Man Who Survived An 18-Day Coma Says Four Words Followed Him Into Heaven

Gabe Poirot was 20 years old when an electric skateboard ride ended with him being thrown headfirst onto a Texas road. He had been traveling close to 30 miles an hour without a helmet when something caught his board and sent him roughly six feet into the air. His friend John Michael watched as he hit the pavement and lay unconscious. Poirot says he remembers none of the crash itself. What he does remember is a vivid experience he says began after he left his body, involving a tunnel of light, a city filled with light and a phrase he heard repeatedly from the world around him.

That phrase was just four words: “Worthy is the Lamb.” Poirot says he heard the words coming from mountains, trees and water as he moved through what he believes was heaven. His account has since become central to his public testimony, but there is another detail that makes the story harder to dismiss as a simple dream. Before the crash, Poirot was already studying the Bible and preaching online. The biblical phrase he says he heard was therefore already familiar to him.

Gabe Poirot suffered a severe traumatic brain injury after being thrown from an electric skateboard at nearly 30 mph and landing headfirst on the pavement without a helmet. Doctors placed him in a medically induced coma and warned that even if he survived, the chances of severe… pic.twitter.com/ftwJNAlWPO

— Walk with God (@WalkwithGod7) September 24, 2026

The Crash Left Doctors Facing A Severe Brain Injury

The accident happened on October 25, 2021, while Poirot and his friend were riding electric skateboards in Texas. According to his account, something in the road caught his board and launched him into the air. He landed on his head, suffering injuries severe enough that he arrived at the hospital already dependent on a breathing machine. His friend remained with him after the crash and later described finding him unconscious on the ground while people prayed over him.

Dr. Forrest “Dell” Moore, the surgeon who treated Poirot, said the initial condition made the seriousness of the injury immediately clear. “He came in already on the breathing machine. So it was clear he had had a pretty bad head injury,” Moore said. Medical imaging showed subdural hemorrhages, intraparenchymal hemorrhages and contusions across Poirot’s brain. Other accounts of the case describe a shattered skull and serious injuries to his lungs.

Poirot ultimately spent 18 days unconscious. The first three days were described as a natural coma, while doctors then induced a coma that lasted another 15 days. Some accounts of the accident have also reported that his heart stopped during the ambulance journey and that he was resuscitated, although that detail is not consistently included in every account of what happened.

For his family and friends, those 18 days were spent waiting for signs that he would recover. For Poirot, the period would later become something entirely different. He says his consciousness had moved somewhere he could not explain through ordinary experience.

Poirot Says He Watched His Own Body From Above

According to Poirot, his experience began with an awareness that he was no longer confined to his injured body. He says he found himself looking down at himself and immediately recognized the body below as his own, even though he felt separate from it. “It was pretty wild because I was above my own body,” Poirot said. “I looked at it and said, ‘Wow, that’s me, but that’s not me because I am fully alive now.’”

He says the experience then changed dramatically as a tunnel of light appeared. Poirot described being pulled away from the scene by the light, saying, “By the time the ambulance had gotten there, honestly, I was suctioned up by light; this tunnel of light suctioned me up out of there.” From there, his account moves away from the hospital and into a landscape he identifies as heaven.

The most distinctive part of the experience was the sound. Poirot says he encountered mountains, trees and water, but they did not appear silent or lifeless. Instead, he says the natural world seemed to produce the same four words repeatedly. “The mountains and the trees. As the wind hits the leaves, they’ll blow back and forth and they have a note to them. They’ll sing ‘worthy is the lamb’,” he said.

He says the water joined in as well. The phrase was not something he heard once before disappearing. In his account, it continued through the landscape, becoming part of the environment itself.

He Says Jesus Asked Him One Question

Poirot’s description of heaven eventually centers on a figure he identifies as Jesus. He says the place looked like a city filled with light and love, but he did not understand heaven simply as a physical destination. “The heaven I was headed for isn’t just a destination. Heaven is a person,” he said.

Poirot described the figure he says he encountered as being around five foot eleven to six feet tall, with darker skin and features he associated with the Middle East. He said the figure appeared both 33 years old and eternal. Poirot has also said that no painting he has seen since the experience has captured the person he remembers seeing.

Communication in the experience was also different from ordinary conversation. Poirot described the words as carrying an intense emotional force rather than simply arriving as sounds. “Words were like spears to my heart,” he said. One message, he recalled, came with his full name: “Gabriel, why are you concerned about that which has been paid for?”

The message he says he received was also direct. “Tell them who I really am, and tell them and tell my family I’m coming back to get them soon.” Poirot says the encounter left him with the conviction that he had been given a reason to return.

A Prayer On The 18th Day Came Before He Woke

While Poirot remained unconscious in hospital, a close family friend named Ginger continued speaking to him. She knew he could not respond, but she continued addressing him as though he might still be able to hear her. “I know you’re unconscious, but I know that you know I’m here,” she told him.

She also reminded him that he knew her voice and connected her words to prayer. On the 18th day, Ginger prayed over Poirot and told him to wake up. According to the account, he did.

Poirot later said the prayers were part of what he experienced while unconscious. “I saw those prayers go right into the heart of Christ,” he said. He described witnessing the prayers and said he understood their significance while experiencing no fear. His explanation for returning was remarkably simple: “It was those prayers that I was actually sent back on.”

The physical recovery that followed was separate from the spiritual interpretation of what he experienced. Within days of waking, Poirot was able to leave the hospital walking under his own power. Moore, who had first seen him critically injured and dependent on a ventilator, described the recovery in striking terms. “I mean, it is nothing short of a miracle,” the surgeon said.

What Science Can And Cannot Explain About Near-Death Experiences

Poirot’s account cannot establish what happened to his consciousness during the 18 days. His memories are personal experiences, and there is no medical measurement that can independently confirm the places or figures he describes. There is, however, scientific research showing that vivid experiences can occur around periods of cardiac arrest and resuscitation.

The AWARE-II study followed 567 patients whose hearts stopped and who received CPR between May 2017 and March 2020. Researchers found that some survivors reported lucid experiences associated with death. The study also recorded periods of organized brain activity, including gamma, delta, theta, alpha and beta waves, during CPR.

Researcher Sam Parnia, who led the study, described the findings as evidence that some patients can experience organized mental activity during periods surrounding cardiac arrest. “These recalled experiences and brain wave changes may be the first signs of the so-called near-death experience, and we have captured them for the first time in a large study,” Parnia said.

There are important limits to what those findings establish. The study involved cardiac arrest patients rather than someone recovering from a traumatic brain injury like Poirot’s. It also cannot determine whether reported experiences originate from a physical brain process, something occurring during recovery or an experience that patients interpret in spiritual terms. Nothing in that research specifically verifies Poirot’s account.

The Four Words Already Had A Place In His Faith

The phrase Poirot says he heard throughout the experience is found in the Bible. Revelation 5:12 describes angels around a throne proclaiming that the Lamb is worthy to receive power, wealth, wisdom, strength, honor, glory and praise.

That detail adds another layer to the story because Poirot already knew the words before his accident. He was studying biblical studies at college and had already built an online presence around evangelism. The phrase was therefore part of his religious world before he ever described hearing it during his coma.

That does not prove or disprove his interpretation. It does, however, provide an important piece of context when considering the account. A familiar religious phrase appearing during an intense experience could be interpreted through faith, memory, brain activity or some combination of those factors. The available evidence does not provide a way to settle that question.

What is documented is the severity of the accident, the length of Poirot’s unconscious period and the fact that he survived. What happened inside his experience remains something only he can describe.

Poirot Has Spent Years Telling People What He Saw

Since recovering, Poirot has continued telling the story publicly. His account became the basis for a book titled 18 Days in Heaven, and his YouTube channel has grown to more than two million subscribers. He has repeatedly returned to the same central details: leaving his body, traveling through light, seeing what he identifies as Jesus and hearing the phrase “Worthy is the Lamb” throughout the landscape.

For Poirot, the experience is not a story about a strange dream that happened during a hospital stay. He believes he encountered Jesus and returned with a message he was supposed to share. His interpretation is deeply connected to the faith he already held before the accident.

There is also a striking tension at the center of the account. The four words that became so important to Poirot were already part of the Bible he studied before the crash. Yet he says he experienced them in a way that felt entirely different from reading them on a page.

The medical record can describe the injuries. It can document the coma and the recovery. It cannot record what Poirot says he saw beyond those facts.

And that leaves the four words exactly where they began: in a young man’s account of an experience he says changed everything he believed about what happens when the body stops working.