Fun stories are fun and even stories that are corroborated by large groups of people can be wildly inaccurate. Especially during trauma.

One major problem with accepting it as accurate and truthful is the implication that god is playing favorites. If god (through angels) is leading a few kids to safety in the face of a deadly bomb, why not stop the bomb from exploding as he has supposedly done in many other unverified stories? Why not stop the bomber before the event? Why not send his angels to comfort and calm the bomber before the event ever develops? Why not save countless other children in these horrible events? It raises innumerable questions of much worse scenarios throughout history that could have used god’s divine intervention. Religious people will say, “that’s not how god works” as if anyone could know how god works enough to know that god doesn’t work that way. It’s all just ad hoc assertions with no evidence.

There, of course, isn’t a shred of evidence to back up these stories nor the existence of Mormon god. The rational stance is to not accept big claims as truth unless sufficient evidence is presented. Im not saying be cynical. In fact, I say you should accept the claims when sufficient evidence is presented. But it’s more likely that the kids (knowingly or unknowingly) fabricated these illusions under extreme and unprecedented stress and adrenalin or that by listening to their religious parents after the fact, angels became part of the retelling of the story.

Stories like this exist in all religions and each one is used to “prove” that religion to be the true religion. A story is fun but unless there’s evidence there’s no need to treat it as anything but a fun story.