God led Charlotte on an extraordinary journey that touched thousands

Editor’s note: In memory of Charlotte Holmes, who died due to a heart attack Nov. 28 at her home in Mammoth, we’re reprinting, from the Dec. 25, 2019, edition of the Times, the story about Charlotte’s visit to heaven while a medical team worked to restart her heart when it stopped for 11 minutes in September 2019 in a Springfield hospital. That story is below this addition to her original story.

Charlotte Holmes’ amazing story about her visit to heaven was published in the Dec. 25, 2019, edition of the Times, and a couple of days later, it was posted at ozarkcountytimes.com and linked to the Times’ Facebook page. Then, Charlotte’s story went viral, spreading her vivid description of what happened when her heart stopped for 11 minutes in September 2019 while she was hospitalized for blood pressure issues. 

In that first week after the story was published and posted, it was shared by more than 32,000 Facebook users, and it generated 11 million “hits” to the Times website. The initial response to the post was so big, the Times website host’s server crashed. Twice. 

 And the response kept growing.

‘So much love’

But the story wasn’t just an online phenomenon. For Charlotte, it was personal. As online interest in her story continued, she worked diligently to respond to every private Facebook message she received, and she directed the Times staff to give out her phone number to those who called the office, wanting to contact her. She began traveling throughout the region, answering invitations to tell her story in churches and other Christian gatherings (after praying and asking God which invitations to accept). She handed out business cards imprinted with her home and cell phone numbers and told her audiences, “I hope I hear from you.”

Charlotte loved having people tell her about their own heavenly experiences when their heart stopped. Many of them confessed they’d never told anyone for fear others would think they were deranged. Many of the people who called Charlotte wanted reassurance that heaven is real for those who believe in Christ. Others wanted confirmation that they will see again their precious loved ones who have died. Charlotte often said her favorite thing to do was to pray with people; she gave them hope and assured them that the God who made them loves them.    

She felt God leading her to tell the story of her visit to heaven as a way of sharing the gospel. “This is a cruel world, but there is so much love,” she told the Times in a 2020 interview. “Jesus just fills you with love and joy.”

In 2020, Charlotte and her husband Danny flew to Dallas to appear on two programs on the DayStar Broadcasting Network, which reportedly has a “footprint” that can reach 106 billion homes in 200 countries. Charlotte also appeared on the Christian Broadcasting Network, and she did several remote broadcast appearances from the Times office, which has a better internet connection than she and Danny had at their Mammoth home.

Her story was retold in book and magazine compilations. An internet search for “’Charlotte Holmes’ heaven” reveals an amazing array of video and text depictions of Charlotte telling her story through American and international sources.

‘Can you stay?’

Now, even though it’s been four years since that original story appeared in the Times, interest in Charlotte’s amazing visit to heaven has continued – and so have her speaking appearances.  

A couple of months ago, Charlotte and Danny went to Georgia, where she was scheduled to speak twice at a church where the auditorium held 3,000 people. When her first session ended, she invited anyone who wanted to pray with her to meet her down front. Five hundred people rose from their seats, Danny said last week, and made their way down the aisles. 

Charlotte hadn’t finished praying with all those people when the second session was scheduled to start. She told those waiting that, if they wouldn’t mind sitting through the next session, she would pray with them when it ended. “Not a one of them left,” Danny said.

Then, while she was praying with the waiting audience members after the last of the two sessions, the pastor told Charlotte, “Our people are wanting you to do another service tonight. They have questions. Could you stay for a third session?” 

Of course she would stay. At that evening’s session, 12 microphones were made available throughout the auditorium so people could ask Charlotte questions. “And this is what really got to my heart,” Danny said: “About 60 percent of the questions that night came from kids.” 

He especially remembered one brave little girl who asked Charlotte, in front of the large audience, what color the girl’s mansion in heaven would be. Charlotte asked the girl what her favorite color was. Pink, the girl replied. 

Charlotte explained that of course we can’t know exactly what our homes in heaven will be like, but the Bible tells us we’ll be very happy there. So she expected the girl’s heavenly home would be a color that makes her happiest. 

“Charlotte just had a way of listening to people and making everyone feel special, like they were the only one there and she had all the time in the world to pray with them,” Danny said. 

And wherever she went, Charlotte shared her message with the same simple, country-girl earnestness, whether she was speaking to thousands of listeners in a big-city auditorium or to 20 people sitting in a remote little country church.     

‘You’d better be ready’

From the beginning, Charlotte’s family worried that her precarious health would be further strained by responding to all those who reached out to her. In response to a question from the Times about that concern, Charlotte smiled and answered,  “I’m not worried about anything. God has this. He will take it as far as he wants me to go.”

But she had a warning for anyone who felt a similar call from God: “When you say, ‘Here I am, Father,’ you’d better be ready,” she said. “Because God is going to take you on a journey!” 

For Charlotte, that journey ended Tuesday night, Nov. 28. Danny said he was watching television at their home in Mammoth while Charlotte was “on the phone with someone from New York, praying with them.” 

When the call ended, Charlotte joined Danny in front of the TV. “Did you get ‘em taken care of?” he asked her, as he often did. 

Charlotte smiled and said yes, they’d talked and prayed together. It was good, she told him.

Then she sat down, laid her phone down beside her and leaned back in the chair. 

Five minutes later, Danny said, she grabbed her chest and said, ‘Oh!’”  

Danny spoke to her, but Charlotte didn’t answer. Her heart had stopped – again – and this time, there was no restarting it. She was 72, and the extraordinary earthly journey God had called her to was over.

‘It just makes you wonder’

A short time later, when Danny and Charlotte’s daughter Chrystal Meek posted a message about Charlotte’s death on her Facebook page, hundreds of people from throughout the U.S. commented, offering love and sympathy. Some of them told about their impactful personal encounter with Charlotte. Several mentioned how they cherished being able to talk with her by phone. One said, “We had a conversation I will never forget.” Another said she’d been glad to wait in line for four hours so Charlotte could pray with her at a church where Charlotte had spoken. 

Danny said that, in addition to the many, many calls, messages and visits they’ve had  from local friends and family, condolence calls and text messages have poured in “from California to New York, and even from Canada. It just makes you wonder how many people she’s reached,” he said. Even though he’d been beside her on that journey, every step of the way, Danny added, “I don’t think I realized just how big a deal her story was.”

Hundreds of people attended Charlotte’s funeral Saturday at Mammoth Assembly of God, where she had played the piano – her hands floating all over the keyboard without a piece of music in sight. Danny, playing guitar, often joined her and the rest of the church band. On Saturday, though, friends and relatives made the music, and a cousin’s husband, David Small, led the service, sharing the gospel Charlotte so cherished – and also telling lots of funny stories about her, just the way Charlotte would have wanted it.  

Several close friends and relatives were unable to be at the funeral Saturday, so another service, a celebration of Charlotte’s life, will be held sometime later, Danny said. Until then, he and his family – their daughter Chrystal, along with Chrystal’s husband, Kevin, and their adult children, Brody Meek and Shai Meek Stevens and her husband Zach and Charlotte’s great-grandbaby Haze Stevens, born Oct. 15 – are grateful for the time they had here with Charlotte. And they appreciate all those who have reached out to tell them what Charlotte meant to them.   

When Charlotte’s heart stopped, her amazing visit to heaven began 

One day back in September, Charlotte Holmes watched from above as a dozen medical personnel surrounded her hospital bed and fought heroically to bring her back from death. One staff member knelt astride of her on the bed, delivering chest compressions as others administered drugs, adjusted monitors and called out readings. In the corner of the room, Charlotte saw her husband Danny watching, alone and scared.

Then, she smelled the most wonderfully intoxicating fragrance she’d ever smelled. And with that, heaven opened before her. 

Charlotte, who has lived with Danny in Mammoth for 48 years, had been admitted three days earlier to Cox South Hospital in Springfield after she went for a routine checkup with her cardiologist and was sent directly to the hospital when her blood pressure spiked at 234 / 134. 

“I’ve always had trouble with my blood pressure, and I’ve been in the hospital two or three times before when they put me on IV medication to bring it down,” she said. “That time, in September, I’d been there three days, and I was hooked up to all the heart monitors. They had just given me a sponge bath in my bed, and they were putting a clean hospital gown on me when it happened. I can’t remember anything about that moment, but Danny said I just fell over, and one of the nurses said, ‘Oh my gosh. She’s not breathing.’”

Danny told her later that her eyes were wide open, and she seemed to be staring. The nurse ran out of the room, and called a code, bringing a crowd of medical personnel rushing into the room. One got up on the bed and began the chest compressions. 

“I thought I wasn’t gonna bring you home,” Danny told her later.

That was the moment, Charlotte said, when “I came out above my body. I was looking down on everything. I could see them working on me on the bed. I could see Danny standing in the corner.”

And then came the wonderful fragrance. 

“The most beautiful, wonderful smell, like nothing I’d ever smelled before. I’m a flower person; I love flowers, and there were these flowers that had this fragrance you can’t even imagine,” she said. 

The flowers were part of a scene that suddenly unfolded before her. “God took me to a place beyond anything I could ever have imagined,” she said. “I opened my eyes, and I was in awe. There were waterfalls, creeks, hills, gorgeous scenery. And there was the most beautiful music, like angels singing and people singing with them, so soothing. The grass and trees and flowers were swaying in time with the music.”

Then she saw the angels. “There were several angels, but these were humongous, and their wings were iridescent. They would take one wing and fan it out, and I could feel the wind on my face from the angels’ wings,” she said. 

“You know, we’ve all imagined what heaven will be like. But this … this was a million times more than anything I could have imagined,” Charlotte said. “I was in awe.”

Then she saw “the golden gates, and beyond them, standing there smiling and waving at me, were my mom and dad and sister.”

Charlotte’s mother, Mabel Willbanks, was 56 when she died of a heart attack. Charlotte’s sister Wanda Carter had been 60-something when she too had a heart attack and died in her sleep. Her dad, Hershel Willbanks, had lived into his 80s but then died “a very sad death” due to lung problems, she said.

But there they were, smiling out at her from just beyond the golden gates, looking happy and healthy. “They had no glasses, and they looked like they were in their 40s. They were so excited to see me,” Charlotte said.       

Her cousin Darrell Willbanks, who’d been like a brother to her, was there too. Darrell had lost a leg before he died of heart problems. But there he was, standing on two good legs and happily waving at her. 

A blindingly bright light streamed from behind her loved ones and the huge crowd of people standing with them. Charlotte is sure the light was God. 

She was turning her head away to save her eyes – the light was so bright – when something else caught her eye. It was a little boy, a toddler. “He stood there in front of my mom and dad,” she said.

For a moment, Charlotte was confused. Whose boy was that? she wondered. But as soon as the question came into her mind, she felt God answering it.

It was her and Danny’s son, the baby she had miscarried nearly 40 years ago when she was five and a half months pregnant.

“Back then, they didn’t let you hold the baby or bury it when you miscarried that far along. They just held him up and said, ‘It’s a little boy.’ And that was all. It was over. I went through a long, deep depression after that miscarriage, wishing I could have held him,” she said.   

Seeing her little son standing with her parents, she said, “I couldn’t wait to hold him. I had missed that.”

It was all so wonderful, heaven was. And, from beyond the golden gates, she felt God saying, “Welcome home.”

“But then, I turned my head away from that bright light again and looked behind me. And there were Danny and Chrystal and Brody and Shai,” she said referring to her and Danny’s daughter Chrystal Meek and her adults kids Brody and Shai. “They were crying, and it broke my heart. We know that in heaven there is no sorrow, but I hadn’t walked through the gates. I wasn’t there yet. I thought how I wanted to see Shai get married and Brody get married to make sure they were OK.”

At that moment she felt God telling her she had a choice. “You can stay home, or you can go back. But if you go back, you have to tell your story. You have to explain what you’ve seen and tell my message, and that message is that I’m coming soon for my church, my bride,” Charlotte said.

About that time, as Danny was watching the emergency responders continue the chest compressions, he heard one of them ask, “Paddles?” apparently referring to an electro-shock defibrilator. 

He heard the person in charge answer no and instead order some kind of shot. “And then he said a guy comes running in, and they give me the shot, and he could see on the monitors that my blood pressure was going down,” Charlotte said.

And then, Danny told her afterward, he saw one of Charlotte’s eyes blink, “and I knew you were coming back to me.”

Charlotte had been dead 11 minutes. 

When she came to, she started to cry. Danny asked her, “Mama, are you hurting?” 

Charlotte shook her head no. And then she asked him, “Did you smell those flowers?”

Danny had messaged Chrystal the moment Charlotte had stopped breathing, and Chrystal had rounded up her kids and they all rushed to Springfield, arriving at Charlotte’s side just as she was being taken to ICU.

When she saw Chrystal coming toward her, the first thing Charlotte said to her was, “Did you smell the flowers?”

Chrystal turned to her dad and said, “Huh?”

Danny shrugged. “I don’t know,” he said. “She keeps saying she smelled flowers.”

Charlotte was in the hospital another couple of weeks, and during that time, “I couldn’t stop talking about it. I’ve got this burning in my life and my soul. I got to see something so amazing, and I’ve just got to tell people about it. Heaven is a million times better than you can imagine. I stop people in the grocery store. I even stopped my mailman and told him. I’m not bashful. I want to share this story wherever I can.”

When she was in heaven, she felt God telling her that, when she went back, she would see angels. “And just in the last month, I’ve started seeing them. I can see people guardian angels behind them,” she said. 

Charlotte has always been a devout Christian. She and Danny are part of the band that provides the music at Mammoth Assembly of God. “But now, more than anything, my favorite thing to do is pray with people. Danny even built me a prayer closet. He knows if he wakes up at 3 a.m. and I’m gone, that’s where I am. It’s so important to me, and in doing this, I’ve heard from so many other people with their testimony.” 

Charlotte has told her story at several churches and meetings of other groups in the area. 

“I just can’t keep from talking about it. And there’s so much more to the story. I don’t want people to think I’m crazy – well, I don’t care if they think I’m crazy. I know what the Lord showed me, and I can’t quit saying how wonderful and merciful God is,” she said.