A woman who was raised to be a ‘good Catholic girl’ says she turned her back on the Church after a terrifying near-death experience left her convinced she had spent a year in hell.
Kathy McDaniel, now 80, spent 18 days in a medically induced coma in late 1999 after developing a life-threatening lung condition that left doctors in Seattle giving her just a 38 percent chance of survival.
What she experienced during that coma would haunt her for decades.
McDaniel told the Daily Mail that although doctors assured her the powerful drugs would prevent her from remembering anything, she instead found herself trapped in what she believed was a hellish realm.
She described waking up in a world of total darkness where she was taken to the burning ruins of a hellish city, a monstrous hospital piling up the remains of unborn children, an endless road filled with sexual predators and a frozen wasteland guarded by a female demon.
Despite being unconscious for less than three weeks, McDaniel said the ordeal felt as though it lasted more than a year.
In 2017, Marc Wittmann, a psychologist at the Institute for Frontier Areas in Psychology and Mental Health, theorized that this time-bending experience arose during near-death experiences because the brain’s temporal processing is disrupted under extreme conditions, causing events to seem much longer or much shorter than they really were.
But years later, McDaniel reached a startling conclusion that would ultimately drive her away from Catholicism.
McDaniel suffered sudden lung failure in 1999 after contracting pneumonia and Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome and was placed in a coma for 18 days
McDaniel said her vision of hell felt like it lasted for one year, despite her being in a coma for 18 days
McDaniel said: ‘I believed that I would go to purgatory when I died. That’s what I was told. And purgatory was like hell, but you get out.
‘If you’re taught that from the time you’re five years old, and now you’re, you know, 60, you believe it. And so, when I got over there, that’s what I expected, and so I made it.’
McDaniel said that when doctors put her in a coma, she ‘woke up’ and vividly remembered drifting through a silent void when a red fog appeared.
‘Out of this fog came this horrible, maniacal voice that just said, “Do you know where you are?” And I’m racing, I can’t think, and I thought, oh my gosh, this must be hell? And he just laughed, this horrible laugh, and I ran,’ she recalled.
A study published in 2019 in the journal Memory, which compared positive and negative near-death experiences (NDEs), claimed there is little difference between these events and that they basically display the same type of brain activity, just with varying emotional tones.
Study authors said this helps explain why some people come back from the brink of death with terrifying stories that feel just as vivid and life-changing as the peaceful ones.
In McDaniel’s case, she said she was suddenly transported to a bombed-out city she compared to a ruined New York, with collapsed buildings, screaming people and chaos everywhere.
She claimed to have seen strange figures in dark clothing wander around. She tried to escape by climbing rubble but fell, and the lights went out again, with her consciousness descending into another realm of hell.
She would then come face-to-face with a huge, hairy demon that looked like a Yeti. McDaniel said the demonic creature gave her an impossible task of cutting through an endless field of vines while he laughed at her struggles.
Kathy McDaniel, now 80, who survived an 18-day medically induced coma in 1999
McDaniel said her experience in hell ended when she was transported to a realm of light, filled with feelings of joy and love
She then landed in a hospital-like area where she claimed demonic ‘doctors’ handed her the remains of dead babies to place in giant warehouse.
‘I said, I can’t do that, and I’m not gonna do that. And he says, “Oh, you know what? It’s just gonna get worse.” I thought, how could it possibly… then the lights went out.’
McDaniel claimed she landed on a dark, rocky road with fire visible on the horizon. She encountered a group of moaning, lurching people who surrounded her, assaulted her sexually, and claimed they all had AIDS and she now did too.
Her experience would come to an end after her consciousness was sent to a freezing wilderness where she and other souls were held in a rundown shack under the watch of a ‘female demon.’
The frozen shack was her final vision of hell before she was suddenly lifted into a realm of overwhelming bliss, love and joy. McDaniel said she forgot her experience in the hell as her vision focused on a bright, cathedral-like space.
Her former fiancé appeared young and healthy again and showed McDaniel a huge book that she believed contained the entire story of her life that her soul had mapped out before birth.
Like many other near-death experience (NDE) patients, McDaniel revealed an overwhelming feeling of not wanting to return to Earth, even though she said her fiancé’s spirit claimed she still had much more to do before death.
McDaniel said her NDE was so traumatic she could not even discuss it with anyone for ten years.
After discovering the International Association for Near-Death Studies (IANDS), a nonprofit organization dedicated to the scientific research, education, and support of individuals who have had NDEs, McDaniel was able to start putting what she had seen into context by comparing her visions to those of other near-death patients.
According to McDaniel, the only part of her experience she believes was not triggered by her expectations of the afterlife was her brief journey to heaven, encountering her former fiancé and seeing the book of her life story.
Through her work with IANDS, the 80-year-old has been convinced that God would not have even created a realm like hell.
‘It changes everything. It really does. I had to leave my religion,’ McDaniel declared, noting that she walked away from the teachings of Catholicism five years ago.
‘God isn’t like that, you know? It’s just a construct of people needing to control one another. I hate to say it that way, but most people become spiritual, not religious, when [they] get back.’
McDaniel said her experience sent her into depression for years and forced her to evaluate for Catholic upbringing
Kathy McDaniel said what she was taught as a Catholic left her misinformed about God and the afterlife
McDaniel learned that nearly 20 percent of NDEs are distressing. She started a monthly sharing group for distressing NDEs and has connected with thousands of others, leading her to write a memoir called Misfit in Hell to Heaven Expat.
She told the Daily Mail she no longer believes she visited a literal hell created by God to punish wayward souls. Since her brain was technically offline while in the coma, she attributed the experience to her consciousness becoming confused.
According to McDaniel, it pulled from her life memories, such as the 1989 Santa Cruz earthquake to recreate the bombed-out city, and a past rape was likely the memory used while she was on the hellish road.
She also noted her Catholic upbringing as the influence for her expectations of the suffering in purgatory and her pro-life views for the vision of the demonic hospital – ultimately concluding that hell does not await anyone when they die.
‘When I was talking to people who had this experience, they’d come back and say, “You know what? I had segments, and I can trace them all back to things that actually happened to me.” So, no, there’s not a hell.’
McDaniel noted that there were now at least four Facebook groups with over 6,000 people who have shared distressing NDEs experienced after being placed in drug-induced comas.
She now advocates for moving away from the practice of medically-induced comas when not necessary, citing the work of Kali Dayton, an ICU nurse practitioner who promotes the Awake and Walking ICU model, which minimizes deep sedation and encourages early mobility, even when the patient is on a ventilator.
According to a study in the journal Critical Care Clinics, this practice reduces delirium, muscle wasting, PTSD, Post-Intensive Care Syndrome and distressing experiences while improving patient outcomes.
McDaniel’s coma left her wasting away in a hospital bed for 18 days, dropping to just 86 pounds and needing a month of physical rehabilitation to regain her strength.
