As an investigative reporter and legal editor, Lee Strobel has spent his career covering high-profile criminal and civil cases across the country.
But one of the most controversial cases he’s explored yet is the one for and against the afterlife.
Once a confirmed atheist, Strobel turned his investigative talents to the supernatural and the evidence, he now believes, proves not only that heaven is real – but so is hell. And it’s even more terrifying than you might think.
In his new book, Seeing the Supernatural: Investigating Angels, Demons, Mystical Dreams, Near-Death Encounters, and Other Mysteries of the Unseen World, he discusses dozens of deeply compelling near death experiences, which doctors agree have no medical explanation.
In one case, a single mother called Mary described watching from above as her life slipped away on a hospital bed.
‘Suddenly a tunnel appeared, and she felt herself being pulled toward it,’ writes Strobel. ‘Her spirit passed through a ceiling fan and then through the ceiling.’
At the end of the tunnel, she said she was surrounded by a sense of love and light, and saw her life replayed in front of her.
‘I felt every good or bad deed I had ever done and its consequences upon others,’ she said. ‘It was a difficult time for me, but I was supported by unconditional love and weathered the painful parts. I was asked telepathically about whether I wanted to stay or return.’
So far, so predictable, perhaps. But what makes Mary’s story particularly convincing, says Strobel, is one very specific element that defies explanation.
‘When Mary’s spirit floated out of her body,’ he writes, ‘she noticed a red label on the top side of a blade on the ceiling fan, hidden from view for people in the room. She later described the sticker in great detail.’
Mary’s spirit floated out of her body as she lay on the hospital bed
Mary noticed a red label on the top side of a blade on the ceiling fan, hidden from view for people in the room
Other accounts tell of clinically dead patients being able to describe the medical procedures and tools a doctor used on them, in the kind of precise detail they couldn’t possibly have known.
In the case of a heart attack patient called Maria, she talked about rising above her body and out of the hospital – where she saw a stray tennis shoe on a window ledge.
When she was eventually revived, she described it: ‘A man’s shoe, left-footed, dark blue, with a wear mark over the little toe and a shoelace tucked under the heel.’
When staff went to check, it was there, exactly as she’d said.
In another account, a seven-year-old child called Katie was in a swimming pool accident.
Found face-down, she was in a coma, showing no measurable brain activity. Clinically dead for 20 minutes, she was kept alive by an artificial lung.
‘Somehow, though, she made a miraculous recovery in just three days,’ writes Strobel.
Questioned at length by doctors, she told them that, in her out-of-body state, she had followed her family home one night.
‘She was able to give specific details about what she observed, including what her father was reading, how her brother was pushing a toy soldier in a Jeep, and her mother was cooking roast chicken and rice. She even knew what clothes each family member wore that night.’
Her case was published in the American Journal of Diseases of Children.
Even people who have been blind all their lives have reported being able to see when they claim to travel to the other side.
Vicki described going down a tunnel to a beautiful place – even though she’d been blind all her life
A seven-year-old child called Katie was in a swimming pool accident and was able to describe what her family did while she was clinically dead
‘Vicki had never visually seen anything in her 22 years,’ writes Strobel.
‘Then she was in a car accident and found herself looking down on the crumpled vehicle, and later she watched doctors working on her body as she floated toward the ceiling.’
She, too, described going down a tunnel to a beautiful place, where she was met by two old schoolfriends and watched her life in review.
What was particularly astonishing was that she was able to describe these friends accurately, despite the fact that she’d never ‘seen’ them.
However, while most near death experiences are positive, he recounts one story of person who claimed he was taken to hell, where the terror he encountered was unlike anything he could have imagined.
Howard Storm – an atheist and a professor at Northern Kentucky University – wrote a book about his experience when he ‘died’ from a stomach ulcer.
‘He began following some mysterious but friendly visitors who beckoned him down the hallway,’ writes Strobel.
‘This turned into a trek of miles, with conditions getting darker and darker.’
Then, without warning, his previously friendly guides turned terrifyingly violent.
‘They began pushing, hitting, pulling, kicking, biting and tearing with their fingernails and hands as they laughed and swore at him,’ writes Strobel.
‘He fought back as best he could, but he was mauled – physically and emotionally – in the struggle.’
He quotes Storm as saying: ‘There has never been a horror movie or book that can begin to describe their cruelty. Eventually I was eviscerated. I definitely lost one of my eyes, my ears were gone.’
He claims, however, that when he called out for help – ‘Jesus, save me!’ – a bright light appeared and a pair of hands reached for him.
‘When they touched me, in that light, I could see me and all the gore. I was roadkill. and that gore began to just dissolve and I came back whole.’
Strobel also interviews an Ivy League psychiatrist who became a believer after a firsthand encounter with demonic forces.
Richard Gallagher was trained in psychiatry at Yale University and in psychoanalysis at Columbia University.
Howard Storm said of his ‘journey to hell: ‘There has never been a horror movie or book that can begin to describe their cruelty’
Howard Storm (left) wrote a book about his experience after he ‘died’ from a stomach ulcer. Psychiatrist Richard Gallagher (right) says he was the victim of a demonic spell
But he found God in the reality of Satan and demons after a chilling encounter with a ‘possessed’ woman.
The night before he met her, his two cats began fighting.
‘Loud screeching sounds startled me and my wife out of our sleep. Our two normally docile cats were going at it like champion prizefighters, smacking and clawing at each other, intent on inflicting some serious harm,’ Dr Gallagher recounted.
He had a client named Julia the following day. She was a self-described priestess of a satanic cult and was accompanied by a Catholic priest.
Dr Gallagher said that when Julia arrived, she gave him a smirk and said: ‘How’d you like those cats last night?’
The meeting made the doctor believe that some of his patients may not be mentally ill but possessed by evil spirits.
‘To the untrained eye, many possessions may be thought to fall into the psychiatric categories of various psychoses and severe personality and dissociative disorders,’ Dr Gallagher said.
‘However, for well-trained psychiatrists and other health professionals, possessions differ from such disorders in significant ways.’
Seeing the Supernatural: Investigating Angels, Demons, Mystical Dreams, Near-Death Encounters, and Other Mysteries of the Unseen World by Lee Strobel is published by Zondervan
