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6th August 2025
07:03pm BST
People tend to believe that when someone dies, they're sent to either heaven or hell, however, according to some people who were clinically pronounced dead for a certain amount of time, that's not always the case.
A man who was pronounced clinically dead for six minutes before being brought back to life says that the afterlife is a truly terrible place.
Evidently, what happens to people after they die is difficult to measure, however, there have been a few studies researching near-death experiences.
Research shows that people tend to describe sensations of their life being replayed, including out-of-body experiences, dreaming and meditative states.
However, one person shared their experience on Reddit, and it doesn't sound nearly as peaceful as a meditative state.
The man describes a situation that occurred when he was just 15 years old. After an episode of ventricular fibrillation, a type of irregular heart rhythm, he collapsed.
He was later told that when the emergency services arrived at the scene, they reported that his heart had stopped beating. His state of 'death' lasted a total of six minutes.
The man recalled that his 'journey' began with a white light, which initially claimed him, giving him the feeling that he was ascending.
During this ascension, he passed several gates before arriving at a place he described as ‘beyond reality'. He said that several 'life forces' came towards him.
"At first, because of my Christian upbringing, I believed them to be angels. In my incorporeal form, I made the spiritually equivalent gesture of opening my arms, anticipating their embrace," he wrote.
However, instead of a warm embrace, the man felt himself being shackled by the lifeform's powers, while feelings of humiliation and terror came over him.
He recollects the beings being ‘cruel, unsympathetic overlords’ that laughed at him in a manner which he described as being ‘cold’ and ‘mocking’.
The man goes on to say that these beings started to reveal some ‘horrifying truths about existence’, which he further details in the post.
He wrote: "Our universe, like many others running parallel to it, contains a pittance of the total energy in existence. It is a farm, used to produce souls, which only arise in the precise conditions found in our cosmos. When you hear scientists talk about the improbability of the existence of our goldilocks universe, it’s because they don’t actually come into being spontaneously. They’re designed. And the hands that craft them are not benevolent gods, but rapacious beings with little care for the creatures they create. Our ultimate purpose, I learned in the custody of the spirits that shackled me, was to ripen until we were ready to serve them on their higher plane."
He added: "I can’t imagine anything worse than what I experienced, subsumed beneath an ineffable grief and torment."
In the Reddit post, the man writes that he was warned not to reveal their existence, however, when he was revived, he tried to explain to anyone who would listen what had happened during those six minutes.
Nonetheless, the people he spoke to brushed him off and explained he had suffered a serious and traumatic experience. Eventually, he said he convinced himself it was all a dream, until he met the author of a book who had claimed to have met God in the afterlife.
The author had told him that 'he knew the truth, that slavery awaits us all'.
However, the man recalls the author not seeming entirely truthful, writing: "A flicker in his gaze betrayed his knowledge of the fact. He really had died and visited the afterlife, but lied about it in his book. Because he knew."
The man concluded his post with a warning, writing: "During my visit, I learned things about our universe that I wish I hadn’t. Perhaps in sharing my story, I might help our species prepare for what comes after we expire"
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