A man who only introduced himself as Edward believes he visited the afterlife after suffering a heart attack in 2012. According to Edwards’s account, he was in midtown Manhattan Park, New York, when his heart began to hurt and he found it difficult to breathe. After he laid down on the grass, he felt a strong and painful force pulling down on him.
Edward said: “It felt as if it was trying to drag me to hell. But It seemed a million times stronger than gravity itself.
“I started fighting this force by moving my body/soul left to right and trying to escape from its grip.
“I noticed that the more I fought this force, the more the pain increased. The pain was unbearable.”
It was then he realised he had died and had entered a “spirit realm”.
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In the UK, the NHS does not consider NDEs to be genuine cases of a person dying.
The NHS said: “A more accepted definition of death is when brain stem death occurs, which is when all neural activity in the deepest brain ceases.
“While it is possible to keep the heart functioning using life support systems, a person with brain stem death has permanently lost the potential for consciousness.
“The existence of an ‘afterlife’ remains a matter of belief, not scientific proof.”