How Psychic Are You?
By Sara Reistad-Long
Special Offer
KELLY 26, grad student
I was in a major car accident with my mother when I was 13. We hit a deer, and our car flipped over twice. Miraculously, concussions were our only injuries. But during the few seconds in which the car was flipping, I had what I thought was a dream. My body stayed in the car, but the thinking part of me went really high up, watching the whole scene. It was as if I was in "Superman mode." I saw the ambulance arrive, my twin sister, Sarah, picking up the phone at home and finding out what had happened, the people in the nearby farmhouse coming out to look. I heard the deer panting as it ran away. I was just all-knowing. And I had no fear.
Then, it was as if somebody pressed "download," and I was aware of every detail of my life. I didn't see anybody, but there was a presence with me, and we went through my whole life, pausing at certain moments. The presence didn't judge, but listened as I evaluated those moments. At the end of my "dream," I saw my funeral. Then I heard--or felt, rather-- a voice say, "It could end this way, but there's more for you to do. We're putting you back in." Suddenly, I was zipped back into my body, and the car had stopped spinning. I never told my mother what happened.
Years later, in college, the story came up for the first time. My boyfriend, who'd been reading up on this sort of thing, gave me a book called The Light Beyond, by Raymond Moody. It was basically a psychiatrist's record of the countless, almost identical near-death experiences his patients had described. I was shocked to discover that other people have had the same "dream" I had. Comparing my experience with those of so many others awakened my curiosity. To me, it proves there is something beyond what we know.
