When 20-year-old Beverly Brodsky climbed onto a motorcycle in 1970, she had no idea her life was about to take a turn so dramatic it would shatter her beliefs, transform her faith, and leave her with a story people around the world still talk about today. What she says she encountered during her near-death experience wasn’t a tunnel cliché or a dreamlike haze — it was something she describes as God Himself, but in a form she never imagined. Raised in a conservative Jewish home in Philadelphia, Beverly’s faith collapsed at just eight years old after learning about the horrors of the Holocaust. By 1958, she considered herself an atheist. But all of that changed years later on a sunlit road near Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles. A crash that changed everything Beverly was riding as a passenger on a motorcycle when an accident left her with a fractured skull and devastating facial injuries — so severe that doctors told her they only saw wounds like hers “on the battlefield.” She spent...
If you grew up in the ’80s, you know Chunk. The Hawaiian shirt. The legendary Truffle Shuffle. And loveable chaos machine who stole scenes in The Goonies without even trying. But what happened to the kid behind the icon —Jeff Cohen — might be one of the most surprising Hollywood story of all. Behind-the-scenes Jeff Cohen’s rise (and crash) from child stardom happened almost overnight. Born Jeffrey Bertan McMahon on June 25, 1974, in Los Angeles, he watched his family shift early in life. When he was around seven or eight, his parents separated, a moment that marked him deeply. Not long after, he chose a new identity for the screen, adopting “Cohen” as his stage surname, a tribute to his mother Elaine’s maiden name. Before his breakout role in The Goonies, Cohen was already popping up on television. In 1982–83, he appeared as one of the kids who helped explain clues to players on the CBS game show Child’s Play. A few years later, in the summer of 1985, he returned to TV as a young...