You're listening to the Paranormal UK Radio Network, the best in paranormal talk radio
in the UK and around the world. Hello world, You're listening to Eleanor
Wagner's Strange and Scary world here on the Paranormal UK Radio Network, where we'll
always creep in it Real. I'm your host, Eleanor Wagner. Welcome all
to my paranormal Closet, where the stories and magic take place. I've long
been intrigued by near death experiences and I've written about them in my hauntings book,
Warren County Hauntings in a chapter. Today's show is on near death experiences,
and for those of you who are unfamiliar with the terminology, the near
death experience is described as an unusual experience that takes place on the brink of
death and is recounted by the individual who experiences it after recovery, typically an
out of body experience accompanied with the vision of a tunnel of life. So
today's guest, Jack W. Gregory, the Accidental Journalist, is a UK
based author, consultant and actor. During his whole life, he battled with
being sexually trafficked in the UK special school system, along with battling rejection,
fear, mental illness, addiction, and criminality. At one point, he
lost everything and found himself homeless and addicted to crack cotaine crack cocaine. He
got clean and sober in twenty fourteen and began to change his life until he
found himself on a deathbed in twenty fifteen, where he experienced a near death
experience that changed his life and his whole perspective. He found a new purpose
in sobriety and became a Hollywood consultant, actor, poet, journalist, author
of three books, and a podcaster. He took hold of the power of
his own story and used it as a tool to educate others. He now
helps educate doctors on how to deal with addicts, speaks regularly at churches,
schools, and colleges about his story. So join me in welcoming him to
the show. Hi, Hi, why don't you stop by telling us?
Well, what happened to you? Okay? So my whole life I have,
as you said, battled with addiction and a certain way of life,
which led to certain illnesses and my body started to fail. I met my
now wife in twenty fourteen and we got together at the end of twenty fourteen
and twenty fifteen is really when I started getting very ill. I couldn't breathe,
there was no oxygen getting to my brain. I was really struggling to
speak. I was going I thought I was going mad because the hypoxia.
Oxygen wasn't getting through to my brain because of hypoxia arm and I ended up
in hospital after a really bad weekend of just feeling really ill home. I
got to the hospital around about half past four in the afternoon, and by
half past seven I was dead. I had typed tu lung failure, tuberculosis
because of the life that I'd lived and not taking care of myself. I
had pneumonia, plurisy, and some environmental disease that they hadn't seen for about
thirty years because of when I was on the streets and when I was homeless
and addicted to crack cocaine. I'd gotten sober only June before the twenty seventh
of June, before I was a crackhouse at ten o'clock at night. At
twenty sixth June twenty fourteen, I was in a crack house and I was
sat down and I had a pipe in my hand, and I closed my
eyes and I said, God, I can't deal with this anymore. Please
take away this, this hunger, this thirst for drugs, or take away
my life, because I can't live like this anymore. I was six down,
six ounces, I I was barely living. I'd lost pretty which everything.
And I fell asleep on crack cocaine, which is a bit of a
miracle in itself. And I woke up just gone twelve on the twenty seventh
of June twenty fourteen, and I haven't used the day since. I'd met
my wife a few months before. She was serving her food bank at a
coffee morning and she'd served me coffee with a smile and we got talking.
Yeah, so I guess by the end of twenty fourteen, we've got together
and we were having a you know, I'd found sort of a faith and
I was part of a church called Hope. I resigned to the fact that
God had taken away this, this, this hunger, this thirst, and
I was like, HALLI the yeah, but I don't know except Christ into
my life because if I do, I'll have to be good, and I
want the option to at least be a bit naughty on occasion, and yeah,
So end of February March I'd start to get really hear twenty fifteen,
and I'd end up in hospital, and I remember my sort of I was
going quite insane because the hypogy was blocking all the the oxygen. It just
wasn't getting through. So I became convinced that the police were after me for
the life that I'd lived, and that they had CCTV cameras in the room
I was and what's called a negative pressure room, which is a room that
it pulls out all the air and then pushes in all the good air is
for people that have things like tuberculosis. The only contacts that I had with
people they were in contagency masks and things on their heads and stuff like that,
and it was it was very scary that to wear gloves, and I
couldn't understand it. And this was way before the pandemic, before we you
know, so it was like I didn't know what was happening. I became
convinced that my family had I had caused the end of the world by this
super virulent strain of tuberculosis. My mind was broken from not only the hypoxia,
but from the sort of the life that I'd led the guilt that I
had from the past that I'd led, and I yeah, I became quite
abusive, and there were people from my church coming to pray with me.
I remember my elder coming in, lead elder coming in. Batman by the
grammar name of Grantly Watkins is a great church planter, and he came to
pray for my soul because they were told that they were going to lose me
again and this time for good. I went to hell when I actually died
for four minutes, and it felt like months. I just remember screaming,
convinced that everybody around my bed were police rapped with fear, with guilt,
with shame, with I was just broken arm and with a last sort of
I guess, a bit of rebellion. They were fighting to keep me down
on the bed, you know, they were trying to strap me to the
bed and stuff. One of them that they gave me this thing called zos
in, which is basically it puts fire in your veins. It's an anti
infection drug. But I didn't take well to it, so it felt like
they'd burnt my chest with acid. I thought they were placed and so I
guess I died screaming blue murder at these people that wanted to talk to me.
Before I died, I let my bladder go in one last bit of
rebellion, I guess, and then it went black for a minute or two,
and then what felt like a minute or two, and the hospital was
calm, felt empty. I couldn't get out of my bed before, but
I could now. I didn't, you know, I didn't have any straps
on. So I got out of my bed and I was looking out of
my door, the window in the door, and there was nobody there.
So I thought I'd make a run for it. And there was a sound
and it sounded like an old air I saw air raid siren. So all
I heard was and I'm trying to just work out. Don't know where I
am. It's not hot, it's not quite it's not anything, I guess,
if anything, there are embers in the air, arm just falling arm.
I walked around the ward. The beds were empty, the nurse station
was abandoned. I walked out of the door and down towards the exit of
the of the hospital. I was on the third floor. For some reason,
I was convinced I was on a secret floor known to all about these
people. But I'd managed to get out, and I'd managed to I was.
I still had a canula in my hand and a drip and I was
pushing this drip, and I was in my NHS gown, so I had
a bear behind hanging out and you know, but I managed to get to
one of the doors and I got out of the door and it was just
dark, as if the clouds had been scorched. This sound was still going
in the background, getting louder and louder. The bodies were just piled in
meters high, dotted around the car park, some of them on fire.
I could I could smell them. I could smell the rotten flesh. I
could still hear this siren intermittently. It would stop and then it would start
again. HM. And to me, that was another million people dead arm
And I just went everywhere that I could. I went back in and I
searched every floor for any survivors. They weren't there. There was nobody there
apart from me. I guess it was my own personal hell home, and
I just I didn't know what to do. So I just went back to
the ward, back to my room, slowly, back to my bed,
just walking through the canteen. All the plates were on the floor, and
it was just it was like something out of a you know, like The
Stand or something like that, a horror movie. Yeah, yeah, And
just how long did this go on for? So it felt like months.
I went through every floor, every room, every ward, every canteen.
It's a big hospital. It's a very big hospital, went around car park.
It's a teaching hospital, so that puts in perspective how big it is,
you know, and we're a city on a hill, and you know,
it took some time, and I didn't feel like I needed teat or
want to go to the toilet or anything like that. I just was wandering
a around this aimlessly, around this desolate landscape, this personal apocalypse, this
wasteland. Mm hmm. And I got back to my room when I just
sat there on the bed, and I guess I wasn't tired. There was
there was a haze in the air where the ashes were dropping, but you
know, you wouldn't know it was anything else if it wasn't for that.
And then it went black again and I felt like I had fallen asleep.
And I then came to in my hospital bed and they brought me around,
and I brought I absolutely broke and I this hell carried on into real life.
Oh really, and I had this personal I call it personal apocalypse.
I was still convinced that God was going to end the world. I went
mute for a while. I wouldn't eat, I wouldn't drink, I wouldn't
see my daughter, I wouldn't see my ex. Five people would come in
from my church and they would talk, and I was convinced that they were
I guess, clones, replacements. There was some sort of robot. I
don't know, but I was convinced of this for so long a time,
and it was just so crushing. I felt so alone. I remember having
a this is what happened to you when you came out of the near death
experience corrected it rolled over into real How long did it take you before normalized?
Three weeks? Wow, of just absolute mentality. So your experience in
your near death experience was only experiencing hell. You did not experience heaven.
Is that what you're telling me? Yeah? No, I didn't experience heaven.
Wow, experienced hell. But the life that I'd led, the guilt
that i'd felt, you know, I wasn't a good man. I've been
married once before I died. I cheated, I lied, I've lost every
job that I'd ever had. I was a person that liked women a lot.
I would womanize. I find it very interesting that you say to me
that you let Jesus into your life, but you still wanted to be naughty.
And it was it was almost like he was saying to you, all
right, now I'm going to show you why you're what you're doing is wrong.
And then you have this experience and then it's almost like an awaking,
an aha moment. Yeah. I mean, you know, I accepted God.
I knew Jesus existed, but I, as I said, and upset
him into my life and take him into my heart because I still want the
option to be a bit naughty, right, but you know, just just
to come from that. You know, I don't believe now that God sends
us to Hell. I'll get to that in a minute. But yeah,
it was dark. I remember having this skype call with my daughter and she
must have been six at the time, and I was convinced that she was
dead and that her mom was using a mom and her mum's boyfriend were using
her as a puppet and just to just to freak me out, just to
sort of hurt me. Throughout all this, there was a presence at the
end of my bed, and it didn't feel like the other presence is,
you know, it didn't feel insidious. It felt different. There was this
one doctor, a young female Asian doctor now our National Health Service. I
know that some places in America that your doctors are allowed to pray with patients
are allowed to, you know, talk about their faith. You're not here
at all. You can lose your job and you can go to prison for
it because it's an abusive power here. But I remember she had a cross,
and you're allowed to wear a cross, but you're not allowed people to
see it, but you should let me see it. On occasion, she
would come in and she would let me say. She wouldn't really say anything,
she'd just be pottering around there the room, and then you know,
when somebody came in, she'd put it away. But then there was this
thing at the end of my bed, and I, like I said,
I guess after about three weeks of this hell in life that I brought back,
I'd still had this rash from here to my mid riff how it felt
like a burn arm. And but I'd been mute. I wouldn't talk to
anybody. And there was this presence at the end of my bed, and
I said, who are you? What do you want? And I just
heard the ordered but voice saying, you know who I am, you know
what I want? I said, well, what what do I do?
You know what to do? You know what you've got to do. So
I said, all right, Jesus, I upsept you into my life.
And the way that I've been seeing, I guess you can put it akin
to I could really all sort of see arteat television if you remember them,
or watching you can see I've got VHS, watching a VHS. It was
kind of grainy, But as soon as I accepted Christ into my life,
it went from grainy to two k I could see normally. I sat up
in my bed, which should have been impossible because I was that emaciated.
I was just from the six stone seventy pounds, I guess, which is
not a lot. And I was sat up in my bed. There was
nobody in my room. I sat up in my bed and I remember this
nurse coming names Jackie. It's a good friend. Of mine. Now.
She came into my room and she went white. I said, hellop,
can I have a wash please? And she went out and there was a
fumbling outside and kerfuffle outside. The doctors came in and they and they checked
me over, and I'm saying, I am thirsty, I'm hungry. My
mouth hurts because I've got ulcers because I was so emaciated and stuff. But
you know, my teeth for falling out, Why is that bad? Mm
hm? You know, and I still have potential problems because of it.
But you know, they said, okay, you can have a wash.
And this nurse brought in a bowl with a sponge and I took my top
off and this rash was from at and I started to wash. There's no
word of a lie. I have people that loved that were there that the
nurse the like say she's a good friend of mine. I saw this rash
peel away and disappear. Mm hmmm. I forgot to say through all this,
you know, when I came out, I thought that all of my
family had been brought in, and friends and anybody that from my past life
were being brought into another part of the hospital. But I could hear them
holding what's called the kangaroo courts outside about what to do with me, because
I'd felt so judged. Put that judgment had gone, I didn't feel that
anymore. I didn't hear that anymore. I heard people walking around the hospital.
I heard the clitter clatter of the tea trolley, you know, and
I even asked for a cup of tea. And I don't drink tea,
drink coffee. And it was nothing short of miraculous. When I do have
people that will attest to that, I started to get better. People started
to coming to visit me ARM. I'd accepted Christ into my life and it
was nice, but I really didn't know the journey that I would go on
after that. ARM. There were people from the church that were I've got
a thing for spam. I love spam. ARM. They were bringing me
into into spam and sweets and pop soda, you know, Luca's aid ARM.
And there's nothing more glorious than smelling the nurses cooking your spam because they're
so happy that you want to eat right. I'd had a job before I
ended up in hospital. Unfortunately, the company went under while I was in
hospital, but I did get some money for my redundancy. So they said
to me, if you get to eight stone, you can leave, So
I would. I'd have sweets and you know, all day every day and
Snickers bars and Mars bars and things like that. And just on a morning
I was, yeah, I would have the breakfast that they brought me,
and then an hour later I was going down to the canteen to have a
full English breakfast right up, and then same with dinner. And then I
was having a a good dinner down there, and I found a local pizza
place that we're doing two for one fourteen inch pizzas and for nine pounds,
so I I was getting one from me and one for the nurses to share
every night. And within two weeks I went from just on the sixth stone
to eight stone three and they allowed me to go home. The day before
my stepson's birthday, arm and I just began to heal. But that's not
where the supernatural ends, really, I guess, because I believe in a
God that is so supernaturally natural and naturally supernatural. Arm I was going to
the church, the same church we were meeting in a school high school hall
on a Sunday, and I made the commitment to get baptized arm and I
went on the baptism course and it came to my baptism day and my wife
came and mine now wife came with me with the kids, and we walked
in and my wife tapped me on the shoulder and she said, isn't that
your specialist from the hospital over there talking to someone? So I went over
and he said, it's so good to see you. You were really poorly.
I don't know if you remember me. My name is doctor twenty And
I said, yeah, I do. I remember you saved my life.
Thank you. I said, you know why are you here? Well,
but one of them I know why I'm here to get baptized. He said,
well, my son is getting baptized today. So I had the pleasure
of getting baptized alongside the son of the man that saved my life. Wow,
which was mental to me, It was absolutely mental. I then started
an ALPHA course, which started a career in Alpha. I don't know if
you know what Alpha is, but Alpha is it's just course run by churches
and you go and you learn about Jesus. You go and have a meal,
share a meal, and then you watch a video and then you sit
and discuss this video and talk about God and Jesus. You don't have to
be a Christian to go on it, which is great, and you just
learn more about the Bible. And so I did that. I did twenty
one alpha's all in all, seventeen nine helped lead. I did a discipleship
course called Freedom in Christ. And now I'm involved in this thing called the
School's Supernatural Life, which came from an idea by our lead elder. But
he was He and his wife went to a church and read in California called
Bethel, which is a church to believe in prophecy, and they believe in
spiritual gifts and the Holy Spirit and you know, a God led life.
And they came back and they designed this course. And on the second year
I went and joined this course. I now help lead this course nine years
later, eight nine years later, did you tell me how you feel about
death? Now? I'm not scared because I know Hell isn't for me.
Now. I don't believe that God sends you there, who sends ourself there.
I didn't have Christ in my life, and I didn't repent of my
sins and the things that I did, and so I was in my own
sort of purgatory. I guess. I know I missed my children and my
wife, and my family and my friends and my wider family. But I
know I'll be reunited. I don't want to die. I know it's going
to come soon, but death is not the end, you know, and
soon meaning any time and whenever. But you know, I do have some
illnesses still, but I have a good life, a great family. I've
over the past nine years, I have really pushed myself into stepping out.
My life is amazing at times. You know, it's hard at other times,
but you know, like you said, I've I've had the opportunity to
work on Troo, my Scarsey Fund of films. I've written books. I
wrote my first book, of Personal Apocalypse, which was about this and about
some of my life before. I get to do this sometimes and share my
voice. I do podcasts where other people come on my podcast and I amplified
their help amplify their voice because God gave me a mission to be a voice
for the voiceless. Yeah, I see you have. You have a huge
array of topics that you're willing to openly discuss with people, like the first
the human trafficking and sexual slavery and exportation, because you personally experienced that yourself.
To be willing to openly discuss that with others is amazing. And then
you talk about addiction, and you talk about homelessness, mental illness, mental
health, crime, recovery, losing people to suicide and murder, forgiveness.
It's just amazing because the voices you can reach, planting those seeds and discussion,
helping people to heal. Now, this is your purpose. You've discovered
what your mission is and it all came from prophecy. You know. This
is school, the School Supernatural Life. I did the court a few times,
and then I would help out doing the words for worship and then hang
around and just listen and things like that. And we encourage people to listen
to Garden to pray for his gifts, and we encourage praying for prophecy and
for words and pictures for other people. And four people from four different courses
came to me and said, you are going to be a voice for the
voiceless. I wanted to be an actor. I didn't want to be anything
else. They said, you are going to be a voice for the voiceless.
And then in twenty sixteen, I spent six months working with Escape as
of human Trafficking. I wasn't ready to look at my past, but I
then realized because I didn't know I was trafficked, I didn't know that what
happened to me was trafficking. Thought I was just plain abuse from several people.
But I learned about what happened to me, and then I started to
hear, and now I want to help other people here that's wonderful. Perse
is it available on Amazon. It is a Personal Apocalypse is available on Amazon.
My second book, Between Street Lights and Red Lights is available on Amazon.
Everything is available on my website JW. Gregg dot WordPress dot com.
Everything through there. The site is massive, it's a bit of a rabbit
hole. And so I've been blessed to be able to do quite a few
of these to speak about myself and lots of different subjects. And you know,
we do a few collaborations as well as my three series of my own
Live and on drugs. But I just I absolutely love to educate. I
believe that if we've lived a set life a certain way, if we've experienced
difficulties in any sort of way, then it's our it's a blessing to us.
But it's our responsibility to teach. If you can teach, teach you
you can't teach. You need to teach. You need to learn to teach.
Because there are people dying of addiction, of people have been trafficked to
fall into addiction, which was my route into addiction. You know, there
are people dying on the streets. Our homelessness is a high in this country.
You know, I'm very very blessed and lucky. You know, you
here talking to you from my garden shed. It's with with the heating on.
It's minus three outside. Oh my goodness. You know, we're not
even in full winter yet. Oh wow. So you know, and I
live in the south of Norfolk, so we're in the pretty much in the
countryside, so you know, it's it's very cold. Our main city,
Norwich, is a emotional vampire. It's a very hard It's a beautiful city,
a very very beautiful city with lots of history, but the people are
hard work, you know, and there are a lot of people in that
city that are really broken. There's a lot of homelessness, there's a lot
of addiction, there are a lot of I guess you would call them projects,
you know, housing schemes where they're in flats twenty thirty floors high in
the middle of the city, you know, high rise flats. The austerity
is in our country is on all the time. Bad. We have a
government that really don't care, that are only in it for themselves, that
have done nothing but bleed our country dry. And the poor are really feeling
it. We're in a recession, especially when COVID hit people lost jobs,
businesses. Turns out COVID was a blessing for me. You know, the
first lockdown I had a bit of a mental slump. The second one now
and I started doing this. This was the spur that I needed to start.
And it was all because of a conversation with the friends saying, why
don't you get into podcasting. I said, I don't think I could do
that. I haven't got the voice for that. I don't think people would
understand me. And he said, you don't give yourself much credit. She's
gonna interview me if you like. He is one of the top postures negotiators
in this country. So I interviewed him, and then I got a guy
by the name of Dominic Nagus, who was at one other time one of
the hardest men in Britain. And then I got a few celebrities and it
just went from there. Early and well, what's the name of your podcast.
It's called Live and Undrugged. It's on my website, it's on YouTube
under the Accidental Journalist. I'm trying to build my numbers on there. It's
not all about numbers for me. If I educate one person, I'm very
happy. One person at a time, I'm very happy. But I do
believe that I'm called to educate more. I get to speak do this in
a few weeks just after Christmas. I get to teach a few government employees
who are running a trafficking scheme anti trafficking scheme. I get to speak to
them and give them some training. I've trained new GPS to deal with addiction.
And this is from a man that was ten years ago, was broken
beyond anything. I'd lost all control als my family. I'd tried to keep
my out ex wife's dooring, and I just wanted to die to now really
sort of trying to push my was not my but a shared combined wisdom.
It's just not much of my wisdom. It's wisdom that I've learned from other
people. You know, I went to my first NA meeting in I guess
I was fourteen years old. I went to my first AARNA meeting, trust
their meeting. So I had thirty odd years of in and out of the
meetings and in and out of the program, and I could never get it.
You know, I'd have various years of sobriety, going through it dry
white, knuckling it sometimes and not really getting it. And it was only
when I found myself in hell and then had to navigate that and navigate my
way back through life. Having come back from there, you know, I
guess there's still a chance that I could go there. I'm saved, but
you know I have a faith. That's good. But you know, faith
is a faith, it's not you're making a difference. You're making a difference.
So thank you for what you do. You try to keep it for
good work. I mean, that's what it's all about. Yeah, it's
all I've ever wanted to do since I started my new life, because we
need to something that our world is very broken, Yes, it's very broken.
And you know it's this this whole journey of me speaking to you or
started with really me going on the Jeff Maher podcast, you know, And
I guess some people struggle with my accent. I've had to work on the
way that I speak because I'm from the North of England and we speak very
very different arm and people don't always understand that when I speak in my natural
accents, I have to I'm learning to speak slower, and so, you
know, I do apologize if I'm coming across as it's absolutely and I appreciate
you opening up about your story because I know how difficult that can be.
I've spoken to so many people on the subject, and they've each told me
that they really don't talk openly about it. They talk to other near death
experiencers, but to really talk to somebody who's a stranger, they don't usually
do that. So I appreciate that. Yeah, I enjoy it more than
anything. I'm a Northerner. I like to speak. I you know,
sometimes I have to get a bus and I will pray sometimes and I'll say,
you know, God, I've got got this hour bus journey. Give
me someone to speak to mm hmm. You know, I've got a forty
five minute wait for this bus. I'll go get a coffee from the machine
off from one of the cafes in our town, and I'll wait for the
bus and I'll say God send with someone an eight times I would tell you
will, And that's great. I love that I have a business card with
a QR code on the back that I give and then people can view it
their leisure and you know, I get to, you know, affect people
sometimes, which makes me very happy. And we celebrate it together as a
church as part of the school m HM. And we you know, the
school has run on a Tuesday night as well as all Down a Friday,
but Tuesday night, which is the part of school that I'm involved with.
And we share our victories through from the week before. You know, we
share our failures because victory failures are always a road it's a victory. We
celebrate the failures along with the victories because you know, we all fail because
victory wouldn't be victory without the failures behind it all the time. So yeah,
I mean, I guess that's where I am right now. Wow,
this has been an amazing discussion. Thank you so much for joining me today.
I really do appreciate it. And we'll get those links up on the
summary so people can check out your books and your podcasts. Thank you for
having me, oh wonderful, and to the listeners out there. If you
like listening to this week's episode and your into all things paranormal, check out
my other show, Eleanor Wagner's Creeping It Wheel out of the Coast to Coast
Entertainment Network, which is available wherever you get your podcasts streamed through Eleanor Wagner
YouTube channel. And if any of you are interested in reading any of my
books, you can find them directly on Amazon or you can get signed copies
directly through me at author Eleanor Waggert gmail dot com. I write about the
history of the town and the location, add the paranormal story to the mix,
and finish it all off with photos and evidence. Everybody loves a good
ghost story, but there's nothing better than a real life ghost story, So
check out the books on Amazon and I hope you'll stay and listen as Silent
Crafters Stranger Part two takes us out of the show. Good Night, Ghostly
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Remember to tap into your own gifts everyone has now, and in the
meantime, make sure you're creeping it young