What is your worst nightmare? When you watch a train speed into the platform, has your brain ever—despite all logic—succumbed to its innate love for drama? Out of nowhere, your imagined body is tumbling hopelessly through the air and into the incoming train.
That thought alone is enough to send a chill down anybody’s spine. Yet what if it actually happened? What if it was meant to be and rather than break you down, it opens new doors and brings out the best in you?
Predestined Fate
In the years leading up to his near-death experience, David Ditchfield was dragging his way through life.
“Life was a bit of an uphill struggle. I’d been living in London hoping to make something of [life] because I left school without any qualifications—I’m dyslexic. In all fairness, I think I was just trying to push on all the wrong doors that weren’t meant for me,” he said.
One day, on his way to visit his sister’s family, Ditchfield met an elderly couple looking for directions. After he helped them, the lady handed Ditchfield a flyer for a seance and welcomed him to join.
Never a spiritual person, Ditchfield shrugged off the invite without a second thought. Yet, later that night, while nursing a beer in the pub after escaping from the chaos of his sister’s kids, he fished out the leaflet and decided, “I’m going to go.”
Inside the packed venue, an animated medium was walking down the aisle calling out messages from the beyond when she abruptly stopped in her tracks—energy shifting as she turned toward him.
“Your life is going to change,” she said. “They’re not telling me what but just for you to be prepared. It’s going to be very big but you’ll be protected.”
A Terrible Accident
In February 2006, Ditchfield was seeing a friend off at the train station when the unthinkable happened. As he leaned into the train for one last goodbye, the automatic doors closed on his thick sheepskin coat.
“I pulled and screamed at the top of my lungs for help but the driver did not see me. The train pulled out at a great speed and I was dragged under the wheels,” Ditchfield recounted on the podcast Round Trip Death.
“It was violent, painful, and immensely terrifying. I was under a moving train and being thrown around—like inside a washing machine on full spin.”
The train left Ditchfield on the tracks shattered and bruised. His left arm was severed completely from the elbow.
Following the accident, British Rail ran a year-long investigation and stripped the train’s carriage door down to its last rivet. At its conclusion, the head of the police told Ditchfield, ‘We banged our heads together. You should not be here—you should be dead.”
Threshold to Another Realm
Throughout the terrifying ordeal and his transfer to the hospital, Ditchfield stayed alert. Then—while awaiting surgery—he was suddenly pulled from the agony and the cacophony of the ER into a realm of absolute peace and calm.
“I found myself in what appeared to be a darkened room—I figured I was dead but I wasn’t scared. I didn’t resist that idea, yet I didn’t want to die.”
The place was beautiful and filled with orbs of colorful and pulsating lights. The hospital gurney was replaced by a huge slate of rock and to Ditchfield’s great surprise, his body was whole and healed beneath the blue satin sheet that covered him.
“I looked up and there were three symmetrical grids of white light—very bright and pure white. I couldn’t take my gaze away, I sensed that there was a gentle energy healing all the trauma my body had just been through.”
Ditchfield then noticed there was an androgynous being with white-blonde hair and a simple black t-shirt standing at his feet. “I knew this person’s face and I said, ‘Where do I know you from? Who are you?’” The being smiled knowingly but remained silent.
A while later, two female figures entered the scene and hovered their hands above Ditchfield’s body. As they slowly ran their hands over the contour of his body, Ditchfield felt a powerful energy that went straight to his soul.
“It was an energy of love. They were peeling off all the layers of hurt. All the baggage that I’d been carrying all my life was slowly being taken away. They were healing my essence. It was a remarkable feeling—this unconditional love coming through in waves from their hands.”
Though the three beings never spoke, Ditchfield was quickly gaining knowledge as they worked. Through telepathy, he understood that the being in the black t-shirt was his most important guardian angel and had been with him through this lifetime and beyond.
“I realized that I hadn’t just lived this one life. I was reincarnated and will be reincarnated again. I could have been a cat or another person in my past life but whatever it was, my soul was guarded by this particular being.”
Infinite and Unconditional Love
Convinced that he was dead and worried about his family’s reaction, Ditchfield peered over the edge of the rock hoping to see them. What he saw instead, was a waterfall of stars.
“I saw stars tumbling down. I could see shooting stars, colors, and nebulous, beautiful things that I’d never seen before with human eyes. I knew I was looking from one galaxy into another—into infinity,” he recounted.
“I felt the [most powerful] energy before I saw it—every molecule in my body was vibrating with pure and unconditional love. I looked past the being in the black t-shirt and saw a huge tunnel of white light surrounded by powerful, rotating flames.”
The scene should have terrified him but all Ditchfield felt was love emanating from the center of the pure light. It was then he realized innately that he was looking at God—the source of all creations.
“This was not the image of God that we saw on the ceiling of the Vatican in Rome. I was so overwhelmed that I started to laugh. I was just so happy,” Ditchfield said.
“[Before this] I had no faith whatsoever. So, to suddenly see all this and realize that there was a God—to feel the pure vibration of love going through me—was really profound.”
Then, just as suddenly as he had exited his physical body, Ditchfield came crashing back. In an instant, the pain and chaos of the hospital returned.
From then on, Ditchfield recovered with superhuman speed. “You’ve been under a train and you can’t move, but you’re positively glowing!” exclaimed a friend—one of many who had walked into Ditchfield’s hospital room prepared to see the worst.
Doctors estimated that he would need to spend at least four months in the hospital recovering. To their astonishment, Ditchfield made it home in just three and a half weeks.
A New Lease on Life
“Most people said to me, ‘You must have been really disappointed to come back after all this,’ but I wasn’t. I was charged with so much energy. All I could think of was, ‘I’ve got to tell everybody about this!’ I decided then and there that I was going to paint what I saw.”
Art was something Ditchfield had always enjoyed but didn’t think he could pursue.
After the accident, however, things started falling into place naturally and help came in many forms—two friends offered him a studio space to work in, then an aunt visited and brought him a canvas, even strangers were stopping in to chat and encourage him as he painted.
“I was apprehensive because I had no training and I didn’t want to mess it up. However, as soon as I started, I knew I wasn’t the only one creating this painting. I was still connected to that other realm and I was being helped,” he said.
“I became really prolific and I couldn’t stop painting. The love that had been given to me gave me a sense of self-worth and confidence to bring out all that creativity within me.”
One day years later, Ditchfield received a call from excited friends urging him to watch the news. Hubble telescope had just captured some images from the far side of our galaxy and those pictures looked just like Ditchfield’s paintings—he had been recreating things from the universe that no one had seen before.
In equally miraculous ways, Ditchfield achieved success both as a composer and a writer.
With only a cheap synthesizer, an old laptop, and basic musical knowledge, Ditchfield wrote his first-ever orchestral piece inspired by his near-death experience. It debuted to a sold-out audience.
Angels Watching Over Us
Looking back on his journey, the biggest message Ditchfield learned from the other realm was that we’re all loved and cared for. After all, our guardian angels are following us on a day-to-day basis. We just need to accept and tap into that love.
“It’s all about self-love. Once you start loving yourself with total, genuine, full-on love—you start to evolve as a person. My music and art were already in me—that self-worth gave me the confidence to bring it out and do something with it. We’ve all got that.”
Before his accident, Ditchfield spent a lot of time worrying about past mistakes, lost opportunities, and the future.
“In the realm beyond, there was no sense of time, guilt, or shame. So, all those feelings of worry were a part of the past and I did not even think about the future,” Ditchfield shared.
“What does exist is the present moment that we are in—the past and the future are not as important as we give them [credit for.] It was really powerful to feel that.”
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