A woman who once described herself as an atheist says a six-minute brush with death changed everything she thought she knew about life, consciousness and humanity’s place in the universe.
Dr. Anna Stone, a former Department of Defense research technician, was 38 in 2016 when an undiagnosed ectopic pregnancy ruptured, triggering catastrophic internal bleeding that she says left her clinically dead in a hospital.
Speaking to the Daily Mail, Stone said the near-death experience shattered her long-held belief that awareness simply disappears when the body dies, leaving her convinced that some form of afterlife is real.
But she said the most powerful revelation was not just personal survival beyond death. According to Stone, she returned with the conviction that all people — no matter their faith, politics or culture — are bound together within a single shared consciousness.
‘I came back with this understanding that God, or source, or whatever you want to call it, is like an ocean,’ she told the Daily Mail.
She described each human being as a separate droplet containing the divine, destined after death to rejoin the same ‘sea of consciousness’ without losing their individuality.
‘We’re all going to go to the same place at the end,’ Stone said, arguing that the divisions people use to separate themselves are ultimately ‘all fake.’
She also said the incident awoke a hidden psychic connection between her and another realm – which now sends her terrifying messages from an unseen guardian.
Dr Anna Stone was 38 in 2016 when she died for six minutes during a medical emergency
Stone had previously worked as a lab technician specializing in histology, preparing tissue samples in research labs that she said were tied to university and government contracts.
This included work connected to the US Department of Veterans Affairs, the University of California, Los Angeles and defense projects.
Before her near-death experience, Stone rejected the strict religious teachings of her upbringing and believed that there was no afterlife awaiting her when she died.
‘I am energy, I’m made of cells, cells decay and die. My energy will transfer back to the Earth in some way, shape, or form, as energy does. But it’s not going to be me continuing; it’s gonna be the energy of my body feeding plants or something. That made sense to me,’ she explained.
That all changed when Stone began suffering from multiple episodes of heavy bleeding. She went to the hospital three times, and doctors treated the condition as an ulcer.
In reality, Stone was dealing with an ectopic pregnancy, where the fetus grows inside the fallopian tube. After it ruptured, Stone’s heart stopped while doctors rushed to give her a massive blood transfusion.
Stone described feeling extreme pain as if every cell in her body was dying before she suddenly found herself standing next to her physical body in the hospital, watching as doctors called her time of death and referred to her as a ‘junkie.’
‘I didn’t care that he had said it, really. I cared more, like, did I hear it? Because that’s a problem,’ Stone said, adding that she asked the doctor about what he said when she came back to life.
‘If I’m clinically dead and you called my time a death, I should not have been able to see or hear any of this, right? And, he says, “I’m sorry, I did. You shouldn’t have been able to hear that.”‘
Stone revealed she could hear what doctors were saying as they called her time of death
Despite only being clinically dead for six minutes, time did not seem to apply in this realm, and Stone noticed other versions of herself inhabiting the same realm with her.
‘I knew there was a two-year-old, six-year-old, 12-year-old and 16-year-old version of me, all around me. I was existing all at the same time.’
She said the various versions of her past also shared this space with other people whom she recognized but never knew their names. They were strangers she had encountered throughout her life, who had been affected by the negative interactions Stone had with them.
‘I got to see from their perspective how selfish I was,’ Stone confessed. ‘I didn’t consider the other people that I was interacting with. I was just going through my day, and just doing my thing, and I was not considering other people.’
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After this revelation, Stone saw a slightly different version of herself as she looked in 2016, hearing the presence say ‘nope,’ and understanding that it meant she would not be staying in the afterlife.
She claimed that returning to her body was an extremely painful experience, seeing her return to Earth through her navel and feeling her entire body get compressed through this tiny hole.
Stone said that a brightly lit realm appeared right next to the hospital room after she was pronounced as clinically dead
The trauma of the near-death experience did not end for Stone after finding out from the doctor that she could hear his private comments. In fact, the experience had lasting effects that led her to undergo a psychiatric evaluation.
Stone claimed she returned from the afterlife and repeatedly heard voices that gave her warnings moments before terrible events took place, including one which told her to stop just before she nearly struck a pedestrian with her car on a poorly lit street.
‘I started hearing this voice. Not a voice outside of me. It was inside, and it would tell me things, like, don’t drink that, or, don’t go that way,’ Stone said.
In another incident, Stone said she could hear a stranger standing near her while walking to her teaching job ask what time it was.
She answered that the time was 3.30pm, causing the man to panic and claim he never asked that question out loud.
After experiencing these incidents, doctors at the University of Southern California ruled out schizophrenia and similar conditions.
Although Stone was diagnosed with complex PTSD from her difficult childhood, including her father being arrested for murder when she was two, and being kicked out of her house at age 12, there was no explanation for what was causing the episodes.
Stone did not see angels or other people, but said she could feel the presence of others, including different versions of herself at younger ages
She told the Daily Mail she now believes that her soul somehow caused the entire near-death experience to take place to put her life back on the right track.
Stone, who would go on to earn a PhD in spiritual psychology after the incident, said she battled an addiction to opioids before going through a medical detox in 2011.
She also admitted to drinking heavily before her near-death experience but has not drank since due to a miraculous incident right after she got home from the hospital.
‘I tried to drink alcohol, and it foamed up in my mouth. Instead of drinking it, it turned from liquid into this foam and it was warm,’ she said.
‘I had to spit it out, and I tried a different type of alcohol, same thing. That was the end of it. So I stopped.’
‘I knew I was coming back,’ Stone said of her near-death experience. ‘This was just, like, I call it my karmic b**** slap. It was like, Anna, get your s*** together, what are you doing?’
Stone also claimed that she began hearing psychic voices which warn her of impending danger
As for her own experience, Stone said it completely altered her as a person from the moment she left the hospital.
Shortly after, Stone received an offer to teach at a continuation school, working with students whose lives had also been marked by trauma, disruption and the same kinds of struggles she knew firsthand.
She has taught, written and studied how trauma, consciousness, and unusual sensitivity are connected since 2016, to help other people make sense of pain and change.
‘I would hope that it means that we are not finite, that we are part of this collective organism of the universe that is, I believe, conscious,’ Stone said of her near-death experience.
‘I have no idea where it’s gonna go, but I think that it is far more. My hope is that this whole existence here is more than just bills and taxes and disappointments and rat racing. I really hope that there’s something after that makes all of this worthwhile.’