A Theory of Warning Dreams in the Last Year of Life

In this post I will advance a speculative theory that I cannot advance with a very high confidence, because parts of the theory are not supported by an abundance of observations from many different observers. But the theory is based on some things I have read and some things I have personally experienced.  I have reason to suspect that the theory may well be true in whole or in part. I will not be able to provide good evidence to support each part of the theory. But I will at least be able to cite a few things that may be reasons for suspecting particular parts of the theory are true.  

The theory I will present is largely based on my own dream experiences of having extremely thematic and non-random dreams throughout a roughly nine-month period, as discussed in the very long post here (a post that originally appeared in February 2021, but which I updated on very many days between that month and August 2021).  The relevance of such death-related dreams to a theory of dreams in the last year of life is unclear, because I don't know at what time I will die. If my death occurs in the year 2021 (something I have no reason to suspect based on purely medical reasons), then you should more strongly suspect that the theory below is partially or largely accurate. But if you eventually read posts of mine written long after January 1, 2022 (such as posts written in the years 2023 or 2024), you should be a little less likely to believe in the theory discussed below. 

Hypothesis #1:  rather than being purely random content, dreams may partially reflect telepathic messages sent to the dreamer, or clairvoyant activity of a dreamer.

There is a very strong evidence basis for believing that psi phenomena such as ESP and clairvoyance may occur more commonly under altered states of consciousness.  Throughout most of the nineteenth century and well into the twentieth century, there were published innumerable lengthy reports of clairvoyance occurring in states of hypnosis (which may have been referred to by various names such as Mesmerism, animal magnetism or somnambulism).  You can read some of these reports here and  here and here and here and here. 

In the twentieth century there were very many reports of ESP or clairvoyance or "remote viewing" (pretty much the same as clairvoyance) occurring during slightly altered consciousness states such as what is called the Ganzfeld protocol (a sensory deprivation protocol) or a remote viewing protocol involving a slightly altered state of consciousness.  There has been considerable evidence (experimental or anecdotal) for telepathic effects or clairvoyant effects occurring during dreaming.  You can read here about some of the laboratory evidence for ESP during dreaming, which was mainly collected at the Maimonides laboratory in the 20th century.  The meta-analysis here finds highly significant evidence for ESP during dreaming. 

Hypothesis #2:  there may exist unseen entities capable of knowing things about a person's future or the state of a person's body or health that are unknown to the person, including a time when a person is most likely to die, or possibly even the exact date when a person will die. 

This part of my theory may be the most speculative. The idea is that there exist one or more entities unseen by you who may know something about your health or your future that you do not know. Such an entity or entities may be divine, angelic, spiritual or extra-dimensional.  They may or may not be the spirits of people who once lived on Earth. 

I can imagine several different ways in which such knowledge might be acquired. On one hand there is the idea of some kind Book of Fate or Book of Destiny in which might be written (clearly or not-so-clearly) the earthly fates of individual people. Or, to imagine a very different idea, it might be possible through some paranormal means for some unseen entities to acquire knowledge giving an idea about a person's expected time of death. 

An idea very widely stated in the literature of the paranormal is that humans have some kind of aura or energy field (or possible multiple auras or energy fields) that can be perceived in some way different from ordinary vision, and that by kind of "reading" or perceiving such indications, an idea can be reached about a person's state of health or future lifespan. It could be that unseen entities or powers are capable of leveraging such an indication or indications, to be able to get some idea about when a person is likely to die.  Such indications might be very unreliable when someone is in his youth, but far more reliable when a person is in the last year of his life. 

I am familiar with a well-documented and weighty case in the literature of the paranormal that may provide evidence in favor of Hypothesis #2. The case is described on page 432 of Volume 11 of the Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, which quotes the November 1, 1890 edition of the Religio-Philosphical Journal. You can find the original source account by opening this link, and scrolling down about nine pages until you see page 361 in the right corner (or, alternately, searching for the name Suddick).  We read a Dr. Suddick giving this account:

"Mr. Cottnam had a friend, Mr. Chris. Varis....His attendant physician, Dr. Headlee, of St. James, told Mr. Cottnam that he thought Mr. Varis could live but a few days at most, and from his appearance Mr. Cottnam was of the same opinion."

We then read about some action of a "Mr. C." (who is this Mr. Cottnam) at a "table tipping seance."  In such a seance people may put their hands on a table and ask for answers from the spirit world, which may then be following by raps on the table or a lifting of the table.  We read this:

"Mr. C. asked, ' Do you know my friend Chris. Varis, of St. James, Mo. ?' 'Yes.' ...'Will he live over to-morrow?' 'Yes.'  'Do you know when he will pass out?' 'Yes.' Then the table rocked back and forth slowly, the feet striking the floor forty times, making forty distinct raps, much to the surprise of all present, as we were expecting him [Varis] to pass out much sooner. We counted, and found that the time indicated would be October 8th ; so to make sure we were right we asked, ' ' Will he pass out on October 8th?' 'Yes.' 'In the forenoon ?' 'Yes.'  'Will a telegram be sent to me on the morning of the 8th to that effect ?' 'Yes.' "

Dr. Suddick informs us of the aftermath, in which the prediction came true exactly:

"The prediction about Mr. Varis became an open secret, and was talked of freely through the town from the morning of August 30th until October 8th, when a telegram came over the wires informing Mr. C. that Mr. Varis died that morning at six o'clock. I append a letter from Dr. Headlee, the physician who attended Mr. Varis, which corroborates the account just given. I also send the signatures of twelve of our best citizens in further confirmation, and the signatures of the sitters."

We then read testimony from  witnesses, who all sign their names to the following assertion:

"Cuba, Mo., October 15th, 1890.

To AIL WHOM IT MAY CONCERN :— This is to certify that we, the undersigned citizens of Cuba, Mo., did, prior to the death of Mr. Chris. Varis, of St. James, Mo., wliich occurred on the morning of the 8th of October, 1890, hear a prophecy to the effect that he would die on the mornmg of that day.

We heard that his death was foretold at a seance, at tlie house of Dr. S. T. Suddick, in the town of Cuba, Mo. , on the night of August the 29th, or forty days prior to that event."

The statement is signed by the following people:

• Jas. E. Hollow, jun., one of the circle of August 29th.
• Longstreet Simpson, Clerk in Store. 
• T. P. Brickey, Proprietor, Cuba Hotel.
• E. A. Evans, Real Estate Agent.
• F. R. Hardesty, Druggist.
• W. T. Hunter, Blacksmith.
• C. H. Cottnam, one of the circle of August 29th.
• Dr. V. L. Shelp, Dentist. 
• Dr. J. H. Martyn, Physician and Surgeon. 
• Geo. Askins, Hotel Clerk.
• Mrs. Louise Farley Suddick, one of the circle of August 29th.
• J. A. Rost, Shoemaker.
• J. A. Caims, Clerk in Store. 
• B. F. Johnson, Notary Public

Below is the original text of the edition of the Religio-Philosphical Journal (November 1, 1890) in which this testimony first appeared. Because the report appeared within one month of the death of Chris Varis, and because the report was corroborated by so many witnesses,  this case seems to be rather substantial evidence in support of my Hypothesis 2. 

We have in this very well-documented case what seems to be substantial evidence to support the hypothesis that there may be unseen entities who may know something about when a living human will die, knowledge that may conflict with or be at odds with the opinions of earthly humans about such a topic. 

Hypothesis #3: in his last year of his life a person may be warned that his death is not very far in the future, by means of symbolic dreams rather than an explicit warning. 

If Hypothesis #1 and Hypothesis #2 are true, then Hypothesis #3 should not seem very unlikely. The idea is that there exists some unseen power or powers who may know that a person is probably in his last year of life, and that such a power or powers may give that person a telepathic or clairvoyant warning, which the person receives in the form of symbolic dreams hinting at his upcoming death.  Under my theory, such warnings do not come as explicit warnings, such as a dream person saying, "Dave, you have only four months left to live." Instead, such warnings typically appear in a veiled and indirect way, largely through symbolism that may hint that death is not far off. We can imagine why such a warning may appear in a veiled or symbolic way: because a direct, explicit warning might create undesirable fear in the person who is in his last year of life.  

Some examples of death-suggesting dreams are:

(1) a dream in which there is some loss of electrical power, or in which an electrical device is turned off;

(2) a dream in which some electrical device or mechanical device suddenly stops working;

(3) a dream in which there is some end (possibly a sudden end) to some journey or some trip or some theatrical perfomance or some game;

(4) a dream in which someone is in a check-out line at a store ("checking out" is a slang term referring to death); 

(5) a dream using words such as "termination" or "liquidation" or other words that are synonyms for death. 

(6) a dream in which you are on a train, and you hear an announcement that the train is approaching its last stop.

 Hypothesis #4:  in his last year of life, a person may start to get many explicit references to death (something that rarely occurred before),  along with dreams in which the dream action brings the dream protagonist  right to the brink of death. 

In your last year of life, you may start to get many explicit references to death. You may hear the specific words "death," "dying," "grave," or "termination."  Also, you may commonly have dreams in which the action seems to bring you right up to a death event, stopping just short of such a death event. For example, you may dream that you are in a battle, and an enemy tank drives right up to you, with that may be the end of the dream. Or you may dream of falling off of a tall building, with the dream ending as you are plunging toward the ground.  Or you may dream a car traveling at high speed crashes into your car, with the dream ending right at the moment of the crash.  Or you may in your dream observe such things happening to other people. Or you may have a dream in which you see a grave, a tombstone, a coffin, a corpse or a funeral. It will be rather as if some external party is trying to suggest the idea of physical death to you. 

Hypothesis #5:  in his last year of life, a person may start to get many dreams that symbolically hint at life after death, such as  dreams involving crossing a river, crossing a boundary, crossing a bridge, traveling to a new place, traveling home, relocating or rising up in an elevator. 

It is quite rare to have dream in which there occurs a sentence of more than a few words. Dreams are mainly imagery, and are not very verbal. Rather than getting a sentence message such as "you are about to travel to a new realm of existence beyond the mortal realm," which might easily get mangled inside a dream, you may get imagery that symbolizes  life after death. There are many possibilities:

• You may dream of crossing a river or bridge, with the river or bridge  representing the boundary between life and death. 
• You may dream you are waiting for an elevator or rising up in an elevator, with the elevator rise representing an ascent to a higher realm of existence. 
• You may dream that you are an astronaut rising up in a rocket, with the rocket rise representing an ascent to a higher realm of existence. 
• You may dream you have just relocated to a new home or a new apartment, with the relocation representing moving to an afterlife realm.
• You may dream you are traveling to some earthly place that you most often thought of as home, such as a home that you were raised in. Accounts of near-death experiences often include a report that the place fleetingly visited felt like a person's "real home."
• You may dream you are preparing for a journey, such as packing a suitcase or buying a train ticket.  
• You may have a dream in which you are told that you have to leave by a particular time or a particular date, with such a departure symbolizing a departure from earthly life.  The time mentioned might symbolize a date. For example, if you dream that you have to meet a deceased person around 6:30, that could mean that your death may come about June 30 (June being the sixth month of the year). 

Hypothesis #6: in his last year of life a person may be symbolically warned about a common type of way he will or may die. 

A person may be warned of some way he may die. But such a warning will not be an explicit verbal warning such as "you may die of a heart attack." Instead, there may be veiled warnings that use symbolic imagery. To give some possible examples:

• A person who will die of an artery blockage may have various dreams with a motif of blockage, such as a dream of a clogged sink, or a dream of a blocked road, or a dream of walking down a stairway which is blocked for some reason. 
• A person who will die of sudden cardiac death (usually a kind of electrical failure) may have dreams of power failures in his home, or an electrical machine that suddenly stops working, or a dream of a power blackout on the street he is walking down. 
• A person who will die of cancer may have some dream involved an unwanted spreading, such as dream of lots of mice in his house, or a dream of the grass on his lawn growing up into the floor of his house, or a dream of some thing that he wanted to be small (such as a key) grow too large. 

Hypothesis #7: rarely a person may have a dream that explictly warns him of the exact way he will die or the exact day he will die. 

In support of this hypothesis, I  quote this statement from an edition of The Spiritual Magazine. 

"In Dr. Binns's Anatomy of Sleep, which the curious in such matters will find rich in material upon these subjects, we find this case : — 'A young man named John Gray, residing at Cinderford, who told his mother, before he went to the Crump Meadow coal-pits, at which he worked, that he dreamed tne preceding night (Sunday, January 14th, 1844) that, while at work, a large stone fell upon and killed him. The mother made light of the dream. Not so the dreamer, who went reluctantly to work, and not until he had returned twice to wish her good-bye. The dream was fulfilled. An immense block of stone fell upon and crushed him to death.' "

In the posts here, here and here there are additional cases of people who seemed to get explicit dream warnings of how they or others would die or when they or others would die.  Not mentioned in those posts are the cases discussed on pages 197-201 of the book here, in which four people seemed to get dream warnings of the 1976 Teton Dam collapse in Idaho, USA. Also not mentioned in those posts in the very interesting case discussed on pages 31-40 of Gardner Murphy's Challenge of Psychical Research, in which Walter F. Prince had a dream of a beheading of a woman, with such a very rare event happening about six miles away within 24 hours, as a mentally ill woman placed her neck so that a train could decapitate her.  Although the Prince case and the Teton Dam cases do not support the idea of an individual dreaming of the exact details of his own death, they support the idea that someone can have a dream about the exact details of someone else's death that soon occurs. 

Hypothesis #8: in his last year a person may have an unusally high number of dreams about deceased people, often deceased family members, deceased pets, deceased friends and deceased famous people. 

In the last year of life a person may dream more commonly about deceased people than about living people. Such a person may have many dreams about deceased family members.  Having a dream in which there is a very small distance between the person and the deceased family member (or no distance at all, with direct physical contact) may be a sign that death is only a few months or weeks away.  In the last year of life a person may get many dreams of very obscure deceased people the person has not thought of or read about for many years. 

A study of the dreams or visions of 60 terminally ill patients in India reported that 78.9% "reported seeing 'deceased' people, be it relatives, friends or acquaintances," while only 31.5% "saw living friends and relatives."  Rather interestingly, the study mentioned a high level of visions of the deceased when a person was awake, although that is beyond the scope of this post.  A study of about 59 American terminally ill patients also found that dreams or visions of the deceased occurred more commonly than dreams of the living, particularly as the person approached death (see Figure 2 to see the ratios). 

Hypothesis #9: the phenomena listed above may not be commonly reported because people rarely write down their dreams or rarely look for patterns in their dreams, or possibly because dream warnings are not sent to average people who would tend to ignore them. 

How can I account for the relative rarity in which people report things like those I have listed above? That is easy to do. First, we have the fact that dreams are very quickly forgotten unless you write them down just after waking up. But very few people record their dreams upon waking up. So it might easily be that in the last year of life very many get warning dreams like those I have mentioned, but that almost all such dreams are forgotten and never recorded. It could also be that people with no interest in psychic phenomena are not sent warning dreams, because such warnings would tend to be ignored by such people. 

I have used the term "warning" in my title, although the type of dreams I discuss are mainly kind of notification or hint dreams that may  give people a "heads up" or clue or intimation about what is to come, rather than dreams meant to cause some change in behavior.  I can imagine a way to test aspects of the theory discussed in this post.  People could be paid for participation in an online survey that included many questions about dream content, and also questions about a person's age and any health conditions they have. All subjects who finished the survey could be told they will be paid three times as much for participating in a very short follow-up survey that could only be filled out one year after the first survey.  Based on the data regarding age, health conditions and participation in the second survey (and possibly based on follow-up attempts to contact those who failed to participate in the second survey), inferences could be made regarding which participants in the first  survey were in their last year of life.  A study could then look for large differences in the dream content of those who were in their last year of life.  

Don't conclude anything if you get only one or two of the things I have mentioned here.  But if you find your dreams often seem to have many of the features I have discussed here, consider the possibility that you may be in your last year of life, and do not be troubled by such a possibility.  Any universe in which you got paranormal telepathic dream warnings that your earthly time is almost finished would be almost certainly a universe in which you would expect to enjoy a life after death. 

The Degenerative Spiral of "Grand Explanation" Academia

At a time in which people are suddenly noticing that revered authorities have been massively lying to us for a very long time about Afghanistan, it may be appropriate to look at other areas in which authorities have long misspoken. Professors who have a limited and philosophically irrelevant field of study such as virology or stellar astronomy or ancient history tend to be people of good honesty.  But then there are what we may call the "Grand Explanation" professors, dedicated to promoting some "grand explanation" about the fundamental nature of life, mind or the universe. 

"Grand Explanation" professors include the following:

• Scientists dedicated to propagating the claim that there is a known natural explanation for the origin of life or the origin of species or the origin of complex biological innovations or the origin of man. 
• Scientists dedicated to advancing big sweeping theories about the universe such as the cosmic inflation theory (not to be confused with the Big Bang theory) or the Cold Dark Matter theory or speculations about a multiverse. 
• Scientists propagating the idea that low-level chemical things such as DNA molecules (and genes in them) explain human development (the progression from a tiny-speck sized egg to a full adult body), and also explain much of human and animal behavior. 
• Scientists dedicated to advancing the claim that the human mind and human mental effects such as the formation and recall of memories can be explained as mere brain activity. 

Very many "Grand Explanation" professors have a long history of making misleading statements and carrying on deceptive practices. Below are some of the items in that history (you can read here for an explanation of some of these assertions):

• Many biologists write scientific papers that have titles, summaries or causal inferences that are not justified by the data in the papers. A scientific study found that "Thirty-four percent of academic studies and 48% of media articles used language that reviewers considered too strong for their strength of causal inference." A study of inaccuracy in the titles of scientific papers states, "23.4 % of the titles contain inaccuracies of some kind." A scientific study found that 48% of scientific papers use "spin" in their abstracts.
• Very many biologists design experiments with too-small study group sizes, experiments in which there will be a very large chance of a false alarm.
• Scientific papers very often make improper citations of other scientific papers, claiming that they said something or established something such papers did not actually say or establish. A study of such quotation errors found that 25% of paper citations are in error. 
•  Biologists repeatedly appeal to dubious achievement legends and doubtful causal claims, citing a supposed opinion of the majority as their justification.
• Biologists repeatedly make “your brain does this” type of statements about research findings, even when the research provides no actual evidence of brain activity, but merely provides evidence of mind activity.
• Biologists often claim irrelevant studies support whatever dogmas biologists are trying to defend, such as when  observations of fatty bubbles are given to try to show some progress in understanding the origin of life, or when observations of clumping algae cells are cited to support claims that biologists are starting to understand how multicellular life appeared, or when artificial breeding of guinea pigs with four toes (a natural occurrence in guinea pigs) is cited as evidence for macroevolution (despite the lack of any benefit in such a fourth toe). 
• When discussing critics of Darwinism, professors typically attempt to misleadingly insinuate that such critics are fundamentalists, even though the Bible is scarcely even mentioned in most of the literature criticizing Darwinism, with such criticism being based mainly on the failure of Darwinists to present a credible theory of the origin of enormously organized organisms and hard-to-explain human minds.
• Many biologists present visually misleading brain visuals that create impressions of brain activity differences that do not match the underlying data of the brain scans. Differences of less than 1% (which should be displayed in only a very slightly different shade) are displayed in some bright color such as bright red, thereby giving people the incorrect idea that some big difference was found. 
• Many biologists repeatedly use misleading metaphors rather than exact non-metaphorical descriptions (a very big example being the frequent use of the term "natural selection" when the underlying theory does not actually postulate any real selection, selection being an act of choice by a conscious agent).
• Biologists and chemists have countless times repeated in their textbooks bad evidence. For example, the articles here and here discuss how the embryo drawings of Ernst Haeckel were "highly inaccurate" and "falsified." But such drawings have appeared in biology textbooks for more than a hundred years, and offered as evidence for evolution. For more than 60 years, scientists have been citing the Miller-Urey experiment as important evidence supporting claims of abiogenesis, even though it was very obvious from the beginning that the experiment failed to realistically simulate the early Earth, and even though it has been believed for decades that the experiment did not use a mixture of gases realistically simulating the early Earth. 
• Many physicists repeatedly use speculative charts and diagrams that are not correctly identified as being speculative (a prominent example being wildly speculative "composition of the universe" pie charts).
• Many scientists very often make utterly inaccurate claims about paranormal phenomena,  often telling us there is no evidence for things which are supported by massive amounts of reliable evidence. 
• An article in Science states that "more than half of Dutch scientists regularly engage in questionable research practices, such as hiding flaws in their research design or selectively citing literature," and that "one in 12 [8 percent] admitted to committing a more serious form of research misconduct within the past 3 years: the fabrication or falsification of research results."
• When describing experiments providing evidence for paranormal phenomena, many professors make very inaccurate descriptions or summaries of the results or procedures of particular experiments or types of experiments. An example of a paper describing such very inaccurate representations (by professors other than the author of the paper) can be found here. 
• Many biologists repeatedly make assertions that "evolution is fact," thereby suggesting that macroevolution is fact, failing to tell us that no one has ever observed macroevolution, and that the only type of evolution that humans have observed is the vastly less impressive reality called microevolution. 
• Biologists and paleontologists have long used speculative depictions of never-observed organisms, often to bolster dubious claims they preferred to believe in. For example, on page 207 of the book Shattering the Myths of Darwinism by Richard Milton, a book which can be read online here, the author points out that a visualization of Australopithecus afarensis (in natural history museums of London and New York) made the species appear to have human-like hands and feet, even though the fossils indicated the species had long curved hands and feet, like those of a tree dweller. To give another example, to help bolster claims of humans being descended from ape-like organisms, there have been many artistic visualizations depicting Neanderthal man as being brutish and anatomically more ape-like than modern humans.  An example is the extremely misleading visualization here, which depicts a Neanderthal as a hairy almost ape-like creature. But it has been pointed out that if you were to dress a Neanderthal man in a business suit, he would probably attract little attention on a New York City subway car. 
• Biologists and chemists repeatedly make inappropriate use of anthropomorphic "action verbs" in describing inanimate chemical units, making such mindless chemicals sound rather as if they had little minds or agendas of their own.
• Many biologists create false impressions suggesting biological life is vastly simpler than it is, such as publishing extremely inaccurate and misleading diagrams of cells, causing people to think cells are 1000 times simpler than they are.
• Many professors routinely engage in character assassination and gaslighting against ideological opponents and inconvenient witnesses living and dead,  such as characterizing as "kooks," "cranks" or "frauds" those who report inconvenient observations the professors cannot explain. 
• Some biologists write extremely inaccurate and misleading comparisons in which they claim that there is little difference between the minds of animals and the minds of humans. 
• When finding some very weak correlation with a negligible  correlation coefficient, biologists may announce the correlation as being significant, or publish misleading "trend line" graphs, and fail to state clearly how weak the correlation is.  
•  Biologists often make unproven statements about specific biological units such as synapses, failing to inform us of the relevant facts that contradict their claims (such as the fact that the proteins that make up synapses have an average lifetime of only two weeks or less). 
• Many scientists wrongly brag about "predictive success" for theories that have very many different varieties, and that actually make predictions that are all over the map,  given different reasonable model inputs.  The theories in question may more commonly make bad predictions than good predictions. 
• Many scientists wrongly brag about "predictive success" for theories that have spectacular predictive failures. An example is when scientists claim predictive success for the Big Bang theory, failing to tell us that the theory actually predicts a universe with as much antimatter as matter. 
• Many scientists do not correctly state the conflict of interests they have, causing incorrect "conflict of interest" statements to be published as part of something they have written (the 2020 Lancet letter dismissing the COVID-19 lab leak hypothesis being an example). 
• A study of biology papers found that "as many as 35,000 papers in the literature are candidates for retraction due to inappropriate image duplication."
• Cognitive neuroscientists very frequently use an extremely misleading technique in which some thought, emotion, behavior or recollection is statistically correlated with some very small group of cells arbitrarily chosen for study, even though there is no reason (even under the assumption of cognitive neuroscientists) to assume that such arbitrarily selected cells (like a few randomly chosen hay strands from a haystack) have any causal connection to the thought, behavior or recollection under study. Almost all such correlations are probably false alarms, and the type of correlations are those that could always be found by someone studying causally unrelated things, searching until some random correlation is found. 
• Chemists, astronomers and astrobiologists have often repeated the very false claim that the "building blocks of life" exist abundantly in outer space. The building blocks of microscopic life are functional protein molecules, which have never been detected in outer space outside of human spacecraft or space stations. The building blocks of the building blocks of life are the 20 amino acids used by living things, and the four nucleotides used by living things. None of those 24 things has  ever been found in outer space, with the exception of one or two ot them (glycine and alanine), which have been detected in no more than microscopic trace amounts. 
•  Some biologists and chemists do biological origin experiments that do not realistically simulate the conditions that are under study, or make blatantly false claims about the implications of such unrealistic studies done by their colleagues or predecessors.
  
• Some biologists use the term "early human" when it is not justified, in describing organisms that have never been shown to have the essential characteristic of humans: symbol use.
• Many biologists have repeatedly told us the enormous lie that DNA (a molecule containing only low-level chemical information and bearing no resemblance to a blueprint for making humans) is some kind of blueprint of recipe for making a human body. 
• Scientists repeatedly make untrue statements such as "we know that most of the universe is dark energy," or "we know that most matter is dark matter," asserting as facts ideas that are mere speculations (no one has ever directly observed either dark matter or dark energy).
• Scientists have countless times made the untrue claim that Earth-like planets have been discovered in other solar systems. No such planet has been found. An Earth-like planet would be one containing life, but no such planet has been found. Astronomers have merely found Earth-sized planets. No planet has even been discovered with radiation conditions as suitiable for photosynthesis as Earth conditions. A recent study says, "So far, we have not observed terrestrial planets comparable to Earth in terms of useful photon flux, exergy, and exergetic efficiency."
• Although Earth is the only planet known to have life,  and everything we know about the complexity of even the simplest life suggests that the natural appearance of life on a randomly chosen planet should be gigantically improbable, scientists sometimes senselessly tell us that Earth isn't special or is "just another planet."
• Quite a few physicists have made mainly bogus claims to be making progress on a "Theory of Everything," while working on some half-baked theory that was nothing remotely like any such thing, being merely a theory of physics. 
• In their papers, experts are extremely prone to cite weak research that cannot be replicated, and according to one study, papers that cannot be replicated are 153 times more likely to be cited than those than can be replicated. 
• To try to explain memory, neuroscientists have repeatedly appealed to an effect they call "long-term potentiation." But that name is deceptive in this context. Human memories very often last as long as 50 or 60 years, but so-called "long-term potentiation" is actually a very short-term thing, typically lasting for less than a day. A scientific paper says  that "in general LTP decays back to baseline within a few hours," meaning that so-called long-term potentiation disappears within hours. A recent paper distinguishes two types of LTP, one lasting 1-6 hours and another type which "lasts for several hours or even days."
• Museums (often directed by professors) often display structures that countless visitors think are fossils, but which are merely fiberglass or plaster artworks inspired by some data obtained from studying fossils.  One large natural history museum confesses that only 85% of the specimens in one of its exhibit halls are actual fossils. 
• Professors routinely write articles discussing DNA analysis of species that lived more than 50,000 years ago, neglecting to tell us that such analysis is based on only very small fragments of DNA surviving from such species, because of the fact that the half-life of DNA is only about 512 years. The relatively short half-life of DNA means that no one knows what the DNA was of species living long ago, and that projections about DNA of such species is mere speculation by scientists (such scientists failing to inform us of how speculative their work is).  
• Eager to make their observations of distant molecular clouds sound biologically relevant, astronomers sometimes (1) call certain molecules "large organic molecules" even when they are some of the smallest of known organic molecules (2) incorrectly claim biological relevance for such molecules, and (3) use the incredibly misleading term "reservoirs" to refer to amounts of such molecules that are something like 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 less dense that the density of molecules in an earthly reservoir. 
• An article in the leading science journal Nature states this: "A computer-aided analysis of almost 12,000 human-genetics papers has found more than 700 studies with errors in the DNA or RNA sequences of their experimental reagents. That amounts to a 'problem of alarming proportions', because it suggests that a worrying fraction of studies on human genes are not reliable, says the team that conducted the analysis, led by cancer researcher Jennifer Byrne at the University of Sydney in Australia. The mistakes could be accidental but, researchers suspect, might sometimes point to fraud."
• The term "body plan" is a profoundly misleading term that biologists love to use, a term that opens the door to deceptions about DNA. In biology literature the term "body plan" has a very limited meaning, something vastly different from a complete plan for constructing an organism. The wikipedia.org article on "body plan" tells us this: "A body plan, Bauplan (German plural Baupläne), or ground plan is a set of morphological features common to many members of a phylum of animals."According to this definition, all chordates (including men, bears, dogs and fish) have the same body plan. So when biologists talk about "the human body plan" they are merely referring to the common characteristics of all chordates, including men, bears, dogs and fish:  basically just the existence of a backbone and bilateral symmetry (having the same things on both sides of the body).  They are not referring to the structure of the 200 types of cells in the human body, or the structure of internal organs, and are not referring to the dynamic intricacies of human physiology. But anyone hearing the term "body plan" will think the term referred to a complete specification of a human body.  So, most misleadingly, biologists may say that this or that "determines the body plan," when all they mean is the beginning of a bilateral organism with a backbone, something a thousand times simpler than the final product of the internally dynamic and enormously organized human body.  This is as misleading as someone saying that he has built a starship, when he has merely built a boat in the shape of a star.
• A paper by Stuart A. Newman (a professor of cell biology and anatomy) discussing at length the work of scientists trying to evoke "self-organization" as an explanation for morphogenesis states that "public lectures by principals of the field contain confidently asserted, but similarly oversimplified or misleading treatments," and says that "these analogies...give the false impression that there has been more progress in understanding embryonic development than there truly has been." Referring to scientists moving from one bunk explanation of morphogenesis to another bunk explanation of it, the paper concludes by stating, "It would be unfortunate if we find ourselves having emerged from a period of misconceived genetic program metaphors only to land in a brave new world captivated by equally misguided ones about self-organization."

Given the things listed above, it is no surprise that there is a huge  scientific research problem called the “replication crisis.” This is the problem that a large fraction of research studies cannot be replicated. The problem was highlighted in a widely cited 2005 paper by John Ioannidis entitled, “Why Most Published Research Findings Are False.”  An article in Science magazine has the title "Rigorous replication effort succeeds for just two of five cancer papers." The paper says, "The cancer biology project was inspired by reports from two companies that when they tried to follow up on dozens of papers pointing to potential new drugs, they could not replicate as many as 89% of the studies." Although it is sometimes described as a mere  "psychology replication crisis," the poor replication rates are just as bad in neuroscience and evolution research as in psychology. Referring to the fMRI brain scan studies that are a staple of experimental neuroscience, a paper states, "Low sample sizes, low power, and low effect-sizes, which reduce replicability, have been generally reported in the field of fMRI research." A paper found that evolution and ecology research is plagued by the same Questionable Research Practices leading to low replication rates in psychology and neuroscience. 

A common characteristic of "Grand Explanation" professors is their failure to study large bodies of evidence very relevant to whether their "grand insights" are correct.  For example,such professors fail to seriously study reports of anomalous mental and spiritual phenomena, with 99% of such professors failing to read even 1% of the books and the journal volumes they should read presenting direct observational reports of such phenomena.  What's going on is a very dysfunctional "don't read reports that contradict my grand explanations" tendency. 

Overall, there is a kind of spiral of degeneration occurring in the activity and speech of "Grand Explanation" professors. As more and more evidence accumulates that we do not live in the kind of universe depicted by such scientists, and that reality does not work the way they claim, and that our bodies and minds did not arise by things discussed in their "Grand Explanations,"  the actions of the "Grand Explanation" professors grow more and more desperate.  Some of them resort to desperate measures such as asserting an infinity or near-infinity of other universes, or telling us tall tales about monkeys rafting across the Atlantic ocean millions of years ago, or claiming that random mutations accidentally produced things more organized than anything humans have ever designed, or making morally destructive claims that consciousness or freedom of action is an illusion, or claiming that previously unimagined cellular complexity originated by lucky ingestion, or making laughable claims that fatty bubbles help explain the origin of microscopic life, or claiming that clumping algae cells help explain the origin of macroscopic life. This is the phenomenon of "escalation of commitment," where someone makes bigger and bigger investments into some activity or ideology, despite increasing signs that it was a mistake to have ever invested in that activity or believed in that ideology.  

Why is there so much deceptive behavior going on among "Grand Explanation" professors?  I can give two general reasons. The first is that committing yourself to a particular Grand Explanation is  something that tends to make a person prone to start speaking incorrectly. Once a professor has committed himself to his Grand Explanation, he may have a strong tendency to always make whatever statements support his Grand Explanation. Facts will be twisted; misleading language will be used; data will be cherry-picked; the most enormous improbabilities will be ignored;  disconfirming evidence will go unstudied and ignored; things will be described with utterly misleading metaphors; taller-and-taller tall tales will be conjured up to try to explain away inconvenient facts; mere molehills of evidence will be described as if they were mountains; mountains of disconfirming evidence will be ignored or effectively declared as taboo; reasonable and honest critics will be besmirched or belittled or libeled. Eager for evidence in support of his Grand Explanation, a professor may also adopt bad experimental procedures that may tend to produce misleading results superficially supporting such an explanation.  

The longer that the "Grand Explanation" has been around, the more eager the scientist may be to do "whatever it takes" to keep the "Grand Explanation" afloat. He may feel that not only his own prestige but that of his entire scientific specialty is in danger if his "Grand Explanation" loses favor.  Paraphrasing a common saying about deception, I can describe the situation like this:

Oh, what a tangled web we weave

When first we "grand insight" believe

The second general reason for the degenerative spiral of "Grand Explanation" academia has to do with the widespread dysfunction in today's scientific academia. What we have is a system whereby various players are strongly incentivized to act in a corrupt or dysfunctional manner for self-serving reasons.  Specifically:

• Wanting to increase their very important paper counts which help determine their career trajectory (the number of papers they have had published), scientists may use bad methodology techniques to grind out junk science papers. 
• Wanting to increase their very important citation counts which help determine their career trajectory (the number of citations their papers have received), scientists often give their papers misleading titles claiming that something was established which was not actually established, or make impressive claims in the abstracts of such papers that are not justified by anything in such papers. 
• Wanting to make their papers seem more well-supported so that they get published, scientists often include illegitimate references to other papers, often claiming the papers showed something they did not show, or citing low-quality papers that should not be referenced because the research failed to follow good experimental practice. 
• Not wanting to waste too much time on anonymous peer-review activities that do not benefit their standing,  and not wishing to condemn bad procedures that they themselves may use, scientists very often approve the publication of papers using bad techniques and misleading claims.
• Wishing to get prestige from publishing results that sound impressive, scientific paper publishers allow papers following bad methodology, and fail to assert effective publication standards for scientific papers. 
• Wishing to make it look like important research is being done at their institution (something that will lead to a collection of more tuition fees), colleges and universities shamelessly hype, exaggerate and mislead when issuing press releases about scientific papers published by the professors at their institution.
• Not wishing to have the "product prestige" of their college or university decreased by scandal, which might decrease tuition revenue, universities and colleges do little to investigate complaints of unethical or misleading conduct by their professors, and do little to watch out for such conduct. 
• Wishing very much to publish sensational science stories on web pages that generate advertising revenue proportional to their page views, "science news" websites either uncritically reproduce  unwarranted but interesting claims made in university press releases, or produce their own headlines and news stories which describe such claims with even greater hype, and in an even more exaggerated way, to get even greater page views and greater advertising revenue. 
• Wishing to increase their own page view counts or book sales by offering alluring "Grand Explanations," science journalists parrot whatever dubious "Grand Explanations" are being offered by scientists, and fail to apply critical scrutiny to such explanations.
• Not wanting to tolerate critics that expose and debunk the "Grand Explanations" being offered at their institutions, which might make people a lot more reluctant to pay high tuition fees at colleges and universities,  colleges and universities deny professorial positions to dissidents and contrarians, fail to mention evidence against the defects of the "Grand Explanations" they are promoting, and fail to tell students about  reasonable alternatives to the "Grand Explanations" they are promoting. 
• Wanting to get money from authoring "Grand Explanation" books, professors and science journalists write books that have many misstatements and distortions.
•  Wanting to get money from publishing "Grand Explanation" books offering explanations as grand and sweeping as possible, publishers publish books by scientists that have many misstatements, exaggerations and distortions.
• Wanting to get prestige from scientific papers or scientist statements in support of what they are selling, corporations provide various forms of funding (direct or indirect) to professors inclined to produce research (or produce statements) that support whatever products or services the corporations are trying to sell, or who make statements that help their bottom line (such as statements denigrating competitor products or services). 

What we have here is a largely corrupt system in which various parties (professors, colleges, universities, science journalists, corporations, "science news" sources, science paper publishers and book publishers) are financially motivated to produce or promote misleading but impressive-sounding content. There are "perverse incentives" all over the place, leading to an abundance of erroneous claims.   A 2017 scientific paper stated, "we will ...describe how perverse incentives and hypercompetition are altering academic behavior of researchers and universities, reducing scientific progress and increasing unethical actions." The same paper has a section title of "Perverse Incentives in Research Academia: The New Normal?"

A 2016 scientific paper is entitled "Current Incentives for Scientists Lead to Underpowered Studies with Erroneous Conclusions."  Below is a quote (I'll omit the reference numbers in the original text):

"Current incentive structures in science, combined with existing conventions such as a significance level of 5%, encourage rational scientists to adopt a research strategy that is to the detriment of the advancement of scientific knowledge. Given finite resources, the importance placed on novel findings, and the emphasis on a relatively small number of publications, scientists wishing to accelerate their career progression should conduct a large number of exploratory studies, each of which will have low statistical power. Since the conclusions of underpowered studies are highly likely to be erroneous, this means that most published findings are likely to be false. The results of our model support this conclusion. Indeed, given evidence that with sufficient analytical flexibility (known as p-hacking) almost any dataset can produce a statistically significant (and therefore publishable) finding, our results are likely to be conservative...Ioannidis concluded—on the basis of simulations of the impact of varying types of bias—that most published research findings are false. Button and colleagues showed that the average statistical power of studies in neuroscience is likely to be very low, and there is evidence that this problem exists across different domains of biomedical science. Recently, the Open Science Collaboration reported that of 100 psychology studies selected from leading journals, only a minority of findings (approximately 40%) could be replicated." 

Because of problems like the ones just mentioned, the world of the "Grand Explanation" professors is often rather like an athletic league in which the players are taking bribes to perform poorly in certain games -- not through direct cash payments but through various indirect incentives that make the bribery not so noticeable.  A professor and a PhD candidate write the following:

"The steady growth of perverse incentives, and their instrumental role in faculty research, hiring and promotion practices, amounts to a systemic dysfunction endangering scientific integrity. There is growing evidence that today’s research publications too frequently suffer from lack of replicability, rely on biased data-sets, apply low or sub-standard statistical methods, fail to guard against researcher biases, and overhype their findings. In other words, an overemphasis on quantity versus quality. It is therefore not surprising that scrutiny has revealed a troubling level of unethical activity, outright faking of peer review, and retractions. The Economist recently highlighted the prevalence of shoddy and non-reproducible modern scientific research and its high financial cost to society. They strongly suggested that modern science is untrustworthy and in need of reform."

The behavior of very many "Grand Explanation" professors is a huge betrayal of trust. Many millions have placed their trust in professors, anointing them as their primary guides to understanding reality.  With such great trust comes an expectation of extremely upright and first-class behavior. But again and again professors have betrayed such trust, by failing to act according to proper principles of honesty and candor, and acting as if their chief interest was in promoting their own prestige and career advancement, their own belief systems, and the vested interests of themselves and their colleagues. Many millions who decided that professors should be their compasses are being pointed in the wrong direction by professors who act like broken compasses. 

There is a way out of the degenerative spiral of overconfident "grand explanation" science-flavored ideology.  The way out is a path that can be called rollback and reform. 

In the software industry the term "rollback" is used to mean when a version of a software is withdrawn because of errors in it.  We can use the word "rollback" in a scientific context to mean a case of retracting some explanatory claim and reverting to a state of saying that the cause of something is unknown.  Although scientific academia rarely does rollbacks, they sometimes occur. Some examples are below:

• In the BICEP2 affair, scientists first claimed that they had discovered faint traces or aftereffects of primordial cosmic inflation. Later in the same year they retracted that claim, admitting they were not sure whether the faint signals observed were from mere dust. 
• At the beginning of the year 2020 scientists were saying they knew that COVID-19 had a purely natural origin. But now very many scientists are saying that they do not know whether COVID-19 did or did not result from a lab leak. 
• In 2020 scientists announced they had discovered phosphine in the atmosphere of Venus, phosphine that might have a biological source. But by the end of that year the claim had largely been rolled back, with many scientists disputing the claim.  

"Grading their own term papers," our "Grand Explanation" professors have sewed on their own shirts many a self-devised merit badge they did not deserve.  They have adorned their mantles with self-devised trophies, by prematurely declaring without warrant that they understand great mysteries a thousand miles over their heads such as the origin of mind, the origin of major biological innovations and the origin of humans. Scientists should do a rollback of such vastly overconfident and never-warranted claims.  Rather than replacing their faulty "grand explanations" with some other explanation, their first step should be to simply revert to a state of very humbly saying "we don't know the answers to most of the biggest origins questions." Replacing hubris with humility, they should stop pretending to understand so many big things they don't understand.  Along with a rollback of unwarranted and failing "grand explanations," there should occur a reformation of the faulty academia practices and perverse incentives which helped to cause such poor explanations to sit on thrones for such a long time. 

An Apparition Was Their Death Notice

Very strangely, many a modern scientist is a kind of person of a hundred unreasonable taboos. A judge of submissions to a scientific journal will be very likely to refuse publication to almost any scientific paper reporting or suggesting something like alien abductions, UFOs, apparition sightings, extrasensory perception, precognition, out-of-body experiences, prophetic dreams, faith healing, inexplicable seance events, clairvoyance, telekinesis, Bigfoot sightings, signs of design in biology, spooky inexplicable patterns, psychometry, signs of design in the universe, evidence for ancient aliens, inexplicable trance phenomena, mysterious organism sightings, poltergeist activity, intercessory prayer successes, motions of galaxies in conflict with standard cosmology, inexplicable water phenomena, channeling, reincarnation, inexplicable knowledge of the dead displayed by mediums, alleged miracles, spiritual possession, near-death experiences, as well as fifty or a hundred other phenomena. There exists a culture in much of academia in which the serious study of such topics is for all practical purposes prohibited. It's almost as if the libraries of academia had bookshelves labeled like the ones below:

Let us look at some interesting reports from the countless volumes which our "read only what supports my beliefs" professors refuse to look at. In the posts below I have described well over 200 cases of people who reported seeing an apparition of someone who had died, but whose death was unknown to the person seeing the apparition:

25 Who Were "Ghost-Told" of a Death

25 More Who Were "Ghost-Told" of a Death

Yet Another 25 Who Were “Ghost-Told” of a Death

Scientific American's Very Lame "Ghost Explanations"

They Also Were "Ghost Told" of a Death

More Accounts of Veridical Apparitions

Even More Cases of Veridical Apparitions

When Apparitions Serve as Announcements

Still More Cases of Veridical Apparitions

When Apparitions Act as News Bulletins

They Too Were "Ghost-Told" of a Death

Let us look at still more cases of this type. 

A Thomas Savage reported at a large conference in 1817 that a wife saw an apparition of her husband about the time he was murdered.  At the time she was with  three other people, who apparently all saw the apparition. We read the following:

"The moment before the spirit disappeared, my sister cried, ' He is dead, he is dead !' and fainted away. The boy ran to his father, and wept, because he would not stay a short time. After this, we received a letter, sealed with black, (the dark emblem of mortality), bearing the doleful but expected news, that on such a night my brother-in-law was found weltering in his blood, in returning from the mess-room. Life was not quite gone ; the last wish he breathed in the ears of those who surrounded him was to see his wife and child. It was granted him in a certain sense ; for that very hour in which he died in the island of Minorca, that same hour he appeared to his wife, his child, and eldest sister, in Doncaster."

In a nineteenth century work we read this account:

"A little before Michaelmas, 1763, my brother George, who was a good young man, went to sea. The day after Michaelmas-day, about midnight, 1 saw him standing by my bed-side, surrounded by a glorious light, and looking earnestly at me. He was wet all over. That night the ship in which he sailed split upon a rock, and all the crew were drowned."

In the same work we read this account:

"On April 9, 1767, about midnight, I was lying awake, and 1 saw my brother John standing by my bed-side. Just at that time he died in Jamaica."   

In the same work we read this account:

"During the celebrated Peninsular campaign, as a lady, whose son, a French officer in Spain, was seated in her room, she was astonished to perceive the folding doors at the bottom of the apartment slowly open, and disclose to her eyes, her son . He begged her not to be alarmed, and informed her that he had just been killed by a grape-shot, and even showed her the wound in his side ; the doors closed again and she saw no more. In a few days she received a letter, which informed her that her son had fallen, after distinguishing himself in a most gallant manner, and mentioning the time of his death, which happened at precisely the same moment the apparition was seen by her." 

Jan Hunter reported in 2014 an account of seeing a Mr. Strictly dressed differently from the many times she had previously seen her:

"When I was growing up in north London, our two neighbours — rather aptly named Mr and Mrs Strictly — were a familiar sight. You simply never missed them, thanks to their eccentric dress-sense. They were an elderly couple who always stepped out in immaculate, but stiffly formal attire...One morning, when I was a 24-year-old teacher, I raced out to my car and saw Mr Strictly standing by the gate. I stopped in my tracks because, for the first time ever, he didn’t have his hat on.  Instead, he had a mass of wild, white hair — I remember noticing the individual strands which were blowing in the breeze. That sense of frivolity seemed to match his mood because, as he turned and smiled at me, I saw a happiness that I’d never seen before. He looked at me as if to say ‘I’m free’ — the sense of release was almost palpable — and I noticed his shirt-sleeves were rolled up, his studded collar had been removed and his shirt and waistcoat were unbuttoned. What’s more, his hands were casually in his pockets, which I’d never seen before."

Hunter then found out that this Mr. Strictly had died ten days earlier. At the same site we read of a librarian reporting seeing a book-loving man she did not know was dead: 

"She almost gave a start when she saw me and blurted out: ‘Oh Pam, the most funny thing just happened. Your Dad was wandering around the shelves looking for something to read, but when I looked away for a second, he totally vanished.  I don’t know what happened to him — and I’m worried.’ The colour drained from her face when I told her Dad had passed nearly a week before. She was utterly insistent she’d seen him."

The works of the astronomer Camille Flammarion on paranormal phenomena are must-reads for any serious scholar of parapsychology.  Those works include the three volumes of his monumental trilogy Death and Its Mystery (which you can read here, here and here), his work Mysterious Psychic Forces (which you can read here), and his great work The Unknown (which you can read here).  

On page 87 of his work The Unknown, we read the following:

"One day, in his students’ chamber, he, being perfectly awake, had a clear vision of his father, exactly as if he were standing there. The vision lasted but a moment. My friend had no reason whatever to expect his father’s death. Yet he, who was by profession a tuner at Tours, had met with a terrible accident. In assisting to take a piano up a staircase, it had fallen on his body and crushed him, so that death ensued.  Now, after he received this news, Ferdinand could well understand how the moment when he had seen the apparition coincided with that of his father’s death."

On page 100 of the same work, we read the following:

"My mother was sitting in a room in the lower story of her house, either knitting or sewing, when suddenly she saw before her her eldest brother, who lived in a village in the arrondissement of Toulon, about twenty-five miles distant. Her brother, whom she recognized perfectly, said ' Adieu,' and disappeared. My mother much excited, hastened to her husband and cried, ‘My brother has just died !’ She knew he was ill. The next day or the day after, news reached them of the decease of my uncle, which happened in the afternoon, precisely at the time of the apparition."

On the next page we read this account by a P. Busserole of seeing an apparition in a train station, following a kind of seizure:

"The figure of my father appeared and disappeared, and at the same moment the thought came to me — was borne in upon me — that I could not refrain from expressing it in these words : ‘ My father is now dying.'  I had the idea fixed in my head all night as I travelled onward. I tried to make myself entertain another conviction. I arrived at rny home, which was in the Department of La Charente, about six in the morning. There they told me that my fatlier had died at six o’clock the evening before. About an hour before his death he had several times earnestly asked for me, and my absence caused him to shed tears. This coincided with the moment I had seen his apparition in the Redon station."

On page 110 we read this account from an Emma Lutz:

"My father for seven years had been on bad terms with his son, and did not even know where he was living; he appeared to this son two hours before his death. My brother, as he left his chamber at seven o’clock, saw our father about two yards away from him, and asked him affectionately, ‘ Why have you come here ?’ My father answered, ‘ To look lor you,’ and disappeared immediately....It was December 3, 1889. I was at that time sitting beside the bed of my father, who was asleep. At nine o’clock he died with out having regained consciousness."

On page 157 we read this account from a Wekecian Biliowsky:

 "I was a student at the University of Kieff, and, though young, was already married...My adored wife was suddenly taken ill with influenza, and though she was so young she sank under it rapidly. Paralysis of the heart carried her off as suddenly as a flash of lightning. My father was living at Pulkowo. He knew nothing of the illness of his charming daughter-in-law, but he knew she was with me at Moscow, so that great was his surprise to see her standing 'beside him, as he left his house, and for a moment she accompanied him, then she disappeared. Seized with fear and anguish, he sent us a telegram at once to ask after my dear one. It was the very day of her death."

On pages 163-164 we read of a Mrs. Wheatcroft who saw an apparition of her soldier husband: 

"Towards morning of the night between the 14th and 15th of November, she dreamed that she saw her husband ill and anxious, at which she immediately awoke with her mind much excited. It was bright moonlignt, and as she opened her eyes she again saw her husband standing beside her bed. He was dressed in uniform, his hands were pressed against his breast, his hair was in disorder, and his face pale. His great black eyes looked at her fixedly, and his mouth was contracted. She saw him, and all particulars of his clothing, as distinctly as she had ever seen him dtirmg her whole life; and she remembers to have remarked between his hands a piece of his white shirt, which, however, was not stained with blood, he seemed to lean forward with an air of suffering, and he made an effort to speak, but did not utter a sound. The apparition lasted about a minute, then it vanished....In the following month of December, a telegram announcing the death of Captain Wheatcroft was published by the War Office in London. It said that he had been killed before Lucknow, on the 15th of November."

On page 91 of The Unknown by Flammarion we read that a sister cried, "It's brother Francois!" and ran to greet her brother, "but at the moment when she should have reached him he disappeared, which frightened her terribly." At the same hour another sibling of this brother heard the brother's voice saying, "I am about to die," followed by "I am dying," followed by "I am dead."  The siblings later learned that the brother had died on the same day as these events.  

A Dr. Kerner states the following:

"We need not be surprised at these phenomena, when we remember that dying persons — when the soul is yet in the body, but the spirit is free — have it in their power to appear, in their own image, to distant friends. Thus did a relation of my friend. Dr. Seyffer's, appear to him, at the moment of death ; as did also his academical friend, Prince Hohenlohe, to Dr. Oesterlen."

In her long fascinating book The Night Side of Nature, Catherine Crowe cites an account, saying that she can vouch for its authenticity. The account is that a son and mother sailed from Jamaica towards England, leaving the husband behind "quite well" in Jamaica. On the ship the son said he saw the father. The mother reported the incident to the captain, who recorded the date.  Shortly after arriving in England, the mother found the father had died during her voyage.

In the same book on page 167 we have one of the earliest published accounts of out-of-body experiences. We read this (in which "somnambulic patients" refers to people put in a deep trance through hypnosis:

"The girl at Canton, for example, mentioned in a former chapter, declared, as do many somnambulic patients, that, whilst their bodies are lying stiff and cold, they see it, as if out of it ; and in some instances, they describe particulars of its appearance, which they could not see in the ordinary way. There are also numerous cases of sick persons seeing themselves double, where no tendency to delirium or spectral illusion had been observed. These are, in this country, always placed under the latter category; but I find various instances recorded by the German physiologists, where this appearance has been seen by others, and even by children, at the same time that it was felt by the invalid. In one of these cases, I find the sick person saying, ' I cannot think how I am lying. It seems to me that I am divided, and lying in two places at once.'  It is remarkable, that a friend of my own, during an illness in the autumn of 1845, expressed precisely the same feeling; we however saw nothing of this second ego; but it must be remembered, that the seeing these things, as I have said in a former chapter, probably depends on a peculiar faculty or condition of the seer." 

The claim about the German physiologists is a very interesting one, suggesting cases in which a person might have a sensation of an out-of-body experience at the same time that some apparition of him might be seen by other people.

Serious scholarly study of the paranormal is a multi-year project that requires reading hundreds of long volumes filled with original eyewitness accounts and experimental reports. In reference to my first paragraph, I must emphasize that we should always assume (unless there is clear evidence to the contrary) that any professor talking about any aspect of the paranormal is a person who knows very little or nothing about such a topic. Given the extremely strong taboos in academia against all aspects of the paranormal, your default assumption should be that any scientist or professor talking about the paranormal has never seriously studied the topic he is talking about. We should only assume a professor or a scientist is a serious scholar of anomalous phenomena if we can find online writings in which he displays abundant study of original source materials relating to the paranormal. A large fraction of all  science professors these days are "straw-hole scholars" with an extremely narrow field of study, and when they speak of things "outside of their straw-hole," they often go seriously wrong.  But many a professor will briefly and dogmatically lecture us about deep spooky topics he has never seriously studied, like some plumber lecturing you about nuclear physics, or some truck driver lecturing you about cellular biochemistry. 

Now, a professor might argue that while he has never studied apparition sightings, he has studied things that shows they must be groundless. He may claim that he has learned various things that show that the human mind must purely be a product of the brain, and that such things show there can be nothing to reports of a human soul or spirit appearing outside of its body.  But such claims of knowledge would be unfounded.  There are no such claims that stand up to critical scrutiny. 

To the contrary, none of the chief aspects of mind and memory can be credibly explained by neural activity. Scientists have no credible theory of memory storage, and they sound silly when they try to explain such a thing by muttering empty phrases such as "synapse strengthening." as strengthening is not storage.  There is nothing in the human brain resembling something that could write or read memories, and no neuroscientist can credibly explain how human learned knowledge could ever be translated into synapse states or brain states. While memories can last for 60 years, the synapses which scientists appeal to as a place of memory storage are very volatile things that do not persist for years; and the proteins that make up such synapses have average lifetimes of only a few weeks.  Humans can form permanent new memories instantly (much faster than the time it takes for synapse strengthening). No scientist can give a credible explanation of how memories can last for decades, nor can he provide a credible explanation of how a human could instantly recall a memory using a brain lacking any feature that could allow such instant recall (the brain lacking anything like a read mechanism, an indexing system or a coordinate system that might make possible instant recall).  Neuroscientists lack any credible explanation for such things as thinking, spirituality, imagination, self-hood and creativity. Nor can any neuroscientist explain how memories and intelligence can persist very well with little impact when a patient suddenly loses half of his brain in a hemispherectomy operation to stop seizures.  Low-level neuroscience findings suggest the brain is too slow and too noisy to be anything that could explain human mental phenomena. 

Until all such things are credibly explained by the neuroscientist, he has no business at all dismissing apparition sightings. In fact, apparition sightings, evidence for out-of-body experiences,  and the too-little-studied low-level factual findings of neuroscience (not to be confused with the unfounded high-level dogmatic claims of neuroscientists) are all in good agreement, all suggesting that human mentality must involve some great reality very different from brain activity. 

Postscript: Flammarion's account of the Wheatcroft apparition dates from 1900, but an earlier account matching his occurs in the 1876 scientific paper "Second Sight, or Deuteroscopia." On page 13 of that paper, we read this: 

"Captain Wheatcroft, an officer in the Inniskilling Dragoons, having exchanged into the Carabineers, was present, and was gazetted as having perished, at the siege of Lucknow, on the 15th November, 1S57. His wife, who remained with her mother in Cambridge, on the night of the 14th November, saw, first in dream, and then apparently standing by her bedside, her husband, wearing his regimentals, agitated, painstricken, but not blood-stained. The image remained sufficiently long that she noted particulars, such as the whiteness of his shirt, &c. So convinced was the lady of the reality of this interview, that she disclosed her secret to her mother, and deported herself as a widow. Delay and difficulty occurred in reconciling the discrepancy which existed between the official report in the War Office and the conviction of Mrs. W. ; but ultimately, six months afterwards, it was placed beyond a doubt that Captain W. fell in a charge on the 14th. A painful blunder was thus corrected by an apparition, whether seen by the material or the mental eye."