Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Hell is real, and you're not going to like it..

The "Heaven is real..." thread got me to thinking about this. I know it pizzes some folks off when metaphysical topics come up, but it's something others have a genuine interest in. So to the former, I say move along, I'm not preaching at you.

I mentioned in the other thread that there is an outstanding book by Dr. Eben Alexander called "Proof of Heaven" in which he describes his near-death experience a few years ago. He had overwhelming bacterial meningitis, which basically ate up his cerebral cortex as he lay in a coma for a week. In that week he went to Heaven, and when he miraculously awoke with a healing brain, he realized he had to find a way to tell the world what he had seen and heard.

The key feature of his story, the kernel that convinces me as a physician and a scientist that his story must be true, is that he could not have possibly "dreamed" or hallucinated his experience. He had no functional brain because of the overwhelming infection.

Whether you're a believer or not, Christian or other faith, this book is worth reading. It's powerful.

But what I really want to talk about here is not Heaven, but Hell. I know it's not a popular concept, but I am convinced Hell is real, and I am convinced that people have been there and have come back. I cite two examples from my own experience.

In the first case, I was a medical student studying under a Cardiologist who was the first doctor I ever heard say he believed in Hell and had proof of it. He had a patient go into V/fib in his office one day, and he started CPR and got the defibrillator. The patient opened his eyes after the first shock and screamed, "I AM IN HELL!". The doc said the man's terror was real, and chilling. The patient coded several more times, and each time he came back he screamed in unholy terror at what he was experiencing. Eventually they got him back, and the patient was able to relate his experience to my Cardiology professor. As it happens, that professor had several other patients describe similar visits to Hell during their heart attacks. But that's third-hand information, I realize.

Since then I have seen a similar thing happen several times, and one instance I will relate here. First, though, I should explain what happens when someone goes into the lethal arrhythmia that we call ventricular fibrillation (V/fib).

You can watch V/fib start on a cardiac monitor, if you have one attached to the patient at the time. What has always puzzled me (and I'm not the only physician who's noted this) is that the patient ALWAYS loses consciously immediately upon onset of V/fib. The brain has 7 seconds' worth of oxygen in it, so the person is not passing out from lack of circulation. They lose consciousness instantly upon onset of the arrhythmia, and you can see the person die before your eyes. I've seen it hundreds of times, it's very very real. You then defibrillate the patient, and they wake up immediately upon restoration of normal sinus rhythm. The body jumps at the electric shock, and sometimes the patient will groan, and you clearly see the life come back into them.

But on several occasions the return to life is dramatically different. I'll tell you the one that sticks in my mind most clearly.

I was working the night shift in my ER in the winter of 2004. It was a relatively quiet night. The night nurse was Mark, who I had worked with for many years. In addition to being a paramedic and a great ER nurse, Mark was an ordained evangelical minister, and we had interesting conversations about theology and such on quiet nights. Me being Catholic, we had some lively doctrinal disagreements from time to time, but we had great respect for each other.

Anyways, about 10 pm a 44-year-old man came in with his wife, saying he had developed bad indigestion shortly after eating a late supper at a local restaurant. He was a big strapping muscular guy with a terrific sandy-blond mustache. (Funny the things you recall about people...) Cigarette smoker, social drinker, no history of heart disease, hypertension, or hyperlipidemia. But he looked awfully pale and sweaty when he walked in, so Mark did the smart thing and put him in the cardiac room and put him on a monitor. He called me in immediately upon seeing the wave form on the monitor. I came in and saw big "tombstones" in Lead II (a positive sign for myocardial infarction, blockage of one of the main arteries supplying the heart). I told Mark we needed an EKG, and told the ER tech to get the AMI box so we could inject him with tenecteplase (clot-buster) as soon as possible.

Mark started to apply the EKG leads, but before he was done the monitor alarmed and the man died. Like I said, it's instantly recognizable: the life simply goes out and the body sinks down on the bed lifelessly. Mark and I both recognized it instantly, and as I reached for the defibrillator Mark slapped defib pads on the man's chest and connected them. I went straight to 360 joules (phugg this 200-300-360 joules bullsh!t), charged the machine, and delivered the shock. The man's body arched up like usual, and he came back to life with a superhumanly loud scream of agony and terror, his eyes bugging out of his head like he'd seen Satan himself. He couldn't speak, and trembled so violently he shook the bed. I looked at the monitor and he was in normal sinus rhythm.

There was no time to really "debrief" the man. We had to get his EKG (which showed an acute anterior MI) and get the clot-busting drugs into him, lidocaine bolus and infusion to stabilize his heart rhythm, and so forth. Mark is a superb nurse, and I think that was close to the world speed record for doing all the things you need to do to treat a bad MI with V/fib.

It was maybe 15 minutes later that Mark and I stepped away from the patient, and I said to him, "You know where that guy went, don't you?" and Mark said, "I've heard about it, but I've never seen it!".

Well, I told Mark he was the ordained minister, and suggested that he use the next 15 minutes using his pastoral skills alongside his nursing skills while we waited for the chopper.

He did so. And afterwards he told me that the patient admitted he had gone to Hell. I won't share details of the man's story, but it was convincing to me, having seen his state of terror when he came back to life.

I've seen two other cases like that one in my career, and in discussions with other ER docs have heard of many more. I am convinced this is as close to Proof of Hell as you can get.

If you choose to disregard or disbelieve this, that is your choice. But if anyone reading this has been sitting on the fence and wondering, I suggest you take this anecdote for what it's worth and do some research on your own in the field of near-death experiences. Not everyone has a happy experience as Eben Alexander did. It might prove a good motivation to get to know the Lord.