A real-life story · Chile, 2019
Ana Magallanes’ near-death experience
Ana Magallanes says that in 2019, at age 28, doctors found a tumor in her heart by chance. She had open-heart surgery in Chile to remove it. She later said that she found herself outside the operating room during the operation. First she was in the waiting room, and then on another floor of the hospital. There she saw her best friend showing a phone to a doctor. According to Ana, her friend later told her she had been on a video call with Ana’s parents at that moment.
Ana says her friend was on the other floor and confirmed what she saw there. And she describes that scene the same way in the two interviews we know of. The two interviews are a year and a half apart. How did she know where her friend was and who she was talking to?
Step 1
March 2019 · Ana’s account
A week of changes
Ana is 28 and lives on the outskirts of Santiago, Chile. She is a visual artist. A week ago, she opened a shop.
Her family has just moved out of the country. Five days ago, she saw them off at the airport.
She has no symptoms of anything.
Step 2
Two days before surgery · Ana’s account
A bus that doesn’t brake
Ana has been buying supplies for the shop and is heading home on an intercity bus. The bus goes over a speed bump without braking. The jolt fractures her spine.
It hurts so much she can’t move. In the ER, they scan her whole back. The fracture is minor, and they tell her to rest.
But they tell her another doctor is coming to see her, “because there’s something else” (translated from Spanish).
Step 3
In the ER · Ana’s account
A tumor in her heart
Several doctors arrive at once and ask whether she has fainted. She says she hasn’t. The doctor breaks the news: “You have a tumor in your heart, it’s a giant tumor.” She has probably had it since she was a child.
She needs surgery right away. The doctor tells her: “Three months from now, this is over.” The tumor is a myxoma, a type of heart tumor.
Her family can’t get back in time. Ana asks for blood donors on social media. One of her best friends holds on to her phone and takes charge of talking to her parents.
Step 4
Wednesday, March 20, 2019 · Under anesthesia · Ana’s account
Open-heart surgery
She has open-heart surgery. It is a long, complicated operation.
Ana warns: “I’m not a doctor.” But she understands that in this kind of surgery the heart stops and a machine keeps the blood moving. At the end, the heart has to start beating again on its own. She says hers took a little longer than usual.
She believes that is when she went through what she describes.
That night at nine, she and her partner had tickets to see Paul McCartney in concert in Santiago. They had been counting down for months.
Step 5
During surgery · Ana’s account
Ana says she finds herself in the waiting room
At the time, she took it for a dream. She leaves the operating room and, all at once, she is in the waiting room.
She can’t see all of herself. She sees her arms covered in bruises. When she looks down, she sees the freshly closed incision. “I don’t want them to see me like this,” she thinks.
The people closest to her aren’t in the room. Instead there are some people who came to give blood. Ana doesn’t know them very well.
“How strange that this person is here,” she thinks.
Step 6
During surgery · Ana’s account
Ana says she sees her friend on another floor
Ana leaves so they won’t see her. Suddenly she is on another floor of the hospital.
There she sees her friend, the one who has her phone. Her friend is showing the phone to a doctor behind a counter.
She can’t see the scene clearly. “She must be showing him photos,” she thinks.
No one sees her. The people in the waiting room don’t see her, and neither do her friend or the doctor. She can’t hear anything, and whatever she tries to touch is farther away than it looks.
Step 7
During surgery · Ana’s account
Ana says her cat appears, years after his death
Out from under the counter comes Peloto, her first cat, who had died a few years earlier. “I’m clearly dreaming,” she thinks. “Why am I dreaming about him?”
She tries to touch him but can’t reach him, however far she stretches her arm. He looks at her and moves his mouth as if he were meowing, but she can’t hear him.
Peloto starts walking down a hallway, looking back at her. Ana follows him.
She says she sensed there were more people up ahead. She never got to see those people.
Step 8
During surgery · Ana’s account
Ana says she follows him to a door full of light
The cat stops in front of a door with bright light pouring out of it. From outside, Ana sees that it is the operating room, with the doctors’ big surgical lamp.
Peloto jumps inside. She tries to grab him.
And at that moment, she wakes up.
She feels completely calm. She feels no pain and no fear. She says the only strange thing is the feeling of being underwater.
Step 9
After waking up · Ana’s account
She tells her friend
She opens her eyes still intubated, unable to speak. All she can move is her eyes.
A day or two later, the tubes come out. Then she tells her friend what she “dreamed” and whom she saw in the waiting room.
Her friend starts asking questions: “So who was there? Who was it? What was he wearing?”
Her friend tells Ana that those people really were in the waiting room. “How did you know, if it wasn’t someone that close to you?”
Step 10
After waking up · Ana’s account
The video call
According to Ana, her friend then tells her something else. When Ana saw her with the doctor, her friend wasn’t showing him photos. She was on a video call with Ana’s parents.
The doctor was explaining to them that the surgery had gone well and that they were waiting for her heart to start beating again on its own.
Her friend told her that Ana had no heartbeat at that moment. But that was normal, because they were waiting. Her friend has not told her side of the story in public.
Step 11
The months that followed · Ana’s account
“He was the first one there waiting for you”
Ana tells the surgeon and the cardiologist. They explain that some patients see things because of the medication.
She tells the cardiologist that she saw her cat, who had died years before. He replies: “Well, he was the first one there waiting for you.” Those words give her a great sense of calm.
Her recovery is very painful and takes months. On top of that, her spine is still fractured. Part of her heart has been repaired with cow tissue.
She says that in the hospital, at night, she sees Peloto’s silhouette in the window. It happens two or three times. When she looks again, he is gone.
Step 12
Today · Ana’s account
She is no longer afraid of death
Ana experienced it as a dream, and she still says so. But today, she says, “I chose to believe” that it was Peloto who brought her back. She has lost her fear of death.
Since then she has felt a very deep closeness to animals. Today she works as a medium, mostly with animals, under the name Ana Medium.
Her story needs someone else to tell it. Her friend could tell it, or the record of that video call could confirm it.
How many NDEs include leaving the body?
Ana says she left the operating room and saw what was happening elsewhere in the hospital. It is one of the best-known parts of these experiences, but not every NDE includes it.
Imagine 100 people who have had an NDE after cardiac arrest:
Each dot is one person. The 25 filled dots are, roughly, those who said they had left their body. The figure comes from a study at ten hospitals in the Netherlands, with 62 people who had an NDE.
In another set of accounts, the figure is somewhat higher:
| What they described | How many |
|---|---|
| Leaving the body. Cardiac arrest survivors with an NDE, the Netherlands, 2001 (62 people) | about 25% |
| Leaving the body and seeing it. Written accounts after a coma caused by lack of oxygen, Belgium (34 accounts) | 35% |
| Seeing what was happening around them during the emergency, in those same accounts | 27% |
| With some detail that may have been checked, in those same accounts | 9% |
What these figures don’t tell you
- These are small groups. With 34 or 62 people, a few more or a few fewer change the percentage a lot.
- “May have been checked” is not “was checked.” The authors label those details as possibly confirmed, not as checked.
- Ana’s situation was different. She was in a planned operation under general anesthesia, not in an unexpected cardiac arrest.
That is why no one knows the real figure. There is more in How many people have a near-death experience? The two studies agree that leaving the body shows up in one out of every three or four experiences, not in all of them.
Where this story comes from
Interviews
- Lo Invisible con Esteban Vigouroux, “Mi gato fallecido me guió de regreso” [My late cat guided me back] (2026), in SpanishWatch on YouTube
- Luces en la Oscuridad, “El caso Ana Magallanes” [The Ana Magallanes case] (2024), in SpanishWatch on YouTube
Studies
- Van Lommel et al. (2001), ten hospitals in the Netherlands, The Lancet 358:2039-2045. The out-of-body figure is given by the author himself in Journal of Consciousness Studies 20(1-2):7-48 (2013)View in the journal (free with registration)
- Michael, Luke, and Robinson (2025), using the accounts collected by Cassol et al. (2018), Frontiers in Psychology 16:1532937Read for free
To learn more
Our archive
- Her record, with the two interviews compared, and the assessment of what she saw on the other floor, as of October 10, 2026
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