Tricia Barker wasn’t a spiritual or religious person – even though she grew up in a Christian household – but everything changed after a horrific near-death experience.
At 21, she was driving her Honda Civic in Austin, Texas, to a 10km running race.
‘I was late to the race, hadn’t had my morning coffee and I felt really sleepy,’ Tricia, now 53, told Daily Mail.
‘I crossed the intersection on the yellow light and next thing it must’ve turned red. Another car was going very fast and we hit each other.’
The crash was devastating. Tricia remembers going into shock and being unable to move. At the time, she had no idea how badly she was injured.
‘Even though I wasn’t a believer, I made one little plea in the wreck: “If there is a God, this is going to be a hard day. Please help me. Let me live. Let me walk again.”‘
Moments later, a nurse who happened to be driving by stopped her car at the scene and ran to help Tricia. She called an ambulance and instructed her not to move.
Tricia was rushed to hospital where it was found she had a fractured spine, broken foot and various internal injuries. She had CT scans and an MRI, but because she did not have health insurance, she had to wait 17 hours for surgery.
Tricia Barker was an atheist before her near-death experience when she was 21
‘The minute I left my body, I just felt total clarity and so much smarter than I’d ever been. There was no pain, just peace,’ said Tricia (pictured as a child)
‘They were going to have to do spinal surgery, and I was deeply afraid that I would be in a wheelchair for the rest of my life. But the surgeons gave me hope,’ Tricia recalled.
Before surgery, she had to sign documents and noticed in the fine print there was a ’17 per cent chance of death’.
She wasn’t afraid to die, however.
Being a strong atheist, she believed ‘death is just death’ and there was nothing but blackness on the other side.
But what happened on the operating table changed her perspective forever.
While she was under anaesthetic, Tricia says she found herself suspended between two worlds – one where she was a broken body lying on an operating table, and another that would redefine everything she thought she knew about life and death.
‘I popped up out of my body… I was looking down at myself. The minute I left my body, I felt total clarity and so much smarter than I’d ever been. There was no pain – just peace.’
She was ‘aware of everything in the room’ and could even hear an Elvis Presley song playing on the radio.
In the distance, she saw a man in his thirties next to a shiny 1960s truck. It was her grandfather who had died when she was ten. ‘Do you want to keep going towards God?’ he asked her
Tricia spoke to God in the afterlife and He told her that her true calling was to become a teacher
‘I saw these “light beings” behind the surgeons. They were made up of this silvery-white, gold, yellow and blue light. They were androgynous, neither male nor female,’ she said.
‘The first thing that hit me was that they were incredibly intelligent. They looked at me very deeply and it’s like they were communicating through telepathy… They sent this light through the back of the surgeons into their hands, and it lit up my whole body.
‘I knew light was communication. They showed me an image of me running and they told me I was going to be okay.’
In that moment, Tricia’s heartbeat monitor flatlined. She could see it happening, as if she were an outside observer.
‘I thought, “I’m technically dead, so I can do whatever I want outside of this body”. And I didn’t want to look at what the surgeons were going to do to try to revive me.
‘It was definitely an out-of-body experience that became a near-death experience.’
Tricia didn’t know it at the time but she was succumbing to internal injuries on the operating table. She would later be told that she was technically dead for a total of three minutes before surgeons were able to revive her.
During this time, Tricia says she moved through walls, doors and corridors, passing through the hospital. She even saw her stepfather in the waiting room with her mother.
‘He was at a vending machine getting a candy bar. I thought he didn’t eat sweets or was on a carb-free diet, so I thought it was funny,’ she said.
Tricia says from there she continued to move ‘beyond our universe’ and into the afterlife, which looked like a beautiful green pasture.
In the distance, she saw a man in his thirties standing next to a shiny 1960s truck. It was her grandfather who had died when she was ten.
‘When I saw him, I almost didn’t recognise him because he looked so young and healthy. I forced my spirit to transform into the child version of myself,’ she said.
Tricia says her vision seems to affirm one of the most enduring myths of the afterlife – that we’re reunited with loved ones not as they were in old age, but in the prime of their lives.
‘Then he asked me, “Do you want to keep going towards God?” I knew my body wasn’t doing so well in the physical world, so of course I wanted to see God.’
Tricia said she then continued to drift through the afterlife until a ‘booming voice – not really male or female’ hit her like a thunderbolt.
‘It was just something you could not deny, like a vibration. I knew it was God. It shakes you to the very core of your being. It’s nothing but pure love.’
In the vision, the speaker told Tricia – who at the time wanted to be a lawyer – that it was actually her destiny to teach and, in particular, to show students ‘how to live a life full of joy and passion and fun and belief in themselves’.
Tricia says it was after this conversation with the voice she now believes to be God that she was suddenly ‘flung back to reality’. She woke up gasping in the ICU.
When Tricia regained consciousness, a nurse asked her name. Disoriented, she replied, ‘Her name is Tricia,’ before correcting herself, ‘My name is Tricia’.
Returning to her body felt almost restrictive after her spiritual experience. ‘How could I be me? How could I just be, and it seemed so limiting,’ she recalled.
Afraid the apparent memories of the afterlife would fade, Tricia asked for pen and paper and wrote everything down.
She tried to tell her family, but says her mother didn’t believe her.
But that scepticism changed when Tricia described seeing her stepfather buying a candy bar from the hospital vending machine – a detail her mother confirmed.
However, her family’s willingness to accept she had been to the afterlife and spoken to God soon faded. A minister gave her parents a pamphlet condemning near-death experiences as ‘delusions from the devil’. The subject was swiftly shut down.
‘They were just done with talking about it,’ says Tricia. ‘They took the stance that they were right and I was wrong.’
But Tricia would never forget her conversation with God that made her a believer.
After making a full recovery, Tricia returned to college, switched from law to teaching, and discovered her true calling in life.
She went on to teach at various levels, including high school and community college, with a focus on helping students overcome personal challenges.
Tricia is now an English teacher at Houston City College and also works as a spiritual medium. Her story was first published in her book, which is available here.
