A woman who ‘died’ after suffering a cardiac arrest in a nightclub has shared the incredible experience she had in the “after-life” – and how it has left her with ‘paranormal’ powers.
Louisa Peck was 22 and partying hard in New York, suffering with alcoholism and abusing drugs, when she overdosed on cocaine unknowingly cut with lidocaine, an anaesthetic.
She went into cardiac arrest in the club, which triggered a grand mal seizure, causing Louisa to lose consciousness.
From there, she describes being “shot up into the sky like a character punched by Popeye”, and emerging onto a new land, where she felt her body slip away, and was able to fly and ‘meet’ her ancestors.
But what happened after she regained consciousness was even more fantastical – with Louisa reporting newfound powers, such as the ability to accurately predict deaths and see ghosts.
“I was determined to settle back into normal life as if nothing had happened and the experience had meant nothing, but my spirit energy deflectors had been permanently damaged,” Louisa, from Nehalem, Oregon, US, told Need To Know.
“I was an avid materialist atheist who despised all things churchy or woo-woo, but I knew this ‘reality’ had been no dream or hallucination.”
Louisa’s previous beliefs were put to the test when, in November 1982 while partying with friends, she took the drugs that proved to have fateful consequences.
She started to get ‘tunnel vision’ as her heart slowed, and she stopped breathing as she went into cardiac arrest.
Louisa, who describes herself as a “high-functioning alcoholic” at the time, recalled being “shot up” into the air, before soaring over Manhattan and diving into the ocean.
She said: “I wondered briefly whether my speed falling from this height would make for a hard surface impact, but I felt no fear.
“I shot down into the water, which felt cold but lovely, saw incredibly beautiful bubbles rising around me and the surface dappling far overhead.
“I surfaced and swam to shore without effort or normal time passage.”
There, she found a pale blue house and felt an innate connection with it.
She climbed rocks to reach it, and felt her body “slip away” in the process, before she entered the property.
Louisa said: “As I crossed the threshold, I realised this was the house of my ancestors, that all of us had passed through it.
“I could see the grain of the wood floor worn to almost a powder by the tread of so many generations.
“I could sense my ancestors’ joy at my coming to join them and felt honoured to do so, though in life I’d never cared a bit about my ancestors.”
Louisa then felt herself “flying” across the ocean again, and says a voice answered her inner question of whether or not the experience was real, responding, “More real than anything back there”.
She said: “Back there, I knew, referred to life as Louisa.
“I also knew the voice was right: this was far more real.
“Meanwhile, the sun got bigger and bigger as I approached it and I wondered if I would vaporize – again with no trepidation.
“And then, as if I’d passed through a thin filament, poof – I was inside the sun.”
There, Louisa describes being engulfed by a light that felt like “divine love” and felt in a blissful state, not aware of time passing.
But the ‘voice’ called her back to Earth, telling her “You can’t stay, you’re not done yet”.
She slowly came to, seeing the bartender performing CPR on her – she had been unresponsive for three minutes.
Louisa said: “With tremendous despair and frustration, I realized I’d been stuck back into the meat puppet, as I thought of it at the time.”
She didn’t wait for the ambulance that had been called, and instead got a taxi home and tried to dismiss the whole experience.
But that would prove impossible, over time.
In 1987, five years later, Louisa was confronted with an otherworldly presence while on a beach – the “ghost” of an old man emerging from a swamp and staring out to sea, who then vanished, leaving no trace.
Another five years later, in 1993, Louisa had the strong sense that her unborn nephew wouldn’t survive to full-term, which proved tragically correct.
Another year later, while battling severe alcoholism, she attempted to drive while under the influence and heard the same voice shout, “This is the last time I can help you. And you do know right from wrong!”.
Finally, she got sober – but the strange, paranormal experiences continued.
In 1997, Louisa was in hospital with her terminally ill sister when the same voice urged her to “tell her about the light” as she was “having trouble crossing”.
Louisa said: “I described the light, speaking softly into my sister’s ear.
“20 minutes later, she haemorrhaged and died, but I soon sensed her clear as life hovering above us in the room.
“Her unique love was palpable to me.
“She filled me with the light and gave me instructions to find her two-year-old child and communicate what she would tell me.”
All the while, Louisa wasn’t reporting her experiences to anyone, for fear of “seeming grandiose and crazy”.
But the occurrences continued, including knowing a stranger’s name before she had been told it, and being able to inadvertently view the memories of a friend, plus further communications with deceased loved ones and her ‘guardian angel’ voice appearing as an ‘orb’ in pictures.
Louise, now 65, said: “It was the aftereffects, not the near-death experience itself, that proved to me the coexistence of a spiritual plane.
“I now believe intelligence and love are one, and that they manifest as the entirety of the universe – including life.
“I understand that terrestrial life for humans and animals is but a brief gig inside the meat puppet.
“We are dense and dull-witted in our flesh suits, but to jump the spark of love from one of us to another is our purpose here.
“It’s much harder to do when we’re blind and deaf to our spiritual context, but it generates something precious.
“I still consider religion distorted by an amalgamation of human foibles – it’s like a pre-schooler’s clay model of profound and complex truths, and to adhere to it doggedly is not only misguided but dangerous.”
Louisa has also written a book about her experience, titled ‘Die-Hard Atheist: from NDE Denier to Full-on Woo-Woo’.
