People Who Were Stuck In Comas Are Revealing What It's Really Like, And I'm Seriously Spooked
A while back, we wrote a post where people who were stuck in comas shared what it was actually like. In the comments, even more people shared their own experiences. Here are some of the wildest stories:
1."I was in an induced coma in 2010. I didn't have any dreams or nightmares. I remember everything just being black. When I woke up, I was hooked up to several machines and had a tube down my throat, and because of this, I couldn't speak. Miraculously, I began signing to the nurse who had come into the room. I learned sign language in 1986 because we had a hearing-impaired classmate. Talk about repressed memory! The staff thought I was deaf and told my family I was up and signing."
"They were confused because I'm not deaf. Needless to say, I haven't signed since."
2."I was in an induced coma for two months and died three times. It was a weird experience; I had multiple nightmares that never made much sense, and I was very lucid besides the fact that I didn’t realize this wasn’t real. I had human bumblebees trying to kill me, big spiders that would fall from above and kill me. I’d be trapped in a room with the walls closing in or trapped underground with a bunch of people with a killer snake. My dad and lots of my dad's side of the family were in my dreams, which is odd, as I never had much contact with them."
"I remember being able to hear the outside world and speak to them, but I lived in a different country, so all I could hear was Polish, and it was extremely confusing and distressing. No one could visit, as it was early-COVID time, so I was really stuck in my nightmares for months. I remember dying in it, but a spirit came to me to tell me to fight and live, and that it wasn't my time. I had complete organ failure in it and had to learn to walk again when I woke up."
3."I have no memory of 10 days in June 2021. I have a shunt (which drains extra fluid from my brain to my abdomen), and it failed three times in four weeks. My mom said after it was all over, I was able to have a normal conversation, but the moment the doctor or whoever left the room, I completely forgot I had the conversation. Wildest thing about it is, when I did 'come to' and get my memory back, I remembered voices of people around me, but not faces."
"I had the same nurses and other medical professionals the entire time, so I remembered their voices and got to 'meet' them when my brain came back."
4."One of my friends was shot when he was 9 years old and put into a medically induced coma for six weeks. He said he could hear people talking to him, but it went through a bit of a dream filter and translated to what he was seeing in his dreams — so it didn’t make a lot of sense. Most of what he repeated to his family about hearing was half right. He said he had a lot of nightmares about walking through a never-ending corridor for hours and hours with no doors or windows."
"He’s like 28 now and has a PhD, so he’s obviously fine now."
5."I was out for six months, non–medically induced, and it was a living nightmare. What was real blended into imagination — war, torture, being hunted. I experienced everything from being a prisoner of war to being alone and having nowhere to run. I had a hard time figuring out what was real when I woke up."
"I couldn't walk or talk, and being in intensive care for a year was a life changer."
6."When I healed enough to come out of the coma, it took a week for the drugs to fade and my brain to reboot to the real world. I could not see at first; my eyes had lubricant on them to keep them from drying out. I lost 100 pounds. I had no muscle to move or sit up, and I almost wasn't able to lift an arm. I couldn't communicate, as I had a tube down my throat. I could barely hold a pencil to scrawl the most basic word poorly. I forgot how to breathe, and I had gone into total organ failure. I needed six more surgeries and a year of therapy to learn how to do everything again."
"My wife had her friend and my parents fly in when I was under. I told her I remembered hearing them talk to me, but it's all very strange because you don't understand anything through the dream state. I experienced déjà vu, as I feel I have been through all of this before in a previous life. I wondered how many times I've lived this life event before. I tried hypnosis to see if I could unlock subconscious memories to get details about what happened, as it all fades."
7."My neighbor was in a coma for 16 days following a bicycle accident. It’s amazing that he is alive and has slowly continued to make progress that astounds us. THE WILD PART: This man was such a jerk beforehand. Even just this morning, he waved at me while I crossed the street with my dog, and when I say he waved, it was like a huge, friendly motion. He was also walking his dog. To see a neighbor who once ignored us and hated all animals to now enthusiastically engage in conversation and OWN A DOG… If I wasn’t witnessing it with my own eyes, I’d discount it, but y’all, he is forever changed."
8."My uncle was in a coma, and we're really close, so I'd sit and talk with him a lot. The doctors on his case, which included my father, all told me he wouldn't make it. But I had this gut feeling he would. I was sitting with him one day, and he never liked my dad, and I told him, 'Dad thinks you'll never wake up, and you've got to prove him wrong,' and his eyes popped open real big. I screamed, and the doctors came rushing in, but his eyes had closed again. The docs said it was just a reflex, but I knew they were wrong."
"He ended up waking up while my dad was working, and he told my dad to tell me that he had proved him wrong. He's still alive, with some brain damage that isn't very noticeable, and we're still thick as thieves."
9."I had 'the flu' for a couple of weeks, then collapsed at work and was taken to the hospital by ambulance. Turns out, I had pneumonia. Had an allergic reaction to the antibiotic they gave me and was in a coma for three weeks. I remember vividly many of the 'coma dreams' — particularly Ariana Grande stalking me with a machete, wanting to chop off my head because I flirted with her man or something. LOL."
"Many of the memories I can now tie to things my family has told me were happening at the time — some are just bizarre."
10."I was on vacation when my pancreas ruptured due to a plug from a gallstone, spilling acid into my abdomen, and eventually I got sepsis due to third-degree internal burns. I was placed in a six-week coma because my heart was out of control. My first dream was watching my sister-in-law get shot in the head. Next dream was of an idyllic cottage in the country during winter, like a Christmas scene. The next dream was of my coworkers kidnapping my child from my wife and me, when, in reality, we had no children yet. I also had a dream that I was broken and was being fed ice chips while in the hospital, and they were trying to fix me, but I was trapped. I had dream after dream until a dream where I was in a dark place with other people around, but they were shrouded in the dark."
"I believe this was a way station where spirits leave. I decided to return. I heard familiar voices talk to me but created dreams to visualize it. I found out my heart stopped twice after I woke."
11."I remember hearing a woman telling me to squeeze her hand. I found out later that they brought me out of the coma to see if I was brain dead. I squeezed her hand, and they put me back under for several more weeks. I remember being taken to a spaceship orbiting Earth so I could be repaired. I found out that I was actually a cyborg. While I was on the ship, something ruptured the hull, and the ship lost atmosphere and everything froze. I was frozen in place but fully aware that I was frozen and could not move. I was now certain that I would spend eternity fully awake and immobile on this ship, never able to shut down."
"I had a dream that my wife had many evil versions, and eventually during a visit, I was convinced that the woman I was seeing was not my wife, and I disintegrated her with a handheld weapon. But then I thought I'd killed my wife and I would never see her again. Meanwhile, she'd spent all six weeks at the hospital by my side, making medical decisions and talking to me."
12."I was in a medically induced coma for a few days. I don’t remember anything from it until they woke me up and took out the intubation tube. I was still really out of it, and it felt as if everyone around me was trying to hold me down and suffocate me. It was terrifying."
13."I specifically remember when I believe to be near the time I came out of a coma: I was on a small boat with a bunch of people. The boat approached and tied to a much larger, cruise ship–type boat. People started getting off, and when it was my turn, the couple in front of me turned and told me to say I was with the lady behind me — she had been trying to get on the big boat, but the crew wouldn't let her on. I turned, and there was a young woman with a tiny baby in her arms. I told the ship crew we were traveling together, so they let her on but then would not let me get on the ship."
"I stayed on the small boat, then I started to come to the surface and awoke to my brother telling me I had been in a coma for three weeks."
14."I had pneumonia and sepsis, and I was put in a medically induced coma for three weeks to help me heal. They gave me propofol, and I had the most hellacious nightmares ever in my life. I dreamed that my family was in a cult and trying to sacrifice me to their leader or whatever. Another dream was that I had to watch people confess to these horrible crimes, and at the end of it, they were trying to make me the scapegoat for all of it."
"Wild stuff. I hope I never have to have that stuff again."
15."My mom was convinced that the hospital staff and government were conspiring against her after she woke up. She thought I was in on it too at first. We laugh about it now, but she was creepy AF for weeks after."
16."I was in a medically induced coma in 2005 for four days after trying to unalive myself. I’m told that the day before I remember waking up, I woke up and kept asking the same three questions over and over and over. I remember overhearing a conversation from the nurses station that I asked my ex-husband about months after the fact, and I was right — it was him on the other end of the phone."
"I referred to it as time traveling because there was nothing for me. There was absolutely nothing. I also have a very horrible memory, and I can’t remember if it was like that before or not."
And finally...
17."My uncle was in a medically induced coma due to sepsis for two weeks. When the doctor stopped the medication, it still took a while for him to come around. I asked the doctors if I could give him a foot rub. I thought it might be nice for him to feel something that didn’t hurt but felt good. While waiting for permission, I looked up reflexology charts. The next day, I started rubbing his right foot. Within just a few minutes, he started twitching his left foot — basically directing me to do what he wanted. It was such an 'Uncle Bill' thing to do. That’s when we knew he was still there."
"It took another six weeks before we took him home. We thought we were taking him home to die peacefully. The next morning, he got up and cooked breakfast, and then demanded that someone take him out to check on his cattle. The coma started at Christmas in 2015. He is still alive today."
The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is 1-800-273-8255. Other international suicide helplines can be found at befrienders.org. The Trevor Project, which provides help and suicide-prevention resources for LGBTQ youth, is 1-866-488-7386.
Have you — or someone you know — ever been in a coma? Tell us your story in the comments below.
Note: Some responses have been edited for length and/or clarity.
