In September 2019, during a routine check-up with her cardiologist, Charlotte Holmes’ blood pressure suddenly spiked to a concerning 234/134. The doctors informed her that she was experiencing either a heart attack or another stroke.
Her husband, Danny, watched helplessly as medical staff admitted her to the hospital and worked to stabilize her condition.
He shared with The 700 Club about the moment he feared he was losing his wife: “They called this code right away, and everyone rushed in.”
“They just started working on her, and I thought well; I’m wondering if I’m even going to be able to bring her home.”
As her condition deteriorated, Charlotte began describing things she could see, like flowers. However, when he glanced around the room and saw none, a startling realization struck him.
“That’s when I knew she was not in this world,” he said.
Charlotte’s heart stopped beating, leaving her clinically dead for eleven minutes, during which she claims to have experienced an out-of-body encounter, watching doctors and medical staff work to bring her back to life from above.
“I could smell the most beautiful flowers I’ve ever smelled, and then I heard music,” she remembered. “When I opened my eyes, I knew where I was. I knew I was in heaven.”
The Wichita, Kansas mother described her surroundings as pure “beauty” in every sense, with everything moving gracefully in harmony with the music she heard.
“I can’t convey to you what heaven looked like, because it’s so above what we can even imagine, a million times,” Charlotte said. She then shared how a group of angels guided her further into the afterlife.
“There’s no fear, it’s like pure joy when the angels take over,” she added. “I seen my mom, I seen my dad, I seen my sister, I seen family members standing behind.”
The mum explained, “I seen saints of old. They didn’t look old, they didn’t look sick, none of them wore glasses. They looked like they were in their 30s. Yet it says in the scriptures, ‘we will be known as we were known’.” She added, “I knew them there in their new bodies. They looked wonderful.”
Charlotte then revealed something surprising: she had seen a toddler. She shared, “I can remember thinking, ‘who is this?’ And I heard my heavenly father say to me, ‘It’s your child.’”
She went on to explain that she had lost this child during pregnancy, saying, “I was five-and-a-half months pregnant. I can remember them holding the baby up and saying, ‘Charlotte, it’s a boy.’ Then he was gone. So when I seen this toddler, I said, God, how is that possible?” God replied to her, “‘They continue to grow in heaven—but there’s no time, it’s eternity.”
According to Charlotte, she was then taken to a place completely opposite to the paradise she had just witnessed. She described, “God took me to hell, and I looked down and the smell, and the rotten flesh – that’s what it smelled like…and screams. After seeing the beauty of heaven, the contrast to seeing hell is almost unbearable.”
Charlotte said she was shown this vision for a purpose. “And he says, ‘I show you this to tell you, if some of them do not change their ways, this is where they shall reside.’ I heard my father say, ‘You have time to go back and share’.”
Afterward, she described a sensation of being “pulled back inside” her body, and Danny saw her eye twitch. Charlotte, who fully recovered and was discharged from the hospital two weeks later, recalled, “I felt the pain, where I hadn’t felt pain, I felt the sorrow.”
She decided to share her remarkable story following this near-death experience. “People need hope,” Charlotte said. “They want to know that there really is something out there, they want to know that everything’s okay. Heaven is more than you can imagine.” She affirmed, “I can look you square in the eye and tell you for sure, heaven is real.”
The Ozark County Times reported that Charlotte passed away from a heart attack on November 28, 2023, at age 72, survived by her husband of 52 years, their daughter Chrystal, and her grandchildren.