Mary Neal’s near-death experience

Step 1

Before 1999 · Wyoming (United States) · Mary’s account

A spine surgeon with four children, and something her oldest son said that she never forgets

Mary Neal was a spine surgeon in Jackson Hole, a mountain town in Wyoming. She was married to Bill, who was also a doctor, and they had four children: Willie, Betsy, Eliot, and Peter.

One night, when Willie was four or five, Mary said something to him about when he turned 18. She says Willie looked at her in surprise and told her he was never going to turn 18. He said that was the plan, and that she knew it.

Mary writes that she never forgot that conversation.

Step 2

January 1999 · Southern Chile · Mary’s account

On vacation in Chile, Mary goes kayaking on a river of waterfalls without her husband

Mary and Bill traveled to Chile with some friends, the Long family. Mary and Bill were both skilled whitewater kayakers. They spent a week paddling the rivers in the south of the country.

On the last day, the group went down the Fuy River, a river of waterfalls in a forest with no houses. That morning Bill woke up with bad back pain and didn’t go. Mary went with Tom Long and two of Tom’s sons, Kenneth and Chad. Anne, Kenneth’s wife, came too, along with some other kayakers Mary didn’t know.

Mary says she had a bad feeling that day.

Step 8

The following days · From Chile to Wyoming · Mary’s account

She returns to Wyoming with broken legs and reaches the hospital with her lungs in very serious condition

Her friends carried her out of the forest on a kayak, and an ambulance took her to a small clinic. Mary decided to go home without being treated in Chile. Bill took her on several flights to Utah and then by car to Jackson Hole.

On the way, she began to suffocate. The doctors at the hospital found that she had pneumonia and acute respiratory distress syndrome. This syndrome is when the lungs become so inflamed that oxygen can’t get through. Her doctor told Bill she probably wouldn’t survive the night. Mary spent that night in the ICU and survived.

In that hospital, Mary says, she had a second vision.

Step 10

1999 to 2009 · Mary’s account

For ten years, Mary keeps it to herself and only tells her husband what Willie said

Mary writes that she often thought about what the angel had told her about Willie. She connected it with what Willie had told her as a little boy. She says she kept it to herself so as not to worry anyone.

Before Willie turned 18, Mary told Bill about the conversation she’d had with Willie when he was little. She doesn’t say she told him about the angel.

Willie turned 18 and was still alive. In the early hours of his birthday, Willie was asleep in a hotel in West Yellowstone. Mary says she went to his room just to hug him and make sure he was alive.

In the spring of 2009, Mary began writing a book about her experience.

Step 11

June 21, 2009 · Mary’s account

On the day she finishes the book, her son Willie is hit by a car and killed at 19

Mary wrote a first draft in one week in the spring of 2009 and then set it aside. On June 21, 2009, she went back to it and finished it that afternoon. The book doesn’t say what that draft said about Willie.

That same afternoon, Willie was roller skiing with a friend on a road in Maine, in the eastern United States. An 18-year-old driver who was looking at his phone hit him from behind. Willie was killed instantly, at 19.

Mary told the whole story in her book two years later.

Step 12

2011 to today · Her book and her interviews

Mary publishes her story in 2011 and tells it in many interviews

In 2011 Mary Neal published To Heaven and Back. It became a bestseller in the United States.

Since then she has told her story in many interviews. In one from 2026, she said she had been underwater for “half an hour.” In her book, the figure she gives comes from Anne’s stopwatch, 11 to 14 minutes until her friends began to resuscitate her.

Almost everything we know about the angel’s warning comes through Mary. Let’s look at what can be checked.