Do You Believe In Near Death Experiences?

Colton told his parents that he had met his younger sister in heaven, describing her as a dark-haired girl who resembled his older sister, Cassie. When the Burpos questioned him, he asked his mother, “You had a baby die in your tummy, didn’t you?” While his wife had suffered a miscarriage years before, Mr. Burpo said, they had not told Colton about it. “There’s just no way he could have known,” Mr. Burpo said.

I saw an interesting story in the book section of the New York Times about Colton Burpo, the 11 year old boy who is the subject of the book “Heaven is for Real,” who underwent surgery when his appendix burst when he was almost four. After Colton woke he said that he died and went to heaven and saw Jesus and his grandfather. The part I found most intriguing was that Colton described a sister who is in heaven, a sister that Colton never knew because of a miscarriage. The Burpo’s claim that there was no way that Colton could have known about the unborn sister because they never told him about the miscarriage.

The skeptical side of me says that the Burpo’s could be just trying to make money off of their son, but I think this is an interesting story if they are telling the truth. It would be hard to come up with a natural explanation for the story about the unborn sister. What do you think?