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Near-death experiences have captured attention for decades. People who’ve been declared clinically dead and then revived often share vivid accounts of what they saw and felt. One woman recently shared her story after being pronounced dead for eight minutes.
Her claim? Death isn’t what we think it is. She says what she experienced proves it’s an illusion, sparking conversations about what might really happen when life as we know it comes to an end.
Meet Brianna Lafferty
Brianna Lafferty, a 33-year-old from Colorado, has lived with a rare neurological condition called myoclonus dystonia. It causes sudden, quick muscle jerks and contractions.
One day, she says her body just gave up. Her heart stopped, and doctors pronounced her clinically dead for eight minutes. She also says her consciousness never left. That moment, she explains, changed how she thinks about life and death, leading her to believe that what most people fear might not be what it seems.
An Out-of-Body Experience
Brianna says that during those eight minutes, she felt herself leave her body. She describes it as floating above and then moving into a place where time didn’t seem to exist. She didn’t see or think about her human self.
She just felt still but fully aware, more herself than she had ever felt. There was no pain. She also talks about feeling a deep, calm peace and a clear sense of being that stayed with her after.
Manifesting the Afterlife
Brianna says that in that space, her thoughts seemed to shape everything around her. She noticed how what she focused on started to become real there, though it didn’t happen instantly.
She felt grateful for that little bit of time because it gave her a chance to shift anything negative into something good. She also came back feeling more trusting of life and even the moments that don’t feel good at first, believing they can still lead to something better.
Claiming Death is an Illusion
Brianna says that even though doctors measured her time away as eight minutes, it felt like months to her. She came back with a clear belief that death isn’t real in the way most people think.
She feels our soul keeps going and our consciousness stays alive, only changing form. That thought has made her more accepting of life’s harder moments. She also says it’s helped her focus on gratitude and the power of her thoughts and feelings.
She Claims Our Universe is Made of Numbers
Brianna says leaving her body made her see how temporary life in human form really is. She also talks about meeting other beings that felt familiar, though she’s not sure they were human.
She describes sensing a higher presence that seemed to guide and watch over everything with love. In that place, time didn’t seem real, yet everything felt in perfect order. She also says she learned that our entire universe is made up of numbers.
Coming Back with a Mission
When Brianna woke up, she had to relearn how to walk and speak. The experience left her with lasting effects, including damage to her pituitary gland that needed experimental brain surgery.
She admits she fears going through another near-death experience, but still feels grateful for what happened. She says she came back with a sense of mission and a new respect for life and death.
What Do People See in Near-Death Experience?
Some researchers think near-death experiences come from the brain’s reactions in its final moments. They say the brain might flood us with comforting images to protect us from fear. Others believe what people see could simply be visions created by a brain shutting down.
Neurologists have a term for it, calling it a disturbed bodily multisensory integration. That’s when signals in the brain’s right temporoparietal cortex mix together in unusual ways, creating vivid experiences that can feel completely real.