Woman 'walked from hell to heaven' during near-death coma

A woman claims that she walked through hell to meet God in heaven during a three-week coma. Speaking on the DEAD Talks Podcast, Kathy McDaniel shared how she was placed on a ventilator for lung failure caused by a particularly severe strain of flu in 1999 and fought for her life.

After recovering, she claimed to have found herself in a place she could only describe as hell. She remembers the experience vividly, even decades later, and shares her story to validate others who have near-death experiences.

Sharing her story with the podcast, she claimed her memory of what happened was still "as crisp as could be". She went on to say: "To me, proves it happened not in my brain but in my soul - and you can't turn the soul off."

The mom was raised Catholic, having spent her childhood in Catholic schools and spending Sunday at church. But through life struggles and traumas, including divorce and the death of a baby, Kathy began to doubt her faith in God.

She said: "I'm a nice person, why does this stuff keep happening to me?" She contracted an aggressive strain of flu after taking care of a terminally ill friend in Seattle.

She told the podcast: "I was coughing up blood... I could feel my life force draining out through my feet." A doctor diagnosed Kathy with ARDS - known fully as acute respiratory distress syndrome - which is a life-threatening illness that can happen when your lungs are not working properly.

The then 53-year-old was put into a drug-induced coma and given a 38% chance of surviving the condition. After a while, Kathy had her experience that 'lives with her to this day'.

Kathy said she 'woke up' in a "totally dark place". She described seeing an eerie "reddish glow" that she thought at first was a sunrise. However, she claimed this developed into a "pretty but weird" swirling fog and it started getting "a little too warm" and it began to smell "really bad".

She said: "Then this voice just boomed out, scared me half to death and it said 'do you know where you are'. I'm thinking, and the only thing I can come up with is hell.

"The voice did this maniacal laugh and I just ran into the darkness. I didn't care if I hit a wall, fell in a ditch, that thing was going to get me so I kept running."

Then, things took a turn, as Kathy found herself being transported to different strange places like a destroyed city with toppling buildings and a warzone before being met by what she describes as "a demon" who offered her a "way out" if she completed a simple gardening task.

Kathy claims she "had no better offers" when she was handed "children's scissors" and told to cut down seven-foot-tall blackberry bushes that would keep growing back. She then spent a lot of time walking along a dirt road, with nothing around but the occasional pile of rocks. The whole time, Kathy claimed she had "no idea [she] was dead."

Kathy told the podcast host she never flatlined at any point, meaning there was no physical death involved. But, she said: "It's very common, and is accepted now in the groups that I belong to, that if you're in a coma, your consciousness can wander off.

She said: "I started off in hell but ended up in the presence of God. During her experience, Kathy claims to have found "an architect's book" with a plan.

She said: "It was halfway open and I thought they were telling me something. I remember saying, 'that's going to be too hard' and then I saw my friend who had died the month before."

She claimed that he had reversed in age from 53 to 35 and looked nothing like he did on his deathbed. Kathy explained: "If he's dead, and I'm standing next to him, I must be dead too."

Her friend told her she had "too much left to do" and it wasn't long afterwards that she was "welcomed back to Earth". Kathy shared that people who hear her story often deny it, believing that they "don't want it to happen to them".