Author Randy Kay says he’s seen heaven — and it’s an experience he still gets emotional recounting. It all happened years ago when Kay experienced a medical emergency. He recalled waking up in the middle of the night with a swollen calf after a business trip — something he initially ignored.

“I could barely walk, went for a bike ride of all things, which I should not have done because that exacerbated the problem,” he told Billy Hallowell and Jen Lilley on their “Into the Supernatural” podcast. “I went up the coast of San Diego ... on the bicycle and could barely breathe. My calf was about one and a half times its size.” At first, he thought he was experiencing asthma, but soon realized it was something else entirely. By the time he reached his doctor’s office, he collapsed and ended up in the emergency room. And things went from bad to worse from there. “The ER physician said that I was a walking dead man because I had let this go so long,” Kay said. “By the time I had made it into the emergency room, I had seven clots, one near my heart, six that were blocking the pulmonary artery, which is the main blood flow to the lungs.” Already struggling to survive, Kay ended up contracting Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), which got into his bloodstream. Suddenly, he was clinically dead, but rather than being overtaken by darkness and nothingness, Kay experienced something he’ll never forget.

“Immediately, my body went still, and, initially, it felt like a tugging at my hospital gown,” he said. “And, later, I would come to realize that that was my spirit leaving my body, and then I became a third party to my body. So, I was looking down this still body I knew that was my body, but that wasn't me.” Kay said he was suddenly “in a different place.” He found himself moving up to a new location. Watch his experience — and see the full interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SG3bqRLfpyw&t=58s