Man who claims he died for 45 minutes reveals he ‘watched his death like a movie’

A Utah man was pronounced dead for nearly an hour, during which time he entered a supernatural realm where he watched his own death.

The former bodybuilder had started a new supplement regimen, though he did not say what he was taking specifically. The substance turned out to be toxic.

He was in a restaurant when his world changed forever.

While in the restroom, he got sick and vomited. He passed out and fell unconscious, inhaling his own vomit.

‘They think I was dead for at least 30 to 45 minutes before they found me,’ he said. ‘But I was cold, like, cold to the touch.’

As paramedics worked to revive him, the man had an out-of-body experience, finding himself in a beautiful theater in front of a large screen.

There, he could see his own death from above. Only, it wasn’t him but instead a stranger in his clothes.

‘It would almost be like going to a movie, like a real movie, and seeing someone dressed like you and looking like you in the movie, but you’re like, ‘That’s not me because I’m over here watching the movie,”’ he said.

A divine voice apparently inspired a paramedic to open up the body bag and continue working to successfully revive the man.

An estimated five to 10 percent of Americans have near-death experiences at one point in their lives.

The man described watching his demise from above at first, the camera zooming out from a prone body. But it wasn’t him.

He said: ‘What’s weird is it didn’t feel like it was me at all. Even though I was sitting there looking at my own dead body, I couldn’t recognize it.

‘I had no idea I was watching was my own death.’

He described hearing the thoughts of the restaurant staff, from diners and hostesses to cooks, ‘which was so odd to me.’

‘My background actually was TV and film, and so as I was watching this I though that was such an odd choice for the director to think that he needed to overplay all these thoughts of everyone in the room.

‘And I kept thinking, this is a weird movie.’

He watched restaurant workers and paramedics discover the body and bag it. 

As they pulled away from the scene in an ambulance, he could hear the voice of a rookie medic nearby berating himself for not trying harder or enlisting help from veteran medics.

‘And as he was doing that, I actually saw light, a real light, start glowing from inside this rookie medic. And it felt as if someone put a light bulb inside his shirt and light was coming out of his heart space,’ the man said.

‘And out of nowhere, this really strong voice says “This one’s not dead.”’

The man heard the medic’s inner monologue telling him the voice was just his imagination and shrugged it off. But then the voice boomed the statement again.

The light got brighter and brighter, engulfing his entire upper body in a glow.

The medic heard the voice, the man said, because he jumped up, unzipped the body bag, and resumed attempting to revive the man – breaking protocol.

The medic scrambled to find a pulse but couldn’t. Yet he felt on the inside of his leg near his femur a spark, ‘and that was enough for him.’

The man did not realize he was witnessing his own death until paramedics lifted his body from the ambulance to the hospital. As doctors strapped is convulsing body to the gurney, the man felt the straps trap him to his movie theater seat.

‘How come I can’t move my arms?’ he asked himself. ‘And that’s when I realized that what I’ve been watching was me.’

The man was revived and left to reckon with his glimpse into the afterlife.

Most people with NDEs describe them as taking different forms. These often include an out-of-body sensation, where they observe their physical form from an external vantage point.

Many describe traversing a tunnel toward a radiant light, encountering departed loved ones or benevolent beings, and gaining profound, expansive awareness.

Some undergo a vivid life review, in which they not only revisit past actions but also empathetically perceive the emotional impact – both positive and negative – their choices had on others.

Doctors began collecting accounts of near-death experiences in the 1970s after Raymond A Moody’s book Life After Life debuted. Based on interviews with over 150 people who clinically died and were revived, Moody identified recurring patterns in their accounts, coining the term “near-death experience” itself.

Dr Jeffrey Long, a radiation oncologist and researcher based in Kentucky, has emerged as one of the most rigorous investigators of near-death experiences (NDEs).

Unlike Moody’s approach, which was based on personal stories, Dr Long takes a more scientific approach, amassing over 5,000 verified accounts across more than 30 languages and diverse cultures through his Near-Death Experience Research Foundation (NDERF).

He has concluded that around 45 percent of NDEs involve a sense of leaving one’s body, while more than half report seeing a heavenly realm.