A man who came back from the dead after dying for 90 minutes has revealed what the afterlife is like – and his experience was so frightening that his brain has 'blocked it out'.
Alistair Blake, 61, suffered a heart attack in January 2019. His wife, Melinda, had woken up at their home in Australia to find her husband of 35 years 'gurgling' and unresponsive during the terrifying ordeal, the Daily Star reports.
She then tried to revive him for 20 minutes until an ambulance arrived.
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However, when they got there, they only found his lifeless body.
Melinda had desperately tried to perform CPR until paramedics arrived, and it’s reported that he was clinically dead for an hour and a half.
Medics continued to work on Alistair for over an hour, giving him CPR and using a defibrillator to shock him eight times.
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And, after a desperate 90 minutes, his pulse was found after his heart had finally restarted.
When describing the afterlife, Alistair says there was 'nothing', no sounds, voices or lights. He said that the experience was so traumatic that his brain had shut everything out.
“Technically, I was dead for 90 minutes,” he said.
“I remember going to bed on the Saturday night – and the next thing I remember was waking up on Thursday morning on a trolley going from ICU to coronary care.
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“The human brain has totally blocked out what happened in between.”
He added: “A lot of people ask me if I saw anything, and no, I did not see anything. No bright lights, nothing like that whatsoever.
“It’s a case of not knowing what’s out there – but I don’t mind about that, as long as I’m fit and healthy.”
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Doctors managed to unblock one of the 61-year-old’s arteries at Frankston Hospital and he was fitted with a pacemaker.
Alistair returned home after 12 days in hospital and says that his near-death experience has given him a completely different approach to life.
After his brush with death, Alistair reduced the number of hours he works in order to see friends and family more. He also eats more healthily and does more exercise too.
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Near death experiences are a topic of scientific fascination, particularly to one researcher Dr Steven Laureys, a neurologist at the Centre Hospitalier Universitaire de Liège in Belgium.
According to Laureys, near death experiences feel 'even more real than real' and he says its 'the dysfunctional brain which causes the phenomena'.
His research also suggests that some people have a very vivid experience.
Speaking to CNN, he said: “After being close to death, some people will report having had an out-of-body experience, having seen a bright light or being passed through a tunnel; all well-known elements of the famous Near-Death Experience.”
Topics: Health, World News, News