A real-life story · San Diego, United States, 2004 or 2005
Randy Kay’s near-death experience
Randy Kay was a medical-company executive in San Diego, in the United States, married with two children. He was admitted to the hospital with blood clots that had reached his lungs, and while there he caught a very serious infection. He later said that his heart stopped and that he met Jesus. And that when he came back, he heard beside him the same song he had heard with Jesus.
Randy Kay waited more than thirteen years to talk about it in public. Today he hosts a show about near-death experiences and has written several books. He says the hospital monitor showed that he went 30 minutes and 49 seconds without a heartbeat. 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. What really happened that day in the hospital?
Step 1
Spring 2004 · San Diego, California · Randy’s account
An executive with no job and no money asks God to show himself
Randy Kay grew up near Philadelphia. He had worked for years at medical companies. He trained doctors and sales reps on devices and drugs for the heart and the brain. He was a Christian and taught classes at his church. As a young man he had been an agnostic.
He says that about two years earlier he had lost his job. His company was about to launch an Alzheimer’s vaccine, but the trials were stopped because some patients developed brain inflammation. Then he was laid off. Afterward he bought a local newspaper that had to close. The family was left with no money and no health insurance.
One night, in despair, he had asked God to show himself. Shortly after, on a spring evening in 2004, he was with his wife, Renee, at a coffee house in Escondido, near San Diego. He told her, “Well, dear, at least we have our health.”
Two days later, the phone rang.
Step 2
Two days later · San Diego · Randy’s account
He is offered a good job, but one leg swells up and he can’t breathe
The call was from Johnson & Johnson, a company he had worked for before. He flew to New Jersey for the interviews and returned to San Diego. The next day his right calf began to swell. Even so, he went to the gym and rode his bike along the coast.
One Friday they called to offer him the job. Randy said yes. But by then climbing stairs was hard and he was short of breath. He had had asthma since childhood and thought that was the cause.
He says that one day he had to stop and rest several times just to take out a small bag of trash. He went to an orthopedist to get something for the pain in his leg.
The orthopedist looked at his leg and sent him straight to the emergency room.
Step 3
In the emergency room · Randy’s account
He has six blood clots in his lungs
In the emergency room they ran tests and gave him an IV drug to keep his blood from clotting. He says it felt as if a very big man were sitting on his chest. A nurse told him he was a walking dead man.
A doctor explained that he had six clots. They had traveled up from his leg and were blocking the artery that carries blood to the lungs. Removing them would mean opening his chest, and the surgeon who could do it was too far away. He says they told him that by the time the surgeon arrived, he would already be dead.
He spent two days on the IV, breathing with the help of a machine, waiting for the drug to work.
Then another problem came along.
Step 4
Days later, in his room · Randy’s account
A drug-resistant bacterium infects his blood
A doctor came to draw blood and could barely get any. He saw that the skin around the IV needle was red. The test showed a staph infection resistant to almost all antibiotics. According to Randy, it had gotten into his blood through the IV needle.
His blood was full of bacteria, and clumps were forming throughout his body. A doctor explained that if one reached his brain, he would have a stroke.
Randy says he asked God to let him die if he was going to end up a vegetable.
Shortly after the doctors left, he started shaking.
Step 5
In his hospital room · Randy’s account
Randy has seizures and loses consciousness
Randy says that suddenly he felt cold, as if he had been dropped into ice water. His teeth were chattering. He tried to take one more breath, and his chest arched up off the bed. It was the last thing he did on purpose.
Then came the seizures. His body jerked like a fish out of water, and he could feel his heart pounding in his chest.
In his first book, from 2020, he says his blood stopped circulating and that he woke up with someone pressing on his chest. He doesn’t say how long it lasted. The foreword, by another author, says Randy has proof that he died, without saying what it is. In his 2021 book, he already says that, according to the monitor, his heart was stopped for almost thirty minutes. Later he gave an exact figure, 30 minutes and 49 seconds.
Randy says everything went black.
Step 6
While unconscious · Randy’s account
Randy says he rises through darkness and sees figures fighting in the distance
Randy says he found himself in a black void, floating upward as if carried by a balloon. The darkness slowly lightened, from black to gray, until it filled with colors and a light that lit up everything.
In the distance he saw hills and some figures fighting each other. Some were horrible, and they were hurling themselves at others that were very tall and bathed in light.
He reached a peaceful place, with green valleys and hills, and settled onto soft ground. His fear went away.
Then, he says, someone hugged him from behind.
Step 7
While unconscious · Randy’s account
Randy says Jesus hugs him and tells him it is not his time yet
Randy says someone leaned over him, wrapped their arms around him, and rested a cheek against his. He felt a love he had never felt before. He thought, “So this is love.” He knew it was Jesus. He heard him say, “It will be all right.”
He didn’t dare look him straight in the face, but he could see his robe and feel his warmth. There was a scent of flowers, pine, and oranges. For the first time in his life, despite his asthma, he could breathe deeply without effort.
Jesus told him, “Trust me, My beloved… It’s not your time.” Randy wanted to stay. He says he then heard a choir of hundreds of voices singing a worship song.
Suddenly, everything vanished.
Step 8
On coming to · Randy’s account
Randy comes to and hears the same song beside him
Randy says he woke up in his hospital bed with pain in his chest, because someone was pressing down hard on it. Medical staff were around him. And next to the bed, a couple who had come to visit him were singing the same song he had heard with Jesus.
At first he thought it was just the two of them. Later he came to believe that angels had joined the couple, because earlier he had heard many voices.
In his 2021 book he tells what happened before. He says the nurse in charge had stepped away from the central station and didn’t see that the monitor showed a flat line. It was the visiting couple who found him lifeless and called a nurse.
In no version does Randy say what the couple’s names were or what the song was.
Step 9
The following weeks · Randy’s account
He recovers, starts the new job, and keeps quiet about what he experienced
Within a few days the clots began to shrink, and the antibiotics gradually brought the infection under control. After ten days he was walking slowly down the hospital hallway, dragging his leg. He had lost about 30 pounds.
He spent weeks barely getting out of bed. Because he had no insurance, he owed more than $100,000 in medical bills. Even so, he started the new job, with his wife by his side to give him the injections against the clots.
Randy says that when he left the hospital he wrote down what he had experienced in a journal. For more than thirteen years he told only his family and friends. He was afraid people would think he was crazy.
Then, in a television interview, someone asked him about it.
Step 10
Years later · From his books and interviews
Randy tells his story on television and starts writing books
His former pastor interviewed him on a Christian TV channel about a different topic and asked him about his experience. Randy says he broke down in tears in front of the camera. On the flight home he felt he had to write it down.
In 2020 he published “Dying to Meet Jesus,” and in 2021 “Revelations from Heaven.” Today he hosts an online show where he interviews other people who have had a near-death experience. He is an ordained pastor.
Randy has not published his medical records, the monitor recording, or the journal he wrote when he left the hospital.
One question remains: what really happened that day in the hospital?
How many people have an NDE?
Randy Kay is not a one-off. 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. Randy Kay is one of those who took years to talk about it.
Frequently asked questions
Who is Randy Kay?
Randy Kay is a Christian pastor and corporate trainer from the United States. He says he had a near-death experience in 2004 or 2005, in a hospital in the San Diego area. In it, he says, he met Jesus. He tells the story in his books “Dying to Meet Jesus,” from 2020, and “Revelations from Heaven,” from 2021, and he hosts an online show about these experiences.
How long was Randy Kay dead?
No published document says. Randy says the monitor showed 30 minutes and 49 seconds without a heartbeat. Since 2020 he had spoken of about 30 minutes, and the exact figure doesn’t appear, in what we have read, until 2024. His first book, from 2020, gives no figure at all. Here we explain what can be checked.
What did Randy Kay see in his near-death experience?
Randy says he rose through darkness, saw figures fighting in the distance, and reached a place of green hills. There Jesus hugged him and told him it was not his time yet. When he came to, he heard a couple singing the same song he had heard with Jesus.
Where this story comes from
His books
- Randy Kay, Dying to Meet Jesus (Chosen Books, 2020)
- Randy Kay, Revelations from Heaven (Destiny Image, 2021)
Interviews
- “Near Death Experience I Died from Blood Clots,” Heaven Encounters, September 2020View
- “What He Saw in Heaven Will Wreck You,” It’s Supernatural, November 2021View
- “Man Says He Visited Heaven, Met Jesus,” Faithwire, June 6, 2024View
The Alzheimer’s vaccine
- The AN-1792 vaccine trial, stopped in 2002, AlzforumView
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 two books, our comparison of eleven interviews from 2020 to 2026, and the scoring against our five criteria, as of November 7, 2026
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