Pronounced Dead in 1680, She Came Back Naming the Newly Dead | Atherton Sister NDE

What happens after death? In 1680, a young Englishwoman found out, and she returned with knowledge she could not possibly have possessed. Her story is one of the most remarkable and best-documented near-death experiences of the 17th century.

The woman was the sister of Dr. Henry Atherton, a physician who published her account in a pamphlet titled The Resurrection Proved, or, The Life to Come Demonstrated. She fell into a deathlike state so profound that the women attending her were certain she had died. They held a mirror to her mouth and saw no breath. They placed live coals against her feet and saw no response. By every test available in 1680, she was dead, and those around her began to treat her as one who had passed.

When she recovered, she told her family she had been to heaven. They dismissed it as a dream or the fancy of her illness, but she insisted on the reality of what she had seen. Then she told them something extraordinary: while she was gone, she had seen several people who had died after she lost consciousness, people whose deaths she could not possibly have known about. One of them was still believed to be alive.

Her brother recorded the detail almost in passing, because it was not the point of his pamphlet, which was a moral warning to a corrupt generation. But when the family sent out inquiries, every person she named was confirmed dead, including the one they had believed living. Modern researcher Bruce Greyson has identified the case as a genuine "Peak in Darien" experience, where the dying see the departed whose deaths were unknown to them, and he noted that the detail's incidental nature makes fabrication unlikely.

The family was convinced of the reality of the afterlife, and her brother spent his energies publishing the account to strengthen faith in the resurrection. If you have ever asked what happens after death, listen to the woman who died in 1680, visited heaven, and came back naming the dead she had never met.