After suffering a bilateral pulmonary embolism – which is where a blood clot gets lodged in the lungs – the woman, identified only as KC, slipped away before paramedics arrived. Although her heart had only stopped for a few minutes, the woman said it felt like an eternity. During this time, KC, who wrote on the Near Death Experience Research Foundation (NDERF) website, said she felt euphoric and absent from all the worldly pains.
KC added she felt as if she was on stage, where she received a round of applause.
She wrote on NDERF: “I heard something similar to applause, or perhaps white noise. It was a muffled sound and hard to tell.
“I don’t recall seeing anything terribly specific. What I do remember, and will remember for the rest of my life, is the feeling of euphoria that I experienced before I regained consciousness.
“It was as if the entire balance of my world was obliterated. I felt free and happy.
“I felt all the complexities, that are inherently connected with living organism in this world, simply melt away. I remember looking down.
“It looked as though I was on a stage with lights lining the edge on the ‘stage.’ I think I remember seeing the light at my feet, slowly turn into wood.
“The sound was pure static. I wasn’t confused or scared by it.”
Paramedics arrived in time to save her life, but KC said the experience will live with her forever.
Some researchers, however, said these visions are normal phenomenon and not necessarily a sign of an afterlife.
Dr Sam Parnia, director of critical care and resuscitation research at NYU Langone School of Medicine in New York City, told a recent 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 said 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.