
When I moved to Los Angeles in 2008 I was going through a phase in my life where I had just finished some intense years of University study . I had also just gone through about 8 years of intense study and revelation about my faith. Moving to Los Angeles was like a vacation phase from all my studies. Los Angeles is where I met Ray Landicho.
I’m telling this story as a way to let people know that G_d can use people you’d least expect, even people who do not believe. I say that because Ray Landicho is a homosexual who does not believe in the Bible and he is very quick to denounce anyone who does. While Ray Landicho may not believe it was an experience I had in 20__ that involved Ray Landicho the super charged my faith.
I was working as a therapeutic massage therapist in Los Angeles when Ray contacted me about services. As with all clients I did a lengthy phone interview to assess the issues the client had that could benefit from massage. It was during this interview that something out of the ordinary happened that had never happened before in my years as a therapist. The interview became a conversation between two people and Ray never actually became a massage client. He instead became a friend that had an interest in many subjects of a higher level than average people talk about, and that’s how we clicked.
Ray was a nurse so obviously being a very caring person was in his nature. We were both in professions where we helped others heal. Our friendship developed over a period of months and then one day Ray fell ill with some respiratory illness. He said he’d really been feeling bad and had an appointment on Thursday and the doctor was going to do an MRI of his lungs after diagnosing him with Desert Fever aka coccidioidomycosis. When I didn’t hear from Ray after his MRI I became very concerned leaving message after message on his phone. Finally, a few days later I received a phone call from his phone from a woman claiming to be his best friend. She told me Ray had gone for his lung MRI and while it was taking place one of his lungs collapsed and he was taken to the ICU and had been into a drug-induced coma and they didn’t know if he was going to live or not.
Ray did not return to consciousness after the drug-induced coma wore off and he remained in a comatose state on life support for nearly a month. It was relayed to me that the family was making the decision whether or not to remove life support and allow him to pass. Nobody had been in contact with Ray’s co-workers to keep them informed so I took it upon myself to call the nurses station where he worked and let his co-workers at Los Angeles Children’s hospital know his condition and asked for prayers for his recovery.
Ray’s friend told me the family had decided upon medical advice to disconnect the life support the next day after all the family had come to say their goodbyes. I went to bed that night with such grief knowing Ray was going to die. It was 1:04am when I was awoken from my sleep hearing Ray’s voice call my name loudly twice. I sat up in bed rather freaked out because there was no mistaking Ray’s voice. Anybody who know’s Ray knows he has a very distinctive voice. I sat up on one elbow in bed and suddenly I felt something hit the bottom of my feet twice and I shrieked, “Oh,shit!” and yanked my feet away from the end of the bed. Nothing else happened. Immediately I wondered if Ray had passed and this was his way of saying goodbye to me? There is more to this story and I didn’t speak of it for some obvious reasons, but give me a minute and I’ll tell you the rest of the details of what happened during this experience.
The next morning I called to check on Ray and his friend said he had passed. I wanted to know about funeral arrangements, but she said it was already decided it would be a family-only funeral. So, I never got to say goodbye and I didn’t get to go to his funeral. I realized I had to share the sad news with his co-workers at Los Angeles Children’s Hospital and so I made that call that everyone hates to make.
It was about a week after Ray’s death that some friends of mine from Las Vegas were in town and wanted to so something to help me feel better so they took me out to the Universal Studios theme park. It was while exiting one of the rides through the gift shop trap that I had another supernatural experience with Ray. As we were passing through the shop I saw a white stuffed animal bear holding a blue heart that had the words written on it “Wish you were here!”. My heart sank because I immediately thought of Ray and said in my mind, “I wish you were here, Ray.” That very moment I audibly (not in my head) heard Ray’s voice say, “I am here!”
The next months were very difficult for me. These two supernatural experiences with Ray and mourning his death had taken me down into a bad depression. I remember one night my phone rang and when I looked at it the caller ID said, “Ray Landicho” calling and I shrieked as horror raced through my body. I returned to calm thinking perhaps Ray’s friend still had his phone and had dialed my number by mistake.
A couple months later there was a voicemail on my phone. It was from Ray’s number and I wondered what it could be about. Maybe his friend felt bad for me and she was going to let me know where he was buried so I could visit his grave, at least. I opened the voicemail and what a heard devastated me. It was Ray leaving me a short message to say he hadn’t died and he couldn’t talk to me now, but he’d tell me what happened soon. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. I wasn’t imagining it was Ray’s voice. It was really him and he was really alive, but how??? When we talked the next day he explained that his family was religious and were concerned about him possibly dying as an unrepentant homosexual and going to hell and they didn’t want anything to do with any of his friends who accepted his lifestyle and that’s why they told me he died, just to get me off their backs. I wanted to come see him in the hospital and they didn’t want that.
He explained that after he woke from the coma and found out what they had done telling me he had died, the damage had already been done and he didn’t know how it would be possible for him to now contact me and tell me he was alive. He said it wasn’t until he read on my website how depressed I had become and was even having suicidal thoughts because of his death that he knew he had to contact me to right a wrong before another wrong happened and he would feel I killed myself over the grief of his death.
So, that was his explanation. What was I to do or say? What would you do if someone you cared about allowed you to believe they were dead and then out of guilt and fear that you might commit suicide because you are so depressed that they finally come forward so you don’t commit suicide? Very unusual situation, and I was in shock about the whole thing, but was handling it well and so Ray and I went out to get some dinner and he filled me in on all the details.
What kind of friend does something like this to another friend? Ray was let go from Los Angeles Children’s Hospital for faking his death and he blamed that on me. He felt I had no right to tell his co-workers that I’d been told he died. I’m not even gonna try to comment or explain that one except for I think I did what any caring person would have done for friends of a deceased person.
Now, I’ll get to that part of the story I held off telling a few paragraph’s back. I never told Ray about this because he doesn’t believe in the Bible so why bother I thought. That night I was awakened hearing him call my name twice I picked up my cell phone off the nightstand because I wanted to write myself a note about what had just happened so I didn’t go back to sleep and think it had all been a dream, or worse, forget all that had just happened. So, I was awakened by hearing Ray calling my name twice and when I sat up in bed then something hit the bottom of my feet twice. I’d describe like someone swatted the bottom of my feet with a broom. I thought that was a really strange thing to happen, but I was later to find out it had a certain significance. At that same moment I heard Ray’s voice calling out to me, “Please help me! I’m on my way to hell!”
That was the extra part I never told Ray about because if someone doesn’t believe in G_d or Hell or anything like then there is never going to be anything you can say to convince them. I don’t think Ray wanted to believe the other parts of the story either so why give him an excuse to be mean to me when he’d already devastated me about as much as anybody ever could by allowing me to believe he was dead. He later told me that when he first awoke from coma he wanted to contact right away and set the record straight, but then when he heard that Los Angeles Children’s Hospital had fired him for faking his own death he blamed me for that happening and decided he’d not right the wrong. It was only when he began feeling guilty about if I would commit suicide that he felt he had to tell me the truth.
I’ve tried to talk about faith with Ray since that time, but he was very quick to cut me off with letting me know he has his own relationship with a god that accepts him as homosexual. Well, that’s not the G_d of the Bible. Ray began a very cruel personal attack against me and my faith and I wanted to tell him that when he must have been having that near death experience or whatever it was, perhaps astral travel, that he knew he was on his way to hell for eternity and was pleading for help. When I talked about him contacting me he said he had no memories at all from when he was in the coma. That’s a shame. He’s never gonna know that whatever god he is believing in is taking him straight to hell when he dies for being a homosexual.
Coincidentally, I know a lot of people who know Ray and they are shocked when I tell them what Ray did to me. All I can see there are a lot of evil people in this world that hide a lot of pain and issues behind a smile. I had always known Ray to be very kind, but I found out he also has a very vicious and hateful side too. The personal attack he made on me for a health issue I was born with was so cruel and unforgivable. When he said those things to me I offered no reaction other than just walking away to never talk to him again.
So, that’s the whole story. Ray letting me know he was on his way to hell was a wake-up call for me. It helped me clean my life up and even though what he did to me was so horrible at least there was a silver lining in it for me.