Deathbed "appearances" and "coincidences"

Peter and Elizabeth Fenwick write: "Further evidence to support the theory that consciousness can in some form continue after death has been found in studying what appears to happen to people as they approach death

"Occasionally, someone may have a premonition of their own death some time before it occurs, though this is rare. But about 80-90% of people who are dying see a vision of someone they loved so real that the dying person looks at them as if at a fixed location in the room, may talk to them, try to shake hands, or may clearly feel that the visitor is sitting on the bed. Often the visitor tells the dying they will be back to collect them when it is time for them to go. Without exception these experiences are positive and reassuring for the person who is dying and occur independently of "drugs, pathology, or any physiological factors affected by the dying process.

These deathbed visitors seem to come to reassure the dying that all will be well and that dying is only a transition to a continuation of being. In some cases they accompany the dying person into a new, spiritual area, full of love and light, where they may see spiritual figures and other dead relatives. Often the dying seem to travel into and out of this area, and they are given to understand that this is where they will be going when they die. Relatives who overhear the conversation nearly always describe it as rational and lucid." Below Marie Dowdall describes what she saw while with her dying uncle:

My uncle served in the First World War and experienced the horrors of the Somme. He had led a group of men, returned with only three survivors was badly injured and was awarded the Military Cross. When he was dying of cancer, my mother cared for him at home. One evening we were sitting with him when suddenly he leaned forward and stared across the room. He became very animated and looked very happy as he began to talk to people he could obviously see but we couldn’t, calling them each by name and saying how wonderful it was to see them again. It became apparent that they were some of the men who had served with him at the Somme and died there. There was a look of wonderment on his face and he forgot his pain. I didn’t see him conscious again, and he died a couple of days later. (Fenwick & Fenwick, 2008).

"The appearance of these visitors is often used by the palliative care team to comfort the dying and in one hospice in Canada the staff tell them about the possibility of deathbed visitors and encourage them to go with them if they are asked to do so.

"Another very common experience reported by the dying is the transition in and out of another reality they describe as composed of light and love, and which they believe is their destination.

My father was at my grandfather’s bedside, deeply distressed, but my grandfather quietly said to my father, “Don’t worry Leslie, I am all right, I can see and hear the most beautiful things and you must not worry.” And he quietly died, lucid to the end. (Fenwick & Fenwick, 2008).

Deathbed visitors are occasionally seen by relatives or palliative care staff who are with the dying person and more frequently (though still rarely), by children.

Monika Renz

"Recent work by Dr. Monika Renz, a palliative care physician working in Switzerland on cohorts of patients dying of cancer, has characterized the final stages of the death process, with a transition into light and love very similar to the ADE (Renz et al., 2018).

1. The cleaning and giving up of attachments.

2. The gradual crumbling of the ego structures of the mind and the dawning of non-dual consciousness where everything becomes a unity.

3. The final stage, death, characterized by experiences of light and love and movement towards a more cosmic sense of mind."

"Some of the best evidence for the continuity of consciousness is the phenomenon of deathbed coincidences, in which a dying person makes a farewell visit to someone emotionally close to them. Often this is during a dream, or when the person suddenly wakes with an overwhelming realization that something is wrong, or that someone was trying to contact them. (Fenwick & Fenwick, 2008) found 66% of the visits described to them occurred either in dreams or on a sudden awakening from sleep.

"Distance is no bar for these communications, and even being underwater can’t stop them. In October 1987 Terry Woods was serving in the Royal Navy on patrol as a Submariner:

Two days after diving I was asleep in bed and had a very real dream that my grandfather had "died". All of our family were waiting and I was the last one to arrive. When I arrived my grandfather picked up my nephew's bike and said "that's it, I'm off" and pedaled off and disappeared. I woke up the next morning and told my best friend that "I had a really weird dream that my grandad had died."

"Whilst on patrol submariners are never told of any bad news, so it was three weeks later that Terry was told about his grandfather’s death at approximately 3.00am on the 18th October 1987, when he was fast asleep 200 feet under the Atlantic ocean (Fenwick & Fenwick, 2008).

"It is certainly not uncommon for people who are away from their families to have anxiety dreams about them, but Terry says the dream was very real and this, combined with the precise timing, adds weight to the idea that it was more likely to have been communication than coincidence.

"The following coincidence was reported by an Australian mother whose son was a sailor. The transition to love and light is similar to the new reality described in the ADE.

I was suddenly awoken from sleep to feel something was wrong, then I saw a vision of my son (not a dream) walking slowly towards me. He was disheveled and dripping wet. As he got closer he slowly transformed and became surrounded by light. He then said “don’t worry mum I am ok” and slowly faded. I knew something had happened to him so I rang England the next morning to find he had been drowned in a sailing accident the night before (Fenwick & Fenwick, 2008).

"Sometimes coincidence is a reasonable and rational explanation for these events. But in many of these accounts, both the accuracy of the timing and the strength of the emotional response make it much harder to attribute them to ‘just coincidence’. That seems much less reasonable or rational than the alternative explanation – that there is somehow a genuine connection between the people involved and that this contact is driven by the person who is ill or dying.

"This suggests that there is a state at death or just after death in which the person has some kind of existence in which their personal consciousness – their ‘mind’ - somehow persists independently of their brain. We can find further corroborative evidence for this in the study of actual death experiences.

"Some of the accounts of these deathbed visits are particularly interesting as they show apparent communication between a dying person and someone who is close to them emotionally but geographically far away.

Our friend Sarah told us how she had been living in Florence for several months when one day, on her way back to her pension from an art class, she had a sudden, overwhelming feeling that something was wrong with her father – who, as far as she knew, was perfectly well and healthy at home in America. The feeling was so powerful that she began to run, feeling that she must ring home immediately and find out if anything was wrong. When she reached the pension a phone message was waiting for her, telling her that her father had died after falling down the cellar steps and broken his neck. (Peter Fenwick: Personal Communication)

"These experiences are usually brief and while some, like Sarah’s, give rise to a sudden strong conviction that someone they love is very ill or has died, other people simply have a feeling of uneasiness for no apparent reason, as in the following account by Kathie Guthrie.

Sadly my brother was killed in a car crash some 20 years ago now. I had been at work intending to work till 5 o'clock. At 4.20pm I was so uneasy and began getting cross with myself I just packed up and went home despite really needing to stay at work for one reason or another. I found out at 2.30 am the next morning that my brother had been killed instantly by a drunk driver at 4.20pm. (Fenwick & Fenwick, 2008)

"Kathie would probably not have given a second thought to her feeling of uneasiness had she not discovered the exact moment of her brother’s death. It is ambiguous experiences like this which reinforce the view that they cannot be dismissed as simply coincidences, even when the feelings experienced are inexplicable and out of character, and the timing approximately correct – indeed uncannily accurate in this particular case.

"To determine whether an experiences is coincidence or fact we devised a rating scale and used it to rate 100 coincidences reported to us in response to newspaper articles and broadcasts. We found that the experiences were all within half an hour of death but most were at the time of death as recorded by the hospice.

"A number of inexplicable occurrences are often reported at or around the time of death, for example clocks stopping, light in the room, shapes seen leaving the body and domestic pets seeming disturbed. These features suggest that dying is a very special event which seems to cross the boundaries of both time and space."

 

The above quoter were included in “To Be And Not To Be. This is The Answer: Consciousness Survives,” an essay for the 2021 Bigelow essay contest submitted by Dr Peter Fenwick & Dr Pier-Francesco Moretti, Dr Vasileios Basios, and Martin Redfern.