M.K. McDaniel's Journey Through Hell and Back to Heaven

The Caregiver Who Gave Everything

Kathy McDaniel was 53 years old, a cradle Catholic who'd spent her entire life in the church. She'd gone to Catholic schools, been taught by nuns and priests, attended Mass every Sunday, believed everything she was taught. She had no reason to question any of it. Her faith was as familiar as her own breathing.

Then her best friend got leukemia. He needed two caregivers to accompany him to a research hospital in Seattle. Kathy left California and found them a place to live just blocks from the hospital. They were told it would be two or three months. Eight or nine months later, they were still there. Her friend would get better, then worse. The other caregiver broke her foot. Now Kathy was caring for both of them, around the clock. Her friend would start bleeding from the nose in the middle of the night, and they'd rush to the emergency room. He'd be hospitalized for a week, then come home. The cycle repeated.

In November, he died.

She was mentally, physically, emotionally, and spiritually spent. There was nothing left. A friend invited her to a singing program. She went, trying to feel normal again. She caught a terrible flu going around, very similar to what we'd later call COVID. The flu turned into pneumonia. The pneumonia turned into ARDS, acute respiratory distress syndrome. Doctors gave her a 38% chance of living.

She went from being an independent person to someone on a ventilator, put into a drug-induced coma for three weeks. Her family flew in from California and Colorado. They were told she probably wasn't going to make it. This was 23 years ago. The technology was primitive. They were experimenting.

Just before she went under, a doctor told her he was giving her something called white amnesia, which would cause her to completely forget everything that happened during the coma while they did terrible experimental things to her. She'd thank him for it, he said. She had no choice. She said goodbye to her parents and daughter and prepared to just go to sleep.

That's not what happened.

Into the Darkness

She doesn't know when in the three-week period it occurred. Maybe when they told her family she wasn't going to make it and they needed to say their goodbyes. But in a drug-induced coma, your spirit can wander. All of a sudden, she woke up. She became conscious.

It was completely dark. There wasn't a sound. She had no reference as to whether she was sitting or standing. She thought somebody was playing a trick on her, stuck her in a closet. She waited.

Then a reddish glow appeared in front of her, getting just a little bit lighter. She thought, good, the sun's coming up. Now she could see where she was. But as it got lighter, it became very foggy, swirling around. She couldn't see through it. It became uncomfortably warm. She smelled something terrible. Then she started hearing shrieks and moaning coming out of the fog.

She said to herself, this can't be good.

Then out of the fog came this booming voice: Do you know where you are?

She said, I hope I'm wrong, but hell.

The voice boomed back with a maniacal laugh.

She was freaked. She didn't care what happened to her. She had to get away from that thing. She turned and ran into the darkness.

The Ruined City

All of a sudden it became light. As she looked around, terribly confused, she saw a huge city. But there had been an atomic bomb, or aliens, she couldn't figure it out. The buildings were all falling over and on fire. The windows were blown out. There were big chunks of concrete everywhere with rebar sticking out of them. Screaming and yelling and fires.

She was terrified. She sought to find a place to tuck herself in so she could get her wits about her. It became obvious she was in serious danger. There were funny noises, a scuttling metallic noise like a giant spider or a tank.

Then a group of people came out of the darkness toward her. They didn't talk. They wore rags. They didn't get too close. One of them said, we are all alone here.

She thought, I better find another place to be. She took a chance and ran out into the rubble. She tried to climb a concrete wall, but as she got to the top, her fingers started slipping down. She fell backwards into the darkness.

Boom. The lights came up.

The Stage of Vanity

Now she was somewhere else. When she looked ahead, it looked like a movie set. There was a stage with beauty parlor chairs, all canted and crooked, and mirrors that were weird, like a haunted house where everything is spooky.

Then she saw somebody she knew. It was a relative of hers, a person you had to be careful around. This woman was very cautious about looking good all the time. That could be okay even if you were a little snarky on the inside, as long as you looked good.

Kathy was glad to see a familiar face. She went to the set. The woman said, oh my gosh, you look awful, get up here and I'll fix your hair and your makeup. Kathy climbed into a chair and said, no, you don't understand what's going on here, there's something very weird.

The woman said, no, if you look good it'll be all right. She had two of her friends there, also very good looking and impeccably dressed. When Kathy protested, they all started laughing, really really mean, and they wouldn't stop.

It made her mad. She got off the stage and walked into the darkness.

The Demon's Bargain

The lights went out. Up they came. This time she had to look up because there was a demon standing there. People ask her how she knew it was a demon. If you'd never been to Australia and you saw a kangaroo go by, you'd say that's a kangaroo. Well, this was a demon. A big, ugly looking thing, not even a person, like a Yeti with a ratty outfit on and a big stick.

She looked up. She looked back. She thought, oh golly, what's this.

He said, do you want to get out of here.

She said yes.

He said, okay, I can see to it that you get out of here. One job. I got one job for you.

She said, all right, what is it?

He waved his hand. The lights came up behind him, and as far as she could see it was a field of blackberry bushes, the big canes that overlapped one another with thorns an inch and a half long. She looked at this huge field and got a bad feeling.

He said, all you gotta do is cut down all those rambling bushes and I'll see that you get out of here.

She's from Washington. There are a lot of blackberries up there. She knew it would have taken her years with equipment and gloves and sharp scissors to get that done. But she thought, well, I got no place else to go.

He handed her paper cutting scissors that you give children when they go to kindergarten. He laughed. She thought, oh, that's not a nice guy. But she yanked the scissors from him and tried to scoot down as far as she could get. She was getting all scratched up. She started gnawing on one of the canes until it finally came loose. She turned to put it behind her so she could get to the next cane.

When she turned around, it grew back right in front of her. The demon started laughing. She wasn't going to give him any pleasure in this. She just went back to cutting.

Then it went dark.

The Eternal Road

The lights came back. She was walking on a road. She thought this was probably a good thing because it was flat, just gravel and dirt as far as you could see in any direction. Way in the distance there was a horizon with that reddish glow, but no trees or bushes or signs or anything. Just a road.

She thought, well, at least nobody's going to sneak up on me. I can do a 360 here and I can walk.

She walked and walked and walked and walked and walked. Later she learned that in eternity there is no time. This is why it seemed eternal that she was on that road. She walked and walked. Then finally she started smelling something, but it smelled good. She thought, I don't know how long I've been here, but I'm tired and I'm hungry and I'm thirsty, and maybe somebody up there is cooking and I can get something.

Again, she had no idea where she was. This was just her reality, and she was making the best of it.

She came to a bend in the road. On one side there was a man sitting in a chair, which she thought was strange. On the other side, oh my gosh, there were all these tables laden with food. They smelled so good. Desserts to entrees to salads and everything. There was a woman furiously fixing things and setting out dishes, making sure everything was ready.

She noticed again, it was a relative of hers.

See, when she was down there, she never believed she was dead. She never felt dead. Just confused. So she kept going. Nothing else she could do.

She asked the woman, please could I have just a small plate of anything that you got too much of and a glass of water, I'd really appreciate it. The woman just looked at her like she didn't even know her. She said, this is for the important people.

That hurt.

She got back on the road.

The Mob

She kept going. She walked and walked. At one point, she said to herself, I think I'm on a big treadmill, I don't really seem to be getting anywhere, but I like to walk, this is good.

Not too long after that, she could see people milling about. This could be good news or bad news. As she got closer, she could see they were limping, dragging their feet, muttering, making growling noises.

Ah jeez, this is not going to be good.

They had rags on, and the women wore shawls that were ratty and dirty. She had to go through this crowd of people, maybe 20, to get to the other side of the road. There was no other place to go.

She thought, maybe I'll just keep my eyes down and I'll shuffle and they'll think I'm one of them and I can get through onto the other side and keep going.

That worked for a little bit. She got about to the middle when they all froze. So did she. Then the women with the shawls went to the outside of the group. The men started coming toward her. They were growling, muttering some language she didn't understand.

One reached up and punched her in the chest and sent her flying backwards onto her back. Another came by and kicked her. They jumped on her and did despicable things. When they were through, one was laying down in her face and his breath stank and his face, the skin was falling off, it was rotted. He said, we all have AIDS and now you do too. You will not be able to die. You'll just get sicker and worse. That's your fate.

Then they backed up. A lady came out, lady demon, half person and half demon, not an attractive look. She leaned over Kathy and said, you're one of us now, get up.

Kathy had nothing better to do. She thought, well, at least she'll get me away from these guys. She gathered what was left of her ripped clothing and stood up. By then she's thinking, I don't know if I'm going to get out of here or not. Along the way, the demons had said, just despair, just give up, you'll never get out.

Christmas in Hell

She followed the lady to another group, women like herself who had obviously been through what she had. Tattered clothing. Eyes down. Weeping. She got in line.

The lady took them to the edge of a forest. Before them was a tundra, ice and snow on the ground, no trees as far as you could see. She told them to get in line and follow her. So they did, one by one, as it started to snow.

Kathy thought, wow, how can this get any worse? But it did. They walked and walked until the snow was chest high. The expression "cold as hell" is real. They were freezing.

Finally they got to a cabin. The lady opened the door and shoveled them all inside and made them sit down on the floor. Kathy said to her, I've been here a long time and it just seems to be a particularly depressing bad energy time, something I don't know about.

The lady said, well, it's Christmas on Earth, and that's always the worst day in hell.

Hell. She'd been pushing that thought out of her mind. But to hear her say it was the last straw.

Kathy wasn't giving up. She just started singing a Christmas carol, her favorite one, Away in a Manger. She thought, what else can they do to me? I mean, really?

As she started singing, the lady whirled around and yelled shut up, lifted a stick that she'd been carrying. The other ladies kind of looked at Kathy. She kept going. As she got to "the little Lord," the ladies were singing together.

The lady demon leapt at her like a spider. Kathy closed her eyes.

It went dark.

The Love That Changes Everything

The lights came up. But this time, she was infused with this tremendous love and joy and bliss. She couldn't believe it. She felt like every molecule of her was just swimming in this ocean of love, completely saturating her. She was so happy and joyful. Everything that had happened, she couldn't remember. There was nothing but the love.

Then as she looked around, it seemed like this white light was kind of turning into a cathedral or someplace with white granite walls. As she looked over straight ahead, there was her friend, the one that had died only a month before.

He looked great. Last time she'd seen him, with the leukemia, his face was all mottled, he'd lost all his hair, his eye was all swollen with infection. But he looked wonderful. Instead of 53, he looked about 35. He had on the sweater she gave him for Christmas. He was so happy to see her. He was just skipping from one foot to the next, like he really had a lot of things he wanted to tell her.

She was just shocked. But she was so happy. She thought, oops, he doesn't know he's dead.

She just thought that. But by the way he was laughing, she thought, oh my goodness, he heard me. And if he's dead, then I'm dead.

She was so excited. This must be heaven. She said to him, why are you standing in front of that doorway? She saw a table over to one side with a great big book on it, open about halfway. She thought he was showing her something in that book. What was it?

But he started walking toward her. She was excited. He said, now Mary Kay, you've got too much left to do.

What? She said, no, no, they were throwing me out. She said no. He just smiled.

Boom. She was gone.

The Meadow and the Message

This time it was like in a meadow and there was a stream. She figured later on, when she'd had time to think about this whole thing, God was probably giving her a time out because she was angry, and he wasn't going to send her back in that condition.

She walked along the stream. It was going downhill and it was lovely. She met a lady there who spoke a language she didn't really understand, sounded Scandinavian. The lady gave her a beautiful handmade quilt, a small one. Kathy said thanks, and the lady motioned, still talking in some language, to go down further down the stream.

She walked down the stream with the quilt over her shoulder. It really was lovely. Another lady was there, sitting in a rocking chair. She waved. Kathy waved. She starts talking in this language. She hands Kathy what looked like trousseau items, things you would get when you're going to become a bride. She gave her a little nightie thing with lace on it. Kathy thought, oh thanks, threw it over her shoulder, kept walking.

The final lady gave her another pretty lacy gift and then a piece of paper. She said in English, you sure and give this to my boyfriend's name and tell him you must live together.

Kathy thought, can this get any weirder? Sure. She took that piece of paper in her hand.

Then boom, it went dark.

Waking Up

The lights came up. They were way too bright. There were all these people milling around. She thought, oh no, the zombie people are back.

But then one of them said, oh Mom's awake. Everyone said, oh my gosh, she's back.

She thought, who is people? What's going on? Why can't I move? Why can't I talk?

They gathered all around her. Her daughter said, now Mom, you've been really really sick, we didn't think you were going to make it, but you're back. We prayed, we had a prayer chain going around the world.

Kathy thought, oh you terrible people, this is the reason I got thrown out of heaven. But she couldn't talk. She had the trach still inside her. She'd dwindled down to 86 pounds because of just being fed through a nasal tube. She had no muscle mass left. She couldn't move anything.

The doctor came in a couple days later to examine her. The only thing she could move was one finger. She could blink. That was it. So here she is with this message reverberating, you've got too much left to do, and she thought, I can't even breathe by myself, how am I going to get all this stuff done so I can go back to heaven?

She'd been in the coma for almost three weeks. She was there a month, and finally got to go home. She was very depressed. She was still haunted by the demons. She was unsure of what that was all about. How did a good Catholic girl like her get thrown in hell?

Nobody wanted to hear her story. They got too upset: that's depressing, that's weird, why were you in hell anyway, what'd you do that we don't know about.

So she started writing. She'd just write it out as much as she could think of, and then she'd put it in a drawer, thinking if she could just get this out of her head, she'd be sane and could start to have her life back.

It took her 10 years to find a group called IANDS, the International Association of Near-Death Studies. We each bring back just like a little puzzle piece when we come, and then you get to share your puzzle piece, and we get a better picture of what was going on there.

What She Knows Now

What she understands now is that we are all part of God. Our souls are part of God. What she learned was that God is all loving, all forgiving, and would never condemn anybody.

Anything that she was taught about God sending people to purgatory or to hell, it's not true. She believes that we choose to come down here and learn things. She's learned patience. She's learned all kinds of things that she wanted to learn.

So now she's certain that she went to that place, for lack of a better word, it was a manifestation that she had because she believed she would. There's been a lot of changes in the way she thinks, feels, and believes.

If a person is open to it, she'll be happy to tell them about it. She doesn't force her opinions on anybody. Everybody's chosen their own life and what happens to them.

It's a wonderful thing to know you're not a victim anymore. When things happen to her now, she says, hmm, I planned that, what was I hoping to learn? It makes life a lot easier. She feels a lot freer. She knows she's going to go home.

She's just here to share her story and hope it helps you.

What This Experience Reveals

M.K. McDaniel's account is one of the most detailed distressing near-death experiences on record. It's also one of the most transformative. The fact that she experienced what she calls "hell" before experiencing the overwhelming love and light is significant, not because God sent her there, but because, as she came to understand, she manifested it herself.

This is a pattern we see across many NDEs. The experiencer's expectations, beliefs, and emotional state at the time of death can shape the initial stages of the experience. Kathy was a devout Catholic who'd been taught about hell her entire life. She was also emotionally, physically, and spiritually depleted after months of caregiving and the death of her best friend. When her consciousness separated from her body, those beliefs and that exhaustion created the landscape she first encountered.

But here's what matters most: the moment she sang that Christmas carol with the other women, the moment she refused to give the demons the satisfaction of her despair, everything changed. The love that flooded her was not a reward for good behavior. It was the truth beneath the illusion. It was what had been there all along, waiting for her to remember it.

The reunion with her friend is another common feature of NDEs. He appeared not as the sick, dying man she'd cared for, but as his true self, vibrant and whole, looking decades younger. He wore the sweater she gave him, a detail that speaks to the continuity of identity and relationship beyond death. And he delivered the message that would reshape her entire life: you've got too much left to do.

Kathy's decade-long journey to make sense of what happened to her, to find IANDS and a community that could hold her story without judgment, mirrors the experience of thousands of other experiencers. The isolation, the disbelief, the sense of being forever changed in a world that doesn't want to hear about it. But she persisted. She wrote her memoir. She shared her puzzle piece.

What she learned is what so many experiencers come to know: God is all-loving and all-forgiving. We are not victims. We choose our lives and our lessons. The hell she experienced was not a place God sent her, but a reflection of her own beliefs and fears. The heaven she experienced was not a reward, but the reality that awaits all of us, the ocean of love we're already swimming in, even if we can't feel it yet.

This is the gift of near-death experiences. They show us that consciousness is not produced by the brain. That we are eternal beings. That love is the only thing that's real. And that no matter how lost we feel, no matter how dark the road, the light is always there, waiting for us to turn toward it.