A person named Carolyn was clinically dead, meaning her heart stopped beating, during complications through childbirth. During her temporary death, Carolyn believes she saw a tunnel of pure light. The tunnel apparently led to tranquillity, where Carolyn believes she communicated with a higher power.
Carolyn wrote on the Near Death Experience Research Foundation: “I remember being in a tunnel and seeing an unbelievably bright, white light. It was everywhere.
“Everything in the light was so beautiful and colourful. It’s very hard to describe.
“I’ll never forget the feeling of peace and calmness. It was like the most unreal feeling of love and tranquillity.
“It was like nothing I have ever felt before or since my experience.
“I don’t remember how it was spoken or directed to me that I had to go back and could not stay.
“I remember repeatedly begging to stay in that peaceful, state of tranquillity. I didn’t want to leave.
“Anyone that knows me, knows that I love my life and my family.
“I wouldn’t have wanted to leave either one. The only way to explain this discrepancy is that I was in a place of the most awesome beauty, the feelings were so strong; I was in the middle of all that is perfect, wonderful, peaceful, and full of love.
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“I was willing to give up all my worldly life and stay there. It is very hard to believe, but I did experience it all.”
Suddenly, Carolyn was back in her body, and she is now convinced God is real.
She said: “Today and every day, I do thank God for my life and my blessings. I only hope that he is not disappointed that he sent me back.”
However, some researchers believe Carolyn’s experience is not necessarily a sign of God, but more a natural phenomenon associated with death.
Dr Sam Parnia, director of critical care and resuscitation research at NYU Langone School of Medicine in New York City, said: “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.”