Boy of 3 has near-death experience and meets his [great?] grandmother

While clinically dead for three hours, a little boy spoke with “grandma Emmi” in the afterlife.

Paul Eicke [bild.de]

Three-year-old German boy Paul Eicke was in the pond at his grandparents’ house for several minutes before his grandfather saw him and pulled him out. His father gave him heart massage and mouth-to-mouth during the ten minutes it took a helicopter to arrive. Paramedics then took over and Paul was taken the ten-minute journey to hospital. Doctors tried to resuscitate him for hours. They had just given up when, 3 hours and 18 minutes after he had been brought in, Paul’s heart started beating independently.

How could Paul have come back to life after more than three hours?

Statistics from the US show that the vast majority of children who survive drownings – 92 per cent – are discovered within two minutes of submersion. Nearly all those who require cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) either die or are left with severe brain injury. But cold temperatures can slow the metabolism, which means the body can survive for longer without oxygen. In this case, the water in the pond was said to be very cold and the boy’s core temperature was just 28°C, compared to the normal of 37°C.

If the temperature had been higher, the team would have stopped trying to resuscitate after 40 minutes because the boy would definitely have been brain dead. Instead, they carried on with the chest compressions to stimulate Paul’s organs, which had shut down after he breathed in the cold water.

Professor Lothar Schweigerer, director of the Helios Clinic in Buch where Paul was taken, said: ‘I have never experienced anything like it.

‘When children have been underwater for a few minutes they mostly don’t make it. This is a most extraordinary case.’

Professor Schweigerer went on:

My doctors were close to saying “we can do no more” after two hours of thorax compression. This was because the chances of survival had gone and the little lad must have been brain dead. But then suddenly his heart started to beat again … it was a fantastic miracle.

I’ve been doing this job for 30 years and have never seen anything like this. It goes to show the human body is a very resilient organism and you should never give up.

“I knew I was in heaven”

Paul said that while unconscious he saw his great-grandmother Emmi, who had turned him back from a gate and urged him to go back to his parents.

Paul said:

There was a lot of light and I was floating. I came to a gate and I saw Oma [Grandma] Emmi on the other side.

She said to me, “What are you doing here Paul? You must go back to mummy and daddy. I will wait for you here.”

I knew I was in heaven. But Grandma said I had to come home. She said that I should go back very quickly.

Paul is now back at home in Lychen, Brandenburg, north of Berlin in Germany, and there appears to be no sign of brain damage. Although heaven “looked nice,” he says that he is glad to be back with his mummy and daddy now.

NOTE

I would like to dig up a bit more on this story. Presumably, grandma Emmi is a deceased relative, though this is not made explicit in the reports. If so, how did Paul recognise her? Had she died recently?

It would also be fascinating to see if this amazing experience leaves any lasting mark on Paul’s personality. — barry

Sources

• Bild: Paul (3): “I saw the afterlife and met Grandma in Heaven!”
• Daily Mail: Boy, 3, tells how he ‘saw grandmother in Heaven’ before being brought back from the dead after falling into pond

For more of my posts about near-death experiences, here’s an index:

• Near-Death Experiences