There and back again is usually stated in the context of The Hobbit, but for one man, his there and back again involved an alleged trip to Heaven.
Brian Miller, a 41-year-old, has stated that he recently visited Heaven in a near-death experience.
Miller suffered a major heart attack. He seemed to be doing well at first, but soon experienced a deadly arrhythmia better known as Ventricular fibrillation which the Mayo Clinic describes as "a....rhythm problem that occurs when the heart beats with rapid, erratic, electrical impulses."
Miller is said to have nearly died while the frenzied hospital workers fought to resurrect his heart.
"He had no heart rate, he had no blood pressure, he had no pulse, I mean think about that," stated Nurse Emily Bishop to WJW-TV.
But while the workers feared the worse, Miller saw the light, literally, and held the end of the tunnel to Heaven in his eyes. He told WJW-TV that it was his recently-deceased mother-in-law that told him he had to return to his earthly body.
"The only thing I remember, I started seeing a light and started walking towards the light," Miller said as he described the ethereal flowers lining the path of the tunnel.
Miller also claims that in addition to seeing and hearing his mother-in-law, he also viewed her late husband who was waving from afar.
"She was the most beautiful thing when I seen her. It was like the first day I met her. And look so happy," said Miller. "She grabbed a hold of my arm and she told me, 'It's not your time, you don't need to be here ... you've got things to go down and do.'"
While all this was happening in the great beyond, the hospital was still working to bring Miller back. They'd shocked him four times, but had received no positive indication of it working. Then, Bishop states that Millers pulse returned of its own accord.
"His brain had no oxygen for 45 minutes, so the fact that he is up walking, talking everything--I mean that's amazing," Bishop told WJW-TV.
Miller is said to have experienced a change of perspective on life after his otherworldly experience. "There is an afterlife and people need to believe in it big time," he said.
But you don't have to take our word for it, you can hear Miller talk about the experience in his own words on Fox 8 Cleveland.
On a similar note, "Heaven is For Real," a movie describing a young boy's journey to heaven in his own near-death experience, will be released on April 16th.
