A woman who was pronounced dead for 11 minutes has offered a vivid account of the afterlife, insisting that she’s seen both heaven and hell with her own eyes.
In 2019, Charlotte Holmes of Wichita, Kansas, was having a routine checkup with her cardiologist when her blood pressure suddenly spiked.
She was told that she was either having a stroke or was about to have a heart attack and so was rushed to hospital where she was placed on an intravenous drip.
As medical staff rushed to save her, she started describing beautiful flowers to her husband Danny, who was by her side throughout the ordeal.
“Well, I looked around, and I knew there were no flowers in that room,” Danny later told Christian chat show The 700 Club. “That’s when I knew she was not in this world.”
It turns out, Charlotte’ s heart had stopped. And for the next 11 minutes, she was clinically dead.
Speaking to the same TV show, Charlotte, who was then aged 68, recalled: “I could see Danny standing in the corner […] I could see all the nurses around.
“Then I opened my eyes, I looked around at the beauty. I could see the trees, I could see the grass. And everything was swaying with the music, because everything in heaven worships God.”
She then stressed that she was unable to convey “what heaven looked like” because “it’s so above what we can even imagine – [by] a million times, a million times”.
The great-grandmother claimed that she was led into heaven by angels, and stressed that she felt “no fear” only “pure joy”.
Then, she said, she began to recognise deceased family members, including her mother, father and sister.
“See, they didn’t look old, they didn’t look sick, none of them wore glasses,” she continued. “They looked like they were in their 30s […] They looked wonderful.”
She then explained the shock she felt when, standing behind her mum and dad, she saw a blindingly bright light which she “knew” to be God. Alongside Him, she saw a toddler, whom “[her Heavenly Father]” informed her was her son.
“I lost that child,” she explained. “I was five-and-a-half months pregnant. I can remember them holding the baby up and saying, Charlotte, it’s a boy. Then he was gone.
“So when I [saw] this toddler, I said, ‘God, how is that possible?’ [And] he says, ‘They continue to grow in heaven’.”
Following this heartwarming reunion, Charlotte said God chose to show her one more thing: “the edge of hell.”
“I looked down, and the smell, and then rotten flesh – that’s what it smelled like – and then screams,” she recounted. “After seeing the beauty of heaven, the contrast to seeing hell is almost unbearable.”
She continued: “And He says, ‘I show you this to tell you, if some of them do not change their ways, this is where they shall reside”.”
Then, she said she heard her father instruct her to “to go back and share” what she’d learnt. And, suddenly, she “felt [herself] being drawn back into [her] body” and was back in her hospital bed.
Charlotte made a full recovery and was released from hospital two weeks later, after which she did her utmost to share her story with as many people as possible.
“People need hope,” she said. “They want to know that there really is something out there, they want to know that everything’s OK.”
She continued: “Heaven is more than you can imagine. I’m so grateful I can look you square in the eye and tell you for sure, heaven is real.”
Charlotte died four years later, at the age of 72, on 28 November, 2023. She was survived by Danny, their daughter, two grandkids and one great grandson.
Whilst her obituary makes no mention of her alleged brief tour of the afterlife, it notes that she requested the following verse from the bible to be included: “He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain any more, for the former things have passed away. ”
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