A great peace came over me as the sea pulled me down.
I didn’t struggle. I opened my eyes to see the most dazzling ocean panorama. Fish sparkled with unreal colors. The sun was shining on the pink and orange coral. The sand looked like crushed jewels.
It was one of the most beautiful places I had ever seen in my ten-year-old life. As I floated down, I saw the entrance to a crystal cave. There were mermaids with bright long hair flowing and huge fish staring at me with big, shiny eyes.
Soon I was standing on the ocean floor, diamond sand squishing in my toes. I felt a magnetic pull to the crystal cave. I knew there was something wonderful there, something for me and only me. I began to walk toward it.
Abruptly, I woke up on the beach, choking on seawater and gasping for air. I looked up to see a crowd staring down at me. My mother was screaming in the background. My two cousins were crying uncontrollably.
Then I remembered: We had all been on a raft, catching waves, having fun.
A huge wave had overturned the raft and thrown us all into the ocean at Virginia Beach. My uncle, a retired Navy SEAL, was frantically searching for me when he saw my waist-length hair floating in the water.
He grabbed me by my hair and pulled me to shore as fast as he could. He did CPR on me and saved my life.
Corfield was ten years old when she had her first near death experience
She found herself in a beautiful underwater world, with ‘huge fish staring at me with big, shiny eyes’
Corfield describes seeing mermaids with ‘bright long hair flowing and beautiful’
Turns out I had never been even close to the bottom of the ocean.
That was my first near-death experience (NDE).
I’m 72 now and the scene of what awaited me in death has never left me. It is as vivid today as it was then. It seemed like at least 15 minutes. It was less than three.
Sometimes I close my eyes and picture it. It brings me peace even though it is about my own death.
What I saw as I was drowning is one of the first things I want to see when I finally pass. I want to enter that crystal cave and see what was in there that was for only me.
Of course, that is just one scenario I am planning for my afterlife.
Now working as a spiritual counselor with a PhD in theology and world religion, I have guided thousands of people through their fears of death and dying by helping them plan what happens to them in the afterlife.
My second NDE came years later under very different circumstances.
I was 19. In a moment of violence, my then-husband held a pillow over my face and very nearly succeeded in killing me. As I began to feel myself slip away, my physical body just relaxed.
I felt myself floating. I was self-aware but no longer fully in my body. In the background, I could hear the soft crying of my infant son. His cries grew faint as I floated through a dark tunnel. It wasn’t frightening. It felt quiet and brought peace.
As I moved forward, I became aware of faces all around me, those who had passed before me: my grandparents, two friends who had died young. A boy I went to elementary school with, who slowly died of cancer, was especially vivid to me.
There were others there I did not recognize but instinctively knew were relatives. They all lined the tunnel as I moved along it.
It felt as though they were speaking, offering me reassurance, love, encouragement. But I couldn’t hear any words. Still, I understood the message completely: You are not alone. You will be OK.
But there was something else. I could see faces of people I recognized from school and sports. I didn’t know them well. They were at best casual acquaintances. They were smiling. I felt warmth and encouragement from them, but in a much lighter way than the others.
Then, just as suddenly as it began, it ended. The pressure lifted. The tunnel collapsed inward and I felt myself forcefully snapping back into my body. I was gasping for air, but I had survived.
Corfield escaped her abusive husband after he almost killed her, age 19
I’m 72 now and the scene of what awaited me in death has never left me. It is as vivid today as it was then
I escaped my abusive husband and left with nothing but my infant son and some clothes. But part of the experience kept nagging me. The faces I had seen of those casual acquaintances – were those people dead?
We had no social media or computers back then. But I went to the library to look at old newspapers on microfiche. Every one of them was, in fact, dead. I had not known this prior to my NDE.
Though these experiences differed, both shared something unmistakable: a sense of awareness that continues after death, a feeling of being guided and an environment that felt deeply personal rather than random.
They didn’t feel like dreams or imagination. They felt like glimpses into something real, something eliciting a clear response. I felt in control.
And over time, they led me to a question most people never think to ask: What if our afterlife isn’t something that simply happens to us but something we can help shape?
That idea became the foundation of my new book, Create Your Own Afterlife. In it, I encourage people to think about the afterlife not as a predetermined destination but as something influenced by our own awareness, desire and intention.
It doesn’t involve religion or spiritual practice – unless you want it to.
The return to the crystal cave from my childhood experience is one of the first places I want to see again, but it is only one part of what I am planning.
In my afterlife plan, I visualize reconnecting with loved ones, going on great adventures with them, catching them up on things they missed. I envision spaces of learning and reflection. There will be places of silence and peace right along with the noisiest dance halls one can imagine.
And, yes, I even consider the more unusual possibilities: to move freely through time and space, travel instantly, shift form. I will become an angel, an alien, a ghost guiding my still-living loved ones.
I believe there are proper and improper ways to haunt – and we should always ghost with grace, adhering to the spiritual beliefs of the people with whom we wish to stay in contact.
While I was completing my book, I experienced a profound personal loss. My 21-year-old grandson Preston died. This forced me to confront everything I had written in a very real way.
Did my grief disappear? It did not. But what did happen is I was able to have hope again. Hope my grandson and I will do more things together. Hope we will reunite our family. Hope, indeed, of a future for us. Grief steals your hope of a future. Planning your afterlife returns your hope.
While writing the book, Corfield’s 21-year-old grandson Preston died, forcing her to confront everything she had written in a very real way
Corfield hopes she’ll be reunited with her grandson and other loved ones in the afterlife
A good ghost will learn how to communicate with loved ones using methods you know they would appreciate.
If you think your loved ones would engage in a conversation about this now, you can talk to them and learn how they feel about ghostly visits.
Some will want just a light breeze or bird’s song to remind them of you. Some will want to feel you are still listening to them. Some may want a much fuller experience. You can learn to be the most delightful ghost.
If you believe there’s an afterlife and that what you do here matters there, then you’re already planning it whether you realize it or not. So why not take that idea further and plan with purpose?
Because when you begin to consider who you want to see, how you want to feel and what you want to do, it changes your relationship with death. It becomes less about fear and more about possibility. You can relax; you know what will happen next because you created it.
At the end of the day, planning your afterlife may be the most empowering thing you ever do for yourself. It changes how you relate to death. It changes your perception of permanent loss into a plan for future hope and joy. Instead of feeling helpless, you know you hold agency over your next destination.
Instead of seeing death as an ending, you will know it is the next great chapter of your life.
Samantha Corfield is a spiritual counselor and author of Create Your Own Afterlife, Take Control of Life After Death, published by Llewellyn Worldwide.
