Death as Going Home

Neurosurgeon Allan J. Hamilton reports that he is able to predict when his patients are going to die. He first experienced this premonition while assisting a veterinarian with animals. “I began to notice that there seemed to be some energy or light that spread out from the animals themselves, and then completely enveloped them right before the moment of death.

“Later, as a medical student, I became aware that I could perceive a pale yellowish hue around human patients, almost like the light thrown by a candle. This glow would seem to shine from underneath the patient’s skin. Invariably, when I saw it, patients would die soon. As their impending death drew nearer, the yellow-colored light grew more tightly focused around their bodies and faces.”

While caring for Harry who had survived a heart attack, Hamilton noticed “that yellow, waxy light in his eyes, from his skin.” There were “no symptoms like chest pain or arrhythmia. I had nothing solid to go on except my premonition. I told a white lie to the charge nurse to get Harry back into the ICU. I explained, “I thought I had seen a run of ventricular tachycardia on his monitor. I had just not been quick enough to capture it on the paper strip.” With this warning, the supervising nurse immediately granted his request.

Prior to this reversal in his recovery, Harry had shared with Hamilton his near-death experience during his heart attack.

 got to tell you that there really was nothin’ scary ‘bout it. I just felt at peace, loved. I just seemed to rise up in the air, like a puffy cloud. I could see myself lying in the grass. But it wasn’t like I was scared. I just felt like I was going home, like being on furlough to see my family during the war or something. You know, something that you’re jus’ dying to do. I suppose that’s a pun or somethin’. But you get what I mean, don’t you? It was like I was lookin’ forward to it. Like I’d been lookin’ forward to it for the longest time, and now I was goin’ to finally get there, get to do it.

Now, Harry continued, it isn’t like I wanted to die or somethin’ like that. ‘Cause I sure as hell din’t want to leave Phyllis [his wife]. But at the same time, I knew there wasn’t anything to fear ‘bout what lay beyond this life.

After his cardiac arrest, shocks to his heart, CPR, and an injection with Adrenalin failed to bring Harry back to his physical life.

Allan J. Hamilton, The Scalpel and the Soul: Encounters with Surgery, the Supernatural, and the Healing Power of Hope (Penguin, 2009).