Divine Encounters Episode 067 | Near-Death Experience Story
Susan Walter was a little girl on an Iowa farm, four years old and then six, when she says she slipped out of her body during life-saving surgeries and found herself in a park with three angels. In this Divine Encounters episode she tells Alex Ferrari what they showed her, how she was asked to become a planet creator, and what it has been like to see angels all her life.
Key Takeaways
- Susan says she had two experiences as a child, at ages four and six, during surgeries for ruptured hernias.
- She describes floating by the ceiling, then standing in a park of enormous trees with three beings she understood to be angels.
- She says she was invited to see the world “through the eyes of the animals,” and then found herself swimming in space among the stars.
- She describes watching souls come into being like “the exhale of the Creator,” and being asked, with two others, to become planet creators.
- She says her parents called her accounts stories and asked her to stop, so she kept quiet, though she says she saw angels all the time afterward.
- She says her purpose is to help people feel more connected to the divine, and that love is the fastest frequency.
| Guest | Susan Walter |
| Episode | Divine Encounters 067 |
| Age at the time | Four, and again at six |
| What Susan says happened | She left her body during surgeries for ruptured hernias |
| Where she says she went | A park with enormous trees, then the animal world, then space and the stars |
| Who she met | Three angels, who she says she has seen ever since |
| What she was shown | The creation of souls; she was asked to become a planet creator |
| The message | Help people feel connected to the divine; love is the fastest frequency |
A Farm Girl and a Surgery
When Alex asks what life was like before she died, Susan starts with her health. She says she was a little girl with ruptured hernias, which she knows is unusual at that age, and that she went through life-saving surgery.
She remembers the first one most clearly. She was lying on the couch under a blanket so heavy she could not move it, and she felt very hot. A doctor came to the house, which they still did in those days. Her parents and the doctor went into the next room to talk about whether she should go to the University of Iowa or to the local hospital.
She grew up on a farm, and she was the kind of kid who would find a nest of baby mice or snakes or rabbits, play with them gently and put them right back. That connection to animals matters later in her story.
The First Time: A Park and Three Angels
As her parents and the doctor talked in the next room, Susan says she followed them, but from a different point of view. She was up by the ceiling, looking down at them.
Then, all at once, she was in a park. The trees were massive, she says, way bigger than anything she had ever seen. Now that she has seen photographs of redwoods, she compares them to that. She was introduced to three beings that she knew to be angels. She just knew it, she says.
That is about as much as she can remember from the first one. Then she woke up, and one of her grandmothers was sitting at her bedside, reading a National Geographic with the Pyramids of Giza on it. Susan looked at her, before her grandmother realized she was awake, and asked, “where’s the rest of them?” Her grandmother did not look at her funny.
If you are new to the idea of angels in these accounts, our glossary entry on angels is a short place to begin.
The Second Time: Through the Eyes of the Animals
The second experience came when she was six, and she remembers a lot more detail. She was back in the same park with the same three beings, as if she had never left.
They asked her whether she wanted to “see the world through the eyes of the animals.” That fit the child she was. She says they occupied her time and energy, moving her from one animal to the next. Then she was not on land anymore. She was swimming, in what felt like a massive body.
Then she was not swimming in the ocean at all. She was swimming in space, among the stars.
The Exhale of the Creator
Susan says she was shown a big rush of energy from a central light source, where souls were being created. The best way she can describe it is “the exhale of the Creator.” All these souls came into being, and she says she was one of them.
Then she and two others were pulled aside. They were “asked to become planet creators.” She says she is still trying to figure out fully what that means.
They were shown what looked like transparent pads, a little bigger than a computer screen, which could show pictures. On them she saw what the world would be like if they did it, and what it would be like if they did not.
The other two beings chose to go on to the angelic realms. Susan did not. She went there for training for a while, she says, but that part is foggier. She thinks she may not be ready to remember it, or that there are things about it she is not supposed to remember.
Back in the Garden, With Questions
Afterward she was back in the garden, with a whole bunch of questions. She does not remember all of them. As she asked and got answers, she says, she became more and more aware of her physical body again.
Some of her questions were about things she had been taught in Sunday school that did not make sense to her. At the beginning she was the six-year-old. Then she moved into what she calls a larger understanding, and as the experience came to an end, she was the six-year-old again.
The biggest question she remembers was how long God’s day was. It did not make sense to her that this enormous being would have a day the same size as ours. If the being is bigger, she reasoned, their day must be bigger. She used to get in trouble in Sunday school for asking questions like that, she says, because the very small Missouri Synod Lutheran church she grew up in was not prepared for them.
She does not remember making a decision to come back. She says it was more like she just did it, and she was back. She thinks that was about when the anesthesia was wearing off.
A Child Without the Words
Susan has tried to piece together what happened from her medical records, but they are scattered. Her family moved a few times, and she has only gotten bits and pieces. The letter from the surgeon back to her doctor, she says, gave very little detail, perhaps three sentences about the surgeries.
As a four and six year old, she says, you do not have the words to convey what you experienced to your parents. She tried. It came out as what her dad called stories, as in, when I was a snake, when I was a rabbit. The term near-death experience, she points out, had not even been coined yet.
At one point her dad told her to quit telling those stories. So she did. She stopped talking about what she had seen. But she was not disconnected from it, she says. Afterward, she saw her angels all the time.
Living With Angels in the Room
She does not remember much after the experience at four, she says, but after the one at six she remembers clearly seeing them just there all the time. For a while she did not realize that other people did not see what she saw.
She says some of them are not good at speaking English. When they communicate, it sounds tonal to her, with a frequency and musical quality. After a while she almost ignored them, she admits, because you take for granted that they are always there. Eventually she learned to turn the volume down. Now she sees them more as a sphere of color, constantly moving, like a “Snow Globe full of glitter.”
Her definition of an angel is “multi dimensional beings made of light.” Some exist in different frequencies. Archangels come and go when called upon, she says, and we also have personal angels who stay with us. She says it is extremely unusual for an angel to take physical form and have a physical lifetime, while with spirit guides it is the opposite. Angels understand some things better, and spirit guides understand others, such as time, which she says is totally different for an angelic being than it is for us. You can read more in the glossary entry on spirit guides.
She says she cannot imagine life without this connection. “I really don’t remember life without it,” she says, and if she lost it she would have a big empty space.
Planning Lessons Between Lifetimes
Susan says one of her purposes in this lifetime is “to help people feel more connected to the divine,” and angels are a common way people can understand that.
She believes we sit down with our angels between lifetimes and plan. “These are the things we want to experience,” she says, and these are the lessons we want to learn. Angels help line up situations for those lessons. If one of your main lessons is forgiveness, they will put you in situation after situation where you have to forgive someone, maybe even yourself, until you get it. Sometimes, she jokes, it feels like a spiritual clue by four.
She also thinks about how we treat the body. She calls it a temporary energetic temple that we are meant to honor. A lot of the time we abuse ourselves until something starts to hurt at 60, she says. And it is not only food. It is what we are feeding our ears, who we are around and how much negativity and fear we take in from the news. All things in moderation.
A Normal Life, Soul Groups and Frequency
Her life has been pretty normal, she says. She has been married a couple of times, has four great kids and is now a grandmother. She worked a corporate job for years, and was a web designer and developer for 14 years. She admits there were times she was not good about listening to her angels, and she made things harder for herself than she needed to. Sometimes they stand and point toward a certain direction or illuminate a certain choice, and she goes her own way.
Family members, she says, are not always from your same soul group. As she understands it, groups of souls were created at the same moment, the same exhale, and clustered together, so they feel more connected. It can also be people who think in similar patterns, in the same frequency. That is what the saying “that old saying like attracts like” is really about, she says. For more, see our glossary entry on soul groups.
She puts it in terms of the nervous system. Even in a room that blocks all light and sound, she says, you would still hear your own heartbeat and your own nervous system, because it gives off a frequency. When someone gets on your nerves, she says, it can be because your frequencies are so different that communication is hard. She thinks of it as faster or slower, more than higher or lower.
What She Weighs Most
Susan says she has put more weight on the spiritual than on the physical because of her experience. Sometimes that has served her very well. Other times it has made life harder in a 3D reality, and she says she is not very good at things like finances.
What matters most, she says, is making connections with other people, those heart connections. They are some of the most important parts of life, and so is connecting others with the divine and helping them realize “there’s more to life than what we can physically touch.”
Love does that, she says. It is “the fastest frequency, at least from our perspective.”
To place her story beside others, our complete guide to near-death experiences collects the themes that appear again and again.
Questions to Sit With
- Susan stopped talking about what she saw when her dad asked her to. Is there something you stopped saying out loud that you would like to say again?
- She says we are given a body to honor. What is one small thing your body is asking you for this week?
- Susan says love is the fastest frequency. Who feels closest to you in frequency, and what would it mean to spend time with them?
Spend ten minutes today in quiet with no news and no screens, and notice who or what feels near. Write down one sentence about it.
Spiritual Takeaways
- Susan says angels are multi dimensional beings made of light, and that we each have personal ones who stay with us.
- She says we plan our lessons between lifetimes with their help.
- She says souls were created like an exhale, and that soul groups feel more connected.
- She says the body is an energetic temple worth honoring.
- Her view is that love is the fastest frequency, and that heart connections matter most.
Please enjoy my conversation with Susan Walter.
Guest Links: Connect With Susan Walter
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Frequently Asked Questions
Who is Susan Walter?
Susan Walter is a near-death experiencer who grew up on a farm in Iowa. In this Divine Encounters episode she tells host Alex Ferrari about experiences she says she had at ages four and six during surgeries.
What happened to Susan Walter?
She says she had ruptured hernias and went through life-saving surgery. During the experiences, she says, she left her body and found herself in a park with three angels.
What did the park look like?
She describes massive trees, way bigger than any she had ever seen, which she compares to redwoods after seeing pictures of them.
What did she see through the eyes of the animals?
She says the angels offered to show her the world from animals’ points of view. She went from one animal to the next, then found herself swimming in a massive body and then in space among the stars.
What does she mean by planet creators?
She says she and two others were pulled aside and asked to become planet creators. She says she is still trying to understand what that means. The other two chose the angelic realms.
How did her parents react?
She says her dad called her accounts stories and eventually told her to stop telling them, so she stopped talking about it.
What does Susan say angels are?
She describes them as multi dimensional beings made of light who exist in different frequencies, including archangels who come when called and personal angels who stay with us.
How is an angel different from a spirit guide?
Susan says it is unusual for an angel to take a physical lifetime, while spirit guides are the opposite. She says each understands some things better, such as time.
What does Susan say about soul groups?
She says groups of souls were created at the same moment and cluster together, and that family members are not always from your same soul group.
Is a near-death experience proof of an afterlife?
Next Level Soul shares near-death experiences as lived experiences told in the person’s own words. Researchers continue to study and debate what they mean. Nothing here is medical advice or a medical claim.
Keep Exploring
- The complete guide to near-death experiences
- What is a near-death experience? (glossary)
- Who are angels? (glossary)
- What is a soul group? (glossary)
- A man who died as a child meets his angels
- A woman crossed over at four years old and describes what happened next
- A man who died at four is shown the blueprint behind reality
- A woman is told by angels to go back
- A teacher drowns and is rescued by angels
- 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.
Susan Walter 0:03
I actually had was ruptured hernias, which I know is very unusual for little girls to have hernias at that age. But I was going during my experiences. I was going through life saving surgery, I do remember particularly the one, yeah, the first one I do remember being, yeah, the laying on the couch, being under a blanket, and it was just so heavy, but that I couldn't even move it on, being really, really hot. I remember the doctor coming to the house, which they still did back in those days. And then, you know, I remember going with my mom and dad and the doctor, went into the next room just to discuss, was I going to go to University of Iowa, or was I going to go to the, you know, our local hospital? And I remember following them and just kind of but up from the point of view, about by the ceiling and looking down at them, and then all of a sudden, I'm in this park with these trees, you know, massive trees, way bigger than I'd ever seen. Now that I've seen pictures of the redwoods, I would equate them to that size. And I just remember being introduced to these three beings that I knew to be angels, and how I just knew it i But I did, and that's really about as much as I can remember on my first one, other than waking up, I remember waking up, waking up my one of my grandmothers was setting my bedside. I remember her reading. She was reading a National Geographic, and the Pyramids of Giza were on there. And I just looked at her, and she didn't even know I'm awake yet. And then I look at her and saying, where's the rest of them? And she doesn't look at me funny. It's like, but yeah, even now, we're now figuring out, even just on the last two or three years, that there's actually foundations of more of them on on the plaza than Yeah, then you see today, there's just foundations left a smaller one, second one. I remember a lot more detail. I'm back in the same park with the same three beings, and it's like I hadn't even left. And I was one of those kids on the farm that if there was a nest of baby mice or snakes or rabbits or whatever, I found him, and I would just gently play with them and then put them right back where I found them. And so I was very connected to the animals at that time, and they asked me if I wanted to see the world through the eyes of the animals. So it's like they occupied my time or my energy while I was there, just kind of literally going from one animal to the next, and the next thing I know, I'm not on land anymore. I'm actually swimming. And I feel like I'm in this massive body size. It's, yeah, this felt really big. And then all of a sudden, I'm not swimming in the ocean or in the water anymore. I'm swimming in space. I'm swimming in the stars. And then I'm shown what's like. The best way I can describe it is like this big rush of energy from this central light source where there's all the like souls being created, like the exhale of the Creator, and all these souls come into being. And I'm watching that, yeah, I'm one of these souls. And it's I'm pulled as me and two others are, like, pulled aside, and we're asked to become planet creators. Now I'm still trying to figure out fully what that means. And then we were shown on like, these blast pads. Is the best way I can describe it, because, like, if there could be pictures on them or they it could be completely transparent, and it was a little bit bigger than the average computer screen, but we are showing like, what the world what would it would be like if we did, and what it'd be like if we didn't. The other two beings chose to go on to the angelic realms. I obviously didn't, at least, to become an angelic but it's like I went there for training for a while, is the best way you're going to describe it. And that part of it is a little bit foggier, and I think it's because I'm either not yet ready to remember, or there's some things about that I'm not supposed to remember. I'm not sure. So I'm just being shown all these things in my nd, and then I'm then I go back to this garden. And I, you know, I had a whole bunch of questions, I don't remember all of the questions. And then, just like as the questions, as I asked questions and got the answers to what I was asking, it's like I became more and more back to my physical body at that time, where I even started asking questions about things I was being taught in Sunday school that didn't make sense to me. A little bit of both. It's like, at the beginning, I was the six year old, and then I kind of moved into a more, a larger understanding, as the best way I can put it, and then, as is it, like it would be an experience was. Harness starting to come to an end. I went back to that six year old again. You know, the biggest one that I really remember is asking how long God's day was? Because it didn't make sense to me that this massive being is the best way, you know, can describe it in English, day was the same size as ours. It's like that being was bigger. So their day must be bigger. And I used to get in trouble in Sunday school a lot for asking questions like that very small little Missouri Synod, Lutheran church that I grew up in, you know, wasn't prepared to be. And at that point, even most of my great grandparents were still alive. I had eight great grandparents growing up, and I ended up in well, you I do have three families. I understood them immediately to be angels. I just had that knowing and how I see saw them during that experience is still how I see them and how I draw them. I don't really remember making that decision. It was just like, I just did it. I just came back. I was just back. And I think that's probably about the time the anesthesia, you know, was wearing off. From what I've been able to gather for my medical records, because they're kind of all over the place, because we moved a few times, and I've only been able to get bits and pieces here and there. What actually happened. The letter that was written by the doctor who performed the surgery that went back to my action, you know, to my doctor, you know, where I live, didn't really give it a lot of details. There was probably only three sentences even about the surgeries, you know, records of what happened in them, in there, in you know, during surgery, or anything. It was just that this surgery happened on this date, and, you know, I'm the doctor that performed it. That was basically it from the mind of the four and six year old. You don't really have the words to convey to your parents what you experienced. Did I try, definitely, but it came out as what my dad called stories where, you know, when I was a snake when I was a rabbit. You know, that was the best I knew how to describe it. Because even if I had heard such a word as near death experience, it was not even any. Wasn't even coined yet. For another 10 or 15 years, I remember my dad at one point did tell me to quit telling me those stories. So I did. I just quit talking about it when I came back, I saw my angels all the time, then after that. So I just quit talking about seeing those things and, you know, and the experience that I had. But it's like I wasn't completely disconnected from it, and I'm still not, but, yeah, I was just able to see the angels and all the time after that. And to be honest, I really didn't understand for quite a while that, not that everybody didn't experience what I was seeing. I don't really remember so much after the one at four, but after the one at six, I do remember clearly seeing them just there all the time. Still are just hanging out. Some of them are not so good about speaking English, either, because when they even communicate with each other. To me, it sounds more tonal more and it has more of a frequency, musical aspect to it. And they were supportive after a while, I think I kind of got so I almost ignored them, to be honest, because it's like you just take for granted that they're they're always there. I did eventually learn how to kind of turn the volume down a little bit where I see them like more as like a sphere of kind that's kind of looks like a snow globe of color that's just constantly moving. Snow Globe full of glitter is the best way I can describe it. My one of my purposes in this lifetime is to help people feel more connected to the divine. And I think angels are a very common way that I think a lot of people can understand and can do that. And the definition of an angel for me is there are multi dimensional beings made of light, and there are ones that even exist in different frequencies. And there's like Archangels that kind of are come and go as they're called upon and needed. And then we also have ones that are personal to us, that stay with us at all times. And my understanding and what they have shown me is that separate, where it's extremely unusual for an angel to take physical form have a physical lifetime, where spirit guides is just the opposite. It's almost like unusual that they don't so there are things that angels, you know, understand better, and there are things that spirit guides understand better, like time is totally different for an angelic being than it is for us having a physical experience. So your spirit guides understand time better. It's like I have this constant connection to the divine because of it. It to me, yeah, I really don't remember life without it, so I think if I lost it, I would, I'd have this big empty space. The main reasons that we're here and that our angels are here to support us is it's like we sat down with them, like between lifetimes, and we plan. Now, these are the things we want to experience. These are the lessons that we want to learn, and it's they help, like, line up those situate, you know, to learn those lessons. So for example, if you know one of the main things you need to learn is forgiveness, they'll put you in situation after situation after situation where you have to forgive somebody, maybe even yourself, until you get it. And sometimes, you know it's you feel like you've gotten the spiritual clue by four, upside down. I think we've all experienced that at one, you know, with one lesson or another in our lifetimes. Change this habit, that habit, you know, learn the lesson. Some people it's just to take better care of themselves, to realize that, you know, we were given these, essentially, in a way, temp, energetic temples, that we also need to honor, honor them and take care of them. Because, you know, a lot of times we we abuse ourselves until we get 60 and something starts hurting, and, you know, then we realize, Oh, gee. And we think we're invincible, and it's like we it's not just even what we're physically feeding our body. It's also can be, you know, what are we feeding our ears? You know? What? You know energetically, you know, are we around people that are negative? Are we listening to the news and all that negativity, negativity and fear, porn all the time that affects us energetically, spiritually and emotionally too. We need to all things in moderation. Yeah, in a lot of ways, I've had a pretty normal life. I've been married a couple times. I've got four great kids. I'm now a grandmother. I've done all the things that most of us have done. You know, I had the corporate job for a number of years. I got out of that a few years ago. I was a web designer and developer for 14 years, at one point, you know, lived actually a pretty normal life, because there was times I was not good about listening to them. So if there was times I made things a little harder than myself, for myself than I needed to, it's like, sometimes they're standing, they're pointing in a certain direction or illuminating a certain choice. And sometimes it's like, well, no, I want to go do this. You know, family members are not always from your same soul, your actual soul group, yeah, you don't always have that connection to them. The way I understand it. It's like groups of souls that were like, created at the same moment or the same second, the same exhale. They were, you know, they were clustered together in some way, so they feel more connected to each other. It can also be people that think more in the same patterns. So they're on this they exist in the same their thought patterns are in the same frequency. Yeah, that old saying like attracts like. That's really all about frequency. Like, if you have somebody that goes into one of those rooms that's completely unblocking all light sound except everything from the exterior, you're still going to hear two things. You're still going to hear your own nervous system and your own heart beating that nervous systems, because it puts off, you know, your nervous actually puts off a frequency. So when you say somebody gets on your nerves. They really do, because your frequencies are so different that they don't, you know, communication can be difficult. Yeah, you're just you think completely differently it speaks, you know, I think of it as faster, slower, more than higher, lower. I think that's more accurate and more accurate description. I think of them as pretty much the same thing. I've really, honestly put more weight on the spiritual than I do on the physical as a result of my experience. Sometimes that has served me very, very well. Other times it's made life a little more difficult, least as far as a 3d reality. Because, you know, sometimes things like finances can be a little more difficult understanding how that works, because that's a very 3d structure of your 3d way of, you know, looking at life and things. Sometimes I'm, I'm not very good at that part. We have brains wired a little bit differently, family, friends, connections, making connections with other people. You know, those heart connections, I think, are some of the most important parts of life, connecting others with a divine and helping people realize that there's more to life than what we can physically touch love does that's the fastest frequency, at least from our perspective.
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