Fact Checking Nelson's "Doors Of Death" light aircraft near death experience

[dastardly stem]

Sounds to me he wanted to tell his family a tall tale for the sake of their posterity. Sounds less disturbing a lie if his goal was to stretch the truth for family lore. Sounds like after that as he gained apostleship and more attention he and others who promoted him needed more story for praise and glory. Since it was mentioned in his obscure family book he had no way to correct it and not look the fool. Its the age old story of mounting lies. Although I'm not convinced nothing happened. I imagine the description he offers is a near impossibility with the turning off engine and just before impact turning it on to pull out of a spiraling dive.

I still find the moral of the story stupid

[Doctor CamNC4Me]

I already checked the Color Spectrum Sunday Edition on the 14th. There was no mention of any aircraft incidents. It did cover Kerr's (I don't think the spelling's right) inauguration. The article mostly covered what was in his inaugural address. It didn't mention about who gave the invocation. I went through all 22 pages of it, but could find nothing. Ditto for The Delta Newspaper, Millard County Chronicles Progress published on the 18th, 8 pages long.

This is a huge problem for Russell M. Nelson's story along with no record of an engine blowout and what is really a crash landing in a Delta, Utah farmer's field. I get we might think 1976 was ancient history and it was a bunch of aviation cowboys just damned around willy nilly, but that's simply not the case. The industry across the board would've, somewhere, had some record of this event.

So. This is where I'm at with regard to the story.

Russell M. Nelson probably took a flight to SGU for the inauguration. Probably.

Russell M. Nelson absolutely invented this story out of wholecloth. Virtually everything and everyone, except himself of course, were fictional tropes.

Russell M. Nelson couldn't possibly have known about the Internet because God doesn't offer up those kinds of portents.

He is, without a doubt a liar, embellisher, and deceiver. Unless someone can actually generate some proofs of this story it's a myth busted like Everybody Wang Chung said.

- Doc

[Gadianton]

I hope your guess is wrong.

well, it probably isn't right. there isn't much to go on here. But I like to speculate.

That’s rock star stuff already.

Yet, "The most detailed account existing of the heart surgery performed by Dr. Nelson on President Kimball when it was revealed to Nelson that Kimball would someday become the President of the Church" -regarding fhth

after all that, he still had to go and have a vision of Kimball becoming prophet.

Speaking of which, the book, and Nelson's storytelling in general, is filled with dreams and visions. I can't find the quote right now, but I believe he's mentioned that dreams are a connection point to the spirit world, which is really real.

What if he had a vivid dream of nearly crashing? I can definitely believe that, given all the flights he'd been on.

He often mentions his dreams as dreams, while then alluding to them probably also being real. He essentially claimed that he had detailed conversations with Harold B. Lee in the spirit world:

Since the passing of President Lee, I have had two very special dreams involving him. The first was in April of 1975. The substance of that message is too sacred to mention here, but it was a very reassuring and humbling experience. "The Second occurred on September 16, 1978. In the dream there were two vivid messages: first, that if President Lee had gone on living, a very severe affliction would have developed in his body which, if allowed to progress, would have given him great pain, suffering, and incapacity. The medical details of this were dreadful and distressing. He said his sudden death in December 1973 was brought about as an act of love and mercy, for the Lord wished to spare him and the Church the misery that otherwise would have ensued.

Think about what he's saying: in order to have a detailed conversation about medical minutia, it had to be real. He's saying that he was relayed the minutia of the sickness, and that he's summarizing that as dreadful and distressing, not that he got the dreamy impression that it was dreadful.

Yes, my guess is he had a vivid dream about crashing during the time he was working on the book. His tendency to organize stories by tropes retrofit the contents of the dream into nudge from the Lord to begin the book. Having been asked about the incident by family, he merged the dream with a flight to Dixie. No, I don't think in the dream the pilot said, "the halfway point; the point of no return", I think that's a prime example of adding story tropes after the fact. I don't think there was a woman screaming in the dream either. I do believe that he felt at peace in the dream as that could go either way, but in reality, he would have been terrified, even if he didn't show it.

However, if we eventually get "from heart to heart" and it has a fleshed out version of the incident, including the ominous pilot message, the woman screaming, dixie college, his thoughts of rewards and honors meaning nothing, then I'd consider my theory falsified.

[Tom]

I just ran the query for Delta, UT from '72 through the end of '81. Nothing matches. Not even close, unless you count an amphibious aircraft with two engines.

- Doc

I found a newspaper account of an amphibious plane that crashed 15 miles south of Delta on March 30, 1979. Family of four on their way to General Conference. No one was injured. Front-page news in the Millard County Chronicle (April 5, 1979). Same incident?

The June 24, 1976 issue of the Garfield County News reported that a plane made a forced landing two miles south of Hatch, Utah, after running out of fuel. The pilot attempted to land on a road, but the wind blew the plane into a pasture. Three wheels were torn off in the landing and the plane hit two sheep, killing both. No one on the plane was injured.

[Doctor CamNC4Me]

Tom,

Yeah, I think that's the one.

- Doc

[Res Ipsa]

I hope your guess is wrong.

well, it probably isn't right. there isn't much to go on here. But I like to speculate.

That’s rock star stuff already.

Yet, "The most detailed account existing of the heart surgery performed by Dr. Nelson on President Kimball when it was revealed to Nelson that Kimball would someday become the President of the Church" -regarding fhth

after all that, he still had to go and have a vision of Kimball becoming prophet.

Speaking of which, the book, and Nelson's storytelling in general, is filled with dreams and visions. I can't find the quote right now, but I believe he's mentioned that dreams are a connection point to the spirit world, which is really real.

What if he had a vivid dream of nearly crashing? I can definitely believe that, given all the flights he'd been on.

He often mentions his dreams as dreams, while then alluding to them probably also being real. He essentially claimed that he had detailed conversations with Harold B. Lee in the spirit world:

Since the passing of President Lee, I have had two very special dreams involving him. The first was in April of 1975. The substance of that message is too sacred to mention here, but it was a very reassuring and humbling experience. "The Second occurred on September 16, 1978. In the dream there were two vivid messages: first, that if President Lee had gone on living, a very severe affliction would have developed in his body which, if allowed to progress, would have given him great pain, suffering, and incapacity. The medical details of this were dreadful and distressing. He said his sudden death in December 1973 was brought about as an act of love and mercy, for the Lord wished to spare him and the Church the misery that otherwise would have ensued.

Think about what he's saying: in order to have a detailed conversation about medical minutia, it had to be real. He's saying that he was relayed the minutia of the sickness, and that he's summarizing that as dreadful and distressing, not that he got the dreamy impression that it was dreadful.

Yes, my guess is he had a vivid dream about crashing during the time he was working on the book. His tendency to organize stories by tropes retrofit the contents of the dream into nudge from the Lord to begin the book. Having been asked about the incident by family, he merged the dream with a flight to Dixie. No, I don't think in the dream the pilot said, "the halfway point; the point of no return", I think that's a prime example of adding story tropes after the fact. I don't think there was a woman screaming in the dream either. I do believe that he felt at peace in the dream as that could go either way, but in reality, he would have been terrified, even if he didn't show it.

However, if we eventually get "from heart to heart" and it has a fleshed out version of the incident, including the ominous pilot message, the woman screaming, dixie college, his thoughts of rewards and honors meaning nothing, then I'd consider my theory falsified.

I think that the story originating as a dream is a plausible scenario. Here’s a weird experience I had. I had an an insurer client. It was a National insurer, with several claim offices in the area.

I was invited to a meeting at one of the claim offices. The Superintendent asked me if I needed directions. I said I didn’t.

I knew exactly where the office was. It was in an office building right off the freeway. I’d driven past it dozens of times, each time thinking “that’s the xxxx claim office.

I went to the building for the meeting. There was no claim office. The client had never had an office there. The claim office was 30 minutes away in a building that bore no physical resemblance to the building where I thought it was located. And the actual claim office has been in the same location for as long as I had practiced law.

I was as disoriented as hell. While standing in the lobby of the wrong building, I tried to figure out why I was sure that the office was here. It seemed to me that the interior of the building looked different than I’d remembered it. Then, I realized that my recollection of having been in the building was pretty patch and a little incoherent. Dreamlike one might say.

I think what happened was that, at some point, I had a dream about going to that building to see that client. When I drove past the Building from time to time, my brain recognized the building as where the claim office was. But I didn’t recall the dream itself or recognize the information originated in a dream. So, yeah, my brain recalled something from a brain as being real.

But I don’t think a surgeon recalling a dream a including a discussion about medical details is evidence that confuses dreams with reality. Clearly, he believes that the dead can communicate in dreams. But I think that’s different than believing that the events of every dream happened in real life.

[Res Ipsa]

I already checked the Color Spectrum Sunday Edition on the 14th. There was no mention of any aircraft incidents. It did cover Kerr's (I don't think the spelling's right) inauguration. The article mostly covered what was in his inaugural address. It didn't mention about who gave the invocation. I went through all 22 pages of it, but could find nothing. Ditto for The Delta Newspaper, Millard County Chronicles Progress published on the 18th, 8 pages long.

This is a huge problem for Russell M. Nelson's story along with no record of an engine blowout and what is really a crash landing in a Delta, Utah farmer's field. I get we might think 1976 was ancient history and it was a bunch of aviation cowboys just stupid around willy nilly, but that's simply not the case. The industry across the board would've, somewhere, had some record of this event.

So. This is where I'm at with regard to the story.

Russell M. Nelson probably took a flight to SGU for the inauguration. Probably.

Russell M. Nelson absolutely invented this story out of wholecloth. Virtually everything and everyone, except himself of course, were fictional tropes.

Russell M. Nelson couldn't possibly have known about the Internet because God doesn't offer up those kinds of portents.

He is, without a doubt a liar, embellisher, and deceiver. Unless someone can actually generate some proofs of this story it's a myth busted like Everybody Wang Chung said.

- Doc

Doc, I don’t understand this concept that the existence of a trope is an indication that the story is false. They concept of trope is so broad that almost any story can be described as full of tropes. Tropes are simply conventions for human communication. Telling a story is human communication, so it’s not surprising that a story, even about true events, would include tropes.

[Everybody Wang Chung]

[Doctor CamNC4Me]

RI,

I think, and I'm speaking for myself only, is that when something smells like BS, given my life experience and age, it's BS. The story is so over the top and so perfectly suited for Russell M. Nelson's needs that it immediatley raised my hackles when I read it. All the additional investigation taking place on this thread serves to confirm my reaction. I was actually poking around hoping to find some sort of corroborating evidence because I just wanted to see if there was anything that could lend it some plausibility. There's literally nothing, outside of the story itself and possibly Russell M. Nelson being at the inauguration, which I'm still not sure of, that establishes any sort of reliable factual truth to this story.

- Doc

[kairos]

Do you think his journals were available to his biographers?
I remember in the gene cook- mick jagger brouhaha, gene was getting beaten badly in terms of whether he was lying or making it all up, when his son joined in the discussion fiercely defending his father. He claimed that all the details of the encounter with mick were in his dad’s journal and told the naysayers to just look it up.
The anti gene crowd told his son that only gene could approve access since the church had control of his journals. They asked his son to simply xerox the several pages and post them. He said no! Thus most blasted his son that his dad was a Dunn like fabricator ! Still the son would not post the pages and I don’t believe ever has!
Yet Cook still has defenders but those many who heard the story from Cook’s mouth believe it was all BS used
By Cook to embellish his own reputation as a fierce defender of the Book of Mormon/ gospel.
I do believe Nelson had a scary moment in one of his travels and he had used that to embellish his reputation as
a PSR/corporate sole no less. He will probably continue to use it! Whether he tells the gun to head robbery story I doubt it will pass correlation.