A Glimpse Beyond: One Woman's Two Encounters with Death
A woman from Virginia has courageously broken her long-held silence, sharing the profound details of what she witnessed after being brought back from the brink of death on two separate occasions. Deborah Prum, a wife, mother, and former research director at Dartmouth Medical School, has revealed the astonishing out-of-body experiences she endured during traumatic events that nearly shattered her family.
The First Brush with the Beyond
Her initial near-death experience, or NDE, occurred in the mid-1980s. While pregnant with her eldest son, Prum went into early labour and suffered a cascade of life-threatening medical complications. These included dangerously high blood pressure, critically low blood cell counts, severe liver problems, and seizures.
As doctors scrambled to save her and her premature baby, Prum experienced a radical shift in consciousness. She recounted leaving her physical body and entering a state entirely free from pain or emotion. She found herself looking down from the hospital ceiling, observing the medical team as they worked frantically on her form below. Her final memory from this perspective was of being wheeled into an operating room for an emergency Caesarean section.
Following this, Prum spent three days in a medically induced coma, while her newborn son required a two-week stay in the neonatal intensive care unit. The experience was so shocking that she confided only in her husband, Bruce, for decades, unsure of how to process or discuss what had happened.
A Second Journey into the Light
Over two decades later, in 2007, Prum faced mortality once more. On Valentine's Day, she and her husband, a physician, were involved in a near-fatal car accident after an SUV drove through a red light and struck their vehicle. The impact was so severe that her husband found she had no pulse immediately after the crash.
While he shouted her name, Prum described crossing over into an entirely different realm. She lost all sense of herself as an individual person and instead transformed into pure energy connected to a vast, universal life force. She described this state as being profoundly peaceful and safe, as if she had finally come home.
This blissful realm was filled with a glowing yellow light that she likened to the sensation of being submerged in pudding. Although she could hear her husband's distant calls, she actively tried to block them out, so powerful was the euphoria and her desire to remain in this energy state. Shortly after, however, she felt herself being pulled back into her physical body.
The Mysterious Helper and Lasting Impact
Upon her return, a baffling mystery awaited. Prum has a vivid memory of a man, described as being in his 40s with curly hair and a receding hairline, wearing a button-down dress shirt with no tie. She insists this stranger was at her passenger-side door after the crash, where he unbuckled her seatbelt, stabilised her to prevent further injury, and held her hand until paramedics arrived.
Yet, despite her clear recollection, her husband and the first responders never saw this man. To this day, no witness has ever come forward to confirm the presence of this mysterious good Samaritan, leaving his identity and existence an unsolved puzzle.
Reflecting on her extraordinary dual experiences, Prum stated that it took having two NDEs to make her truly believe in their reality. She admits she likely would have remained sceptical had she not lived through them herself. Her story adds a powerful, personal dimension to scientific research, such as a study from the NYU Grossman School of Medicine, which found that many near-death survivors report an awareness of entering another realm of consciousness.
