Dr. Carla Willis-Brandon explores deathbed visions—structured, purposeful encounters with deceased relatives at the moment of death—contrasting them with chaotic hallucinations or near-death experiences (NDEs). Research from the 1960s in America and India documented consistent cases, including comatose patients suddenly animated by interactions with the dead. A 1907 Harvard study and recent German/English observations noted unexplained weight loss at death, suggesting a physical "life substance" departure. Callers share accounts: a South African psychiatrist witnessed geriatric patients speaking to empty rooms, a Texas caller saw his stepsister appear healthy post-death, and a Florida man felt compelled to leave water after his nephew’s collapse nearby. Willis-Brandon argues these phenomena demand open scientific inquiry despite institutional skepticism and unresolved grief. [Automatically generated summary]
From the high desert and the great American Southwest, I bid you all good evening and or good morning wherever you may be across this great land of ours from Guam, way out across the date line in the west eastward to the Caribbean and the U.S. Virgin Islands, south into South America, north all the way to the Pole.
This is Coast to Coast, A.M., and I'm Art Bell.
Good morning, everybody.
Well, anybody out there know what Eco Challenge is?
Did you happen to see it?
I certainly recommended, you'll recall, that you watch it.
Anyway, in a moment, we have an extreme team to speak with you, which made it all the way through the Echo Challenge.
Tell you all about it in a moment.
Actually, that's really a good way to come into this segment.
It's good for all segments, I'm slowly deciding.
Anybody out there know what Echo Challenge is?
In 1992, Mark Burnett of Survivor fame created Echo Challenge way back in 92.
Based the idea on the New Zealand-based multi-sport and European endurance races, popular during the early 80s, he lengthened the race, removed assistance grews, added a strong environmental message.
Savan 2000 is the seventh Echo Challenge.
Borneo, which is what we're going to talk about tonight, redefined Adventure as 76 four-person teams from 26 different countries set out on what I call non-stop torture.
They call it non-stop expedition race, racing through the wild and exotic islands of the Borneo area.
Teams travel day and night, no sleep, little sleep, grueling 320-mile race.
They faced a host of physical challenges from paddling outrigger canoes to maneuvering mountain bikes along ancient headhunter trails.
Oh, wonderful.
Swimming down swollen jungle rivers, trekking through dense leech-infested jungles, climbing and rappelling down a 300-foot cliff, the longest rappel in Echo Challenge history, and navigating the unforgiving lowlands and deep bat-infested caves.
Oh yeah, the cave.
Teams must have at least one member of the opposite sex and must cross the finish line together.
If a team loses a member to illness, injury, fatigue, or disagreement, they are disqualified.
And we are honored tonight to have the majority of one of those teams with us.
I hope.
They are Playboy Extreme Team members, Dan L. Fultra.
Now, I know this sounds wild.
Why would they have, how could you possibly have on this kind of thing, Playboy Centerfolds?
Dan L. Fultra was captain of Playboy Extreme Team.
And let me, see, she was, there's so much to say about all of them in so little time.
Miss April 1995.
All of them are athletes.
There's Kaylin Olson.
And Kaylin was a Playboy Playmate in 1997.
Miss August, I believe.
Jennifer Lavoie.
And she was really something.
They really portrayed her in a very interesting way on television.
Jennifer was Miss August's Playboy Playmate in 1993.
I have never had such three on my lines before.
I hope all of this works.
Now, check my website, and you will see a picture of these gals.
In fact, the whole team.
And there are links to, I think Jennifer has a website.
You'll be able to see Jennifer.
Remember, a little bit of it is adult-oriented, but what we're going to talk about right now is what they did and why they did it.
I guess, number one, what kept you all from quitting?
You probably all have your own answers for that, I would imagine.
unidentified
Yeah, this is Jennifer.
I think they even captured it during the show where I said I did not want to quit.
I didn't want to be the one to go to sleep at night knowing that I caused our team to not be able to finish the eco challenge because I see these girls a lot and I didn't want to have to see their faces and be like, have them look at me like, thanks.
We could have finished the Eco Challenge had it been for you.
Yeah, in other words, you had to, before you even started up the rope, you had to walk through the bat poop, right?
unidentified
Oh, yeah, you walked right through it, and I had actually fallen in it up to my thighs, and my face almost landed in what they call, I don't remember the name of it, but it's the deadliest spider.
I mean, you definitely didn't see all of it, but that whole day for me was just, I was really sick.
I had finally I I drank so much of the the brown, dirty pond scum water the day before, and it just did not sit with my stomach.
I was extremely sick.
And, you know, it's not fun when you really have to go to the bathroom and you have a harness on and you're just not feeling yourself.
And I was just so sick.
And then, you know, the whole climbing thing, it was just so much more than I had ever thought.
And even the number one, even the winning team, Team Eco Internet, said, you know, we thought this was going to be a quick, you know, run through the cave and run back to the beach.
I mean, everybody was shocked at how difficult that whole climbing part was.
Well, I guess, you know, when we hadn't slept for so long and it probably hit us all about this around the same time because we had been awake for so many days and you just, you're exhausted and you just don't want to, you know, you're short-tempered.
And like Jenny said, we just, the trek turned into, I don't know how many hours it took us to get up that mountain.
We had two peaks to climb and then, you know, the 300-foot rappel.
And then we got poured on in a jungle.
We didn't even think we were going to make it to PC because it was raining so hard.
And all of a sudden, there were like rivers where there weren't rivers before.
You did why you found it in the middle of the night or something?
unidentified
Yeah, I was actually, we were on our bikes, and there was one on my leg, and I just had one at the time, and it just scared me to death.
I didn't know what to do.
Get it off!
Get it off!
Yeah, and then, you know, a couple days later, we're in the jungle, and there are hundreds and thousands of them on every leaf, falling out of trees, and you just, pretty much, you just get used to seeing them crawling all over you.
But I don't think you ever really get used to it.
It's, yeah, it's probably the most fast thing I've ever seen.
Is this something that somebody talked you girls into, or did you actually sit down together and say, we could do this?
I mean, how did this happen?
unidentified
Well, Danelle and Kaylin were actually scheduled to do it, I think, six weeks prior to the race, which is, I mean, people trained for this race for a year.
So in other words, quality torture is really expensive.
unidentified
Yes, exactly.
You're paying for the torture.
But you know what?
People don't understand.
Adventure races, they do it for the love of the sport.
They don't really do it for the money.
And the winning teams, especially the top five, I mean, they're racing to try to become the number one racing team, adventure racing team in the world.
That's going beyond what a human being, the point where they can go, and then somehow mustering it up inside and continuing on.
Girls, hold on for a moment.
We're at the bottom of the hour.
And then, of course, there's the issue of why would Playboy centerfolds choose to do this?
Grizzled guys with, you know, big guns, yeah, maybe.
unidentified
But these girls, why?
Pretty woman walking down the street.
Pretty woman, the kind I like to meet.
Pretty woman.
I don't believe you.
You know the truth.
No one could look as good as you.
Mercy.
Pretty woman.
Won't you pardon me, pretty woman?
I couldn't help but be pretty woman I couldn't help but be pretty woman I couldn't help but be pretty woman I couldn't help but be pretty woman I couldn't help but be pretty woman I couldn't help but be pretty woman I couldn't help but be pretty woman I couldn't help but be pretty woman I couldn't help but be pretty woman I couldn't help but be pretty woman I couldn't help but be pretty woman I couldn't help but be pretty woman I couldn't help but be pretty woman I couldn't help but
be pretty woman I couldn't help but be pretty woman I couldn't help but be pretty woman I couldn't help but be pretty woman I couldn't help but be pretty woman I couldn't help but be pretty woman I couldn't help but be pretty woman Call, Art Bell, in the Kingdom of Nye, from west of the Rockies at 1-800-618-8255.
East of the Rockies, 1-800-825-5033.
First-time callers may rechart at 1-775-727-1222.
And the wildcard line is open at 1-775-727-1295.
To rechart on the toll-free international line, call your AT ⁇ T operator and have them dial 800-893-0903.
This is Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell from the Kingdom of Nine.
Well, they would probably say with you, but we both know it.
We both know.
We both know it was at you.
We all know.
unidentified
You know what's funny, though?
Those same people that were laughing, when we crossed the finish line, they were like, we're so proud of you.
So I think they knew as of like maybe the second day that, hey, you know, wow, they heard about our bike incident and they were like, wow, these girls are really in this race to finish.
Mark Burnett was saying that after everybody managed to get up out of the bath poop and then climb, which was horrible, I know for you, but then once you've done that and you get up to the top and you climb a little further and you see how far you have to go, that I guess was Jen's probably worst moment.
I was so mad.
Yeah, angry, right.
Burnett said he said that everybody would be angry when they got up there and saw what was ahead of them.
unidentified
Well, you know, when we were getting up there, I saw the flag and I started almost running, like, if you can call that running up that cliff.
And we get there and you look over and you can see it on TV.
You can see the highest peak.
And it's like, oh, my God.
You know, we have that far to go.
And let me tell you something, the tears just fell because you're so discouraged.
You think you're at the top and it looks like what looks to be days away.
And I'll tell you, though, they captured it.
When we got up there, we were just like, you know, thank God we made it here.
And little do we know, the descent was just as hell.
Did you begin to gain respect as I assume that from time to time teams pass each other and interact more than you might know if you watch the TV program?
Is that true?
unidentified
Oh, that's the most, that's the best part, Hunt Kaylin.
The camaraderie, just the team spirit.
You see everybody, you know, you see the same team.
Actually, when I was watching the show, I would see like the guys from Boogie Aspen and a couple teams.
I'm like, oh, my God, I love him.
You know, he's so nice.
And, hey, you know, we got them through the jungle section.
Yeah, there are times where you spent hours with the same team, with another team.
Janelle and I, when we were checking by ourselves, we joined up with another team and we went up the mountain together.
And then a huge group of teams went down together.
Is there anything that you girls can think of that you could have done differently that might have had you finish actually ranked?
unidentified
Absolutely.
How about bringing a derailer?
Yeah, I mean, as far as equipment goes, what can you do, you know?
But yeah, you never know.
I mean, you know, there are things that I watched the show like three times, and I've seen things that definitely, if we do the Eco Challenge, definitely quicker at the PCs.
A couple of the PCs, we spent like two hours, and we wasted a lot of time.
Mark's right.
You know, people, rookies that spend two to three hours, you're talking at the end of the race, they've added on like two days.
So there's definitely, we need to be a little bit faster.
I mean, it's easier to say now, but when you're there and you're totally exhausted and you're just broken down, I mean, sometimes you need that two hours.
Well, I'm afraid of high places, and I looked at that chasm that you all had to slide across and then pull yourself Up the rope to get to the other side.
I saw one fellow who did a header over his bike and I think had a branch of a tree that went through his chest up into his arm or some god-awful thing like that.
During the race, who do you think of the two sexes, which gave you the toughest time, either from before the race or just to when it began and then early on in the race?
Do you think the men or the women were laughing harder?
We were actually almost at that last peak before the rappel, and there was two guys on the ground, and we started walking up, and we were getting excited because we knew that the top was nearing us.
And the guy looked at his sick teammate, and he's like, get up, get up.
That's the effing Playboy Bunnies.
They're passing us.
So it's kind of funny.
And you know what?
And our guy teammate said, don't worry, pal.
You don't hear what you passed.
So it does.
It definitely demoralizes men.
And I'm getting a lot of bad feedback.
I'm like really surprised on USANetwork.com, they have a message board in the EcoChallenge section.
I'm so upset about it that these guys are saying that we really didn't finish and that they helped us and we basically were flown in helicopters and pulled with our boats.
He seems such a sweetheart on the regular survivor, you know, but even on Echo Challenge, he seems like a nice guy, but my God, the torture he directs.
unidentified
I think he's a great guy.
You know, he gets a bad rap sometimes, but he's a great guy.
He's a smart, you know.
I mean, God, he's a great marketer, and he loves the sport.
I mean, you know, that guy greeted every single team that crossed the finish line.
I mean, no matter what time of day, what time of night you went through.
Carl Wills-Brandon, Dr. Brandon, knows she is a doctor.
And we'll get to her and what deathbed visions are all about in a moment.
Just a couple of things to think about in the news that I just have to touch on.
By the way, we just got what an extreme pleasure it was to interview members of the Playboy Extreme Echo Challenge team in the last hour.
Absolutely amazing.
I mean, just, I don't know whether you saw Echo Challenge.
I recommend it to my audience that you see it, but nothing but respect for them.
Playmates, yes.
Beautiful Playmates, yes.
In fact, yes.
We've got photographs on my website.
If you'll go to program tonight's guest info, you'll see the Playboy Extreme team, and you'll see Jennifer Lavoie's site up there as well.
That's worth a visit, guys.
Anyway, that they did that was beyond all belief for me.
In a moment, deathbed visions.
Right now, just a couple of items.
One, from CNN, let me read a little bit of this.
While giving a boost to Mars exploration, thank you very much, the proposed 2002 budget for NASA would scrap A mission to Pluto, tighten the reins on the International Space Station, and cut programs that monitor world climate changes.
And I thought, boy, that's interesting.
They're cutting the funds for solar and alternative energy development, slashing them.
And now they're going to cut the program that monitors world climate change.
The U.S. is still trying to get its plane and people, people and plane, I guess, should be in that order back from China, and it's beginning to get pretty serious.
We've had a powerful X-Class solar flare.
As you know, we had that last night during the program, which triggered radio blackouts and a minor radiation storm, but it also hurled a coronal mass ejection toward Earth.
So, today's CME joins another CME already en route to our planet.
Now, that's pretty interesting.
Forecasters estimate now a 25% chance, at least, of severe geomagnetic activity at middle latitudes.
That would be me, when the CMEs arrive late Wednesday or Thursday.
So, in other words, one coronal mass ejection is now joining another, and they're coming right at Mother Earth.
Now, these are not as bad, thankfully, as the horrible one, the big one, the monster that missed us, but they have joined, like the perfect storm, into the perfect CME.
And it should be here late Wednesday or Thursday.
Skywatchers should be ready for the Aurora after sunset on Wednesday, tomorrow night.
So anytime after sunset, keep your eyes peeled.
And there's just one more item that I've got to get out to you, and that is, last night, toward the end of the program, oh my God, did we have some remarkable calls?
And I'm going to follow up on it.
I promise you, I'm getting zillions of email, and I'm looking for more.
We had a call from a man who said that he remembered his memory.
Well, first of all, we were talking about time.
Let me set it up that way.
We were talking about time and the nature of time and time travel and so forth and so on.
And the possibility that time travelers could manipulate time.
I think you've all seen that, that you could go back in time and change something, and then that would change everything that had ever been.
Well, think about this, folks.
Suppose somebody had changed something in the past.
We would all of a sudden, boom, like that, we'd have new memories, and the old memories would be gone.
Only maybe they wouldn't be entirely gone.
And that's where it got really interesting.
A fellow called up and basically said that, you know, he remembers from being in high school that he read a book, a history book, saying that Nelson Mandela had been killed, that he didn't get out, as we all know, and go on to freedom and running South Africa.
That instead he was killed in a different timeline.
And then I started getting emails like crazy.
Here's someone else.
Art talk about creepy.
I also remember reading in the newspaper about Mandela's death in prison.
We might be, our memories might be a little confused about some events.
And so trust me, as I am following up on the shadow people with a guest on the subject Thursday, I will find a guest on the phenomena that we're talking about right now that I don't fully understand, but another one uncovered on this program that I guarantee you we're going to follow up on.
I'll be right back.
All right.
I guess we're back sooner than we thought we were going to be, so we can do this a different way.
This has been a night of some technical nightmare.
I'll tell you right now.
We'll do it a little differently.
What we'll do is we'll do our commercial first, and then we'll do the rest of it.
Here comes Carla Wills-Brandon, M.A., Ph.D., author of eight published books on spiritual development, The Departing Visions of the Dying, Self-Esteem, Sexual Trauma, Addiction, Alternative Health, and Recovery.
That's a lot of writing.
She's appeared on a number of TV programs like Politically Incorrect, Geraldo Rivera, Montelle Williams, Sally Jesse Raphael, The Howard Stern Show, and has lectured across the United States and the United Kingdom as Will Brandon continues to work.
Howard Stern?
Continues to work as a licensed marriage and family therapist in private practice with her husband of 25 years, Michael Brandon, who's also a doctor.
The Brandons have two children, and we'll name off all her books later.
If I had even attempted to do something like that, I would have had a deathbed vision.
I'm stunned because I went to the website and I looked at these girls and they're pretty and they're slight and they're and to hear them talk about what they did, I was absolutely stunned.
Raymond Moody talks a lot about deathbed visions, and I saw that you're going to have Daniel on tomorrow night, and he'll talk about, I mean, near-death experience.
And a near-death experience is where somebody comes to the point of death and they have an experience which involves going through a tunnel, meeting up with deceased relatives, seeing a bright light, but they don't cross that boundary.
Do you think that an NDE only qualifies if the person lost all of their life signs, you know, no breathing, no heartbeat, whatever, technically really dead?
Well, yes, that's a near-death experience, but people can have experiences like that with meditation.
There have been research studies and investigations regarding people having experiences where they were in a state of danger and they had such experiences.
But the near-death experience does seem to be a real specific phenomenon.
The deathbed vision is a totally different sort of character.
That happens specifically with the passing of somebody.
As a mental health person who has done an awful lot of work with individuals who have had true blue hallucinations where they are seeing all sorts of things, and it's very chaotic, and it's never organized.
With a deathbed vision, people who are passing who have these visions typically experience the same thing.
They seem to have visions of friends or relatives who have already passed on, who are visiting them with the specific purpose of sharing with them that death is going to be okay.
Now, a lot of people, when they pass, they're unconscious.
So a person has to be conscious when they have this experience.
But there have been accounts, and I've gotten lots of emails regarding this, where someone is in a coma or somebody is unconscious, and then they do have that rally at the end, and they will be talking about having visited with their mother who passed on or their deceased partner or a child or somebody.
But yes, I can't tell you how many emails I've gotten.
It's consistent.
Account after account after account.
And there aren't a lot of books out there on this topic.
But interestingly, in the 60s, there was a huge body of research that was done by a couple of researchers.
And what they did is they took a look at people who were passing in America and people who were passing in India.
And they interviewed doctors and nurses.
And what they asked them to do was to document any unusual activity that happened at the moment of these passings.
And what these nurses and doctors reported to these researchers were these visions.
Some of the people they were sitting with were having these visions.
And so what I decided to do is I decided to update all of this and begin collecting some here and now experiences, and they're consistent.
Now, not only do the people who are getting ready to pass seem to have these visions, but it's not uncommon for those who care for them or love them or are near them or dear to them to also have some experiences.
When I was 16, my mother passed.
She was 38.
And at the exact moment of her passing, I woke up.
And she was in the hospital.
I was at home.
I intuitively knew that she was passing.
Now, a lot of people would roll their eyes and say, oh, Carla, that's just a coincidence.
But at that exact same time, two family friends in separate residences also awoke at the exact moment of my mother's passing and knew that she was no longer with us.
So there are three separate individuals awaking at the exact moment of my mother's passing.
Now, for years, I didn't talk about it because when I did try to talk about it, I was horribly ridiculed.
But working with bereavement and working with grief issues and working with trauma, I began to hear these same sorts of things.
I was at home in my bed.
All of a sudden, I had a dream that my father had come to me.
He was waving goodbye to me.
I awoke from this dream.
Ten minutes later, I received a phone call from the hospital telling me he had passed.
Okay, well, that's, that's, is that passed off as some kind of telepathy, do you think?
Or is it something from the collective consciousness, you know, kind of like a, oh, I don't know, some kind of sharp message that suddenly passes for those that can receive it, those that are close.
Interestingly, a lot of times individuals will share that they see either celestial beings bathed in white light or what they will see, and this is very interesting, and I'm not just getting this from one, two, three, ten, or twenty people, they will have visions of somebody dressed in black coming to visit them.
A lot of times the person who is getting ready to pass will talk about this, and initially when they see these people or these visitors, they're startled, frightened at times, but a calmness seems to come over them.
Sometimes people will report seeing what would be termed angels.
Interesting, in a body of research that was done in the 1920s, this individual took accounts from children, and children reported seeing angels, but the children also reported that the angels did not have wings.
So people are seeing something at the moment of a passing, and also people who are near to them also are seeing something.
I want to share something with you now that might seem a little bit odd, but the main reason why I decided to go ahead and sit down and put together the book that I put together on this was because my three-year-old son had a deathbed vision.
My father-in-law was passing.
He was a hardcore atheist, hung on till the last breath.
He finally did pass in my husband's arms.
But about two weeks before he passed, my three-year-old started talking about seeing somebody named Domas.
And we'd be driving in the car.
And we live on an island, so I have to go to the mainland to shop a lot.
And he would start talking about Domas and let Domas drive, and Domas just sort of became a part of the family.
At first, I thought, well, the stress of the family and the stress of the passing of pop, that's what's going on with my son.
Well, I was sitting with a rabbi friend of mine, and I said, you know, have you ever heard of the term Domas?
And he took out his pen.
He's a real historian, and he wrote it out.
And first he wrote it out in Hebrew.
And then he translated it into Aramaic.
And he said, well, one interpretation of that word, now that's a very archaic word.
I don't know where you're hearing that because it's not commonly used.
He said, one interpretation of that is angel of death, and every hair on the back of my neck stood up.
Now, after my father-in-law passed, you know, we didn't hear anymore about Dhammas.
But lots and lots of people have reported visitations from angels, from deceased relatives, from celestial beings, from I received one today, an interesting one today, where a woman said that her father was seeing somebody in an overcoat and a top hat.
So for some reason, people who are getting ready to pass are being visited.
Which makes the next question for me very important and for a lot of the audience, too.
And that is that the critics say that, look, you're dying.
Your brain as a reflex mechanism to protect itself begins releasing all kinds of things, I suppose, dopamine, other things that will ease the transition to death.
It's part of the life cycle.
And then our brain does that.
And then if that's not enough, then there's the medication part of it.
People, a lot of times, are, well, frankly, pretty doped up toward the end to prevent the pain.
So let's address both of those.
Why do you think those are not the most logical answer to this whole thing?
Because when the brain is shutting down, first of all, it doesn't shut down, you know, when it's shutting down, there isn't a consistent vision that people will have across time.
It depends on the illness.
It depends on a whole lot of things.
These visions are not like hallucinations.
They're totally different.
And I can say that because I've seen people who are having hallucinations or who are suffering from a serious brain disorder or who are even passing as a consequence to something related to that.
These are very specific, specific visions.
Now, the medication issue Is another one that I always love talking about because a lot of the accounts that I have received have been from folks whose loved ones haven't been medicated.
Well, one afternoon or evening, she and the one surviving sibling were sitting with the father, and the father announced, isn't it wonderful that all three of my children are here?
If this was the only account I had received of this nature, then I'd, if I'm a bit skeptical, I would question.
But I've received a number of accounts of this nature.
So something is going on.
My premise is, okay, something is going on.
Let's quit rolling the eyeballs and act like there isn't anything going on.
Why not really begin taking a look at this, taking a look and seeing what it is?
Because the dying brain theory doesn't explain all of these.
It may explain some of them, but it doesn't explain all of them.
Medication doesn't explain all of it because a lot of these individuals are not on medication.
It doesn't matter, according to the research that was done in the 60s, a very, very agnostic, hardcore, I don't believe in any of this sort of stuff person can have a vision like this as death draws near.
Actually, doctor, if I am to consider this, for the purpose of our conversation, a real phenomena and not some reaction of our brains, then I would think that medication would actually tend to suppress, if this is a real spiritual event that's occurring, a real one, then medication, I would think, would tend to suppress that, not promote it.
Is there enough missing and is there enough evidence of the kind that you quoted a moment ago so that you are personally convinced now that medications and the brain itself is not exercising some sort of protective function?
I had a woman who was in the office last week, and she was sharing with me that she was with a man who was getting ready to pass, and the family was there, and she said to the family, oh, his friends are back.
And the family looked at her and they said, what friends?
Oh, his visitors from the other side are here.
He talks to them.
He's been talking to them for the last couple of days.
She said the family literally went screaming out of the room because they didn't know what to Make of this?
And an awful lot of people have shared with me that they've tried to talk to physicians about this, and they've gotten, well, it's because he's passing, she's passing, don't pay any attention to it.
But hospice has known for a long, long time that this is a very, very common phenomenon.
It's just that we in our culture don't like to talk about death.
100 years ago when somebody was passing, they typically passed in their own home.
And they passed in their own bed with their favorite Afghan, with their favorite dog at the foot of the bed, with the family around the bed.
It is because I also received an account from a woman who shared with me that her dog was at the vet and she was at home and she was reading the newspaper and the dog was going in for a routine checkup and she looked up at the clock for some unknown reason and then looked back down and was reading the paper and she felt a brush up against her leg and she reached down.
She thought that her pup was down there and she was going to pet him.
And then she realized, oh, he's not here.
He's at the vet.
And about an hour later, she received a phone call and she was informed that her pup had passed.
And her pup had passed at the exact time that she had looked at the clock on the wall.
We sure are, because would this be the dying person sending out some kind of message?
Would it be the living person with such a close connection simply plucking a message from the ether, a general kind of message that, you know, someone you love is close or has died or you're right, we're into the unknown.
So often I'll receive email from people who will share with me that they were sitting next to the bed of a loved one who was passing.
And all of a sudden, they had a sense that there was a presence in the room.
One woman shared that she had just this really strong sense that her father was, her deceased father was in the room.
And I think her mother was passing.
And she turned and looked in the doorway, and she saw her father standing there.
And he looked whole and healthy, and he had been gone for two decades.
So yes, somehow we're connected.
Somehow, those who have been here before us may be reaching out to us.
I don't know.
But something is going on.
And my purpose is to sort of be a catalyst to get people to start talking about this.
Also, do you know how sad it is to receive emails from people who say things such as, dear Carla, my wife passed 50 years ago.
At the moment of her passing after being very ill, for three months, she sat up in bed and called out to her own mother with her arms outstretched, with a smile on her face for the first time in months.
It was absolutely beautiful.
It brought me such comfort.
It helped her transition.
And I haven't shared this with anybody in 50 years.
It is so weird doing a show under these conditions.
We are having major to severe geomagnetic storm conditions right now.
And a lot of you are probably getting fading and disruptions of your radio signals and all kinds of things are going on as a combined, the perfect CME, I've decided to call it, is headed toward us from two recent biggies that erupted on the sun.
These are strange times.
Listen, I forgot to welcome WDAK in Columbus, Georgia.
Welcome to the network.
They're 540 on the dial in Columbus, Georgia, and we're sure glad to have you along.
Should have welcomed you in the first hour.
But I got all wrapped up with the playmates.
I'm sure even you all can understand.
Hope you can anyway.
These really are strange conditions, folks.
Strange things going on on the radio and off the radio and all around us.
It's the nature of the time we live in, I guess.
My guest will be back in a moment.
We're discussing deathbed visions with Dr. Carla Wills Brandon.
Stay right there.
All right, I'm getting unverified reports right now that there have been tornadoes in the St. Louis area.
I repeat unverified reports that houses have been lost and there is a wide, a very wide area across the central portion of the United States right now bracing for or having bad, very bad weather.
So my advice to you is if you're in one of these areas, stay close to the NOAA channel, the NOAA weather channel.
Stay close to your radio so you know what's going on.
And if you need to duck and or get to the basement or get to a safe place, the radio right now is your best friend.
And you can be sure your local station will cut in, no doubt, if something bad is coming your way.
So a lot of very severe, awful weather going on in parts of the Midwest right now, according to the reports I'm getting.
There's something called the DBV stare, deathbed vision stare.
I can only guess that means that when somebody's having these visions, they get sort of a far-off look in their eye, a kind of a blank stare from our point of view, I suppose.
Well, the deathbed stare is something that I have witnessed time and time again with people who are passing.
And what tends to happen, it usually happens with people who are unable to communicate.
For some reason, verbal ability is lost.
And what tends to happen is they seem to be tracking something.
I mean, they're really, really looking at something.
For people who experience the deathbed stare who are communicative, what they will oftentimes do is they will be looking at something, and a family member or medical person will say something to them, and they will turn and they will talk.
A lot of the accounts that I have received have been accounts where the person who is getting ready to pass is very lucid, very here with it, not on a lot of medication.
But then they sort of gently return to looking at whatever it is they're looking at.
Sometimes they'll even say, don't you see them standing in the corner?
Or, look at them, they're all around my bed.
You can't see them.
But there's just this intense gaze towards a part of the room.
Just a real directed sort of look.
I got an account today where a woman was sharing that I guess her dad was talking to somebody in the hospital and that he would talk to, he would gaze at the corner of the room and nod his head several times as if in conversation and appear to be answering some questions.
And then he would turn to her and carry on a little conversation with her and then suddenly turn back to the corner of the room and continue the conversation with whomever Was in the room with him.
So, this is another consistency that I've picked up in looking at these.
There's also one other type of deathbed vision that I want to talk about because I suspect people in your audience may have experienced this.
Sometimes the person sitting at the deathbed, at the bedside of the person who is getting ready to pass, when the passing occurs, they will actually see something leave the body.
My husband saw something pastel and filmy and swirling color leave his father's body.
My cousin shared that she saw something like a vapor, blue-gray vapor.
I have found accounts of this, historical accounts of this, several of them, descriptions of seeing something leaving the body that's sort of bluish-grayish in color.
Hospice workers have reported this.
I received a couple of accounts from nurses.
So sometimes people will actually see something leave the body.
Other times there will be a sense that something's leaving the body.
I have a very curious friend in Russia.
He's a physicist, and he's trying to measure this.
He measured up to three quarters of an ounce of difference in weight at the instant of death, which could not be accounted for by any gases, fluids, any other sort of anything.
They were on a table where everything was retained, and inevitably they lost a half to three quarters of an ounce of weight.
And it just boggles the mind to begin thinking of the soul or the substance, the life substance, whatever it is, as having physical mass or weight.
Instead of having all of this sitting in somebody's dusty file, some researcher's dusty file, this information needs to be presented to the public so that we can discuss it.
I mean, these are serious medical studies, and if there are no backups to the first serious one, at least one other confirming it, confirming the first one, that ought to be on with Dan Rather and Tom Brokoff.
I have an appendix in the back of my book, and it was for the clergy, for mental health workers, and for the medical community.
It was almost impossible for me to get any of these people to sit down and write out the proper way to address and deal with somebody who comes to them sharing a deathbed vision.
But so many of these people who are having these visions are not religious, or those that are religious, they're not seeing what they have been told they should be seeing.
So because some of these people might be agnostic or worse, they don't care to document their visions of anything that documents after death because, well, because it doesn't confirm what our church doctrine says.
I talked to a minister's wife, and she said, you know, I think it's really, really sad that so many people in our religious denomination don't feel safe talking about this.
That came from the lips of the wife of a Baptist minister.
And also, rabbi friends of mine have shared how this sort of thing is not, quote, politically correct to discuss.
So within the clergy itself, this isn't a comfortable topic.
There's usually a reason behind that, and there's unfinished business and issues with the whole concept of religion and God and a whole lot of other things.
Lots of unresolved stuff.
And yeah, it's opening up a can of worms.
But I've been dealing with this for quite a long time, so I'm used to it.
But science and religion have been at odds since day one.
I mean, they've really always been at odds.
But if one can end up supporting the other, why both sides wouldn't be fighting to see if it could be true?
The scientists because they are in search of the truth, supposedly, and the clergy because it's the ultimate question for them.
So why wouldn't both sides be really grabbing at each other, trying to settle on a middle ground and decide there, my God, there is scientific proof to support this?
Yeah, but for me, scientists, good ones, sitting up there in front of, I don't know, a congressional committee and on Dan Rather at night saying, look, at the moment of death, three quarters of an ounce is lost.
Science cannot tell us why.
We have no idea why, but it does indicate, give credence to The thought that there is something that leaves the body at the instant of death.
That's really important.
Hold on, we're at the bottom of the hour, Doctor, and we'll be right back.
I'm Art Bell.
is Coast to Coast AM.
unidentified
Coast to Coast AM.
In the night, don't control through the wall.
Something breaking, wearing white, as you're walking down the street.
Thank you.
Only know if the core is right to find it and I'm on the road.
I used to be your heartbeat for not one.
But the time to stay the more my work gets done because I'm still free.
This will tell me a freedom From the inside I want more freedom.
Wanna take a ride?
Call Art Bell from west of the Rockies at 1-800-618-8255.
East of the Rockies at 1-800-825-5033.
First-time callers may reach ART at area code 775-727-1222.
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I'm getting reports that NOAA has issued tornado warnings or watches for parts of Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, Oklahoma, and Texas.
And if you look at the Weather Channel weather map right now, you'll see the hail line and the tornado warning line crosses about a third of the nation.
Now, this is springtime, and it's time that these kinds of things happen.
But I can't remember a time when I've seen it across as large an area as this.
And listen to me.
You watch out.
As the day wears on today and we get solar heating, it's going to obviously get much worse in those areas and areas just to the east as the system moves east, if that's what it's doing.
I think it is.
So you keep your head down today.
You all hear?
Well, all right, let me do the book plug here because my guests never do, or a lot of the good ones forget.
So if you want to get a copy of One Last Hug Before I Go, The Mystery and Meaning of Deathbed Visions, and I bet you do, there's two ways to do it.
One, you can go to my website under tonight's guest information.
Easy to get to, and you'll have a link to Amazon.com where you can usually get a deal.
God, I hope they stay in business.
They discount so well.
That's one way.
And the other way is HCI Publishing and their number, an 800 number.
I have received some of the most wonderful emails from people who have shared that this has been such a validation for them, that they are so grateful for the book.
They have just been wonderful.
They have shared their experiences.
And then I have been the topic of discussion on the message boards of skeptics.
It's just really, it's a 180-degree turnaround where, and what's so interesting about the skeptics is that I'm not stating that I'm proving anything.
When I wrote a book called The Coming Global Superstorm, and it was interesting because it was on Amazon before it was actually available, and people would put up reviews, and they could not have possibly read the book yet, and yet they were raking it, you know, which was interesting to me because they could not have had a copy of the book.
I mean, in some of the visions, now I will validate that some people, when they're getting ready to pass, what they will do is they will have, they'll slip into unconsciousness or they'll have a dream and they'll have visions of what it's like on the other side.
And usual descriptions are beautiful, wonderful.
I can't wait to go.
I'm so happy.
I'm no longer scared.
I just, I haven't picked up on any of the notions of hell.
But, I mean, even the worst serial killer you can imagine in his last dying seconds, then you think is going to say, whoa, mom, dad, cousin Bruce, you know, and so forth and so on.
Well, I just, I really do believe, this is a very personal belief.
I believe that humankind has a long way to go spiritually.
I really, really do.
And I do believe that there are probably many people who, when they transition and take that trip to the other side, that they're greeted by loved ones.
But I don't get a sense that all of a sudden they hit nirvana and everything is peachy keen and wonderful.
From what I'm getting, there are still lessons to be learned and that everybody is in a different place.
I really just don't think it's that black and white.
And the churches and the religious institutions would like for us to think that.
And I'm just not picking that up.
I actually did get an email this week from a woman whose father had a vision.
A priest and a nun came to visit him, as a matter of fact.
But of course, nobody else in the hospital saw this priest and nun.
And this man was not a religious man.
He was not one of these guys who went to church on a regular basis at all.
And he had a conversation with these two.
And what they shared with him was that he wasn't going to be going straight to the heaven that had been discussed in church.
That it sounded like there was still going to be some more growing to do on the other side.
And I've had lots of debates with different people who look at this sort of thing.
And they're a lot of fun.
And some of these folks do believe, oh, yes, you just hit that nirvana mode and you're just home-free and you blend with the great consciousness and life is peachy keen.
I think that his premise is that with a violent death, the energy dissipates a lot quicker as opposed to a slow, lingering death where the life force appears to eke out over time.
As a matter of fact, this book was originally printed in Russian, and I had to track him down because I had read a little blurp on it, and I was just fascinated by it because it was validating an awful lot of stuff that I was finding.
And I had to track him down and then wait for the book to come out in English and then track the book down.
It was quite a process just to get a hold of this book, but now I think the book is more mainstream.
But yeah, this sort of stuff is not out there.
It's not.
And as I was saying earlier, I have another friend who is very involved with the International Association of Near-Death Studies.
And he wanted to do a big research project with hospice on deathbed visions.
And I've been saying to him over the last several years, what's happening?
And I think that the only way it's going to change is when more and more of those individuals who do have a scientific background do get brave and come forward and share their experiences.
I have a physician friend who's very well known in my neck of the woods.
And she was finally one of the people who was willing, her and her partner, they were willing to give me some input on my book with regard to how medical professionals should address somebody who reports to them a deathbed vision.
And she pulled me aside and she said, I've never really shared this with anybody, but my grandmother was passing.
And the entire family, we were all around her bedside, and we were all talking and catching up and gossiping.
And my grandmother was laying there and she was being very, very quiet, just sort of listening.
And then suddenly I noticed that she was gazing into the corner of the room and she just kept gazing.
And after a while, she sat up in bed and she said, why on earth is he here?
And my friend said that everybody in the room just bust out laughing.
But my point is, because my friend, who is a physician, had such an experience, she's much more aware now when she works with her patients, and she's much more willing to listen.
And in talking with me and in talking with a few other people who have a medical background or a more scientific background, she's been coming out a little bit more.
And I've found this with people like this, of this nature.
Another friend of mine, just a tough, go-get-em, a lawyer, big-time Houston attorney.
He sends me an email.
I never would have expected this from him in a million years.
And he says, I have something to share with you.
I haven't told anybody.
He says, my father just passed.
Have you ever seen or heard of anything like this?
At the moment of his passing, after being sick for so long, he sat up in bed with a big smile on his face, with his arms outreached, and that's how he passed.
So I really do believe that it's just going to take more people coming forward with their experiences and not being so fearful of being ridiculed.
And if you're in a hospital room with a dying relative and they begin talking to others who are apparently not there, I guess if you're a relative, you're going to think they're raving, they're having delusions, they're having hallucinations, they're whatever.
And then if you talk to the doctor about it, that most doctors are going to just confirm that for you and say, yes, it's part of the process.
And you know what's interesting is that the families who have had the easiest time with a relative transitioning have been those family members who have had a real supportive medical person share with them, this is not that unusual.
I've heard of this before.
And so what I try to pass on to the medical community is, look, even if you don't believe in this, now is not the time to debate this with a family member.
Send them or refer them to somebody who has some information about deathbed vision, somebody who can talk to them knowledgeably about this.
If this is something very uncomfortable for you, leave it alone.
It's so interesting.
When my father-in-law was passing, we had this physician who, my father-in-law, he was ready to go.
I mean, he was a surgeon himself.
He had seen the Holocaust.
He'd gone back and rescued relatives from the camps.
He'd come to this country and built a successful business for himself and raised a family and worked until he was 83.
And, you know, when his time came, he was ready.
But the people who were working with him, the medical people that were working with him, didn't treat him with a whole lot of respect.
First of all, when they talked about his condition, they didn't talk to him.
They talked about him.
We also had talked about no resuscitation.
And on the verge of passing, this one very death phobic, very cute, nice physician, but just terrified of death himself, gave an order for a blood transfusion.
And actually, our family was very, we know how to do death pretty well.
I mean, we're real okay with it.
And we finally had to just escort him out of the room.
To have heroic measures used and to bring somebody back for a little more barely living, just huffing and puffing and not having any kind of quality of life at all.
A lot of times, family members who are really, really, really fearful of losing a loved one, if that sort of situation is going on, the person will hang on.
Another author had reported this wonderful account, and this account, it goes something like this.
There was, I think it was Melvin Morse or one of the near-death researchers.
He shared, this researcher shared an experience where there was a young child who was passing, and the family was sitting around and praying and praying and praying for this child not to pass.
And what happened was the family minister had a dream.
And in the dream, the child came to him and said, will you please tell my family to quit praying for me?
It's time for me to go.
I really do need to go.
And the next day, the minister went back to the family and said, I had this incredible dream.
Let me share it with you.
And the family listened intently.
They had one more prayer.
And then they gave permission to this child to leave, and the child left.
That's astounding that there would be now three real, a controlled test done of a loss of weight at the instant of death, and that would not be mainstream big news.
And yet we report on the smallest, insignificant, but salacious things that go on in any given day.
Even if you go travel into the Amazon to a tribe that has never been touched by humankind in any way until now, you'll find that they worship something.
They worship the sun, the stars, the earth, some god, some idol, a cave, whatever.
They worship something.
Matthew's contention is that our brains, in trying to cope with the prospect of death, mandate and that there's actually a part of the brain that mandates worship and belief in the afterlife.
Because not to have that is a protective mechanism of the brain, because not to have that, we'd go berserk.
Because in a lot of cultures, when a person turns 40, they begin contemplating their death and making preparations for their death and looking into spiritual matters.
And it's seen as a part of their growth process.
In certain primitive cultures, when a person is at the moment of death, that's when they are seen as being their most psychic.
They have one foot in the afterlife and one foot on this side.
My husband, as I told you earlier, the Strap in Texas, the day after his father passed, he came downstairs and he saw his father sitting on the couch, whole and healthy.
And previous to that, he had been very ill.
And then he saw him one second time at his residence.
I just want to relate to you an experience, a few experiences I had.
Number one, I live in San Mateo, California, and one night I looked out my window and I saw a shooting star heading straight north and short and bright.
I saw it for certain.
And I shared with my mother, whose house I was at, that I saw it.
She didn't make anything of it.
But when I awoke the next morning, I found out that my friend of 10 or so years had just passed away.
And it turns out that he passed away at the time, just about the time that I saw that star.
Well, that's pretty loose anecdotal evidence, unless you thought your friend passed away when you saw that star, unless you made the relationship at that point.
That's a very common after-death communication where suddenly a loved one is visited by a deceased relative and they see them and they're whole and they're solid and they communicate and they talk.
Typically in these after-death communications and also in deathbed visions, if the deceased before passing had just been very, very ill, like my father-in-law, when they visit, they look healthy.
A lot of times they are younger.
They look energetic, happy, full of life, positive.
Well, listen, thank you very much for relating that.
I wish I knew what it was really like on the other side.
I wish I knew a lot of things.
I wish I knew why relatives seem to, this almost moves into what some are going to call the ghost area, but some seem to leave this earthly plane right away, while a million ghost stories, Doctor, that I could share with you that I've heard over the years, and I bet you've heard on this program too, would indicate that not everybody leaves quite on schedule.
And so apparitions are incredibly common around here.
I mean, anybody who lives in an old house has a story to tell about a lingering apparition.
Now, some theories suggest that that's like an imprint, almost like a hologram, that that's not really a spirit, but it's an imprint, sort of like a photograph.
Whereas in other situations, there are groups of individuals around here who actually go to these homes and they take photographs, and these photographs are just incredible.
And I've actually done some of these photographing deals myself.
Some of these apparitions, spirits, ghosts, lingering souls seem to communicate and know what's going on in the here and now.
So there are a variety of different levels of spirit in the world.
And then there's a second kind of ghost that seems to be contemporary, even has contemporary information or information that the subject that it passed to had no prior knowledge of and could not have had prior knowledge of.
And that seems to indicate that there's a conscious spirit here now.
And a lot of people get very confused with regard to after-death communication because an after-death communication can take place 20 years after a passing.
And the person doesn't necessarily have to be experiencing a near-death experience, nor do they have to be experiencing a deathbed vision, but they receive a visitation.
And the visitation may be, you know, just as solid as all get out, walking through the door.
A woman that I did work with for many years, she lost her husband in a very, very tragic death.
And she was sitting listening to jazz music, and they had had a very, very hard marriage.
And as a matter of fact, right before his death, they were just beginning to piece things back together again.
And in he walks.
This is 10 years later.
And he sits down, and she said she was just stunned.
And when she came in, of course, her first words to me were, please do not refer me for medication.
But I really need to share this with you, and please don't tell anybody.
And she said he was as solid as anything and shared with her that he was very proud of her for the way in which she was raising the children and that he was really, really sorry for any pain that he had inflicted upon her.
And she described his clothes to the detail, down to the detail.
And she said he looked younger and he looked healthy and he looked happy and that his main concern seemed to be for her.
And so an after-death communication can take place anytime.
We'll be right back, and I'm going to hold you over.
I've never seen anything like that.
And I'm sitting here debating about whether I would want to.
Yes, I think I would, actually.
unidentified
Listen to me in the middle of a dry fell.
The gentle rising of the cross outside.
I'm dancing, baby on her shoulder.
Just on a second light, my life is in the sky It's the best time I can't believe it I know that you have just as much as my eyes.
I can see for miles and miles and miles and miles and miles Oh yeah If you think that I don't know about the little tricks you play I'll never see you when you live with me Put me in the night away You know what?
I mean, if you normally see auras, then it would be interesting to know at the moment of death what change you saw and compare that to what the doctor knows.
unidentified
Yes.
As far as what I've seen, as I said, I've done hospice work for a few years, and I actually was there at time of death or casting for two people.
The first person, I was really, the person was resting very quietly.
They Had been pretty much non-responsive for quite some time.
And this was very, very early in the morning.
It was about 2 o'clock.
And I was just sitting there watching them breathing.
And all of a sudden, I noticed that, you know, it was kind of an observation or a feeling as I was looking that I didn't see the next breath.
You know, the chest wasn't rising.
And as I was looking at the person, I did notice that there was a little very thin, wispy kind of bluish gray kind of, looked like smoke almost.
It was kind of curling up from the top of the head, which would be up by the crown of the head.
At that moment, when you were sitting there and you saw that, what did you think you were seeing?
unidentified
I actually thought that I was seeing the actual energy, because I believe very much in energy, that everything is energy, that I was seeing the energy or spirit leave the body.
Actually, I have two things that actually happened.
One with a near-death experience, or not near-death, I'm sorry, but with a death experience.
I took care of my mom here several years ago when I lost her to cancer.
But not the night she died, but the next night, I'd say about two or three o'clock in the morning.
And I was in asleep, and I felt like, you know, when you're a little kid and you get the kiss on the forehead, when your mommy and daddy's like kissing you goodnight, it's like one of those and like the feel, you know, like everything's okay.
Now, my daughter, she's grown up too.
She told me the next day, she called me, she goes, grandma was here.
And I go, what do you mean grandma was here?
She was about 2 o'clock in the morning.
I felt someone kiss my forehead and I just felt this sense of well-being and everything's okay.
When we have direct contact with deceased loved ones on the other side, and there is a sense of a physical touch, there's always this overwhelming report of a sense of well-being.
It's a wonderful feeling.
unidentified
Yes, yes.
Now, I have kind of a comical Bowman's borders on a comical ghost story.
Because you've got to remember, I'm over here, and so the natives, of course, speak Korean.
A lot of them, they don't speak English.
So my daughter, then, she was a lot younger then, she was over here visiting me in Korea, so we stayed in this hotel.
Anyways, they have a treat here, a Korean treat called Yakimandu, which is basically a fried meat dumpling.
It was like Friday night, and I told her, and we were on the sixth floor.
And I told her, I says, okay, I'll be right back.
I'm going to go down and get some Yakimandu, and I'll be back in a minute.
So I went down the hallway, got to the elevator, and hear my daughter screaming.
I run back into the room, and you've got to picture this.
Like, overseas, they got these fans in the room.
You pull the cord, and the fan, like, rotates and blows and stuff like that.
And they had a TV with the old potentiometer type, not the push-button, but you had to physically move it, and you feel the click, then the volume control.
Well, the best way to do it is to begin with inviting them to visit you in your dreams.
And what you do is you're facilitating an after-death communication.
Now, after-death communication dreams are much more vivid than a typical dream.
I had one with my grandmother, and she came to me with a specific piece of information.
And it was very, the colors were very vibrant, and it remains with me to this day.
But the way you induce that is you get a picture of your father and you have it by your nightstand.
And every night before you go to bed, look at the picture, then close your eyes, visualize them in your mind's eye, and share with him that you would really, really like for him to come and visit you in your dreams.
You need to do that for about two weeks.
And if nothing happens still, if still you're not having any results, try some letter writing.
Also, you can do some visualization during the daytime.
If you feel like you need to make some apologies or you have some unfinished business.
This has been weighing rather heavily on my mind because it just happened on Sunday.
I was in Navarre, which is just outside of Gulf Breeze, Florida, and I was at the beach.
And I went out swimming, and I was trying to teach my nephew how to boogie board.
Well, sure enough, my boogie board broke, and then I had noticed a man.
He was probably one of the older men out there.
And I was staying out there a little bit longer.
And I had an uncontrollable thirst.
I couldn't control it, and I had to go back to shore.
Well, sure enough, as soon as I had hit the shore, my nephew, or my niece had come in to tell me my nephew had passed out.
The timing of the event was the man actually ended up drowning.
He died.
And it was at the exact moment that it had occurred.
The reason why it's been weighing so heavy on my mind is because my niece had called me over and telling me that my nephew had passed out.
And I was the only one to contend to my nephew.
So as I went to see my nephew, it was rather a nice day.
It's Florida.
But he had complained of not only blacking out, but then he was shivering, couldn't move.
We finally got him to the water, calmed him down.
I had this overwhelming compulsion to get off the island altogether.
The reason why that is so important is because I'm a big guy, I'm about 6'2, 300 pounds, a fairly good swimmer.
And my wife was sitting there on the beach, and they actually pulled him ashore about 10 feet away from her.
She was right there, right in the general area that we were swimming.
And it's as if it seemed to me that by my nephew passing out at the very moment that that gentleman died, kind of pulled me out of the water.
Because I know my personal characteristic would have been the fact that I would have gone out to the water and tried my best to save him.
I found out the next day that the actual reason that he drowned was he was trying to save someone else.
And it's been overwhelming in my mind when something is so blatantly obvious that had pulled me out of that water and perhaps saved me from drowning myself trying to save that person.
But the biggest part of this, and I guess this is a deathbed intervention perhaps, is the fact that the coincidence of my nephew passing out at the exact moment, he has never passed out in his entire life before.
The Saturday, we had taken a six-mile walk for the March of Dimes, and he was full of energy, not a problem.
And then just out of nowhere, we'd only been at the beach for 30 minutes, couldn't have suffered from heat exhaustion.
And so that's been kind of weighing on my mind the implication of that entire event and perhaps the relationship between him passing out and the person dying at that very moment.
See the strong intuitive sense that is being discussed here?
It's like an immediate intuitive sense, intuitively knowing what is happening.
And that's very, very common for some people when in the presence of death, that the coincidences that are taking place make absolute crystal clear sense.
But the adamant sense of intuitively, this is just so obvious, it also sounds like this gentleman has an awful lot of grieving to do.
I mean, witnessing a tragedy such as this is going to create for him possibly unfinished business with regard to passings that he's experienced in the past.
And I don't know if this is the case for this gentleman, but oftentimes in situations when we're confronted with death and there are other coincidences happening around us, it seems as if everything makes sense at that moment.
Wild Card Line, you're on the air with Dr. Wolf Brandon.
Good morning.
unidentified
All right, good morning.
And Doctor, I think you're a great guest.
I could listen to this for hours.
And I think the timing of you being on here is very prescient.
As Art talked about, we live in interesting times and in quickening times.
And I think the timing of you being on here is just great.
I think you're doing a great service.
My question is this.
You mentioned that, and I find this very difficult to believe how the religious community could be hesitant or opposed to what you're saying when, at least from the Christian side of it, fundamentalist or Catholic, however, the whole Bible points exactly to everlasting life and it speaks directly about death and what it is.
In fact, if these religious types would just look at the book, the first, I wonder if it's a fear of death.
Here's my point.
That these people are denying something about death.
Because the first lie that supposedly the human race fell into was when Satan said, you surely won't die.
And it seems like ever since then we've had this aversion.
Obviously, it seems moral, an aversion to death.
I'm just wondering if these people still have that in them where they can't seem to face what you're saying.
Because you mentioned that it won't be Peachy Cane and there are levels.
Yet when you just read the scriptures themselves, especially in 2 Corinthians 5, it speaks directly to that issue, saying that everyone will be judged.
I'm not talking about whipped or beaten, but everyone will be judged by their works.
So there are levels in there.
And so could you tell me when that nun and priest spoke to that man or came to that man and they told him that there's going to be certain levels or certain lessons to be learned?
Could you describe it a little bit more and how long those lessons might take?
That wasn't shared with me, but there are all sorts of philosophies and traditions regarding spirituality that discuss this in depth.
And these philosophies have been around for eons and eons.
And also, I do also want to share that within the Christian tradition, within the early Christian tradition, there are lots of examples of deathbed visions and near-death experiences.
Also, in the Jewish religion, some of the most famous rabbis of earlier times shared deathbed visions.
So these have been with us for quite some time.
In most religions, you can easily find these things.
But I think that today, religion has become, it's so political, it's very political, and it's become a business, sadly.
And an awful lot of people who are in the business of religion, in my opinion, they need to take care of some of their own unfinished business and heal themselves before they attempt to spread the message.
I think it must be incredibly confusing for the religious community to hear about near-death experiences, after-death communications, out-of-body experiences, and deathbed visions from hardcore non-believers.
First-time caller, and I think this is along the lines which people are talking about.
When I was about five years old, I was sleeping in my room upstairs, and I just awoke throughout the night, one time during the night, and at the end of my bed was standing my mother.
My mother's alive to this day.
She's still alive.
She's healthy and everything.
And there she was standing.
And when I saw her, I immediately kind of got scared.
Like, I'm only five years old at the time, but I knew that there was something wrong.
I knew it was my mom, but I knew there was something wrong.
And I could remember her being ghost-like, basically sort of a white outline, but like all her features were there.