Writing for the Near Death Experience Research Foundation website, the woman explained she had a severe allergic reaction when she was younger which led to heart failure. Identifying herself only as Rebecca, she said she technically died before paramedics had a change to reach her. During her brief moments in what she believes was the afterlife, Rebecca said she met an angel who was sent from God.
Rebecca wrote: “I then sensed a presence with me. The presence spoke to me in a kind and soothing female voice.
“I did not see her. She did not speak with words but with thoughts. That is the best way I can describe it.
“When I thought ‘Am I dying’ she spoke with surety and said, ‘No! that would never be asked of your parents’.”
Rebecca said her brother died a few years before. She said the angel told her it would be too much to take another child.
She continued: “The love that came from that presence that I call my angel is inexplicable. I describe it this way: Take the person that you love the most in all the world and magnify that love times a million.
“I know that I spoke to one of God’s angels. No one will ever convince me that I did not.
“There is no way she could have known and prepared me for the future not to mention the love, total kindness, complete forgiving and unconditional love.”
However, experiences like Rebecca’s are not uncommon and researchers believe they could have an explanation – hallucinations.
Dr Sam Parnia, director of critical care and resuscitation research at NYU Langone School of Medicine in New York City, told Oz Talk: “People describe a sensation of a bright, warm, welcoming light that draws people towards it.
“They describe a sensation of experiencing their deceased relatives, almost as if they have come to welcome them. They often say that they didn’t want to come back in many cases, it is so comfortable and it is like a magnet that draws them that they don’t want to come back.
“A lot of people describe a sensation of separating from themselves and watching doctors and nurses working on them.”
Dr Parnia says there are scientific explanations for the reaction, and says seeing people is not evidence of the afterlife, but more likely the brain just scanning itself as a survival technique.
He said thanks to modern technology and science “death does not have to be limited to philosophy and religion, but it can be explored through science”.
“They can hear things and record all conversations that are going on around them.”