Deathbed visions

“Oh Wow, Oh Wow, Oh Wow”.

Deathbed visions are usually moments of great joy. Exciting reunions. A sudden realisation that life does continue. Steve Jobs co-founder and former CEO of Apple computers (the iPhone, iPad etc) clearly felt this when saying his last words: “Oh Wow, Oh Wow, Oh Wow”.

Studies suggest that 70% of them involve seeing deceased relatives who have come to collect them.

Deathbed visions usually happen in the last 24 hours of life and many nurses recognise them as a sign of closeness to death.

They are also really common. A study conducted between 1959 and 1973 of tens of thousands of individuals by Karlis Osis and Erlendur Haraldsson  found that 50% of them had experienced deathbed visions. In 2010 April Mazzarino-Willett through her research estimated that 50%-60% of us are likely to experience them in some form. Different century, different researchers, similar results.

Just think about that for a moment. 50% of us.  That's half of us.  Why are they so rarely talked about?

So deathbed visions happen. That’s undeniable. So the question then is not “Do they happen” but “Are they real?

In several reported cases, the death of a sibling has been withheld from the dying patient for fear of unnecessarily distressing them, yet they communicate with the sibling in their deathbed vision. They have found out about the death of the sibling through their deathbed vision. That's pretty convincing evidence of the communication being real. There was one sad case where the parents found out about the death of their daughter in a different country through the near death experience of their son. Similar thing really.

Peter Fenwick, a neuropsychologist and researcher,  also describes various cases where there has been negotiation to extend life a short while to enable a relative time to get to the hospital to say goodbye. So be aware this is a possibility should you need it!.