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I am a sixty-eight year-old retired lawyer, a former assistant attorney general for the US Territory of American Samoa, and for the State of Vermont. I have two bestselling books on Amazon: INCIDENT AT DEVILS DEN and DEVILS DEN: THE RECKONING.
FREE FALL, AN AMERICAN NEAR-DEATH EXPERIENCE is my third and latest book. I've never had a near-death experience, but since 2020 I've learned about these visits to "the other side" vicariously through those who've taken this transformative journey firsthand. In 2021 I began extensive research on the subject. The results changed my perspective about death and dying. Survivors of near-death lose all fear of death after the experience. More importantly, they lose all fear of living as well.
FREE FALL is a compilation of two near-death stories submitted to me by amazing women and written as a novel. Both are practicing medical doctors who describe their afterlife experience as "life changing" and "a transformative journey." Raymond Moody, MD, PhD wrote the bestselling book LIFE AFTER LIFE in 1975 as a case study of 150 patients who survived death. He coined the term "near-death experience," and is founder of the International Association of Near Death Studies at IANDS.org. If you've never heard these stories before, I invite you to visit their website and listen to a few of the narratives shared by others. The near-death experience is a global phenomenon with incredible commonalities irrespective of religious or cultural beliefs.
Contrary to some common beliefs, near-death experiences are not the product of a dying brain, hallucinations, or a result of medication. According to Dr. Sam Parnia, MD, PhD, Associate Professor of resuscitation medicine at NYU Langone, "Survivors reported having unique lucid experiences, including a perception of separation from the body, observing events without pain or distress, and a meaningful evaluation of of life, including of their actions, intentions, and thoughts toward others. The researchers found these experiences of death to be different from from hallucinations, delusions, illusions, dreams, or CPR-induced consciousness... These lucid experiences cannot be considered a trick of a disordered or dying brain, but rather a unique human experience that emerges on the brink of death." NYU RESEARCH PRESS RELEASE, New Hub, November 7, 2022.
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"INCIDENT AT DEVILS DEN, a true story ..." is a book I waited 40 years to publish. It's the true account of a wilderness camping trip a friend and I made in 1977. We were both 22 year-old staff sergeants in the USAF, stationed at a nuclear missile base in Western Missouri. We drove six hours to Devils Den state park to photograph eagles. Instead, we had an encounter with something unimaginable. It changed our lives in ways we could have never imagined.
My enlistment ended in 1979. Using my G.I. Education benefits I finished college and attended law school at Western Michigan. Over the course of my legal career I handled civil litigation and criminal defense cases in private practice. I switched sides to take a job as an Assistant Attorney General for the U.S. Territory of American Samoa. From palm trees in the South Pacific I finished my career working for the State of Vermont as an Assistant Attorney General. l retired in 2011 and moved to Dallas.
Our 1977 misadventure began as a simple two-night camping trip. We drove south from the air base for six hours to Devils Den state park. We avoided the campgrounds in favor of a high bluff in a remote area of the park. We came to photograph eagles and the spot we found was perfect.There was a treeline to our backs and an open meadow in front of us. It was early evening before we set-up camp and by nightfall we were enjoying a nice campfire. We were about to retire to the tent for the evening when my friend noticed three bright stars just above the western horizon. We watched them for a quarter hour and debated what they could be. We were familiar with most kinds of aircraft and there is nothing that has lights in a perfect, tight triangle.
We were abducted from our campsite and subjected to four hours of terror. When they returned us we were both badly burned and suffering from dehydration. Initially, neither of us could clearly recall what happened in a clear narrative. We had bit and pieces of memories. The memories returned as years of screaming nightmares.
I never told a soul about my encounter. My wife and I kept it a secret. It was just between us for 40 years. If my story had leaked out I would have lost both my job and my good name in the legal community. I was at peace with it finally. Until 2012.
Why did I write this now? If I had published this story it would have trashed my good name in the legal community and probably cost me my job. I retired in 2011 and moved to Dallas. A year later I took a bad fall on a stairwell and thought I might have broken my leg. I went to the VA Medical Center in Dallas for an x-ray of my leg. What the radiologist discovered was the catalyst to publish a book.
In October of 2012 I fell and thought I may have broken my leg. We drove to the VA Hospital Emergency Room to be checked-out. What was discovered on the x-rays baffled the doctors. On the first x-ray they found a piece of metal about the size of my fingernail. In the second x-ray there's a flower petal arrangement of of white objects in my calf muscle.
The mystery was two fold. How did this piece of metal that looks like a computer chip and this collection of tiny objects in manage to get an inch and-one-half deep in my thigh and my calf muscle? How did the collection of objects below And, how did it get under my skin without leaving a scar? I had never injured that leg before.
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