Sometimes people die during surgery but then come back. Others flatline on an emergency room table after a car accident and are brought back by doctors. Whatever the situation is, dying is the scariest thing in human existence. No one knows what happens on the other side, but these people claim that they've experienced it...
Redditor u/monitormonkey said that she saw her life flash before her eyes...
"I always get nervous about having surgery, but this time I knew something was going to go wrong. It sounds silly but I felt so strongly about it that I wrote a will and left it on my dresser just in case. Anyway, things go wrong during the surgery and I start to bleed out. Things went even further south and then my heart stopped beating. I found out later that I was dead for several minutes. Now I don’t know if this was real or a hallucination or a mixture of the two. I woke up in what looked like space but there weren’t any stars or light. I wasn’t floating so to speak, I was just there. I wasn’t hot/cold, hungry, tired, just a peaceful neutral kind of thing. I knew there were light and love somewhere nearby but I had no urge or need to go to it right away. I remember thinking over my life, but it wasn’t like a montage. More like I was idly flipping through a book and snippets stood out here and there. I don’t remember making a decision to stay or go back, I just woke up in the ICU two days later. Whatever it was, it changed my thoughts on a few things. I am still afraid to die, but I’m not worried about what happens after that."
u/TheDeadManWalks had a horrifying experience when he just was 15. He had sepsis and was hem dragging internally...
"The worst part of it all, looking back, is how peaceful it can seem. When I started vomiting blood, I went into shock. Hitting the wall to get my mum's attention was a subconscious thing, the rest of me just … stopped caring. When the doctors were trying to save my life, I just wanted to blackout again. I didn’t want the lights to hurt my eyes and the doctors to hurt the rest of me anymore, the unconsciousness seemed easier. And that’s how it felt when I was in the ICU for a few weeks after that, doped up on ketamine and slipping in and out of life. Being asleep was easy, being awake meant more pain and less dignity. So if you want to know what it’s like to be that close to death, it’s tempting. It’s like wanting to hit the snooze button on your alarm at 7:00 A.M. And maybe you do hit it once or twice but then you remember that you have work or school and that sleep can wait because you’ve still got shit to do."
u/Schneidah7 temporarily passed away after a motorcycle accident.
"I passed out while cruising along at about 50mph (they still have no concrete idea why) and I was thrown into a light pole. I only have two clear memories of that event. The first is being upside down and wondering idly why the opposite road was passing by inverted. The second is hitting the pole and stopping. It hurt, a lot. I cannot accurately describe how badly that hurt but suffice it to say I’m a person with a high pain tolerance to begin with and if I had been in my right state of mind I would have wept like a child. I just remember being on the pavement and things slowly going black and quiet, which honestly was a relief because it made the pain feel more distant instead of the crushing immediacy it had before. The only reason I didn’t fall asleep was a bizarre moment where I heard someone yelling “Ranger up you candy f**k! Come on man, get up. Get up. GET UP!” and then someone slapping my helmet (which was basically smushed really hard onto my head; the faceplate was bent up into my face and a good chunk was more or less shaved off). When I opened my eyes I saw my brother squatting on the pavement next me to. This was odd because my brother has been dead from an OD for several years. I couldn’t really gather the presence of mind to speak so I just looked at him."
In a way, it's comforting that all of these people went through extremely traumatic experiences and only remember a pleasant, albeit empty feeling. Who's to say what really happens after death?