Andrés Arévalo’s near-death experience

Step 1

Before · 2021 · In good health · Andrés’s account

An animation director in the middle of the pandemic

Andrés Arévalo lives in Bogotá. He directs and produces animated videos. He has a ten-year-old son.

It is 2021, the last peak of the pandemic in Colombia. Like almost everyone, he has been shut in at home for a long time.

He is not a very religious person. But he says the subject “did seem quite interesting to me” (his words are translated from Spanish). He had read about it. “What you read about it is one thing, and what you are living through is another,” he says today.

Step 2

2021 · Sick with COVID, at home · Andrés’s account

A cold that isn’t a cold

It starts as a very mild cold. He doesn’t think it’s COVID. The weeks go by. Everything tastes salty and he has trouble breathing, but he doesn’t realize how bad it is. A medical team monitors him by video call.

Andrés says he starts to sense that he is going to die a few days before he is hospitalized. He says goodbye to people, leaves messages, and sends emails. He has almost no voice left, so he communicates with voice notes.

He asks to speak with a priest, Father Gonzalo Arias. “I don’t want to talk about theology. I just want you to listen to me,” he tells him. It is a long conversation, and a very healing one for him.

Step 3

2021 · Critically ill · Andrés’s account

He is intubated in an ICU in Bogotá

The nurse in charge of his case decides, with his family, to send him to the hospital. An ambulance takes him to the Clínica Reina Sofía. There, the entire third floor is an isolation ICU.

He doesn’t respond to treatment. The last thing he remembers is asking them not to do anything more: “I can’t take any more.”

He is intubated and kept sedated for weeks. His lung specialist later told him that intubating was “almost like playing Russian roulette.” Some patients came out of it and others didn’t. Andrés closes his eyes.

Step 4

The first night · In a coma · Andrés’s account

Andrés says he sees himself from above and offers the nurses coffee

He opens his eyes and he is in the room. He sees everything at once, in 360 degrees. He sees what is in front, behind, and to either side. He feels the breeze from the window. At first he thinks he is dreaming. Then he feels anxious and curious.

In the early hours, two nurses come in. They attach some tubes to his arm. One says to the other: “It’s really cold, isn’t it?”

He goes up to them and tells them to go to the kitchen at his home. There is coffee in a cupboard: “You can use it, because I’m already dying.”

They don’t hear him. Andrés says that at that same moment he is also in the kitchen of his apartment. But he has not left the hospital. Everything happens at once.

Step 5

The weeks in a coma · Andrés’s account

Andrés says he goes to a restaurant with his son

The weeks go by. He has nightmares in which he is drowning. He himself says those nightmares were an effect of the medication.

But he says he experiences other things differently, as if they were journeys. In one, he goes to a restaurant with his son and they come back home. In another, he walks around a gas station watching people. At the same time, he knows he is lying intubated in a bed.

He doesn’t know why he goes to those places in particular. Later he will say he recognized them.

Step 12

On waking · Andrés’s account

He wakes up unable to speak

He opens his eyes. The lung specialist asks him: “Andrés, do you know what day it is today?” “I think it’s Tuesday,” he answers. But no one can understand a word he says. He is so thin that the bones of his face stand out.

He has a lot to tell. He asks them to record him, and he writes notes. He says he still has them. No one has seen them.

He tells his doctor about it. According to Andrés, the doctor answers: “Forget about all that. None of it happened. It was all the effect of the drugs.” A year later, the doctor tells him the same thing. “I didn’t need to convince him,” Andrés says.

Step 13

One and two years later · Andrés’s account

Andrés says he recognizes places he saw in the coma

A year later, Andrés is driving home with his son. At a traffic light, he sees the restaurant from the coma. He goes in and asks how long it has been open. “Three months,” they tell him. He goes to wash his hands. Before anyone tells him where the restroom is, he is already heading for it.

Almost two years later he is finally able to visit his aunt. Everything is arranged just as he saw it in the coma. He asks her how long the Virgin has been there.

“We put it there when Armando died,” she answers. And on the altar, next to a portrait of his uncle, there are orchids.

Andrés first told the restaurant story in 2025. He already talked about the furniture in 2024. The Virgin and the altar appear in 2025. Neither his aunt nor the woman at the restaurant has given her own account.

Step 14

Today · Andrés’s account

Andrés says he dreamed that Trump would return

In the coma, Andrés dreamed about Donald Trump. “But he was already president, wasn’t he? He’s going to be president again.” In the dream itself, it seemed impossible to him. Trump returned to the White House in January 2025.

He first told this in September 2025. In March 2024, before the election, he had already told his story, but he did not mention Trump. In 2026 he added that in the coma he saw the wars in Ukraine and Gaza coming. He says he didn’t know the names of the countries.

Today he gives talks about his experience and keeps sick people company. He says he is not afraid of death. And he says he believes in the power of prayer.