Dr. Mary Neal is an accomplished spinal surgeon whose Near-Death Experience (NDE) has inspired millions. Her story, told in Angel Studios’ film “After Death,” unfolded on a South American river when she became submerged while kayaking, and says she visited heaven.
“My husband and I are avid kayakers,” Neal recently told CBN Digital. “We’ve kayaked for decades all around the country [and] internationally.”
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So, they joined friends in Chile for a special trip for her husband’s birthday, but while they were making their way down a river, the jovial occasion was obliterated.
Neal ended up going over a waterfall and experienced something she could “never have dreamed up.”
“The boat and I were immediately submerged under eight to 10 feet of water,” she said. “I didn’t panic. I set about trying to free me or free the boat … but the weight of the water and the force of the current was too great for me to do anything.”
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As she pondered her options, she came to the conclusion she would very likely die, finding herself forced to face the unthinkable. Neal said she somehow mustered the strength to ask God for His will to be done.
“The moment I asked that, I was immediately overcome with this very physical sensation of being held and comforted and reassured that everything would be fine,” she said.
And this is where Neal’s story takes a wild turn: she then said she found herself in heaven.
“I never felt alive and then dead, conscious and then unconscious,” Neal said. “I felt conscious and then more conscious, alive and then more alive.”
She added, “I was being held by Christ.”
While in heaven, Neal said she was still herself but that she was her “best” self. At first, she thought it was a hallucination based on her trauma and said she was doing “self-assessment examples” in heaven.
“I knew I’d been underwater too long to still be alive,” Neal said. “So, I thought, ‘OK, I have an air pocket. So I would think about, ‘OK, take a breath. Do you feel air?’ And I’d say, ‘No.’”
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But she wasn’t suffering or struggling to breathe. Instead, she felt “glorious.” Neal described sensing Christ’s love and being guided through a life review. She said she even felt her spirit leave her body.
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Reprinted with permission from cbn.com. Copyright © 2025 The Christian Broadcasting Network Inc. All rights reserved.
