A real-life story · Mexico City, 2001

José Manuel Ramos Montalvo’s near-death experience

José Manuel Ramos Montalvo says that in 2001 a gang hit him on the head with a rock in Mexico City. He spent about 80 days in a coma. He later said that during the coma he rose toward a white light and met his grandparents, who had died. He also said he saw two towers burning in New York. He says he already knew about the September 11 attack when he woke up. And he says no one had told him.

No. 7 in the ranking

José Manuel was in a coma on the day of the attack on the Twin Towers. He woke up about seven weeks later. He says he saw the attack from inside the coma. He also says his family asked him how he could know. Where did that memory come from?

Step 1

Before · 2001 · In good health · José Manuel’s account

A 25-year-old actor and opera singer

José Manuel Ramos Montalvo lives in Mexico City. He is 25 and has just finished his acting studies at Bellas Artes. He is also an opera singer, a tenor. He is newly married.

José Manuel describes what he was like at the time. He thought he was a very good actor and a very good singer. He believed he could win over any woman and do anything at all. He drank a lot.

He says he was full of arrogance.

Step 2

August 6, 2001 · At night · José Manuel’s account

A gang attacks them outside a restaurant

He walks out of a restaurant with his two brothers. In the street, a group of fourteen people starts beating them. The brothers don’t know them. The attackers hit them with whatever they can find: rocks, pipes, chains.

Later, he was told what the prosecutor’s investigation found. According to the prosecutor, the attack lasted about 45 minutes.

José Manuel is hit on the head with a very large rock. He loses consciousness.

Step 3

That night · Unconscious · José Manuel’s account

Doctors open his skull to remove bone fragments

His brothers are hurt too. They think José Manuel has only passed out. They put him in their car to take him home and splash water on him to wake him up. He doesn’t respond.

His wife’s brother lives nearby. He sees them arrive and takes José Manuel to a hospital. José Manuel is rigid and fluid is coming from his mouth, as if he were having a seizure. He says he arrives nearly dead, and at first the hospital doesn’t want to admit him.

A surgeon opens his skull and removes the bone fragments lodged in his brain. The operation lasts about eight hours. Today he has a plate in his head. The doctor warns the family that he doesn’t know whether José Manuel will live a day, two days, or a week. He is in a deep coma.

Step 4

August to October 2001 · In a coma · José Manuel’s account

Eighty days in a coma

He is moved to a neurosurgery hospital in Mexico City. Doctors make an opening in his neck so he can breathe. It is called a tracheotomy. He has an infection and a high fever.

José Manuel says his mother, his father, and his wife can only go in to see him for one minute at a time, because of the infection. He also says there is no TV or radio on the ward.

He describes the coma as dreaming, but the dreams are very long. Each dream lasts a week or ten days. He says he had about eight dreams in those 80 days. These are the ones he remembers.

Step 5

In a coma · José Manuel’s account

José Manuel says he climbs a staircase of clouds toward a light

First there is a vast blackness. Then he sees a staircase that isn’t real. It seems to be made of clouds. He starts to climb.

In the distance he sees a white light. He says that light does not exist in this world. It draws him in. He feels peace, love, and great happiness.

But suddenly something pulls him from behind and draws him back. “It’s not my time yet,” he thinks. (His words are translated from Spanish.)

Step 6

In a coma · José Manuel’s account

José Manuel says his grandparents ask him to stay

He comes to a low white building, like a retirement home. It has a courtyard full of people in white robes. His grandparents, who had both died, are there. His grandfather Gustavo is standing. His grandmother Lucina is sitting beside him.

They talk without words. His grandfather calls him by the name he used when José Manuel was a boy: “My little boy, look how beautiful it is here where we are. There is no suffering here. Stay here with us.”

He tells him no, because he is young and has just gotten married. He senses that his grandfather is angry. His grandmother starts to cry.

Step 7

In a coma · José Manuel’s account

José Manuel says his car’s lights go out on the highway

In another dream he is driving at night on a highway with his wife. Suddenly the car loses all electrical power. Every light goes out and he can’t see a thing.

He tells his wife to get out. He tells her she might get hurt, but she will live. He opens the door for her. He goes on alone, in the dark, until he reaches a small town.

He goes into the town’s chapel. He sees saints and Virgins that look not like paintings but like figures in relief. There he feels calm. He understands that he is in what he calls “the fifth dimension.” For him, it is the place where the dead are. He realizes how gravely ill he is.

Step 8

Midway through the coma, he says · José Manuel’s account

José Manuel says he walks out of an alley and sees two towers on fire

The dream changes. He is walking down a dark alley. When he comes out, he sees two huge buildings straight ahead, white and identical. The place strikes him as very elegant, and he doesn’t know where he is.

Then he sees that one of the buildings is engulfed in flames. There is chaos everywhere: people running, people jumping from high up.

He understands that he is in New York and that these buildings are the Twin Towers. He also understands that they have just been attacked. On September 11, 2001, he had been in a coma for 36 days.

Step 9

Midway through the coma, he says · José Manuel’s account

José Manuel says he carries people down through a tube of light

He says he goes into the building as a soul, not in his body. There is a kind of tube of light. He goes up it, takes hold of people, and carries them down to safety in the street.

He feels he has wings, like an angel, and that he can wrap people in them. He carries down the people whose time to die has not yet come. To those whose time has come, he says: “Go to the light. Don’t be afraid.”

This part is his alone. Of what happened in New York itself, he describes nothing that wasn’t shown on television.

Step 10

Late October 2001 · Awake · José Manuel’s account

He wakes up after 80 days

He wakes up at the end of October, about seven weeks after the attack. He has lost about 40 kilos. He can’t walk, and he can barely speak.

In the 2024 interview he says the first person he sees is his father. His father hugs him. He bursts into tears.

Once he leaves the hospital, rehabilitation begins. He learns to speak, write, and walk all over again. And there is something he knows.

Step 11

After waking up · José Manuel’s account

José Manuel says he knew about New York without anyone telling him

In 2024 he told it this way. When he wakes up, his father says there are things José Manuel doesn’t know, things that happened while he was in the hospital. He answers: “I know. There was a terrorist attack on New York City, on the Twin Towers.”

His family is taken aback: “You can’t know that. Nobody has told you.” He replies: “I was there.”

In his 2025 and 2026 interviews, the first person to hear it is his cousin Roberto. José Manuel tells him a few days after he wakes up, or once he is already home. Roberto asks him the same thing. He asks how he can know, if nobody has told him.

His father has since died. His cousin has not given his own account publicly.

Step 12

The years that followed · José Manuel’s account

He loses almost everything and forgives his attackers

His left side remains partly paralyzed, and he walks with a cane. He can no longer work as an actor. He doesn’t want his wife to be tied to him, so he asks her to leave. And she does.

At first he feels bitter. Today he says everything has a purpose. He has given up alcohol, and his arrogance. He calls the people who attacked him “angels in disguise.” He believes they had a pact with him.

He has gone back to singing opera. He says that sometimes he dreams things that happen that same day or the next. He also says he feels heat and light in his hands. He gives no dated example.

What does the evidence say?

What can be checked

We ask every story the same five questions. They don’t tell us whether someone is telling the truth. They tell us what can be shown today. Here we ask them about what José Manuel says about the attack on the Twin Towers.

3.5 of 5

Yes
Unconfirmed
No data

Did anyone tell José Manuel about the attack on the Twin Towers before he described it?There is no sign that anyone told him about the attack, but we can’t be completely sure. Only José Manuel tells it, more than twenty years later, and not always the same way. Sometimes he says he told his father what he saw as he came out of the coma. Other times he says he told his cousin Roberto, a few days later or once he was home. His father has died, and his cousin hasn’t given his side. In none of his accounts does he say anyone told him about the attack beforehand.
Is it known when José Manuel was in a coma?Only José Manuel gives the dates of the coma: from August 6 to late October 2001. He says he has the medical papers, but no one has seen them. He also doesn’t know on which day of the coma he had the dream about the towers. He says it was “in the middle.”
Is it known when the attack on the Twin Towers happened?Yes, the date of the attack is public: it was September 11, 2001.
Is what José Manuel said about the attack confirmed?Yes, the attack is a matter of public record. Two white towers burned in New York. José Manuel also says that he had wings and carried people down a tube of light. That part is only his, and it can’t be checked.
Could José Manuel have heard about the attack during the coma or when he woke up?It cannot be fully ruled out. According to José Manuel, his family says there was no TV or radio and that no one had told him anything. He adds that visits lasted one minute. But about seven weeks passed between the attack and the day he woke up, and no one has looked into what he could have heard in that time.

Why we ask each question

Whom he told first, in each interview

This case depends on the first conversation in which José Manuel mentioned New York. He has described that conversation in four interviews:

2024: his father and his family, right after he woke up. Before that, his father tells him something has happened while he was in the hospital, but he doesn’t say what.
March 2025: his cousin Roberto, at home, after he left the hospital. José Manuel is the one who brings it up.
July 2025: Roberto, a day or two after he woke up. Again, José Manuel brings it up.
2026: Roberto. This time it is Roberto who first tells him something very serious has happened in the world.

What changes is who heard it first, and when. The core is the same in all four interviews. He always tells of the two towers in flames, New York, the tube of light and “go to the light.” More than twenty years on, it is normal for the details of a conversation to shift. But here, that detail is the evidence.

What is hard to explain

According to him, there was no TV or radio in intensive care. And because of the infection, visits lasted one minute.
In every interview, the person listening asks him how he can know if nobody has told him.
In 2024 he says he told it right after waking up. If so, he had very little time to find out.
The core of his account is the same in all four interviews, from 2024 to 2026. In every one he tells of the two towers, New York, the wings, the tube of light, and “go to the light.”

What remains unresolved

He woke up about seven weeks after the attack. And nothing proves that he had the dream before he could have heard the news.
We don’t know whether José Manuel heard about the attack in the hospital. He says he had visitors, even if the visits lasted only a minute. No one has looked into what he could have heard during those days.
About what happened in New York, he describes nothing that wasn’t on television.
In each interview, whom he told first and when are different. In two of them, the person listening first tells him something big has happened, but doesn’t say what.

How many people have an NDE after many days in the ICU?

José Manuel is not the only one. His experience did not happen during a cardiac arrest but during a very long stay in intensive care. In 2023, a team in Liège, Belgium, surveyed every patient who left their hospital’s ICU after more than seven days.

Picture 100 of those people:

Each dot is one person. The 15 filled dots are the ones who reported a near-death experience. In the study, that was 19 of 126 patients.

The other 85 people reported no NDE. In both groups, almost no one had had a cardiac arrest. Only 5 in 100 had had one.

What was more common among those who reported an NDE
In the ICU	With NDE	Without NDE
Were sedated	89%	63%
Were on a breathing machine	84%	58%
Had had a cardiac arrest	5%	5%

What these figures don’t tell you

It is a single hospital, and no one has repeated the study anywhere else yet.
Patients who were confused on leaving the ICU were excluded. And no one measured delirium while they were in the ICU. The authors themselves list this as a limitation.
Sedation alone doesn’t explain NDEs. The researchers looked at all the factors together. What counted most was a person’s tendency to disconnect from what they are going through, and their spirituality.

José Manuel’s case is not part of that study. His coma lasted about 80 days, and it was caused by a blow to the head. His case is different because of what he says he saw during the coma. He says he saw something that was happening at that very moment in another country.

Where this story comes from

Interviews

José Manuel Ramos Montalvo tells his story on The Other Side en Español (2024), his earliest version, in SpanishWatch on YouTube
On Experiencias Cercanas a la Muerte [Near-Death Experiences] (March 2025), in SpanishWatch on YouTube
On Lo Invisible [The Invisible], with Esteban Vigouroux (July 2025), in SpanishWatch on YouTube
On Lo Invisible [The Invisible] (2026), in SpanishWatch on YouTube

Studies

Rousseau, Martial, and colleagues (2023), on near-death experiences after a long ICU stay, Critical Care 27:76Read for free

Learn more

How many people have an NDE?Read

Our archive

His record, with a side-by-side comparison of the four interviews and an assessment of what he described, as of October 10, 2026

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