“My Kong is falling from the building,” Maribeth Graham whispered into her father’s ear as he lay on his deathbed. These strange words were meant to make his transition to the next world more comfortable. But is there really a “next world” or is it something we humans conjured up? Read the following four accounts and then decide.
1. My Father Was Dying
Maribeth Graham lovingly called her father King Kong throughout her life, believing he was as strong as the famous ape. Now, on his deathbed, these were the words she whispered into his ear to make him more comfortable as he slipped from one world to the next. A few months after his passing, Maribeth and her sister wanted to communicate with their late father. So they did what any logical-thinking, bereaving kids would do: they grabbed their father’s watch and sought a clairvoyant medium.
2. Lisa Williams
Lisa Williams, well-known for conversing with the dead on her show on Lifetime, was giving a presentation in town. The sisters got two seats in the far back of the packed, nineteen-hundred-seat auditorium. Lisa stood on stage and announced different “people” who were with her, waiting for an audience member to recognize their loved one or friend standing, invisibly, next to her. It didn’t take long for her to say the words that perked the sisters’ ears.
3. Is That My Father?
“I have a grandfather-like figure with me and he is speaking about his granddaughter Julie,” she announced. Maribeth’s father used to call Maribeth’s daughter Jilly, short for Jillian. That wasn’t enough to cause Maribeth to confidently raise her hand in the second-to-last row. “This man is letting me know he had cancer.” At that point, Maribeth’s hand went up. But so did another woman’s…
4. His Watch
“Which one of you is holding his watch?” The other woman sat down and Maribeth waved the watch in the air. Lisa continued, “He wishes you happy birthday and congratulations.” Maribeths’ birthday was the week prior and she gave birth to her fourth child three weeks after her father’s death. Maribeth was in shock. Was she really hearing from her dead father?! Lisa then said the words that rested any doubt in the two sisters…
5. Six Dimes
On stage and far away, Lisa Williams began banging on her chest and said that he wanted her to do this, “Like Tarzan.” Maribeth’s sister realized the meaning and called out, “King Kong,” Maribeth’s pet term for her father. Lisa finished by saying that their dad would send them dimes, the tiny 10 cent American coins. The very next day, Maribeth found six dimes in various places that, as she said, seemed to come out of nowhere. Cue the them from The Twilight Zone.
6. Rainbows, Butterflies, Or Feathers
When Amanda X. was 18 years old, she had so much going for her. She was in a good university, she was an ambassador for the school and an excellent singer aiming to be a famous. All that ended when she was killed in a car accident in 2003. Her older sister, Melissa, was devastated. But this feeling turned to doubt and confusion over the following months as friends reported that Amanda came to them in dreams, showing them rainbows or butterflies or feathers.
7. Evan
Amanda was letting them know that she was all right. Melissa’s doubt, however, was born from jealousness: Why would Amanda visit everyone else? Why wouldn’t she reassure Melissa, her only sister? The doubt and confusion led to anger. Melissa continued longing to see her sister again. After awhile, Melissa got married, adopted Tysee (a dog) and then, seven years after losing her sister, Melissa and her husband had a son, Evan…
8. Birds, Clouds And An Airplane
Evan, of course, had to grow up not ever knowing his Aunt Amanda. In fact, she was hardly talked about in front of him. Before Evan turned two, Tysee, the dog, got sick and died. Evan’s parents were not ready to discuss death with their little boy, so they said that Tysee had “gone away for awhile.” Evan seemed to accept this. Then, one afternoon, months after Tysee’s death, Evan and Melissa were outside playing one of their favorite games. Melissa would point at something and Evan would identify it. Pointing up, Melissa asked, “What’s that?” Evan told her it was the sky. He also identified birds, clouds and an airplane. Then came the surprise.
9. Comfort, Finally
Looking up at the sky, two year-old Evan said, “I see Manda Tysee.” Melissa froze, believing she misunderstood what her son said. “What do you see, Sweetie?” Evan replied, “Manda Tysee in the sky!” Melissa telephoned her mother and asked if she ever discussed Amanda with Evan. Melissa’s mother admitted that recently, Evan pointed to Amanda in a photograph and asked who she was. The grandmother said, “That’s your Mommy’s sister,” but she never told him what happened. Melissa looked back up at the sky, and she finally felt some comfort.
10. Israel
Alon Anava was born Jewish and raised in Israel, but he was not religious. In fact, he hated religion. If he could do something purposely to oppose religion, he was for it. That would change after his near-death experience in which he claims to have seen the next world. It happened not in Israel, but in New York. Three years after moving to the Big Apple, on the morning before the big Seder (Passover) he was traveling in a taxi cab with a girl he hardly knew. He started to feel ill, and the feeling got increasingly worse every minute.
11. Above The Cab
Soon, Alon collapsed to the floor of the cab…and then he was looking down at himself from the roof of the cab. His first thought was, “This is how I die? In the backseat of a car?!” Then he felt himself being pulled higher and higher, and as he rose up, he could see more below him. Soon, he was about two stories up, flying above Manhattan traffic as well as the cab that carried his body. And then, the most amazing thing happened.
12. Above The City
Alon, “flying” above the cab, then dove into the girl who was sitting in the backseat with his motionless body. In the instant he entered her, he saw her whole life: thousands of events and emotions from the beginning of her life and even into the future. (He saw her telling his parents that he died in New York.) Then the car went under an apartment building and Alon, flying above the cab, went through the building. This allowed him to experience every aspect of every person’s life inside the building: what each was doing at that moment and what they were thinking and how they were feeling…during each part of their life.
13. Everything
In the few seconds he was “in” the building, he learned everything about the hundreds of people inside that building. Instant and complete knowledge. Soon after that, he felt he was being crushed and pulled through a razor-lined funnel, and it hurt like no pain he’d ever known. Just like he knew about all the people around him, he knew what was happening to him, and he was scared, well, to death. After what felt like an eternity, he was pulled through a dark tunnel into a light where he experienced complete and universal knowledge of all of history.
14. Pieces Of The Puzzle
Alon Anava saw it all, from the beginning of time, and every detail made sense to him: war, suffering, the unthinkable—it all made sense as part of a master plan that, Alon says, we cannot understand as we can only see one piece of the puzzle, and with one piece you can’t see the whole picture on the puzzle. He said this experience was pleasure that was not normal. The pleasure, though, was about to change.
15. Spreading The Truth
What happened next was his “Judgment Day,” and after viewing all the things he did wrong as if in a movie, he was sent back to his body to rectify everything. He woke up in a hospital eager to start his path of repentance, called teshuvah for Jews. He later went to the girl who was in the cab with him that night and asked her if she experienced such and such at age 7 and at age 8, and she said, “How did you know that?” Anova has since become an Orthodox Rabbi telling his story around the world.
16. Colton Burpo’s Story
When Colton Burpo was almost four years old, his appendix burst. He went to the hospital and was in emergency surgery before you could say, Happy Almost Birthday. In the two hours he was unconscious, a lot transpired, and not just on the operating table. It seems that little Colton left his body and did some traveling in this world…and in the other world.
17. “I Saw You, Dad.”
When he woke up, he said things that confused and shocked his parents. For starters, he told them what they were doing in separate rooms in the hospital as he lay on the operating table. He was correct. He told them he met his baby sister…the one who was lost when his mother miscarried. The parents never mentioned this to the young boy. That’s not all.
18. Touring For Heaven
Colton later pointed to an old man in a photograph and called him Pop, saying he met him when he was in heaven. “Pop” was his paternal grandfather. To Colton’s father’s astonishment, Colton even described in detail seeing his father as a young child playing with his grandfather. He described the scene exactly as it happened, and this was decades before Colton was even born! Colton now tours the country, telling his story which is also available in book and movie format called Heaven Is For Real.
Do you now believe Heaven is for real?
[Featured Image Credit: comicvine.gamespot.com]