• We have updated the guidelines regarding posting political content: please see the stickied thread on Website Issues.

Deathbed Phenomena (Visions, Premonitions, etc.)

In this case, Ray could've just been something her mind conjured up, as she lay thinking about life and what might have been.
 
Well indeed..but if that's the case it undermines the validity of DBVs generally, as it suggests it is, after all, the most likely explanation for the visiting dead. And that itself if significant.

Although in terms of her perceptions as to what was happening, as told second hand throuhg her other son, the suggestion seemed to be that she percieved him having been in her hospital room, rather than merely was having melancholy what might have been thoughts. That is it was an "hallucination" of some kind, rather than just confused wishful thinking.
 
gattino said:
One of the most intriguing and..to me..convincing paranormal phenomenon is the Death Bed Vision...largely involving the dying patient reporting visitations by deceased loved ones, sometimes ones they couldn't even have known were dead, but seemingly never reports of the living, thus largely ruling out mere hallucination or confused memory retrieval (else why so selective?).

When my own mum was at death's door she repeatedly spoke of both my dad and her mum having been in her hospital room usually silently sitting there etc, but never imagined anyone still alive doing so...which made me assume the inevitable, but it never actually happened. 5 years later she's still here and the dead aren't. Which cast some doubt on the neat and literal interpretation for DBVs. But I rationalized it away by speculating that perhaps the dead "draw near" when we're dying but just as automatically pull away again if the physical danger passes.

But tonight, on the reality TV series Long Lost Family, where adoptees and their birth relatives are reunited, there was an extraordinary story which throws yet another intriguing spanner in the works.

A 74 year old man called Ray had never met his birth mother since being given up as a baby. They found his still living 72 year old brother. The mother had died in 1975. The brother casually reports to the TV presenters that he knew his older sibling existed as his mum spoke of him on her death bed. She said a couple of days before passing that Ray had been in to see her and sat at the end of the bed. He asked who Ray was and she told him it was his older brother who'd been given up. She died 2 days later.

Now this fits all the criteria of a deathbed vision...except Ray was clearly not dead! Nor had he physically actually been in to visit her.. he didn't know anything about her. And she presumably hadn't envisioned a baby coming into the room to sit on the bed but a young adult as he would then have been (?)

It seems to me then that either this is a huge fly in the ointment for the DBV narrative..one can and does perceive visits from the living, suggesting they are mere hallucinations after all. OR, can we imagine that Ray, perhaps asleep in his bed, did indeed leave his body and go and visit his dying mother as a ghost might, returning to waking life with nothing but a quickly fading dream, now long forgotten?
Click to expand...

The only story I can relate Gattino was back when I was working on a hospital ward .. the more seriously ill patients were normally moved to the side rooms (to avoid distressing the other patients) .. the strange thing was that patients who were considered more than likely terminal would often talk of children visiting them in the night, sometimes even getting into bed with them.

I remember one woman asking me out of concern where their mother was and a different woman quite annoyed that they were there. The thing that struck me was that none of about five patients in that room ever got to meet each other (not on our ward anyway).

Sometimes when I was sat at the nurses work station on my night shift, I'd see an apparent dark shadow move into that room out of the corner of my eye but I just put that down to tiredness. No staff members ever complained of feeling uncomfortable working in that room at any hour of the day or night. If anything, we all found that room comforting for some reason.
 
gattino said:
Well indeed..but if that's the case it undermines the validity of DBVs generally, as it suggests it is, after all, the most likely explanation for the visiting dead. And that itself if significant.

Although in terms of her perceptions as to what was happening, as told second hand through her other son, the suggestion seemed to be that she perceived him having been in her hospital room, rather than merely was having melancholy what might have been thoughts. That is it was an "hallucination" of some kind, rather than just confused wishful thinking.
Click to expand...
To be fair, and depending on the medication, it's perfectly likely that a patient in a hospital will see something that isn't there.

A while back, my father was hospitalised, and given all kinds of drips to balance up this or that chemical in his body. Although superficially coherent, he would occasionally be confused about where he was, or see things that weren't there. It was quite saddening, as all the signs were that he wasn't well at all. I remember one occasion when I visited, when he became convinced that mum was just out of sight behind him, and kept asking me to get her to step forward so he could talk to her. Needless to say, he and I were the only people in his room.

In case you think I'm about to tell a ghostly tale, I should say immediately that my parents are both alive and in pretty reasonable health several years later, and only occasionally talk nonsense!

If any conclusion is to be drawn from this, it's probably that there is no obvious one-size-fits-all meaning to a NDE/DBV, particularly if the "D" doesn't apply!
 
Last edited:
Peripart said:
To be fair, and depending on the medication, it's perfectly likely that a patient in a hospital will see something that isn't there.

A while back, my father was hospitalised, and given all kinds of drips to balance up this or that chemical in his body. Although superficially coherent, he would occasionally be confused about where he was, or see things that weren't there. It was quite saddening, as all the signs were that he wasn't well at all. I remember one occasion when I visited, when he became convinced that mum was just out of sight behind him, and kept asking me to get her to step forward so he could talk to her. Needless to say, he and I were the only people in his room.

In case you think I'm about to tell a ghostly tale, I should say immediately that my parents are both alive and in pretty reasonable health several years later, and only occasionally talk nonsense!

If any conclusion is to be drawn from this, it's probably that there is no obvious one-size-fits-all meaning to a NDE/DBV, particularly if the "D" doesn't apply!
Click to expand...

I had a similar experience when I was a patient in a different hospital years later. I was on this that or the other meds as well as a drip (at first) .. to cut a long story short, I hallucinated demons around my bed. I was fully awake but decided to call the police because I genuinely thought the ward was under attack. After the head nurse reassured the police that I was hallucinating and called them off, she gave me some kind of strong knock out drug so I could get some sleep.

I don't believe in demons and have no mental health difficulties (that I'm aware of anyway), I had my laptop with me at the time so posted the experience I was going through in the WTF thread and another member here kindly calmed me down .. I felt stupid but then other patients told me about similar (non demonic) things they'd experienced so that helped me to feel a bit less mad.

The flipside of course could suggest that demons are real and it's only in an altered state of consciousness that we can experience them. A friend of mine has taken photos of what he feels are demons, I've said to him that if demons are real then angels must be as well. They're either both bullshit or both real, one can't exist without the other .. for me, I'm going with the medication cause theory.
 
One of the contributory factors in my own drift back to religion was the number of nurses I knew and they all seemed to have DBV stories.

There were two big hospitals in the area I grew up, about half the eligible ladies were nurses, or so it seemed! And later on the wife of a close friend had been a nurse on Intensive Care for several years.

I'm not going to try and relate any of their experiences because this is all some considerable time ago and the various stories are all mixed up in my memory.
 
Well you may recall when my brother was initially in hospital following his terminal diagnosis he had a couple of potentially DBV related incidents while still fully compis mentis (as he was til the end), and I had the intention of reporting all subsequent ones here as matters progressed, but I added no more as, once discharged from hospital and right until he passed away he didn't have any more to report. What that tells you I don't know.
 
I don't _know_ anything. :) At least, regarding the existence or otherwise of God (or gods) .

Things have happened to me which, taken in conjunction with evidence , albeit anecdotal, from other people has lead me to believe there is a God, and He is the Christian God. But I don't expect others to believe me on that point, even if I was to describe my experiences. And I don't intend to, because they could quite simply be put down as hallucination or delusion.

And, because for a long time in my formative years I was an atheist, I still tend to think of the goings on in this plane of existence in terms that an atheist would, of science or at least things potentially explainable by science. But OBE/DBV stories seem to have the potential of crossing over from this plane to another one, hence interesting and part of my 'evidence'.
 
As, generally, experiencers of or people interested in phenomena presumed unacceptable to mainstream science, our relationship/attitude to religion in a time and place where atheism , or at least anti-religionism, is the dominant faith is probably a confused one for most of us.

I have had so many experiences of supposedly impossible things that I have next to no doubt that the mind is not a mere function of brain matter, and from that everything else seems at least possible, not least survival of death. And to a lot of people that possibility if accepted leads to a chain of assumptions..that an afterlife means heaven, heaven means God, God means religion and religion means the church or other forces who condemn and punish the things you like to do. And I think that chain of assumption is what is behind the more assertive sceptic's and debunker's crusade. Allow belief in telepathy to be accepted and you end up with a theocratic state seems to be the way their thinking goes.

But absolute conviction about that "everything else" continues to allude me. I'm teased constantly with hints that there is a life beyond but that one convincing experience that would make me a confident believer is always out of reach. I know "paranormal" things happen, but I don't attach any firm belief as to what is behind them.

My attitude to God and religion is that I have no problem with either at all, though I've not been a church goer for years. So it fascinates me that, despite being not religious myself, religious imagery has been involved in so many of hte more prominent experiences I've reported on here.. the cross and holy medal sagas, the "miracle" of the catholic saint etc, nor were any of the deceased people I've known Holy Joes particularly. So its certainly curious.

As for God, the "being of light" and "overwhelming love" reported by people who have NDE's seems to be no more than short hand for "Him", but if such a being exists I don't think can bear much resemblance to the authoritarian giant most people assume the word to imply. I would be tempted down the road of supposing "He" is simply the universal mind of which we are fragments.
 
Well, OK, I'll open up enough to say that I have seen the 'being of light'. And that to me his face was unmistakably Jesus - which of course is problematic in itself since we have no idea what Jesus looks like. But I 'knew' it was Jesus. My 'Jesus' actually looked a bit Palestinian -beard, olive complexion - his face was the only part that was clear in a human shape that seemed to be wearing what seemed like the whitest cloak ever. He told me 'Remember the word of God'.

I'm very reluctant to post this.
 
The face you saw could be an archetype, ie the Saviour and Guide, that your mind picked up at the time you were ready to believe in something more 'spiritual' or you needed it in your life. If it had made you happier, then, your subconscious did an excellent job.
That is just my opinion.
 
Draheste said:
The face you saw could be an archetype, ie the Saviour and Guide, that your mind picked up at the time you were ready to believe in something more 'spiritual' or you needed it in your life. If it had made you happier, then, your subconscious did an excellent job.
That is just my opinion.
Click to expand...
Oh, i don't dispute that what I saw and heard might be a figment of my imagination. It was utterly convincing to me, however, even if it took me years to come to terms with the experience - that sort of thing just can't happen :)

Edit: I should add this was at a very happy period of my life - I had met the love of my life a few years before, we had managed to buy a house together, we both had work, good friends and hobbies we enjoyed doing together, my son was pre-teen and happy at school, and so on. I didn't need 'saving' or anything.

I'd much rather be back there than where I am now :) although things aren't by any means terrible now they aren't as good as they might have been.
 
Last edited:
I think, Cochise, that no one can take the fact of the experience away from you - if it happened, it happened. And I can imagine also that, given what it purported itself to be, questioning or doubting its actual nature would feel somewhere between foolish and dangerous, certainly unfaithful. So you're not expected to defend it or respond to any of the following random thoughts from someone who wasn't there.

The first thing it reminds me of is St Paul on the Road To Damascus. In fact the description would rather suggest he must have had an identical experience to yours. If nothing else your experience gives support to the historical reality of his.

Most of us, non religious as we are..or certainly reluctant to accept the church-y notions of saints and sinners and all the rest ...may respond negatively or more sceptically to your experience than to others simply because we don't want it to be true. But with that caveat in mind, some problems that suggest themselves are...that other people through history have done not just good but awful things, claiming (no doubt with the same sincerity and honesty) to have been instructed to by a vision from God, or a voice, or a blinding light. Serial killers, tyrants etc. Unless its the same divinity with a pretty sick and fickle sense of humour, it would maybe suggest that the experience is real but not what it claims itself to be.

The second problem I see with taking it at face value, for you that is, is a lack of clarity as to what exactly "the word of God" refers to which you're instructed to remember. Does it mean biblical teaching? That would be problematic to many, as its often restrictive and contradictory. So presumably it meant something else..but what?

One paranormal possibility might stem from the observation that when the dead supposedly communicate they appear to retain all their earthly personality and attitudes..and aren't suddenly gifted with some kind of greater understanding of everything. So a cynic is still a cynic when dead and the religious here are just as religious on the other side. So maybe your message was a manifestation from a particularly preachy ghost. I don't mean that facetiously.

I've never had anything like your experience but in terms of the instruction I can never shake the memory of a song invented in a dream about 18 months ago, which I woke up with in my head. "Don't let me down. You're in the world to save the world". I doubt very much I am, but the words sound so messianic and, well, at the very least, from an external-to-this-reality perspective, that they're kind of intriguing. What if I'd heard them while awake?
 
Cochise when my husband's niece died I was crying as I tried to sleep when it seemed that I was flying through space until I saw a tall white figure standing with his arms stretched out.
There was a feeling of absolute love like I had never felt, and like you, I thought that it was Jesus.
 
Gattino, I subsequently understood 'The Word of God' to be the vision telling me he was Jesus - see the first definition here.

http://www.gotquestions.org/Jesus-Bible-Word-God.html

I didn't know this definition at the time I had the experience. I had to look it up - as said above I 'knew' it was Jesus at the time. Initially I thought that the vision was telling me there was a particular word I had to find.

I don't know what I would have done if the vision had told me to kill or do something else that would be against my own moral code. I presume if Jesus exists then Satan also exists and maybe he deceives people from time to time? But I don't really believe in Satan...

I call myself Christian because I believe in Christ, and you now know part of the reason, but I am still not sure what relationship my beliefs have to 'organised' Christianity, but fortunately the CofE doesn't enquire too closely into how much of the Bible or the rest of it one believes in.

Iris, I did have that feeling of absolute love. And sometimes I get it again at Communion. It's addictive.

We are probably on the wrong topic here, I don't really like talking about belief in any case - for me first off it is intensely personal, and second I would hate to sound like I am preaching.
 
Last edited:
My best DBV story is on here somewhere, posted some years back when it was still fresh in my mind.

As I recall - I was working evenings in a local hospital. An elderly lady had been on the ward for a while. She'd been expected to die but had recovered and was sitting up and taking meals.

I came to know her a little over nearly a week and looked forward to seeing her when I started my shifts. One day I said 'We were a bit worried about you last week!' and she said 'I knew I'd be all right because my mother came to see me every night!'

Having seen her every afternoon and evening for a while I knew that nobody who could have been her mother had been there at visiting times, and I'd been there until after she was asleep at night so knew that Mother (who'd have been about 101!) hadn't rolled up at bedtime either.

Hospital staff know that while elderly people sometimes rally after an illness, it's often temporary. This, and the lady's certainty that her mother had been visiting all through her illness, made me suspicious about her recovery. I had a day off and when I was in again her bed was freshly stripped. She'd died shortly before.

Hospitals, eh.
 
I couldn't find a general thread dedicated to the subject, though i've posted a number of references to it myself over the years, as i'm sure others must have.

End of Life phenomena and deathbed visions. According to a large number of books and articles on the subject they are very common, as reported by hospice nurses, doctors and family members of the dying. The phenomena include the dying pointing at or seeing things, a light or especially people (primarily deceased relatives) - and conversing with the latter - who others in the room cannot see; terminal lucidity (the demented, comatose or mute regaining their speech and normal mental faculties prior to death); reaching out to something with a look of joy (occasionally fear); talking about going on a journey; referencing accurately the hour or date of their death; and lights, mist or other forms seen by others leaving the body at the moment of death.

Most people will have some such account in their own family, you just never hear about it unless you ask.

My brother apparently did the reaching up to something thing. My mum exhibited both terminal lucidity and referenced "going down the road" with my (deceased) father on the morning of the day she died.

Anyway the trigger for this post is that an Airbnb guest who was here yesterday told me - without prompting or knowledge of my interest in these things - of what happened at his late wife's deathbed. I could hardly put it under It Happened To Me, but its the first time anyone has personally told me of experiencing one particular variey of these phenomena which until now i've only ever read about

His wife died cancer at the young age of 41, more than 15 years ago. It was a grey dark rainy February afternoon and she died in her hospital bed. By his account at the moment of death he felt pins and needles go up his arm and the room was suddenly filled with light. He said it was like someone had switched a light on in the centre of the room. It last about 10 seconds, and he never told anyone about it for a long time.

You may immediately suspect this was some physiological/neurological phenomenon in himself related to his grief..except as i say the intense light in the room at the moment of death has been reported by nurse and doctors too. This quote from an online article:


"The bright glow witnessed by the Georgia doctor has also been reported by many other deathbed observers. Moody quotes one man as saying that the room became “uncomfortably bright,” so bright that he couldn’t shut it out even when he closed his eyes. A hospice nurse reported seeing a “luminous presence floating near the bed, shaped somewhat like a person.” In the same case, the head nurse saw the light in the room and light coming from the dying person’s eyes but did not observe the presence."

So, over to you...tell me about your Aunt Gladys....
 
Last edited:
A couple of days before my wife died after a routine operation she told me that her time was up (at 47) and that I should prepare myself. She had had a strong premonition and had been "told" - I could not get out of her how she knew and I begged her not to leave me. The doctors told me there was absolutely no cause for concern, but despite this I lost it completely because I knew that she was always right in what she said. I mentioned in another thread that I had been given the exact date of her death by a medium some 12 months before I met her but thankfully had forgotten this until I saw some 3 months after her death my written record of what he had said.
 
My dad is currently on end of life care and has gone into a hospice this morning. After spending from Saturday afternoon until Monday morning by his bed, with other family members, he is not giving it up just yet.

His elder sister passed away in 2015. While he was unconscious, he started pointing to the corner of the room, calling his sisters name. One of the nurses says that this does happen. I'm sure that the Richard Dawkins of this world would assume people to be simple idiots for wondering whether it is all due to medication but I guess we won't know. He woke up briefly and has a conversation with her yesterday morning.

Please move if this is in the wrong thread as I don't want to hijack it. He is now well cared for and not in distress, I've taken a couple of days break. I just wanted to share is experience of talking to his sister.
 
It's precisely the right thread Spudrick. And sorry to hear about your impending loss. But I hope there is some comfort and reassurance in these little but little reported experiences. The fact is as i say they seem to be near universal...perhaps not the full drama of glowing lights and floating souls, but certainly the inference invited by the words and actions of the dying that they are experiencing something profound and highly suggestive of a coming afterlife.

There is something of a conspiracy of silence about the death process and these events as people rarely talk about them publically but everyone seems to know them personally.
 
Thank you for your kind words. He also appears to have gone back over his life as he talked, while not conscious, of his former pets too. His two dogs are precious to him. It is easy for someone to call it all drug based hallucinations and it may well be. But as I said, we may never know.

I am personally so glad that we sorted out differences several years ago and I got over a personal barrier of telling that I love him. Ever since we have never parted without him telling me that he loves me.

As an aside apprently his sister was telling him to stop showing himself up! Which I can well imagine, with a fag hanging out of her mouth.
 
This is a lovely thread, thank you gattino! :)

My previous jobs were mainly in care/nursing situations and I heard lots of spooky stories, including some about end-of-life scenes. Although I worked with plenty of dying patients I didn't see any myself. However, I did observe some pre-death weirdness which I've already described on here, and will happily reiterate if required.
 
OK then... a taster. ;)

An elderly lady in a care home where I worked was gently going downhill - having mini-strokes and recovering, gradually losing her mobility. However, nobody was expecting her to die; which she did, quite suddenly and peacefully, in the early hours one day. She'd been popular and it was a bit of a loss.

Anyway... the night before she died I was assisting her to get ready for bed, and left her tucked up and smiling, propped up on pillows. I turned at the door to wish her goodnight and was struck by how beautiful she looked.

Her face was no longer lined - it was as smooth as a teenager's. Her eyes were bright, her hair was smooth, she seemed to actually glow. Not exaggerating - she looked as if she had light all around her, emanating from her.

Of course this was the last time I saw her as she was dead within hours.

I've been told since that this not an uncommon thing to see when someone's dying. She didn't seem on the brink of death though so it's not something I was looking for. Weird.
 
This might apply to animals as well.

Our previous cat went downhill very quickly one day and I thought I was going to have to take him to the vet for a final visit. We put him to bed and I knew that if he wasn't any better in the morning then I would be taking the day off work to do the necessary.

He seemed to sleep alright, just a bit of laboured breathing but it was obvious that this was his last night with us.

I was awake just before dawn, kneeling by his bed and stroking him. Suddenly he was alert and his head was darting from side to side as if he could see things moving in front of him. He was in hunter mode and it looked like he was watching mice. It was twilight and I could see very little but there was nothing there. He kicked a back leg a couple of times and was gone, just as the sun came up. It was very sad and yet the sunrise seemed to make it all the more significant to me.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top