Curious to know if any of you lifers have had any??? This isn't intended to be morbid! In fact it's quite strange, and probably a curious human trait, to find stories of NDE's quite entertaining.
The reason I ask is that i'm currently in Northern Mexico assisting on an environmental project in Aquascalientes...today I was lifting oil drums and driving them to a neighbouring farm in a pickup truck, bottle of Corona and cheap Mexican cigarette in hand ("living the dream"), when unloading the last drum it felt as if my hand were glued to the inside of it, didn't think much of it, but had a look out of curiosity...only to find that both my thumb and index finger were tangled in the web of a fully grown Black Widow, with it being but a couple of inches away from my thumb. Without a doubt the scariest moment of my entire 22 years; my mouth went completely dry, my cigarette quivering, time slowed down - and it may all sound dramatic I know - but for some reason I can't remember what I did next, and it was only 3 hours ago!
I reckon i'm going to develop a fear of anything black and red, running down the street when confronted by a goth - what's worse is that I have another 4 months left here. Great.
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On a Geology field trip to a quarry in Clandon (near Guildford) - a lump of flint the size of a basketball was dislodged some fifty feet above me and landed in the exact spot my head had been less than five seconds before.
A centipede as long as my forearm ran right up my leg, over my stomach and across my hand after I stupidly got into bed without checking it first in a s***hole of a hotel in Mexico. Had to annihilate a scorpion as big as a saucer with a pool shoe in the same hotel (it was so big that when I turned the light off, you could hear it crawling around)
I also flipped a car up a grass bank doing about 95mph. The car rolled and somersaulted before coming to a stop in a field. Neither myself or my passenger were wearing seat belts and both walked away with scratches and bruises.
Have a few more but that will do for now. If I was a cat i would be down to my last life by now.
I was riding home
on my motor bike from work one night along Lower Thames Street in London (dual carriageway)
and a car driving the other way swerved and hit a lamp post. <?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />
The lamp
post then fell and landed on the bikes handle bars stopping the bike dead and launching
me over the top. Police that arrived on the scene helpfully pointed out that
half a second later and the lamp post would have been level with my head and
being cast iron would have taken my head off!
Coming home from hospital later that evening in a mini cab and the local radio announced that“central London was brought to a standstill when a lamp post fell on a motor cycle" which I thought was a bit unfair blaming me instead of the driver that hit the lamp post!
Put me off
riding for a few years!
http://forum.charltonlife.com/discussion/41336/closest-youve-come-to-death/p1
After a few minutes of dozing off I suddenly felt myself rising in the chair but being held back by something. I came round to discover that my arse was about four inches off the seat and it was the seat belt stopping from rising any further.
The plane had gone into a frighteningly steep descent, and anybody who wasn't strapped into their seats was flying through the air towards the back of the plane. This seemed to last longer than just a flash in the pan and carried on for about 45 seconds. All off a sudden there was an almighty bang which shook the plane from head to tail and it appeared to level off. The bloke in front of me who was about 17 stone was on top of somebody else three rows behind, and everybody who had flown through the air was now nursing bruised and bloody heads where they hit the roof of the cabin.
All the oxygen masks had dropped and the overhead lockers had opened spilling all the contents over everybody. There was lots of crying screaming and panicking, and several people lay injured in the aisles.
Once the plane had leveled out and the pilot had regained control the cabin staff appeared and assessed the damage. Now this was in the days when smoking was allowed in certain quarters of the plane. Imagine the horror when the cabin staff started giving people oxygen while those around started lighting up. I can't remember exactly how many Hail Mary's I said that day but I thought we had clipped the top of the Himalayas and were on the way down.
We were a group of fourteen Brits on the plane and very few people actually spoke English, but we sussed out that the Captain must be able to and asked for him to come to come back and tell us what had happened. It appears we went into a air pocket created by the thunderstorm and bottomed out after the dive. He assured us that the plane was OK, despite what it looked like inside.
He told us that the options were to fly and land at Islamabad which was about one hour away, and stay for 48 hours while they checked the plane over or continue to Beijing which was another four. He decided on the latter. Needless to say all services inside the plane were knocked out, toilets, food water etc.so the rest of the journey was spent either crossing our legs or praying to the good Lord.
We landed at Beijing about four hours later where the plane was sent to a taxi way where the fire engines/ambulances were waiting for us. The injured were ferried off quite quickly (including some of our party) and the TV and Press were waiting in the arrivals hall. Fortunately none of us spoke Mandarin so they ignored us.
I really thought that was my last day on earth.
I never have seen the end of Turner and Hooch, or flown Air China again.