When a Baptist named Gladys Hargis "died," she came back with an account of the afterlife that left out a critical detail: her alleged meeting with the Virgin Mary.
In fact, to Gladys, the author of two books on her experience, Mary was the high point of her entire experience. We recently reported on this.
"I was so thrilled to meet her and I lay down prostrate in front of her," Hargis, now in her eighties, told us. "I was just floored. I spent most of my time with her."
Nor did the experience leave her a void. She believes angels returned with her (others who have this experience report enhanced spiritual sensitivities and gifts), and her surroundings are sometimes reflections (she insists it's not always just the sun) that are little port holes into spiritual dimensions.
What may be purgatorial or earthbound spirits seem to happen by, on occasion, she says, and unusual light formations appear on or in front of a shed in her backyard, away from where sunlight could be the cause.
They form images, claims Gladys, including that of the Blessed Mother.
"Mary had said she would take care of me," notes Gladys -- who, because she is not Catholic, does not pray the Rosary or have images of Mary, interestingly enough!
In one case, she says two distinct wings appeared in front of the shed, and she watched as the firm, tinged in gold, took shape.
"There were two distinct angels, but all gold," Hargis, author of The Land Beyond, asserts. "They were like seven-foot and up tall. They were beautiful. I was flabbergasted. I mean flabbergasted." For five days in a row two smaller white angels appeared, some clearer than others -- and relatives saw them too.
Done in one dimension: pure white on a softer white background.
For our consideration. Eye of the beholder?
"In the middle of one glaring light -- you'd be shocked -- there was like a green ball of about five inches in circumference and in the middle was a Man in a white gown and you know that statue of Jesus in Rio de Janeiro? That's what it reminded me of." It was on a lawn chair between my window and the shed.
Mary was also in a ball -- orb? -- of luminosity.
"When I saw her in Heaven I saw her as a queen, but in this ball she looked just like the pictures you see of her on the mantle of Catholics), but just like that with the cloth over her head and her gown and in the middle of the gown is a white sort of underblouse and her hands are folded across where her heart is, with a prayer. Clasped in prayer. That's what I see her as and I was so amazed. I didn't want it to end. I looked at her with such reverence and awe. She was showing me that she was there for me and she loved me. Why she came then I have no idea and won't the rest of my time on earth."
[resources: Land Beyond the Veil and You Live Forever]
