John Barnacott, now in his 50s, says my story goes back to 2005 when I quit drinking.

In 2008, someone suggested I go to Alcoholics Anonymous. Even though I'd quit quite easily

and hadn't drunk since, I decided to go along. At the meetings, they mentioned about having a higher power.

It could be anything, a friend, a tree, anything. I chose God, but I was also looking

for some truth, to see if he was real. Unknowingly, it's almost like I asked for my near-death

experience because I was praying for a glimpse of God because I'd had such a hard time imagining

him. I asked for it every day for about four months. Then one night after an AA meeting, I was about to

get into my pickup truck when a lady who turned out to be on her fifth DUI swerved a Cadillac and hit me.

What I'm told is that I went up in the air and I came down on her hood, bounced down and hit her windshield,

falling off into the road and ending up 80 feet away in a ditch. I woke up 28 days later in hospital.

During that time, I was on life support for 18 days. I couldn't breathe on my own.

The first thing I remember when I woke up was a nurse said, oh, you're awake. And I said,

well, I'd prefer to be outside on the ledge with the birds.

And the nurse replied, there's no ledge out there and no birds.

I said, well, you better look out the window.

And she went and looked and leaned over and said,

Oh, there is a ledge down there and there are birds sitting on it. And she just

gave me this horrified look because the ledge was down on the first floor and I was up on the

fifth. And she knew I hadn't opened my eyes in 28 days. She ran out of the room. I closed my eyes with the hope I would go back out there on the

ledge with the birds again because that's the first place I went when I left my body. I was

outside to the hospital and it's really different being in your spiritual body. In your physical

body when you want to go and sit down you have that thought and then you have to get up and go over and sit down.

...