Recently, u/SynQ_Envy asked, “Redditors who have ‘died’ and been resuscitated, what was your experience? Did you see bright lights? Nothing? Do you remember anything about it?" And though the thread has since been removed by moderators, the responses are still incredibly eye-opening. Here's what people shared.
1. "I died of blood loss after a car accident when I was 16. I saw space. It was really peaceful. It felt like I was in a tunnel. I saw flashes of memories going by, but I couldn't focus on them. I'm 24 now, and I still have dreams about it all the time."
2. "My mother-in-law was very ill and had to have surgery, during which her heart stopped for a couple minutes, but they were able to bring her back. The next day, I went to visit her, and she told me that she was sure she had died whilst they were operating on her because she somehow watched them do the surgery in an out-of-body experience and had a conversation with her deceased father."
3. "Not me, but my grandfather quite recently. He told us he walked in his old house and saw his mother doing dishes or something. When his mother saw him, she said, 'What are you doing here? You are not supposed to be here yet!' And then he woke up."
4. "I was dying due to a pregnancy complication, but managed to come back after being in a coma for three days after my son was born. I didn’t see any bright lights or anything. What I did experience though was a feeling of calmness and no pain. I had at least five medical staff around my hospital bed discussing how to treat me, and I felt like I could hear each one of them so clearly. They said I was only given minutes to live at that point."
5. "It was like a warmth at one point, then just black nothingness. It was very peaceful."
6. "I was 7 years old when I was in a head-on collision with a semi-truck. I remember having an out-of-body experience where I spoke with a presence or something on the other side, and it told me I wasn’t done yet. I woke up a month later from a coma with that as the last thing I remember before going dark."
7. "I was 17, and my dad had died two years earlier. I was having a diffuse pulmonary hemorrhage and had to be put under for a BAL. While I was under, I had a dream that I was standing in a hallway at the hospital, and I was on my way out the door. Then I heard my dad's voice say, 'No, don’t go that way!' and I turned around to see him. That was when I woke up in the OR. They told me I had flatlined during the procedure, but they were able to get me back quickly. I like to think my dad saved my life that day."
8. "When I was 3 years old, I had my second open-heart surgery. I guess I got too into the anesthetics, and I stopped breathing. I still have some memories of my time in the hospital, but not of 'dying.' I guess if you die in your sleep, you just never notice."
9. "I knew a guy who got into a car accident, got rushed into surgery, and died on the table. He was looking down on himself and the team working to revive him when he noticed the music playing in the room, the doctor's bald spot, and heard everything they were talking about."
"When they brought him back to life and stabilized him, the doctor came to see him. He told the doctor, 'I was watching you when I was dead on the table.' The doctor brushed it off, but the guy told him, 'I'll prove it. When I was dead, the speakers were playing Metallica, and I saw you have a bald spot on the top of your head.' The doctor was tall, and the bald spot was at the back of his head, so the guy couldn't have seen it. The doctor was shocked when he identified the music and his bald spot."
10. "It felt like being stuck in TV static while being dragged underwater by powerful waves. I remember trying to grasp for the last bits of memory I had really hard, so hard that it pulled me back. Limbo was weird."
11. "My fifth grade teacher recalled the story of the time in his life when he had blood cancer (don't remember which type) and he became gravely ill. He rapidly declined, and they brought him to the hospital where they performed some sort of surgery to stabilize him. During surgery, he flatlined: He had absolutely no pulse; he was dead — and the next thing he knew, he was floating above the surgeons, nurses, and technicians. He could see everything they were doing and heard what they were saying. He described the experience as surreal, but peaceful, with full cognitive ability."
12. "My uncle got shot and temporarily died in the hospital. He said that when he died, he was walking around in the sky and heard trumpets…but he didn't see anyone else around. He woke up and said there is definitely an afterlife."
13. "My near death experience happened when I was 29. I remember driving in my '79 Camaro, the one I got when I was 16, just cruising down this beautiful highway. I heard a voice calling names, and then all of a sudden, I was jolted back into agonizing pain."
14. "I've died twice with the same experience both times. It felt like that twilight between consciousness and sleep; I remember it being dark and feeling like I was floating. In both instances, I was self-aware and knew something important had happened, but I wasn’t quite sure what. To this day I take that to mean that there is something that happens after we die."
15. "I went into cardiac arrest when I was 16, and I remember walking down a dark, cold tunnel until it came to an opening. Beyond the opening was just empty, and as I stepped in, I noticed a light."
"When I looked over, candles started to light up over a replica of the Christ the Redeemer statue from Brazil. As I walked towards it, a voice told me to throw a rock at it and gave me a rock. I thought for a moment and imagined the statue collapsing in ruins as my rock hit it, so I refused and walked away. Just then, I heard voices calling me, and I looked up to see all my school friends standing at the opening I came in through. I walked back to them."
16. "I nearly drowned when I was 5 years old. I remember it still as clear as day: I fell in and began to panic. I tried to scream and struggle, but then everything went calm and quiet and slowed right down. I remember thinking, 'I am about to die now,' but it was calm, and I felt okay about it. No lights or seeing anything special, just a divine calm and a feeling of being okay."
17. "Black darkness. Nothing. Like turning off a television. Then turning it back on, time no longer known...so much time had elapsed between turning off and back on."
18. "It was all dark with a pinhole of light in the center, like a long tunnel. As time went on, the light progressed from pinhole-size to encapsulate me — it felt like walking out of the tunnel into the whitest sunlight ever, but I didn't shy away or hide my eyes from it. It was just warm and bright. Then, I heard unfamiliar voices, and it suddenly became the room I was in with doctors saving me."
19. "My grandmother described her near death experience to me in great detail. When her heart stopped, she had an extremely out-of-body experience where she kept falling into an endless void with strong winds for a long, undetermined amount of time. When she'd been resuscitated, it felt like the void suddenly reversed itself and got stronger as she was pulled back into her body. During that entire time, she didn't feel anything in the void except darkness. She couldn't see, but she could hear voices from afar."
20. "There was darkness, but it had a soft, bluish glow. What seemed to be a person appeared and reassured me. A few times since then, I could have sworn I saw his shadow out of the corner of my eye...just for a brief moment. Every time I kind of see that shadow, some bullshit ends up happening. I like to think he's some kind of guardian angel and shows up to reassure me in times of great strife."
21. "In 2016, I had a heart attack, and I coded three times. I remember being in a field with tall grass; trees in the background and some sort of barn nearby with a lot of junk — including an old car — in it. The sky was all orange, like sunset. Although I couldn't see anyone, I could sense that there were many people (beings?) around me. I began to focus on one person in this group, moving in closer, and I got the sense that this one was my grandfather, and I was really happy he was there. I was just about to talk with him when I woke up."
"Later, I told my wife about this dream. She reminded me that when your heart stops, you’re not sleeping but unconscious, and unconscious people don’t dream."
Have you had a near death experience? If so, please feel free to share your story in the comments.
H/T r/AskReddit
Submissions have been edited for length and/or clarity.