What Mary Neal claims to have experienced during those 24 minutes seems incredible, but the most unsettling part came afterward. In 1999, the woman was kayaking in a river in Chile when she had an accident, became trapped underwater, and had to be resuscitated.
Mary says that during that time she felt she was leaving her body and arriving at a place she identified as heaven. She described a feeling of peace and love, and also said she was able to observe the attempts to save her from another perspective. But before returning, she claims she received information about things she still had to experience.
Among them was something no mother would want to hear: she was told that one of her children would die prematurely. At that moment, her son Willie was only 9 years old, healthy, and Mary could not imagine how something like that could happen.
Ten years later, the experience took on a devastating meaning for her. Willie was 19 years old when he lost his life after being struck by a vehicle whose driver was distracted. Mary was in the process of finishing a book about her near-death experience when the tragedy occurred.
For her, what she had heard ten years earlier ultimately came true in the most painful way. And although losing her son was devastating, she claims that having lived through that experience gave her the certainty that Willie was in the same love-filled place she says she had known.