Extraordinary experiences involving the dead

Dr. Janis Amatuzio writes: "As a forensic pathologist for more than twenty-five years, I have the extraordinary privilege of speaking for the dead by investigating their circumstances of death. This means examining the body and clothing; learning about personal habits, intimate beliefs, and customs; and safeguarding valuables, photographs, and other treasured possessions. I use my medical knowledge and life experience to interpret and diagnose patterns of disease, disuse, and injury. My goal is always to reveal the truth about ‘what happened,’ so loved ones can mourn, understand, and return to life wiser than before. 

 

"Occasionally loved ones speak of extraordinary experiences: dreams, visions, or synchronicities surrounding the event of a death that have deeply affected their lives. As I have studied those who have shared an experience with me, I have observed that they are profoundly changed and live life differently than they did before, with an inner knowing that seems to create health and beauty wherever they go.

 

"In Beyond Knowing I explore the wisdom and truths arising from these mysteriously beautiful experiences: an awareness that we already know these things; insights that trigger freedom and joy; and the recognition of profound loving reassurance that life is perfectly safe and always goes on. I describe a shift in my own awareness, from a sense of hope to one of knowing – that we are immortal and forever is a long, long time – a shift marked by feelings of excitement and purpose as well as profound happiness. 

 

"But please don’t take my experience as recorded in this book as “the truth.” Read the stories that real people have shared with me. Then trust your own feelings, make your own decisions, arrive at your own truth, about one of the greatest concerns of sentient humanity: Life and Death.

 

"Recently, a woman named Laura requested an autopsy to help her family understand what had really happened to her husband following organ transplant surgery. We discussed the devastating effects of his disease and its complications and the complexities of organ transplants. As she was leaving she hesitated. 

 

Doctor, could I tell you something else? 

 

Of course you can, I said, sitting back down.

 

Something happened to me last evening, she said, taking a deep breath. I had been on the road for several hours, driving up to my daughter’s house to stay overnight for this meeting. I was thinking about my husband, Ron, our children, and our life together. As the memories flooded over me, I felt such overwhelming grief that I burst into tears and just wept. I knew I had to pay attention to my driving, so I took a deep breath and wiped my eyes and rolled down the window. I punched on the radio to break the silence and distract my thoughts, but what happened next absolute astonished me!

 

The radio came on quite loud; instantly I recognized the music that filled my car – it was "our song," from 1981. Ron liked it so well he had given it to me on an eight-track tape. I listened to the familiar verses playing on the radio, and the words ‘being well in heave’ and ‘watching over you’ took on a whole meaning.

 

In that moment I changed; I mean, I knew without a doubt he was reaching out to assure me that all was well. (ix-xv)

 

Janis Amatuzio, Beyond Knowing: Mysteries and Messages of Death and Life from a Forensic Pathologist (Novato, CA: New World Library, 2006).

Appearance of a dead loved one

Near the end of his surgical career, neurosurgeon Allan J. Hamilton had an experience that convinced him near-death experiences were real and the patient’s conscious mind can exist when the patient is ‘brain dead.’ 

 

A thirty-four-year-old woman had suffered an aneurysm in her brain stem. “The swollen, ballooned portion of the aneurysm had actually engulfed and surrounded two important arteries that could simply not be injured or sacrificed. The aneurysm had swelled, like a rising loaf of bread, and would have to be teased off both blood vessels before it could be definitively repaired. But how to do this? Almost for certain, dissecting the aneurysm in this fashion would cause it to rupture — in which case she was dead for sure. But what if there was no blood to spill out when it did rupture? What if there was no flow at all?

 

“The surgical team decided to address the repair by cooling the patient’s body temperature down low enough to put her into a state of suspended animation. To make her core temperature cold enough to stop her heart so all blood flow would cease — maybe for as long as twenty minutes. To accomplish this goal, the young woman’s body would have to be slowly cooled on a heart-lung bypass machine, a device that oxygenates and then pumps the blood back into the patient’s body. Eventually, as the body’s temperature dropped below 90 degrees Fahrenheit, her heart would stop beating altogether. Once it stopped, the bypass machine would also be shut down. All blood flow to her body and brain would then cease entirely.

 

“At that point, all her brain wave activity on an EEG monitor would fall to zero. Then the aneurysm could be approached without being obscured by bleeding. It would be clipped under deep hypothermia. No more than twenty minutes could be allowed to complete this task. By then, if all went well, Dr. Tom Reed would have the aneurysm successfully clipped so it would be completely excluded from the circulating blood flow. When the deadline was reached, the bypass machine would be turned back on. Her blood could then be slowly and progressively rewarmed. We hoped that as her body temperature returned closer to normal, the young woman’s heart would resume beating.

 

“From a technical point of view, everything required for this daring surgical undertaking went well. There’s a video and audio track documenting the operation through the microscope. The audio portion is simply a recording of whatever ambient noise is picked up on a small boom microphone. As the operation began to wind down, several trivial conversations were picked up. One involved a conversation between Tom Reed and the perfusionist, the technician who overseas the heart-lung bypass pump.

 

We’re going to need to start the pump back up in a minute or two. Everything ready to go? Tom asked.

 

We’ve got to blow first, the perfusionist answered.

 

“To ‘blow’ is vernacular for firing up the pump and letting it circulate for a few seconds to ensure any bubbles in the system are cleared before reestablishing blood flow in the patient. While the pump was readied, there was a second important conversation picked up by the microphone. One of the nurses in the operating room, a certain Rita Hightower, announced she had just gotten engaged. A couple of the other nurses shrieked in excitement. Because Rita was scrubbed in, wearing surgical gloves, she wore no engagement ring.

“But she said, Oh, wait till you see it. It’s a one-and-a-half-carat square-cut yellow diamond. And he proposed to me right there at Morton’s. John got down on his knees and proposed. In fact, one of the waiters didn’t see him and tripped and fell into the wine case. Nothing broken, but it was funny.

 

“Someone in the background asked where the ring was from. Johnston Fellows. This was one of the most exclusive shops in the Phoenix area. John had it custom-made for me.

 

“The pump was cleared. Thar she blows, captain, came the answer.

 

Okay, then. Let’s pump this baby up, shall we?

 

“The bypass machine churned and red blood began to flow again through the patient’s tissue. The patient’s body was gently rewarmed. Her heart started beating again. A few minutes later a normal, healthy brain wave pattern reappeared on the EEG. The operation by Dr. Reed went flawlessly. But there was one matter than troubled everyone. That was why I felt compelled to go see things for myself.

 

“As the patient awoke in the intensive care unit, she emerged gradually from the grogginess left by all the anesthetic agents. After several hours, her head cleared. She sat up to greet Dr. Reed and his team of residents when they stopped in to see her in the evening.

 

How did everything go today? The patient asked.

 

Textbook-perfect, Tom said with a smile. He quickly examined her. All of it was recorded on the video camera in her room.

 

Well, I thought I remembered hearing something ‘blow’ during the case,” she said. “Did the aneurysm blow?

 

No. Tom must have gone sheet-white. I could not see, as his back was toward the stationary camera in the corner.

 

I thought someone said, ‘Thar she blows.’ Like in Moby-Dick.

 

Yes, well that . . . what you might have heard . . . was the tech telling me all the air bubbles were blown clear out of the lines. That’s all.

 

Oh. I’m glad. I was just remembering what a disaster you said it would be the aneurysm leaked or ruptured.

 

No. Everything went fine with the aneurysm. Tom leaned in closer to the young patient. Is there anything else you recall?

 

Yes, a ring. A one-and-a-half-carat yellow diamond from Johnston Fellows . . . and Morton’s restaurant where someone fell into a wine case.

 

“Tom just kept staring at her. You remember all that?

Yes. Why? What does it mean?

 

Well, those were just conversations we had in the operating room. Nothing special.

 

“Tom left the room and immediately paged the anesthesiologist. She remembers what happened in the OR!

 

No. No way! the anesthesiologist responded. No, it’s impossible.

 

Well, you come here and ask her what she remembers!

 

The anesthesiologist came up a minute later and charged into the room and made her repeat word for word everything she could remember. He scratched his head and muttered, How the hell could this happen?

 

“What shook everyone up who watched the video between Tom and his young patient was we all knew that this woman’s brain had been dead — without discernible electrical activity whatsoever. This meant that no brain cells were active, working, or emitting electrical signals. Yet somehow the patient managed to recall the conversation in the operating room while her EEG was flat. In other words, while she was, for all intents and purposes, clinically dead — with no ability for her brain to function — she somehow managed to make or ‘encode’ specific memories of that conversation in the OR. And this was no hazy recollection. The patient was reproducing practically word for word what had been said. Right down to the jewelry store and the waiter stumbling. No, she clearly recalled what had been said. There was no doubt about that.

 

“From everything we currently know about how the brain works, it would be utterly impossible, from a biochemical, metabolic, and physiologic point of view, for this woman’s brain to create a memory. To do so would require neurons to be activated and then capable of encoding incoming electrical signals. This electrical activity would cause them to convert the voltage signals across the cell’s surface membrane into specific changes in the transcription of messenger RNA — or mRNA — in each neuron. These changes in mRNA produce precise molecular changes, altering amino acid and peptide production within thousands of cells to make a lasting memory the brain can recall. In order to create a ‘Kodak moment of recollection,’ the brain must be very much alive and bristling with electrical activation, and intracellular metabolism must be ‘revved up’ to the maximum of each cell’s capacity.

 

“Yet we also had here unequivocal, scientific evidence that not only was her brain not working, it specifically demonstrated the absence of all cortical electrical activity when these conversations actually took place. So where could these brand-new memories have been created? Where had these memories gone? And where could such a place exist? Certainly, wherever it was, it would have been beyond the confines of her brain and mind, as we currently understand them. But wherever these memories existed while her brain ceased to function, how could they be accessed later from such a location? And how could such memories survive intact ‘out in the ether,’ a place accessible to her brain for later storage only after it revived and awoke? One thing was clear: Explanation or not, she had stored and recalled accurate memories of what had happened.”

 

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

Her mind was alive when her brain was "dead"

In the previous post, neurosurgeon Allan J. Hamilton described brain surgery on a woman who despite a flat line EEG remembered much of what was said during her operation. Hamilton and other members of the medical team agreed that was impossible, but nonetheless true. Hamilton writes . . .

“We would have to come up with some new explanations. One theory held that her brain — and the conscious mind it produced — went somewhere else, beyond its own physical and physiological confines. Out into the cosmos. The notion that conscious awareness — something generated by and of each brain — could have life (so to speak) independent from the brain itself is a baffling idea. To us, as physicians, at least. Maybe not to Tibetan Buddhists or others who believe in reincarnation.

“Another notion, just as radical as the first, was advanced by a group of researchers. Their idea was that the memories of the conversation in the OR could survive intact as discrete quanta of energy. This is similar in concept to rays of light from stars, lying far beyond our own galaxy, reaching us here on Earth. The light we perceive tonight was actually sent millions of years ago in the past. In fact, the star whose light reaches our retinas today may have actually extinguished itself long ago. The quanta of light we perceive exist independently from the star.

“In a similar fashion, once the quanta — the packets of ‘memory energy’ — came into existence, they might become independent of any brain’s ability to remember them. Later, supposedly, these quanta could somehow be available to reenter the brain. So just as the light waves we see today in our telescopes came into being millions of years ago in a distant star, memories could persist independently in the cosmos until the individual’s brain was ready and able to ‘experience’ them.

“Imagine, for a moment, the implications of the notion that quanta of conscious energy could exist independently in the Universe, able to enter from anywhere, at any time. Maybe they might even go into someone else’s brain that was not even present, where the memories were never intended to reside. And, if intended, by whom? Could an unconscious or ‘brain-dead’ patient exert an intention? All of this also was leading us into unfamiliar territory, where theoretical physics merged with the realms of consciousness. Were our notions of being alive and aware now intermingled with quantum mechanics and the stars themselves?

“No matter how we sought to explain it, this woman’s experience seemed to indicate that the mind, the essential repository of consciousness, could somehow be induced to separate from the very brain that created it. That it could live without neuronal support of any kind. Maybe her ‘deathlike state’ was a prerequisite condition.

“We began our inquiry with a vague, scientific curiosity. We felt confident we’d find a plausible explanation that would make this seeming mystery disappear. We began by eliminating the obvious explanations. For example, we needed to be absolutely sure that no one — including the patient herself — could have heard about the conversation in the operating room secondhand or third hand from someone else. As the more rational explanations faded away one by one, we began to wonder if maybe we had encountered something unique. Wondrous even.

“Were we holding solid, convincing evidence that consciousness could exist wholly separate from the brain? Perhaps even generated outside the central nervous system rather than being its by-product? None of us — scientists or physicians — could ever have imagined that one day we might be close to a vindication of individual awareness beyond the brain. In fact, this particular patient’s consciousness seemed to thrive despite substantial evidence that her brain was concurrently dead, incapable of generating a single electrical impulse.

“We met again with the patient. Her name was Sarah Gideon, a petite brunette with . . . two children, both boys, ages five and eight. With both kids now in school, Sarah had just started working as a receptionist for a leading architectural firm in Phoenix. Her favorite pastime was quilting — something she often did with her mother and sister. She was Catholic and had attended a religiously oriented school run by the Carmelite Sisters. She went to church services but not as much as I should, she added. But I do for, like, the holy days. Around Easter, Palm Sunday, Christmas, or Christmas Eve. She told me she prayed every night before going to bed but rarely read the Bible outside of Church.

Have you ever had an out-of-body experience before? I asked.

Is that what happened to me?

No, no. I don’t know. None of us really do, I stammered.

Is there something wrong with me? With my brain?

No. Not at all. It’s just when you came up to the ICU, you recalled so much of the conversation from the operating room. That’s, well, that’s never happened. It’s not supposed to under circumstances like the conditions of your surgery. Do you have any recollection of being in the operating room? Or looking down from above? Maybe of seeing yourself on the operating table? I asked.

No, she answered, almost brusquely. I’m sorry. I don’t remember anything. Just what I heard.

What do you imagine, I asked, say, about the woman you heard discussing her engagement? What do you think she might look like?

Sarah looked down at the nurse’s call light button in her hand. A look of sadness came across her face. I imagine, Sarah confessed, she’s blonde. About five foot six. Petite. Wearing a surgical mask and hat.

What color eyes?

Blue. She concentrated on the call light. Like she might have to call for help.

Does the hat on her head look like a large surgical hat? Pulled over her head like a shower cap?

Yes, I think so.

How do you know she’s blonde? Which she is, by the way.

She closed her eyes. Because I think there was a curl of blond hair showing. Sticking out. Like it had fallen out. Onto her forehead.

“As I quizzed her for further details, it was obvious she had an image of everyone in the operating room. There were so many little facets that she knew. For example, she was able to tell me exactly where the heart-lung bypass was located in the suite. Yet it had only been brought in after she was under general anesthesia for more than two hours. In other words, she could not have seen the machine before surgery began. Sarah also knew the pump technician had a beard. She told me the second scrub nurse was African-American and very tall. In fact, she was over six feet tall.

“What emerged from the conversations I had with Sarah over the next two days was that she was aware of the room, those in it, and their conversations. Her consciousness was present in the operating theater even though it was not supported in any way by her brain.

“So what do we, in the field of medicine, do with unsettling disturbances, the supernatural ripples? Ignore them? Ban their discussion? Or declare them simply to be a puzzling mixture of science and spirit? Can we not, as doctors, allow ourselves to entertain the possibility that the supernatural, the divine, and the magical may all underlie our physical world? Would we not be the richer for just challenging our imaginations? Don’t we owe it to those who come after us to at least raise the questions? Can we not admit we yearn to glimpse the mystery of the spirit?

“To satisfy myself, I took a copy of the EEG and showed it to two more colleagues in Neurology who routinely read EEG printouts for a living. I told each one of them that this particular EEG was taken from a patient whom I was asked to declare ‘brain-dead.’ In short, this was someone whose brain seemed to be completely destroyed, and I wanted to be sure there was no evidence of brain wave activity. Both of them assured me that the EEG was unequivocal: the patient’s brain was dead. A goner.” 

 

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

Despite flat line EEG woman remembers surgery

Near the end of his surgical career, neurosurgeon Allan J. Hamilton had an experience that convinced him near-death experiences were real and the patient’s conscious mind can exist when the patient is ‘brain dead.’ 

 

A thirty-four-year-old woman had suffered an aneurysm in her brain stem. “The swollen, ballooned portion of the aneurysm had actually engulfed and surrounded two important arteries that could simply not be injured or sacrificed. The aneurysm had swelled, like a rising loaf of bread, and would have to be teased off both blood vessels before it could be definitively repaired. But how to do this? Almost for certain, dissecting the aneurysm in this fashion would cause it to rupture — in which case she was dead for sure. But what if there was no blood to spill out when it did rupture? What if there was no flow at all?

 

“The surgical team decided to address the repair by cooling the patient’s body temperature down low enough to put her into a state of suspended animation. To make her core temperature cold enough to stop her heart so all blood flow would cease — maybe for as long as twenty minutes. To accomplish this goal, the young woman’s body would have to be slowly cooled on a heart-lung bypass machine, a device that oxygenates and then pumps the blood back into the patient’s body. Eventually, as the body’s temperature dropped below 90 degrees Fahrenheit, her heart would stop beating altogether. Once it stopped, the bypass machine would also be shut down. All blood flow to her body and brain would then cease entirely. 

 

“At that point, all her brain wave activity on an EEG monitor would fall to zero. Then the aneurysm could be approached without being obscured by bleeding. It would be clipped under deep hypothermia. No more than twenty minutes could be allowed to complete this task. By then, if all went well, Dr. Tom Reed would have the aneurysm successfully clipped so it would be completely excluded from the circulating blood flow. When the deadline was reached, the bypass machine would be turned back on. Her blood could then be slowly and progressively rewarmed. We hoped that as her body temperature returned closer to normal, the young woman’s heart would resume beating. 

 

“From a technical point of view, everything required for this daring surgical undertaking went well. There’s a video and audio track documenting the operation through the microscope. The audio portion is simply a recording of whatever ambient noise is picked up on a small boom microphone. As the operation began to wind down, several trivial conversations were picked up. One involved a conversation between Tom Reed and the perfusionist, the technician who overseas the heart-lung bypass pump.

 

We’re going to need to start the pump back up in a minute or two. Everything ready to go? Tom asked.

 

We’ve got to blow first, the perfusionist answered.

 

“To ‘blow’ is vernacular for firing up the pump and letting it circulate for a few seconds to ensure any bubbles in the system are cleared before reestablishing blood flow in the patient. While the pump was readied, there was a second important conversation picked up by the microphone. One of the nurses in the operating room, a certain Rita Hightower, announced she had just gotten engaged. A couple of the other nurses shrieked in excitement. Because Rita was scrubbed in, wearing surgical gloves, she wore no engagement ring.

 

“But she said, Oh, wait till you see it. It’s a one-and-a-half-carat square-cut yellow diamond. And he proposed to me right there at Morton’s. John got down on his knees and proposed. In fact, one of the waiters didn’t see him and tripped and fell into the wine case. Nothing broken, but it was funny.

 

“Someone in the background asked where the ring was from. Johnston Fellows. This was one of the most exclusive shops in the Phoenix area. John had it custom-made for me.

 

“The pump was cleared. Thar she blows, captain, came the answer.

 

Okay, then. Let’s pump this baby up, shall we?

 

“The bypass machine churned and red blood began to flow again through the patient’s tissue. The patient’s body was gently rewarmed. Her heart started beating again. A few minutes later a normal, healthy brain wave pattern reappeared on the EEG. The operation by Dr. Reed went flawlessly. But there was one matter than troubled everyone. That was why I felt compelled to go see things for myself.

 

“As the patient awoke in the intensive care unit, she emerged gradually from the grogginess left by all the anesthetic agents. After several hours, her head cleared. She sat up to greet Dr. Reed and his team of residents when they stopped in to see her in the evening.

How did everything go today? The patient asked.

Textbook-perfect, Tom said with a smile. He quickly examined her. All of it was recorded on the video camera in her room.

 

Well, I thought I remembered hearing something ‘blow’ during the case,” she said. “Did the aneurysm blow?

 

No. Tom must have gone sheet-white. I could not see, as his back was toward the stationary camera in the corner.

 

I thought someone said, ‘Thar she blows.’ Like in Moby-Dick.

 

Yes, well that . . . what you might have heard . . . was the tech telling me all the air bubbles were blown clear out of the lines. That’s all.

 

Oh. I’m glad. I was just remembering what a disaster you said it would be the aneurysm leaked or ruptured.

 

No. Everything went fine with the aneurysm. Tom leaned in closer to the young patient. Is there anything else you recall?

 

Yes, a ring. A one-and-a-half-carat yellow diamond from Johnston Fellows . . . and Morton’s restaurant where someone fell into a wine case.

 

“Tom just kept staring at her. You remember all that?

 

Yes. Why? What does it mean?

 

Well, those were just conversations we had in the operating room. Nothing special.

 

“Tom left the room and immediately paged the anesthesiologist. She remembers what happened in the OR!

 

No. No way! the anesthesiologist responded. No, it’s impossible.

 

Well, you come here and ask her what she remembers!

 

"The anesthesiologist came up a minute later and charged into the room and made her repeat word for word everything she could remember. He scratched his head and muttered, How the hell could this happen?

 

“What shook everyone up who watched the video between Tom and his young patient was we all knew that this woman’s brain had been dead — without discernible electrical activity whatsoever. This meant that no brain cells were active, working, or emitting electrical signals. Yet somehow the patient managed to recall the conversation in the operating room while her EEG was flat. In other words, while she was, for all intents and purposes, clinically dead — with no ability for her brain to function — she somehow managed to make or ‘encode’ specific memories of that conversation in the OR. And this was no hazy recollection. The patient was reproducing practically word for word what had been said. Right down to the jewelry store and the waiter stumbling. No, she clearly recalled what had been said. There was no doubt about that. 

 

“From everything we currently know about how the brain works, it would be utterly impossible, from a biochemical, metabolic, and physiologic point of view, for this woman’s brain to create a memory. To do so would require neurons to be activated and then capable of encoding incoming electrical signals. This electrical activity would cause them to convert the voltage signals across the cell’s surface membrane into specific changes in the transcription of messenger RNA — or mRNA — in each neuron. These changes in mRNA produce precise molecular changes, altering amino acid and peptide production within thousands of cells to make a lasting memory the brain can recall. In order to create a ‘Kodak moment of recollection,’ the brain must be very much alive and bristling with electrical activation, and intracellular metabolism must be ‘revved up’ to the maximum of each cell’s capacity.

 

“Yet we also had here unequivocal, scientific evidence that not only was her brain not working, it specifically demonstrated the absence of all cortical electrical activity when these conversations actually took place. So where could these brand-new memories have been created? Where had these memories gone? And where could such a place exist? Certainly, wherever it was, it would have been beyond the confines of her brain and mind, as we currently understand them. But wherever these memories existed while her brain ceased to function, how could they be accessed later from such a location? And how could such memories survive intact ‘out in the ether,’ a place accessible to her brain for later storage only after it revived and awoke? One thing was clear: Explanation or not, she had stored and recalled accurate memories of what had happened.”

 

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