Misfit in Hell

Are you interested in angels, demons, spirits, ghosts, monsters? Are you curious about their origins, tales, and influence upon history and on the present day? If so, sit back, relax, and welcome to Southern Demonology, the podcast that explores all of this and more. Hello all. Welcome back to another episode of Southern Demonology. As always, I'm your host, JJ. Today I am really excited to bring you an interview with MK McDaniel, or as her friends call her Kathy, author of the book Misfit in Hell, Heaven Expat.

She's not only experienced an NDE or near-death experience, but she is in the minority and she had a distressing NDE. In other words, she saw hell. I first became interested in NDEs from an older television program that focused on some of these distressing visions. The segment I remember the most vividly was a man who woke up in a hospital room. Yet things quickly went south, as everyone else he encountered from doctors to nurses to patients were demons with fangs and claws. And they were all chasing him throughout the halls.

My interest was again piqued by hearing about Enderf or the Near Death Experience Research Foundation on an old episode of Art Bell. Endurf catalogs NDEs, and according to statistics at that time, only three percent of their records were visions of hell. Before I turn it over to the interview, I do want to stress a few things. First, many of the things Kathy experienced are quite disturbing. So viewer discretion is advised. Man, I think I have always wanted to say that.

Second, she has, through her participation in IANS, the International Association for Near Death Studies, in hearing the experiences of others, has drawn very firm conclusions about what awaits us in the afterlife. As such, her views are her own. You can find her book on Amazon, Audible, and other places. I purchased my own copy through Audible, and I do recommend it. You can find a link to it in both the description of this episode and on the website Southerndemonology.com. With all that said, let's turn it over to the interview. Hello all. Thank you for joining us today.

I am thrilled to bring to you an exciting guest. We haven't really covered this topic in previous episodes, so it's really a pleasure to have MK McDaniel with us. However, her friends call her Kathy, so that's what I will be doing from this point onward. How are you doing today?

I'm doing great. Thanks for having me on the show.

Oh, thank you for joining us. Kathy is an experiencer of an NDE. Would you like to give us a definition of that before we proceed forward?

Well, uh, a near-death experience, uh, which is sometimes called an NDE, is just what it sounds like. You don't stay dead, you come right up close to it. Some people flatline, some people uh you can do it in a lot of ways. I was in a coma. That counts because your your consciousness gets kind of loose. There's all kinds of ways to get near death. It's just that you come back.

Gotcha. Thank you for that. I just figured we'd have a good baseline definition going forward. What were the events that led up to your near-death experience?

Well, I was um what I considered a normal Christian Catholic lady, about 53 years old. I had my own business. My kids were in college. Life was good. I got a phone call from my best friend who had moved out to the East Coast. I was on the West Coast. We had been engaged for several years, but decided to split up when his work took him too far away to keep a relationship going. So anyway, he called up and said that he had been diagnosed with leukemia, which completely blew me away. He was 53 years old.

And uh he was going to go up to Seattle to a research hospital because his doctor couldn't help him, and he needed a couple of caregivers. And would I go with him? Oh, I didn't hesitate. I said, sure, I really would do that. So I dropped everything and went up to Seattle and found us an apartment near the hospital and waited for him to come.

Oh my God, I couldn't even imagine.

Yeah, it was awful.

So, what were the events that actually led to your getting sick and going to a coma?

We were supposed to be up there two or three months, and it turned into eight and a half months. The other caregiver broke her foot, so I was taking care of all three of us. Uh, he was in and out of the hospital. We were up in the middle of the night with him bleeding all over the place. It was just chaos, turmoil, and tragic. And then he died. And I was a mess, uh, physically, spiritually, emotionally. I was a wreck. And there was a terrible flu going around, very similar to COVID. And I caught it. And I got very, very ill uh very quickly.

I took myself down to one of those dock-in-the-box places. They gave me a bunch of pills to go pick up at a pharmacy, but I was so tired and weak, I never took the pills when I got home. I just set them on the counter. And uh, a friend was supposed to come over for dinner, called and said he couldn't make it. And I says, You know what? I am so incredibly sick. Would you please just come over and sleep on the couch? And I was up on the third floor of an apartment with no elevator. And so he reluctantly came over.

Well, in the middle of the night, I started coughing so bad there was blood spurting everywhere all over the mirror in the sink. I was freaked out. So I went in and woke him up and he got me down the stairs and back to the dock in the box. But as we pulled into the parking lot in the middle of the night, I could feel my my like my spirit just leaking out. It was coming down from my head and into my chest, and it felt like it was just leaking out on my feet. And I'd never had that experience.

So I tried to shout at him, but all that came out was a whisper, and I said, I'm dying, I'm dying, I'm dying. And he slammed on the brakes. I tried to open up the door, I fell out, and I don't remember anything after that. He came, he put the car, you know, and stop and set the brake and came around, got me out of the asphalt and uh carried me into the hospital, not the hospital, but the um emergency care place, and uh there was no pulse. So they called an ambulance and worked on me, got me back, and took me to the hospital. I woke up a couple days later, um, completely confused.

My my family had flown in from Colorado and California, and I was in a tent, oxygen tent, and they said that I was really, really ill, that I had gone into something called ARDS, which is acute respiratory distress syndrome, also known as lung failure. And they weren't sure they could save me, but their only chance was to put me into a drug-induced coma and put a trach down my throat and uh pray. So the doctor said to me, last thing, he says, now don't worry about this. Oh, yeah, right. Don't worry about this. Right. Sure, no problem.

So he says, but I'm I'm gonna give you something called white amnesia. And it's in it's something that will knock you out. You will remember nothing of what happens when you're in the coma. Just rest, you know, we'll we'll take care of everything from here. And then I was gone. So while it was I was just gone, and then I'm not sure when I was in a three-week coma. Sometime during that time, I woke up and I was conscious, but it was black and there was no sound, and I was afraid to move. I didn't know if I was laying down or sitting up or felt like I was in a closet.

It was just so weird and scary, you know? And I thought, well, I'll just wait and see what happens. Well, eventually this rolling fog, reddish glow came uh into sight, and I and I thought maybe the sun was coming up, and uh, I thought, oh, that's good. But then it got strange. Uh it it got too warm, it was smelling terrible, and people started shrieking and moaning in the middle of the fog. I couldn't see anybody, but it it didn't sound good. And then all of a sudden, I was just shocked when this horrible monster voice came out and said, Do you know where you are? Oh, my mind was going crazy.

I thought, oh, only thing that came to mind, I I said to myself, I hope I'm wrong. I I just whispered, hell? And that thing came back with this horrible laugh scared me so much that I turned and ran into the darkness. The next thing I knew, it was like the lights came on, and I was in this bombed-out city. It looked like New York or something, and all these big tall buildings, some of them had fallen and others were on fire, windows were blown out, and there's big chunks of concrete and and fog and uh screaming, and and I thought, oh, well, that's what happened.

There was an atomic bomb went off or something, and that's why this is all happening. And I I kind of tucked into where some concrete had made kind of a V because I didn't know if there were soldiers or or or what. So I was just my heart was beating so fast, I thought, oh, this is ridiculous. How did I get here? And I just waited, and and these these strange shadows went by and with clicking noises, and I thought, oh my God, maybe it's aliens. I I really didn't know. I did see uh what I thought was a person way off in the distance.

And and I thought, oh, thank God, there's there's somebody else here. Maybe we can, you know, get together and and and find shelter together, and and I'll I'll feel better if there's somebody else. And so I yelled out, you know, I said, hey, hey, over there, uh, why don't we get together? Please, I I I need some help. And and he just echoed back to me with, we are all alone here. And I thought, here, where where's here and why are we alone? Anyway, with this scuttering noises got closer and closer, I decided to make a run for it.

I hit a brick wall and I'm trying to climb up it, and I fell, and I thought, oh no. And that's when the scene changed again. It was just an unbelievable experience. I was always never knowing what was going to happen the next minute. I just had that instinct to survive. I had no idea that I was dead or near dead. I felt very much alive. So it went to different scenes. There were the first time I saw what I determined to be a demon was when the lights went out or it became dark and the scene came up differently. All I could see was this huge beast in front of me. I had to lean back to look up.

He must have been seven feet tall and and with weird kind of tattered clothes on, and he had like a club that he was holding, like a prison guard would hold it, kind of smacking it in his hand. And I thought, what the heck is this? And and he said, And I said, a job? What do you mean, a job? He says, And I says, Well, of course I do. And he says, Okay. And all of a sudden, this this like light came on. As far as I could see, was all these blackberry vines. They were all twisted and and entwined upon each other as far as I could see.

Now, if you've ever had experience with blackberry vines, they have very thick, long thorns and they're almost impossible to get rid of. And every place I've lived, we've had them, and I've had to uh clean out the backyard or whatever. So I looked at that that field and I just looked back at that creature and I said, You're kidding! And he says, No. And and he handed me this like scissors, those little dull scissors you give to give to kids in kindergarten so they can cut paper. And and I took the scissors and I looked at him, and he's got this big, ugly grin on his face.

And I thought, well, you jerk, you're just playing with me. And I thought, I'll show you. So I I tried to scooch down inside these things. I'm getting all scraped up and it hurt. And I started sawing away at one of the vines, and I'm sawing and sawing, and then and finally I got it to cut through. And so I went to put it behind me if find a place that that I could move it. And when I turned around, it grew back. And then I looked at that field and I thought, there's no way I can get out of here. And that demon was laughing, and I just looked at him and I started cutting again.

I was just angry.

I thought, oh Yeah, I mean, if if you're faced with such a literally a Sisophean task.

Yes, it was it was overwhelming, but there was no option. I could give up, I could start to cry. I mean, but I didn't. I'm a survivor. And so I thought, okay, I'll show you, you jerk. And I started cutting again. But then, boom, the scene changed, and I found myself somewhere else. And this kept happening over and over and over. And the worst ones stick out in my mind. I hate to tell them to people, but this is about hell. The next one that was terrible was I the bright lights came up because most of the time it was very dim. And I looked up and every all everything was white.

It was a big white hall, and there was two doors open ajar on either side of me. They were white and the floor was white. And I thought, a hospital. I'm in a hospital. That's good. That's good. Maybe I can find somebody that'll help me here and find me, find a way out. But when I looked up at the end of the hall, there was another one of those great big demon guys. And this one had like a truncheon. It would look like it was made out of steel or something. And and uh he caught sight of me and I thought, oh no. And I thought, I've got to go in one of these rooms.

But by the time I looked to the left and the right, this thing was right in front of me. I froze. And he says, You've got a new job. And I thought, oh, okay. Thinking, well, maybe if I go in one of these rooms, there'll be a door or there'll be someone that can help me. And I says, What is it? And he says, You just go in that room over there to your right, and you take what they give you, and then you come across the hall, and I'll point you into the room on the left. You deposit what they gave you, and then you go back and forth and back and forth.

And I thought, okay, I did run into another being there, and she was frightened to talk to me because of that that beast, and so I couldn't get her help. So when I went inside there, I I observed what looked like a very large operating arena with a whole bunch of gurneys with that I could see the patients were on the far side, and then there was a doctor or or a physician on a stool sitting in front of each of these people, and and their legs were splayed, and there was a drape over them. And I thought, oh, they're delivering babies or something.

And one of the doctors raised his hand up and and uh didn't turn around or anything, and I just stared at him and he turned around, he said, get over here. And he had blood all over him and his hand and everything. And he he picked up something that I didn't understand and put it in my hands, and I could see parts, and it was uh an abortive baby. And I thought, oh my goodness, that's what they're doing here. That's that's just awful, that's just criminal. I mean, I was raised a Catholic, and that that was, you know, I was a pro-lifer, and and that was about as bad as it could get for me.

And and then the doctor said, get out. And so I scurried out in the hall, and the demon pointed into the other room, and and I was in shock. I just walked across and opened up the door, and oh my God, as far as you could see, where there just piles, piles of these little babies. And and I I I oh it's it it smelled so bad. I I put the baby down and I went back in the hall and I told this creature, I says, No, I'm not gonna do that. That's wrong and it's disgusting, and I'm not gonna do it. And he says, Oh, you have no idea what you're bringing on yourself this time.

And I just crossed my arms in front of him and he raised that that steel truncheon or whatever it was up like he was gonna hit me. And I closed my eyes. I thought, I don't care. But I woke up and I was somewhere else. And this this went on and on. And between times, I would find myself on this road, and it was, I don't know, about three feet wide and and made of dirt and rough gravel, and and uh on either side, it was just desolate. Uh, rocks and sand, and and in the very far distance, there was a kind of like a horizon with a little glow and that awful fog and no signs, of course.

And I just got on the road and started walking. Those were the times that I felt a little safer because I could see if anybody was sneaking up from me, you know, behind me or whatever, but and I didn't know where the roads went, but I couldn't just stand there. Again, I never considered the fact that I was dead or I've I've talked to so many people in the ears, and most of the time, that's just the consensus. Because our soul is always with us, that's our our personality, that's who we really are.

Just because it steps outside the body, which is just like stepping out of your car, you're still you. You're just you. So I kept going.

Can can I ask you just a quick question?

Yes, sure.

Uh uh, this is not to make little of this, but because you so readily accept each one of these realities, is it almost like uh like dream logic, how you just never question your surroundings? You just assume everything is the way it is?

That's really hard to say because it was not a dream, it didn't feel like a dream.

Oh, yeah, I'm excited, it's not even intimately that that could be the case. I I'm just curious, you know, is it just because you know what is in front of you is accepted as reality, that's what you took it as, or well, I guess that's true because what we're living now is the same thing.

I I believe this is a dream. Everything is is not not real. There is no such thing as reality on this plane, but this was 22 years ago, 23 years ago now, and I hadn't gotten very much into the metaphysical at that point. So uh for me, real was real. I didn't, I didn't, I didn't feel like saying, wake up, Kathy, wake up. You know, it wasn't that kind of thing. I really thought, you know, for me, it was manifested, and it at the time it was the equivalent of reality on Earth.

Wow. If you don't mind me asking, and I know this is it must be terrible to even recollect and think about, but what did these demons look like? Did they all share like common features?

You know, when if you've never been to uh Australia and in the zoo and something pops up and you says, Oh my goodness, that's a kangaroo. Well, it's kind of like all the things we've been taught about beasts or demons. And I would say Bigfoot would be the the closest, you know, big and tall and hairy and and uh not at all human. And yeah. I've never seen one on this planet, and I hope not to, you know, but if you've if you've seen monster movies or read horror books, you'd call it a demon. So yeah, and it was manifested, I'm sure, in retrospect, but out of what I would consider a demon to be.

And I I know that you have mentioned the smell a few times. Is there any description that you can give to it?

Death. You know, that putrid smell where it's just your instinct says, ooh, avoid that. That's bad. That's not that's not good. That's this is this is not something you ordinarily would come across and it's dangerous kind of thing. I I haven't I haven't smelled that since, thank God.

Oh, I I could imagine. And the fog, was it did it always look the same? Did the the its properties happen to change in between?

It seemed like there was a fire, so it was smoke billowing out. Where I've lived, I've had always had fog around me. So sometimes when there's light, red light behind fog, it has this eerie appearance. Uh sometimes when you have a play, you know, they roll out the the dry ice and put red eye uh lights behind it. It was that kind of a theatrical, believable, but not something you see every day normally. It it had mystery to it.

From everything that you have described sounds uh n not just frightening, but existentially, soul-wrenchingly terrifying.

Terrifying is a good word because I was so alone and um you you don't even imagine. I don't know. Yeah, it was it was terrifying, but the the that that fight or flight just kicks in. Uh that's a human thing, I know, and it goes with a body, but um, it's just I had to survive. I I'm not a quitter, and I had to survive. And it was just imperative that I not give up. You know, in in the Catholic religion, there there's there's the unforgivable sin, which is despair. And uh maybe that was somewhere deep inside my spirit that that I knew I must not despair.

That is really interesting. That's actually the first time I have ever heard of despair listed as the unforgivable sin.

Uh, that's where you give up on God.

I love that idea, honestly. Uh, because I come from a uh originally a Protestant faith, and the unforgivable sin was always listed as suicide. Ah, well, that's close. And so despairs, they they take their life.

Yeah, yeah. If you commit suicide, then uh yeah, they don't even give you a funeral. They just silently cremate you and your family goes away in shame. It's a terrible bad situation.

It is terrible. And I've learned since then that that's not the case.

So I learned a lot getting out of there for how long did it feel like you were there?

You know, when I got back, a lot of people asked me that, and I'm stuck in the hospital. I can't talk, I can't move. I I'm still haunted by this. I'm scared to death that the the demons are gonna come back and get me. And I was afraid to die. I couldn't breathe. I'm uh it was awful. It was almost as bad being back as it was when I was there, almost. But um I had a chance to really think every second of that experience through because it was so fresh. And I figured two years with all the I know all the walking and all the all the stuff that went on, it just went on and on.

You know, when you get on the other side, there's no time. So you don't have a watch and you don't have the sun coming up and going down, and you have no concept of it. So it could either be really a long time or it could be really a short time. I don't know if you've ever been to Vegas and you you go in at four o'clock in the afternoon and there's all the blinds are pulled, there's no clocks, and and you play slot machines, and then all of a sudden, you know, somebody says, I'm hungry, and you go, Oh, really? Uh it's only about 10 o'clock.

And then you look at your clock and it's two in the morning. Yeah, there's there's just no reference, you know, there's there's no so uh, and I would imagine being in a terrible uh situation like I was, it would seem a lot longer. But again, all this happens in seconds, earth time or minutes. So it's it's just a real different place to be. I mean, when you're in heaven, that's gonna be the good news, you know, it's gonna go, it's eternal, and there is no no uh no clocks.

How many of these types of scene changes do you think that you underwent?

At least 10, uh, but they some were longer than others. And then being on the road, again, when I got back and I was able to get in touch with other people who'd had these experiences, I was able to understand what had happened and that I had manifested this situation uh because I believed it would have happened to me, because I was told from the time I was a small child that uh there was heaven and hell and purgatory. And purgatory was just like hell, except you went there to get your sins burned off, and then you went home to God after you were purified. So my whole life, I believed that.

And we were also told if you did something good, like say a rosary or go to church extra times, you got 350 days off your time in purgatory, or if uh for doing something good, but boy, if you robbed a bank or something, you could get two years in purgatory. So my whole life was live with that. And so when I crossed over, I believed I was gonna go there and I wasn't disappointed. That was part of the reason.

Uh, well, we'll jump ahead a little bit if you want, but when I finally realized after going to Ions after years, like 10 years of reading stories of other people that have had distressing dear death experiences. And there's only about, I think, one in 15 people that that have this anything that's negative. But I I I manifested it. And part of the reason I went was I chose it, because we all choose our experiences on this live. And um, I've been told that the people with the dark one, dark experiences are the brave ones.

They're the ones that will endure something like this to bring lessons back for the rest of us. Kind of like back in the ancient world of the uh Jason and the Argonauts and all those folks, a lot of them would go down into hell and they'd uh, you know, face trials, and then they would find the find someone and bring them back from the dead and tell everybody about it and how to avoid it. Well, I learned how to avoid it is to not believe in it that uh what my religion had been telling me all those years was false, and I refuse to believe that anymore.

I've learned that God is all-loving and all-forgiving and would never send anybody to a place like hell. I don't believe there really is a hell. I think it's just a manifestation of people's fears and beliefs. And so my let my lesson is to tell everybody out there, I don't care what your religion tells you, you will not go to hell. Nobody does. You go to heaven, and that's just the way it is. We're all parts of our spirits. That's who we are, having a human experience. Uh, when we're through on this earth, we go home.

And we go home, and we're able to look at the life plan that we plan before we come down. We come down and choose to have all kinds of experiences to learn things. We come with our soulmates and and um we all plan it. And I've been told by many people that there's even a committee that has to go over the plan before and okay it before you can come down. And a lot of your soulmates will come down for other incarnations, and sometimes your brother is your best friend, and sometimes your brother, who is the soul, is your father or uh somebody. It's so big on the other side.

We've got these little tiny human brains, and all we know is all we know, which is this little little planet, this little universe, and as much as we can cram into one little human brain. But when you're free of that body and you're free of that little tiny brain, uh, there's just so much out there that there's it's impossible for us to comprehend, even probably a small part of really what's going on. And that's what's fun about being in this group ions with hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people who have been there, you know, been to different parts of it.

Like it's like aliens, three aliens coming down to Earth, and one goes to the Brazilian uh rainforest, another one goes to Alaska, and the other person lands up in Hawaii. When they get back to the ship, they're going to say, Oh, Earth was like this, or Earth was like that.

So when we got all these people coming back from heaven, they've all got little pieces of information of places they went and places and things that they saw and learned, and bring them back so you get a little better map, a better composite of the vastness and the joy and the bliss, the out and out fun of being doing our time here on earth that we chose, and then get to go home. It's just been so wonderful to meet other people that have been through these experiences.

We have conferences every year, and oh my gosh, such energy there, you cannot believe all these people who've had the bliss of heaven and and their their whole outlook on life is so different from the people who haven't had the experience. There's no fear, there's no worry. You know, there's some because we're still human, but we all know why we're here. We chose it and we're we're living it and we're doing the best we can, and then we get to go home.

I I've had some person, one person told me that uh it's almost a joke up there that uh when people go to Earth, that's the toughest place you can pick. And that uh uh you you get an extra, I don't know, I'm being silly, but an extra badge or something for for being uh on Earth. You survived Earth, man. That's a tough, tough gig, man. Looking at life that way now just lightens everything up. It really does. I I it's very fortunate. I feel very fortunate not to have that particular experience, but to but to get to where I got after I came back. And so my my joy is getting on podcasts like this.

And if I can just reach one person at a time and save them from worrying about going to hell because they I don't know, they ate meat on Friday when they weren't supposed to, or they called somebody a bad name. No, you're not going to hell. And that's what's fun about the ions, too. There are so many atheists, former atheists in this group. Uh, a lot of uh oh, people that were, you know, like neurophysicians and scientists and all this other didn't believe in all that stuff. And boy, they're the biggest proponents now.

So when an atheist or someone who doesn't believe in God or the afterworld comes up to me and says, I don't believe in that stuff, and and I just say, You're in for a big surprise.

There you go.

Nice surprise.

Briefly going back to your experience. So besides fear, did these demons inspire like any other types of emotion in you?

Yeah, it would be anger. It just would be anger. I mean, they were so nasty and so wanting to hurt you and scare you and degrade you, humiliate you, uh, things that happen to me. Just, you know, you could I can see where, you know, despair is not too far away, but you can't kill yourself if you're dead. Yeah, it was it was interesting in retrospect. Um, I just know I I didn't give up. And uh all the way to the end, I didn't know it was going to be the end, but that would be my thing to tell people too.

If you have this manifestation, if this, you know, for some reason you go through this, it's it's not real. You will get out. But the best thing is just not to choose it in the first place. Don't give it any power, don't manifest it. Whatever you have to do, just accept that God loves you unconditionally, and there's nothing you can do to piss off.

Thank you for listening to Southern Demonology. Find us online at Southern Demonology.com where you can find all of our social and podcasting links. Also, if you have a moment, please feel free to rate this podcast and leave any encouraging feedbacks that you may have. As always, I am JJ, and it has been a pleasure getting to talk to you today.