Andrés Sampedro’s near-death experience

Step 1

Before 2017 · Andrés’s account

Andrés has had a very slow heart since he was a boy

Andrés Sampedro is an osteopath, and he lived in Madrid. An osteopath is a therapist who treats people with his hands. Andrés had known since he was 13 that his heart was very slow. His heart beat about 35 times a minute. A normal heart beats between 60 and 100 times.

In 2017 he was 42 and always exhausted. He was due to get a pacemaker in June or July.

The pacemaker didn’t come in time.

Step 3

At that moment · Andrés’s account

A nurse who has just arrived gives him CPR

A young woman had just walked into the school. Her name was Lourdes. She was a nurse at a hospital in Madrid. Andrés had never met her. She was still taking off her coat.

Pepe was a man Andrés knew from the school. Lourdes and Pepe took turns giving him CPR. They gave him chest compressions and mouth-to-mouth. They kept going for about 20 minutes, until the ambulance arrived.

Andrés’s earliest account is an interview a doctor recorded in November 2017. The doctor published it in a book in 2023. In that interview, Andrés says Lourdes’s shift had been changed that day and that she decided to go dancing. In later interviews he adds that Lourdes was coming off a shift and heard a voice telling her to go dancing.

Step 4

During CPR · Andrés’s account

Andrés says he sees himself from the ceiling, lying on the floor

Andrés says that suddenly he was floating up by the ceiling of the school. He could see his body lying on the floor and two people trying to revive him. He wasn’t afraid, but he didn’t understand what was happening.

Several times he tried to go back into his body. Each time he felt pain and a pressure in his chest that left him unable to breathe. It was as if his body spat him out. During one of those times he heard the young woman:

“You’re not leaving me.”

From above, he could see the young woman giving him mouth-to-mouth. He didn’t know her.

Step 5

When the ambulance arrives · Andrés’s account

A light behind him tells him everything is going to be all right

The ambulance arrived, and they gave him several shocks to the heart. The shocks weren’t enough. They had to call a second ambulance. It was a mobile intensive care unit, an advanced ambulance. Out in the street, people were crying.

Andrés says he sensed a very large light behind him. It wouldn’t let him turn around to look at it. The light told him to stay calm, that everything was going to be all right, and that his body would be in the hospital for three days.

Then he felt something pulling him backward.

Step 6

During the coma · Andrés’s account

He meets his grandmother and decides to come back

Andrés says he found himself walking through a garden. The light that had been behind him moved in front of him. That light was his grandmother. His grandmother had already died. She hugged him and gave him a kiss.

Then he saw other people who had died. He saw his grandfather and his friend Rafa, who had died a short time before. He came to a walled city. He couldn’t enter it, because if he went in, he wouldn’t come back.

His grandmother and the others told him he had three days to decide. Andrés decided to come back, to help others with what he had learned.

Andrés spent three days in a coma, at La Paz Hospital in Madrid.

Step 7

Tuesday, May 16, 2017 · Andrés’s account

When he wakes up, he says a young woman gave him mouth-to-mouth

Andrés says that when he woke up, he began to talk about what he had been through. His wife asked him to be quiet because the doctors were there. He also says that people told him about Lourdes while he was still in the hospital.

At some point he said that a young woman had given him mouth-to-mouth. His wife told him no. She told him the young woman had only done the chest compressions. And she told him Pepe had given him mouth-to-mouth.

Almost seven years later, in an interview from January 2024, Andrés said this about the young woman:

“I described perfectly what she looked like, what she was wearing.”

In that interview he also says he could not have seen her with his eyes, because he was unconscious and they were closed.

Later he met Lourdes. She told him that she had in fact given him mouth-to-mouth, taking turns with Pepe.

On May 19, he was fitted with a pacemaker with a defibrillator. Today he and Lourdes are close friends.

Step 8

From 2017 to 2026 · Andrés’s account

Andrés tells his story to a doctor in 2017, and later in dozens of interviews

The physician Juan José López Martínez interviewed him with a recorder in November 2017, six months later. He published Andrés’s account in a book in 2023. The doctor says he copies each witness’s words exactly, but the recording has not been published. The doctor is a regression therapist. In this kind of therapy, the patient tries to relive memories they have forgotten. The doctor also believes the soul leaves the body. That interview is the earliest version known. Since January 2024, Andrés has told his story in more than 40 interviews.

• In the 2017 account he already describes the young woman as blond, with shoulder-length hair, a white blouse, and jeans. And he says that when he woke up, he told his wife a young woman had given him mouth-to-mouth.
• In the interviews he repeats the same clothes many times.
• What Lourdes confirmed was the mouth-to-mouth. In no interview does he say she confirmed the clothes.
• It is not clear when he described her. In 2017 he doesn’t say. In an interview from September 2024, he says he described her “when I met this young woman” (translated from Spanish).

Andrés says he was unconscious and his eyes were closed. The question remains: how could he see a young woman he didn’t know?