Stephen Musick was serving in the United States Navy when his body began to fail.
He had been given an experimental vaccine against swine flu, and his body reacted in a way the doctors did not expect. While he battled between life and death, Musick claims that his consciousness traveled to another place: a wheat field, gentle hills, and an enormous oak tree, all with a clarity he himself described as “HD on steroids”. There, he says, he walked arm in arm with a man with long brown hair and hazel eyes who introduced himself as Jesus.
The conversation was brief but definitive: he could not stay. He opened his eyes again in intensive care, not knowing how much time had passed or how to explain what he had just experienced. Years later, he wrote a book to tell the story, although he himself admits that words fall short when compared with what he remembers.