A nine-year-old girl who plummeted 30ft headfirst down the inside of a hollow tree claims she 'went to heaven and sat in Jesus's lap' while unconscious after the fall.
Her mother, Christy Wilson Beam, 42, has spoken of her amazement after Annabel, now 12, escaped the horrifying accident unscathed - even waking miraculously cured of a devastating illness that had plagued her childhood.
For the first time in her life, she can eat solid food – and her mother thinks her brush with Jesus is the reason why.
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Annabel Beam, now 12, believes she visited Heaven when unconscious after falling 30ft at the age of nine
Annabel (centre), with her mother Christy and father Kevin and her sisters Abigail (right) and Adelynn (left)
In December, 2011, Annabel was playing outside the family's Texas home with her sisters Abigail, now 14 and Adelynn, now ten, when she slipped and fell inside a hollowed-out cottonwood tree.
Mum 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.
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'Sometimes at night, it replays in my head – a dark twist on Alice tumbling down the rabbit hole.'
An emergency fire crew managed to harness Annabel to safety and she was rushed to Cook Children's Hospital in Fort Worth in a helicopter.
Fearing the worst, medics prepped brain and spinal injury teams to stand by for Annabel's arrival – but, incredibly, she survived without a scratch.
Video: Today
Annabel survived the horrific fall with only bumps and bruises. The doctors said'I guess someone up there was looking out for her'
Annabel's mother, Christy, and father, Kevin, believe their daughter, saying she 'has no interest in melodrama'
Doctors told her relieved parents: 'I guess someone up there was looking out for her.'
'The ER doc told us the one thing we weren't expecting to hear,' her mother said.
'He said, "Other than a possibly 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.'
In the days following the accident, Annabel began to talk of religious visions she experienced while lying unconscious.
She told her parents: 'I went to heaven when I was in that tree. I sat in Jesus' lap.'
'I saw in Anna's eyes the conscious decision to confide in us,' Christy said. '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.'
A cross marks the hollowed-out cottonwood tree, where Annabel plummeted 30ft headfirst to the bottom
Initially, Christy was concerned that Annabel was indicating a head injury, but MRI and CT scans revealed she had not sustained one.
Further tests also revealed Annabel had remarkably stopped displaying symptoms of pseudo-obstruction motility disorder, a rare incurable condition that had seen her in and out of hospital since 2008.
Doctors advised she could begin to come off the antibiotics she had been taking for years.
Instead of taking ten different types of medication throughout the day, she only needed three, and the painkillers that were prescribed 'as and when she needed them' were not required at all.
Previously, Annabel's medication meant she had to have a liquid diet or stick to soft, bland food – but now, she can happily tuck into pizzas and McDonald's happy meals.
The family have gone more than a year without a single visit to the doctor.
'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.'
Nine-year-old Annabel was playing outside with her sisters Abigail and Adelynn when she fell inside the tree
Annabel said she saw a fairy-like guardian angel as she gained consciousness, and it stayed with her while she was rescued, shining a light so she could see
Annabel talked of seeing a 'guardian angel' as she came to.
The schoolgirl said: '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 the 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 also spoke of seeing Mimi, her great-grandmother who'd died in 2010 after surgery on a blocked intestine.
When asked what Jesus looked like, Annabel said: 'He had a beautiful long white robe, dark skin and a big beard – kinda like Santa Claus, but not really.'
