FROM GRAVEYARD 🪦😲

I was raised atheist and was a rabid anti-theist continuing into adulthood. When I was in my late twenties I had an out-of-body experience and am convinced that God showed me a glimpse of Hell. And by “showed me a glimpse of,” I mean that I believe I experienced Hell. It’s impossible to accurately describe or explain because it’s a spiritual dimension, and so there’s nothing in the natural world which can even be compared; the best I can do is offer my experience.

Trying to precisely describe a spiritual realm is like trying to explain to someone what the color purple tastes like, or the sound which lightwaves emit. We just don’t possess the conceptual abilities to be able to comprehend it in any sufficient manner while we’re bound to our natural bodies. It’s impossible for me to completely remember many details for this exact reason.

If I was in Hell and my experience was real, it’s far worse than anything I had ever heard of or could’ve imagined. Firstly, there’s no time; it’s just a single, eternal moment. This, again, is something which we cannot conceptualize in our natural state, so there’s that as a foundation. Then the best way that I can explain it is that it felt like my consciousness was twisted inside out, folded over itself, tied into a super-compressed knot, and squeezed into a space infinitely too small. Try to recall the most claustrophobic experience you can imagine and multiply it by infinity. Meanwhile, there was a persistent, horrific feeling of “Oh, no. No! No!!!” spanning eternity. There was no light, no hope, no joy, no emotion of any variety other than the ceaseless sensation of “Oh, no!” amidst the most powerful claustrophobic torture imaginable.


It is comparable to the feeling someone has when they know they are about to die suddenly but desperately want to live. I experienced this once when I lost control of my car in a snow storm and hit a giant tree head-on at fifty-five miles per hour. Immediately before impact I let out an involuntary, primal scream. It was a guttural, instinctive, raw and absolutely terrifying reaction which I didn’t know I was capable of or had in me. That primal scream was one of the most powerful and surreal moments of my life, and I imagine that feeling would be magnified in the case of a violent death by someone else’s hands.

I used to have recurring dreams of dying and had “died” in so many different ways that I had just become used to it. The worst way that I experienced dying in my dreams was being shot in the head at point-blank range. The feeling of “Oh, no! Please, I don’t want to die” was so absolutely vivid, visceral, and horrific that it makes me uncomfortable even recalling it. And that was just a dream—I can’t even imagine how much more terrifying it must be in reality.

But that feeling—that awful, helpless, hopeless, and terrifying feeling—of exponentially heightened pure terror and regretful longing in despair is what I experienced while my consciousness was folded inside out over itself, tied in the tightest knot, and shoved into an infinitely too small space for an eternal moment of “Oh, no…” So, if my experience was real and tells us anything, you don’t do anything in Hell. It’s just an eternal moment of infinitely claustrophobic, horrifying “Oh, no…” That’s it.

Once my brain started communicating with my body again, I came back into myself and saw my two friends I was with hovering over me, looking extremely horrified. They told me that I had been crying hysterically, but I had no conscious recollection of crying at all. I immediately said “I was in Hell,” which is odd because I was an atheist and most definitely did not believe in Hell, but I didn’t try to immediately rationalize it. I did eventually push it away though and finally dismissed it—not through any specific explanation but because I had no use for it, and what was I supposed to do with an experience like that?

Years later, I had come to a place of absolute darkness and despair, and I was planning on killing myself. In the desperate moment I prayed to God for the first time in my life, saying something along the lines of “I don’t know if you exist or care at all, but I’ve tried everything. I have no hope, I’m just sad all of the time, my heart hurts, and if you can’t help me I give up.” I fell asleep crying but woke up the next morning with pure joy in my heart and a peace of mind I had never known, even as an “innocent” child. All of the darkness, desperate horror, and empty, meaningless sorrow had been completely eradicated from my being in an instant and replaced by a peace and joy which have never left me.

I walked three miles into town that morning and three separate people spoke with me about what Jesus had done for me on the cross—living a life of perfect, righteous obedience to take my punishment upon himself and die in my place, conquering the power of death and sin to reconcile me to God—that I may be called a child born of God, and live with Him forever. It felt totally random as I had never had anyone share the Gospel message with me in my hometown, and now in a single day I’m having three different discussions about Jesus Christ without any prompting. Now, I didn’t immediately believe, of course, but it was enough for me to start reading Jesus’ teachings for myself, and they not only explained why my life had come to the point that it had, but furthermore explained so much about people, our hearts, the human spiritual condition, society, and the world in general.

The words spoke directly to my heart, and when I got to the part where Jesus says that one must be born again, I knew that this was exactly what God was doing in my life, and as I looked into it further other parts of Scripture described this process exactly. I repented, confessed my sin nature before God, turned away from iniquity towards seeking him and trusting in his righteousness: I accepted Jesus as my Lord and Savior. I was baptized less than a year later, and my life has been forever changed. I died that night to myself and have been raised with Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit, being sanctified according to the council of His will, for His glory.

I don’t know if I actually experienced Hell, but I believed I did then when it happened, although I eventually pushed it out of my mind, and I now truly believe that I did. It’s not something that I want anyone to ever experience.

I pray that some who read this will come to the knowledge of Christ Jesus by the power of the Holy Spirit, and that they may know you and be known by you. For in you there is true joy, peace, love, and all good gifts of the Spirit through grace, and life everlasting, beginning here, now. I ask all of this in Jesus’ name, Father. May it be your will.

Amen