The Blue Tennis Shoe

Photo: Kimberly found this old photo and thinks it’s the shoe she found on the ledge, but she’s not certain. It’s been over 40 years. Not everyone had a camera in their pocket back then.

Kimberly served as a social worker at Harborview Medical Center in Seattle, Washington, and witnessed Maria’s resuscitation during a cardiac arrest.

Later, Maria excitedly described leaving her body during her resuscitation. She told Kimberly she’d hovered briefly above the bed and then left her motionless body behind and left the hospital room altogether.

Maria described a large dark blue tennis shoe with white laces sitting on an outside ledge of the hospital and insisted Kimberly go find it.

At that time in her career, Kimberly had never heard of a near-death experience. Searching for a shoe felt far-fetched, but she went.

Kimberly walked the outside perimeter of the medical complex looking up. Then she scoured other parts of the hospital looking down. After a lengthy search, she found the shoe.

Maria’s second-floor room was on the north side of the hospital. The shoe was found on a third-floor ledge on the west side. Kimberly surveyed the area and concluded Maria couldn’t have seen the shoe from the ground or from her hospital room. Kimberly took the shoe to Maria who subsequently gave it back to Kimberly to keep.

Many people saw the shoe and heard Maria’s story over the next three weeks of her hospital stay. Kimberly followed Maria in the cardiology clinic for years afterwards and later founded the Seattle International Association for Near-Death Studies.

There are many things science struggles to explain, like how Maria could have seen that shoe, but that doesn’t make them less true. Sometimes, you must go searching to find your evidence.