Observations placeholder

Death and its Mystery, At the Moment of Death; Manifestations and Apparitions of the Dying – Camille Flammarion
extract from a letter received from Sarce Dazacal, of Buenos Aires

We were living in a town in the north of Spain, on the coast of the Bay of Biscay.  I was a very young child, when my elder sister was taken desperately ill.  In a nearby room, which was the dining room, my mother and two of my other sisters were nursing the invalid.  At such and such an hour, my mother asked one of my sisters to go and lie down on her bed and the latter complied.  Her room communicated with the dining room and was directly opposite the room in which the invalid was.

Some moments afterwards, my sister came back into the dining room saying that it was better that the other sister should lie down, for she did not want to sleep.  This was acted upon; but the sister who had left last came back, in her turn and asked my mother to go herself and res.

My mother reproached them for being timid, at their age [twenty and twenty two] but for fear of being scolded, they said nothing as to the real reason which had sent them from the bedroom.

My mother in her turn went in to rest, leaving the door half open as my sisters had done, for the room was illuminated only by the light of the dining room, where the invalid was being cared for.

My mother’s stay in the room was not long either, for she came back into the dining room, pale and greatly affected.  It was the that I asked them all ‘Why what happened to you?’ 

By their explanation, it appeared that all three had experienced the same thing.  Each of the three had lain down and shortly afterwards there had been motion and noise in the mattress, the bed began to move as though there were some restless animal in it.

Each had leaped from the bed and looked under it, to discover the cause of this shaking; they had found nothing and had lain down again; as soon as they were in bed they had perceived once more, in the mattress, the strange noise which had so alarmed them.

So all three had refused to sleep on such an extraordinary bed.

At the very moment when they were telling of their impressions, they heard a noise from the cupboard doors in the neighbouring kitchen; they were banging as though shaken by a furious wind, or by Herculean arms.  Nevertheless, all was quiet in the kitchen, there was no wind and all the doors were tightly closed.

My eldest sister died on the same day, or a very short time afterward and this strange phenomenon preceeded her death.  I am giving you these facts without comment