Death-bed phenomena: Taylor excerpt #9

Greg Taylor writes: Strange experiences reported at the time of death, including NDEs and death-bed visions, are often dismissed by skeptics – incorrectly, as we have seen – as artifacts of the dying patient’s misfiring brain. But such ‘skeptical’ explanations are confounded by the fact that, in quite a number of cases, other healthy people present in the room with the dying also experience similar visions.

For example, while those dying have commonly reported being immersed in a loving, peaceful light, many of those caring for the dying – who are not ill or approaching death – have also described seeing a bright light surrounding the dying person, exuding what they relate as “a raw feeling of love.”  And again, this anomalous experience is not a rare occurrence: a survey found that one in every three palliative carers reported accounts of “a radiant light that envelops the dying person, and may spread throughout the room and involve the carer.” In a similar Dutch study, more than half of the carers surveyed reported witnessing this ‘light’!

One respondent to a questionnaire put to palliative care nurses in Australia told how he, another nurse, and the patient’s husband all saw a light leave the body of the patient and drift toward the ceiling. “As she died we just noticed like an energy rising from her...sort of a bluey white sort of aura,” the nurse explained. “We looked at each other, and the husband was on the other side of the bed and he was looking at us... he saw it as well and he said he thinks that she went to a better place.” This experience was transformative for the nurse: “It probably changed the way I felt about people dying and what actually happens after death.”

Similarly, Dr Peter Fenwick relates an instance in which a person, at the time of their brother’s death from cancer, witnessed “odd tiny sparks of bright light” emanating from the body – and these ‘sparks’ were also seen by her brother’s wife, who was also present. Given the phenomenon is seen by multiple people at the bedside, we can confidently discount mundane explanations such as it being caused by a stress-induced hallucination or wishful thinking.

Strange lights are not the only thing witnessed by family and carers at the bedside of the dying. There are many eyewitness accounts in which what is described variously as “smoke,” “mist,” wavy air “like the heat haze of a mirage,” or a “very wispy white shape” is seen leaving the body, usually from the chest or head area. For example, one witness saw “a plume of smoke rising, like the vapor that rises from a snuffed-out candle, but on a bigger scale...it was being thrown off by a single blade of phosphorus light. It hung above Dad’s bed, about 18 inches or so long, and was indescribably beautiful...it seemed to express perfect love and peace.” Another carer’s experience was of seeing “distinct delicate waves/lines of smoke (smoke is not the right word but I have not got a comparison)” above the body which then disappeared, leaving them with “a sense of peace and comfort.” Immediately after the death of a friend, a woman says she saw “the air was moving” directly above her body, “rather like a heat haze you see on the road but swirling slowly around.” A doctor assisting somebody who had a heart attack said he witnessed “a white form that seemed to rise and separate from the body.” And an Australian carer was actually inspired to conduct academic research into the subject of ELEs because of her own experience: “There was a young man who had died in the room with his family and I saw an aura coming off him,” she recounts. “It was like a mist. I didn’t tell anybody for years.”

Family, carers and physicians have also reported a multitude of other phenomena occurring at the time of death: apparitions of the dead, voices calling, the sounds of heavenly music/angelic choirs singing, the feeling of a strong wind blowing, and mechanical/electrical failures at the time of passing. Dr Peter Fenwick’s survey of British palliative carers found that 33% noted experiences of “synchronistic events” at the moment of death, such as clocks stopping, electronic devices shutting down, and lights going on and off.lxvi More than a hundred years before that survey, a 19th century researcher found so many recorded reports of such happenings that he concluded that they “cannot be considered a mere fiction.”

In his book Death-bed Visions, Sir William Barrett told of a seventeen-year-old girl who, after a prolonged illness, was in her final days. Her already-widowed mother, facing the second major loss of a loved one, was tending to her when she noticed the girl was absorbed in something nearby. Querying her as to what she was so focused on, the girl pointed to the bed-curtains and asked what her mother saw. “I followed the direction of her hand and saw a man's form, completely white, standing out quite clearly against the dark curtain,” the mother recalled later. “Having no ideas of spiritism, my emotion was intense, and I closed my eyes not wishing to see any longer.” The girl was puzzled by her mother’s silence, asking why she didn’t reply, but her mother – through fear, or incredulity – was unable to admit to the vision.

“I had the weakness to declare to her, 'I see nothing'; but my trembling voice betrayed me doubtless, for the child added with an air of reproach, 'Oh, little mother, I have seen the same thing for the last three days at the same hour; it's my dear father who has come to fetch me’.

Dr Peter Fenwick was told by a lady that while sitting at her dying husband’s bedside there was suddenly “a most brilliant light shining from my husband’s chest.” The light began to rise toward the ceiling, and she heard “the most beautiful music and singing voices,” filling her with an overwhelming feeling of joy. Researcher D. Scott Rogo catalogued many accounts of transcendent music being heard at the time of death: one such case was that of a woman who was caring at home for her aunt, who had terminal cancer, when one day, while walking up the stairs to the aunt’s room to bring her lunch, she felt “a rush of very warm air.” Then, as she approached the door to the bedroom she was “startled to hear faint strains of beautiful music, that came from her room and dwelt lightly in the hall where I was.” Upon opening the door, it was immediately obvious to her that her aunt “was seeing something that I could not, even though I did hear the music.” As she stood spellbound by the sight, her aunt turned to face her, “smiled the most peaceful and happy smile I ever saw,” and gently fell back on the pillow, dead.

When the former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom Arthur James Balfour was on his death-bed, his niece Jean Balfour – who was sitting by his bedside – experienced “a sensation of a mighty rushing wing (which was entirely subjective, as nothing around me was even stirred), and that the room was full of a radiant, dazzling light...[and] it seemed to me that there were people there too; they had no concern with me, they were invisible; but I knew that they were clustered about A.J.B.'s bed, and that their whole attention was concentrated on him.”

These phenomena have, quite simply, been experienced constantly throughout the ages at the time of death – and they defy skeptical explanations. 

 

Greg Taylor, “What is the Best Available Evidence for the Survival of Human Consciousness after Permanent Bodily Death?” An essay written for the Bigelow contest addressing this question. I am presenting excerpts without references, but this essay is available with footnotes and a bibliography at https://bigelowinstitute.org/contest_winners3.php.