A man who temporarily died from a ruptured brain aneurysm says he encountered something profoundly mysterious on the other side. Darren, whose experience was reported by the Irish Star, believes he witnessed a supernatural phenomenon while doctors fought to save his life after his heart stopped for up to 15 seconds.
The incident occurred eight years ago, during emergency surgery that lasted six hours.
Darren recalled, “I remember standing in a dark area and just looking upon a bright light in the distance. The light was brighter than the sun, yet it did not hurt my eyes to look upon it.” He went on to explain how the light had rays shooting out in every direction, and right in the middle of it all, there was the silhouette of a human being.
This is a neuroscientific model of a near-death experience.
🧵1/11 pic.twitter.com/73282VPm7I
— Nicholas Fabiano, MD (@NTFabiano) May 29, 2025
Though the encounter may have lasted mere seconds in real time, Darren insisted it felt timeless. “God created time and God controls time,” he said. There is no such thing as time being recorded in the next world.” After the surgery, Darren faced temporary paralysis and loss of vision in one eye, but also a lingering sense of awe and spiritual clarity.
Although people think his experience was out of this world, scientists are still unsure. They reckon Darren’s close call with the afterlife could have some more down-to-earth explanations.
What Does Science Say About Near-Death Experiences?
When talking about near-death experiences (NDEs) like what happened to Darren, many who have been through that experience claim the same weird happenings: floating feelings, seeing their bodies from outside and passing through tunnels into bright lights.
Dr. Sam Parnia, who leads research into resuscitation science at NYU Langone Health at the Parnia Lab, has noticed that these people who’ve had near-death experiences say they’ve been pulled towards a soothing, warm light. And they sometimes meet people they know who’ve passed away.
“They often say that they didn’t want to come back (…) and it is like a magnet that draws them,” he informs.
However, experts argue that these vivid experiences might not stem from the divine but from the dying brain itself. Neil Dagnall and Ken Drinkwater from Manchester Metropolitan University have written extensively about the neurological and psychological theories behind NDEs.
One such theory is that low oxygen levels in the brain can induce hallucinations. Another suggests NDEs are the final bursts of electrical activity in brain cells before death.
“Currently, there is no definitive explanation for why near-death experiences happen,” Dagnall and Drinkwater concluded. “But ongoing research still strives to understand this enigmatic phenomenon.”
What feels like a glimpse of eternity could very well be biology’s last gasp.
What Are Aneurysms?
Darren’s frightening experience with a cerebral aneurysm started when a spot in one of his brain arteries became weak and suddenly burst. It causes a lot of bleeding.
Cerebral aneurysms can often be dormant for decades prior to rupture. This is a very rare case of a large vertebro-basilar junction aneurysm with observed rupture during a 3D angiogram spin. pic.twitter.com/sTvoyPPcSz
— Richard Dalyai, MD (@drdalyai) August 7, 2018
Johns Hopkins Medicine says these things can happen anywhere in your body, but they’re most common in the brain and the aorta. Some look like a balloon sticking out (saccular), while others bulge all around (fusiform), and sometimes they can tear the blood vessel wall apart.
The risk factors that can make you more likely to get an aneurysm are high blood pressure, smoking, having it in your family history, being overweight, and having arteries that are clogged up and hard (arteriosclerosis). Usually, you don’t even know you have one until it bursts, which can be terrible.
For Darren, surgery was the only way to fix it after it happened.
He went through a six-hour operation where the doctors worked hard to save him. Luckily, he made it through, but going through something so intense changed how he thought about life, dying, and what could be waiting after we’re gone.
