Gravely ill in hospital, Jess Burges felt only goodwill from beyond. Then he got the message. Photo / Jess Burges
Death doesn’t scare Kelvin Cruickshank. The Kiwi medium says having spent most of his life interacting with the spirits of those who have died means he knows there’s nothing to fear about “crossing over”.
But after technically dying during the second of two massive heart attacks he suffered earlier this year, he’s relieved doctors were able to revive him, despite experiencing “the bliss of the other side”.
He says, “There’s still a lot I want to do. It wasn’t my time to go.”
Kelvin, who appeared on the TV show Sensing Murder, had been “feeling off” for some time, but put symptoms such as breathlessness and extreme fatigue down to work stress, lack of sleep and too much coffee. Then in the weeks leading up to his heart attacks, he had a couple of bouts of chest pain and sought medical advice.
“I saw a doctor – not my usual GP, someone else – and my blood pressure was through the roof. He gave me a pill, told me it was stress and said I should get counselling,” says Kelvin, 54. “It turned out to be a bit more than that.”
The dad of two, who lives in the Bay of Islands, travels the country doing shows, which involve passing on messages from spirit to family and friends in the audience. In June, he was at a motel in South Auckland, ironing a shirt to wear for his function that evening in Papakura, when he suddenly had severe chest pain that felt like “being smashed in the chest with a sledgehammer”.
Luckily, Kelvin – who also does a lot of behind-the-scenes work with people experiencing the loss of loved ones – was not alone. His Auckland-based PA Gemma Cappel had popped in to see him at the motel, instead of driving straight to the theatre as she usually did.
“Thank God Gemma was there to call the ambulance because I couldn’t have done it,” admits Kelvin. “I couldn’t speak. I was in and out of consciousness, struggling to breathe.”
The ambulance crew took him to Middlemore Hospital, where he had a second heart attack. He’s been told he only survived that one thanks to being in hospital, where doctors were able to act quickly to restart his heart.
“This time, it was like I was whacked by a cricket bat,” recalls Kelvin. “I was gone. It was dark and quiet and peaceful, and there was a light in the distance.
“There was no suffering, no pain. There was just this feeling of bliss and it was so good. I thought, ‘Oh, this is nice.’
“And then I heard my good friend Vicki Walsh, who died a few years ago, giving me a growling. I couldn’t see her – I just heard her saying, ‘What are you doing here? Go back.’”
Kelvin gets emotional as he describes seeing his dad Les, who died last year.
“He was pointing his finger at me and saying, ‘Not yet, son.’ Next thing I knew, I was in the hospital and there was a doctor banging on my chest.”
He was then transferred to Auckland City Hospital, where a surgeon inserted stents to open up two arteries in his heart that had collapsed and were 96% closed.
Kelvin’s recovery has been gradual and he felt weak for a long time. Used to doing 20km tramps through the bush, it took weeks to be able to walk 50m to his letterbox.
“It’s also hard to deal with mentally, going through all of this,” he shares.
The experience has made Kelvin rethink how he does things. He’s back doing shows around the country, but plans to do fewer tours in future and will start offering online classes to help people develop their spiritual awareness.
He’ll still go ahead with a trip to Los Angeles this month for the launch of TV show Voices From the Grave, which he filmed in the US over nine years. He’ll be working on more episodes in which paranormal experts join with a forensic detective to investigate infamous crimes in LA.
In the meantime, Kelvin is grateful to the healthcare workers involved in his treatment and thankful he was in the right place at the right time.
“If Gemma hadn’t been there, if I hadn’t been in hospital when the second one hit, if it had happened two weeks earlier when I was in the bush or a week earlier when I was on my boat fishing... I would not be here,” he says, adding, “It’s great over there, but I’m happy I got sent back.”
Voices From The Grave is available on YouTube from December 13.