Divine Encounters Episode 096 | Near-Death Experience Story
Sandra Champlain grew up Catholic, in a family where you had to see it to believe it, and by the mid 1990s she was lying awake with an overwhelming fear of dying. In this Divine Encounters episode she tells Alex Ferrari how a deck of angel cards, a weekend mediumship class and a recording that said good night to her slowly changed her mind. The conversation explores skepticism, evidence, grief and why she believes we are divine souls having a human experience.
Key Takeaways
- Sandra says an intense fear of dying began in the mid 1990s and would not go away, even though she was raised Catholic.
- She says the same angel card, which told her to listen to music, came up every day on a racetrack catering job, and she began knowing songs before they played.
- She describes a weekend mediumship class where a practice reading about a fisherman named Jan in Denmark, she says, was exactly right.
- She says her best results came when she was relaxed, okay with being wrong and using her imagination.
- She describes a recording made in a cabin in 2005 where, she says, a man’s voice said good night to her by name.
- She says her father died within five months of a cancer diagnosis in 2010, and her relationships with her siblings fell apart in the grief.
- She says studying grief taught her that a grieving mind is not working at its best, and that we should be gentle with each other and ourselves.
| Guest | Sandra Champlain |
| Episode | Divine Encounters 096 |
| Her starting point | A deep fear of dying in the mid 1990s |
| Background | Raised Catholic in a family of skeptics; her father a pilot and mother a travel agent |
| Her book | We Don’t Die: A Skeptic’s Discovery of Life After Death |
| Key turning points | Angel cards, a mediumship class and electronic voice phenomena |
| Her own near-death experience | None described; she shares a journey of evidence and grief |
| The message | We are divine souls having a human experience; be gentle with yourself |
A Fear That Would Not Go Away
Alex asks his usual opening question, and Sandra answers with a fear. Growing up, and until the mid 1990s, she had an incredible fear of dying that just would not go away. She was raised Catholic. The Catholic faith does teach life after death, she notes, but that was not enough to calm her.
So, very secretly, she began studying other religions, all kinds of them. It was a journey into what is possible, and it became the subtitle of her book, We Don’t Die: A Skeptic’s Discovery of Life After Death.
A Family of Skeptics
She did not believe any of it. She was open, but she was raised in a family where you have to see it to believe it. Her dad was an airline pilot and her mom a travel agent. There was also a local psychic medium in town who kept making false predictions, so somewhere in her young mind the whole world of spirituality, what she calls the woo woo stuff, was dismissed.
In the nineties, when the fear hit, it hit hard. She would go to bed at night in panic, wondering what would happen if this were her last night. She would look up at the stars, think about how endless the universe is, and it all came back as fear.
The Angel Card That Said Music
A friend she describes as a nice lady talked about angels and spirit guides. Sandra thought, you are so nice, I just wish you would not talk like that. The friend gave her a deck of angel cards. At the time Sandra was off on one of her racetrack catering jobs, eight or nine days of cooking in the heat in Sebring, Florida.
Each day she pulled a card, thinking any card could apply. But every day, after shuffling, she pulled the same one. The card was music. Listen to music. She typically did not, because the cooking was fast paced and she did not want music to slow her down. This time she turned on a peppy station. She began to know the songs before they came on the radio, before they were announced. For a short explanation of this kind of experience, see the glossary entry on synchronicity, a word she might not have used then.
Knowing Before She Should
It creeped her out. This would be a psychic ability, she says, and if psychic and medium abilities were real, she certainly would not have them, because she did not believe in any of it. It kept happening. She would know someone’s name before they introduced themselves. The phone would ring, a telemarketer, and she knew their name.
Eventually she took a weekend course in California on mediumship. The promise of the course was that if you attended, you could see deceased people around others. She so wanted it to be true, but her skeptical mind said it was impossible. The only way to know for sure was to go. So she told everyone in her life she was going to a business meeting, and went to medium school, a class of about fifteen.
The Practice Reading
The instructor explained how a reading is done. You create a safe space, a bubble of light between you and another person, and invite their loved ones to come through. Sandra closed her eyes and imagined a big, beautiful bubble of light around the woman across from her. She said, politely, that if any of her loved ones wanted to come through with a message, she was there.
With her eyes closed, she began telling what she saw. A man behind you, she said, your grandfather on your mother’s side. He was a fisherman in Denmark. His name was Jan. He had blond hair and blue eyes. In her mind, she gave him a big cigarette and a cough, so she thought he had died of lung cancer, and a big gap between his front teeth. She felt he wanted the woman to tell her mother that he had never said I love you, but that he was proud of her.
It Was Right On
She opened her eyes to say, okay, you are next, and the woman was crying. Her grandfather’s name was Jan. He was a fisherman in Denmark. It fit the entire description, and her mother had always said that her father was rough and tough and never said I love you. Sandra was stunned. When it was her turn, the woman described Sandra’s own grandfather, the cane he used to walk with, his name, and the German Shepherd dog that was always by his side. For another way people describe messages like these, see the glossary entry on mediumship.
That was the moment, Sandra says, that she knew there was something more. The fear of death started to dissipate. There’s something here, she thought. This is real.
The Role of Imagination
The bad news, she says, was that every time she tried to be a medium, it seemed not to work. When she was okay with being wrong and felt relaxed, as if she was creating, that was when she was right. She left the seminar excited but afraid to tell anyone, because we all like people to like us, and if someone asked who she saw around them and she got it wrong, she would be laughed at.
She now believes imagination is everything. We have two sides: an analytical, skeptical mind and a daydreamy, loving side. We believe the first too much, she says, when it often greets us in the mirror with self-defeating words we would never say to a child. The second side is the one used for communication. She believes “we’re divine souls, having human experience,” and that after more than 26 years, she has learned to get the analytical mind out of the way. It keeps us safe, but when we want to connect and create, it is the place of imagination, in the present moment.
More Searching, and a Prayer in a Bookstore
After the class, she asked herself what else there was. She took classes in remote viewing with Russell Targ and studied hypnosis, still afraid to tell anyone. At a Barnes and Noble, she asked the universe, if I am meant to help people believe in the afterlife, I need some evidence. She saw a bright orange book, The Idiot’s Guide to Communicating with Spirits, written by Reverend Rita Berkowitz in Massachusetts.
Reverend Rita is a minister, a medium and an artist, and Sandra was introduced to spirit art, in which a medium draws a picture of your loved one. Rita’s church was 45 minutes from her home. She attended a service, then another, then another. In spiritualism, she explains, the service is Christian based, and at the very end the minister gives readings to the congregation. She calls it beautiful to watch.
Electronic Voice Phenomena
One day a couple came as guests to speak about electronic voice phenomena, or EVP. Both had children who had died. They said they left their house with a fan running and a digital tape recorder on a pillow for twenty minutes. When they came back, the recording held the sound of little kids laughing and saying, “Mommy, Daddy, don’t be scared. We’re still here with you.”
Sandra’s brain had to figure that one out. If people could communicate this way, she wanted to know. For further reading on how people describe contact after death, see our glossary entry on after-death communication.
A Retreat at Omega and a Cabin in the Rain
Several months later, on a Halloween weekend in 2005, she was burned out from cooking for race teams and stress eating. She found the Omega center in Rhinebeck, New York, and went for a retreat with nature walks and vegetarian cooking. During the weekend they made recordings and tried to listen. Two classmates, Tom and Lisa, heard lots on her recordings. Sandra heard nothing. They told her, “it’s like listening to a different language,” and that you need to know the language to understand the words.
She wanted to hear for herself. On the last night, alone in her cabin in pouring rain, she held up her recorder and imagined her aunt, uncle, grandmother and grandfather at the foot of her bed. She asked humbly whether this was real, and whether she was supposed to help people believe in the afterlife. She asked them to speak up, and then she said good night. She recorded one minute.
Good Night, Sandra
She played it back. At second number 46, she says, it said in a man’s voice, “good night, Sandra.” Then good night, good night, good night. It scared the heck out of her, and excited her, since she thought about the veil between this life and the other, and about how they could see her but she could not see them.
The next day she brought the recording to class. Others there had lost someone significant, a child or a spouse, and they could all hear it. She could see on their faces the difference it made. She was no longer afraid. She began sharing with family and friends, attended afterlife conferences, and made recordings in hotel rooms with the shower running for background sound.
Her Father, and the Hardest Grief
In 2010 her father, John Champlain, was diagnosed with cancer, and he died within five months. Sandra says she and her loving siblings turned into monsters. She did not think of herself as one, but is sure she appeared that way. The arguments over her father’s care and belongings were ugly, nasty, unpredicted. She was the only single sibling, so she relocated to Florida to be at his side, then the family moved him to Connecticut, and she stayed with him until the end. She went through the grief, and the relationships with her siblings were lost.
She is usually upbeat, a glass half full kind of person. She was not herself. She started studying grief. “Why does it have to hurt so bad?” she asked. It is, she says, the worst pain any human being will ever feel.
If you are carrying a loss right now, you are not alone. If you are struggling, you are not alone. In the US you can call or text 988 any time.
What Sandra Learned About Grief
She says she found stages of dying as well as stages of grief, and that, in her reading, biology changes when we grieve. She describes losing healthy neurotransmitters, such as serotonin and dopamine, which she says explains the anger, the sadness and the trouble eating or sleeping. That was her aha moment. She had been fighting with her siblings about things that never even happened, because their memories and perceptions were affected.
We were working with unhealthy brains, she says, trying to communicate. She compares grief to withdrawal from a substance. You would never trust someone in withdrawal with your bank account information. “Our drug is love,” she says. These are her observations and reading, not medical advice.
Right Here, Right Now
Her message is simple. Right now, she says, you have people around you, loved ones and guides, who want you to have the best life possible. “Don’t be so hard on yourself.” You are at the perfect place at the perfect time. “Take some time and be quiet within your own mind.” Trust that you are not alone, that your life matters and that you are one of a kind.
There are people who need to hear your words, she adds, so give a compliment. If someone needs help, offer it. “You’re wiser than you know,” she says, and the right person for the job.
Questions to Sit With
- Sandra’s skepticism made her check everything for herself. What have you been willing to believe only after you tested it?
- She says her best results came when she was relaxed and okay with being wrong. Where could you loosen your grip on being right?
- If grief is a kind of withdrawal, how could you be kinder to yourself, or someone grieving, this week?
This week, speak to yourself in the mirror the way you would to a child you love. Say one kind sentence out loud, and mean it.
Spiritual Takeaways
- Sandra says she is a divine soul having a human experience.
- She says imagination and the present moment are where connection happens, and the analytical mind needs to step aside.
- She says the veil may be thinner than we think, and that loved ones may be close.
- She says grief affects the whole person and calls for gentleness.
- She says you are wiser than you know, and you are the right person for the job.
Please enjoy my conversation with Sandra Champlain.
Guest Links: Connect With Sandra Champlain
- Sandra Champlain’s official site
- Sandra Champlain on YouTube
- Sandra Champlain on X
- Sandra Champlain on Instagram
- We Don’t Die Radio on Facebook
- Full conversation with Sandra Champlain
Listen to the Episode
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Frequently Asked Questions
Who is Sandra Champlain?
Sandra Champlain is the author of We Don’t Die: A Skeptic’s Discovery of Life After Death. She was raised Catholic, with a deep fear of dying, and tells Alex Ferrari about her journey from skeptic to believer on Divine Encounters.
Did Sandra Champlain have a near-death experience?
She does not describe one in this episode. She shares a journey of evidence that includes a mediumship class, electronic voice phenomena and grief.
What happened with the angel cards?
She says she pulled the same card, music, every day, began listening to music, and found she knew songs before they were announced.
What happened in the mediumship class?
She says she gave a practice reading describing a fisherman named Jan in Denmark, and the woman confirmed every detail. Then the woman described Sandra’s own grandfather.
What is EVP?
EVP stands for electronic voice phenomena. Sandra says a couple at Reverend Rita’s church shared a recording with children’s voices saying they were still there.
What did Sandra record in the cabin?
She says she asked her aunt, uncle and grandparents to speak, recorded for one minute, and heard a man’s voice say good night to her by name.
What happened with her father?
She says her father, John Champlain, died within five months of a cancer diagnosis in 2010, and that the family’s grief led to arguments that cost her relationships with her siblings.
What did Sandra learn about grief?
She says grief changes the brain and body, makes thinking unreliable, and resembles withdrawal. She says be gentle with yourself and others.
What is Sandra’s closing message?
She says loved ones and guides want you to have your best life, that you are perfect where you are, and that you should be quiet, trust you are not alone and give compliments.
Is Sandra’s story proof of an afterlife?
Next Level Soul shares these accounts as personal experiences in the guest’s own words. Researchers continue to study and debate them, and nothing here is medical advice or a medical claim.
Keep Exploring
- The complete guide to near-death experiences
- A short entry on mediumship
- What after-death communication is
- Peter Redgrove on a medium, belief and preparing for death
- Amber Kasic on a shared death experience with her father
- Garnet Schulhauser on a spirit guide in disguise
- Julie McFadden, a hospice nurse, on the moments before we die
- Dr. Jeffery Mishlove on dreams, karma and consciousness
- Browse more free masterclasses and the Divine Encounters podcast.
Follow Along with the Transcript
Alex Ferrari 0:00
Tell me what your life was like before you died.
Sandra Champlain 0:08
Growing up and up until the mid 90s, I had an incredible fear of dying that just wouldn't go away. I was raised Catholic, and very secretly, I started studying other stuff. I mean all kinds of different religions, yes, yes. I couldn't find that comfort, even though, in the Catholic faith, faith, they believe in life after death, surely. But that wasn't enough to rest my fears. And so very secretly, I went on this journey of what's possible. The subtitle of my book. First of all, my book is called We Don't Die A Skeptics, a Discovery of Life After Death. I didn't believe in any of this. I was open, but I was raised in a family where you have to see it to believe it. Dad, an airline pilot. Mom, travel agent. There was a local psychic medium in town who kept making false predictions. So somewhere in my young mind, that whole world of that kind of spirituality, I would say the woo, woo stuff. I didn't believe in any of that. So in the 90s, when this fear of dying hit me and it hit me hard, I'd go to bed at night panic. What would happen if this was my last night, or I'd look up at the stars and start thinking about how endless the universe is, right? And it all came back as fear. So with that, I went on this journey. Well, after looking at the religions out there, I had met a friend, nice lady, but she talked about angels and spirit guides. And I thought, you know, you're so nice. I just wish she wouldn't talk like that, right? That was me. But she would talk about angels, and she gave me a deck of angel cards. They were called, and I went off on one of my racetrack catering adventures, you know, eight or nine days cooking in the heat. I was down in Sebring, Florida, and I had this deck of cards with me. Every day I'd pull a card, just thinking any card would apply, right? But every day, I picked out the exact same card after shuffling the deck, and the card was music. Listen to music. And typically I didn't listen to music. When I was cooking, we were working so fast paced, and I didn't want music to slow me down. But in this case, I did. Turned on the radio, put on a peppy station. What happened was I started knowing the songs before they came on the radio, before they were announced. It creeped me out, because this would be a psychic ability, and certainly, if psychic and medium abilities were real, I wouldn't have them, right, because I didn't believe in any of this. So it kept happening, and I would have other synchronistic times. I'd know somebody's name before they introduce themselves, or this phone would ring, it'd be a telemarketer, and I knew their name. Bottom line is, I ended up taking a weekend course out in California on mediumship. The promise of the course was, if you attend, you're someone who can see the deceased people around others. I so wanted this to be true, but my skeptical mind said it's impossible. There's only one way to know for sure, and that's to go. So I lied to everybody in my life, and I said I was just going to kind of a business meeting. And I went to this medium school. There were only about 15 people in the class. It lasted for the weekend. The instructor said, the first experience I guess I've had is she says, I want to tell everyone how a medium reading is done. She says, You just create the safe space, this bubble of light between you and another person, and invite in their loved ones to close my eyes and around this lady, I just imagined this big, beautiful bubble of light and very respectively. I said, if any of her loved ones want to come through with a message, I'm here. So with my eyes closed, on telling her story, I see a man behind you, I'm feeling it's your grandfather on your mom's side. He's a fisherman in Denmark. His name is Jan. He had blonde hair and blue eyes. In my brain, I created him smoking a big cigarette and coughing. So I thought he died of lung cancer, and he had big gap between his front teeth. And so I continued on. I said, I'm feeling like he wants you to give a message to your mom that he never said, I love you, and he's proud of her, you know, that sort of message, but in life, he never said, I love you, so I opened my eyes just simply to say, Okay, you're next. And the lady's crying. Her grandfather's name was Jan. He was a fisherman in Denmark. Fit the entire description, and she was always told by her mom that her dad was rough and tough. Never said, I love you. It was right on. And I was stunned. And then it was her turn to work with me again make believe. And she described my grandfather the cane he used to walk with his name, the German Shepherd dog that was always by his side. So it was that moment that I knew that there was something more, and that fear of death just started dissipating, like there's something here. There's something this is real. Now the bad news is, every time I tried to be a medium, it seemed like it wouldn't work. When I was okay with being wrong, and when I felt like I was creating. Right and relaxed. That's the time I was right. So I left that weekend seminar excited and believing that there's something else, but still, I was afraid to tell anybody, because we all like people, to like us, right? And if somebody said, Sandra, who do you see around me? And I got it wrong, I'd be laughed at. So I didn't tell anybody, and I didn't actually open my mouth about it until I did some EVP work, electronic voice phenomenon. And our imagination is everything. I've come to find out, because I've done some stuff, some wild stuff, and it all happens through our imagination. Being a human, there's two sides of us, you know, we've got the analytical mind, that skeptical mind, and I don't know why we believe it so much, because if anybody's like me, you know, we look in the mirror in the morning and getting old, too many pounds, gray hairs coming in, there's self defeating words that come through, right? And meanwhile, we would never speak to a child or anyone else like we speak to ourselves. So we've got this other side of us, the daydreamy side, that loving, loving side, that's the side that we use for this communication. So with the medium psychic, all of that, we're divine souls, having human experience, this 26 plus years has told me we need to get out of the way. We need to get that analytical mind out of the way. It's great to have it. It keeps us safe. But when we want to connect and when we want to create, it is that place of the imagination. It is that place in the present moment after I went to the medium class, very secretly, I'm like, what else is there? Right? So I've taken classes in remote viewing with Russell Targ hypnosis. I've studied it all in the realm of life after death, yet still afraid to tell anybody. I went to Barnes and Noble bookstore at the time, and I said to the universe, if I'm meant to help people believe in the afterlife, I need some evidence. I need something else. And I see this bright orange book called The Idiot's Guide to communicating with spirits, written by Reverend Rita Berkowitz in Massachusetts. And Reverend Rita, not only is a minister, but she in the medium. She's an artist. So I was introduced to spirit art, where somebody not only is a medium, but they draw a picture of your loved one, right? I turned to the back of the book. Her church was 45 minutes away from where I lived. I went to a service, and then I went to another service, and then I went to another service. And in spiritualism, it's kind of like a Christian based event, except for at the very end, the minister does readings on the congregation, and it's a beautiful to watch. On this one particular day, though, she had a couple as a guest. They were talking about Electronic Voice Phenomena. EVP, this is the first time I had ever heard about this. They both had deceased children from previous marriages. They said they left their house with a fan running, and they put the digital tape recorder on a pillow just let it record for 20 minutes. They said, We're going to play for you. What was on the recording when we came back in, it was sounds of little kids laughing, saying, Mommy, Daddy, don't be scared. We're still here with you. My brain had to figure this one out, because if now people can communicate this way, I need to know about it. You know, this could be what I need to be able to share this with people. Several months later, it was actually a Halloween weekend back in 2005 I was burnt out from cooking for the race teams, just overeating, stress eating, you know, just having a real tough time. And I found out there's a place called the Omega center in Rhinebeck, New York, that has wonderful retreats. You can take a class in art or whatever. So I said I'd like to go there, just nature walks, spa, vegetarian cooking. I thought that's a good place to go. During that weekend, we would do recordings and then try to listen to them. Well, Tom and Lisa were hearing lots of things on my recordings. I couldn't hear anything. They said, it's like listening to a different language. You need to know the language before you can understand words. Our brains are trying to pick up the background noise, as opposed to the subtle words within them. So they told me a lot of great things about my grandparents who were deceased, and I thought that's really cool, but I need to hear this myself. So the very last night of before class ended the following day, I went into my cabin alone. It was pouring rain outside. I held my digital tape recorder up, and I imagined again, the imagination my aunt, uncle, grandmother and grandfather at the foot of my bed. And I very humbly asked if this is real, and you guys are with me, and I'm supposed to help people believe in at the afterlife. I said, I need you to try to talk really loud, and then I'll say goodnight. So I let this thing record for just one minute, and I said, Good night. I played it back, and I didn't have a computer to put it in, to loop the sounds over and over, but there it was in second number 46 on the recording. It said in a man's voice, good night, Sandra. And then, good night, good night, good night. That scared the heck out of me on one hand and excited me on the. Other hand, because suddenly you hear about the veil between this life and the other. It's like they can see me, but I can't see them. So I was excited, concerned, went to bed that night, a little bit freaked out, brought my recording into class the next day, and the other people that were in class all had somebody very significant who died, whether it was a child or a spouse, and they could all hear my recording, and I could see on their faces the difference that it made for them. And it was that that had me go out, not publicly, but I was no longer afraid. I did this with family members and friends, and I started attending afterlife conferences, and I would do recordings with people that I met there, and I we go into one of our hotel rooms and we put the shower on for background sound, because I figured it's the water that was the white noise that would work in 2010 My dear dad, John Champlain, was diagnosed with cancer five months later. He died in those five months my loving siblings and I turned into monsters. I would say I didn't think I was a monster, but I'm sure I occurred that way to them, the arguments that happened over dad's care and dad's belongings, and I didn't recognize any of us. It was ugly. It was nasty. It was not predicted. I was the only single kid. Everybody else was married, and so I was able to relocate to Florida, down by dad's side, and then they moved him to Connecticut, where they lived, and I was right there with Dad till the end, and I went through that grief, but the relationships with my siblings was lost. I'm usually upbeat, and I'm always the glass half full kind of person. I was not me. I was somebody else. And for whatever reason, I decided to start studying grief. Why does it have to hurt so bad? Why do we go through this? I think the worst pain any human being will ever feel. I ended up uncovering a world of grief that I didn't know. There's stages of dying also stages of grief, I found out that our biology changes. When we grieve, we have these healthy neurotransmitters that run through our system. I always think of a car with all the different fluids that a car needs to run, and these neurotransmitters help us as human beings. And I found out that when we grieve, we lose quite a bit of these neurotransmitters, things like serotonin and dopamine, things like that, and they explained for the anger and the sadness and not being able to eat and not being able to sleep or vice versa. And I thought, oh, that's why I feel so bad. Your memory centers how you perceive the world. And I that's the aha moment, because I was fighting with my siblings about things that never even happened. And of course, after someone does and we grieve for all kinds of reasons, not just over a death, and it started all making sense that we were working with unhealthy brains, trying to communicate. When you think of somebody who's addicted to some kind of a drug, some kind of a substance, and then you take them off take them off that substance, they go through a withdrawal, you would never trust them with your bank account information and other things that are so important, the grieving process is very similar. Our drug is love right around you right now. And I mean right now, you have people, loved ones, your guides that want you to have the best life possible. Don't be so hard on yourself. You're at the perfect place, at the perfect time, the perfect age, perfect everything. Take some time and be quiet within your own mind. Trust that you're not alone, that your life matters, that you're one of a kind. You are perfect. And bottom line, there are people that need to hear your words, so give a compliment. If you're with somebody, they need some help on something. You're wise, you're wiser than you know, and you're the right person for the job.
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