So Supernatural - MYSTICAL: Pam Reynolds

Episode Date: September 2, 2020

In 1991, singer-songwriter Pam Reynolds underwent a daring operation to remove a life-threatening aneurysm. Afterwards, Pam was able to describe the entire procedure in detail… even though she was clinically dead throughout. 

What happens after we die? For many people, this question is unanswerable. But in the case of Pam Reynolds, she knew because she'd been there. In fact, out of all the near-death experiences people have reported, Pam's story is the most famous. It happened while she was in the operating room under close medical watch. The doctors who were there could confirm that Pam was clinically dead when her experience happened. Yet, she was able to describe the things that happened during her surgery with almost perfect clarity. And of all the near-death experiences out there, hers just might be the most believable.

This is Supernatural, and I'm your host, Ashley Flowers. This week's episode is about Pam Reynolds, a singer who came back from the dead with tales about the other side. Though several scientists have tried to debunk Pam's story, there's yet to be an answer to what truly happened. We try to sort it out ourselves coming up. Stay with us. Even before her death, Pam Reynolds was famous.

In addition to being a singer-songwriter herself, she owned a company that recorded musicians like Bruce Springsteen and Pearl Jam. Pam's career and her cozy suburban life meant that she was pretty happy. But then, on a hot summer day in 1991, Pam suddenly forgot how to talk. And I'm not sure whether Pam just couldn't make sounds or if she was totally forgetting the words in her head, but either way, Pam was disturbed by this. The loss of speech isn't her only symptom either. Pretty soon, Pam's struggling with extreme dizziness and difficulty moving her body.

It's unclear how frequent these episodes happen or whether it was constant, but Pam knows that she has to see a doctor. After an MRI, her worst fears are confirmed. She has a large aneurysm. Even worse, it's located on Pam's brain stem, the area that controls fundamental life functions like swallowing and breathing. This means that operating on the aneurysm is particularly dangerous. One tiny mistake and Pam could lose the ability to breathe on her own or eat without a medical aid. But Pam doesn't really have a choice. According to doctors, she is a ticking time bomb. And at any moment, the aneurysm could rupture and Pam would be dead. Pam refuses such a dire fate, so she opts for the surgery. She makes an appointment at the Barrow Institute in Arizona, where she meets with a neurosurgeon named Dr. Robert Spetzler. Dr. Spetzler tells Pam that

her aneurysm is so large and it's located in such a precarious position that a normal operation actually could be fatal. So instead, he proposes what's called a standstill operation. In this feat of medical magic, he would basically drain all of the blood from Pam's head, cool her body down to 60 degrees Fahrenheit, and stop her heart from beating. This will prevent Pam's blood from pumping and reduce the risk of her aneurysm rupturing during surgery. Basically, Dr. Spetzler is going to kill Pam and then bring her back to life. Now, standstill operations have been performed since 1952, but they're still extremely dangerous, with a mortality rate of around 12%. Still, Pam doesn't really have a better option.

So on a bright August morning, she takes an antiseptic shower, and then the nurses help Pam onto a gurney. Then, they roll her into the operating room. They help her onto a table and tie her legs and arms down. Then, her eyes are taped shut, and a breathing tube is inserted into her windpipe. Lastly, earbuds are placed into Pam's ears, and they emit a loud clicking to monitor the neural waves in her brain. With everything in place, the doctors administer anesthesia, and Pam slowly slips out of consciousness. But in order for the daring operation to be as safe as possible,

the doctors need to make absolutely certain that Pam doesn't wake up. So they inject her with a huge dose of barbiturates. With the earbuds, they are able to watch the tranquilizers completely knock out Pam's brain function. Her neural waves disappear. Stampeding Buffalo could barge into the operating room and Pam wouldn't wake up. I mean, she is completely out. It's at this moment that a 20-person medical team files into the room. They're all there to ensure that Pam makes it back from her journey to the other side. This team of doctors help swath Pam in cooling blankets packed with ice. This is to help lower her body heat. Then they thread a long, thin catheter through her jugular vein and into her heart.

Her cardiothoracic surgeon hooks this up to a heart-lung machine. When Pam's body is at a chilling 60 degrees, Dr. Spetzler injects her with a large dose of potassium chloride. This stops Pam's heart, meaning that not only does she have no brain waves, she also has no heartbeats. So for all intents and purposes, at this point, Pam is dead. As if that's not crazy enough, though, Dr. Spetzler drains all of the blood from Pam's head. Once there's no more risk of blood causing the aneurysm to rupture, Dr. Spetzler begins his surgery. The first thing Pam hears is the buzzing of a drill as Dr. Spetzler saws open her skull. The singer-songwriter describes it as sounding like a perfect natural D.

And just to clarify something crazy here, I mean, at this point, Pam has no brainwaves, no heartbeat. She is still dead and her skull is literally being sawed open. So none of this makes any sense. But Pam not only hears the buzzing, she feels as though the sound is pulling at something inside of her. It's like a fishhook sunk deep into her consciousness, tugging at her soul. And the clearer the sound gets, the stronger the pull is, until finally Pam feels herself pop right out of the top of her head.

She has a strange sort of clarity as she floats out of her body. She feels herself drift above the operating table until she's hovering somewhere near the ceiling. From this height, Pam can see everything happening below. The operating table, the tools, even her own body. All of it as clear as day. The first thought that registers to Pam is the number of people in the room. She recognizes Dr. Spetzler, but almost everyone else is a stranger.

The next thing Pam notices is her hair. They had shaved one side of her head to perform the operation. The last thing she registers is the drill in Dr. Spetzler's hand. Pam thinks it looks more like an electric toothbrush than an actual surgical tool. Then Pam hears the cardiac surgeon say that the arteries in her thigh are too small. And this confuses her because Pam doesn't understand what her thigh has to do with her brain surgery. It never occurs to Pam at any point that this is all very strange. She sort of just takes the fact that she's looking down at her dead body at face value. And at that point, Pam feels the strong pulling sensation

again. The doctors, the operating room, Pam's body on the table. It all jerks away and Pam feels herself get sucked into a dark shaft. It's like she's in an elevator that's going up very quickly. And this time, the sharp pulling sensation is accompanied by a voice. It's actually calling to Pam, and Pam recognizes it. It's her deceased grandmother. Now, this is actually extremely common with near-death experiences or NDEs. The people who have them often describe seeing and hearing the voices of their long-dead loved ones. For Pam, the sound of her grandmother's familiar voice rids her of any fear.

It allows her to calmly travel up the pitch-black shaft. Then, suddenly, she sees a pinprick of light and it gets brighter and brighter the higher she climbs until it becomes a glare. She instinctively tries to put her hands up to shield her eyes, but Pam's surprised to find that she doesn't actually have any hands. She can't see any of her body for that matter. She's just a floating consciousness like an unmoored soul. Pam begins to discern figures in the light. She sees her dead grandmother, her great-great-aunt Maggie, her uncle Gene. All of them are bathed in a bright light. Pam asks her relatives if the light is God, and they tell her it isn't.

They explain that the light is actually God's breath. And this awes Pam. She's moved by the thought that she is standing in the breath of God. And the longer she's there, the more she wants to stay. So she is alarmed when her uncle suddenly says that she has to return to her body. Pam reluctantly lets him lead her back through the dark shaft all the way down until the operating room is visible again. But on seeing her body down on the table, Pam hesitates. She's disgusted by the thought of climbing back inside of a corpse, but her uncle insists. He says it'll be just like diving into a swimming pool. As they're talking, Pam sees the surgical team below trying to revive her. They're using a defibrillator to administer shocks, which

strikes Pam as really unpleasant. She senses that returning to her body will hurt, and she wants no part of it. She keeps pleading with her uncle until finally he just gives her a shove. Pam senses her consciousness falling as though from a high diving board. She feels her body jump as the surgical team delivers another ventricular shock. And just like that, Pam comes back to life. Coming up, we'll explore whether Pam really experienced life after death. Now back to the story. After her uncle pushes her, Pam knows she's alive. She can tell because she can hear the Eagles' iconic song, Hotel California, playing on the radio in the OR. Pam still has the clicking earbuds, so she shouldn't be able to hear anything. But the tune is distinct.

Its lyrics hit the singer-songwriter in a different way than it ever has. As the Eagles croon, You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave. In the weeks after Pam's surgery, she still vividly remembers her experience, but for some reason, she doesn't share it with anyone. In fact, Pam assumes that the whole thing didn't even happen. She thinks it was just a hallucination, maybe some bizarre dream that she had right before she gained full consciousness. But then, one year after the surgery, Pam casually mentions to Dr. Robert Spetzler some of the details that she remembers from what she thought was her hallucination. And Spetzler is stunned.

Everything Pam says matches almost exactly what transpired in the operating room. There really were 20 people in the room. The doctors really did discuss Pam's arteries being too small. The saw they used did resemble an electric toothbrush, and Hotel California was playing on the radio. Dr. Spetzler's never seen or heard of anything like this, and he can't explain it. From a scientific perspective, it makes zero sense. His reaction causes Pam to take her memories more seriously.

So she contacts Dr. Michael Sabom, a cardiologist who researches near-death experiences. Dr. Sabom is immediately fascinated by Pam's case. With her permission, he accesses Pam's medical files. He, too, confirms that Pam's description of the surgery was accurate. And he's unable to explain how Pam knows any of these details. I mean, even if she had been conscious, she wouldn't have seen or heard anything. Sabom ultimately concludes that there had to have been some sort of extrasensory perception at work. In other words,

Pam was able to somehow perceive things with her unconscious mind. And she's not the only one with this experience. Every year, there are thousands of people who report near-death experiences. Now, this name is a bit of a misnomer since many people who have NDEs weren't actually totally dead when their experience happened.

But there are some people like Pam who actually did die and then come back to life. And in general, all these people call themselves experiencers. According to a Gallup poll, nearly 8 million Americans claim that they are an experiencer. These aren't just people looking for fame. Even celebrities have chimed in with their own tales of life after death. For example, in 2001,

actress Sharon Stone was engulfed by a vortex of white light during a brain hemorrhage that almost left her dead. Sharon describes her NDE as beautiful. She says she interacted with deceased friends and loved ones, and when she returned from the otherworldly plane, she realized she was no longer afraid of death. All in all, her experience sounds a lot like Pam's. In his book, Transformed by the Light, pediatrician Dr. Melvin Morse outlined some key traits that characterize a full-blown NDE. The first is a clear sense of being dead. This is usually accompanied by an out-of-body experience where someone feels their consciousness or their soul float out of their body. Several people like Pam also describe traveling up through a tunnel,

talking to long-deceased loved ones, and feeling an all-encompassing sense of peace and well-being. They report not wanting to return to their dead bodies or their complicated lives back on Earth. And there is one final common trait that crops up in most NDEs, the light. For Pam, the celestial light was the most profound part of her near-death experience. She remembers it as the breath of God. Sharon Stone called it a whole white light thing. But these words are tame when compared to some of the things that others have said. Some experiencers report talking with angels and running with beings of light.

One man even said that he sat on Jesus Christ's lap. He says he was in awe of Christ's majesty and that they stared lovingly into each other's eyes. Some people even claim that their NDE was so powerful they were forever changed as a result. And this was actually the case with actor Tracy Morgan. On June 7th, 2014, a huge truck slammed into Tracy's car, killing his friend and plunging Tracy into a near-fatal coma. While he's out, Tracy goes to heaven. There, he speaks with his long-deceased father. Their conversation ended with Tracy's dad saying,

I'm not ready for you. Then he asked Tracy to return back to life. Like Sharon and Pam, Tracy's been deeply affected by his experience. From that point on, he says I love you upwards of 200 times a day. I mean, he'll say it to family members, friends, even strangers on the street. Tracy also begins to revel in the simple things, taking his daughter to dance class and hanging out with his wife. He says his NDE helped him tap into humanity. It reawakened his faith in his fellow man. And Tracy's not just being mushy. His life-changing experience and Pam's

and Sharon's gels with what researchers are uncovering about NDEs as a whole. They found that experiencers often do go on to live very different lives than the ones that they were leading. Alcoholics can suddenly stop drinking. Atheists become extremely spiritual. Workaholics decide to spend more time with their families. It's like they underwent a sudden personality change. And there's reason to think it might be because of another change, one that doesn't make any sense. In 2008, a neuroscientist named Mario Beauregard decided to study the phenomenon of near-death experiences in a scientific setting. So he invites experiencers into his lab. There, Mario attaches electrodes to their head and he asks them to just think about their NDE.

This allows Mario to watch their corresponding brainwave activity on his monitor. He hopes this will tell him if people's brains have actually changed since their near-death experience. One of Mario's subjects is a man called Gilles Bédard. Gilles had a near-death incident where his heart stopped, and he claims to have interacted with 12 beings of light before fully coming back to life. All in all, a pretty, you know, standard story for a near-death experience. So Mario situates Gilles in his lab. Then he attaches 32 electrodes to his head and asks him to recall the 12 beings of light. Just think hard about that memory, he says. Gilles obliges and Mario watches his brainwaves. And what he sees is astounding.

When we come back, we'll explore what's behind Gilles' bizarre neural activity. Now back to the story. As Mario monitors Gilles' brainwaves, he is shocked to see they've all slowed all the way down. His neural activity resembles that of someone in a deep sleep, not a person who is wide awake with a bunch of wires attached to their head. And this doesn't make any sense. When people are awake, their brainwaves are in constant motion, darting around as their mind skips from thought to thought. The only people

with neural maps like Gilles are Catholic nuns or Buddhist monks, people who have spent hours or even days in focused meditation. Their brainwaves are permanently changed because of their spiritual practice. So it seems like by simply just thinking of the light, Gilles is able to mimic a meditative state that takes most people decades to achieve. Mario goes on to observe other experiencers, and sure enough, there are plenty of them with neural maps like Gilles. In the end, Mario can only come to one conclusion, that near-death experiences open some sort of gateway inside of experiencers, one that allows them to connect more easily with a calm spiritual realm. However, not all NDEs are positive. Some experiencers have stories that are downright traumatic. Distressing near-death experiences aren't as common as positive ones,

but they're not exactly rare either. They usually fall into three categories. The first is what researcher Nancy Evans Bush calls the inverse NDE. In these cases, people report the usual floating out of their bodies and seeing beings of light. But unlike Pam, they aren't filled with a sense of well-being. Instead, they're freaked out, which if you think about it makes total sense. No one wants to look down at their own dead body. Now, another one is called the void. In these instances, there is no light. There are no feelings of love. There is only a deep sense of despair.

One woman recalls suddenly flying over the hospital into a deep, empty space. In the void, she's surrounded by ominous, circular shapes. They tell her she's never existed. They say that the baby that she just gave birth to in the hospital isn't real either. They whisper that her memories, the people she's known and loved, all of it is a mere fabrication. From the way she describes it, these voices, or at least what they're telling her, seem almost demonic, as though there are other spiritual beings on the other sides. Ones that aren't angels or relatives. There are still other experiencers who found themselves sucked into a literal void. One man described it as waking up in a sort of endless darkness.

In the void, he had no idea which way is up, which way is down, and he was surrounded by complete nothingness. Which, if you think about it, is really freaky. If death was just oblivion, a light switch turned off and then you're gone, that's one thing. But to be awake inside of the darkness, I mean, that's a whole different level of terrifying. And some experiencers claim that this is exactly what happened to them. One man says that he felt his spirit leave his body, except he didn't float up into an embrace of welcoming white light like Pam. Instead, he fell, plunging through the bottom

of the earth until he found himself standing at a set of high rusty gates. And instantly, he knows they're the gates of hell. What happens next isn't totally clear, but he claims he was somehow able to dig his way out, scrambling and clawing till he gets back to Earth. Another woman claims she had an even more terrifying experience in hell. Not only does she go there, but she describes smelling a horrible stench and hearing inhuman noises. It sounded like a guttural moaning

coming at her from all sides. Before she could run, she found herself surrounded by demonic beings with gray gelatinous appendages. She said they tore at her, ripping her skin. Ultimately, these stories raised the same uncomfortable question as the more positive NDEs. Is there really a heaven or hell? And do experiencers actually have insight about these places? Or are all 8 million of them just shameless opportunists? Because if one thing is certain, it's that NDEs make great stories. And great stories make for killer book deals.

Neurosurgeon Eben Alexander's book, Proof of Heaven, soared to celestial heights, reaching number one on the New York Times bestseller list. He claims that he spoke with God and interacted with angelic beings while in a medically induced coma. Dr. Mary Neal's book, To Heaven and Back, is equally heavy on angels. She claims she talked to seraphic beings following a near-fatal kayak incident. And just like Alexander's book, her story hit the bestseller shelves. Which makes total sense. Both Alexander and Neal are scientific professionals. So if anyone's NDE can be trusted, it's theirs.

Or maybe their jobs provided a convenient cover. It makes their stories seem more believable. But one of the most successful books in the heaven tourism genre isn't written by a doctor. The authors were a young boy named Alex Malarkey and his father. It's called The Boy Who Came Back From Heaven. The book is published in 2010 when Alex is 12 years old, but it speaks to an event from when he was just six years old. Alex claims that after momentarily dying in a horrific car crash, an angel guided him to heaven. He said the gates of paradise looked white and scaly, like the body of a fish.

And once inside, Alex claims he spoke to Jesus Christ. Maybe it's the innocence of Alex's age, but people are convinced his story is true. The Boy Who Came Back From Heaven sells over a million copies. It's adapted into a TV movie. People all over America are captivated by this little boy's experience. There's only one problem. None of it is true. Just five years after the book is

published, Alex writes an open letter stating that the entire book was a lie. According to him, he made it up because he wanted attention. Alex's publishers quickly pull the book from the shelves, but it's important to remember that this is just one case out of many. There are hundreds more tales in the heaven tourism genre that have yet to be debunked, and maybe it's easier to assume that people are simply looking for a quick profit. Which brings us back to Pam Reynolds, because her story is especially difficult to make sense of. She never seems to try and profit off her story. No books, no Hollywood films. And in that, Pam is more representative of the norm. Of the millions of people who've claimed that they've had a near-death experience,

only a very small fraction try to profit from it, which has to account for something. Besides, all these people have the same thing in common. They're convinced that what happened to them was real. But what if there's a different explanation, a scientific one. Some researchers think that the whole out-of-body experience is the result of damage in a certain area of a person's brain. According to them, Pam Reynolds' soul didn't really pop out of her head. She only felt that way because of some sort of brain trauma. But it still doesn't explain how Pam was able to recall such specific details, things that her senses were literally blocked from picking up on. In fact, the only way any

of it makes sense scientifically is if she wasn't fully dead after all. Australian researcher Gerald Worley thinks this was the case with Pam. In a 2009 interview, Worley theorized that the minute Dr. Spetzler cut into Pam's skull, it jolted her back into semi-consciousness, allowing her to overhear the conversations in the room. As for the anesthesia and the earbuds, Worley has an explanation. He says Pam was likely experiencing what's known as anesthesia awareness, when a person is awake, but they can't actually move. Worley also thinks Pam's earbuds just weren't tight-fitting enough.

But even if that was the case, it still doesn't explain the things Pam saw. How could she have known that the drill looked like an electric toothbrush? Worley explains this by saying the drill sounded like an electric toothbrush and that Pam was able to composite an image together in her brain based on the noise alone. Which, I don't know, it seems like this is grasping a bit for an explanation. And it still doesn't explain the other fantastical things that Pam and the other near-death experiencers claim that they've seen. Pam, for one, was convinced that her experience was real. Until her death in 2010, she gave the exact same story. She really did die on the operating table. She felt her consciousness leave her body. She talked to her deceased grandmother and uncle. She stood in the breath of God. A number of scientists have tried to refute Pam's claims,

and none of them have been able to explain what happened. In the end, we'll never understand why Pam Reynolds was able to see, even though her eyes were taped shut, or why she could hear, even though her ears were plugged. And we'll never know whether the stories that Pam and millions of other experiencers have tried to tell us about the afterlife are actually true. At least, not until we ourselves die. For most of us, it's life's final mystery. Thanks for listening. I'll be back next week with another episode. To hear more stories hosted by me, check out Crime Junkie and all AudioChuck originals.