We’re huge Psychology Today nerds, and when we came across an article about the strange things that sometimes happen as people are dying, we knew we needed to learn more. Steve Taylor, Ph.D., first recalls the night his mother passed:
“My mother passed away a few weeks ago, after a long illness. While sitting alone with her in the hospital shortly after her death, I had an unusual experience. I had expected to be upset, but felt strangely calm, even serene. As I sat there quietly, the room started to glow with white light, like moonlight. The light seemed to stream through, like water submerging the room, illuminating every object (including my mum’s body). The objects became more indistinct, losing their solidity as they merged into the light.
The room seemed strange and unfamiliar as if it was the first time I had seen it. I felt strange and unfamiliar too, not the person I normally feel myself to be. As I observed the light, there was a feeling of stillness and spaciousness inside me. I felt as if a portal had somehow opened and I had entered a different reality. Then a nurse knocked at the door and entered the room, and I quickly switched back to a more normal state of consciousness.
I don’t have any explanation for this experience. I’m not religious, and it didn’t feel like a hallucination. I wasn’t on medication, lacking sleep or in a state of intense emotion. Unlike most hallucinations, the experience carried a strong sense of reality, both at the time and now, when I recollect it.”
In part one of this series you can read about experiences people close to death often have, but it was really the second part, what people tend to experience as they witness the death of others, that grasped our attention.
Powerful Positivity
Sometimes as people are dying we have these hallucinations that are positive, and, dare we say, comforting. Some people may experience this at the time of death while others could experience this during a funeral. In the book Extraordinary Awakenings, we read the story of Suzy whose husband passed away in a car wreck. She describes how, while she was initially distraught at the funeral, “By the second song, everything had changed. It felt like some force had come through me to make me strong, and I felt euphoric. Something had shifted and I felt powerful and in control.”
Crisis Apparations
This is when someone close to you is close to dying and you have no idea. Or at least kind of have no idea. You may experience this by hearing the voice of someone around their time of death or you may have an extremely vivid dream about them. For example, in an example collected by the researcher Ken Vincent, a woman described how her “aunt came to her in a dream and told her goodbye and that she had died. She woke up screaming and her phone was ringing. It was her sister telling her that her aunt had just died.”
Post-Mortem
It’s not unusual to feel a connection to those that have passed on for months, even years after their time of death.
“In 1971, a Welsh doctor named William Dewi Rees was intrigued when elderly patients commented that they had sensed the presence of their deceased spouse. He made a systematic study of 293 widows and widowers in his group practice and found that almost half reported a “hallucination” (in his term) of their spouse. The majority felt that the visions were pleasant and helpful, and saw them as a normal part of the grieving process.”