The Strange Visions People Experience Before They Die, According to Hospice Physicians

In their last weeks, people sometimes start talking to their mother. The thing is, their mom’s been dead for 40 years.

Hospice workers see this often, and some prepare families for it in advance. Dr. Christopher Kerr, a hospice and palliative care physician in Buffalo, New York, has spent years studying what researchers call end-of-life dreams and visions. His book, Death Is But a Dream, draws on interviews with about 1,500 dying patients. In an earlier study of 59 hospice patients, 88% reported at least one dream or vision, and almost all of them said it felt real.

Most of the visitors are people who have already died. In Kerr’s research, patients talked most often about seeing deceased loved ones, and those visits were more comforting than dreams involving people who were still alive. Kerr has also said that relatives with whom the patient had a difficult relationship usually don’t appear.

“Very little is said between the person in the dream and the dreamer, but everything seems to be understood,” Kerr said on The Oprah Podcast.

Hospice nurse Julie McFadden has talked publicly for years about what dying actually looks like, and she separates these experiences from delirium or hallucinations. “Visioning is wild. I have seen so many people … have delirium, have hallucinations, ICU psychosis,” she said in a video. With visioning, she said, the person is usually alert and calm, and they’re fully aware of where they are.

It also doesn’t necessarily happen right before death. “Visioning usually starts happening three to four weeks before someone dies,” McFadden said.

According to Kerr, the very end usually happens while the person is asleep. “People don’t die in an awake state. They die in the depths of sleep,” he said. That’s comforting, at least. 

No one knows with certainty what a dying person is actually seeing when they say their mother is standing in the room. McFadden’s advice to families is simple: don’t argue with them. If Grandma says her mom is sitting by the window, it’s because it’s real to her.