A nine-year-old child, Annabel, who fell headfirst into the hollow of a tree, reportedly visited heaven and interacted with Jesus while still unconscious after the fall, before waking up cured from an incurable disorder.  The girl’s mother, 42-year-old Christy Wilson Beam, was in utter disbelief after Annabel, now 12 years old, was retrieved from the tree unscathed and completely cured from a  devastating illness that had plagued her through her childhood.

Now, for the first time in her life, Annabel can eat solid food, and her mother is convinced that her daughter’s interaction with Jesus is the reason for the same.

In December 2001, Annabel slipped and fell inside the hollow of a cottonwood tree while playing with her two sisters, Abigail and Adelynn, now 14 years and 10 years respectively, outside their family home in Texas.

Her mother Christy said, “She hit her head three times on the way down and this is consistent with the findings of an MRI scan. With the facts in front of me now, I see it all with sickening clarity. Sometimes at night, it replays in my head – a dark twist on Alice tumbling down the rabbit hole.”

After an emergency crew harnessed Annabel to safety, she was rushed to Cook Children’s Hospital in Fort Worth, via a helicopter. Dreading the worst, medical experts prepped teams to look into possible brain and spinal injuries that Annabel might have suffered but upon her arrival, they were stunned to find that the little girl had managed to survive the accident without a single scratch even.

“The doctor said I guess someone up there was looking out for her. The ER doc told us the one thing we weren't expecting to hear. He said, ‘Other than a possible concussion and some superficial bumps and bruises, she doesn't appear to have been injured at all.’ [My husband] Kevin and I exchanged a look of pure astonishment,” recounted Annabel’s mother.

Subsequently, Annabel started to talk about the religious visions she had had while lying unconscious inside the tree’s trunk, telling her parents repeatedly that she had visited heaven and sat on Jesus’ lap while interacting with him.

“I saw in Anna's eyes the conscious decision to confide in us. There was no drama, she wasn't playing either. This wasn't like one of her long, spun-out recaps of a funny dream or movie she'd seen. She'd been through enough real drama in her short life. She had no interest in melodrama. [She described] some of what she'd experienced while inside the tree – how the gates of Heaven are made of gold, how Jesus told her it wasn't time,” said Christy.

Even though her mother was initially concerned that Annabel’s confessions may be stemming from a possible head injury, MRI and CT scans proved otherwise. Further testing also pointed to the fact that Annabel had almost miraculously stopped showing symptoms of pseudo-obstruction motility disorder, an uncommon and incurable condition that had been troubling her since 2008. Consequently, doctors said Annabel could stop taking the antibiotics that she had been taking for years.

Annabel’s previous medication meant that she could consume only liquids or soft foods but after her fall, she could eat all the foods she liked and instead of ingesting ten different kinds of medication each day, she would now have to take only three. The family claims not to have gone to the doctor for over a year and never having had to give Annabel the painkillers that were prescribed to her after the fall, for if and when she experienced any pain.

“I can't explain what happened to her physically while she was in that tree,” said her father Kevin. “All I have to go on is the radiological data and the medical records from before and after. The proof is in the pudding. She wasn't well before and now she is. All I know beyond that is that she believes she went to Heaven. And I believe her when she tells me she believes it.”

While speaking to the media, Annabel said that she was visited by a guardian angel inside the tree trunk until she regained consciousness and was rescued.

“I started to wake up in the tree and I could hear the firemen's voices. And I saw an angel that looked very small, like a fairy. And then God winked at me through the body of the angel, and what He was saying to me was, 'I'm going to leave you now and everything is going to be okay. And then the angel stayed with me the entire time, shining a light so I could see. We didn't talk. We just sat together peacefully,” she said.

When asked what Jesus looks like, Annabel said that he wore a long and beautiful white robe, was dark-skinned and had a beard – a little like Santa Claus, but not exactly.

Photo Credits: Daily Mail UK