Some of the Strangest Deathbed Visions

"Of the various kinds of apparitions, death-bed visions lend themselves the least to telepathic explanation. It appears as if those who passed over were waiting at the gates for their loved one. The dying one is fully conscious of the reason of their coming : sometimes there is an exclamation of surprise at the perception of someone whom the dying did not know to have died (the news having been withheld to prevent a shock), the apparitions always represent the departed, and the vision is shortly followed by death."  -- Dr. Nandor Fodor, Light, 9/8/1933, p. 565 (link).

Below is a newspaper account from 1900 of two deathbed visions, which can be read using the link here, and looking for the "Dying Women" story near the middle of the page. The first account is a typical account of this type, involving a dying person reporting what seems like a glimpse of the Great Beyond. The second account has a "clock stopping" twist that makes it stranger than the average deathbed vision. 

"Friends who attended two women in Newark, N. J„ one of whom is dead, while the other is on her deathbed, are convinced that they saw through the veil that divides this world from the next.

The city is stirred by reports of these visions 'from beyond,' and can give no better explanation of them than that offered by the attendant woman who heard the patients describe what they saw and who now say that approaching death sometimes allows a person who is ill to see beyond the pale.

The first case is that of Miss Mattie Oakley, 18 years old, who lived with her aunt. Mrs. M. E. Van Ness, at No. 90 Elizabeth avenue. The girl was a pupil in the Miller High School. She was to have been graduated next Thursday. She was an orphan. Her parents died several years ago.

She fell ill three weeks ago. Dr. B. H. B. Sleight, of Lincoln Park, attended her. Her aunt, Mrs. Van Ness, tells the story of the vision convincingly, for she is herself convinced. She was sitting with the girl last Monday afternoon, she says. They prayed together. She feared that her niece might die at any moment. For a long time the girl lay still, with her eyes fixed upon the celling, as if she looked through and beyond it. Then she turned to Mrs. Van Ness and she said she had just seen a beautiful vision.

'I stood in heaven,'  she said. Her voice was calm. She seemed
to be of normal mind.

'What have you seen?' Mrs. Van Ness asked.

'My father and mother,' the girl replied. 'They spoke to me. Mother told me to be a good girl. Father said, "Come to me."' 

Mrs. Van Ness and the girl sang a hymn together. A little later the girl died. Mrs. Van Ness is confident that her niece was rational, and that she saw that of which she spoke.

The other case is that of Mrs. Geo. W. Beatty, of No. 78 Sussex street. She is 62 years old. She was attacked by paralysis about nine months ago. Just before the first stroke, she says, the mother of former Mayor Daniel W. Beatty, of Washington, N. J., her stepson, appeared beside her bed, 'robed in pure gold.' A little later she saw Mrs. John Walters, who has been dead for half a century. Last Sunday night the spirit of her late husband appeared walking beside a beautiful river. She called aloud to him, and then she realized that she was in her room but the spirit was beside her. It lingered for a moment, she said, and then it passed through the door, although the door was closed.

At this time, it is said, the clock in former Mayor Beatty's house stopped. The hour of her vision, her friends say, was identical with that at which the clock stopped."

My post here gives five other newspaper accounts of clocks mysteriously stopping at the time of someone's death. 

Below is an untypical account of a deathbed vision, which can be read here. Instead of the dying person having the vision, a vision reportedly comes to a relative far away, alerting that person of a relative's death. There is also a strange element of a feeling of a cold chill acting as an omen of disaster.

Page 477 of the October 7, 1911 edition of the periodical Light gives an account of a deathbed vision. It includes an enormously strange element of faces of the deceased appearing on the face of a dying person. 

"A well-known business man of New York passed away. His widow is a clear-minded and educated lady, without any morbid or superstitious taint in her nature, or any belief in Spiritualism. While bending over her husband shortly before his death she observed that the expression of his face was changing, and the next moment saw there, instead, the face of her dead brother. The two men were entirely unlike in appearance, one being light and having a blond beard, and the other very dark. Shortly afterwards the lady saw on her husband’s face the expression of another deceased friend, and a little later that of a third. Her morbid and overwrought fancy deceived her, someone says. Could two persons be deceived at the same time and in the same way? I ask this because three years ago this lady and her sister watched beside the dying child of the latter. The little girl’s face suddenly changed. One of the ladies saw that the other observed this, and said : ‘ Emily, who was it ? ’ ‘ Adelaide,’ was the answer. 'Yea, Adelaide. ’ The two ladies told our informant that they saw unmistakably the face of their dead cousin, a woman, shining out through the face of the dying child. She could offer no explanation of these phenomena, and we present them, because they seem unusual and interesting."

Below is a very interesting account of a doctor who claimed to have twice seen a soul departing from the body when someone was dying. The doctors claimed that the souls looked like blue smoke. 

You can read the account here:

https://books.google.com/books?id=jvFCAAAAIBAJ&pg=PA2&dq=deathbed+vision&article_id=2891,7442987#v=onepage&q=deathbed%20vision&f=false

The account here tells the same account in fewer words:

An old newspaper account discusses something similar seen by others at a deathbed: one involving a blue flame, and the other a dark vapor leaving the head, forming into a human figure:

Anyone interested in this topic of strange lights or strange mists seen at a deathbed should read my post here, which discusses several other cases of this type. 

Partial corroboration of some of the accounts above might be found in the account below, in which the paranormal researcher Hamlin Garland reports seeing a bluish smoky cloud arising from someone's chest, with the cloud forming into a kind of spirit hand:

On the next page Garland reports, "The spectral hand darted out, seized the goblet, lifted it and brought it to the psychic's lips."

Below is one of the strangest deathbed visions ever recorded. You can read the account here. I can summarize for those not wanting to squint to see the text. In the account a woman has a vision of her late father coming to carry away her sick mother. Then the vision ends. Immediately checking on the sick mother, the woman finds that she had died. 

Use the link here to read six other posts of mine on the topic of deathbed visions (you can read them all by continuing to press Older Posts at the bottom right). In the 2023 scientific paper here ("A Review of Clinical Signs and Symptoms of Imminent End-of-Life in Individuals With Advanced Illness"), we read this about End-of-Life Dreams and Visions (ELDVs):

"It is estimated that nearly 50-70% of dying people experience ELDVs (Dam, 2016; Mazzarino-Willett, 2010). While ELDVs often occur when death is imminent within days or hours before death, it is often non-specific and may also occur about weeks or months before death (Depner et al., 2020; Kerr et al., 2014; Levy et al., 2020; Nyblom et al., 2022; Santos et al., 2017)."

Below is a diagram showing how deathbed visions fit into a larger framework of related topics: