NDE: What I Learned From Dying! with Vincent Todd Tolman
What Researchers Found
The Story
Vincent Tolman was a 25-year-old amateur bodybuilder. In January 2003, he took a strong ephedrine supplement and collapsed in a Dairy Queen bathroom, dying for over 45 minutes from cardiac arrest. Paramedics pronounced him dead and bagged his body, but a rookie paramedic resuscitated him against protocol. During the NDE, Tolman floated weightlessly above, watching his purple, swollen body and his friend's collapse without pain. He observed rescuers and felt sorrow for the body until a strap on his arm broke, revealing it was him. He reviewed his bad actions from victims' views, then good deeds and generational impacts, feeling unworthy then loved unconditionally. A guide named Drake, dressed in white, taught him 10 principles like authenticity, life's purpose as learning, and loving everyone. They journeyed to heaven, where he touched conscious grass, flowers, trees, and healing water, and saw a living marble building. Drake hugged him with God's love. His brother's prayer pulled him back after three days in a coma. After waking, Tolman heard spirit voices, met and married his wife Andrea, had two children, and discovered Drake was his great-great-great-grandfather. He wrote a book, shares his story, teaches intuition activation, and lives with deeper faith, helping others heal and connect to their higher selves.
“his journey to heaven and back and what it's like to be dead for 45 minutes”
Exceptional strength from clinical death with detailed, precise OBE perceptions of impossible-to-access events (locked bathroom, zipped body bag) and highly unpredictable elements like unknown ancestor's identity confirmed later; multiple exceptional verifications including private medical knowledge and ancestor recognition outweigh lack of pre-verification documentation.
Score reflects verifiable perceptions reported. A low score indicates the experience was primarily spiritual or subjective, not that it didn't occur.
Score reflects transformation as described. Domains scored 0 indicate the topic was not discussed, not that no change occurred.
Are you here because someone you love has died?
These accounts were gathered because death may not be the end. Thousands of people have experienced something beyond — and come back to tell us about it.
What Researchers Found
Exceptional strength from clinical death with detailed, precise OBE perceptions of impossible-to-access events (locked bathroom, zipped body bag) and highly unpredictable elements like unknown ancestor's identity confirmed later; multiple exceptional verifications including private medical knowledge and ancestor recognition outweigh lack of pre-verification documentation.
Score reflects verifiable perceptions reported. A low score indicates the experience was primarily spiritual or subjective, not that it didn't occur.
Score reflects transformation as described. Domains scored 0 indicate the topic was not discussed, not that no change occurred.