Visions of angelic beings

Morse also records the experience of Lady Barrett, a surgeon in Dublin who was at the deathbed of a woman named Doris, who was dying from a hemorrhage after birth. As Lady Barrett tells it:

“Suddenly Doris looked eagerly towards part of the room a radiant smile illuminating her whole countenance. Oh, lovely, lovely, she said. I asked, “What is lovely?” What I see, she replied in low, intense tones. “What do you see?” Lovely brightness—wonderful beings. It is difficult to describe the sense of reality conveyed by her intense absorption in the vision. Then—seeming to focus her attention more intently on one place for a moment—she exclaimed, almost with a kind of joyous cry, Why, it’s Father! Oh, he’s so glad I’m coming; he is so glad. It would be perfect if only W. [her husband’] would come too.

“Her baby was brought for her to see. She looked at it with interest, and then said, Do you think I ought to stay for the baby’s sake? Then, turning toward the vision again, she said, I can’t—I can’t stay; if you could see what I do, you would know I can’t stay.

Lady Barrett knew the sister of Doris, Vida, had died only three weeks earlier. But as Doris was in such delicate condition, the death of her beloved sister was kept a secret from her.

Then Doris spoke to her father: I am coming, turning at the same time to look at Lady Barrett, saying, Oh, he is so near. On looking at the same place again, she said with a rather puzzled expression: He has Vida with him, turning again to me and saying: Vida is with him. And then, I am coming.”

This story shared by Lady Barrett with her husband, Sir William Barrett, physics professor at the Royal College of Science in Dublin, inspired Sir Barrett, Morse writes, “to undertake a systematic study of deathbed visions. His was the first scientific study to conclude that the mind of the dying patient is often clear and rational.”

Also, “Barrett reported several children who were disappointed to see angels with no wings. In one such case he described a dying girl who sat up suddenly in her bed and said, “Angels, I see angels.” Then the girl was puzzled. “Why aren’t they wearing wings?” If deathbed visions were simply a fantasy of the mind, says Barrett, why did this girl see something different from her expectations?” Morse adds that at least fifty percent of the children he has studied see “guardian angels” as part of their near-death experience.

Melvin Morse with Paul Perry, Parting Visions: Uses and Meanings of Pre-Death, Psychic, and Spiritual Experiences (Villard Books 1994).