Divine Encounters Episode 038 | Near-Death Experience Story
Stephanie Kraft was an atheist by the age of ten, after the murder of a friend shattered everything she thought was true. In this Divine Encounters episode she tells Alex Ferrari about the psychic reading that cracked her open, the encounters she says she had with her father’s soul, her mother’s Higher Self and the essence of Jesus, and what she now believes about love, choice and purpose.
Key Takeaways
- Stephanie says she stopped believing in God at age 10, after a friend was murdered by her own mother.
- She says a psychic reading, which began with a cassette tape a friend lent her, was the catalyst for her spiritual awakening in 2000.
- She describes an experience during sleep in which her father’s soul stood before her, her rage poured out, and it dissolved into unconditional love two months before his terminal cancer diagnosis.
- She says her mother’s Higher Self visited her while she was driving and told her, “I wanted you to be in your power.”
- Stephanie describes two weeks in which she felt the essence of Jesus embodied in her, and says she later understood it as an aspect of her own higher self coming in.
- She believes each soul chooses its own life experience, and that God, or Source, is love.
| Guest | Stephanie Kraft |
| Episode | Divine Encounters 038 |
| Age when she stopped believing in God | 10 |
| The turning point | A psychic reading, and her spiritual awakening beginning in 2000 |
| What she says happened | Encounters during sleep with her father’s soul, her mother’s Higher Self and her spirit guide, then two weeks of feeling the essence of Jesus embodied in her |
| Who she met | Her father’s soul, her mother’s Higher Self, her spirit guide, and the essence of Jesus |
| Where she was living | Denver, Colorado, until she moved home to care for her father |
| The message | Live authentically, in alignment with your own soul |
A Child’s World Breaks at Ten
Stephanie begins with the day her sense of the world ended. When she was 10, a friend of hers was murdered, and, she says, her friend’s own mother was the one who did it. Stephanie had just slept over at that house. She says it “literally shattered my entire world,” because at ten you do not have the idea that a mother could do something like that. It is simply not in the realm of the possible.
She remembers the exact spot where she was walking home from school. In her mind, she says, she told herself that she was done believing in God, because if that could happen, there was no God. No lightning, no vision. Just a child making a quiet decision on a sidewalk. That decision would stay with her for years, and she describes herself as a firm skeptic who thought of anything spiritual as fake.
The Psychic Reading She Did Not Want
Her awakening, she says, began in the year 2000. A friend suggested she get a psychic reading. Stephanie’s response was blunt: why would an intelligent woman waste her money on something like that? Her friend offered to lend her a cassette tape, since back then the reading was recorded. Stephanie took it home and listened. She says the man read everything about her friend, things he could not possibly have known.
She booked an appointment, still skeptical. She told him she would not say much, since she was testing him. She says he read “my heart and soul in such a way that nobody could ever know.” Then he told her something that landed: you are a healer and a teacher. She had already been thinking about becoming an acupuncturist because she wanted to help people at a deep level. When he said healer, she says, it was like a bell going off.
She credits that reading as the catalyst for her spiritual awakening. She says it “actually bursted me wide open.” That night she could not sleep. With her eyes closed, she says, all she could see was the entire universe in her third eye.
Tap, Tap, Tap, Then Boom
After the reading, things moved fast. Stephanie says it started as a tap, tap, tap and then became boom, boom, boom. That same year she was dealing with major health problems and feeling sick. Her father was also about to be diagnosed with terminal cancer, though nobody knew it yet.
She is clear that what came next was not an ordinary dream. She does not call it a dream at all. She calls it a spiritual experience, and it arrived a couple of months before her father’s diagnosis.
Her Father’s Soul, and the Rage She Did Not Know She Had
Stephanie describes her father as a psychologist who was devoted to his work and to helping his patients. He was very intellectual, she says, and he kind of forgot about his family. He was there as a father and as her mother’s husband, but emotionally disconnected and distant. Three kids and a wife, she notes, and not much interaction.
In the experience, she says, his soul was standing in front of her, and a rage she did not know she had came pouring out. She compares it to a fire-breathing dragon, a rage she says was not humanly possible. It was telepathic. She told him he was never there, that he never touched her, never gave her affection, never said I love you.
What she saw in him stopped her. He stood there with a look of innocence and shock, and she understood he had no clue his behavior affected anyone. He believed he was giving so much in service. His innocence was pure, she says, and his benevolence was strong, and he never wanted to do harm. In that moment, she says, forgiveness came at once, and then it was more than forgiveness. There was nothing to forgive, and “what we have between us is pure, unconditional love.” She woke up holding that feeling.
Five Months at Home
Two months later, her father was diagnosed with terminal cancer. Stephanie was living in Denver, Colorado. She dropped everything and moved home to take care of him.
There she was, in the middle of her own awakening, caring for a man who was in the process of dying and, she says, having a spiritual awakening of his own. They traveled that road together for five months. He died at the end of those months.
She never told him about the experience with their souls. She says the words did not need to be spoken. The healing between their souls showed up in their life together, in pure love and a beautiful bond. She calls it a gift. If you are navigating the loss of a parent, our glossary entry on after-death communication gathers how people describe staying connected.
Her Mother’s Higher Self
Stephanie speaks just as plainly about her mother. She calls her mother a narcissist, and says she went no contact 14 years ago. For a long time, she says, she thought she had the greatest family and that they were perfect. A little later she realized it had been highly abusive, and that she herself had been abused. She does not go into detail, and neither do we.
Then, she says, one day while she was driving, her mother’s Higher Self swooped in by the driver’s window. For the first time in her life, Stephanie felt love coming from her mother. It came from her soul, she says, and the message was one thing: “I wanted you to be in your power.” She understood that her mother had been her bully, and that she had needed to stand up for herself, build boundaries and speak up. Maybe she had not done that in a past life, she says. She does not know.
She adds that a healer once told her about a past life in which she was killed during the Holocaust, and that her mother had been a harsh figure in that story. Stephanie says she has memories of that lifetime but not of her mother in it. She says she cannot know for sure, yet she believes it anyway. Of how people get through such childhoods, she names an inner strength and a determination to do well and be your best self.
If you are struggling, you are not alone. In the US you can call or text 988 any time.
A Guide Tells Her, You Are Jesus
There was one dream, she says, that she knows she had with her spirit guide. He told her that she was Jesus. She said no. He said, “No, you are Jesus.” She decided there could be no ego in knowing about this. When she woke, she tried to analyze it. She is a healer, a way shower, all about love and forgiveness. She has walked a path, been abused, and, as she puts it, resurrected. So she began to understand the symbolism.
Soon after, something more direct happened. Stephanie describes herself then as awakening, but not on board with Jesus. She did not believe in angels. She had no religious programming in this lifetime, zero. Her parents tried to take the family to church, and she says she cannot remember a word of it. She thought all religion was mythology.
Then, she says, his spirit and essence were embodied in her for two weeks. She told nobody. His words went nonstop through her mind. There was a radiance coming out of her, she says, that she did not think anyone else could see, but she could feel it. When she looked in the mirror she saw his radiance coming through her eyes and all around her. It was a nonstop embodiment of Jesus, in her words, and it was profound. For more on guides and how people describe them, see the guide to communicating with spirit guides.
Two Other Women Said the Same Thing
One day, in a private, paid spiritual forum with a large community, Stephanie decided to write about what had happened. She had never told anyone. It felt like a safe place. She typed out just a little. Two other women replied that the same thing had happened to them, and for them it also lasted two weeks. She says that was mind blowing.
That is when she learned the word walk-in. She explains there are different kinds. In one common kind, she says, a person going through major trauma wants to leave this lifetime, and on the soul plane there is an agreement for another soul to trade in and continue the life. She says that did not happen to her, and no trauma was going on at the time. Hers was the other kind, where an aspect of your higher self comes in to be embodied, one that has not been here before.
She describes what that was like. She says, “I was literally looking through new eyes,” and she looked around at humans, called them humans in her mind, and knew she was not one. That part of her was brand new, she says, observing people like foreigners. Her vibration changed, she says, though outwardly it was not that noticeable. She started reading spiritual books as if they were food, devouring one after another. She says it was permanent: the soul that was already here stayed, and the new aspect integrated.
Choice, Hologram and a Rising Frequency
Stephanie shares her wider view, as her own. Parts of humanity are raising their consciousness massively, she says, and other parts are still stuck in lower consciousness, still needing lessons and experiences. She believes that “each soul chooses the life experience they’re having.” The world, she says, is really a hologram. It is not a static planet. You get to choose your reality and what you are born into.
She points out that because of the internet we can now see lives very different from our own, lives that seem to have nothing to do with where we are as souls. That dichotomy, she says, has always been here and probably always will be. But she believes that through entrainment, a term she borrows from quantum physics, those at a higher frequency are carrying others up, gradually and invisibly. She also links what people call the Mandela Effect to parallel universes playing out in different ways.
Where This Story Sits Among Other Divine Encounters
Most Divine Encounters guests describe a single dramatic moment of crisis, a point where they say they crossed over and came back. Stephanie’s account, as she tells it in this conversation, unfolds differently. It is built from a string of encounters in sleep, in a car and in a mirror, which she says arrived one after another once her awakening began.
Still, many of the threads are familiar to anyone who has read near-death accounts: meeting a soul that is more loving than the person was in life, forgiveness that arrives all at once, a feeling of being shown a bigger picture, and being changed afterward. Our complete guide to near-death experiences lays out those recurring themes. At Next Level Soul we share these stories as experiences, in the person’s own words, and we make no medical claims.
Taking It Down to Earth
You do not have to agree with every part of Stephanie’s worldview to find something usable in it. Her father story is a study in what happens when we look at someone’s behavior and then look past it to their intention. Her mother story is about boundaries, and about what strength can come from having to stand up for yourself.
Her closing counsel, as she gives it, is to live authentically, in alignment with your own soul, and to express yourself more. She adds that it is safe to do that. As for who we are, she says that God, or Source, is everything, the All That Is, and that love is who we are and what we are.
Questions to Sit With
- Stephanie says a loss at ten made her stop believing. What did you decide about the world when you were young, and does that decision still run anything today?
- She describes forgiveness arriving all at once when she saw her father’s innocence. Is there someone whose intentions you have never allowed yourself to consider?
- If you were to express yourself more, where would you begin, and what would feel safe about it?
Pick one place this week where you usually stay quiet and say one honest, kind sentence. Notice how your body feels afterward.
Spiritual Takeaways
- Stephanie says forgiveness can arrive in an instant, when we see the innocence under someone’s behavior.
- She describes her mother’s Higher Self wanting her to stand in her own power.
- She believes each soul chooses its life experience, and that this world is a hologram we help shape.
- She says an aspect of your higher self can come in and integrate, and that it can feel like seeing everything with new eyes.
- She says God, or Source, is everything, and that love is who we are.
Please enjoy my conversation with Stephanie Kraft.
Guest Links: Connect With Stephanie Kraft
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Frequently Asked Questions
Who is Stephanie Kraft?
Stephanie Kraft is a guest on Divine Encounters who describes a long spiritual awakening that began in 2000. She became an atheist at age 10 and now speaks about encounters with her father’s soul, her mother’s Higher Self, her spirit guide and the essence of Jesus.
Why did Stephanie stop believing in God?
She says that when she was 10, a friend was murdered by the friend’s own mother. Walking home from school, she decided that if something like that could happen, there was no God.
What started Stephanie Kraft’s spiritual awakening?
She says a psychic reading was the catalyst. A friend lent her a cassette tape of a reading, she was struck by what the reader knew, and after her own appointment she says she was burst wide open and saw the universe with her eyes closed that night.
What does Stephanie say happened with her father?
She says that a couple of months before his terminal cancer diagnosis, his soul stood before her during sleep. Her rage poured out, then she saw his innocence, and it became unconditional love between them. She cared for him at home for five months before he died.
Did Stephanie ever tell her father about the experience?
No. She says she never mentioned it to him. The words were not spoken, but she says the healing between their souls showed up in pure, unconditional love and a beautiful bond.
What did Stephanie say her mother’s Higher Self told her?
She says her mother’s Higher Self visited while she was driving and told her, “I wanted you to be in your power.” It was the first time she felt love from her mother.
What happened when Stephanie felt the essence of Jesus?
She says his spirit and essence were embodied in her for two weeks. His words went nonstop through her mind, she felt a radiance, and she saw it in the mirror through her eyes. She told nobody at the time.
What is a walk-in, according to Stephanie?
She describes two kinds. In one, two souls agree on a trade, often when a person wants to leave a lifetime after major trauma. In the other, which she says was hers, an aspect of your higher self that has not been here before comes in and integrates.
Did anyone else have a similar experience?
Stephanie says that after she wrote about her two weeks in a private spiritual forum, two other women replied that the same thing had happened to them, and it also lasted two weeks.
Does Stephanie describe a near-death experience in this episode?
Stephanie describes her experiences as encounters during sleep, in a car and while awake, and speaks of a spiritual awakening rather than a single moment of crossing over. Next Level Soul shares these as experiences in her own words, not as medical claims.
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Follow Along with the Transcript
Alex Ferrari 0:00
Tell me what your life was like before you died.
Stephanie Kraft 0:08
When I was 10, a friend of mine was murdered, and unfortunately her mother killed her, so I had just been slept over at her house and like so when this happened, it literally shattered my entire world, because when you're 10, you don't have this idea that a mother could kill her child like that's not in the realm of possible. So I remember walking home from school, I remember the exact moment where I was because when this trauma happened in my life, everything that I thought was true was no longer true. And so I remember walking home from school, and in my mind, I said to myself, I'm not believing in God anymore, because if that can happen, then there's definitely no God in the year 2000 was when it happened. And so the first thing that happened was my friend said you should get a psychic reading. And I was like, why would you even waste your money on something like that? It's fake. But, you know, I thought you were an intelligent woman. What are you doing? And she said, No, Stephanie, let me lend you my tape. And back then, it was the cassette tapes. So he the guy records it. So I went home, I listened to it, and he literally read everything about her, things he could not have possibly known. So I said, okay, okay, I'll make an appointment. So I made the appointment with him, and I was skeptical. I didn't believe in anything. And I told him, You know, I said, I'm just not gonna really say much, because kind of testing you, because I don't believe in this really, but he was very cool, and you know about it all, and he read my heart and soul in such a way that nobody could ever know. And he said to me, Stephanie, you're a healer and a teacher. And it resonated in my soul and in my heart, because I had been delving deeply into, you know, maybe I should become an acupuncturist. I want to help people at a very deep level. I knew that already. And when he said healer, I was like, ding, ding, ding, you know, this is true. And so that, because that reading was reading my heart and soul, it, it actually bursted me wide open. It was my catalyst for my spiritual awakening. I was blown away. I didn't under I was like, if he can know things, then there's so much more. And that night, when I was trying to sleep, I didn't sleep. The entire night, I had my eyes closed, and all I could see was the universe I was seeing in my third eye, the entire universe, because it had busted wide open and and I was there. Now I was seeing it. And so that was a memorable that was a memorable experience. It was my first, the catalyst of my spiritual awakening. And then it was the tap, tap, tap. Things were happening, but boom, boom, boom, boom. That year, in rapid succession, I was having major health problems, but I was sick and and then, you know, so I don't know, then, then my father was actually diagnosed with terminal cancer. But something else happened prior to that. Nobody knew he had cancer. He didn't know we were just nothing was happening, you know, in that way, but a couple months before his diagnosis, I had during my sleep time, and I don't call it a dream, because it was an ex. It was a spiritual experience. His soul was before me. And my father was a psychologist, and he was very into his work, which I don't blame him. It's fascinating. And all he was all about helping his patients. And he, you know, very intellectually focused, but he kind of forgot about his family, so he didn't really pay much attention to us. He was emotionally disconnected and distant. So he was there as the Father and my mom's husband, but not really interacting much, just, you know, working all the time. So in this experience, his soul was standing before me, and I had this rage that I didn't know I had, and it came out of me. And you know how, in those experiences, it's really telepathic, but the rage poured out of me almost. I compare it to like a fire breathing dragon, because it's just pouring out. And it was a rage that's not humanly possible. And I said to him, in this Dad, you are never there for me. You never touched me, never gave me affection, never said I love you. You did nothing for me. As a father, nothing, and he stood there with such innocence on his face and shock because he didn't know that. His behavior actually had an effect on others that was new to him. He had no clue. He was just living his life. And maybe he because he thought he was giving so much in service that was his role. Great kudos to you, but you have three kids and a wife. But anyway, so I so he, he had so much innocence, so much like I'm sorry, the innocence was so pure, the benevolence was so strong, and the not wanting to do harm. And when I saw all of that in him, it was an immediate forgiveness, like a forgiveness of let that there's nothing to forgive, and what we have between us is pure, unconditional love. And it was an in an instant, it all washed away. We had unconditional love between us, and that was it. And I woke up with that. And two months later, he was diagnosed with terminal cancer, and I dropped everything I was living in Denver, Colorado, and I moved home to take care of him, and so I'm having these profound spiritual experiences. I'm having my awakening, and then I go home to take care of him. He's in the death process, having his spiritual awakening. So we got to travel along in that way for five months. He died five months later, but we had that time together and and the words weren't spoken. I never said anything to him about my experience with our souls, but the healing that had happened between our souls manifested in in life between us, where it was pure, unconditional love and beautiful bonding, and no words needed to be spoken, but the love was just there, and it was a gift. I did have an experience with my mother's Higher Self that showed me why I chose her. She is a narcissist, and I actually went no contact with her 14 years ago, but one day I was driving in my car, her Higher Self just quickly swooped in, like by the driver's window I'm driving, and she visited me. And when I felt her come to me, I felt love from her for the first time in my life. And that told me, Wow, I've never felt love from my mother at all, not for one second until that moment, because that was the moment. I felt it for the first time, but it was from her soul, and she said to me, only one thing. She said, I wanted you to be in your power. So I got it that she was my bully, and I had to stand up for myself and become strong and create boundaries and speak up for myself. For whatever reason, maybe I hadn't done that in a past life. I have no idea, but I had been told by a healer once, because I was in the Holocaust, in that in another lifetime, and I was told your mother was the one who I was killed in the gas chamber, but she's the one who, kind of, like operated it and killed me. Who knows? I don't have a direct memory of I have memories of that lifetime, but not of her being there, but I believe it, that's a whole other story. I thought I had the greatest family and that we were perfect. It wasn't until a little bit later that I realized, oh my god, that was highly abusive. Actually, I was abused. It's an inner strength, I think, that gets people through it and then a determination to do well, to be your best self. I had a dream in which my it's the only dream that I know I have had with my spirit guide. And my spirit guide came to me and said, you are Jesus. And I said, No, no, no, no, no. And he said, No, you are Jesus. And I was like, okay, there can be no ego in knowing about this. But then when I woke up, I was like, Okay, let me try to analyze this. Okay, I'm a healer. I'm a way shower. I'm all about love and forgiveness. Okay, okay, I get it. I'm walking the path. I've been abused in the past. I, you know, resurrected. So that was a first. But then shortly after that, I had this experience where, with my spiritual awakening, it was a spiritual awakening, but not yet on board with Jesus. I was like, I still don't believe in that angels are real. I don't know about Jesus. Well, I didn't have any religious programming in this lifetime. Zero, when I say, my parents tried to take us to church, I don't remember a word of it. And there was no religion than my upbringing.
I thought it was a myth. I was like all all religion is mythology. It's not real. I guess he really wanted me to believe in Him, because He His Spirit, His essence, his being, embodied in me for two weeks. It was just the sudden thing that happened where I didn't tell anybody, but I could feel it the whole time, his words were non stop going through my mind just speaking. The whole time, there was a radiance coming out of me that I don't think anybody could see, but I could feel it and know it. I would look in the mirror to see it, and I would see the radiance. Of him coming through my eyes and all around me when I would look and it was just a non stop embodiment of Jesus for those two weeks. And that was profound. That was just one, you know, the experiences. And then I was on this spiritual forum, private, private group that you had to pay membership. So I was when there was a large group of people in this spiritual community, and I one day decided, You know what, I'm just gonna write about my experience. I've never told anybody this is a safe place. I typed it out, and I just the little bit. I told you, that's that's all I had to say about it. And two other women wrote, replied and said, The same thing happened to them, and it was also for two weeks. So I realized in that moment that it was pretty mind blowing. So there are a couple different kinds of walk ins. One of the very common kinds that maybe a lot of people might know about, if they know about a walk in is that there is a soul. The person is maybe wants to commit suicide. They're going through major trauma, they want to exit this lifetime. But on the Soul Plane, there's an agreement made with another soul to trade. So it's like, Okay, I'm gonna leave, and your soul is gonna come in a different soul and inhabit this body to continue this life. So that's a soul like a switch of the soul in exchange that did not happen to me and I didn't have any. There was no trauma happening at the time for me, mine was the other kind where an aspect of your higher self comes in to be embodied that hasn't been here before, and it feels like a walk in. It's it is a walk in, because when that happened to me, I didn't know that that's what had happened yet. But I was literally looking through new eyes, and I was looking around at humans, and in my mind, I was calling them humans, and I knew I wasn't one, because I was brand new here, that aspect of my soul was just here, new for the first time, looking at the humans and just saying, look at all these humans, and I was observing them as different, you know, foreigners to me, and everything changed. Then I would say my vibration changed to such a degree that I changed, but it wasn't that noticeable. I mean, it wasn't like I was acting differently, but that was an internal shift. And I started reading spiritual books as if they were food, you know, just devouring book after book after book. So I was so this was another layer of a massive spiritual awakening. My spiritual awakening started in 2000 and it was continuing rapidly, ongoing all these years, with massive experiences that just kept happening. So that was how that walk in went. It was permanent. So my being, my soul that was already here stay, and this new aspect came in and integrated. So I think that we have, I talked about a splitting I feel like there's a lot of humanity is massively raising their consciousness. And then there are some parts of humanity that are still stuck in lower consciousness, and they still need their lessons of and learning and experiences, because as we know, each soul chooses the life experience they're having. And this is really a hologram. This isn't like a static planet. It's like you get to choose your reality and what you're born into, and what you're going to experience. The interesting thing about today is that we can actually see, because of the internet and technology, what's happening in other places, but they don't even have anything to do with where we are as a soul. It's such a foreign thing. And so there's such a dichotomy of experiences on this planet, and it's always been that way, and I think it'll always be that way, but perhaps because we're all connected in in quantum physics, that's there's this thing called entrainment, that those of us at a higher frequency are carrying the other ones up. You just can't see it, but it's happening gradually. Well, here we go, and it's the man this, the Mandela Effect, literally, is this. You know, parallel universe is playing out in different ways. I think being authentic, living authentically and in alignment with your own soul, I would tell her to express herself more, and it's safe to do that. I think that God or source is everything, the All That Is Love is who we are and what we are.
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