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Near Death Telepathic Communications
by Keno

When a person is about to die, can they somehow telepathically communicate with loved ones far away?

It was around 6:30 pm on December 27, 1981 when something very strange happened to me. My family and I had just walked back to our home in Telluride, Colorado, after spending Christmas night and the next day and a half at a friend's house on the other side of town. I went into the bedroom to work on a budget for the next month, as I usually did around the end of the month. My wife Sue and our 2 kids were in the kitchen as Sue started to make dinner. Up to this moment, I was feeling fine and hadn't done any drugs or even had a drink that day when something very strange happened to me out of the blue. I suddenly started to feel ill, it started with a weird feeling in my belly and I became light headed. I stood up and started to see stars and everything was moving around, all while feeling very weak and I felt like I might have to vomit. So I headed to the bathroom, barely able to walk and see, and totally puzzled as to what was happening to me as this all came on so suddenly. As I was in the hallway, I cried out to Sue for help, asking her to come quickly. I sat down on the toilet and place my hands over my head, I felt like I was having a bad acid trip perhaps, even though I never had experienced a bad acid trip before. I then heard Sue say to me "What's wrong!" She was standing over me and I looked up at her and I told her I didn't know, that I just suddenly gotten sick. "You're as white as a ghost" she said to me, then she asked me "did you take something?". I told her I didn't take anything but explained to her how I felt and then I said to her "I feel like somebody is dying". Her reply was "What!?... Who?!" My answer was I didn't know, and right after I said that, I could feel as if something was leaving my body and within 5 minutes I was 100% fine again. Whatever hit me lasted less than 10 minutes and then was over with. At that point in time, I had never in my 27 years of life experienced anything like that before.

After dinner Sue again asked me what I took, and I assured her I took nothing, but I was really bugged that something bad might have happened to somebody in my family. "Call your mother up and make sure everybody is okay then" was Sue's response. Problem was, we were dirt poor back in those days and had no phone, and the only pay phone in Telluride was half a mile away, our car was totally buried under snow, and the temperature was below zero, so I decided to put off calling mom till the next day. When I finally did, I told her what happened the night before and asked her if anybody in the family had died. Her answer was "no", everybody back in New York was fine, other than the family's 15 year old dog was very sick that night, but she was all better come morning. I told her I was sure there was no connection between our old dog being sick and what happened to me, and I figured something just plain out crazy had happened to me the night before. Of course before I hung up the phone, she also asked me if I had been doing drugs and I assured her I was straight when this occurred. Truth being, at this point I wish I had taken something, I would not have this mystery to deal with.

But the truth of the matter was, after I spoke to mom that next day, I did  let it slide and totally forgot about what I experienced and put it behind me. Then about 2 weeks later something happen. There was no mail delivery in Telluride, so Sue and I always stopped at the post office on our way home from work to pick up the mail in our post office box. In the mail that day was a envelope with somebody's hand writing that I didn't recognize. But I knew the return address which was on there. It was my best friend Mark Norton's New York address, but this wasn't his handwriting. I look at the envelope and mentioned to Sue "that's weird...." and she said "well open it up and see who it's from". I decided to wait till I got home to open it and was glad I did. The letter inside was from Mark's mother, and she wrote me to tell me that Mark had died suddenly, 2 weeks earlier.  

Mark was exactly one month younger than me, and he had been my friend since kindergarten, he became my best friend somewhere when we were around 11 or 12 years old. Mark and his family had moved several miles away from the neighborhood in East Meadow NY where we grew up, when Mark was 17. But the two of us stayed best friends, and when I moved out to Colorado, Mark came out to visit, loved the place, and planned to return to join me in living in the Rockies in a few months time. But he got sick shortly after his visit, he had an enlarged heart, and he never did make it back out. My last letter from him came a week before that Christmas, and for the first time I could tell he was depressed over his heart condition, as he put it to me, he could not do anything anymore, even riding his Harley was out of the question, and he had just put it up for sale.  

His death was a major shock and blow to me. As it was, I had just lost another close childhood friend, Brian Spiz, the year before in the same sudden matter. I knew what killed Brian, but Mark's mother only wrote that he died from the same thing that killed his brother 5 years earlier. Thing is, Mark never told me what killed his brother (he refused to talk about it), but my guess was drugs, as his brother didn't have an enlarged heart. 

About a week or so after I got that dreadful letter from Mark's mother, my birthday came around, I didn't feel like celebrating any, and that night I was looking back on my last year, as so many of us do on our birthdays. I started to speak to Sue about what happened to Mark and Brian, and 2 other friends from New York who also had died at 20 and 22 years old a few years earlier. It was strange to lose so many friends at such a young age. Sue then asked me on what day was it that Mark died on. I told her that it was the end of December, but I couldn't recall the exact date. She asked me to get out the letter from Mark's mom, since she needed to know. I thought this was a strange request, so I got the letter and I read to her the date he died on, it was December 27. "Wow, I didn't think of this until just now" said Sue. "Think about what" was my reply. "That was the day you got sick and said to me that somebody was dying". I had forgotten about that experience and said no, it wasn't the same day. But it was. Sue's next question was "at what time did Mark die." The letter noted that his death took place the night of the 27th, but he was alone when he died and nobody knew for sure the exact time he passed away. Sue's next response was, "he died when you got sick, since that happened to you at night."  Could this be so, did I somehow feel my friend's death? "No way"  I said to her, but after that night, this entire thing bugged the hell out of me.

I have been an Atheist since I was around 11 years old. I just never believed in any of the God stuff my parents force fed me, never believed the bible that I read. So I don't believe in any God, other than I believe we are our own gods. I also don't believe in ghosts, not at all. But I always believed in special powers that I can't explain. Different mountains for instance talk to me. Well, they don't "talk" in the way we usually use the word, but there are only a handful of mountains where I get this feeling from. It's as if these mountains are saying "you need to live/be here". Hell, I heard the Rocky Mountains calling me out to Colorado back when I was a boy growing up on flat Long Island, and I recall my dad telling me once that the reason why I wanted to live in the mountains was because it was in my blood (three of my four grandparents came to America from Naples, Italy and lived next to Mount Vesuvius as children before they moved to the States). The 3 towns I have lived in Colorado all had mountains that spoke to me in this strange way. Most of the other mountain towns I've visited in Colorado are very beautiful, yes, but most of these other mountains didn't talk to me as the mountains in Telluride, Manitou Springs, and Crestone did. That's why I lived in those communities, and I've been told by other locals in these towns the very same thing, that they were drawn here by the mountain's spirit.  But again, I'm an Atheist, I'm not suppose to believe in this kind of stuff, but then again, it's not some kind of Godly feeling I get from the mountains, but it's something, and I'll add, it's a great, special feeling, and not a bad feeling like what I experienced the night Mark died.

Now for the second part of this story. I need to fast forward to the year 2002. Up until this time I had told a few people about what happened in 1981, but I could not be sure exactly what it meant. Yes, a part of me still didn't believe I felt my friend's death, and then if it was for real, was Mark still alive when he "came to me", or had he just died when this took place. I think that bugged me the most, since I don't believe in the dead communicating with the living, not at all, but this event bothered me since I had no proof if Mark was still alive when this thing took place. My feelings were if that event I experienced was connected to Mark, then he was still alive when it all took place. But I had no proof, and I believe that was half not allowing me to believe what I experienced. But I did get my answer to all of this in April of 2002.

In early 1999, I had decided that after living in Manitou Springs, Colorado for 15 years, it was time for me to move to a new location. I knew I wanted to get back to a small town away from any city, but as much as I loved Telluride and half wanted to go back there, well, unless you're very well off, living in that town today is out of the question. I actually did very well in my 15 years living in the Pikes Peak area, and after I sold my business in 1996 for a big profit, I did have money to play with. So there was this special hot springs located in the middle of nowhere - at the base of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains in southern Colorado, called Valley View Hot Springs (VVHS) that I'd been visiting since the late 1970s. Talk about a place that gives you peace of mind! Colorado has many hot springs, and I have visited many of them and I prefer the ones where nudity is allowed. I mean, who wants to soak in 104 degree (F) water with your clothes on? Besides that, I've been a naturist my entire life. At Valley View I had made many friends, but it was a 3 and half hour drive from where I lived. One of the nearest towns from VVHS was Crestone, and I had met several kind locals from this small town. So when I was searching for a new place to live, Crestone was on my list, even though I had not been there before. When I and my close friend Helen Wyche visited Crestone for the first time in mid 1999, yes, I got that special feeling from its mountains instantly, as I drove on the only road that leads to Crestone, a 15 mile dead end road that ends at the base of the 14,000 foot plus high mountains. This place was in the middle of nowhere!

After scouting a few other locations that also seemed like nice places to live, I decided Crestone was where I would build my new home. I ended up buying land in the Crestone Baca, just outside of town and where most people who say they live in Crestone, actually live. Since the Baca isn't a part of Crestone, it's governed by the local Property Owners Association (called the POA by locals), and there are few rules to follow when you build in the Baca. But one of them is that you got to get approval from the POA before you build. So I bought my land in January of 2002 and in early April put stakes into the ground for where the house would be built. On April 12 I had an appointment first thing in the morning to meet a POA rep on the land to get their approval. I left Manitou Springs early in the morning that day and was planning to spend the next 3 days at VVHS after I got the early morning appointment over with, and I did just that.

Day one at VVHS was like any other day there, a day relaxing and soaking in paradise, plus there were few people there on that first day and I lucked out in getting a private room in the then free communal house which is called the Oak House today (and sadly, isn't free anymore). Day two also started out like any other day, sunny and warm, and as a habit, I always visit the top ponds first thing, since they're the only ponds away from all of the other ones, plus it's about a 20 minute hike straight up this steep mountain hill; even if you're in top shape (as I am), you will feel a bit winded after taking this hike. The view heading up to the top ponds is second to none, plus since VVHS is a nudist resort, you can do the hike in the nude. If you're a naturist who never hiked up a mountain while nude, well, there is no other naturist hike on planet Earth like this one. The other great thing about the top ponds, is that they're also the most quiet ponds in part because half of the people who visit VVHS never make it up to this spot because of the climb. So anyway, as I got close to the top where the ponds are, I heard something strange, that being the very loud screaming voices of children. VVHS is a family resort, and young children are always welcome there, kids under 16 even get in free; heck, my kids half grew up there. But they got this one strict rule, youngsters can only make noise at the big hot spring pool, which is way down below. At all of the ponds, children are of course welcome, but they must be quiet, as these ponds are for soaking and meditation. That rule is usually followed, and again, the top ponds are always the most peaceful. But not on this day. Thing is, at the other ponds, if they are too crowded (or noisy), you can just move on to one of the other ponds. But after climbing up the side of this mountain for a good 20 minutes, I wasn't about to turn around and head back down. When I got to where I could see the ponds, all of them were filled to the rim, and the very top pond, the best and biggest one, was filled with hippy looking adults, and their kids, who were all under 10 years old. They were so damn loud and splashing all over the place. There were more children than adults here, but as I approached the bench on the side of the pond, sitting there was a young gal I knew named Sandy. We recognized each other and exchanged greetings and she introduced me to her new born son who she was holding named Travel, who was at the most 2 months old. I knew Sandy from a different hot spring that I visited called "The Well", but it was the first time I ever met her and her family at VVHS. Sandy had a very large family, she was a member of this young hippie commune over on the other side of the mountains. Her commune had grown since the last time I saw her and until this day I never seen the entire family all together in one spot.

After sitting there for about 5 minutes with Sandy, I noted that the kids were being a bit loud and she told me they were about to be heading down to the waterfall pond way below. That was very cool to know, so I made my way into the top pond and recognized a few more faces from Sandy's family, including Alice and Mike, who I knew well from both VVHS and The Well. After a short while, sure enough, Sandy was right, they all at once left and headed down the trail, so all of a sudden there was zero noise, and I had the top pond to myself! I closed my eyes and half slept a bit, so very peaceful indeed! After a bit I moved to the very end of the pond where you get this great view of the valley down below and where you can also see the other smaller ponds below. In the pond directly below were two small boys all alone and I recognized one of them being Alice and Mike's son Rainbow. The boys were not making any noise, but there's another golden rule at VVHS, that you don't leave your children under 12 by themselves, ever, and these boys were both 8 years old. After a while they came up to the pond I was in and when Rainbow saw me he said "Hi Keno, I didn't know you were here today". Rainbow then told me he and his buddy were heading down to catch up with the rest of their family, and that was when I realized they would have to do this hike alone. Like all of Colorado's mountains', VVHS has all kinds of wildlife, including bears and mountain lions, and this is another reason why you are suppose to keep your kids close by you. I myself have always been the type of parent who worries more so about my kids than perhaps your average parent (I got that from my mom I guess). So when these 2 boys were about to leave I felt the responsibility their own parents lacked. I guess the fact that a 7 year old boy hiking alone on a trail in Colorado the year before was killed by a lion, well that was on my mind, and again, there are lions around VVHS. I wasn't ready to leave the pond at this point, and was now pissed at their parents for leaving them alone. So I told the boys I would walk down with them, as I wanted to talk to their parents (about leaving them alone).

On our hike down I realized I was developing a bad headache and was starting to feel lightheaded. You usually go to VVHS to heal, you don't go there and get sick, and I figured having to leave the top pond early because of these irresponsible parents was why my head was starting to hurt. When we got down to the bottom of the trail, sure enough I could hear the noise of children coming from the waterfall pond, although when we got there, Alice and Mike weren't around. But Sandy was, and she told me they were at the Meadow pond, the next pond over. Rainbow didn't want to go to the Meadow pond, but I told him to come along with me anyway until I found his parents. Sure enough, they were there along with the other boy's mother. After a short talk they told me they felt their boys were old enough to hike alone. My reply to them was, "Yeah, and so did the parents of that 7 year old who the mountain lion killed last year". Alice then agreed that I had a point and maybe they weren't old enough after all. I then said goodbye and headed down the trail to where the biggest and main soaking pond is located, one of my favorite ponds. But while walking down the hill to the pond my headache was getting worst and I was starting to feel dizzy and seeing things. I recall thinking to myself, how can I be getting sick all of a sudden like this? At the soaking pond was the rest of the commune's family, plus a few other people, so I decided to head towards the main pool instead and see what was happening there. Strange, the swimming pool was usually the only noisy and crowded spot a VVHS, but at this moment it was empty, other than for one old man who was swimming laps. At this point I was feeling very ill and decided to soak in the small and empty kiddie pool, next to the big pool, with it's 106 degree temperature, it was the hottest  body of water at VVHS on this day, and it felt good, even with my head spinning, and a increasingly weird feeling in my gut. I was getting sick, damn it!

As I sat there soaking things got worst for me and I was thinking what the hell is wrong. It was like what I experienced in 1981 all over again - except that event from long ago didn't cross my mind, not once, plus this time the feeling wasn't quite as strong, but it was lasting longer. I wasn't in this small pool too long, and with my head still spinning, I closed my eyes for what felt like maybe 20 seconds. When I opened them up, there sitting directly across from me was Rainbow. I hadn't heard him getting in the pool and said to him "Oh hi Rainbow, you back to visit with me again?" He gave me a weird look and said "Keno, are you okay, what's wrong with you?" I asked him what he meant, and he told me he had been in the pool with me and his mother for about 5 minutes, but I hadn't said a word to them and I was just staring at them. I said to him "Your mother's here?" She was sitting right next to me and I didn't notice her until I turned her way. She said to me "You don't look well Keno, are you ill?" I told her only when walking down the trail did I start to feel funny and didn't know what was wrong with me. I apologized for my weird behavior to them and decided to lie down on one of the nearby lawn chairs.

After a while things weren't getting better, and the kids from the commune were now all at the pool and it was getting noisy, so I headed for my room so I could lie down on the bed in there. But as I got to the room I got this strange feeling that I needed to leave and head home ASAP! One thing about VVHS, you never leave it early, it's a hard place to leave, and I paid for 3 days of soaking as it was, and I had another full day left to go. But for whatever reason, I felt my home calling me back. I had to get back home but I didn't know why. I half wondered if I was going to be able to drive in the state I was in, but by the time I had the car packed, I was feeling a bit better. I still had these weird symptoms, but they weren't as bad and I still felt like I had to leave and head home. About 4 hours later I was home, and still feeling weird and not putting 2 and 2 together. As I got into the house, I walked by this old black and white photo on the table that my mom had sent me in the mail a few weeks before. It was a picture taken over 50 years ago at my parents wedding. I had seen the photo before of course, this was a picture of my parents wedding party and I was happy that mom had sent me a copy of it. But for whatever reason when I walked past it, I noticed that everybody in the photo who was standing to the left of my dad, were now all deceased. I recall thinking to myself, why did I think of that?

Not too long after that I sat down next to the phone to see if anybody had called while I was away. Sure enough, looking at the caller ID logs, there were calls, as one would expect when you're away for a few days. My now ex-wife Sue - whom I still lived with, was away with our youngest grandson, Cooper, who also lived with us. Sue had called twice, since they were away visiting Coop's mother and our oldest daughter, Jackie, who was living out of state, fighting a battle with blood cancer. So nothing unusual with seeing those calls on the caller ID. But then there were about 10 calls alone from my sister Pat in NY from the last 2 days. As soon as I saw this I knew something was wrong, as Pat usually only called me 2 or 3 times a year, tops. So I check the voice mail and sure enough there were messages, and at first I was afraid to listen to them because I just knew somebody in the family had died. Yet I still hadn't put 2 and 2 together, I hadn't realize I had the same sick feeling happening to me as to what took place back in '81. So I finally listened to the voice mails I had. Sue had left just one message and she was just calling to check in, as all was fine with her, Jackie, and Cooper. Only 2 messages were from Pat, the first one was made the day I had left for Crestone, and it just said "Call me back ASAP!" The next day's message was "Where are you! You must be away, I need to talk to you". I was certain at this point that one of my parents had died. But when I phoned up Pat, I found that wasn't the case, not yet anyway. I learned that Dad was in a coma like state, been that way for 3 days and he was on his death bed, so I needed to get back to NY fast if I wanted to see him one last time.

I do have one single phobia, and that's a fear of flying. I've flown about 20 times, but stopped flying for good back in 1988 and swore I would never fly again, nor would I allow any of my kids to fly till they were of legal age. So how was I to get back to NY ASAP? I always said after I stopped flying that maybe, just perhaps in a emergency, I might be able to fly again. But my father was on his death bed and this was an emergency, yet still there was no way I could fly. So I told my sister I was on my way - by train. "You may not get here in time if you don't fly, he hasn't spoken or opened his eyes or eaten in 3 days". A chill went down my spine when she said that, but I still could not fly and had to wait till the next night till I could catch the train out of Denver which would get me first to Chicago, and then to Penn Station in NYC. I told her to tell dad I was on my way and she said she would tell him, not knowing if he could hear her. I also didn't noticed that after I hung up the phone, the sick feeling I had was now gone; I just had too much on my mind at this point to realize this. To make a long story short, I got to NYC 2 and a half days later and had to take one last train out to eastern Long Island where dad was in a nursing home - and barely hanging on. It was after midnight when I got there, and my 3 sisters and mother were there. Dad was still unconscious and had not opened his eyes or spoken in almost 6 days now. I held on to his hand and spoke to him not knowing if he could hear me or not. But mom said she knew he heard me, she said she knew he was hanging on the last few days just waiting for me to get there. I think mom was correct, and dad passed away less than 2 hours after I got there in the early morning hours of April 16, 2002. I was still holding his hand when he died.

It wasn't until about a week after dad's death that I finally did put 2 and 2 together. I was on the train heading back home to Colorado with a lot of time to think about the last 2 weeks. Then somewhere while the train was traveling through the Midwest it just hit me. That terrible feeling I had at VVHS - it was the very same feeling I had the night Mark died back in '81, over 20 years earlier! Yes, it was a bit different this time around, but the same "bad trip" feeling. Up till this time I half believed what I felt back when Mark died was anything but just a coincidence. Yet Sue was positive I felt Mark die, and now I was pretty sure of it too. I had no cell phone on the train and wanted to speak to Sue so badly at this point. The two of us were divorced way back in 1988, but we were true soul mates and the truth was we never totally broke up with each other, and as the years passed we were still mainly living together and best friends up until the day she died in 2011. When I finally got home, Sue was the first person I called. We talked a bunch about that night back in '81 and I told her how most of what took place repeated itself 2 weeks earlier. It was as I spoke to her that I also realized my question about whether or not Mark was still alive when he somehow reached out to me, was now answered. Since my dad was still alive when this happened the second time to me, I was now sure that Mark was still alive when it happened to me the first time. Sue wasn't so sure and she told me that. Unlike myself, she wasn't a Atheist, although she didn't believe in the Christian God, or in any religions, she did believe there was something out there and yes, she believed in spirits. Then it was what she said to me next that I can't forget. She was already sick herself by this time, her lungs were shot and she knew she was living on borrowed time. She said to me, to prove to me that Mark was already dead when this happened the first time to me, that when she was on her death bed, as long as I wasn't there, after she died she would send a message out to me in the same way. "Sue, please", I said to her, "I don't ever want to experience that sick feeling again!". She just laugh when I said that, but when that sad day did come around years later, when she died of lung cancer, she had been living out of state and I wasn't there with her. Her last stay with me and Cooper was here in Crestone, at 8085 feet, in 2010, but after several months she could not breathe even with her oxygen tanks set at it's highest levels. So she left Colorado for good and headed to Kansas, where our youngest daughter Debbie lived, and where the elevation was over 7,000 feet lower. I got to speak to Sue a week before she died; she knew the end was near but felt she had a few months left. I told her that Cooper and I would come to see her. She said to me, "Well if you can't make it in time, I'll still send you that message I promised you when I'm gone". That was a little bit too heavy for me to take and it was one of the last things she said to me besides "I love you". I knew I had to go see her, but time ran out and she died the next weekend. But no, I never did get that final message from Sue, only a phone call from Jackie telling me that she was gone. None of that bad sickly feeling at all, which I guess meant for sure that Mark was not already dead when it happened the first time. Although knowing my late soul mate, she would still say "no" to that, her not contacting me after death wouldn't have meant that to her. Perhaps Sue just decided in the end that she would grant my wish and not put me through that feeling again.

Still to this day, I sit back and wonder, if my dad and Mark were both calling me when they were dying, in a way to say goodbye, or in my dad's case, calling me back to New York before he passed away, but why would they make me feel sick? Why not send a sign in a more pleasant way? Well, death isn't pleasant I guess, so maybe it has something to do with that. The one thing I do know now is I felt something connected to their dying. I guess it's something like how identical twins know and feel inner things about each other that nobody else knows but them. Some kind of special energy that our loved ones send out when near death, even if we are thousands of miles apart, that strange energy finds it's way to us. I may not believe in God, but I do believe in this energy, just like the energy coming from the mountains, although it's a much nicer energy that the mountains give off. I hope and expect to never lose that energy and feeling I get from the mountains, but I rather not ever again experience that ill feeling of somebody dying again.

Addendum: After doing research on this, the closest thing I can find to explain this phenomenon, is something called a "crisis apparition". Only problem is, I don't believe in ghosts, which is what a apparition is, and I know for a fact that my father was still alive when this happen with him. I also never believed in telepathic communications before either, yet that seems to be involved here.