In 2022, amateur hockey player Billy Garaffa collapsed on the ice during a game. His heart had stopped, and for 16 minutes, he was legally dead. While rescuers worked to bring Garaffa back, he was having an experience that changed his faith forever.
Billy Garaffa died on the ice for 16 minutes.
— Kayleigh McEnany (@kayleighmcenany) January 18, 2026
When he died, he saw the Holy Spirit and God.
And then he later saw Jesus! @SatAmericaFNC @FoxNews pic.twitter.com/b5aUYenyc4
'I could smell the sweetest smell,' Billy said of him on the ice. 'I felt the Holy Spirit leading me.'
Billy also said the moments of near-death also 'felt like the real life'. He was eventually brought back to his senses and is healthy in present day, posting about Mother's Day on his Instagram last week.
'Everything was orchestrated,' Billy added. 'There's no other explanation.'
Per a LinkedIn page found under his name, Garaffa is a property manager at Regan Construction in Snowmass Village, Colorado and has held the job since 2013.
The experience has left the Garaffa family forever changed, with their reflection of the incident bringing them closer to God.
Before the game, Garaffa said he prayed with his fellow players because he had a sense of "foreboding," according to Kayleigh McEnany.
"I was on the ice, I don't really remember much," Garaffa says. "But I do know my heart went into v-fib, and I just collapsed on the ice."
Ventricular fibrillation, or v-fib, is an irregular heart rhythm where the ventricles (the two larger, bottom chambers of the heart) do not pump in regular, steady beats. Instead, they quiver. It is a potentially deadly arrhythmia that requires immediate medical intervention.
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"But to me, I never felt like I died, because I was standing in the light. I was standing with God. And I felt more alive than I ever had before. And when I say that that felt more real that this right now, it did," Garaffa says.
Garaffa said he very clearly saw God and the Holy Spirit.
"So I felt God speaking to me, and He... asked me what did Jesus say about the most important commandment, and that was to love your God with all your mind, all your soul, and all your heart, and love your neighbor as yourself," Garaffa says. "And when He said that, everything absolutely made sense. And it made everything so simple, but yet we make it so hard sometimes."
"And then I felt the Holy Spirit on my shoulder, just leading me back to where the bubble was, just outside the light," Garaffa continues, "and as I walked, this amazing light, which I can't even describe to anybody because it would be like trying to describe the color blue to a blind man that's never seen. And when I was walking back, the shadow just dropped away and the bubble illuminated and I knew it was the Holy Spirit, without a doubt, leading me back to my body."
"When I saw my body, I didn't even recognize it was me, cause nothing else mattered at that moment, but when I did recognize it was me, that's whe I woke up," Garaffa says.
After waking up, Garaffa says he prayed and wondered where Jesus was.
"I asked Jesus, 'Where were you?' And a while after the incident, I had a vision in my prayer time in the morning. I woke up, I was just laying in bed...and God really brought me back to that moment, and when I was sitting there, looking at the bubble, I could see through the bubble, and I saw Jesus in the bubble, standing and kneeling around my body and just really guiding all the absolute people doing all the right things to bring me back to life."
"He was there, and He came through that bubble, and he was next to me to save my life. All my wife could pray at that moment was the name Jesus. Without Jesus, I wouldn't be here today," Garaffa says
According to The Daily Mail, doctors later learned that Garaffa's heart had grown rare collateral arteries, which kept blood flowing even after his heart stopped. That anatomical anomaly likely saved his life.
"Without a doubt, I know that...Jesus Christ is my Lord and Savior," Garaffa says. "And I just pray Lord that...if you seek Him, you will find Him. Guaranteed."
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