In 1977, a 22-year-old man named Tsuruhiko Kiuchi lay on a hospital bed, officially declared dead. Thirty minutes later, against all odds, he woke up. But this wasn’t just any revival story. Turiko claimed he had left his body, traveled to another realm, glimpsed the secrets of the universe, and even journeyed through time. And somehow, he brought back what he believed was proof that his experience wasn’t just a dream.
If you’re ready for one of the wildest near-death stories ever told, buckle up — Turiko’s tale is as mind-bending as it is inspiring.
TL;DR
- Comet Hunter’s Revival: Astronomer Tsuruhiko Kiuchi, declared dead for 30 minutes in 1977, suddenly revived after a deadly medical event.
- Proof of Separation: Claimed his consciousness left his body, saw deceased relatives, and overheard real-time conversations (like his mother’s calls) which he later recounted verbatim.
- Time Traveler: Claimed to have journeyed through time, saving his sister in the past and seeing his career as a lecturer unfold in the future.
- Physical Evidence: During a second NDE in 2007, he allegedly influenced a 16th-century carpenter to carve “Turu” on a pillar at Tossa Shrine, a mysterious inscription he later found.
- Cosmic Revelation: Glimpsed the universe’s beginning, asserting existence emerged from a “Universal Mind,” and that individual consciousness is a fragment of this whole.
Who Was Tsuruhiko Kiuchi?
Tsuruhiko wasn’t a random thrill-seeker or a conspiracy-loving eccentric. He was a respected astronomer and a prolific comet hunter in Japan. Over his career, he discovered four comets and even named one after himself. In 1992, he famously rediscovered Comet Swift-Tuttle, a celestial body unseen for over a century.
Hunting comets isn’t for the faint of heart. It takes precision, patience, and scientific rigor. And Tsuruhiko had all of that. Beyond astronomy, he served as an officer in Japan’s Air Self-Defense Force and later became a lecturer. This was a man rooted in science — which makes his near-death experiences even more astonishing.
Sadly, Tsuruhiko passed away in December 2024 at the age of 70, but his story continues to fascinate people worldwide.
The First Near-Death Experience
On that fateful night in 1977, Tsuruhiko was working as a flight operations dispatcher at Hiakuri Air Base when a sudden, severe abdominal pain hit him. Doctors diagnosed him with a rare and deadly condition: superior mesenteric artery obstruction, which blocked blood flow to his intestines. Despite their efforts, his heart stopped. He was pronounced dead.
Thirty minutes passed. And then the impossible happened — Tsuruhiko’s heart started beating again, and he began to breathe. Medical staff were stunned. No one had survived this condition before, let alone revived after half an hour of clinical death.
But the real shock came when Tsuruhiko began recounting what happened during those lost 30 minutes.
Beyond the Body
According to Tsuruhiko, as soon as his body gave out, his consciousness drifted into darkness. A distant glimmer drew him forward until it formed a tunnel, through which he entered a vivid, otherworldly landscape. Imagine standing barefoot in a vast meadow with flowers stretching as far as the eye could see — alive, solid, and serene despite having no heartbeat.
By a white river, a small boat awaited him. He navigated it across using only his hands — no oars, no paddle, just intention. On the opposite shore, five strangers awaited him. One stepped forward, asking, “Why are you here?”
To his astonishment, the four silent figures were his deceased relatives, and the woman guiding him turned out to be an aunt he had never met — she had died shortly after his birth.
Before he could process this cosmic family reunion, he was suddenly back in his hospital room. Though still clinically dead, he could observe everything around him. His mother wept at his bedside. He saw her making calls to tell his sisters about his death, and — get this — he later recounted their conversation word-for-word after reviving.
This wasn’t a hallucination. Somehow, his consciousness had been somewhere else, witnessing real events beyond the reach of his physical body.
Time Travel and Memory
His adventures didn’t stop with mere observation. He discovered that his awareness wasn’t bound by space — or even time. He could revisit past events.
One memory that haunted him was a childhood near-accident by a river. During his NDE, he traveled back to that day and realized he himself had been the mysterious savior who had shouted “Look out!” and saved his sister from a rolling boulder.
Then, he glimpsed the future. He saw himself giving lectures, teaching astronomy, and guiding young minds — events that unfolded exactly as he had “seen” them decades earlier. Yet, not all visions were comforting. He also saw a possible future of destruction and chaos, suggesting humanity’s path is not fixed.
The Second Near-Death Experience and Proof
In 2007, his life took another turn. While observing a solar eclipse in Shanghai, he suffered a severe stomach perforation and flatlined again. This time, he decided to attempt something bold: leaving tangible evidence of his journey.
He traveled back 400 years to the late 16th century in Japan to the Tossa Shrine under construction. Using his consciousness, he influenced a carpenter to write a single word on a pillar: Turu — the first part of his name and the Japanese word for “crane.”
After surviving surgery, Tsuruhiko visited the shrine. He found the faded inscription just where he remembered leaving it, and historical records noted that the word had mysteriously appeared centuries earlier. This, if true, was possibly the first verifiable proof of a near-death experience influencing the physical world.
Cosmic Revelations
Armed with these abilities, he explored even bigger questions. He projected himself back to prehistoric times and witnessed what he believed to be the cause of the great flood 13,000 years ago: a comet pulling ice from Earth’s poles, triggering global flooding. He even claimed that an advanced Atlantean civilization existed then, domesticated dinosaurs, and escaped to Venus before the flood.
Finally, he ventured to the very beginning of the universe. He reported that instead of a fiery Big Bang, he encountered an infinite void containing a single great consciousness — what he called the Universal Mind. From this mind, all matter and energy emerged. Every individual consciousness, he concluded, is a fragment of this universal awareness, reuniting with it upon death.
My Take
Now, I’m not going to pretend his story is simple to swallow. Dinosaurs in 15,000 BC? Time-traveling inscriptions? Cosmic consciousness? Yeah… it sounds like sci-fi meets philosophy class. But here’s the thing: Tsuruhiko believed it. And sometimes belief backed by experience — even unverified — can inspire radical ways to think about life, death, and the universe.
Sure, skeptics will chalk it up to hallucinations, DMT release, or overactive imagination. And yes, some of the physical evidence, like the Tossa Shrine inscription, remains unverified. But the ideas Tsuruhiko explored — consciousness beyond the body, time as fluid, a universal mind — resonate with philosophies, spiritual traditions, and even some emerging scientific theories.
At the very least, his story challenges us to question what we think we know about reality. And if you’re like me, it makes you look at life with a little more awe… and a lot more curiosity.
