Nancy Raines says near-death experience after 2014 Colorado crash changed her life
American geologist Nancy Raines describes a mountain vision, a life review and a message to return after a January 2014 cycling accident in Colorado.
Nancy Raines says a traffic collision in January 2014 in Colorado and the medical emergency that followed overturned everything she had believed about life and the beyond.
Before the accident, Raines — an American geologist and author who spent nearly two decades in science and engineering — identified as an atheist and found it hard to accept anything beyond the material world. The January 2014 crash changed that trajectory when a car struck her while she was cycling, leaving her pinned under the vehicle with severe injuries and requiring complex spinal surgery.
Out-of-body scenes, a voice and a life review
During the operation, Raines says she experienced what she describes as standing in a beautiful mountain landscape rather than a hospital room. She reports feeling intense peace, love and acceptance, and recalls hearing a voice she understood as welcoming her home. She also describes encountering a being she experienced as a spiritual guide who told her she had to return and finish what lay ahead of her.
An important component of Raines’s account is a "life review" in which she perceived how her actions had affected other people, including moments she had previously dismissed as insignificant. The central takeaway, she says, is that the smallest expressions of care can mean far more to others than we realize.
Raines has written about the experience in her book "Awakenings from the Light: 12 Life Lessons from a Near Death Experience" and recently discussed it on the podcast "Mayim Bialik’s Breakdown," bringing renewed attention to her story of injury, recovery and spiritual change.
Researchers continue to study near-death experiences. A 2023 paper in the journal Resuscitation followed 567 hospital patients who suffered cardiac arrest; 53 of those patients survived, and of the 28 who were interviewed, 11 described memories or perceptions suggesting some form of consciousness. Scientists at NYU Langone emphasize that, to date, research has neither confirmed nor disproved the objective reality of these phenomena and that more study is needed.
For Raines, however, the meaning is personal and lasting: the event reoriented how she understands life and highlighted, she says, the importance of paying attention to how small acts affect others.
Photo: press material from the event
