My Near-Death Experience at Langley Air Force Base

At 20, Chase was a U.S. Air Force service member stationed at Langley Air Force Base in Virginia. After a training injury to both knees during Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape (SERE) instruction, he had transitioned toward Public Affairs journalism and was in a medical-retirement process. He describes showing up late the morning of April 1, 2008, and being found unconscious in his dorm room by his supervisor.

He was taken to the Langley Air Force Base hospital, where tests at first found no clear cause. As he remembers it, a nurse adjusted an IV, left the room, alarms sounded, and he saw the monitor go flat. He later recalled severe bruising up his left arm. Chase has described staff later documenting an air embolism in connection with the IV. That account is his recollection of what he was told.

What this site states as documented: U.S. Air Force service; cardiac arrest in 2008 at age 20 while stationed at Langley AFB; and medical retirement later in 2008, which Chase has cited as July 8, 2008. No exact period of clinical death is claimed here. Chase also recalls that some dates were missing from files he later reviewed; that is his recollection, not a proven record deletion.

This part is what I remember, in my own words. I felt a calm presence to my left, and then I was traveling upward through light. I found myself in a vivid garden, more alive than anything I had seen. A little boy with curly blond hair was there, and I recognized him as me. A man in a robe stood with us, and I understood him to be Jesus: short brown hair, green eyes, and a grin, not the figure from the typical painting. The message I carried away was simple, to spread light, love, laughter, and joy. Then I was told I had to go back, and I agreed without argument.

I remember waking up in a different hospital off base, in Hampton, Virginia, with civilian staff around me. Physically I felt normal. I called a friend, ate at Chick-fil-A, and went up to Washington, D.C. for a couple of days. What followed was harder to describe: confusion, a sense that my identity had been disrupted, and then the medical retirement process moving ahead.

For about twelve years, I kept this mostly to myself. I feared being judged or misunderstood, and I worried about possible consequences in a military and professional culture where this is not an easy thing to say out loud. So I stayed quiet and carried it privately.

Connection with other veterans helped first. Chase has described attending a Wounded Warrior Project Project Odyssey retreat in October 2020, which opened the door to talking about what he had carried. Learning that a near-death experience community exists, including the work of IANDS, gave him language for the experience and a reason to share it.

Today the takeaway is simple and practical: love, joy, purpose, and service. That is the heart of Chase the Light: find joy, spread laughter, live with purpose, and carry more love into the world. It is a way of living and a message he shares, not a medical treatment or a substitute for care.