Woman who 'died' after allergic reaction reveals eerie details of what she saw before coming back to life
A nurse whose 'heart exploded' in 2018 claims she caught a glimpse of the afterlife in the brief seconds that doctors declared her deceased.
Julia Evans claimed her brush with death started all those years ago, with a 'scratchy' sensation in her throat.
Speaking to podcast star Jeff Mara recently, the Canadian explained that she'd been at work in her local hospital at the time.
"You go through very rapidly in your head; 'Did I come in contact with something? Did I eat something funny? Do I have a cold?'" Evans began.
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"You kind of scan your environment, and as I quickly scan, I can start feeling my throat getting tighter and tighter.
"It felt like sandpaper as I was swallowing and so, as I scanned my environment, I looked straight ahead of me and at the nursing station there was this beautiful bouquet of lilies."
Since her childhood years, the healthcare worker has suffered an allergy to the flower often associated with mourning, and as such, she was suffering the beginnings of a deadly reaction that almost killed her.
After 'turning blue', Evans' colleagues raced to provide her with some medication. One member of the team also called her husband, whilst a third tried to keep her calm.
Despite a doctor going on to give her an emergency injection of epinephrine, it quickly became apparent that an extreme concentration of the medication - more than 10 times the usual dose - had been administered, sending her heart into overdrive.
"All of a sudden I was just like The Hulk - that was the epinephrine that was surging through my body, I started breathing and I remember just pushing everything away," she continued, claiming she also told staff: "Rip off my clothes. Get leads on me get pads on me right now!"
It was at this point that Evans' suddenly sensed that death was just around the corner, with her thoughts turning inadvertently to those who had died.
"I started feeling how my best friend had died because she had shot herself, and it felt like the back of my head had blown away," she recalled.
"I felt what she had gone through and I was letting that go.
"And then that was the same day that my stepmother years prior had died in my arms in Mexico. She had drowned and had a massive heart attack.
"So then I got to feel her, and at the same point I also got to feel where my biological mother died in 1983 from a brain aneurysm, and it was that feeling - I could feel them and like that moment of I'm going down, I didn't realise at the time it was their pain that I was feeling."
Minutes later, Evans was declared 'pulseless' after her heart stopped altogether. It was then that she got her first taste of life after death.
Claiming the 'went somewhere completely different', she recalled a totally black void, where 'everything – your belief systems, your senses, your body, are pixelated away.'
Despite this unnerving experience, she claims she was able to remain calm.
"I distinctly hear my mother who had died in 1983 saying, ‘It's okay, honey. Mommy's here, don’t cry,'" Evans explained.
"And so, as I heard her, like actually hearing her, as if she was standing right beside me."
The nurse went on to add that, whilst waiting in this black hole, she suddenly had a vision of her colleagues attempting to resuscitate her.
"I was hovering over my body and I was probably two feet over my body," Evans continued. "I could feel them working on me and I was screaming in my mind, 'I would come back if I could.'"
She says she even heard one of the doctors declaring, 'We lost her again' - a comment when she said 'everything else changed.'
Evans recalled being somehow transported to a land of light and colour.
"And now I'm experiencing everything, but there’s no human word completely and fully," she believes. "And the only way I know how to describe it is there was so much love within that moment that I was gifted the greatest gift and that's that self-love."
Evans added: "This light was just so peaceful, and it felt like home.
"I could sense every single person that had passed away before me standing there."
Suddenly, she felt herself being yanked back into the real world.
"I felt 'Wham!', and this time I felt totally thrown back into my body," the nurse explained. "I hit so hard."
Evans woke to discover that all of her clothes had been, as per her own wishes, removed.
"I instinctively looked down and when I looked down I noticed that I was completely naked, like a brand new baby," she went on. "I said. 'Who cut my favourite blue bra?'"
Rhianna Benson