CTP (S3ESepSpecial6) Misfit in Hell: One Woman's Near-Death Experience Revealed

CTP (S3ESepSpecial6) Misfit in Hell: One Woman's Near-Death Experience Revealed
Mary Kathy McDaniel shares her distressing near-death experience and the profound transformation it brought to her understanding of life, death, and what lies beyond. Through her journey from hellish visions to heavenly joy, she discovered a message of unconditional love and purpose that completely changed her perspective.
• MK experienced what's called a "distressing" NDE - something that happens to about 20% of near-death experiencers
• During her drug-induced coma after lung failure, she first found herself in hellish scenarios that mirrored traumatic events from her actual life
• Her experience suddenly shifted to heaven where she felt overwhelming joy and love, meeting a deceased friend
• She was told she had "too much left to do" on Earth and was sent back to her physical body
• MK believes there is no judgment in the afterlife, only a life review where we experience how our actions affected others
• She now co-hosts a support group for people who've had distressing NDEs through IANDS (International Association of Near-Death Studies)
• Her advice for living: be loving, kind, merciful, forgiving, encouraging, grateful, nonjudgmental and useful
• Small acts of kindness can create powerful ripple effects that positively impact others  

Chapters

• 0:38 Meet MK McDaniel
• 6:57 Journey to Hell: The Distressing NDE
• 13:00 Escape to Heaven: Finding Joy
• 17:48 Life's Purpose: Too Much Left To Do
• 25:10 No Judgment, Just Love
• 31:23 Final Thoughts: We Are All Children

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:19

Welcome to the Constitutionalist Politics Podcast, aka CTP. I am your host, Joseph M Leonard, and that's L-E-N-A-R-D. Ctp is your no-must, no-fuss, just me, you and occasional guest-type podcast. Really appreciate you tuning in. As Graham Norton will say, let's get on with the show. Hello everyone, Welcome to another episode of Chris D'Attuso's Politics Podcast. I did a short pause there. I forget the name of my own show For those on video. Well, you can see her. I'm holding up a minor note. I don't like to script shows, we just kind of go where the show goes. Joining me is Mary Kathy McDaniel. For those of you who follow CIA declassified documents, think MKUltra, MK McDaniel there you go.

Speaker 1: 1:28

Because that's what's on your book Misfit and held to have an expat. Mk Mary Kathy McDaniel, welcome to the show.

Speaker 2: 1:39

Well, thank you, I'm happy to be here, yeah.

Speaker 1: 1:42

I tried getting you last year. You never got back to me, whatever, maybe you didn't get my outreach, maybe got whatever. But this year I decided I wanted to reach out again, and here you are, so you know I guess it wasn't meant to be then. It is now Right, that's the way to look at it. And the usual first question, right? Who the heck is MK McDaniel? Where were you born and raised and where are you now? How much time did you spend in prison and for what?

Speaker 2: 2:27

I got out on good behavior actually. Well, it's a long story. I just turned 79. So we got a lot of ground in there.

Speaker 1: 2:35

Yeah, give us the cliff notes.

Speaker 2: 2:38

The cliff notes would be, let's see, born in St Louis Missouri, but my dad was in the Navy.

Speaker 1: 2:44

Like I like to joke, the state of misery oh yeah, missouri.

Speaker 2: 2:50

Yeah, I didn't stay long because your dad was. You started the military. So we got moved every two and a half to four years yep, new York and Maryland and Kansas and California, and so I spent most of my time as an adult in California and I got there about 26 years ago and I'm up in Washington, thank God you escaped oh Washington state is not necessarily if you're in Seattle necessarily if you're in Seattle.

Speaker 2: 3:29

Uh yeah, seattle by an hour, and it's beautiful, right on a harbor, it's, it's like well, it's like life 30 years ago here. It hasn't caught up yet.

Speaker 1: 3:33

Yeah, there are several counties in Washington and Oregon trying to secede from those states and join Idaho. It's like it's getting too California-y here. I know the Californians are coming up, you know, yeah, so yeah, the eastern counties of those states want to join Idaho, and I don't blame them. And of course you mentioned Kansas, so got to do the proverbial joke we're not in Kansas anymore, right.

Speaker 2: 4:09

Yeah, four years of that was plenty.

Speaker 1: 4:13

Whole lot of corn right.

Speaker 2: 4:15

Like.

Speaker 1: 4:16

Iowa whole lots of corn.

Speaker 2: 4:19

Tornadoes that's the part I didn't like. My lights went out. Hold on, tornadoes. That's the part I didn't like. My lights went out, hold on. We're talking about this stuff and somebody's not happy in the universe. All right, that she is okay okay, so indeed, at any rate.

Speaker 1: 4:35

So we kind of know a little bit about you indeed the summary on the podcast guest list that we are both members of, where there's also Matchmaker FM and Radio Guest List and a few other sites where podcasters and guests I've been picked up as a guest by many podcasts through all these things too, as well as bringing guests on to my podcast through them. But yeah, your podcast guest list summary that's all I have here says near-death experiencer, author, speaker and indeed NDE. I've had people talk about afterlife, including an atheist who talked about afterlife from a scientific, nonbeliever standpoint, so that was really interesting. I had to get you on to talk about that, you on to talk about that, and again, the book title Missed it. In Hell to Heaven, expat MK McDaniel. So obviously the NDE inspired the book. What all happened?

Speaker 2: 5:59

Well, you know, about 20% of the people that have NDEs have something called distressing, disturbing not your ordinary run-of-the-mill stuff. So I was one of those people.

Speaker 1: 6:12

Yeah there's, like the Freddy Krueger invaded your dreams, kind of NDE, oh, and that would have been great kind of envy. And then there's those others that have those wonderful, lovely fluffy on a cloud and all their relatives are there, kind of thing.

Speaker 2: 6:32

That wasn't me. No, well, it wasn't at first, but what happened is I had been really sick. I got something akin to COVID before COVID came out, akin to COVID before COVID came out. I had lung failure. They put me into a drug-induced coma. I was there quite a while 19 days or something and they told me the last thing the doctor said is you won't be able to remember anything of what happens. So when I woke up in this very dark place and I thought, uh-oh, what's going on, man, and I was, you know, just kind of hung out, but it did did turn into an adventure, starting with this reddish fog, kind of like you see in the background here reddish fog and heat and people screaming and shrieking, and and I thought, oh, like you said, you're not in Kansas anymore, right it was like you landed up in one of the layers of Dante's Inferno.

Speaker 1: 7:31

Yeah right, it may not have been the worst layer, but one of them at any rate.

Speaker 2: 7:38

The thing is you don't know you're dead. You know that puts a real handicap in the situation, because you think you know this is happening right now and there's no good reason for it, there's nobody to help you and you're just kind of staying one step ahead of the next disaster.

Speaker 2: 7:57

So for me it was a series of segments and, and the first one was almost like a movie separate it was it was, except somebody was changing the channel, you know, on your television and they were, all you know, horror movies, and so you'd go from one to the other and you would. I wouldn't know when it would happen, the lights would just go out and I'd freeze and then the lights had come up and be totally in a different situation. So this, this went on several times. The first one was this bombed out city thing. I just, you know, came, the lights came up and it's like being in New York city and and somebody's dropped an atomic bomb or aliens have landed.

Speaker 2: 8:39

Something terrible happened here and people were screaming and and there's fires and buildings are falling down. You know, it kind of upset me. So I, you know, I kind of tucked into this broken concrete that had fallen and I'm seeing all these weird people, creatures, whatever, going by and I'm I thought, geez, you know, I got to get in survival mode, that's, you know. So I thought maybe if I could just get into one of these buildings I might find some people that are left. There might be food, shelter, whatever.

Speaker 2: 9:11

So as I was running through all this concrete and stuff, I tried to climb up on a wall and I slipped and I was falling backwards and I thought, ah, this is going to hurt. Boom, the lights go out. Boom, the lights go out. Boom, the lights come up. You know, now there's this Bigfoot demon thing standing in front of me and you know, you're just in total shock. What you know? Oh, now what? So it was bizarre in that he said do you want to get out of here? And I thought, wow, that was perfect English, you know for a Yeti. I wonder what he learned there.

Speaker 1: 9:44

But English major you know he went to Oxford, yeah.

Speaker 2: 9:50

I was going to play along, you know. I said, yes, I certainly would like to get out of here. And he says, well, I got a job for you. You do this one thing, I'll see you get out. And I said, huh, you know, I felt there was a trick involved here. But he kind of waved his arm and behind me there was this huge, interminable field of brambles and raspberry bushes and you know just big thorns on it. And I thought, huh, and he says, you just cut all that down. For me, I need that done and I'll get you out of here.

Speaker 2: 10:22

Well, I, I thought, a, it's impossible. And then, b, he hands me these little scissors that kids cut paper with and starts to laugh. He thinks it's funny. So I thought, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, excellent, excellent. So I got down and I tried to, you know, cut at least one of the. I thought, well, I got, you know, I got nowhere to go, nothing to do. I better just try this. Maybe I can, you know, think of something. But anyway, as I finally cut one of the canes and went to put it behind me, I turned back around and the thing had grown completely back and this guy's laughing like it's really funny and I thought you know, this is impossible, but I'm a survivor and I'm just, you know, I'm just going to keep going. Well, the lights went out, the lights came back up. I'm someplace else. There was this road a lot of times. Actually, I like the road because I could. It was like a moonscape, you know.

Speaker 1: 11:19

Kill the Willie Nelson on the road again.

Speaker 2: 11:22

Yeah, that's about how I felt. But you know, I kept turning around making sure nothing was creeping up on me, and so I had bad experiences there, and and every time they would say I've got a job for you, I want you to do something. Sometimes it got squeamishly immoral and I'd say, no, I'm not going to do it. They say, well, all right, it's just going to get worse, you know. So that was the misfit in hell thing. Heaven Expat is coming up later. I finally did get to what I didn't know was going to be the last episode, but I made this demon lady very angry by singing a Christmas carol, you know.

Speaker 2: 12:05

I was really kind of ticked off. This whole thing was just a nightmare. And she had it's in the book. I'm not trying to sell a book, but I don't know.

Speaker 1: 12:15

Yeah, we are. Yeah, we are. I'm lying, I'm lying.

Speaker 2: 12:20

I ticked her off and she came at me like she was going to club me and I thought so what you know, I'll just go someplace else. But boom, I did go someplace else, but this time it was just like, wow, all this joy, love, you're at a birthday party Everybody ever knew was you know. It's just that kind of you couldn't imagine how wonderful that felt. You totally forget everything has happened, everything has happened and you just tumble in this wonderful love. It's kind of sparkly and, oh my gosh, there's not a care in the world. I can't remember anything. I don't remember my kids, nothing. I'm just enjoying this ecstasy Kind of filters into solidity of some sort. I can see my friend. I had gone to Seattle to help him through leukemia.

Speaker 1: 13:13

He had died, that's why I have the hairdo I do.

Speaker 2: 13:17

Oh, really, leukemia? Yeah, I'm, a survivor, though, obviously.

Speaker 2: 13:21

Well, good for you, because it was nasty. I was up there almost nine months. He and I had been engaged for seven years and had gone our separate ways amicably when he got a job promotion but there he had died. And so there he was, standing there and I thought I'm still in this wonderful place and in mood. And I see him and he's laughing and he has his hair back, you know, and he looks about 35 instead of 50. And he's just got this sparkle in his eyes Like he knows something I don't. And I thought you know, he, oh Lord, he doesn't know, he's dead, you know. And and he burst out laughing and I thought, wait a minute, I didn't say that out loud. And then he's laughing again, like come on, come on, think it through, think it through. And I thought, holy, you know what, I'm dead. This is great. Oh my gosh, we're in heaven. Show me around, man. What are we standing here for?

Speaker 2: 14:51

and he kind of crept up a little closer, not getting too close, and said ah, mary Kay, you've got too much left to do.

Speaker 1: 15:01

And people who have that experience often come back saying I came back kicking and screaming, I didn't want to come back.

Speaker 2: 15:10

No, what a lousy trick. You know I'm so mad.

Speaker 1: 15:15

Come back to this. Oh yeah, I was 86 pounds.

Speaker 2: 15:20

I couldn't move. I had the trick I had I, you know. I thought how am I? I can't even breathe. How am I going to get all this quote stuff done, you know? So I was not a happy camper. It took me a couple more months to get out of hospitals and get my life, you know life back to where I could move around a little bit. Still a mess, and then, gee, it only took me another 15 years I guess it was really closer the 10 years of having no idea what happened, afraid to die because I might have that health thing happen again. Before I got back to heaven, nobody wanted to talk to me about it. Gee, kathy, we thought you were such a nice Catholic girl, what you do in hell, you know.

Speaker 2: 16:08

It was tough and then, through this series of synchronicities, things started falling into place. I found myself in Seattle at an IANDS meeting, that's the International Association of Near-Death Studies. Whole bunches of dead people, you know. They have the best time really, because they're not afraid to live and they're not afraid to die. So I got in there and I listened to some of the fluffy stories you know with the angels and puppies and stuff, and I thought, yeah, that's not what happened to me. And some guy overheard me complaining and said why? What happened to you? And I said, well, he said did you have a really distressing, terrible one in hell, or something Like he was excited and I said yeah, and he says you've got to tell us about it. We never, nobody ever will talk about these things. I mean, we know about, you know 20% of the people have them, but nobody will say anything. So that started my journey and now, 15 years later, I've been in INS. I co-host a distressing sharing group for people who have had these experiences. We can kind of get together once a month. They can tell their stories for the first time by people that won't judge them and understand, have been there literally and kind of help them work it through. And I was lucky to find the books of Nancy Evans Bush and Howard Storm. There's been a bunch of them that have written really terrific experience-related books.

Speaker 2: 17:32

And bottom line for me is I believe that as a Catholic, my whole life I was taught that I would go to purgatory when I died because, even though Jesus died for my sins, I still had to pay. You know something, get my sins burned off in hell. It's like hell, but you'll get out, kathy. So I think I made my own. I thought I would go to someplace like that. So I think I made my own. I thought I would go to some place like that, so I did.

Speaker 2: 18:00

And so it took me a long time to realize that each one of those segments, joseph, had been things that had actually happened in my life. Like the first one, I had been in the 1989 earthquake in Santa Cruz that the town fell down, there was fires and people screaming. You know, I could pinpoint every single one of those things and I thought, okay. And the other thing I've come to believe and accept is that had I stayed in heaven or stayed dead, none of that would have happened. I believe that we choose our lives. I believe we come down here to learn things. We have a purpose, and I think my purpose was to have that experience and be able to come back and tell people God is all loving, all forgiving, there is no freaking hell, nobody judges you, and just live your life the best you can. Life the best you can. I was told later to be loving, kind, merciful, forgiving, encouraging, grateful, nonjudgmental and useful. That's it. Throw the rest out If you can't remember all that loving and kind, and then the rest will take care of itself.

Speaker 1: 19:10

Yeah, your story sounds a little bit like mine, in that I am a suicide attempt survivor. It's not something I want to talk about, like you write those people who don't want to talk about it, but it's important that we do for our own cathartic health as well as trying to help others. And yeah, as the joke goes, today may not be your today and sorry, tomorrow ain't looking so good either, right, you don't know until you. Carpe diem Next week, next month, next year, next month next year, my Terror Strikes book. I started it and had a version of it in 2006, but it didn't come out as an Amazon bestseller until 2022.

Speaker 1: 20:11

That's a long time. That's a long time, but as part of that, there is a suicide prevention sub-thread. To make that point and share the story, all life has value and meaning. You may not see it yourself Doesn't mean it's not true, right Right. And little things can matter. They add up to some things bigger again, whether you see it or not. So I'm not happy to talk about my weakness, my depression then and indeed overdosing, but yet coming back, and indeed I didn't have an NDE or anything, but clearly my time wasn't ready to be up. I had things I needed to do. I think like this show and having people like you on.

Speaker 2: 21:09

That's absolutely right and that's specifically how I feel that Too Much Left to do was made available to me. I got an email from Kirstie Salisbury in New Zealand and she said I want you on my podcast, which I had no idea what that was, and that has led to I think I've done 177 now in the last five years, and that you know, with millions of views. So here's this old lady in Gig Harbor and that you know with millions of views. So here's this you know old lady in in gig harbor, washington. You know who, who was able to take that message only through people like you yeah and yeah, not everyone.

Speaker 1: 21:50

I always say everyone has stories in them worth sharing, but not everyone's gonna be able to write a book which is's going to be able to write a book, which is why I also wrote how to Write a Book and Get it Published, to help people who have that story want to share it and help them get it available. Also, not everyone is a podcast going to be for them, but wrote podcasting quick start guide. For those who, right, like I'm gonna lift up my green screen and you could see the ugly couch with all. Yeah, I may not be a hoarder, but I am a slob. Look at all that stuff on the couch hidden behind the green screen doing this podcast from my living room.

Speaker 1: 22:39

Indeed, right, I'm not a big high production show. Right, you may not be, but, again, you may not do either of those things. But again, little things you do do on a daily basis you might not recognize as important are just as important as long as you're trying to sow a little bit of good so good can be reaped, rather than doing nothing and being complicit in the rotten fruit that is then reaped and we're all trying to choke down to sustain ourselves. Absolutely.

Speaker 2: 23:24

Absolutely, absolutely, and and every time you leave the house, whether you're in your car, whether you're standing in line at a grocery store, just to just to give somebody a smile, and it just chit chat just a little bit, I don't care who it is. It elicits something in them, a spark. Oh, I've been seen, I'm valuable. Oh you know, I'm worthy, and, and, and it's loving and kind is just magical.

Speaker 1: 23:51

Yes, those are a lot of the little right. I like to joke. You remember the Pantene shampoo commercial. They tell two friends, then they tell two friends, then they tell right, pretty soon you got a movement right. And these, like the movie Evan Almighty, which is a comedy but important Arc God tells them to build an arc, but it's really about arc as an act of random kindness is the moral of that story. You don't see those great moral stories coming out of Hollywood anymore. But indeed and we have to remember though, we're all human, flawed, frail and perfect I can have a bad day, you can have a bad day. You give a smile and you get a snarl back. Recognize okay, maybe they're just having a bad day. Sometimes someone may be having a bad day. You give them a smile and even if they give a fake smile, forced smile back, as you kind of alluded, they walk away and their day has been made better and they may crack a smile to somebody else and again, hopefully, you have that arc, that those acts of random kindness, movement going.

Speaker 2: 25:22

You betcha and it's easy and it's free and you feel better too.

Speaker 1: 25:27

Smiling is free people. Don't be so grumpy, please.

Speaker 2: 25:35

Yes, so that's kind of where I am today. I love my IONS group and it's ionsorg if you want to find out anything about near-death experiences and sharing groups, and it's ionsorg if you want to find out anything about near-death experiences and sharing groups, and it's all very positive. We have conferences once a year. This year it will be in Chicago in Labor Day and I'm telling you, the energy there is so upbeat and fantastic. The worst part is you have to leave. You know it's like a little slice of heaven and you go.

Speaker 1: 26:07

Oh man, I don't want to go home because, yeah, yeah, well, I like what you said earlier, right, and you're not really afraid of dying because you've been there, done that. Yeah, yeah your greater fear is not living, living positively, living, getting something out of this life, not it just being the plane of existence before we get judged and go to heaven or not.

Speaker 2: 26:39

And really there is no judgment, there's a life review and it's just for your own edification. How did I do? You know how did I do on my job down there? And you get to see your entire life. I didn't, I wasn't there long enough, they threw me out too soon, but yeah, thousands of people have reported the same thing.

Speaker 2: 26:57

And then they turn that around and run it again and you get to experience how it was to interact with you. So that person you did smile at, you know you get to feel their. They got a little bit of joy back. Or you lent somebody some money and didn't expect it back, or whatever wonderful things you did. You get to feel how wonderful it was that you were on that earth. And if you were in traffic one time and you laid on the horn and that poor little old lady just had, you know you get to feel her fear, you get to feel her hurt, and that's not a judgment, that's just kind of karma. You put that out. You get to feel how that was. And then everybody says incarnation. So you just come back and try it again.

Speaker 1: 27:39

I'm glad you said that, because the Bible does not preclude it, exclusion does not, or preclusion does not mean exclusion. We have one eternal soul. It doesn't say only one life on earth. Indeed, some, for whatever reason, might be required to come back, and I want to push back. I don't want to believe that there's not a hell, because there are certainly a whole lot. I sure hope Hitler and Stalin and Mao are not up there. Well, I'll tell you, I love that one.

Speaker 2: 28:21

That's my favorite, because if Hitler gets to feel the pain, agony, fear that he in, you know, enforced on other people, all those millions of people he's still halfway through his life review, you know. I mean he's going to get to feel all that, and what more can you do to the guy you know? And? And God, just you know, is not judgmental, god is love and God, just you know, is not judgmental. God is love, and we'll just get to experience what we put out, and I think that's you know we're not, god is not like us.

Speaker 2: 28:55

God is not like us.

Speaker 1: 28:57

We're invincible, but God is I'll get into trouble, because if I run into Hitler in the streets of heaven, I'm punching him in the face.

Speaker 2: 29:07

No, he's still in the live review room. He's not going anywhere.

Speaker 1: 29:13

Okay, thank you, MK McDaniel. I try to keep my show short. I call it the Twitter attention span these days. Attention span these days. Right, Everybody wants to just give me the headline, even though it might be misleading. Details matter, you know. Cover as much as we can in a short period of time so that people will actually watch or listen.

Speaker 2: 29:41

That's great. Well, thanks for having me on the show. It was wonderful to meet you. I've had a really good time.

Speaker 1: 29:47

Thank you for coming by. Take care. God bless you too. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. I do this all the time that after I hit stop and record, there are always things I think, oh, I needed to say that or I needed to ask that. But I don't do this. Add a tacked on additional segment all that often. Or, frankly, I'd be annoying you as much as it's annoying to me that I keep forgetting things. It's annoying to me that I keep forgiving things. But regarding the exclusion does not mean preclusion thing, reincarnation. Just because it doesn't say there is it in the Bible, it also doesn't say there isn't it in the Bible.

Speaker 1: 30:45

What is it with some people, the sin of hubris that think God owes them explanations and answers to any and every question they may have while we're here on earth. God doesn't owe us that. Hopefully we get the answers to our questions, indeed, in heaven, but we're not owed them here, just as a young child isn't owed an explanation of don't do that, that's bad for you. And sometimes they have to touch the hot stove to learn whoa, mom and dad were right, don't touch that, but not have had an hour lecture of it's hot, you'll get burned. And they don't understand, necessarily hot or burned because they're a child. We are all, despite all our advancements in human history, still children to God, our Father. We are not owed all the answers. That's all I wanted to add on. Thank you all. Take care, god bless.

Speaker 1: 32:09

Thank you for having tuned in for Chris D'Attussion's Politics Show. If you haven't already, please check out my primary internationally available book, terror Strikes, coming soon to a city near you, available anywhere books are sold. If you have a locally run bookstore still near you, they can order it for you. And let me remind, over time the fancy high production items will come. But for now, for starters, it's just you as a very appreciated listener by me. All subjects, no fluff, just straight to key discussion points. A show that looks at a variety of topics, mostly politics, through a Christian, us constitutionalist lens. So again, thank you from the bottom of my heart. Take care, god bless, like and subscribe to Christitutionalist Politics Podcast and share episodes. We need your help.