s story is a testament to the resilience of the human spirit and the transformative power of near-death experiences. It challenges our understanding of reality and raises profound questions about the nature of consciousness, the purpose of life, and the interconnectedness of all things. While his experiences may seem fantastical to some, for Alex, they are an integral part of his reality – a reality that has shaped him into the person he is today.

As he continues to navigate this life with the knowledge gained from his glimpse beyond it, Alex remains open to whatever new experiences and insights may come his way. His journey serves as a reminder that there is perhaps more to our existence than meets the eye.

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