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Introduction


Sometimes it’s the places we trust most—hospitals, home, the embrace of routine—that deliver us to the edge of everything we know. For Nancy Maloney, what began as a simple, everyday surgery became a doorway into the unimaginable. In the space between heartbeats, she left her body, met her grandmother in a world beyond, and returned with messages that would change her life—and perhaps yours, too.
This episode isn’t just about survival. It’s about what we find—and who finds us—when we cross the threshold between life and death. It’s about the questions we carry back, the love that never lets go, and the courage it takes to speak of what we’ve seen when the world expects us to move on.

As you listen, I invite you to pause and consider: What might you discover if you found yourself on the other side, even for a moment? And what would you bring back?

Let’s step into the unknown, together.


Watch The Episode


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In This Episode


Episode Highlights

  • A Safe Place Turns Unfamiliar: Nancy recounts how a routine surgery in a familiar hospital unexpectedly spiraled into a fight for her life.
  • Crossing the Threshold: She describes the surreal moment of leaving her body, the overwhelming sense of peace, and the unmistakable presence of her grandmother welcoming her on the other side.
  • Messages from the Beyond: Nancy shares the insights, predictions, and warnings she received during her near-death experience—some personal, some meant for others.
  • The Return: What it felt like to come back into her body, the emotional and physical challenges of recovery, and the lasting impact of her experiences.
  • Living with the Unseen: Scott and Nancy discuss the challenge (and gift) of carrying spiritual knowledge in a world that doesn’t always understand or accept it.
  • Finding Humor in the Hardest Moments: Yes, even in the midst of near-death and profound messages, there’s room for tech fails, Facebook notifications, and laughter.
  • Legacy of the Experience: How Nancy’s outlook on life, death, and connection has been forever changed, and what she hopes others will take away from her story.

Links

Unedited Transcript

Scott Allan (00:08.318)

Sometimes the unimaginable happens in the very place we expect to be the safest. For Nancy Maloney, a routine surgery turned into a fight for her life, a battle with infection, disability, and even death itself. But in the quiet space between worlds, Nancy discovered that love and purpose can reach us even in our darkest hours.

My guest today says that she never saw a tunnel or a blinding light, but instead found herself on a peaceful knoll in what she knew was a lower level of heaven, beside her beloved Nana and your childhood dog Sherry, after a surgery that went as wrong as anyone could imagine. I’m Scott Allan

and you’re listening to the Enlightened Life podcast where we explore the soul’s journey, the mysteries of the afterlife, and the moments that transform us. Nancy, thank you so much for being here, and I just want to say that for those of you watching, you’re gonna see me on the screen, and you’re gonna understand as we get through this talk why Nancy is not on camera. She has a lot of physical ailments and disabilities.

because of what she went through. So she’s not on camera. It’s difficult for her to stay on camera, but we are able to talk with her. And I’m so grateful that she’s here and thank you for your courage in sharing such a personal and powerful story with us. Thank you for having me. It is my pleasure. And we’ve been talking about this for awhile, so I’m glad to finally have you on the show. When you first realized the surgery had gone wrong, was there a moment when you knew your life?

Scott Allan (02:28.052)

never be the same. Oh, yeah, I definitely did. Um, I woke up

I don’t have any recollection of how many days it had been, but I woke up, was in intensive care, flat on my back, strapped down to the gurney. They had buckles around my wrist, I was strapped down at the gurney. They had given me a medication that they overdosed me on and I had an adverse reaction and I apparently began pulling up.

I was at that point hooked up to 11 different machines to keep me alive. I never felt pain in my life like I did when I woke up at that point. And I knew something was devastatingly wrong, but I also couldn’t talk because they had given me a trach that took away my ability to talk. So all I could do was…

Moult my words and pray whoever was around me could read my lips and generally that was my husband at the time and Nobody could explain to me what happened what went wrong? There was an incident and at that point nobody knew what went wrong so a lot of things Happened for days on end while I was in that ICU and I became even more sick my fever’s went up to 108

They had to pack me in ice and they want to putting me in a medically induced coma for three weeks. so tell me for a moment, and you don’t have to get into details, but the surgery, was that a risky surgery or was it more routine? No, it was a routine stomach surgery. And which is so weird. What we wound up finding out later,

Scott Allan (04:30.92)

was when they were closing me up, they broke one of my ribs and it punctured my lungs and seriously affected my breathing and they couldn’t understand why my breathing was so severely affected. And the doctor had told my husband that you can only race a horse for so long before it gives out. We can’t leave her like this.

We can’t put the tube down her throat. So we’re gonna have to trigger. That’s how it started. Wow. And you were in a ton of pain and, and, know, can’t even imagine what that’s like. And you probably, I don’t want to put words in your mouth, but you probably were reaching a point where you just genuinely wanted to let go. I did. I kept telling my husband, I want to die. Let me die. Tell them to kill me.


I was gonna overdose me, you know? So, you you were pretty bad off. Yeah. And you did die in that hospital. How long after the surgery was that? It was after I came out of the medically induced coma. That I do know.

I just remember after I woke up from that, coming back from heaven and my husband came to visit, I was so excited, to tell him what I had just gone through. Hang on one second, Mary, because I wanna go back. We’re gonna get to that and I wanna give you an opportunity to share that experience when you came back. But I wanna talk about first what happened when you passed.

So in those first few seconds after death, what did you know for certain that you’d never known before? What were those moments like? knew I knew I was in heaven, but I knew I wasn’t in the grand stage level of heaven. knew I was in a lower level of heaven and how I knew immediately knew was the feeling.

Scott Allan (06:52.252)

There was this feeling of love. Like you have, you’ll never ever feel earthbound. You just won’t get it. It’s almost non-existent down here. That level of love. And warmth, like you’re just constantly being hugged by love, just surrounded by it. That’s the reason I didn’t want to come back.

I wanted to stay there for that feeling. How, I’ve heard people describe this, right, as more real than where we are now. Which is hard for those of us who haven’t gone through this. It’s hard to understand what that might feel like, but what did it feel like? What was so different? The colors. There are so many more colors in heaven.

than you ever find a Crayola box around. I’ll tell you that much. Vibrant. And it literally looked like somebody took like finite glitter and blew it all over everything. Everything sparkled. The, the brook sparkled, the tree sparkled. There was a massive building behind me. It looked like this giant Hall of Records. And

The doors to go into it were, it was like gem encrusted. It was a double door, arch shaped double door that was completely gem encrusted. It was beautiful. And I guess this is, you know, I want to try to ask the questions that I know people are probably thinking. If we are in a place where we are spirit,

we are not physical. How are those places human places? How are they physical? Like a gem encrusted building or a river or, you know what, do you know what I’m getting at? Like how do we, how is that a non-human and a human space? It was a human space because,

Scott Allan (09:17.108)

It’s just that our, you know, the shell that God put your soul in is what’s non-existent up there. You know, but who you are as a human is who your soul and what your soul is. That’s truly what makes us who we are. It’s our soul. But the place is real. The place is real. The trees are real. The wind blows. Birds chirp. Butterflies.

You know, was, it was, it was, there weren’t really people around. It was my Nana and my dog from when I was four years old.

But you knew that others were there. It’s almost like I had this feeling that we were not to be interrupted. This conversation that I was going to have with my Nana was not to be interrupted. So nobody came around. Just the dog. Her and the dog. That’s it. How did you know it was them?

Did they have bodies or was it just an understanding that it was them? Well, my Nana when she first showed, because I was looking around trying to find people and when I turned back around, my Nana was sitting on the grassy knoll right beside me. And I think she appeared that way so I would recognize her body. She looked the way that she looked right before she died. But then she

She was light. She was just light, a ball of light. The whole rest of the conversation, I was not staring at my nana’s face. You know, even the conversation itself was telepathic. It was, she was a ball of light, but it was her. knew it was her. I could hear her voice. It was her. It was her. Did you feel?

Scott Allan (11:25.746)

with her the same kind of connection that you had felt here, even though she was a ball of light. yeah. Yeah, and I missed it. I missed it. I’m, God, I missed her. Yeah, that was the hard part, knowing that I was gonna have to leave her. I didn’t wanna leave her, you know? I wanted to stay there with her.

Was there a word, a gesture or feeling from your Nana and your pet that changed you? The whole thing changed me. You can’t go through something like that and not be changed.

She made it very clear that I am.

blessed. She made it very clear, very clear that I am constantly being watched over, that they’re always with me. Look for the signs, which I do get. I get smells, I get signs all the time. I know, again know that the love, the love, the feeling of this warm love.

You can’t explain it because it’s not anything that you feel earthbound. So how do you explain something that nobody will ever feel until they’re in habit? So it’s hard to explain that to an earthbound being. So you’re there, you’re experiencing this incredible warmth, this incredible love, this incredible space.

Scott Allan (13:13.364)

that you’ve been told about but never experienced. It is beyond your wildest imagination. And then she says you have to return to a life of pain. What was that like? What was that like? I almost want to say that I argued with her because you’ve got to remember, I wasn’t like dead, dead. you know, there is no

human emotion in heaven other than love. I was, I remember feeling confused because I kept saying, I don’t want to go back, but she kept telling me that I had to, and I couldn’t understand why. Why couldn’t I stay? And I would ask her why I don’t understand why Nana. And she said, you still have so much more to do. said, like what? Like what? What am I supposed to?

be doing when I go back there? You know, why can’t I stay here with you? She said, it’s Jeff, not your time. She said, but I need to prepare you because the minute you go back, you’re going to enter a body riddled with pain that you’ve never felt in your life before. And unfortunately it is.

A condition that there is no medication on the planet that will help with that pain and you will have to live with it until the day God calls you back home. And she’s not wrong. She’s not wrong. If you could have stayed, would you have chosen to leave everyone and everything behind? Absolutely. And a happy, I actually, I deal with anger.

Yeah. Because I was meant to come back. What is that like? And by that I mean, when you were there, did you have any connection to your body here? Were you aware of it? Was there anything? absolutely. 100 % aware. So even though you were on the other side, you were still aware of what people were doing here and. yeah. Yeah. What was that like? It’s almost like, you know, if you stuck your head low enough, could.

Scott Allan (15:38.42)

pick your head between the clouds and look down and see, it was weird in that regard. So yeah, I knew what was going on. I actually saw things that the nurses were doing and heard some of the stuff that they were saying while I was up there and they were around my bed in the ICU unit. yeah.

You know how people say they have out of body experiences during surgeries and they look down and they get back what it was like. That’s what it was like. So you’re here and you’re with your grandmother and you’re having a conversation with her at the same time you’re aware of what’s happening here. Right. In your body.

Do you not get a sense of was there no sense of loss? So in other words you were married at the time you had family here siblings. was there no sense of Loss or there would have been loss. No, that’s the freaky pot You don’t care at least for me. I didn’t care. I knew that Just like something says life goes on without me I knew

that it would probably be a blow, unexpected, that people would be affected and their lives would change, especially for my husband at the time. But I knew that they’d be okay. I knew that they would be okay. You just know, it’s just this knowing thing is so prevalent. Is it almost when

because you did, obviously you did come back. it almost like there’s a firewall that goes up after you return? You know, in other words, you’re so open and you have this knowing and this understanding of all of these things. And then you come back and it must be like sinking into a ball of concrete. Well, it was, I, I’ve always had this knowing thing. And as a child, I used to have out of body experiences and they,

Scott Allan (17:53.0)

gave me and I never told anybody because that was back in the day when you talk like that you were put into some kind of a mental institution and locked up and it happened to people in my family with mental health issues and I was not going to be that person. So I never told anybody and ironically watching a talk show one day when I was like 22.

They mentioned astro projection, astro travel, and I said, my God, that’s me. That’s the answer. That’s what I went through for all those years as a kid. And I always had this knowing, so I guess it was always have this openness. But when I came back, when I was put back in my body, I was so aware of every single thing going on with my body.

and around my body.

It’s almost like I had been unplugged my entire life and then suddenly unplugged in. And that was after you came back. I knew what my heart rate was. I knew when I had a urinary tract infection. now you’ve got to remember they had me loaded up on so much medication that, you know, I knew days before two days before I remember

I tell me my nurse, Maria at the time, I’m getting a urinary tract infection. So they did a test and they said, Nope. said, it’s coming. And she said, how do you know that? said, trust me. I know two days later, you’re an attractive factor. I, I just literally was so plugged in, so plugged in. long did that last for? That lasted for a long time, for a couple of years after. then any time.

Scott Allan (19:54.504)

there was an emergency or an urgent situation, my body automatically plugged back in again. Like I was left taking care of my mom with dementia for five years before she passed. And there were a lot of urgent and serious issues that came up with her and every single time it did, boom, I was plugged right back in again. was amazing. Amazing to know. I knew things I never should have known.

I knew things I never should have known. knew just all of a sudden it was weird. again, it’s just like a connection. I told them that my mother was on a medication that was making her dementia worse. And it was the Neurontin. And they’re like, no, no, no. And I said, take her off of the Neurontin and watch her get better. Boom, it happened. So she had to go back into the hospital again after a bad fall.

And I was adamant, do not put her on the neurontin. I go to the hospital to visit her. The minute I walk in the door, I could tell they gave her the neurontin. She started. Yup. I went to the nurses and I grabbed the doctors and I said, I told you people, do not put her on this medication. It increases the dementia. They didn’t believe me when I told them the first time. So they figured they’d give it a try. I mean, just things like that.

constantly happens. So logged in. That’s the only other way I can explain it being unplugged your whole entire life. And then all of a sudden you plugged in. So for people who say, um, this was just your brain shutting down, what, what do you say to that? How do you, how do you know though? How do you know? mean, and, and I’m, and I’m playing devil’s advocate, but how do you know that it wasn’t

a dream or something brought on by medication or, know, okay. Two specific things. Yeah. One.

Scott Allan (22:03.876)

being there and witnessing what I witnessed, seeing colors that I’d never seen before. That feeling of pure love that just every fiber of you being.

Again, I can’t explain how amazing that was. That is a feeling that I’ve never felt on this planet because it doesn’t exist on this planet. You’re only ever going to get that in heaven. And then again, when I came back, I came back much more gifted. You did, yeah. It intensified. Whatever I went through intensified my abilities. And what are your abilities?

Well, um, empath, most, more of an animal empath, ironically, clear sentient and psychic ability. Yeah. So you know things, you feel things, you sense. do. And it scares me. That’s, that’s the psychic part scares me, especially, uh, like premonition dreams, bad things. Um, uh, three nights before the twin tower, um, I had a dream that they were both going to get hit with.

There was also a massive, I think it was between Boston and New York, a commuter rail that had gone off the tracks and a lot of people died and I dreamt about that two days before it happened, things like that. It scared me, it scared me, I’m gonna be honest. How did this experience affect your relationships with your loved ones? The rest of your family, with God, with yourself?

Did anyone in your life struggle to even believe you? No. You know, like my siblings, my husband, my best friend, they all embraced what I went through and they

Scott Allan (24:06.462)

They’re actually, they get excited that I know things because they’ll come to me and say, look, I’ve got a new job. How do you see this going? You know, or something really weird will happen and they’ll be like, you know, did you have any idea this was going to happen? I don’t get everything. like, I wish it worked that way. I wish I was.

or the gurus sitting at the top of the mountain with all the yin and yang. No, that’s not how it works. That’s not how this works. We only get what God allows us to get. We only get the information that God’s willing to give us at any point in time. You know? Yeah, I say that all the time. People will say, well, I wanna speak to this person or that person. You only get what you’re supposed to get. They’re not going to give you things that you’re not intended to have.

You know, we all have to walk this path. It’s like these people hear psychic and they come up to you and they’re like, Oh, you’re psychic. What’s my name?

Yeah, doesn’t work like that. It doesn’t work that way. we are only allowed to give what God allows us to give. That is the truth. That is the truth. Were you shown anything about the world when you were there? there anything about the world, about life that sort of made you go, my God. No, in dreams, that comes to me in dreams, but it didn’t happen to me.

when I was actually up there for my visit. You know, I call it my visit with Nana. But yeah, no, I didn’t get any of that there. get it more, I’ll just be sitting here scrolling through my phone and all of a sudden this little video clip will play in front of my face. Some real bizarre thing that, you know, explains, okay, like.

Scott Allan (26:05.778)

The earthquakes that happened in Russia and all the… I started getting images of highways and tsunamis before any footage or before the tsunamis even hit.

Scott Allan (26:21.906)

Yeah. You know, that’s just, it just, it just happened.

Are you afraid to die? Not at all. I tell everybody, I’m not looking to go out and get hit by a bus today, but when my time comes, I am going to welcome it with open arms. Yeah. Yeah. I view death so differently now. When somebody that I love passes away, I know where they are. I know that they’re safe. I know that their life.

literally just began. didn’t they all they did was they lost their human shell. But they’ll they when you go to heaven, you’re you’re born your life is just starting because it’s so much better there than here. There’s no loss in consciousness. No.

No, so as a matter of fact again, I’m going to use that you plugged in You plugged into everything, you know, what’s going on down on earth. You you know if

Like I knew that my ex-husband was seriously struggling mentally at the time. I wasn’t aware when I was birthed out. I only got that information when I was in heaven. But I also got that he’s, if he doesn’t start eating better and taking care of himself, he’s going to get sick and he’s going to wind up in the hospital.

Scott Allan (28:03.356)

And because he was he was visiting he would come every day. took over a month off of work. was in intensive care for three months. So he took as much time as he had and he would show up at eight in the morning and they would let him stay till midnight. So by the time he goes home and sleeps and he’s back again at eight in the morning, he’s not eating. He’s not eating. He’s sitting beside me all day long. You know, so when I

did have the opportunity to grab my mother-in-law, his mother. I told her, you gotta make him eat. I don’t care if people have to cook him food and bring it to him, know, cut down his visiting hours, whatever. Something’s gonna happen to him if he doesn’t start taking care of his health. I didn’t know that when I was laying in that bed. I only got that when I a kid. Yeah. What would you say to someone who has a loved one?

or even themselves for that matter. And they may have a terminal illness, they’re facing, you know, limited time and they’re scared, they’re sad, they’re to miss their family, they’re worried about how it will happen. What would you say to them based on your experience? Okay, because that is such a touchy subject because

Everybody has such different beliefs when it comes to that. It’s like people will go to a funeral and they don’t realize some of the things that come out of their mouth. Oh, they better off or they’re not suffering anymore. Yeah. You know, I don’t care. I want them here with me. You know, your words don’t mean anything. So I didn’t want to be that person. I didn’t want to be like that. So what I do in those situations when people say that they’re afraid to die, especially.

I tell them what happened to me. I tell them my story and I tell them the feelings, the feeling of love, like welcoming love and joy, you’ll never experience that on earth. You’re only ever gonna get that in heaven. And they appreciate that when I tell them that. But they have to believe it. And I think sometimes it’s hard to kind of wrap yourself around that until you’ve experienced it like you have.

Scott Allan (30:24.148)

You know, right. They’re skeptics and you know, that’s, that’s fine. You can be skeptic. You know, I’m not out here trying to recruit anybody into my frame of thought and some of my thinking patterns and my beliefs. I’m no, you have the right to feel and believe and think what you want. And I’m good with how I am. What do you think happens when someone who has no faith and no belief, I’m talking atheists.

completely, you know, an unbeliever. Crosses over. Okay. My first thing, you know, I’ve thought about this before and I, the first thing that comes to mind is shock. When they wind up in heaven and realize everything that everybody told them all these years, you know, that they were here on this shock. my God, they were like, my God, the feeling. my God, I’m here. It was true. The whole time it was true. Shock.

What do feel about hell? that real? I don’t believe it is. I do believe that there are evil forces. I do believe that there are demons. I don’t think that they live in a fiery pit in the core of the earth. I think that it’s something that lives in the ground, like elementals and whatnot, that just…

pick and choose the most vulnerable and volatile people to attack themselves to in that situation. So I do believe in evil. I do believe in demons. I do believe in all that stuff, but no as hell as a place. No, earth, earth is hell. I, know, we’ve heard people who have had these experiences like you had in your death experience and they,

you know a lot of them are similar to yours not exactly the same story but the feelings are the same but every once in a while you hear somebody that went to a dark place where I heard them I’ve heard them what do think that is

Scott Allan (32:38.396)

I think that’s where evil comes from, but I don’t think it’s a fiery pit in center of the earth. I don’t think it’s the earth’s core. I just think that…

What that is, is God’s way of telling them that they really need to change their life when they come back. That they’ve done some very bad things, you know?

Basically, you’ve seen that show, Scared Straight? Mm-hmm. Where they send the children to jail? Yeah, well, that’s what I think that’s a preview of what your penance and your punishment could be if you don’t change your life when you go back.

Yeah. You know, I think that that is probably one of the biggest fears people may have is if there is something, where am I going? Have I been good enough? I believe you. I believe that. But I also think if that’s really what you think and that’s really what you might believe could happen to you, then you’ve got reasons to change your life.

Because if you were doing the right thing, making the right choices and being good and being honest and being fair and being a decent human being, those thoughts shouldn’t even enter your head. Well, I think if, but you can look at it a different way too. You can think that because I’m so very conscious of it, then you do worry, have I been good enough? I try to be good, but have I been good enough? And I think maybe the fact that

Scott Allan (34:26.26)

Just the fact that you worry about that means you’re probably not headed in that direction anyway, because you’re trying and you’re thinking about it. Just a thought. I believe everybody, if you, I don’t know how true this is, but they say a lot of people that die tragically or don’t wanna accept that they’re dead, they can remain earthbound. That’s pretty, you know.

standard knowledge. which is sad because, know, unless they meet somebody that’s gifted enough to help cross them over. other than that, I believe everybody that died goes to heaven. Everybody, even Hitler. Sorry. Sorry. I’m not going to argue the point. That’s what I feel. That’s what I believe. And you get your judgment and your punishment from God when you get up there. You know, you have to

set things right, you have to make things right, you’ve gotta do what you can, you’ve gotta do whatever he tells you to do and then you you’re off the hook and you can roam heaven freely. But everybody gets into heaven, everybody goes to heaven unless they remain earthbound for some reason. I wanna just shift gears for just a moment as we’re getting near the end here.

Do you have any predictions or things you’re worried about for the world based on what you’ve experienced in your dreams? Yeah, civil war. Civil war in the country. Civil war, civil war, and I just keep getting that it’s going to be worse in the middle of the country. Not so much on the coast. It would be bad, but the worst.

places that it would be thought would be the center of America, Bible Bell is in below.

Scott Allan (36:26.568)

Red states, primarily. Yeah, I guess. I mean, that seems to be where, know, the South. Yeah, and why they would fight amongst each other, I don’t know. It’s just like, all on both sides of the Mississippi River, specifically Mississippi River is what I get. Any sense on if that’s, you know, soon or if that’s 10 or 15 years away or what’s your thought?

Okay, now there, if the right things are done, that could not happen. I see what you mean, Okay. But if it does happen, it’s going to be sooner than later. Is there anything else you’d like to share with our listeners? Any final thoughts or stories that feel important before we close?

Not that I can think of right at the moment. No. Well, I really want to thank you so much for your honesty, your strength and your willingness to share a story that’s both harrowing, but also deeply hopeful. And for everyone listening, if Nancy’s experience moved you, please share this episode and check out more conversations at mediumscottallen.com. If you’d like to book a reading, learn about upcoming live events or listen to more episodes,

You’ll find everything you need at the website or wherever you get your podcasts. Please don’t forget to subscribe, hit the like button, share with your friends, and we’re also on YouTube so you can watch this on YouTube as well. My name is Scott Allan. Thank you for joining us here on the Enlightened Life Podcast. We’ll see you next time.

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