NDE: A Door to a Former Life

Connie Stevens, of Clarinda, Iowa, died one afternoon. But that was years ago – she’s better now.

“In 1984 I had a hysterectomy and died,” she said. “They couldn’t revive me.”

Doctors eventually stroked Connie to life, but she’s never quite felt the same since. Connie said while she was gone, another spirit attached itself to her.

“When you have a near death experience and your soul leaves you, another one can come inside you,” Connie said. She believes a spirit, something she calls a ‘walk in,’ took hold of her body when she died.

“My body was so sore,” she said. “I felt like someone had taken a baseball bat and beat me with it. I said something to the doctor, ‘why am I so sore?’ The doctor said, ‘I have no explanation for that.’”

After that experience, Connie’s life – that of a farm wife and mother – drastically changed. She no longer liked the same food or music and was shocked at the things she now saw.

“Shortly after I got home I started seeing things,” she said. “I saw an old man leading an old pack mule. I saw Indians. Before that, I had seen none of this.”

No one around Connie believed she was seeing these spirits or remembering things in her life that had never happened, so she started a journal. In a few years she wrote 300 pages of a past life in Pine Valley, Colo.

She’d never been to Colorado – but the memories were very real.

Finally, Connie called directory assistance and asked to be connected to anyone in Pine Valley, Colo., “but Pine Valley, Colorado, doesn’t exist anymore,” Connie discovered. However, the city, now known as Pine, does. Information eventually connected her with a bookstore in Conifer, Colo., and a door into a life she’d never had was thrown open.

“My marriage ended not long after that,” she said. Connie moved to Colorado in 1986 to explore the past life of her ‘walk in.’

She discovered everything she “remembered” was true – even down to the geography.

“The main thing that really got to me was I knew Colorado,” she said. “I had always lived in Iowa but I could drive right to where I knew things were.”

After a hypnotic regression session with a professional in Denver, Connie was told that, yes, she was inhabited by a ‘walk in’ soul. Connie, however, was comforted by this.

“It’s made me a better person,” she said.

Since Connie moved back to Iowa from Colorado, she’s used the psychic gifts given to her by her ‘walk in’ to help others. She cleanses homes of negative spirits.

“I’ve always been successful in doing that,” she said.

People also ask her to interpret dreams and advise them on the afterlife, but she’s noticed these topics are more taboo in the Midwest.

“In Colorado … the people were so open minded with this you could hear alien abduction stories and ghost stories in the grocery store like you’re talking about buying a loaf of bread,” she said. Things aren’t like that for Connie in Iowa.

“My abilities bother some people,” she said. “But (I don’t) let that bother me. I don’t push it on anybody. If someone has something paranormal and wants me to help, I will.”

However, she said many people aren’t ready for the truth about the invisible world around them.

“I think there’s a lot out there we don’t know,” Connie said. “There’s a lot out there if we did know it would scare us to death.”

Copyright 2008 by Jason Offutt

Got a scary story? Ever played with a Ouija board, heard voices, seen a ghost, UFO or a creature you couldn’t identify? Let Jason know about it: Jason Offutt c/o The Examiner, 410 S. Liberty, Independence, Mo. 64050, or jasonoffutt@hotmail.com. Your story might make an upcoming installment of “From the Shadows.”

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