When Your Childhood Near-Death Experience Opens a Lifetime of Supernatural Sight

David Parker never planned on becoming a hospice nurse who would witness over 3,600 deaths, but looking back, it all started making sense. As a kid growing up on a small farm in Southern Ohio, surrounded by chickens and corn fields, David developed a serious lung infection that landed him in Children’s Hospital in Columbus for what felt like forever.

That’s where everything changed. During one of his hospital stays, David had a near-death experience that would shape the rest of his life in ways he couldn’t have imagined. He found himself floating down a big hospital hallway with high ceilings, but what he saw there was absolutely terrifying – hundreds of nude bodies constantly swirling in a massive ball, arms and legs and heads all tangled together with no gaps between them. The faces would pop out from under someone’s arm or leg, mouths stretched wide open like they were screaming.

Here’s what’s wild though – while David was having this frightening experience, a little girl with dark skin and a long thick braid appeared to him. She was completely solid, happy, and joyful, wearing what looked like a checkered outfit with a little skirt. She told him he could play there for a while but couldn’t stay, and then asked him to tell her mom she loved her. Her name was Penny.

When David got back to his body and told one of his nurses about seeing Penny, the woman completely freaked out. Turns out her daughter had just died in a skating accident when ice broke and she fell into a lake. The nurse quit that day and never came back to work. That experience was just the beginning of a lifetime of supernatural encounters that would define David’s 42-year nursing career.

The Swirling Ball That Kept Appearing in Hospital Hallways

Here’s where David’s story gets really fascinating – that terrifying swirling ball of bodies he saw as a kid? It wasn’t a one-time thing. Over his four decades as a nurse, he encountered the exact same phenomenon seven different times, always in hospital settings.

The Pattern That Never Changed

• Every single time David saw this ball of swirling people, it was in a hospital hallway, and the size of the ball matched the size of the space. In the old Columbus Children’s Hospital with huge high ceilings and wide hallways, the ball contained what looked like hundreds of bodies. When he saw it in a tiny hospice unit with regular-sized rooms, it was only about 10 feet across. The consistency was incredible – always the same pen-and-ink drawing appearance with dark outlines and white interiors.
• What really got to David was watching other people – doctors, nurses, patients – walk right through these swirling bodies without seeing anything at all. He’d be standing there transfixed, watching this incredible supernatural phenomenon, while everyone else went about their business completely oblivious. The last time he saw it, his boss kept opening the door trying to get him into a staff meeting, but David couldn’t take his eyes off what he was witnessing.
• The beings in the ball seemed completely trapped in their endless swirling motion, with no awareness of David or anyone else. Despite their mouths being stretched open like they were screaming, David felt absolutely no emotional connection to them. No communication, no plea for help, nothing. They just kept swirling constantly, arms and legs and heads popping in and out of the mass.
• The really interesting thing is that David worked in emergency rooms for 20 years dealing with traumatic deaths – gunshot wounds, car accidents, stabbings – and never saw this phenomenon there. It only appeared in settings where people had slower, more gradual deaths, like in hospitals and hospice units. Makes you wonder if these might be souls who got stuck somehow during the dying process.

The Refrigerator Beings Who Announced Death’s Approach

During his hospice years, David discovered he had what amounted to supernatural early warning system for when patients were about to die. These mysterious entities he called “refrigerator people” became his most reliable indicator that someone was approaching their final hours.

When Death’s Messengers Gathered

• These beings were massive – literally the size and shape of refrigerators, with bulky, almost square shoulders and round heads with no necks. David could only see glowing outlines around their heads and shoulders, like someone was shining a spotlight on invisible figures. They’d start appearing around the edges of patients’ rooms maybe a couple days before death, just standing there with their backs against the walls.
• As death got closer, more of these beings would show up and they’d start moving closer to the bed. David would have to walk through them to take care of his patients, and he’d find himself saying “excuse me, excuse me” in his mind, feeling like he was interfering with something important. They never responded to him or acknowledged his presence in any way – they seemed completely focused on the dying patient.
• By the time these beings completely surrounded the bed, David knew it was time. The patient would die, and immediately all the beings would disappear until the next time he had a patient approaching death. He saw this pattern hundreds of times over his hospice career, and it happened so consistently that he started using their presence as a more reliable indicator than medical signs.
• David talked to one other nurse who had seen the exact same thing – she specifically mentioned the bulky shape, the lack of necks, and the glowing outlines. But David saw this phenomenon hundreds of times while she’d only seen it a couple times. What’s really intriguing is his theory that maybe these beings were there to collect one of their own, and that when patients died, they might transform to look like these entities too.

What Dying Children See That Adults Don’t

During his five years doing pediatric hospice care, David discovered that terminally ill children consistently reported seeing beings that were completely different from what adults typically described. These weren’t angels or deceased relatives – they were something else entirely.

The Gray Beings That Made Children Laugh 

• Kids between about 8 and 12 years old would repeatedly describe seeing beings that resembled what we might call alien grays, but with some key differences. They were about four feet tall, very thin with long arms, hands, and fingers, but instead of the typical large round heads associated with grays, these beings had very narrow, almost pin-shaped heads with big eyes. The children would often laugh and interact with these beings, clearly enjoying their presence.
• What absolutely blew David’s mind was when he’d have multiple children in the same room with solid walls between their beds so they couldn’t see or hear each other, and they’d be looking at the same spot and laughing at the same time. The kids would tell him there were usually two of these beings, one on either side of them, and they’d repeat what the beings were saying – often the same things from different children who couldn’t communicate with each other.
• Most of the children loved these beings and looked forward to their visits, though a few were terrified and would hide when they appeared. The beings seemed to be doing something amusing around the children and nurses, because the kids would laugh and say things like “oh look what they’re doing now” or “he’s pointing at you.” David desperately wanted to see them too and would close his eyes asking to be shown, but he never could see what the children were experiencing.
• David kept sketches that some of the children drew of these beings, creating a visual record of what dying kids consistently reported seeing. This wasn’t happening just occasionally – it was a regular pattern over his five years of pediatric hospice work. The fact that children who couldn’t communicate with each other were describing identical beings at the same times suggests this wasn’t imagination or medication effects.

The Souls That Wait to Enter Newborn Bodies

David’s nursing career began in labor and delivery, where he witnessed what he believes was the moment souls enter physical bodies. These observations completely changed his understanding of when life actually begins.

Watching Spirits Choose Their Moment

• While delivering babies, David would sometimes see what looked like kinetic energy – like sparks moving around an empty outline in the corner of the room. This energy formation was outlined in bright, twinkling light that kept moving and shifting. He could feel incredible joy, happiness, and anticipation radiating from this presence, and he instinctively knew it was the soul of the baby about to be born.
• The timing was fascinating – this soul energy would usually zip down into the baby’s body a couple minutes after birth, but sometimes it would take a day or two. David would see the same bright light energy staying near the baby’s body, maybe within 25 feet, until it finally entered. He’d come into the nursery and either see the light still there or know it had already joined with the physical body.
• When they had stillborn babies that they knew were already dead, there was never any light energy present. David described the silence as horrible – parents mourning what should be the most joyous event of their life. The absence of that soul energy was as telling as its presence during successful births.
• This experience gave David a unique perspective on the beginning and end of life. He saw souls coming into bodies at birth and souls leaving bodies at death, creating a complete picture of the spiritual journey through physical existence. The fact that souls seemed to choose their moment to enter suggests there’s much more consciousness and intention involved in birth than most people realize.

Civil War Soldiers Still Walking Home

Back on that farm in Southern Ohio, David and his grandmother regularly witnessed something that would puzzle him for decades. About 50 times during his childhood, they’d see Civil War soldiers walking past their house in broad daylight, completely solid and real-looking.

The Boys Who Never Made It Home

• David’s grandmother seemed to have some kind of knowing about when these soldiers were coming. She’d get this feeling and say “they’re coming, get ready,” then put in her teeth, comb her hair, put on lipstick, and hurry out to the porch swing with David. Sure enough, within minutes they’d hear people kicking rocks as someone walked down their gravel road.
• About 30 Union soldiers in blue uniforms would walk by in small groups – some teenagers, maybe a couple in their early twenties. They’d talk to each other but David and his grandmother couldn’t understand what they were saying. The soldiers looked torn up, with ripped uniforms, dirty boots with curled-up toes from getting wet, and they appeared tired and worn down from their journey.
• Being a lonely kid in the middle of nowhere, David would run up to these soldiers trying to make friends. He’d invite them in to watch TV or offer to make peanut butter sandwiches, but they never responded to him. They’d just continue walking down the hill, over a little bridge, behind a barn, and up over the next hill where they’d disappear.
• Years later, David learned that many Civil War soldiers had to walk hundreds or thousands of miles to get home because transportation was destroyed during the war. Many who survived the fighting didn’t survive the walk home. David now believes these young men are still trying to get home, still lost after more than 160 years. He’s planning to go back to that farm next summer to see if they’re still walking that same route.

The Woman Who Showed Her Soul Before and After Death

One of the most profound experiences in David’s hospice career involved a shared death experience with a patient he’d never met before. This encounter changed his understanding of what’s possible between strangers connected by the dying process.

A Soul’s Gift to a Caring Nurse 

• David was working night shift when a woman in her 70s was brought in unconscious. He felt drawn to her immediately for reasons he couldn’t explain – there was just something about her that made him feel connected. She was missing a leg at the hip from an old surgery, and he knew she was in a coma, but he kept feeling compelled to check on her.
• While walking down the hallway to help another patient, David glanced into her room and saw her sitting up on the side of the bed with the side rails down, smiling at him. She looked about 30 years old, her hair was perfectly done, and she had both legs. When he walked back to double-check, she was back in bed unconscious with the side rails up, exactly as she’d been before.
• That’s when it hit him – she was showing him her soul, her true self restored to wholeness and youth. David felt this incredible rush of love and understanding, like watching a caterpillar transform into a butterfly and stretch its wings before flying away. He told her to go ahead, that she was in the right place and ready for whatever came next.
• When David got home that morning, this same woman appeared completely solid in his hallway – radiant, happy, perfectly groomed, wearing what looked like a robe, and with both legs. She smiled at him, he thanked her for sharing the experience, and then she faded away. When he called work to check on her, they discovered she had just died. Why she chose to share this profound moment with him remains one of the most meaningful mysteries of his career.

How Death Changed From Enemy to Friend

David’s path to hospice nursing began with personal tragedy that transformed his entire perspective on death and dying. The loss of his own children led him to spend 17 years helping other families navigate their darkest moments.

From Personal Loss to Professional Healing 

• David’s children were killed when they were seven and nine years old by a drunk driver. Going through that unimaginable pain showed him what families experience when they lose someone they love. He realized that while he couldn’t ease the fear and horror his own boys went through, he could maybe do that for other children and their families.
• That tragedy became his calling to hospice work, where he supported families through over 3,600 deaths during his career. He worked with adults for 12 years and children for five years, seeing people into the world through labor and delivery and seeing them leave through hospice care. This complete perspective on life’s journey gave him a unique understanding of the spiritual process of birth and death.
• After everything David has witnessed, he has absolutely no fear of death. He knows life continues, love continues, and he’s seen countless examples of people coming back to help others transition. He just hopes his own death isn’t painful or messy – he’d prefer something quick rather than a slow, miserable process.
• David’s advice for anyone afraid of death is to start spending time hearing stories like his and meditating to get closer to spiritual vibration. He believes that staying focused only on physical, mental thoughts separates us from spirit, while awareness, experience, love, and openness to the universe are what we take with us when we die.

What This Means for How We Understand Death

David’s 42 years of supernatural experiences in healthcare settings reveal a hidden dimension to the dying process that challenges our conventional understanding of death. His consistent encounters across multiple facilities and decades suggest there’s an entire spiritual ecosystem operating around human death that most people simply can’t see.

The fact that children consistently report seeing the same types of beings, that certain entities appear predictably before death, and that souls seem to have more control over their timing than we realize points to death being far more complex and conscious than medical science currently acknowledges. David’s experiences suggest that dying isn’t just a biological process but a spiritual transition involving multiple levels of consciousness and various types of beings who assist in that transition.

Perhaps most importantly, David’s story shows that those who work closely with death – and those who have their own near-death experiences – often develop abilities to perceive these spiritual dimensions. His grandmother’s knowing when the Civil War soldiers were coming, his ability to see souls entering newborn bodies, and his consistent encounters with supernatural entities all point to death and birth being far more spiritually active processes than most people realize.

The children’s joy when interacting with their mysterious visitors, the woman who chose to share her soul’s beauty with David, and the consistent appearance of beings who seem to guide the dying process all suggest that death isn’t something to fear but rather a transition into expanded awareness and continued existence.

As David puts it, there are two things you can change at any time that can transform any situation: your attitude and where you place your attention. For someone who has witnessed thousands of deaths and countless supernatural encounters, that perspective comes from direct experience rather than wishful thinking.

If you enjoy using and/or creating your own spiritual resources, I invite you to visit my shop where you will find a variety of digital downloads to support your journey, including:
~ Affirmation Cards
~ Tarot & Oracle Cards
~ LOA Printables
~ Editable Templates
~ Digital Papers & Clipart
~ Printable Journals, Calendars, Trackers
And more!

To save 35% on all my digital products and receive occasional updates and free digital goodies, please consider joining my mailing list.

For unique spirituality and manifesting merch, please also check out Amazon and Redbubble.

Please follow and like us: