Passing On: Transition Stories is a eight-part series that attempts to answer the question, “What is it like to die?” through the experiences of those who have made this one-way trip and returned to tell us about it.  Through channeling, mediumship and life-between-life regression experiences, each chapter of this series explores the intimate and unique details of how we pass over into the next world.

If you are interested in any of these excerpts, I would encourage you to purchase the original publication and support the authors who have worked hard to bring this information to light. Links to the books are at the end of each post.

Transition Stories, Part I

“Margaret, I had a most beautiful passing, a most beautiful passing.  I was conscious all the time.  I thanked God for the body that I’d had, the opportunity I’d had, the children, and the gladness of the fact that my family and my wife were there waiting for me.”

-A.D. Mattson, Witness from Beyond, 1975

Transition Stories, Part II

Dr. N: All right, Sally, you have accepted being killed by these Indians.  Will you please describe to me the exact sensation you feel at the time of death?

S: Like…a force…of some kind…pushing me up out of my body.

Dr. N: Pushing you? Out where?

S: I’m ejected out the top of my head.

Dr. N: And what was pushed out?

S: Well – me!

-Journey of Souls: Case Studies of Life between Lives, 1994, Newton, Michael, Ph.D.

Transition Stories, Part III

I’m drifting weightlessly through space with these gorgeous stars and moons and galaxies twinkling all around me.  The whole atmosphere is filled with a soothing hum, like hundred of thousands of voices are singing to me, but they’re so far away I can just barely hear them.

–The Afterlife of Billy Fingers: How My Bad Boy Brother Proved to Me there’s Life After Death, 2013, Kagan, Annie

Transition Stories, Part IV

“Here I was able to move effortlessly into the spirit realm and these other fellows were screaming from the depths of their souls in fear.  I’d already left my body, so I went to this fellow, wrapped my arms around him, comforted him and helped him up and into the light and helped him connect again with his spiritual guide.”

-Chuck Frank, via Richard Martini, Flipside: A Tourist’s Guide to Navigating the Afterlife, 2011

Transition Stories, Part V

“During such lucid intervals that I had, I endured no feelings of physical discomfort. I could see and hear what was going on around me, and I could “sense” the mental distress that my condition was occasioning. And yet I had the sensation of the most extraordinary exhilaration of the mind. I knew for certain that my time had come to pass on, and I was full of eagerness to be gone. I had no fear, no misgivings, no doubts, no regrets—so far—at thus leaving the earth world.”

-Hugh Benson, Life in the World Unseen, 1954

Transition Stories, Part VI

“The great moment in the boy’s life had now arrived. I moved to a position at about the middle of the bed upon the side opposite to Ruth. The boy had lapsed into a gentle sleep. As he did so, his spirit body rose slowly above his inert physical body to which it was attached by a bright silver cord—the lifeline as it is termed. I placed my arms beneath the floating form; there was the slightest momentary twitch, the cord detached itself, retracted, and disappeared.”

-Hugh Benson, More About Life in the World Unseen, 1956

Transition Stories, Part VII

“As I rolled to a stop at the railroad tracks, I decided it might be wind gusts creating too many positive ions in the air that was activating my weird sensations. Closing my eyes for a moment, I saw dancing lights and heard unfamiliar sounds. I felt my body moving, but I also felt protected. Then suddenly I heard the sound of metal, followed by a tremendous silence and utter darkness.”

–My Life After Life: A Posthumous Memoir, Stoller, Galen, 2011

Transition Stories, Part VIII

“It was my soul contract. My time had come, and if I hadn’t been fatally injured when I wrecked the Jeep, I would have left some other way at that same time of my life.”

-Matthew Ward, Matthew Tell Me About Heaven: A Firsthand Description of the Afterlife, 2001