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Nancy Clark is not afraid of dying. Neither is Dennis Hale.

Been there. Done that. Came back.

Their deaths, they say, changed their lives, and for the better.

Clark, a resident of Dublin, and Hale, who lives in the small town of Rock Creek outside of Ashtabula, have both had what they classify as near-death experiences. Clark is convinced she died during the birth of her son in 1962. Hale firmly believes he passed away in 1966 while floating on a life raft in Lake Huron following the sinking of an ore freighter on which he was a member of the crew.

In addition, Clark had what she terms a "transcendent experience" while delivering a eulogy in 1979 for a close family friend who had been killed in a plane crash in Alaska.

Clark had attempted to completely ignore that first experience in 1962, but not so in 1979 when, she says, once again she lifted out of her body and saw that bright light. No longer concerned with what people might think of her mental state, Clark began telling family and friends what had happened to her in that funeral home.

One of the people she spoke to was a minister, who suggested she read the book "Life After Life," published in 1975 and written by prominent near-death experience researcher Raymond Moody.

In fact, Moody coined the term in his book.

The realization that millions of people over the years and all over the world have reported experiences almost identical to hers made a great deal of difference to Nancy Clark.

"I felt that my experience was acknowledged," she said in a recent interview.

Likewise Dennis Hale, who kept silent about what happened to him in the freezing waters of Lake Huron for nearly three decades, found comfort in the knowledge that he was not alone in his eerie, out-of-body experience.

"It kind of confirms what happened to you, for one thing," he said in a telephone interview. "I think that kind of confirmation is very important."

In 1984, Clark formed, and still coordinates, Columbus Friends of the International Association for Near-Death Studies Inc. Hale, in spite of the long drive, is a member of the group and attends as many of the meetings as possible.

About a dozen people turn out for the meetings, held the first Saturday of each month from 10 a.m. to noon at Columbus Mennonite Fellowship Church, 35 Oakland Park Ave. None of the others, aside from Hale, was comfortable with being interviewed for this story, according to Clark.

Clark, 63, was born in Pennsylvania's coal country, in the small town of Hazleton. The family later moved to Levittown, Pa., where she grew up. Clark attended what was then the Woman's Medical College at the University of Pennsylvania, one of the first institutions to train females to become physicians. She majored in cytology, the study of cells, and went on to become a cancer researcher at Ohio State University and at other laboratories.

She and her high-school sweetheart husband, Charles Edward "Ched" Clark, came to the Columbus area so he could study architecture at Ohio State. They have resided in the Union County portion of Dublin since 1972. They have two grown sons.

It was during the birth of one of her sons that Clark says she died. She only came back as a result of a pretty persistent, not to mention rather pesky, nurse.

"I lifted out of my body," she said in the interview. "I heard the nurse pounding on my chest saying, 'Come back, Nancy. You have a son. Come on back.'

"I didn't want to go back."

Clark, who has written a self-published book about her experiences, recalls seeing a bright light to which she was drawn. Then she was looking down upon herself from the ceiling, with the nurse continuing to call to her and pound on her chest.

"To be honest, she was a pest," Clark said.

The next thing she knew, Clark came to where people aren't supposed to.

"I woke up in the morgue. I was lying on a cold gurney with a sheet over me."

She pulled the sheet away and looked to her right, where she observed another sheet-covered body on a gurney and realized where she was. Clark, who had preeclampsia, also called toxemia of pregnancy, lost consciousness at that point and next woke up in a hospital bed.

"My physician denied the whole thing," she said.

When she pressed him that something had to have gone wrong, Clark writes in her book "Hear His Voice," the doctor finally put his arm around her shoulder and said, "I'm an excellent physician and I'm afraid if I told you what happened it will do a lot of psychological damage and you will never, ever want to have children again. So put this out of your mind."

Clark had refrained from discussing the out-of-body aspects of her experience with the doctor.

"He would have transferred me to the psych ward, not the maternity ward," she said in the interview. "I had to be careful what I said.

"I know what happened," Clark continued. "It was real. It was not a hallucination. The individual knows it happened. I can't describe it any other way."

Her "transcendent experience" 17 years later is actually more common than near-death or death-like events, according to research conducted by the International Association for Near-Death Studies, Clark said.

Again on Jan. 29, 1979, Clark felt herself lifting out of her body.

"I was home again with our Creator, with the light, with God," she said. "That's my interpretation."

Dennis Hale was a 26-year-old watchman on the 603-foot Great Lakes ore freighter Daniel J. Morrell when it broke apart during a 65-mile-an-hour gale in the early hours of Nov. 29, 1966. About 13 of the ship's 29 crew members managed to get on board a life raft, but all were swept into the 44-degree water as the ship went down. Three, including Hale, managed to crawl back onto the raft, and they pulled a fourth man on board. By dawn, according to Hale's account on a shipping disaster Web site that was taken from the book, "Sole Survivor," two of the men had died. The third succumbed by 4 o'clock that afternoon.

Hale should have suffered the same fate, and believes he even did for a while, but was sent back.

"This man appeared to me," Hale recalled in the telephone interview. "I was eating ice off my coat at the time. He told me not to eat the ice."

Suddenly, Hale said, he was hovering above himself on the raft.

He was being drawn up into a dark cloud by a bright light.

"I was really frightened because I couldn't understand what was going on," Hale said.

Eventually, Hale says, he was deposited on a vivid green field. He crossed a white footbridge where he was greeted by family members who had preceded him in death, including his mother, who died when he was born. The man who had first appeared to him, Hale said, a white-haired individual with a neatly trimmed mustache, milky blue skin and a thunderous voice, took Hale by the hand and said, "Let's see what you've learned." A review of his life ensued.

Hale says he asked about his shipmates, and was taken to greet them at the bottom of a hill.

"It was a very, very loving reunion," Hale said. "We were hugging one another. Some people were laughing and some people were crying. The love was just overwhelming."

Then the third mate appeared and told Hale, "It's not your time." Turning to his dead mates, Hale saw great sadness in their eyes, just before he was pulled back into the cloud and returned to his body on the raft in those frigid waters. Again he started to eat ice, and again the blue-skinned man cautioned him against lowering his body temperature by doing so.

Hale doesn't believe it was God who came to him.

"I don't know who he was," he said. "I feel he's still with me."

After much reflection, Hale said, he finally came to realize he was meant to speak publicly about his experience, and has done so since about 1995.

Although only 65, in good health and in no immediate danger of dying, death holds no terrors for Hale.

"I'm not afraid of dying. It's there. When it's my time, I know my shipmates will be waiting for me."

For her part, Clark said that she will continue to lead the local chapter of an international organization that seeks to find the truth behind near-death experiences.

"We don't understand it," Clark admitted. "There are many, many more questions than answers at this point.

"It appears there is worldwide interest. There are support groups like mine all over the world. It's here to stay."

Clark has encountered skeptics and even people who have poked fun at her about her experiences.

She doesn't mind.

"My reaction is I know the truth and the truth will set me free," she said. "I also know, at the time of their death they will know the truth they don't believe now."

Husband Ched, while not a firm believer in near-death experiences, feels everyone has a right to his or her own beliefs.

"He accepts where I am," Nancy Clark said. "He's very proud of me, I have to tell you."

For more information about Columbus Friends of the International Association for Near-Death Studies, call 873-5307.

<center>kparks@thisweeknews.com