A woman who was pronounced dead for 11 minutes offered vivid testimony from the afterlife, insisting she had seen both heaven and hell with her own eyes.
In 2019, Charlotte Holmes of Wichita, Kansas, was undergoing a routine checkup with her cardiologist when her blood pressure suddenly spiked.
She was told she was having a stroke or was about to have a heart attack, so she was rushed to hospital, where she was put on an intravenous drip.
As medical staff rushed to save her, she began describing beautiful flowers to her husband Danny, who was by her side throughout the ordeal.
“I looked around and saw there were no flowers in that room,” Danny later told the Christian talk show The 700 Cluband added: “That’s when I knew she was not in this world.”
Charlotte’s heart had stopped; and for the next 11 minutes, she was clinically dead.
Speaking to the same television program, Charlotte, who was 68 at the time, explained: “I could see Danny standing in the corner (…). “I could see all the nurses in the room.”
“Then I opened my eyes and looked around. I could see the trees, I could see the grass. And everything swayed to the music, because everything in heaven worships God,” he added.
He then stressed that he was unable to convey what heaven was like because “[estaba] far above what we can even imagine —[por] a lot”.
The great-grandmother also stated that she was taken to heaven by angels, and stressed that she did not feel “any fear”; just “pure joy.”
Then, he said, he had begun to recognize deceased relatives, including his mother, father and sister.
“They didn’t look old, they didn’t look sick, none of them were wearing glasses. They looked like they were about 30 years old (…) and they looked very good,” he continued.
He then described the shock he had felt when, standing behind his parents, he saw a blinding light that he “knew” was God. Next to Him, she saw a little child, of whom [Dios] He informed him that he was his son.
“I lost that child. I was five and a half months pregnant. I remember they showed me the baby and told me it was a boy. Then they took him away,” he explained, adding, “When I saw this child, I said, ‘God, how is this possible?’ [Y] He told me: ‘They keep growing in the sky.’”
After this heartwarming reunion, Charlotte said God decided to show her one more thing: “the edge of hell.”
“I looked down, smelled rotting flesh, and then heard screams. After seeing the beauty of heaven, the contrast with hell is almost unbearable,” he said.
He continued: “He said, ‘I show you this to tell you, that if some of them do not change their way of life, this is where they will reside.’”
Then, he said he heard his father order him to “go back and share” what he had learned. And, suddenly, “he felt that he was returning to [su] body” and was back in the hospital bed.
Charlotte made a full recovery and was discharged two weeks later, after which she vowed to share her story with as many people as possible.
“People need hope. “They want to know that there really is something out there, they want to know that everything is okay,” he said, adding: “Heaven is much more than we can imagine. “I am so grateful to be able to look you all in the eyes and tell you with confidence that heaven does exist.”
Charlotte died four years later, at the age of 72, on November 28, 2023. She was survived by their daughter Danny, two grandchildren and a great-grandson.
Although her obituary does not mention her alleged brief time in the afterlife, it indicates that she requested that the following Bible verse be included: “God will wipe away every tear from their eyes; and there will be no more death, nor will there be any more crying, nor clamor, nor pain; for the first things passed away.”
Translation by Sara Pignatiello
