An Atheist Has Second Thoughts After Strange Experiences Caring for Dying People

CNN published an interesting story about a man named Scott Janssen who described himself as an existentialist, an atheist who didn’t believe in the existence of god or any afterlife for human beings. But Janssen became a hospise worker, someone who helped people who were often bedridden at the end of their lives. And some of his experiences with these patients changed him.

It was a crisp autumn day, and Janssen was visiting Buddy, an elderly client, at his small brick home on a dead-end street in Durham, North Carolina.

Buddy had just lost May, his wife of 40 years. She was bed-ridden and had suffered from Alzheimer’s disease. Janssen, a hospice social worker, had been visiting the couple for nine months. During that time he had never heard May utter a sound and only saw her open her eyes once…

As Janssen sat down, he noticed that Buddy’s depression had lifted. Janssen wondered why and probed for an answer.

“She was talking to the angels,” Buddy said. “In the last hour, God let me know.”

Janssen had heard about incidents like this before. In the last days or hours of life, some people have experiences where they seem to talk about visitors or even deceased family members coming to see them. But in this case, Buddy offered to show Janssen photos of his wife May in those final hours.

The woman he met couldn’t raise her head in bed without assistance. Her neck muscles had lost strength. He only saw her with head slumped, her mouth ajar. She was almost completely nonresponsive.

But the photos Buddy showed him revealed another May. Buddy said he entered their bedroom when he heard a commotion. When he saw what was happening, he grabbed his camera and started taking pictures. The resulting images showed May sitting upright in her bed, gesturing with her hands to what appeared to be some unseen person.

Buddy said she also looked at him and thanked him for taking such good care of her while she was ill. She then turned to some unseen person and said, “It’s beautiful.”

An hour later she died. Janssen was familiar with the scientific explanations for what is known as “terminal lucidity” but said he had trouble making sense of it. May’s ability to move and respond had been near zero. How had she been able to thank her husband for taking care of her when she seemed to be only barely aware of her surroundings?

Another story Janssen tells involved a dying WWII vet named Evan who’d had a strange experience after working in a combat hospital.

Evan said he was part of a battle during WWII that resulted in a flood of casualties. The wounded arrived by train, and he spent much of that bitterly cold day transporting blood-soaked men on stretchers to a field hospital. During one such trip, Evan said he was exhausted and his grip slipped. The soldier on his stretcher tumbled to the ground, steam rising from his intestines as they oozed out. The soldier died in front of Evan.

“Later that night I was on my cot crying, “Evan told Janssen. “Couldn’t stop crying about the poor guy, and all the others I’d seen die.”

Evan then looked up. He said he saw a soldier sitting at the end of his cot. The soldier was wreathed in light and wordlessly conveyed to him that no matter how cruel the world looked, “We are all loved and connected,” Evan said.

The soldier appeared to him a few more times but when the war ended he never had the experience again, untill he was dying.

Evans told Janssen that the man had sat at his bed the night before, and this time he talked. “He told me he was here with me, “Evan said. “He’s going to help me over the hill when it’s time to go.”

Evan died shortly after telling that story, Janssen said.

It’s not clear from the story where Janssen’s own beliefs have ended up. He clearly now believes some of these near-death experiences shouldn’t be dismissed and even admits to having his own strange experience years ago when an uncle died.

All of this reminds me of a story I heard from my own grandmother many years ago. It involved a child who had left home because she was being sexually abused by her father. She moved in with my great-grandmother to get away from him and one night she awoke and there was a man sitting at the end of her bed who seemed to glow. He told her everything would be okay. The next day she told someone at school what had happened and this led to a police investigation and her father was arrested. My grandmother was not religious but she told me this story when I was in my 20s. It would have happened long before I was born when my grandmother was still young, but the story made its way to me and I’ve never forgotten it. 

Obviously these experiences don’t happen to every person in trouble or to every person on their death bed, but they do sometimes happen. Has anything like this ever happened in your family?