Bill Letson: A Firefighter's Homecoming Among the Stars

Medical Details

In 1994, while on duty as a firefighter-paramedic during a flu epidemic in the Santa Barbara area, Bill became severely ill and dehydrated with a racing heart and no palpable radial pulse. He was taken by ambulance to a hospital in Santa Maria. After a nurse pushed Nubain (a synthetic morphine) and an anti-nausea medication, he collapsed; his wife says staff gave him Narcan several times and could not get a blood pressure, which he recalls as around 40 over 0. He spent the night in intensive care and did not regain consciousness until the next morning.

The Experience

Bill Letson, a retired firefighter from California's Central Coast, describes an experience from 1994 that he kept to himself for many years. While on a medical call during a flu epidemic, he believes he caught the illness from a patient. Within days he was gravely ill, and at the hospital, after receiving medication, his eyes rolled back and he fell back on the bed. He says his blood pressure fell so low that staff could barely register it, and he was moved to intensive care.

Sometime in the middle of the night, he says, he left his body. He describes it as feeling like being let out of a hot, stuffy closet into a world of enormous colored lights he calls stars. They felt welcoming and loving, and he felt himself expand into something vast and joyful. He remembers wondering how he could ever have forgotten who he really was, sensing that the roles and worries of earthly life were a kind of game that comes with being born into the material world. To him, it felt like a homecoming.

He then landed somewhere solid, with soft indirect lighting, tables and equipment. Three short beings in dark hooded robes greeted him with huge smiles and bright eyes, giggling and asking what he had learned. One laughed that he didn't remember them. A tall, wispy being who seemed made of mist appeared to be in charge. When this being came close, Bill says he felt such overwhelming love that he nearly burst into tears.

Bill asked whether a life review came next. The tall being chuckled and invited him to begin. Bill shared only a small regret, about a summer park ranger job on an island that his wife had hoped he would take. The being said that was enough, and that it was time to go back. Bill protested, saying his wife and parents were strong and would get through it, but he was told he had things to do.

The place seemed to dissolve, and he felt himself descend, which he understood as a drop in frequency. Just before reentering his body, he passed through a lonely, dismal place close to the physical world that frightened him, and which he hesitated for years to mention.

He woke hours later, watching his blood pressure numbers slowly climb. He told the nurse he had been home with brothers he'd known forever. She answered that he had been "in escrow, but fell out." He felt sad to be back for some days, and sensed the memory trying to fade.

Afterward, he told friends who had lost loved ones that nobody truly dies; we slip out of the physical and go home. He stresses that he was still himself on the other side, with the same humor and inner voice. When a coworker warned that people were talking, he stayed quiet for about fifteen years, until his retirement in 2010.

How It Changed Their Life

He came away certain there is nothing to fear in death, calling it an instant upgrade, and comforted coworkers grieving children or parents by telling them no one is truly lost. After a coworker warned him people were talking, he kept quiet for about 15 years; when he retired in 2010 the experience came back strongly and he went looking for answers.