“I had a near death experience in which I was ejected from an automobile. When I regained consciousness, a man came to me and said everyone survived. The man was there before any paramedics arrived, the craziest part of it all was that looking at that man gave me the most powerful sensation of deja vu ever. Maybe I hit my head too hard, but it was an insane experience, it was as if I have seen that man before.”

“My dad says he had a classic near death experience several years before I was born. It was from very severe food poisoning. He saw the blinding white light at the end of the tunnel and loved ones who had long since died. There was a barrier between him and them that he really wanted to cross, but they told him to turn back because it was not his time to go. He says the entire time he felt an indescribable feeling of love and peace and he did not want to leave. I don’t know if what my dad experienced is anything more than a surge of chemicals in the brain as it shuts down, but I trust his feelings are genuine and that he wouldn’t make something like this up. He says it has completely removed his fear of dying.”

“My mom’s heart stopped during surgery. She said the only thing she remembers is being in a field of flowers.”

“I attempted suicide a few years ago by hanging myself with an extension cord. I had no pulse when the police arrived but nobody is really sure how long I was up there. I was resuscitated in the ambulance but was in a coma for a little under 2 weeks. Anyway, all I remember is a feeling similar to general anesthesia once I jumped off the table, but for the 5 seconds before it went black, I was in total panic and had a total change of heart from the confidence in my decision to end it seconds before. And then it was just… nothing. Like a deep sleep. And when I finally awoke from the coma, it was like finally reaching the surface of pool after diving too deep. I was in the same panic that I was immediately after I jumped from my table. Like I just blinked instead of being knocked out for 2 weeks. So to answer your question, I don’t remember anything at all. It was like being in a deep, dreamless sleep. Perhaps if I regained consciousness immediately after being resuscitated, I’d remember something more interesting, but yea “nothing” is about all I can offer.”

“My former football coach had a heat attack on the field and was dead for 15 minutes. We were talking to him and someone finally asked what it was like to be dead, he replied with saying that he remembers a whole lot of nothing. He didn’t have amnesia or anything there was nothing around. He did say it was the most peaceful moment of his life. Going off this I kinda think its like Inception where you build the world that you inhabit.”

“My aunt had an experience like this wen she was 18. She always suffered of chronicle seizures that made her pass out. One day, she had one while no was around, she was later found by my grandmother. The doctors luckily arrived in time to resuscitated her. She explained that she was in brightest most peaceful hallway. She wandered aimlessly through it, until she found a massive door closed on one end. She told my grandmother that she tried as hard as she could to open the door. Tapping, slamming, even kicking it would not allowed the doors to break free. She looked back to see the back of the corridor gone, replaced with an emergency room. She was lying on stretcher while multiple nurses/doctor where frantically working to revive her. She gave up on the door, turn around and led for the surgery room. She inevitably reached the room, and reentered her body.”

“It was weird. I left my body and moved up through the ceiling in the ICU. I moved through some walls and then back down, under my body and reentered myself from below. When I wasn’t looking at anything in the hospital I could also see a large, dark/black space with slivers of pulsing color that seemed to be on the edges of shapes. So I could see the hospital and also this dark “world” at the same time. Dunno if I was hallucinating or not.”

“Growing up, my father used to tell me of an experience he had while having open heart surgery. The doctors had to stop his heart for about 20 or 30 minutes while they inserted a mechanical valve into his heart. At the time, he was in his early 20s and was involved in a lot of bad activity that he says he is ashamed of now. Anyway, while my dad was “dead” he said he was in a very dark place and as he wandered around, he started running into very scary people who were deformed and screaming at him. He ran for his life into a corner and hid. And just before the people got to him, he looked up and saw his deceased grandmother reach her hand down and grab him. The next thing my dad remembered, he was back in the hospital. He’s convinced he was temporarily in hell. I don’t know if this was just a dream state or something but I’ve never seen my dad so convinced in his life. It was enough for him to turn his life around and turn to religion and more importantly, come back to his family that he had left behind.”

“Not me, but a friend of mine overdosed one day while doing some stuff with his friend. The friend hadn’t done anything yet so he wasn’t imagining all of the signs of death on this guy (no pulse, cold skin, blue lips). My friend told me that those few minutes he was considered dead he saw nothing but white. Everything around him was bright white and in the distance was a dark shadowed tree. He then saw a woman, also dark and shadowed, so he wasn’t able to see her face. But her presence made him happy. She held out her hand to him and for a while he debated whether or not he should go with her. He decided not to and she simply walked away. Then he woke up again. Before that event he defined himself as catholic but was never really religious. Afterwards he turned his life around and started devoting himself to helping others.”

“When I was twelve I drowned in the gulf of Mexico. I was out pretty far from my family and the current picked up into a rip. I had always been a very strong swimmer and I knew what to do: swim parallel. On this occasion I wore myself out and started to sink beneath the water. I remember struggling to breathe. Then, I took a big breath of water and everything stopped. The only way I can describe it is by saying it was being at Zero. I wasn’t scared or excited. I was just Zero. I was looking through the water and I blacked out. During that time, my mother was swimming out to me (she’d been a surfer all her life) and pulled me to shore and gave me CPR until I coughed up water. There was something eerily comforting about being at Zero.”

“My friend went hiking with his family and he fell a few feet off a cliff they we’re climbing and he hit the back of his head on a rock. They called an ambulance and when they finally arrived to the hospital he was pronounced dead. He had no heart beat or any brain waves. They were already unplugging everything and moving on with all the paper work when he suddenly woke up the nurse screamed “he’s awake!” and then chaos ensued all over again. He was dead for about 7 minutes and he says the entire time he was laying down fully conscious in a really dark room. (he calls it a room but doesn’t really know). He said he couldn’t tell how long it was but that suddenly he heard a sound like if someone snapped their fingers next to his ear and then he woke up in the hospital. The experience didnt make him religious either.”

“I saw a field, with tree’s on both sides. I could see water, I felt like there was an ocean on one side of the path. If you can imagine the fields that electrical lines go through…where there is no residents and they just clear the area for the power lines …it was like that. There was a tree in the middle and a well worn path around it. I was walking the path…it looked like an oak tree…it was very large, and presence came to walk with me. I told it that I was ill and that this seemed like a nice place. The entity (I’m non religious so I don’t know what it “was”) told me that I was not done and that I should return. That I would be happy one day. It was so peaceful, beautiful, but the forest seemed…dark and scary. The tree’s on both sides seemed a place I did not want to go, I only wanted to go toward the water. Then I saw a bright light and I woke up in the ICU. I hope this doesn’t turn into some kind of religious debate or some kind of medical versus spirituality thing. This was my experience. Take it as that.”

“I kicked it, then came back. The how does not matter, but what does is what I saw in the interim. As cliche as it may seem, I saw a brilliant light, and walked into it. Inside, I saw my childhood home and my recently departed grandmother. We talked awhile and then she asked me a question that hit me like a ton of bricks: “are you doing something that matters with your life?”. When I was resuscitated, I came back in an abject panic, but the most pressing thing that was in my mind was the realization that if I had died at that moment, I would have left the world worse off for having me in it. Back then I was a pretty shitty person to a lot of people and caused much more harm than good. After this, I decided to change who I was and make life a little kinder. I now work as counselor working with traumatized children who have experienced abuse, and I have never been happier. I guess I just needed to die to be reborn.”