The Osiris/REx Bennu Mission Disappoints, As I Predicted

 In October 2020 on this blog I published a post entitled "NASA's Asteroid-Stuff Retrieval Mission: The Spilling Boondoggle." Below are some of the things I said in that post:

"The OSIRIS-REx mission is a billion-dollar NASA mission designed to retrieve some matter from an asteroid, and return it to Earth.  It is rather hard for me to imagine a less worthy way to spend a billion dollars. Asteroids are lifeless dry rocks in space that contain nothing very interesting.  We already have a pretty good idea of what makes up an asteroid. Many meteorites have hit the Earth, and scientists who have analyzed their composition have a basis for inferring the element composition of asteroids.  A science site tells us that most meteorites 'are fragments of asteroids.'

Nobody is interested in the exact composition of asteroids other than a very tiny tribe of scientists such as planetary geologists.  If we get back a little asteroid material from the mission, the results will be a complete yawn to 99.9% of the people who read the results in their science news feeds.  It will be some very boring result such as '80% iron and 20% a combination of nickel, iridium, palladium, and  magnesium.' "

By now the OSIRIS-REx mission has completed. The automated spacecraft gathered a sample of dirt from the asteroid Bennu, and returned the sample to Earth in September 2023.  There was then an almost comical glitch in which scientists were long unable to open the top of the sample container.  Finally in January 2024 a news story reported that success had finally occurred, telling us this:

NASA FINALLY RIPS LID OFF STUBBORN ASTEROID SAMPLE

IT'S TAKEN THEM OVER THREE MONTHS

We read this truly ridiculous account in the January 2024 news story:

"In an October update, NASA' noted that 'two of the 35 fasteners on the TAGSAM head could not be removed.' Now, just over 3.5 months later, the main container is finally open. 'Finally having the TAGSAM head open and full access to the returned Bennu samples is a monumental achievement that reflects the unwavering dedication and ingenuity of our team,' said principal investigator Dante Lauretta in a statement."

Can we imagine a more laughable case of scientist boasting? Scientists took three months to get some screws off of a container (something the average Joe could do in maybe ten minutes), and then a scientist is boasting that this is a "monumental achievement."  What can we expect next -- that the next time someone at NASA changes a light bulb, this will be hailed in a NASA press release as an "epic history-making  accomplishment"? 

By now scientists have had many months to analyze the contents of the sample returned from the asteroid Bennu.  The first long publicly accessible analysis of the sample is contained in the 73-page paper "Asteroid (101955) Bennu in the Laboratory: Properties of the Sample Collected by OSIRIS-REx" which you can read using the link here.  Here is the "dull as dishwater" abstract of the paper's contents:

"On 24 September 2023, NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission dropped a capsule to Earth containing ~120 g of pristine carbonaceous regolith from Bennu. We describe the delivery and initial allocation of this asteroid sample and introduce its bulk physical, chemical, and mineralogical properties from early analyses. The regolith is very dark overall, with higher reflectance inclusions and particles interspersed. Particle sizes range from sub-micron dust to a stone ~3.5 cm long. Millimeter-scale and larger stones typically have hummocky or angular morphologies. A subset of the stones appears mottled by brighter material that occurs as veins and crusts. Hummocky stones have the lowest densities and mottled stones have the highest. Remote sensing of Bennu’s surface detected hydrated phyllosilicates, magnetite, organic compounds, carbonates, and scarce anhydrous silicates, all of which the sample confirms. We also find sulfides, presolar grains, and, less expectedly, Na-rich phosphates, as well as other trace phases. The sample’s composition and mineralogy indicate substantial aqueous alteration and resemble those of Ryugu and the most chemically primitive, low-petrologic-type carbonaceous chondrites. Nevertheless, we find distinct hydrogen, nitrogen, and oxygen isotopic compositions, and some of the material we analyzed is enriched in fluid-mobile elements. Our findings underscore the value of sample return — especially for low-density material that may not readily survive atmospheric entry — and lay the groundwork for more comprehensive analyses."

The quote above ends with a false statement. Far from underscoring the value of sample return, the reported results suggest that retrieving tiny samples from asteroids is a waste of money. Nothing of any biological interest is reported. Notably, the paper fails to make any mention of any amino acids detected.  Amino acids are the simplest chemical components of living things. 

By May 2024 scientists had already had months to look at the soil sample from Bennu, and had found no good evidence of anything of biological interest. But in that month the Smithsonian Institute had a speaker announcement making the bogus claim that "analysis of the sample promises to provide insights into the formation of the Earth as a habitable world and the origin of life." This was one of very many similar statements pushing groundless hype about this mission. 

One preprint paper co-authored by D. Glavin claims to have found amino acids in a Bennu sample at the extremely low trace amount of "70 nmol/g" which is only 70 nanomoles per gram.  Ordinary soil has about .1 moles per gram, and 70 nanomoles is only .00000007 moles per gram.  Probably almost all of the reported amount is from earthly contamination.  We cannot have any confidence that such a finding tells us anything about whether multiple types of protein-related amino acids exist in trace amounts on asteroids.   

Scientists use methods to prevent contamination when analyzing samples from space, but there is no reason to believe that such efforts are entirely effective.  There are two potential sources of contamination. A spacecraft may contain trace amounts of amino acids from Earth when it lands on another planet or asteroid.  Once  a sample is returned to Earth, there are endless possibilities for contamination, because amino acids are everywhere on Earth. 

The paper here ("OSIRIS-REx Contamination Control Strategy and Implementation") tells us about methods to prevent microbes and amino acids from existing on the Osiris/REx spacecraft that gathered the sample from the asteroid Bennu. It claims, "To return a pristine sample, the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft sampling hardware was maintained at level 100 A/2 and <180 ng/cm² of amino acids and hydrazine on the sampler head through precision cleaning, control of materials, and vigilance."  This is a mention of some standard of cleanliness that was a target level, and we have no guarantee that such a target level of cleanliness was actually obtained. Moreover, the standard of cleanliness mentioned is less than 180 nanograms per square centimeter.  Under such a standard, we might expect that you would get tiniest trace amounts results as reported by Glavin  (merely 70 nanomoles per gram) from trace amounts from Earth that were left on the spacecraft when it reached the asteroid Bennu.

Then there is another possibility for contamination: contamination during the analysis of a soil sample on Earth. Such contamination is all but impossible to prevent, giving that amino acids and microbes are floating around everywhere on Earth.  Sterilization can be used to kill microbes, but sterilization does not remove amino acids. 

The paper above states this:

"Some level of contamination and alteration of the sample is probable. Decisions and actions which impact sample cleanliness can occur at any time in the lifecycle of spacecraft fabrication, operations, and sample curation."

An article at the site Salon tells us that when a soil sample was analyzed from the asteroid Ryugu, under conditions supposed to prevent contamination, the sample was contaminated not merely by amino acids but by microbes. We are referred to a paper entitled "Rapid colonization of a space-returned Ryugu sample by terrestrial microorganisms." We read this:

"The population statistics indicate an extant microbial community originating through terrestrial contamination. The discovery emphasizes that terrestrial biota can rapidly colonize extraterrestrial specimens even given contamination control precautions."

If entire microbes (millions of times bigger than amino acids) can get through the contamination measures of scientists analyzing samples from asteroids, then can we have any confidence that most of the amino acids detected at the tiniest trace amounts of only 70 nanomoles per gram actually came from an asteroid rather than from terrestrial contamination? No, we cannot. 

There is a technique used to guess whether amino acids in a meteorite or asteroid sample arose from earthly contamination. The technique is to try to check for whether the amino acids are racemic. Some amino acids are racemic if they have an equal number of left-handed and right-hand versions of the amino acids. One of very many accidentally unachievable features of earthly life is what is called homochirality: that in living organisms all amino acids are left-handed, contrary to what we would expect by chance. Producing amino acids in a laboratory produces equal amounts of left-handed and right-handed amino acids. By checking whether amino acids in a meteorite or asteroid sample are racemic, you can get a good hint as to whether they arose from earthy contamination (the amino acids in earthly proteins are all non-racemic).  

The paper by Glavin et. al. merely claims that one of the nine protein-related amino acids it detected was racemic: the amino acid alanine. It makes no such claim about the other protein-related amino acids it found. So we have no reason to think that any of the protein-related amino acids other than alanine came from the asteroid Bennu itself, and we are left with no abundance estimate for how much alanine was found.  We can presume that the abundance was very much less than the reported very tiny, miniscule total of  70 nanomoles per gram, leaving you with a negligible abundance. Alanine is not one of the more complex amino acids used by proteins. 

The bottom line is that no reliable results of any great biological interest have come from the Osiris/REx Bennu mission. The mission was as bad a boondoggle as I said it was in my 2020 post. 

Handling Biological Complexity, the Mainstream Gives Us Flagrant Falsehoods and Fairy Tales

Quanta Magazine is a widely-read online magazine with slick graphics. On topics of science the magazine again and again is guilty of the most glaring failures. Quanta Magazine often assigns its online articles about great biology mysteries (involving riddles a thousand miles over the heads of PhDs) to writers who lack even a bachelor's degree in biology. Often it will assign such articles to be written by people identified as "writing interns."  The articles at Quanta Magazine often contain misleading prose, groundless boasts or the most glaring falsehoods. I discuss some examples of such poor journalism in my posts here and here and here.

Let us look at a fairly recent example of very misleading journalism at Quanta Magazine. It is an article with the enormously misleading title "Meet the Eukaryote, the First Cell to Get Organized." We are deceived very badly by this title.  Eukaryote cells are the type of cells found in human bodies. Eukaryote cells are vastly more organized than a much simpler type of cell called prokaryotic cells. But prokaryotic cells are also enormously organized.  Prokaryotic cells simpler than eukaryotic cells are fantastically organized cells, requiring more than 100,000 base pairs very specially arranged in a vastly improbable way to achieve functional performance.

The paper "Fundamental behaviors emerge from simulations of a living minimal cell"  describes "a genetically minimal bacterial cell, consisting of only ... 493 genes on a single 543-kbp circular chromosome with 452 genes coding for proteins (Breuer et al., 2019 ), some of which are subunits of multi-domain complexes." Each of those genes is a complex invention with hundreds of fine-tuned parts that almost all have to be just right. The total number of amino acids that have to be arranged just right in the proteins partially specified by these genes is roughly 150,000. Far from supporting any "life is simple, we can make it from scratch" narrative, such a paper supports the idea that even the simplest self-reproducing cell has a degree of organization and functional complexity greater than the organization and functional complexity of an 80-page technical manual. And even all that information does not give you a self-reproducing cell; it's only a prerequisite for such a cell. 

The claim that eukaryote cells were "the first cell to get organized" is a glaring falsehood.  The predecessors of eukaryote cells (prokaryote cells) were themselves enormously organized.  The claim that the earliest cells were simple is a lie told by materialists to help bolster their claims of accidental biological origins.  If you are trying to sell the unbelievable idea that life accidentally originated, then the lie that the earliest cells were simple is one of the lies that you need to tell.  And materialists keep telling that lie. We may excuse the writing intern who is the author of this article for the article's glaringly false headline, because writing interns should not be held to very high standards.  But we should not excuse the editors of Quanta Magazine, who have let an article with a glaringly false headline be published in their publication. 

A guy lying (in the 2nd sentence) about the earliest cells

In the rest of the article, we get an attempt to sell us the fairy tale story of endosymbiosis, the idea that we got enormously complex eukaryotic cells by some "lucky swallowing." We read this:  "How this all happened isn’t entirely clear, but today, most experts agree that 2 billion or 3 billion years ago, an archaean cell engulfed a bacterial cell, which somehow escaped digestion and adapted to life inside its host." How did eukaryotic cells originate? Our professors have now "got the memo" that they are supposed to be telling a particular answer, one that is extremely unbelievable. They now maintain that the first eukaryotic cell originated because of an incredibly improbable “combination” accident. The idea is that a bunch of prokaryotic cells somehow ganged up to become a eukaryotic cell – kind of like what would happen if five people collided into each other to somehow originate a new species of three-headed creatures which each had ten legs and ten arms.

Inside a eukaryotic cell are many specialized units called organelles. The organelles include things like ribosomes, lysosomes, mitochondria, and endoplasmic reticulum. Our professors attempt to convince us that these mitochondria are ancestors of prokaryotic cells that somehow got incorporated into eukaryotic cells.

There are several reasons for thinking that such a thing is far too improbable to have ever happened. Among these are the following:

1. No one has ever observed any type of event like the supposed event in which prokaryotic cells combined to become a eukaryotic cell. Microbiologists have done innumerable experiments with prokaryotic cells, and have never observed any combination of prokaryotic cells become anything like a eukaryotic cell.
2. A prokaryotic cell injected with the DNA of a eukaryotic cell will not start producing eukaryotic cells as its offspring.
3. Nowhere in human DNA does it specify the overall shape of a human body, the structure of a human organ system, the structure of a particular human organ, the structure of a tissue, the structure of a cell, or even the structure of any organelle of a cell. Although genotypes influence phenotypes, genotypes do not specify phenotypes. Genotypes merely list chemicals used by an organism.  DNA does not specify the physical structure of an organism. We can therefore imagine no conceivable event by which some lucky combination of prokaryotic DNA could result in a cell that produced eukaryotic offspring, because the structure of a eukaryotic cell is not even specified in DNA.

  In the book Aliens, biologist Matthew Cobb gives a description of current thinking on this topic, emphasizing the improbability of it:

"What happened on Earth – known as eukaryogenesis – was not the product of random mutation and the subsequent sifting of acquired characters that have differential fitness (the essence of natural selection). Instead there appears to have been a single event of mind-boggling improbability, for it involved two life forms interacting in a most novel way....Prior to that moment, all life had consisted of small microbes with no cell nucleus and no mitochondria. Everything changed when one unicellular life form, known as an archaebacterium, ended up inside another, called a eubacterium."

On another page Cobb says this:

"We could in principle calculate the probability of the appearance of eukaryotes, but we would soon run out of zeros...That weird hybrid was our ancestor, and its existence – and therefore ours – was incredibly improbable. As far as we are aware, no such event happened before or since."

Obviously we have here a fairy tale, an "old wives' tale."  Scientists have no credible tale to tell of how eukaryotic cells originated, just as they have no credible tale to tell of how prokaryotic cells originated. Whenever they refer to eukaryotic cells arising by fantastically improbable combination accidents, biologists are merely engaging in the most farfetched hand-waving. Because neither prokaryotic cells nor eukaryotic cells specify in their DNA how to make either a eukaryotic cell nor any of its organelle components, there is no conceivable lucky combination accident of prokaryotic cells that would result in eukaryotic cells with the ability to reproduce to make other eukaryotic cells. 

Only at the end of the Quanta Magazine story (with a deceptive title and the most unbelievable fairy tale as its content) do we get some candid truth telling.  At the end the evolutionary biologist Toni Gabaldon says, "The most fascinating thing about eukaryotes is that we still don’t understand how they came about.”  Correct -- so why is it that biologists are claiming to understand the origin of species such as ours? If you don't understand how the cells in human bodies originated, then you don't understand how the human species originated. 

What happens is that biologists are always making these groundless boasts about understanding great mysteries they do not understand. But every now and then they make confessions that contradict such boasts, and reveal how little they know. You can read many hundreds of such confessions in my very long post "Candid Confessions of the Scientists."  

The same Quanta Magazine had a recent story with the groundless headline "The Cosmos Teems With Complex Organic Molecules," with the false subtitle of "Wherever astronomers look, they see life’s raw materials."  The article gives the asteroid Ryugu as an example of such claimed abundance. The truth is that amino acids (the smallest components of living things) have only been detected in space in the tiniest trace amounts.  The only biologically relevant amino acid reportedly found in Ryugu were three of the simplest amino acids (glycine, alanine and valine), which were reportedly found at a level of only 1 part per billion; and whenever levels that small are reported, the reported detection is questionable. Senselessly the Quanta article describes molecules containing only 20 atoms as "very complex." That isn't a complex molecule from the perspective of biology.  An average-sized protein molecule has about 8,000 atoms in it.  No protein molecule has ever been found in space outside of manned spacecraft or space stations. 

Those wishing to push unbelievable ideas of accidental biological origins engage in different types of misspeaking.  Most commonly they engage in a kind of misspeaking in which great marvels of vast organization are described as if they are things not complex. So, for example,  they may falsely describe a human body (something with sky-high levels of organization) as a mere "bundle of atoms." But when it comes time to sell the groundless notion that life can accidentally originate, then their language is entirely different. Suddenly they are trying to persuade us that molecules of merely 20 atoms are "very complex."  

The Quanta Magazine article "Meet the Eukaryote, the First Cell to Get Organized" was enormously misleading, but its brazen falsehoods and absurdity is not quite as great as the brazen falsehoods and absurdity in a recent article on the site The Conversation, another materialist propaganda site often littered with the type of false and nonsensical statements so often found in Quanta Magazine. 

The writer of the article is a professor of astronomy. Trying to sell Darwinism, the astronomy professor teaches the glaring falsehood that Darwinists keep  telling again and again, the claim that DNA is a specification for building an organism.  He states this: "In biology, information refers to the instructions stored in the sequence of nucleotides on a DNA molecule, which collectively make up an organism’s genome and dictate what the organism looks like and how it functions." No, DNA does not dictate what an organism looks like and how it functions.  DNA contains no anatomy information. DNA does not specify the structure or function of any organ system;  DNA does not specify the structure or function of any organ; DNA does not specify the structure or function of any cell; DNA does not specify the structure or function of any of the organelles that are the building components of cells. See my post here for a long list of quotations by scientists and doctors saying that DNA is no such thing as a specification for building an organism. 

The levels of hierarchical organization in the human body are shown in the diagram below, which correctly tells us that none of the seven highest levels of organization are specified by DNA or its genes. 

I explain in other posts (such as here) why if there were to exist a blueprint in DNA for making a human body or any of its organs or cells -- something never found -- that would not at all explain how human bodies or their organs or their cells get built, for reasons such as the fact that such building instructions would be so vastly complex that nothing inside a human womb would be capable of understanding them and acting on them to produce the state of vast hierarchical organization that is a human body. 

After inexcusably telling us the flagrant falsehood that DNA dictates "what the organism looks like and how it functions," the astronomy professor then makes the supremely ludicrous statement  that "it’s wrong to conclude that animals are more complex than microbes." This is very obviously the worst kind of nonsense. Animals such as mammals are very obviously gigantically more complex than microbes. 

Wise worldviews tend to make the people who argue for them sound smart. But when people try to sell foolish or fallacious worldviews they can end up making very stupid-sounding statements, even if they have high IQs. And when the proponents of an ideology again and again make many different types of deceptive statements in their zeal to sell that ideology, you have a very clear sign of people marching in the wrong direction. 

Humans have minds, mental capabilities and mental experiences of gigantic depth and complexity, and bodies more organized and functionally impressive than anything humans manufacture. In a previous post I stated what I called the first rule of accidental construction:

The first rule of accidental construction: the credibility of any claim that an impressively organized final result was accidentally achieved is inversely proportional to the number of parts that had to be well-arranged to achieve such a result, and the amount of organization needed to achieve such a result.

I can state a similar rule relating to minds:

The first rule of neural explanation: the credibility of any claim that human minds are produced by brains (or are the same thing as brain states) is inversely proportional to the diversity and depth of human mental experiences, the number of mental powers that humans have, and the speed, skill and depth of such powers. 

It is because of such rules that Darwinists tend so strongly to misrepresent the vast physical complexity of humans and other living things and misrepresent the vast mental complexity of human minds, telling us the most absurd nonsense and falsehoods such as the claim quoted above that an animal is not more complex than a microbe, or other falsehoods as glaring and other word tricks as bad, such as the deception of trying to describe a human as mere "consciousness." What is going on is that such people are telling the falsehoods they need to tell and performing the deceptive tricks they need to perform in order to sell us on a theory of accidental construction that has a credibility inversely proportional to the degree of organization and complexity in living organisms and human beings, and to sell us a "brains make minds" theory that has a credibility inversely proportional to the skill, speed, depth and diversity of human mental powers and human mental experiences. The more we can be tricked and deceived into thinking that living organisms and humans are a million times simpler than they are, the more likely such ideology pitchmen will be to succeed. 

When Apparitions Seemed to Act With Persistence (Part 3)

 In Part 1 and Part 2 of this series, I examined reports of apparitions that seemed to act in a persistent manner. Below is another report of a persistent ghost:

You can read the account below:

https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn85025007/1887-03-24/ed-1/seq-1/

The account below may be a one-of-a-kind report. We read of a ghost haunting a TV set in a very persistent manner:

The account can be read here:

https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83045462/1954-09-14/ed-1/seq-34/

We have below a report of what sounds like spectral persistence, with a financial bonanza resulting:

You can read the account here:

https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn82016014/1902-10-10/ed-1/seq-7/

We have below an account of a persistent-seeming ghost, followed by what sounds like a report of near-death experiences, given in 1972, before that term became well-known. 

You can read the account below:

https://digitalcollections.lib.umanitoba.ca/islandora/object/uofm%3A2960475?solr%5Bquery

You can read below an account of least a little apparition persistence:

You can read the story here:

https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn86069117/1898-08-24/ed-1/seq-2/

We have below a year 1900 account of a ghost that seemed to act with persistence:

You can read the account at the link below:

https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn92053934/1900-08-06/ed-1/seq-4/

The account below tells us of witnesses claiming to see a ghost and also a good deal of what sounds like poltergeist activity:

You can read the full story here:

https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn85066387/1897-08-17/ed-1/seq-12/

Below is an 1804 news account of a very persistent apparition. Click on the image to read it better.

 You can read the account below.

https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn87075048/1894-05-19/ed-1/seq-8/

In the newspaper account below with a title of "Two Lively Ghosts," we read of some persistent apparitions. The account calls one of the apparitions "very persistent."

https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn84024546/1889-08-17/ed-1/seq-12/

In the newspaper account below, we seem to read of some persistent apparitions. We have a named witness, Myra Berger, who tells of repeated sightings of the same apparition, one that is reportedly seen by multiple witnesses. 

You can read the account here:

https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83030272/1913-08-31/ed-1/seq-46/

Deathbed Phenomena May Include Spooky Lights or Spooky Mists (Part 2)

 It is well-known that the dying often report apparitions of deceased relatives. Such events are generally referred to as deathbed visions, and are discussed in my series of posts here. What is less well-known is that healthy observers at a deathbed may report seeing spooky phenomena such as a strange light or the room having a strange glow or a strange mist or a spooky cloud being seen. The healthy deathbed observer may even report seeing an apparition at the time of death. My previous post discussed some cases of such phenomena. Let us now look at some more. 

The following quotation is from page 134 of the book The Sacred Book of Death, which you can read here. 

"Another Hindu girl, watching with her mother by the deathbed of a dying and dearly beloved sister, says, when the end came, she distinctly saw a delicate mist rising from the dead body. When they asked the priest about it he said: 'You saw life departing visibly from the physical form.' This was at Benares, India. How many times have persons been present at the beside of a dying friend. The eyes closed, the last breath ceased and they thought their friend was dead. Suddenly the eyes opened; light came back to them; then a look of surprise, admiration, inexpressible; then it passed away. This phenomenon, or the passing of soul, can be witnessed at the deathbed by any one who can properly induce the condition which is commonly called clairvoyance, or, in other words, by the withdrawal of all the attention from other objects and affairs and the concentration of thought and sympathy, as well as sight, on your dying loved ones and friends. You can then clearly see the separation of the spiritual body from the dying physical form, as clairvoyance is finer and farther reaching than the sight of your dull physical eyes."

The book From Matter to Spirit (which you can read here) was published in 1863 under a pen name of C.D., with a long preface written by a person using a pen name of A.B.  The author was Sophia Elizabeth De Morgan, the wife of the leading mathematician Augustus De Morgan, who was the A.B. who wrote the long preface of the book (a preface considered a classic of evidential analysis when dealing with the mysterious or unexplained).  On page 128 the author quotes this account from a healthy witness who seemed to see an apparition at the time of a child's death:

"When I was sixteen years old, I was nursing a child of seven who had been ill since his birth with disease of the head. He had been for some days expected to die, but was quite sensible. About noon I left him in a little back parlour on the ground floor. His mother and a friend were with him. I was returning from the kitchen to the child, and had just reached the top of the staircase, when I saw, coming from the door of the room, the form of a little child. It did not step on the ground, but immediately went up over the staircase and disappeared from me. The bed on which the sick child had been lying was close to the door of the room, and that door was not more than about a foot from the top of the staircase which I came up. As I entered the room, his mother said, ' He is just gone.' The figure that I saw was a little child, fair and fresh-looking, and perfectly healthy. It looked fatter and younger than the little sick boy, and had a very animated, happy expression. It was like a living child, only so light."

On page 128 we have this account by the author (Sophia Elizabeth De Morgan):

"I was myself once standing with a person who had sometimes the gift of spiritual vision beside a bed on which lay one whose life was departing. The breathing was ceasing slowly when I noticed a thin white mist which seemed to rise two or three inches above the bed. My companion appeared also to be looking at something. Her eyes, which always had a strange glitter when they encountered any object unseen by others, were raised gradually from the recumbent form to the top of the bed ; then, returning, seemed to rest half-way between, gazing, as far as I could see, on vacancy. This earnest gaze lasted more than a minute. I looked at her enquiringly, but she did not speak. She told me a few minutes after what she had seen, thus : ' I was looking at a mist which seemed to be rising from the bed, and which I have noticed some time, when my attention was drawn upwards, and I saw a pillar of light, between sunshine and moonlight, rising three or four feet. Within this was a still brighter light, becoming more brilliant at the centre ; and from the centre to the circumference, from within outwards, it was all working together with intense rapidity. I saw it once again, but slightly afterwards, just as the last breath was drawn. It seemed then to pass off by the top of the bed.' The seer has been a trusted friend of my own for many years ; her character for truthfulness is quite above suspicion."

On the next page we have these accounts:

"One night, or rather towards morning, the poor girl awoke suddenly and saw a strong light rising to some height above the sick woman, from whom it seemed to emanate. It passed away in an upward direction, and disappeared. The girl in great terror called out to her mother, but received no answer. She then ran to a friend (a confidential servant of my informant), and told her what she had seen. Her friend returned to the cottage, where they found the mother quite dead.  The late Miss W , well known at one time in the mesmerising world, told me that she once nursed an uncle through his last illness. As he died, a very small bright cloud, appearing to come from the nostrils, passed away, and rising while she watched it, disappeared by the ceiling."

The account below appears on page 21 of an edition of the Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research, the January 1921 edition you can read here, 

"A case reported by M. Belbeder of the 6th Colonial regiment

is similar. Having a few day’s holiday he spent them in the

country at the house of one of his friends, near Riberac (Dordogne). He had been in bed for about half an hour, and had just read his paper, and put out his candle, when, at the corner of the mantelpiece which was opposite the bed, he saw a white and transparent mist gradually detach itself, advance toward the bed and bend over him. Belbeder states that he clearly heard it say: 'Always be a friend to my son.’ The misty form then retired slowly as it came. ' I clearly recognized' adds the soldier, 'the mother of one of my best friends, whom I had left in the best of health. When I returned home, I was very surprised to learn that she had died just on the day when I saw the apparition, an hour or two before it approached my bed. I did not go to sleep until after I saw this.' "

On page 154 of the document here, we read this: "Others have described, in similar terms, how they saw a faint violet mist rise from the dying body, gradually condensing into a figure which was the counterpart of the expiring person, and attached to that person by a glistening thread."

 Below is an excerpt from pages 184 to 185 of The Problems of Psychical Research by Hereward Carrington.

"Dr. Baraduc had prepared a camera beside the bed of his wife, and, at the moment of her death, photographed the body, and shortly after developed the plate. Upon it were found three luminous globes resting a few inches above the body. These gradually condensed and became more brilliant. Streaks of light, like fine threads, were also seen darting hither and thither. A quarter of an hour after the death of his wife, Dr. Baraduc took another photograph. Fluidic cords were seen to have developed, partly encircling these globes of light. At three o’clock in the afternoon, or an hour after her death, another photograph was taken. It will be seen from this photograph that the three globes of light have condensed and coalesced into one, obscuring the head of Madame Baraduc, and developing towards the right. Cords were formed in the shape of a figure eight, closed at the top, and opened at the point nearest the body. Thus, as the globe develops in one direction, the cords seem to become more tense, and pull in the opposite direction. The separation becomes more and more complete, until finally, three and a half hours after death, a well-formed globe rested above the body, apparently held together by the encircling, luminous cords, which seemed also to guide and control it. At this moment, the globe becomes separated from the body, and, guided by the cords, floats into Dr. Baraduc’s bedroom. He speaks to the globe intensely; the globe thereupon approaches him, and he feels an icy cold breeze, which seems to surround and issue from the ball of light. It then floats away and disappears.

Frequently, within the next few days after these experiments, Dr. Baraduc saw similar globes in various parts of the house. By means of automatic writing, obtained through the hand of a non-professional psychic, he succeeded at last in establishing communication with this luminous ball, and was informed that it was the encasement of Madame Baraduc’s soul, which was still active and alive within it!" 

The photos referred to can be seen below and on the page here. 

On the 68th page of the document here, showing page 182 on the printed page, we have an account from the March 25, 1922 edition of the publication Light.  The account is pretty good from an evidence standpoint. It is an account of what was seen two months earlier. The author (Dorothy Monk) is named, and she tells us that there were eight witnesses of one of the reported anomalies (a spooky mist at a deathbed).  We read this account by the author of seeing her mother's death. 

"About seven o’clock that evening mother’s lips parted and from that time we gradually saw a thick white mist collect above her head and spread across the head of the bed. It came from the top of her head, but collected more thickly to the opposite side of the bed to which she was lying. It hung like a cloud of white steam, sometimes so thick we could scarcely see the bed rails, but continually it was varying although it moved so slowly as to be scarcely perceptible. I and my five sisters were still with her all saw it distinctly, also my brother and one brother-in-law. The blue lights continued about the room, also tiny flashes of yellow, like sparks, appeared sometimes. All this time mother’s lower jaw gradually fell a little. For some hours we saw little difference except that a halo of pale yellow light rays came round her head; there were about seven in number; they varied in length from twelve to twenty inches at different times. By midnight every-thing had cleared off, but she did not die until 7.17 on the morning of January 2nd."

On page 42 of Sylvan Muldoon's The Case for Astral Projection, he states this:

"In this connection I might mention at this juncture that only a few weeks ago an orthodox Methodist minister of irreproachable character, who has been well known in my neighborhood for years, confided in me that while at the bedside of a dying friend, early this spring, he saw a cloudlike light rise up out of the body of his friend just as the latter expired. The light, he stated, floated up into the air and disappeared."

On pages 85-87 of the document here, a Mrs. E. reports seeing a blue luminous mist in her room, one that scares her.  She reports then seeing the eyes and brow of Mr. Rose. She then states this:

"That day Mr. Rose came to see me, and before telling him anything of my experience, I asked him what he had been doing the night before. His answer was, 'I went to my room early and concentrated all my thoughts in trying to send my astral body here.' "

The account is corroborated on pages 87-88 of the document, in which Fred W. Rose states that on the corresponding night he had attempted to project his soul or spirit to Mrs. E.  He states, "Having read of cases of spirit projection, I resolved, without mentioning the fact to any one, to endeavour to send my astral body to Mrs. E."  The reported event is not an example of a deathbed phenomenon, but it tends to partially corroborate accounts of spooky mists observed at a deathbed, under the hypothesis that at either death or deliberate "astral projection" there may occur an event in which a soul, spirit or "astral body" leaves the physical body, and is detected as a mist. 

Postscript: On page 82 of his book Man Is a Spirit, J. Arthur Hill quotes an unnamed witness (supposedly a newspaper editor) who claims to have seen the spirit of his wife when she died at her deathbed. The witness states this:

"I was at her bedside when she passed away. I was bending over her at the time. Almost instantly, before I had hardly become erect, I felt a most peculiar sensation. It is impossible to describe the sensation. It seemed as if some powerful penetrating rays were passing, with a rapid but steady movement not like a shock or flash, through my head and body, as far down as the lower part of the chest. There was no sensation of pain, heat, or cold.

As this feeling came upon me I seemed to see in a mist like a white fog shutting out the things I would naturally see. This fog rolled away on all sides from the figure and face of what I saw. It was my wife, or at least her spirit. I saw the head, face, and partway down the figure....It was different light from ordinary daylight. It was much like seeing a person in an exceedingly bright, powerful white light made by some burning gas....The spirit looked younger by twenty years. Instead of the poor, frail, emaciated face, there was the face of one in health, in the prime of life, and I distinctly saw a rosy colour in the cheeks. The whole form and face was shining, not with the steady light of a lamp, but with streams of light that seemed to radiate from the spirit, blurring the outlines slightly and then restoring them to perfect clearness and shape. I once looked into a tube in which there was some radium — so I was told — and could see what I called throbs of light in the tube. Well, as I thought afterwards about seeing the spirit, it was as if I had seen it by throbs of light which made it seem as if the light streamed in every direction from the face and figure."

Deathbed Phenomena May Include Spooky Lights or Spooky Mists (Part 1)

 It is well-known that the dying often report apparitions of deceased relatives. Such events are generally referred to as deathbed visions, and are discussed in my series of posts here. What is less well-known is that healthy observers at a deathbed may report seeing spooky phenomena such as a strange light or the room having a strange glow or a strange mist or a spooky cloud being seen. Let me discuss some cases of such phenomena. 

In Robert Crookall's book Out of the Body Experiences, we have on page 35 this very interesting passage:

"Thus, Dr. R. B. Hout saw 'a fog' leave a dying body (and gradually become its 'double'). E. W. Oaten saw 'a smokelike vapor' (which gradually became 'an exact duplicate' of the person who had just died). Florence Marryat saw 'a cloud of smoke' (which 'gradually acquired the shape of the girl’s body'). J. C. Street observed 'a column of vapor' (which assumed the form of the man under observation). Major W. T. Pole reported 'a shadowy form” (which became 'an exact counterpart of the body on the bed'). Mr. 'G' described 'clouds' (which assumed the form of the body they had left). Maurice and Irene Elliott spoke of 'a white hazy mist' (which also took the shape of the body it had left)."

On page 105 we have a fuller discussion in the same vein:

"We have already referred to the 'mist' observed to rise from dying bodies...Mrs. Annie Brittain saw that 'the mist' which left the body of a woman passed through a second stage and became its counterpart. Lily J. Price, J. P., of Australia, wrote and told me how, when present at the 'passing' of a child, she saw 'a mist' leave the head (first stage). She continued, 'The mist gradually took the shape of the child’s form [second stage].' Mrs. G. Vivian, B.A.,  saw 'a mist' leave the body of her dying mother. 'It gradually took shape and resembled my mother.' Mrs. 'Alexander' gave an identical description, as did Mrs. E. Herrick, T. E. Morgan, and an American literary woman.  The Reverend J. Lewis  saw a gambler die. A 'mist' left his body and later assumed the gambler’s form." 

On page 106 we read this: "Professor E. Bozzano quoted a missionary from Tahiti who was told by the natives: 'Shortly after a human body ceases to breathe, a vapor rises from the head . . . this vapor gradually . . . assumes the form of the inert body.”

Below is a description of deathbed phenomena by Dr. Riblet B. Hout, found on page 210 of the April 4, 1935 edition of the periodical Light, which you can read here:

"I could distinguish nothing more than a vague outline of a hazy, foglike substance. There seemed to be only a mist held suspended, motionless. But, as I looked, very gradually there grew into my sight a denser, more solid, condensation of this inexplicable vapor. Then I was astonished to see definite outlines presenting themselves, and soon I saw this foglike substance was assuming a human form. 

Soon I knew that the body I was seeing resembled that of the physical body of my aunt  . . . The astral body hung suspended horizontally a few feet above the physical counterpart. ... I continually watched the formation of the spirit -body."

On page 121 of his very interesting book The Supreme Adventure the author Robert Crookall cites the following account told by an E. W. Oaten who witnessed the death of his friend Daisy: 

"I saw a faint, smoke-like vapour rise from the body. It rose some few feet above the bed and stayed there. It was full of motion and rolled over and over until it became a ball of greyish smoke, in a state of motion, with slight traces of opalescence in it here and there. It condensed and grew larger, supplied with a steady stream from the body, a stream of vapour some three inches in diameter. Slowly the ball assumed the size of about 5 ft. 6 in. in length by 18 in. in diameter. Condensation continued until it became to me, a semi-solid body, light-grey in colour, but still like a volume of smoke all in motion. Then, gradually, definition began to come. It assumed the form of a roughly-moulded dummy of the human form. An umbilical cord united it with the physical body. I could see the flow of energy in the umbilical cord. The etheric form began to assume the perfect shape. . . . Presently there was the exact duplicate of Daisy floating face downwards in the air.  It was connected to the body by the silver cord through which her life slowly escaped. Then the form began to heave and rock, like a balloon tearing at its moorings. The silver cord began to stretch. It grew thinner and thinner at the middle until at last it snapped and the floating form assumed an upright attitude.  It was the living duplicate of the sleeping form on the bed. She turned to me and smiled. She was thanking me for the hours I had spent in trying to help her. Then, from the corner of the room, near the ceiling, there came a rush. Two white-robed figures, a man and a woman...came to her, and wrapping their robes around her, they floated away . . . .” 

On page 157 of Crookall's book Out of the Body Experiences we read of a Dr. R. J. Staver who witnessed the death of his father: 

"There was a little mistlike wraith which rose rather slowly. ... It had no human appearance at the time of withdrawal; that came a bit later. The whole proceeding took the best part of an hour, and for some time following the complete withdrawal, there was a wisp of connection between the physical body and that portion which had left it— it reminded me of the oft-mentioned ‘silver cord.’ "

On page 159 we read this:

"Mrs. Josephine Taylor ... told how she saw a child die: 'I saw a mist above the little body. It took the shape of the body which lay on the bed. This was attached by a very fine silver cord. . . . The replica was about three feet above the body, then gradually tilted itself into an upright position. It then floated away.'  Charles Moore observed, 'There slowly escapes from the outworn body a luminous cloud of fine substance. This rapidly becomes compact and takes the form of a solid ethereal body exactly like the old physical body from which it has arisen.' "

On page 162 we are told a Dr. Kayner  observed "a vapor or mist"  which left the chest and head and "gradually rose" until the "newly born man" stood up.

The world-class scientist Sir William Crookes was the inventor of the Crookes tube that was the forerunner of all television sets (and also the co-discoverer of the element thallium).  Crookes wrote the following:

"Under the strictest test conditions, I have more than once had a solid, self-luminous, crystalline body placed in my hand by a hand which did not belong to any person in the room. In the light, I have seen a luminous cloud hover over a heliotrope on a side table, break a sprig off, and carry the sprig to a lady; and on some occasions I have seen a similar luminous cloud visibly condense to the form of a hand and carry small objects about."

Lt.-Col. L. Moore Cosgrave reported the following incident occurring near the time of the death of Horace Traubel, the main biographer of the American poet Walt Whitman:

"During this long watch, Horace Traubel, who was suffering from paralysis and debility, was without visible pain, and semi-conscious, unable to articulate owing to paralysis of the tongue....On the last night, about 3 a. m., he grew perceptibly weaker, breathing almost without visible movement, eyes closed and seemingly comatose, he stirred restlessly after a long period, and his eyes opened, staring towards the further side of the bed, his lips moved, endeavoring to speak, I moved his head back, thinking he needed more air, but again it moved away, and his eyes remained rivetted on a point some three feet above the bed, my eyes were at last drawn irresistibly to the same point in the darkness, as there was but 

a small shaded night lamp behind a curtain on the further side of the room. Slowly the point at which we were both looking grew gradually brighter, a light haze appeared, spread until it assumed bodily form, and took the likeness of Walt Whitman, standing upright beside the bed, a rough tweed jacket on, an old felt hat upon his head and his right hand in his pocket, similar to a number of his portraits, he was gazing down at Traubel, a kindly, reassuring smile upon his face, he nodded twice as though reassuringly, the features quite distinct for at least a full minute, then gradually faded from sight."

Besides such accounts of a full or nearly full human form arising from a misty cloud, there are numerous accounts of mysterious hands appearing from such a cloud or mist. We read the following in the book "Occult Science in India" by Louis Jacolliot:

"A slightly phosphorescent cloud seemed to have formed in the middle of my chamber, from which semblances of hands appeared to go and come with great rapidity. In a few minutes, several hands seemed to have lost their vaporous appearance and to resemble human hands ; so much so, indeed, that they might have been readily mistaken for the latter. Singular to relate, while some became, as it were, more material, others became more luminous. Some became opaque, and cast a shadow in the light, while others became so transparent that an object behind them could be distinctly seen. I counted as many as sixteen....One of them, breaking away from the rest, flew toward me and pressed my outstretched hand. It was small, supple and moist, like the hand of a young woman....For nearly two hours a scene ensued which was calculated to set my head in a whirl. At one time, a hand brushed against my face or fanned it with a fan. At another, it would scatter a shower of flowers all over the room, or would trace in the air, in characters of fire, words which vanished as soon as the last letter was written."

On page 269 of the same account, we read the following account of a full human form arising from such a cloud:

'A cloud similar to the first, but more opaque and of a brighter color, hovered near the little furnace, which, at the Hindu's request, I had kept constantly fed with burning coals. By degrees it seemed to assume a human form, and I distinguished the spectre — for I cannot call it otherwise — of an old Brahminical priest kneeling by the side of the little furnace."

In the 2010  book Glimpses of Eternity: Sharing a Loved One's Passage From This Life to the Next by Raymond Moody we read some accounts relevant to this post's title. On page 13 we read of five family members who all saw a paranormal-seeming light effect when a family member died. On page 24 we read of someone named Tom who claims that when he saw his mother die, "I saw this film or transparent envelope of light close up and lift off her body going upwards and out of sight." On page 34 we have this account: "When his grandfather died, the young man was astounded to see 'a golden ball of light' rise from his chest and pass through the ceiling."  On page 38 we hear of a man named Juan who had his own out-of-body experience while viewing his brother's death, which included the sight of light rising from the dying body. On page 83 a hospice nurse says that while witnessing someone's death, "I saw a luminous presence floating near the bed, shaped somewhat like a person." On page 101 we hear a doctor's account of seeing a mist with "depth and a geometric structure" rising from a dying patient whose eyes had brightly lit up with an eerie glow.  On page 103 we read a psychologist claim that "on both occasions I saw patients leave their bodies in a cloud form." The old newspaper account quoted here corroborates one or two of these statements. 

The account below is from page 146 of the July 1926 International Psychic Gazette, which you can read here. We read of a room being flooded with an unearthly light at the time of someone's death, and also even greater wonders:

The next accounts of spooky clouds are those that do not involve deathbeds. But they may lend credence to some of the accounts above, by being accounts similar to such accounts.  The following notable passage is from the book Cosmic Consciousness by Richard Maurice Bucke. In the passage the author is describing his own experience:

"All at once, without warning of any kind, he found himself wrapped around as it were by a flame-colored cloud. For an instant he thought of fire, some sudden conflagration in the great city; the next he knew that the light was within himself. Directly afterwards came upon him a sense of exultation, of immense joyousness accompanied or immediately followed by an intellectual illumination quite impossible to describe. Into his brain streamed one momentary lightning-flash of the Brahmic Splendor which has ever since lightened his life ; upon his heart fell one drop of Brahmic Bliss, leaving thenceforward for always an after taste of heaven. Among other things he did not come to believe, he saw and knew that the Cosmos is not dead matter but a living Presence, that the soul of man is immortal, that the universe is so built and ordered that without any peradventure all things work together for the good of each and all, that the foundation principle of the world is what we call love and that the happiness of every one is in the long run absolutely certain. He claims that he learned more within the few seconds during which the illumination lasted than in previous months or even years of study, and that he learned much that no study could ever have taught. The illumination itself continued not more than a few moments, but its effects proved ineffaceable ; it was impossible for him ever to forget what he at that time saw and knew; neither did he, or could he, ever doubt the truth of what was then presented to his mind."

The description of seances of Franck Kluski by  anatomy professor F. W. Pawlowski is one of the most astonishing testimonies of paranormal phenomena ever recorded. Beginning here you can read an account of more than five pages, filled with the most extraordinary claims. The quote below describes some very spooky mists. 

"As the phantoms made their appearance I saw something resembling luminous smoke or fog floating above the head of the medium like a small cloud. This cloud moved to one side and in a few seconds became a human head, or else it would spread out vertically and become a complete human figure, which immediately began to walk about. The most astonishing and interesting part of these phenomena, so to speak their most important feature as far as I was concerned, was the absolutely human behavior of the apparitions. They acted precisely like guests at a party. As they passed around the table they greeted the more familiar participants with a smile of recognition, whereas they studied any newcomers attentively. The inquisitive look in their eyes is hard to describe. I could see from their efforts to understand our expressions, our smiles, our questions and answers, as well as from their actions, that they were particularly anxious to convince us of the fact that they were real beings and not illusions or hallucinations."