David L Oakford

David Oakford had his near death experience in 1979 from a drug overdose. He was 19 years old. After his experience he got a good job at a factory and a few years later got married. Right before he got married, he got laid off from the good job and ended up joining the Navy a few years later. He worked supervising the tracking and reporting of tracking data on a warship. He left the Navy right before the wars (1990). Then there was 4 years of business school. During that time he was a stay at home father to a growing family for the next 8 years. Then he worked as a software analyst for 9 years. He got laid off during the great recession. Currently he washes dishes at a community kitchen one night a week and is the janitor at a haunted theater on the weekends. He is a disabled veteran.

Right after David had his experience he tried to talk to someone who would at least listen. Two years after he told his fiance about it, she listened and “got it.” For the next 20 years or so he kept the experience to himself for personal reasons but still thought about it every day. It wasn’t until he found the internet in 1996 that he found he could share with interested people in the AOL chat rooms that existed back then. It wasn’t long after he started sharing the insights of his experience in the rooms and interested people asked him to write it down for them. That’s why he wrote his story.

David then shared his story with an artist chat friend who lived in New York. Her son was dying of cancer and he emailed his story to her because she asked for it. She in turn sent it to the webmaster of the Near Death Experiences and the Afterlife website, he posted it there and gave it top billing. David found out about it about 2 weeks later and it already received over a thousand visitors. He started to receive emails related to the story, mostly gratitude letters. The story is still on that site. It was David’s first time trying to write it.

In 2004 he published the first edition of Soul Bared: A Metaphysical Journey, because people asked him to. In 2007 he wrote a book called “Journey Through the World of Spirit” in 2007. He wrote Journey with Dr. John Jay Harper. His current book is a second edition of Soul Bared published in 2018. The first edition is now unavailable.

David’s story has been featured in several books, like” Nothing Better Than Death” by Kevin Williams, “Visits to Heaven “ by Josie Varga, “Born to Love the Near Death Experience and the Meaning of Life” By Lisa Meyler, and “Tranceformers: Shamans of the 21st Century.” By Dr John Jay Harper.