Apparitions that help patients let go of this life

In the following cases from At the Hour of Death written by Karlis Osis and Erlendur Haraldsson the dying patient has an apparition who seems to have a will that is contrary to the patient.

This cancer patient was the nurse’s sister. She saw her dead husband for three nights in a row. He called her. He wanted her to come. She told him that she wasn’t ready to go, not until Agnes [the nurse's sister] was taken care of. It seemed that when she knew that, then she was ready: "Now I am ready to go. I can go."

And she did. She died within twenty-four hours. Agnes was impressed. "Some hallucinations are induced by drugs, but some, like my sister’s, it was different with her. She could see or forecast things that I never could."

A Catholic woman, sixty-one, had cancer that was in its terminal stages. She saw the apparition of her mother and a vision of God, who, in the vision, seemed to have set a time for her death—the first Friday of the month, an auspicious day in the old Catholic tradition.

The patient, however, had mixed up her calendar. Thinking that the next day would be the first Friday, she told the priest, "I want you to come tomorrow by ten of eight," when she expected to die. What actually happened was that she died—contrary to her expectations—at seven-fifty a week later, which was actually the first Friday of the month, as indicated in her vision.

Such experiences might happen to patients who are convinced that they will recover and who are not at all ready to "go." A cardiac patient, a fifty-six-year-old male whose consciousness was clear, saw the apparition of a woman who had come to take him away.

He stared at a bouquet of flowers—he did not seem to be repulsed by it [the apparition], just slightly frightened. He pointed to it and said, "There she is again. She is reaching for me." He described her hand and also the flowers, which were in the room. He did not particularly want to go, but he did not make a fuss. He became calmer. This experience made him serene. He died a day later. The "otherworldly" encounter brought him serenity, peace, and acceptance of his fate.

Sometimes, however, there is a very sharp clash. A college-educated Indian man in his twenties was recovering from mastoiditis. He was doing very well. Both the patient and his doctor expected a definite recovery. He was going to be discharged that day. Suddenly at 5:00 a.m. he shouted, “Someone is standing here dressed in white clothes. I will not go with you!” He was dead in ten minutes.

This last case is that of a Hindu woman in her thirties suffering from second-degree burns. At first, she interpreted the apparition’s take-away purpose as a cruel abduction. She pleaded with the nurse: “Please, save me. There are four men dressed in white coming toward me. They want me to accompany them.” She felt as if the four men were dragging her away.

The woman was in terror. After about ten minutes, however, she said to the nurse: “I then saw a big tree. On each leaf was written: Ram [name of the Indian deity].” She was now ready to die.

At the Hour of Death (Hastings House, 1997) written by Karlis Osis and Erlendur Haraldsson reports on a four-year study involving fifty thousand terminally ill patients observed just before death by one thousand doctors and nurses in the United States and India.