Are you interested in angels, demons, spirits, ghosts, and 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.
As always, I'm your host, JJ. Today we're wrapping up our interview with KL McDaniel, also known as Kathy. In this episode, she goes over how she transcended from hell, some of the work that she has done with IANS, and she wraps up with seven things that she took back with her from her experience. I cannot repeat enough how kind and beautiful of a soul that Kathy is, and I really appreciate her taking the time to speak to us and share her experience. Whether you agree with it or not, it is a beautiful message. And in these dark times, I think that we can all use a reason for a smile.
Before we get to that, I did want to remind everyone that we are about to launch a brand new feature called Listener Inbox. So if you have an experience, a question, or anything else that you would like to share, please feel free to go to southerndemonology.com, click on the listener inbox link in the left-hand navigation, and send me a simple message. You very well may have that shared on the podcast. I'm looking for multiple ways in order to increase listener interactivity, and I figured this would be one very good way of going about that.
There's actually another web application which has been in development, and tomorrow I am actually getting the chance to demo it. It's a Ukrainian team that is building it. I hope to be able to try that out and see if that's going to be a worthwhile avenue for exploration or not. But anyway, thank you all for listening as always. I truly, truly appreciate it. If you can, rate and subscribe on whatever platform that you happen to listen on, it helps me tremendously. And otherwise, sit back, relax, and enjoy this final part of our conversation with KL McDaniel.
I will say that in this conversation, in previous conversations that we've had one-on-one, the two things that have always struck me about you are one, the iron rod of strength that you seem to have in your being, and two, that lovely sense of humor that you have, which is just wonderful to be able to experience.
Well, thank you. And that in my family, that's how we survived. We always said if if you lose your sense of humor, you're done. And so uh that's yeah, we are we are a strong family and we keep our sense of humor no matter what.
That's a good way of going about it.
Yeah.
So how did you transition out of hell?
It was an accident, not an accident because everything's planned, but the last place I was in was a horrible situation. I was going to be a whore of hell. And that sounds probably about as bad as it's gonna get. And I was we were waiting in this horrible freezing cabin, a bunch of us women. We'd been beat up and raped and stuff already. And and uh I was getting a little low. And um, I said to the the demon lady who was no more attractive than the rest of them, I said, I've been here a really long time, and this is a particularly depressing, oppressive energy day.
So, you know, what's going on? And she says, Oh, well, it's Christmas on earth. That's always the worst day in hell. And I thought, hell? Uh really that really. And I thought, well, I've got nothing to lose. So I thought I'll just uh tweak her a little bit, and I just started singing a Christmas carol. And uh it was away in a manger, that's my favorite, and away in a manger, I started singing, and and she turned around, and I could still see the look on her face, and and she with just horror, she couldn't believe I had the guts to do that. And she said, shut up. And I kept going.
I said, No, away in a manger, no crib for his bed. And so some of the other ladies started singing along too, and now she's freaking out and waving her club around, and and uh I kept going. And I, you know, the little lord, and when I got to the just saying Lord, she jumped at me from across the room, came flying at me. I closed my eyes again. That's how it always happened, as I just didn't even want to see what was gonna happen. And boom, I'm in a bright place again, but this time I am absolutely in bliss. Incredible love.
And I can't even describe it, and it still chokes me up when I think about it. It was just so wonderful. And it was everything that that had happened was just gone. I was just enveloped in this joy, and it was like swimming in love. I I felt like every particle of my being was just bursting with love and joy, and uh it kind of started to, it wasn't just bright light anymore. There was just the like white, white, and I could see like walls were kind of forming and a and a door and a big table with a big book on it.
And I was looking around, and when I saw that that table with a book open, I thought, oh, I was being shown something in that book. What was it? Well, I really believe that was my life, and it was only halfway open. And uh the next thing I saw, of course, was my best friend who had just died the month before, and there he is, no leukemia. He's looking great. He looks 35 instead of 53. Joy all over his face. He's so happy to see me. And the first thing that came to my mind was, I didn't have a mind, but I thought I did. It was, oh my goodness, he doesn't know he's dead.
And uh he started laughing then, and I thought, how did he hear me? I didn't say that out loud. And then I thought, well, he read my mind. He read my mind, he's over there, he's not dead. That means I'm dead. I was thrilled. I was so thrilled. I just said, thank you, thank you, thank you. And I said to him, This is fantastic, this is great. Come on, what do we do in this hallway? Let's show me stuff. Come on, take me, show me stuff. And he got closer to me and he looked me in the eyes and he said, Now, Mary Kay, you've got too much left to do. And I thought, what?
They're throwing me out, and I just stopped my foot like a four-year-old and I crossed my arms and I said, No. Well, he and I always played tricks on each other, and he was just grinning ear to ear. He got me the best. I mean, he he probably volunteered to be the one to send me back, you know. Oh, I get to do it, I get to do it. So I just I couldn't believe it. And and then I found myself walking down this stream and and uh it was, I think a timeout, you know, I was so furious they needed me to calm down.
And I met some people there, and they told me to give my friend their uh a piece of paper and tell him uh, you know, we had to be together. And I I was just confused and I was angry, and then and then I woke up and then I've got a bright light again, and this is not heaven, and I couldn't talk and I was I couldn't move, and there's people milling around, and I was freaking out again. I thought, oh no, I'm you know, I'm back in hell, and and then my daughter says, Oh, mom's back, and I thought, back, you know, where have I been? But I had the ventilator in, I um had lost all my muscle mass.
I I hadn't uh I was 86 pounds, that's why I couldn't move. I had no muscles. Of course, I was a wreck and they thought I was gonna die. So everybody's yippie, yippee ka in all over the room, and I'm I just I'm so depressed. I I thought, why am I back here? This is such a dirty trick. How have I I've got too much left to do? How can I do that? I can't even move. It was not a good time for me.
How long was your recovery process?
Well, I was in the uh CCU for three weeks while I was in the coma, and they kept me there another week so they could get the ventilator out and put me on oxygen and and uh I couldn't move. Well, they had to take me over to a rehab facility, physical rehab, and I had to be there a month every day. I was go almost all day in physical rehab, trying to learn how to I couldn't swallow, I couldn't eat, I couldn't crawl, I couldn't move, I had to learn everything all over. Going up and down the stairs almost made me cry. You know, how do you forget going up and down the stairs? It was awful.
It was just awful. And finally at the end of the second month of being, you know, ill, the man who I in, you know, had been dating, who saved my life, who got me to the hospital in time, um, that the people in haven't told me I had to be with took me home and we got married a couple of months later.
I had to learn how to walk more than 10 steps, and I made a uh made myself a promise I'd get it done in a year, and we lived in a place that was very hilly, and I would I started off with 10 steps to the driveway, and then I came back in and panting because my lungs were shot, you know, and I kept walking farther and farther and farther and up and down hills, and by the end of that year I had done it. I'd gotten some of my weight back, and I was starting to re-enter the world, but I was still so haunted by what had happened, and I was so homesick, you know, for having uh it wasn't fun.
So it took me 10 years, 10 years of not being very mentally healthy, I don't think, uh, to find ions. That was the International Association of Near Death Studies. And you ask me about the voice, right? I'll I'll just spit it out now. But the voice is something that's pretty common denominator for people who have been on the other side and come back. It's it's like you're you've been opened to hear your higher self, or whatever some people I used to call it my conscience or my guardian angel, but it's very clear and very loud.
And uh it usually talks to you in your head, and and you know it's not you because it's something you don't want to do. Uh so the voice started bugging me about having to go up to one of these meetings in Seattle, which was an hour away, and uh, traffic is horrible. And I finally went and uh went to a meeting, and gosh, there was a hundred people there, you know, and I couldn't believe it.
And then the speaker was, oh my gosh, he was, you know, Evan Alexander, who is a neuroscientist who was an atheist, and he's a well-known speaker now, because he had a brain bleed and his he was flatlined, his brain was flatlined, and he had one of the most extensive stays in heaven and things he learned. He's written several books about things he was taught when he was in heaven. So he was amazing to listen to. And eventually I I started going once a month, and I got to meet a lot of people, and and that was fun.
And then eventually they they strong armed me at one of the meetings into telling my story. And I, you know, it was gonna be humiliating and embarrassing. Everybody else is talking about, you know, angels and God and all that stuff. And I yeah, but they were fascinated. They had to hear it. And it was interesting because I thought they would probably throw me out of the club, but at the end, they clapped the place.
They it was, you know, everybody was just ecstatic that I got out and that I gave them, you know, gave them the clue if that ever happened to them, you know, that they could get out, and or maybe they didn't have to go at all. It was just marvelous. It was like they were dying to hear this this message that I brought out. So that was the first time I thought, well, maybe this was for a good reason. It gave me hope.
That's amazing. Have you, uh, as part of uh INS, have you met others who have had distressing near-death experiences like yourself?
Yeah, I have, and there's not many. There's not many of us. Uh there's maybe four or five people that have written books about it, but uh one lady in particular, Nancy Evans Bush, she's probably in her 80s by now, but she's ProFootball is back, and so are the predictions.
But it it it it took the stigma away, I think, of, you know, because my my family didn't want to hear it. You know, you're a good Catholic girl. What did you do that we don't know about? And it's like, no, that's not it. That's not it. And, you know, your friends don't want to hear about it. They think you're crackers, and it was tough. It's very alienating. But now I'm so grateful to be on your podcast. This is my 65th in two years.
Oh, wow.
I know it. See what what good is coming out of this. And and uh I've you know, all the people who have written me and um said I'm I really needed to hear that, and that's it just made such a difference in my life. It's it's it's been worth it.
The chance to be able to talk to you, like the moment I saw your name come up in the newsletter that I subscribed to, I knew I had to talk to you. Like it you your listing just jumped out above anyone else's, and uh I am so glad that I have had the chance to be able to uh to speak with you and to meet you because your story is it's it's amazing. It truly is. When I finished reading your book, I had tears in my eyes, and I don't cry lightly, I'll put it that way.
Oh, well, you know, the reason why is you and I are soulmates, and we we determined up in heaven, well, we may not see each other too much on this earth, but let's meet. We'll meet sometime and we'll know because we know we just have to meet each other. We'll have we'll we'll talk to each other, and it'll be so easy to talk to each other, just like we knew each other. And we did. And we did. We do so we we met up, and and I'm so glad we found each other, and I that you found me. And uh it's it's isn't it delightful?
It is. Honestly, I felt like I've known you for a long time, just in that very first conversation we ever had.
Yeah, well, that's why. We've been buds for God knows how many incarnations.
I will ask you this. Do you think that if you hadn't experienced heaven, do you think that you still would be comfortable talking about your near-death experience?
No, I'd probably be in a room somewhere. If that's all you got, you know, was just that despair and the fact that God abandoned you or whatever. I I hate to think what would have happened to me, but I I guess because I did have such a strong faith since I was a child, I, you know, it it was just meant to be. But no, I don't see how somebody could survive that. And the problem with suicide is that um I've I've met several people who committed suicide in Ions, and there's all nothing but love for them on the other side because God loves you.
It we you you chose to come down and do difficult things, and and the people in your family chose to accept that when they came down, and it was something that you had to learn, something that they had to learn, and there's no such thing as sin. It's just experience. The thing that people need to remember is that there is a life review, and I found that very interesting. When you get back, you know, you've had this plan, and uh some people say it's like a big cinema, like a movie.
Some people said it's like millions of little pieces of like a disco ball, and you see your whatever, you see your whole life, every second of it. And and um from the time you're born to the time you die, you get to watch the movie of you interacting with other people and the lessons you've learned, and and then they flip that around. And the fun part, or maybe not so fun part, is that you get to see how everybody that you came in touch with reacted or felt in interacting. So if you were mean to somebody, you will feel that person's pain.
You you will feel what joy you brought to people, and you will feel what pain or humiliation or whatever. So that you get to learn what consequences are for good act or not good actions, positive actions or negative actions. So at the end of it, it's just a matter of, wow, that was that was interesting, you know. I could have done a little better there, you know, but you know, I really got this lesson. Uh, somebody asked me about, they always ask me about Hitler. Well, what about Hitler? You mean he doesn't go to hell, he doesn't well.
Yeah, but if Hitler gets to experience every bit of terror and pain that he inflicted on millions of people, I would think that would be sufficient.
I do have to ask, because I'm just really curious. Your your viewpoints on this life review or the the committee that you Spoke about earlier. How have you come to believe that? Is it based upon your own experiences or just hearing about those from others that you have listened to?
It would be from so many others that come back with the same story. Okay. And it it rings true for me. It just there's so many things you come back and you feel like you don't believe them, you just know them. And so to know that God is all-loving and all-forgiving and would never condemn, the only other thing that would be logical to me, and I'm a logical person, is that there's there's some way for you to experience your life and what it meant without judgment, because we're we're we're hampered being in this physical form with a a human body and human emotions and human brain.
It's uh it's not quite like getting into a Halloween costume and then you know making grunting noises if you're a bear, but it's kind of like that. It's it's not the real you down here. It's you being a human. So you're still a pure soul, but you came down to see what it was like to be a human. You see what consequences are and see how it feels for a human to be be praised. And you feel you choose to do it. Why? I'm not sure. I'm not sure I'd come back here again. My friends, and I gotta giggle about it. You know, I think, well, I think I'm gonna try someplace else next time.
I my dad uh passed away a year and a half ago, and and he and I had lots of conversations about that. He you read about him in the in my book in the first chapter, and he was an atheist and and until he got, you know, shot down in the Philippines and landed upside down in a burning aircraft and told God, uh, you know, if you can get me out of this, I'll believe in you and become a Catholic. And then all these guys came running out of the jungle and and got him untangled and from the plane and drug him into the into the jungle, and he lived.
So um our family goes way back as far as uh being converts. But my dad and I were talking about it, and he was a pilot his whole life. He he was in the Navy and he didn't fly all the time, but he kept his hours up and he loved that more than anything in the world. And so one of the last times I talked to him, I says, Okay, dad, when you get to heaven, what are you gonna do? And he just said, Fly. All right. So um I I'm gonna have to try and catch up with him when I get to heaven. He's gonna be zooming all over the place. And I says, Well, put me on your, I said, your docket, you know.
Um, I want to go flying too, and and I want to go see what's inside a black hole. We want to go. And he's oh yeah, let's do that. So see how much lighter life can be when when the understanding, uh, if you want to use belief, I use understanding of what who we are, where we are, where we're going, what this is all about. Uh, you can kind of lighten up that's that sense of humor thing that I God's got a sense of humor. I don't know, it makes life so much easier, especially when things don't work out well.
My high school sweetheart and I finally got together after six years and we just went traveling and we missed a connection in Paris, you know. I mean, we were standing there, we ran the entire length of the airport and we got stuck in security, and I mean everything was going wrong. And we finally uh got to the gate and they just took off. So we kind of look at each other, and then we, you know, you could get mad, you could get all kinds of stuff, and we looked at each other and said, Well, we planned that for some reason. What were we thinking?
I do have to ask you, what prompted you to write your book?
Well, I I always, well, I've always been a writer. So when I got back from hell, I started writing it out because I thought if I could just get this damn thing on paper, maybe I it'll go out of my mind like a bad dream. Well, that didn't happen. I kept writing and writing and stuffing everything in drawers. And then people say, Oh, you should write a book. Oh, you should write a book. And I thought, yeah, yeah, yeah, no, no, no. That's gonna be too hard to go back. And you knew you cried in my book.
You should imagine how much Kleenex I went through in that book trying to get all that stuff down, you know, and my baby dying and all that. God, that was torture. So finally I was at one of the conferences, and there was a lady there, she was a medium, you know, she reads minds and uh spirits and all that other stuff. And she had a little cardboard table, and it said she was starting her own publishing company and she was looking for writers. And I every time I'd gone by a three-day conference, I put my hand up so I didn't look at her, you know.
But we were leaving and she was putting things away. And I walked by and she she pointed at me. She says, You need to write a book. And I turned around and I said, Me? And she says, Yes, you. And I said, and so she handed me her her information and said, Call me. And I thought, oh, that's direct. I mean, wow. Yeah, okay. That was the thing that I thought, and I called her, you know, a couple months later and I said, How did you know? She says, They told me you need to write a book. I said, Who's they? She's just write the book. And I says, Oh, okay.
So it it took a long time, a couple years, but I got it done.
For those who are interested in NDEs or looking for support, I know you've mentioned INS, but you know, is that the place that you would recommend people to get in contact with?
I think it's the largest organization in the world for that. It's it's uh uh you know all over the place. And yeah, it's iands.org. And there are sharing meetings and spe talks and all kinds of stuff online, and then they'll tell you where meetings are, and um uh the conference is coming up in September, and that is a kick. And that's for anybody interested in you don't have to have an NDE. There's anybody that's interested in this stuff, or people that I've had spiritually transformative experiences or shared crossings. That's when you share a death crossover.
It can teach you how to do that actually through hospice. Any interest at all. It's just come and hear all these marvelous speakers and the bookstore and and uh get-togethers and oh, it's the most joyful place on earth. All those people have been to heaven and they know they're going back. It is just marvelous.
That sounds wonderful.
It is. I wish you could go.
I wanted to wrap this up by seeing if you could share the sentiment that you had in your epilogue. Because I I thought it was just absolutely beautiful.
Yeah, the seven things I learned.
Yes.
I was told when I got back, I I kept saying to God, I I know I'm gonna go back, but could you just give me something short that I can remember? Uh you know, instead of the Ten Commandments, all that stuff. Well, it came to me two words at a time over a series of months, and it was to be Kathy, be loving and kind, merciful and forgiving, encouraging, grateful, non-judgmental, and useful. So that's my mantra.
And that is a beautiful one to absolutely have. I I want to thank you for your time today. This has been such a pleasure getting to hear about your experiences. And I I I know it is not the easiest of things to to share, especially about hell, but it is such a worthwhile message. I I really can't tell you thank you enough.
Well, uh, it's it's people like you that keep me going, believe me. So it's been a real joy to meet you, and I hope we'll we'll see each other again, okay?
Same thing here. Thank you very much.
Okay, take care.
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.