Elizabeth Krohn’s near-death experience

Step 1

Before · 1988 · Doing fine · Elizabeth’s account

A 28-year-old skeptic

Elizabeth Krohn lives in Houston, in the United States. She is 28, has been married for eight years, and has two young children, ages four and two. She went to law school, but these days she stays home with the kids.

She is Jewish by birth, but not observant. She doesn’t believe there is anything after death. For her, when you die, the lights go out, and that’s it.

If anyone had told her back then what was going to happen to her, she would have laughed. She would have told them they were crazy.

Step 2

September 1988 · Doing fine · Elizabeth’s account

She goes to synagogue on the anniversary of her grandfather’s death

It has been a year since Elizabeth’s grandfather died. That afternoon they will read his name at the synagogue, and the whole family will be there. Her husband is away on a trip. So Elizabeth goes on her own with her two sons.

Before they leave, she dresses the boys up. They look so good that she takes a photo of herself with them. Today, when Elizabeth looks at that photo, she sees a look in her eyes that she no longer has.

It is sunny. But as she drives into the synagogue parking lot, a big black cloud covers the sun.

Step 3

In the parking lot · Elizabeth’s account

Lightning strikes her umbrella

It starts pouring. Elizabeth tells her older son to run to the synagogue door and wait for her there. Then she lifts the younger one out of his car seat and takes his hand. With her other hand she opens the umbrella and holds it very close to her head. Her wedding ring touches the metal shaft of the umbrella.

The thunder starts. Elizabeth looks at her hand on the umbrella and thinks it is foolish to hold an umbrella in a lightning storm. “Just let go,” she tells herself.

She doesn’t have time. A small bolt of lightning touches the tip of the umbrella. It hurts, and her arm is paralyzed. She can’t open her hand. Right after that, a much bigger bolt hits the umbrella. Elizabeth knows there were two bolts because a man who saw everything told her later.

The thunder bursts the eardrums of Elizabeth and the younger boy. The boy lets go of her hand and covers his ears, screaming. The older boy runs back, takes his brother by the hand and leads him toward the building.

Elizabeth is left lying on the ground in the parking lot, in the rain. But she doesn’t know it yet.

Step 4

Unconscious · Elizabeth’s account

Elizabeth says she goes into the synagogue and sees her body outside, on the ground

Elizabeth thinks she is still on her feet and follows her sons into the synagogue. In the lobby there is a man who knows them. He comes over to the boys to see why they are screaming. He talks to them, but he doesn’t look at Elizabeth. She doesn’t understand why he is ignoring her.

Elizabeth looks for her umbrella and doesn’t have it. She looks outside through the small glass window in the door. She sees the umbrella on the ground in the parking lot, smoking. Only the metal skeleton is left. About 20 feet from the umbrella, a person is lying on the ground. It is her. The soles of her new shoes have burned away.

Then Elizabeth looks down at her feet, inside the lobby. There her shoes are perfect. They aren’t even wet. But her feet aren’t touching the floor. She is floating about six inches up.

This is how Elizabeth experiences it. Her body is still outside, lying in the rain. And she is inside, looking at it through the window.

Meanwhile, the man from the lobby goes into the room where the service is being held. From the back he calls out: “We need a doctor.” The synagogue is half a block from Houston’s largest medical center. About forty doctors get up. Only she describes this scene. No one from the synagogue has told what happened that day.

Step 9

In the garden · September 1988 · Elizabeth’s account

Elizabeth says she is told who will be president

In the garden, the voice also tells her two things that are going to happen. It tells her who will play in the next Super Bowl, the NFL championship game. And it tells her who will win the U.S. presidential election in November.

Elizabeth objects. She isn’t interested in politics, and she has never watched a Super Bowl. The voice explains why it is telling her. When those two things happen, Elizabeth will remember the whole conversation.

In a 2024 interview, Elizabeth explained what the voice told her about the election:

“He said George Bush was gonna be president and look at that, he’s the president.”

George Bush won the election in November 1988. In that interview, Elizabeth doesn’t say which team would play in the Super Bowl. In her 2018 book she does. She writes that the voice named the Cincinnati Bengals. And the Bengals played in the Super Bowl in January 1989. But there is no evidence that Elizabeth told anyone before the game.

Step 11

From 1989 · Elizabeth’s account

The nightmares begin

Elizabeth starts having a different kind of dream in early 1989, while she is recovering in bed. Before, she never remembered what she dreamed. Now she remembers the details. She dreams of plane crashes. She remembers the flight number, how many passengers were on board, or the airline.

Elizabeth says those crashes are on the news a day and a half later. She tells only her husband and her mother. Her mother is fascinated. Her husband is frightened. Elizabeth acknowledges that not all of her nightmares come true.

In 1990 her third child is born, a girl. The nightmares continue. In 1997, her husband moves out after a very detailed nightmare. They get divorced.

Step 12

From 1988 to 2018 · Elizabeth’s account

She stays silent for almost thirty years

Elizabeth doesn’t talk about her experience in public. She thinks people would decide she was crazy, and that her children would be called “the children of that crazy woman.” She tries to talk it over with several rabbis, but they brush her off.

In 2015 she tells it to an audience for the first time. It is at a conference on these experiences at Houston’s medical center. There she meets Jeffrey Kripal, a professor of religion at Rice University. Elizabeth finishes her talk and goes back to her chair on the stage. Kripal leans over to her and says: “We should write a book.”

They write the book together. To do it, they record their conversations twice a week. The book comes out in 2018 and is called Changed in a Flash. Elizabeth loses almost all her friends. And the son who was holding her hand when the lightning struck is now an Orthodox rabbi.

Step 13

The night of April 24, 2017 · As Elizabeth tells it

Elizabeth says she dreams of a street corner she doesn’t know

In April 2017, Elizabeth and Kripal have just turned in the book. On the night of the 24th, Elizabeth dreams that she is standing on a street corner. She sees the signs. It is the corner of Lincoln and Fifth. Across the street is a movie theater. The theater’s name starts with M.

In the dream, Elizabeth is with Kripal and with another man she doesn’t know. The man’s name is “Corny.” He tells her he died on December 10, the same day one of Elizabeth’s grandmothers died. He also tells her that his wife died the same year as that grandmother, about 14 or 15 years before him. Corny’s last name starts with W or U.

Step 14

April 25, 2017, at 1:01 a.m. · It is in her book

At one in the morning, Elizabeth writes Kripal an email

Elizabeth wakes up and writes Kripal an email on her phone. She sends it at 1:01 a.m. She tells him what she remembers of the dream, doubts included. She writes that the last name starts “with a W or a U” and that the wife died “14 or 15 years” earlier.

She asks whether he had the same dream. Elizabeth believes Kripal was really there in her dream.

Step 15

April 25, 2017, at 6:07 a.m. · It is in her book

At 6:07, Kripal writes back that she got everything right

Kripal wakes up at about five in the morning and reads the email. He knows who Corny is, but he doesn’t remember the dates. Before replying, he looks them up online.

At 6:07 he writes back. He doesn’t remember dreaming anything. But his maternal grandfather was named Cornelius, and everyone called him Cornie. His last name was Wiedel. He died on December 10, 2010. His wife, Wilma, died in 1997, almost 14 years before him.

What’s more, Kripal grew up in Hebron, a town in Nebraska. The movie theater in Hebron is called the Majestic. It stands at the corner of Lincoln Avenue and Fifth Street.

After that reply, Elizabeth tells Kripal on the phone that the theater in the dream was red. The Majestic is red brick. But her 1:01 email said nothing about the color.

The two of them tell all this in their 2018 book. There they reproduce Elizabeth’s email and Kripal’s reply.

Today Elizabeth volunteers at a hospice, with people who are dying. She says she has no fear of death at all.