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

Deathbed Phenomena (Visions, Premonitions, etc.)

When my Mother died I felt compelled to go to see her the day before and I was surprised at how well she looked and there did seem to be a light about her. She even walked outside with us and said how much she would have liked blue delphiniums instead of the pink ones in the garden.
She died during the night and when we went over there was a tall blue delphinium amongst the pink ones.
 
When my mother died (gradual deterioration from cancer) I didn't see anything unusual, however, for her supper, a few hours before, she had FOUR weetabix (first one, then another two, then another one)
 
escargot said:
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.
Click to expand...

Ms petes does a lot of end of life care and has described very similar instances as this.
 
pandacracker said:
When my mother died (gradual deterioration from cancer) I didn't see anything unusual, however, for her supper, a few hours before, she had FOUR weetabix (first one, then another two, then another one)
Click to expand...

I'm sorry you lost your mother.

That's another strange thing that some dying people do: they seem to 'rally', as if they're suddenly starting to recover. I have stories about that too.
 
PeteS said:
Ms petes does a lot of end of life care and has described very similar instances as this.
Click to expand...

Do you feel able to beat some stories out of her - er, I mean ask her to share her interesting experiences in a suitably anonymous way that avoids any breach of patient confidentiality?
 
escargot said:
Do you feel able to beat some stories out of her - er, I mean ask her to share her interesting experiences in a suitably anonymous way that avoids any breach of patient confidentiality?
Click to expand...
I'll have a go but she is reluctant to talk about people she has been responsible for. But one immediately springs to mind of a lady approaching 100, although relatively mobile for her age. In her formative years she had been a dancer. The previous few days her health had declined markedly with virtually zero mobility but Mspetes was astonished to see her standing one evening at her office door .She asked Mspetes whether she would like to see her dance and immediately sprang into an amazing tap type dance which apparently had to be seen to be believed and which Mspetes had to politely and quickly cut short fearing for her health. Escorted her back to her room and she passed very peacefully that evening.

Strangely my mother for a number of years seemed to be a bit fixated about the fact that she would pass away at Christmas. This would inevitably lead to much eye raising on my part. Naturally proving me wrong as usual she did what she said she would.
 
PeteS said:
Strangely my mother for a number of years seemed to be a bit fixated about the fact that she would pass away at Christmas
Click to expand...
This has reminded me of something that i don't think ive ever reported on here but which deals with the question of people seeming to have a foreknowledge of their own passing.

My brother died two years ago of cancer, 4 months after diagnosis (or rather after initial hospitalisation). His health (pain in his back/shoulder) and appearance (he visibly aged) deteriorated maybe 6 months prior to that. Before that point there was nothing wrong with him. However only after his death did my other siblings and I recall a peculiar incident 18 months/2 years earlier. This particular brother had rung each of us, individually, and completely out of the blue and out of character launched into a breathless agitated monologue about how we need to spend more time together etc..basically emoting with no obvious trigger for it on how we should be as a family and so on. When we each found out he'd made the same call to each of us we did at the time, half seriously wonder if he was dying or something.

Well here's the thing, after his death we remembered this incident and wondered once more if he had some forewarning of hs fate. Except he himself never mentioned or alluded to it when he did become ill and was facing death. He never volunteered any insight into that incident and, not being to the front of our minds, we never got the chance to ask him. It begs the question of those who do seem to know..does anyone ever take them seriously enough to ask them how they know?
 
gattino said:
It begs the question of those who do seem to know..does anyone ever take them seriously enough to ask them how they know?
Click to expand...
To an extent, I think you've answered the question yourself: if it turns out that the foreknowledge was correct, it's either already too late to ask, or people's minds are, not so much elsewhere, as very much focused on the imminent bereavement.
 
gattino said:
Actually i've just re-noticed PeteS's account has the line "She had had a strong premonition and had been "told" - I could not get out of her how she knew"
Click to expand...
No - she wouldn't say (and I half suspected it was a hospital staff member but quickly dismissed this) and seeing that I had lost the plot when she told me all she said was that she wouldn't mention it again. A nurse who was straightening her bed said afterwards that it was an elusive answer from her. Other strange things surrounded her death but I won't clog up the thread.
 
Iris said:
When my Mother died I felt compelled to go to see her the day before and I was surprised at how well she looked and there did seem to be a light about her. She even walked outside with us and said how much she would have liked blue delphiniums instead of the pink ones in the garden.
She died during the night and when we went over there was a tall blue delphinium amongst the pink ones.
Click to expand...

Strange that. My father died a few months before my wife. I would ring my parents religiously every Wednesday morning and I did that week . On the Friday I felt a very strong compulsion to ring them again. I never rang on a Friday because it was usually mad busy at work but I did this time and spoke to them both. My father seemed in unusually high spirits so I assumed everything was Ok and told him I would see him on the Sunday. He died suddenly that night in his bedroom having never had a days illness in his life.
(I do seem to have these compulsions to do or not do something occasionally and most of the time there turns out to be a good reason. )
 
I'll recycle a couple of other oddities aroundmy mum's death. On that day - after the lucid reference to "I've just been down the road with Gerry. It was lovely", which prompted me to text my siblings that they might want to come visit sooner rather than later - I went over to the pharmacy to get a prescription for her. In the alleway i had to pass through, a child of about 11 was lying face down on the pavement. There were no other children around. Thinking they'd get embarrassed and get up as i got nearer, instead he/she simply raise their head and said to me "I'm pretending to be dead" and put their face back down to the concrete.

The following day, after the death, I pass through the same alleyway andwas met by a robin (a long held family and now popular association between robins and dead loved ones being the relevance) atop the lamppost there. It was singing, which ive never heard one do before.

During the prolonged death rattle, waiting for her final breath the tv in the room broke the tension when it broadcast an advert belting out "I can't forget this evening and your face as you were leaving.. i can't live if living is without you".

We don't want to go too far after the death as that becomes a different category..after death communication...but for what its worth when clearing out a old handbag on the shelf of her bedroom wardrobe my sister and i found a cut out print out of a poem called consolation, written fromteh perspective of a dead person saying don't grieve for, im free now etc etc. Very apt, and a mystery what it was doing there. The next day the two of us and a brother went to our eldest brother's house. I'd never been before and he has shed type office built in his garden for practicing as hypnotherapist. He showed me in, I sat down on the patient's couch and there right next to my eye level, was a framed citation....the very same poem we'd found 12 hours earlier.
 
gattino said:
Clog it up to your heart's content. That's what the thread is here for. Any incidents around someone's dying that are suggestive of the fortean, paranormal, spiritual or just odd.
Click to expand...

Well ok then a couple of small but unusual things(I'll keep others for another time). A few days before my wife's death bed premonition I was awoken in the early hours by someone shouting my name loudly and repeatedly. I know this is not an uncommon experience from what people on here have said. Weirdly whoever it was shouting" Peter get up." repeatedly. No one ever called me Peter except my wife and my mother. Shouting went on for a second or two after I got up. As I stood up I felt arms wrap around me. I could actually feel individual fingers on my back . A very clear voice said "I'm sorry love but this isn't going to work out well , I'm sorry". Not a dream I can assure you because I was wide awake and didn't sleep the rest of the night. I could not recognize the voice though. Who it was I do not know. Perhaps my imagination?

About a week before she went into hospital we met my neighbours good friend. He was the ultimate Fortean and had the aura of having lived several lives before (as did my wife but a story for another time). THE most fascinating man I have ever met and he was particularly interested in my wife's history. When my neighbour phoned him to inform him of her death his response was " I thought so - she had completed what she had to do, I'll say no more" and he wouldn't. Just strange. I'll shut up now...
 
Just a quick update. My dad passed away yesterday afternoon. His wife was there on her own with him which is what she wanted. It was peaceful and he is not suffering anymore.

On a plus side, we were asked if he wanted a Requiem mass, which received a definitive 'no' from me and my brother!

Anyway, carry on as you were.
 
Spudrick68 said:
Just a quick update. My dad passed away yesterday afternoon. His wife was there on her own with him which is what she wanted. It was peaceful and he is not suffering anymore.

On a plus side, we were asked if he wanted a Requiem mass, which received a definitive 'no' from me and my brother!

Anyway, carry on as you were.
Click to expand...

I'm sorry you've lost your father. No matter how peacefully he went, it's a huge gap in your life.
 
Spudrick68 said:
Just a quick update. My dad passed away yesterday afternoon. His wife was there on her own with him which is what she wanted. It was peaceful and he is not suffering anymore.

On a plus side, we were asked if he wanted a Requiem mass, which received a definitive 'no' from me and my brother!

Anyway, carry on as you were.
Click to expand...
Sorry to hear that S. - as you say suffering now at end. I had to sit through a Requiem mass for my wife - the sad thing was that it would definitely not have been what she would have wanted. sometimes very weird this death thing...
 
Spudrick68 said:
Just a quick update. My dad passed away yesterday afternoon. His wife was there on her own with him which is what she wanted. It was peaceful and he is not suffering anymore.

On a plus side, we were asked if he wanted a Requiem mass, which received a definitive 'no' from me and my brother!

Anyway, carry on as you were.
Click to expand...
Sorry to hear that Spud.
 
Spudrick68 said:
Just a quick update. My dad passed away yesterday afternoon. His wife was there on her own with him which is what she wanted. It was peaceful and he is not suffering anymore.

On a plus side, we were asked if he wanted a Requiem mass, which received a definitive 'no' from me and my brother!

Anyway, carry on as you were.
Click to expand...

My condolences on your father's passing, Spudrick68. Take care.
 
When Mr B's family member died some 12 years ago now, we had, for a perhaps a month or more beforehand, been regulary asked about the 'nurses' that stood at the end of her bed discussing her, or about the food tray being too heavy on her legs, or why her legs worked at home but not in hospital and how she had been to the garage to help Peter and his dad ( we had no odea who these people were) but had told them the equilatrical bicycle needed to be moved before someone hurt themselves on it. She talked about needing her ticket stamped before they would let her on the boat with all the beautiful people and about all the amazing animals and flowers she had been shown. The week before she actually passed, both myself and husbands sister in law on completely separate visits, noticed she looked like she had been placed beneath a silvery spiders web which remained until the moment she died. I must say that all medication had been withdrawn prior to her speaking as she did and end of life meds for pain were only introduced at our insistence 6 hours before she passed.
 
bloop said:
end of life meds for pain were only introduced at our insistence 6 hours before she passed.
Click to expand...

I think the body produces its own pain-killers as the end approaches. My mother was reluctant to take any Morphine tablets at the time when the GP suggested we should be increasing the dose drastically. She still experienced visions of giant ice-creams and relatives beckoning her to go with them . . . :angel:
 
My dad was on three different types of medication near the end. One was for pain, one for anxiety and another for I'm not sure what it was for, But they seemed to know what, when and what doses were needed without knocking him out un-necessarily.
 
JamesWhitehead said:
I think the body produces its own pain-killers as the end approaches. My mother was reluctant to take any Morphine tablets at the time when the GP suggested we should be increasing the dose drastically. She still experienced visions of giant ice-creams and relatives beckoning her to go with them . . . :angel:
Click to expand...
My parent's have just flown over from France because we were going to hook up on the 13th .. she's had a few health scares recently, I've been trying to call her all day and finally got her and she's in a hospital bed at Good Hope Hospital in Sutton .. I've told her to get well first and not to stress about the 13th. The Mrs is telling me to calm down at the moment.
 
Swifty said:
My parent's have just flown over from France because we were going to hook up on the 13th .. she's had a few health scares recently, I've been trying to call her all day and finally got her and she's in a hospital bed at Good Hope Hospital in Sutton .. I've told her to get well first and not to stress about the 13th. The Mrs is telling me to calm down at the moment.
Click to expand...


I hope she is soon up and about again Swifty, and it is nothing serious.
 
Swifty said:
My parent's have just flown over from France because we were going to hook up on the 13th .. she's had a few health scares recently, I've been trying to call her all day and finally got her and she's in a hospital bed at Good Hope Hospital in Sutton .. I've told her to get well first and not to stress about the 13th. The Mrs is telling me to calm down at the moment.
Click to expand...

Do calm down and I hope your mother is well soon.
 
Hugs Swifty just support your Dad too as he must be feeling bad as well.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top