Chelsea Banton, 14, was fighting for her life after a bout of pneumonia, a collapsed lung and subsequent infections saw her breathing with the aid of a ventilator at Charlotte Presbyterian Hospital.
As her family gathered to say their final goodbyes and mother Colleen faced the decision on removing her life support, hospital staff noticed a mysterious bright light outside her room.
"On the monitor, there was this bright light," the Daily Mail reported Mrs Banton as saying.
"And I looked at it and I said, 'Oh my goodness! It looks like an angel!''
When nurses then took off her oxygen mask, Chelsea's vitals returned to normal.
A fortnight later, she returned home in time for her 15th birthday.
"The nurse practitioner who saw the image in the monitor said, 'I've worked here 15 years, and I've never seen anything like it'," Mrs Banton said.
Chelsea's mother captured the baffling light on the CCTV monitor with a digital camera.
"If [people] doubt it, that's fine ... but I know what I saw, and the picture's untouched," Mrs Banton said.
"I didn't make it up.
'I look at things differently than I used to, because I know God is in control."
Amazingly, it wasn't the first time Chelsea had escaped a brush with death.
Doctors reportedly gave her 36 hours to live after she was born five weeks prematurely, but she recovered to lead a relatively normal childhood.
"I'm learning that every day she's alive is a miracle," Mrs Banton said.
