A real-life story · Ohio, United States, 1968
Mickey Robinson’s near-death experience
Mickey Robinson was a 19-year-old skydiver from Cleveland, in the United States. In August 1968, the small plane taking him up for a jump crashed on takeoff and caught fire. Mickey survived with severe burns and spent months in a hospital. Weeks later he had an extremely high fever. He later said that he left his body at that point, came before God, and saw scenes from the next seven years of his life.
Mickey described his accident in great detail. He named the airport, the plane, and the pilot, and said how many people were on board. We have found the official accident record and the news reports from those days. Mickey also says that some scenes he saw in his experience came true years later. We tell it step by step and then look at what can be checked. If you only want the evidence, skip straight to what can be checked. Did Mickey really see his future?
Step 1
1968 · Cleveland, Ohio · Mickey’s account
A young man from Cleveland gets hooked on skydiving
Mickey Robinson was born in 1949 in Cleveland, in the state of Ohio. In 1968 he was 19 and worked in the warehouse of an elevator factory. Five months before this story, he had made his first parachute jump.
From that day on, he thought about nothing else. He says free fall gave him a freedom he had never felt before. After work he went straight to the airfield to jump.
On August 15, 1968, he was going to make a special jump.
Step 2
Afternoon of August 15, 1968 · Brunswick airport, Ohio · Mickey’s account
On takeoff, the small plane’s engine stops
That afternoon, Mickey arrived at a small airport in Brunswick, near Cleveland. Six people were going up in a Piper Cherokee Six. They were the pilot, Walt, and five skydivers. One of them was Dan, Mickey’s mentor. The plane was brand new, and Walt had only started flying it that week.
Walt had taken out the back seats so the five of them would fit with their parachutes. Mickey sat on the floor, next to the pilot.
Right after takeoff, the plane climbed very steeply. Then the engine stopped. Walt tried to restart it and shouted that they were going down.
The plane went nose first into a tree.
Step 3
Seconds after the crash · Mickey’s account
The plane catches fire and Dan pulls Mickey out of the flames
The impact split the fuel tank, and gasoline soaked the cabin. The other four skydivers got out with minor injuries. Mickey and the pilot were trapped in the front.
The gasoline caught fire. Mickey says his parachute harness had gotten caught and he couldn’t get out. He started screaming. Dan ran back to the burning plane and pulled him with all his strength until he got him out.
Dan wanted to go back for Walt, but the cabin exploded. Walt died inside. Mickey lay on the ground with his jumpsuit on fire, and Dan rolled him across the grass until the flames were out.
An ambulance took him to the nearest hospital.
Step 4
From August 1968 · Hospital in Berea, Ohio · Mickey’s account
With burns over 35% of his body, the doctors give him no hope
He was admitted to the ICU at Southwest General, a small hospital in Berea, next to Cleveland. He had third-degree burns over 35% of his body and a severe blow to the head. He had lost the sight in his right eye. The doctors decided he wouldn’t survive a transfer to a hospital that specialized in burns.
The weeks went by and he didn’t get better. The infections were spreading, and the doctors wanted to amputate his right hand. Mickey says they called in a specialist from another hospital. After examining him, the specialist said he had nothing to offer him.
Mickey says that in the ICU he kept repeating the same prayer over and over: “God, I’m sorry! I want to live! Please give me another chance.”
A few days before he got worse, Mickey says, something strange happened to him.
Step 5
Weeks after the accident · In the ICU · Mickey’s account
Mickey says he follows a doctor down the hallway and the door passes through his body
One day Dr. Jeric, the father-in-law of one of his sisters, came to see him. He had just come back from Vietnam, where he had treated many burned soldiers. He sat by the bed and encouraged him to fight to live.
Mickey says that when the doctor left, he got up to walk him down the hallway. He thanked him and asked when he could go home. The doctor didn’t answer. Then the ICU’s automatic door opened and passed through his body, as if he were a ghost.
Right away, he says, he snapped back into his body, like a rubber band let go.
A few days later, his fever shot up.
Step 6
A few days later · In the ICU, with a fever of 106°F · Mickey’s account
With a fever of 106°F, the doctor tells the family he is dying
His fever rose to 106°F, about 41°C. The nurses put a blanket with cold water tubes under him. He was shivering so hard that the bed banged against the wall.
The doctor called one of his sisters. He told her to come that same morning, because he didn’t think Mickey would make it to the afternoon visit. His brother came too and stood at the foot of the bed.
Mickey says that, while he was looking at his brother, he saw a long white room with tables appear beside him. He told his brother they were in the morgue. His brother, not understanding at all, told him he was fine.
Then, he says, he left his body.
Step 7
During the fever · Mickey’s account
Mickey says he goes toward a light, falls into darkness, and comes before God
Mickey says his body stayed in the bed and he got up. He no longer felt pain or fever. His ruined hand was whole. He traveled toward a white light, brighter than a thousand suns.
Then he felt a darkness behind him closing in and blocking out the light. He felt a terror greater than being burned alive. He cried out the same prayer he had repeated in the ICU: “God, I’m sorry! I want to live! Please give me another chance!”
At that moment, he says, the darkness pulled back and he found himself before God. He saw no face and no throne. He felt a presence of love that filled everything.
There, he says, he began to see his future.
Step 8
During the fever · Mickey’s account
Mickey says he sees scenes from the next seven years of his life
Mickey says he saw scenes from the next seven years, as if on a television. He saw young people shooting up drugs, and he saw himself doing things that weren’t right.
Then he saw three very specific scenes. In the first, he was in a garden on a spring day, in front of a rusty gate that opened onto a narrow path. It smelled of lilacs, and a young woman was coming toward him along the path. He didn’t know her face, but he felt she was part of him.
In the second, there was a piece of wood at his feet and he could hear the waves. A strange man was coming toward him, and Mickey felt he had to run away. In the third, he was walking down a mountain road above a blue sea. It smelled of flowers and tropical fruit, and he heard himself say, “So this is paradise!”
As he said “paradise,” he says, the vision ended and he went back into his body.
Step 9
1968 to 1975 · Ohio and Jamaica · Mickey’s account
Mickey survives and says the three scenes come true years later
Mickey woke up in the ICU, and one of the doctors welcomed him back. He spent more than four months in that hospital and then a long time in a rehabilitation hospital. The nerves in his left leg didn’t respond, and a doctor told him he would always wear a brace on it. Mickey says that one day the leg started moving again. Around 1974, after a cornea transplant, he could see with his right eye again.
In 1973 he went to Jamaica with Barbara, his partner. One day, walking down a mountain road above the sea, he said out loud, “So this is paradise!” He says that at that moment he recognized the third scene of his vision.
Later they went back to a farm in Ohio. One spring morning he saw Barbara coming toward him along the path, by the rusty gate, and he smelled the lilacs. He says that was when he recognized her as the woman in his vision. Around 1975, on a beach in Ocho Rios, in Jamaica, he ran away from a man who frightened him. When he stopped, he saw a piece of wood at his feet and recognized the second scene.
Mickey doesn’t say he told anyone about those scenes before they came true.
Step 10
From 1976 on · From his books and interviews
Mickey becomes a preacher and tells his story in two books
Mickey married Barbara, and they had four children. In 1976 he told his story for the first time, in a church. Since then he has been a Christian preacher. He has told his story in many countries, in prisons, in churches, and on television shows.
In 2003 he published it in the book “Falling to Heaven.” In 2014 he brought out another, “Falling into Heaven,” with a foreword by Don Piper, another well-known survivor of a near-death experience.
One question remains: did Mickey really see his future on that feverish day?
How many people have an NDE?
Mickey Robinson is not a one-off. His heart did not stop, but the most reliable figures come from people who survive a cardiac arrest. For more than thirty years, several teams of doctors have asked them what they remember. They do it in the hospital, a few days afterward.
Picture 100 of those people:
Each dot is a person. The 18 filled-in dots are the ones who described a near-death experience. That is what the largest study found. It was done in the Netherlands in 2001, with 344 people.
The other 82 didn’t describe one. Many remember nothing of their cardiac arrest.
| Where and when | People interviewed | Described an NDE |
|---|---|---|
| England, 2001 | 63 | 6% |
| Netherlands, 2001 | 344 | 18% |
| United States, 2002 | 30 | 23% |
| United States, 2003 | 116 | 10% |
| United Kingdom, United States, and Austria, 2014 | 101 | 9% |
| Vienna, Austria, 2023 | 126 | 4% |
| United States and United Kingdom, 2023 | 28 | 21% |
What these figures don’t tell you
- Only some people are asked. In the 2014 study, 330 people survived, but only 140 could be interviewed, and 101 reached the second interview. The rest died later, were too ill, or didn’t respond.
- Most cardiac arrests are never counted. These studies run in a few hospitals for a limited time. Outside them, no one keeps track. Also, the 2003 study interviewed 1,595 cardiology patients, not just the 116 with cardiac arrest in the table, and 81 of them described an NDE from an earlier occasion. The study did not count them, because it only counted those from that hospital stay.
- Some people keep quiet. In the accounts in our archive, at least 13 people say they kept their experience to themselves for a while. They kept quiet because they weren’t believed or because they were afraid of how others would react.
- It depends on how you count. If you count any memory of the cardiac arrest, the numbers go up. If you use a strict scale, they go down. In England in 2001, 7 of 63 people remembered something. But on the scale, only the memories of 4 people qualified as an NDE.
That’s why no one knows the real figure. But every study shows that it isn’t rare. Between 4 and 23 of every 100 survivors who are asked describe an NDE. Mickey Robinson’s case stands out for another reason. The accident that started it all can be checked in documents from the time.
Frequently asked questions
Who is Mickey Robinson?
Mickey Robinson is a Christian preacher from the United States. In 1968, at 19, he survived the crash of a skydivers’ plane in Ohio and later described a near-death experience. He tells it in his books “Falling to Heaven,” from 2003, and “Falling into Heaven,” from 2014.
Was Mickey Robinson’s plane crash real?
Yes, the crash happened. The official accident record and two reports in an Ohio newspaper from August 1968 describe it. A skydivers’ plane crashed on takeoff in Brunswick, the pilot died, and five people were injured. None of those documents gives Mickey’s name. Here we explain what can be checked.
What did Mickey Robinson see in his near-death experience?
Mickey says he left his body, that a darkness nearly swallowed him, and that he came before a presence he recognized as God. There he saw scenes from the next seven years of his life. He says three of them came true later.
Where this story comes from
His books
- Mickey Robinson, Falling to Heaven (Arrow Publications, 2003). Available to borrow on Internet ArchiveView
- Mickey Robinson, Falling into Heaven (BroadStreet, 2014). Foreword by Don Piper
The accident
- U.S. National Transportation Safety Board, aircraft accident briefs for 1968, file 3-3286, page 914View
- “Plane Crash Fatal,” Norwalk Reflector, August 16, 1968, front pageView
- “Engine Trouble Believed Plane Crash Cause,” Norwalk Reflector, August 19, 1968, front pageView
Interviews
- “Refined By Fire,” Charisma, January 31, 2001
- “Skydiver Has Visions of Afterlife Following Fiery Plane Crash,” CBN
Learn more
- What is a near-death experience?Read
- What does science say about near-death experiences?Read
- How we check each storyRead
Our archive
- Our reading of his 2003 book, the 2001 and 2015 interviews, the official accident record, and the 1968 press, and the scoring against our five criteria, as of November 6, 2026
Keep reading
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Gloria Polo
A dentist was struck by lightning in Bogotá, and her heart stopped. She says she hugged her daughter, who was somewhere else, and then saw her whole life.
Mauritius, 1982
Ian McCormack
In 1982, Ian McCormack, a 26-year-old surfer from New Zealand, was stung by five jellyfish while diving at night off the island of Mauritius. He said that in the hospital he went through a darkness, that a light brought him out, and that he met Jesus. According to him, his mother dreamed that same night that he was dying.
Utah, 2003
Vincent Tolman
In 2003, Vincent Tolman collapsed in a Utah restaurant. He says he was put in a body bag and that a rookie EMT resuscitated him in the ambulance.
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