A Call From Heaven: Personal Accounts of Deathbed Visits, Angelic Visions, and Crossings to the Other Side

By Josie Varga and Peter Fenwick

What happens when we die? Do we really die alone? What if death is not the end but a new beginning?

As the dying prepare to leave this world, they often begin to get a glimpse of what lies beyond through deathbed visits from deceased loved ones, strangers, and angelic or divine figures. Religious beliefs appear to have no bearing on these experiences—even atheists and nonbelievers have reported such phenomena. At times these visits are experienced by others in the room, offering incredible validity to the idea that life truly does continue.

A Call from Heaven will:

Report a wide variety of recent, documented deathbed visits from around the world.

Introduce you to the many different forms of deathbed phenomena, including angelic visions, shared-death experiences, gateway or portal appearances, and many others.

Highlight accredited research by renowned experts and scientists.

Present substantial evidence—perhaps the most compelling to date—that we do not die alone.

A Call from Heaven illustrates that death is not the end and that we all will be guided to the other side, comforting those who are grieving and removing the fear of death for all of us.

• Language: English
• Publisher: New Page Books
• Release date: Mar 20, 2017
• ISBN: 9781632659224

Book preview

Comatose to Lucid Right Before Death

Terminal lucidity, seen time and time again, is a term used to describe the unexpected return of mental clarity and responsiveness shortly before death in those who were previously incoherent.

One of the most amazing cases on record is Anna Katharina Ehmer (1895–1922), a severely disabled woman who lived in a mental institution. University of Virginia Researchers Bruce Greyson, MD, and Michael Nahm, PhD, explore Ehmer’s case in a paper published in Omega—Journal of Death and Dying.

Ehmer never spoke a word her entire life but, according to reports, this changed on her deathbed when she shocked doctors by singing songs for 30 minutes prior to her death. The head pastor, Friedrich Happich, was asked to join Dr. Wilhelm Wittneben at Ehmer’s bedside. When the two men entered the room, they were shocked by what they witnessed. When we entered the room together, we did not believe our eyes or ears, wrote Happich. Kathe, who had never spoken a single word, being entirely mentally disabled from birth on, sang dying songs to herself. Specifically, she sang over and over again, ‘Where does the soul find its home, its peace? Peace, peace, Heavenly peace!’ For half an hour she sang. Her face, up to then so stultified, was transfigured and spiritualized. Then she quietly passed away.¹

Both Happich and Wittneben wrote similar accounts of what happened. In fact, they pointed out that Ehmer had never given them any indication that she was even remotely aware of her environment. From birth on, she was seriously retarded, according to Happich. She had never learned to speak a single word. She stared for hours on a particular spot, then she fidgeted for hours without a break. She gorged her food, fouled herself day and night, uttered an animal-like sound, and slept.²

According to skeptics who have reviewed this case, the fact that Ehmer did not speak her entire life does not prove that she couldn’t speak. Perhaps, they speculate, she chose not to speak. I tend to agree with the skeptics because it is difficult to authenticate these reports from almost a century ago. However, the idea that such a story would be identically fabricated by two respected individuals doesn’t make sense.

Also, this account of terminal lucidity taken in conjunction with those that have since been reported only gives it more credibility. People with Alzheimer’s disease and schizophrenia with severely impaired mental workings have suddenly regained intellectual clarity shortly before death.

The majority of neuroscientists have, up until now, asserted that once the brain is damaged, normal mental reasoning and perception becomes impossible. But new research suggests that this is not necessarily always the case.

Professor Alexander Batthyany, PhD, teaches courses in behavioral science and philosophy at the University of Vienna in Austria. At the time of this writing, he is currently conducting a large-scale study on terminal lucidity in those stricken with Alzheimer’s disease. Thus far, his preliminary findings suggest that normal cognition can occur despite a severely damaged brain. However, his research has found that this only occurs when a person is near death.

Conventional science has no explanation for this. Professor Batthyany has called these deathbed phenomena close to a miracle, however, he admits, I am not sure whether miracle is a good word, but it is deeply mystifying given what we know about the relationship between mental function and brain integrity.³

I then questioned him about why he decided to undertake such a study.

Why do I study this? How could I not? The day I heard about this phenomenon, I was surprised that so few people look into it. In the beginning, I was slightly skeptical whether I would find cases. Now, I have so many that I wonder how I will be able to cope with all the data which need to be analyzed.... There is a growing database which seems to point to a far more complex picture of the relation between brain, mind and self than we tend to assume.⁴

Professor Batthyany has conducted several other research projects and his impressive work has been cited in numerous books and publications. In another paper he authored, Complex Visual Imagery and Cognition During Near-Death Experiences, he studied cases of enhanced conscious awareness and visual imagery during near-death experiences. The results of this study were published in the Journal of Near-Death Studies in 2015, in which he writes, Together with case studies of terminal lucidity and mindsight, our findings of enhanced mentation and visual imagery during severe physiological crises appear to therefore indicate that, at least near death, the relationship between cognition, perception, and their neuronal correlates might be more complex than traditionally thought.⁵

As an example, Alzheimer’s disease kills nerve cells and tissue in the brain. Through time, those affected by the disease lose almost all of their normal brain functions beginning with memory loss. Although someone stricken with Alzheimer’s, schizophrenia, or any other mental disorder may suddenly become coherent on their deathbed there are no observable changes in the brain. In other words, the nerve cells in the damaged brain don’t suddenly become alive and allow communication to take place.

The brain doesn’t suddenly fill up with new neurons. The brain remains exactly how it was prior to the terminal lucidity taking place. This means that conventional science is incomplete and additional research certainly needs to be conducted. In addition, according to Terminal Lucidity: A Review and a Case Collection, published by researchers at the University of Iceland and the University of Virginia, Several of these accounts suggest that during terminal lucidity, memory and cognitive abilities may function by neurologic processes different from those of the normal brain. We expect that significant contributions to better understanding the processes involved in memory and cognition processing might be gained through in-death studies of terminal lucidity.⁶

One of the more recent remarkable cases is reported by Dr. Scott Haig, a New York–based orthopedic surgeon. In 2007, Dr. Haig chronicled a patient named David, who died from lung cancer, in the TIME article The Brain: The Power of Hope. His body was so filled with cancer that it spread to his brain. In fact, Haig noted, there was barely any brain left at all, leaving him both speechless and motionless.

The cerebral machine that talked and wondered, winked and sang, remembered jokes and birthdays and where the big fish hid on hot days, was nearly gone, replaced by lumps of haphazardly growing gray stuff. Gone with that machine seemed David as well. No expression, no response to anything we did. As far as I could tell, he was just not