A guest on Tuesday morning’s episode of “Fox & Friends” told host Gretchen Carlson that she could actually “smell” the Christian deity figure during a near-death experience that’s since inspired her to write a book.

“What does God look like?” Carlson asked Crystal McVea, author of the new book Waking Up in Heaven: A True Story of Brokenness, Heaven, and Life Again.

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“I saw an immense brightness,” McVea said, recounting the hallucinations she experienced after an accidental drug overdose given by an anesthesiologist stopped her heart. “A brightness I could feel, taste, touch, hear, smell, that infused me. Not like I had five senses, but maybe like I had 500 senses.”

She added that the Christian deity spoke to her without using words, but she didn’t remember the conversation other than her supposed refusal to return to earth when prompted to. “When I came back I was only allowed to remember a few things,” McVea said.

It’s not the first time “Fox & Friends” has pitched a book claiming anecdotal proof that the Christian afterlife is more than just wishful thinking. Neurosurgeon Eben Alexander, a guest on the show last December and author of Proof of Heaven: A Neurosurgeon’s Journey into the Afterlife, actually told Carlson that he’s certain the child victims of the shooter in Newtown, Connecticut will remember their deaths in heaven but won’t feel any pain.

Despite the adamant claims of authors like McVea and Alexander, whose stories about visiting the afterlife are sold for a profit, it is much more likely that these individuals experienced a measurable medical condition. According to a 1975 study published in Anesthesia & Analgesia, research on nearly 500 anesthetized patients found that 11 percent experienced some form of mental aberration like extremely vivid dreams, awareness of the outside world and even hallucinations.

Additionally, much more recent research at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine found that in a trial of 18 adults given psilocybin, the hallucinogenic compound in “shrooms,” 94 percent of the participants walked away from the trip saying it was one of the most profound spiritual experiences they’ve ever had. A further 34 percent placed it as the most meaningful single experience in their life up to that point.

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This video is from “Fox & Friends,” aired Tuesday, April 2, 2013.