Dr Mary Neal, an orthopaedic spine surgeon, claims she visited the afterlife after drowning for 30 minutes during a kayaking accident in Chile in 1999. She was trapped underwater at the bottom of a waterfall and went 24 minutes without oxygen before being resuscitated.
Before regaining consciousness, she described embarking on the 'most wonderful adventure' of her life, reaching heaven and undergoing a life review. She said she was greeted with joy and felt an overwhelming sense of being home, where she was completely valued and loved.
Dr Neal claimed she was guided along a pathway and spent hours beside a 'great dome structure', from which she observed her own rescue. She was given a 'to-do list' of work she still had to do, which included the prophecy that her son would die. At the time, her son Willy was a healthy nine-year-old.
Tragically, a decade after her accident, Willy, aged 18, was struck and killed by a driver distracted by a mobile phone. The incident occurred just as Dr Neal completed the final draft of her debut book about her ordeal.
Despite her heartbreak, she found solace in the belief that her son was in heaven. She continues to work in medicine and shares her story publicly.
