The debate concerning what might happen to us when we die is one that has no conceivable end. As long as humans have a finite amount of time to wonder over what exactly ‘being alive’ means, they’re well within their rights to speculate over what comes next.
Fascinatingly, there are a select number of people on the planet who perhaps have a better idea than the general populace. And while we’re not about to sit here and say that people who have died and been brought back to life are lucky, there are usually interesting details to be gleaned from their experiences.
This includes exactly what they saw (if anything at all) and what they remember from their time in the place beyond our mortal realm.
Lifelong atheist Riley Courtright can count herself among those well placed to weigh in on the question of what awaits us when we die. Riley had been diagnosed with vascular Ehlers-Danlos syndrome (EDS), which the Cleveland Clinic describes as a severe type of genetic connective tissue disorder.
Sufferers are said to bruise easily and face a high risk of dangerous internal bleeding if they sustain trauma.
Over an 18-month period, Riley died twice.
The first time happened at home after doctors had told her there were no further treatment options available to her.
The second, which she discussed at length during an appearance on the Round Trip Death podcast in April, occurred last year after Riley and her husband had relocated so that she could spend what they believed were going to be her final days in peace.
“Dying is a funny thing because it all sort of happens at once, right? The moment that you realize your soul has left your body and that you’re not a body with a soul, rather a soul with a body, right?” Riley said.
She described both her brushes with death as journeys through what she labeled a cosmic wormhole, recalling how she had reunited with deceased loved ones and heard otherworldly music.
It was during her second experience, however, that she claims to have found herself in the presence of God.
“When I died, I instantly shot up to God. And there was no mistaking that’s where I was,” she said on the Round Trip podcast. “He is bigger than the cosmos. I got to wrap my arms around his neck. I got to sit in his lap. I got to play by his ankles. I got to go with him to work.
“It felt like I got to watch him expand the universe. I got to watch him build the next Earth that we’re all going to be on.”
She continued: “He explained it was… it’s everything. You get every bit of information that’s ever existed in the universe all at once.”
Riley also said that God told her he would give her a heart and lungs. When she abruptly returned to her body and woke up to her husband holding her cold body, she claims he had been holding her for an hour, refusing to let medics take her away.
“And when he was finally ready to let them take my body, he kissed me one last time, and I took a breath,” Riley said. “I went from being with God to [being] with my husband…and everybody’s like shocked and terrified because they’re like, what the f*** right?”
She added: “The first breath that I took was the cleanest breath I’ve ever taken. There was nothing wrong with my heart anymore. My lungs were great. My kidneys, my liver. I was hungry.
“I knew that I could get up and go to the bathroom… I had been healed, and I knew it.”
Riley was subsequently taken to the hospital for tests, where she says doctors were at a loss as to explain what had happened.
“We can’t explain this, but you look like a healthy 34-year-old,” they reportedly told her.
“Like, your organs look good. We can’t see the past trauma anymore from heart attacks, from strokes, or signs of internal bleeding. Like you’re great.'”
Doctors then asked what they could do for her, but Riley says she declined treatment.
“I knew I wasn’t meant to take medicine anymore. And so I said nothing,” she added.
At the time of the podcast’s release – April 2026 – Riley confirmed she was no longer an atheist and claimed to have been “healed” for seven months.
She concluded: “I was an atheist, and I got to see God. So I also don’t want people to be scared of this, like biblical telling or this Baptist telling of, you know, ‘fear God’ because God doesn’t want to be feared. He wants to be loved, right?…His love is so unconditional.”
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