It doesn’t matter who we are, we all have a story to tell. For some, it may be about something that happened at work or perhaps, how they met their significant other. If you are Charlotte Holmes from Wichita, Kansas, you have a different story altogether.
Charlotte has a rather interesting story to tell because she died for 11 minutes. That’s interesting enough, but she claims she also had an afterlife experience and was even able to see the gates of hell.
It happened in 2019 when she went for a routine checkup with her cardiologist. When her blood pressure spiked, probably due to a heart attack or stroke, she was taken to the hospital and given intravenous medication.
While she was being cared for by the medical professionals, she thought that she was smelling beautiful flowers and seeing them around her. Her husband, Danny, was there with her and he believes she was ‘not in this world’.
She said: “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.”
Her heart had been stopped for 11 minutes total and she was declared clinically dead. She said that she can’t even describe heaven because ‘It’s so above what we can even imagine a million times.’
She also said that she was led into heaven by angels and she felt no fear, just joy. Suddenly, she was seeing familiar faces around her, and it was her family members who had already died.
She said: “I see my mom, I see my dad, I see my sister, I see my family members standing behind.” She also claimed that all of them looked like they were in their 30s and behind them was a ‘light so bright’ she couldn’t look at it. She thinks that was God.
Holmes also saw a toddler and she didn’t know who it was, but a voice told her it was the child she had lost.
She said, “I lost that child. 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.’”
That is when she said that God wanted her to see the ‘edge of hell’.
According to the Journal of Palliative Medicine, “End-of-life dreams and visions can occur in wakeful or sleep states and typically manifest with clear consciousness. A common element reported by bereaved family members and clinical staff is the personal or spiritual solace provided by the dreams/visions for patients at the end of life.
“Clinicians have reported that whereas hallucinations frequently elicit anxiety or perplexity, ELDVs evoke peacefulness, comfort, and a sense of wonder. In addition, ELDVs help patients reconcile past life events and accept death.”
That is when she described what she saw. She said: “I looked down, and the smell, and then rotten flesh – that’s what it smelled like – and then screams. After seeing the beauty of heaven, the contrast to seeing hell is almost unbearable.
“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.’”
She was then brought back to life and made a full recovery after staying in the hospital for two weeks. She has shared her story with many others to provide hope that there is a heaven. She also has a warning for others.
She passed away last year on November 28, after suffering from a heart attack. She was 72 years old.