The publishing industry goes through fads. UFO abduction stories are popular for a while. Then sparkly teen vampire stories. And then starting few years ago, yarns claiming to be non-fictional biographies of people who died, went and saw Heaven, then came back. Many people have seized on these books to back up their religious beliefs.
Whoops:
“The Boy Who Came Back From Heaven” Recants Story, Rebukes Christian Retailers
In short: in 2004 a six-year-old (with the unfortunate name “Alex Malarkey”) was in a car crash, seriously injured and pounded into a coma. Two months later he woke up and began to regale with tales of being shown around Heaven. Small problem: he now says that he made it all up as a way to get attention.
Amusingly, he apparently tried to tell the world of this fraud a while back, by posting message saying as much on the “Alex Malarkey Facebook fan page.” The moderators there deleted his message and banned him.