Observations placeholder

Ernesto Bozzano - Psychic phenomena at the moment of death [110 cases suggesting survival after death]

First category - Cases in which the apparitions of the deceased are perceived solely by the dying person, and relate to persons whose death he knew.

11th case. - This episode came to light as a result of the publication of my first monograph on the class of cases we are dealing with here. Mrs. Le Normand des Varennes wrote in the following terms to the Director of the Revue du Monde Invisible, Mgr Meric (July 1906):

The article by Mr. Ernest Bozzano on the apparitions of the dead on death bed interested me even more, that I myself witnessed a similar episode ...

We had lost one of our sons of infectious typhus. I had been in Paris to treat him, and three days later I brought back the body. I had left my husband suffering from a stomach illness, many years old.

After the death of our Paul, every crisis of evil left him always weaker; he was rapidly declining, enduring with admirable courage and resignation his atrocious sufferings ... Soon he could not leave the bed, and it was no longer possible for me to delude myself about his condition ...

He received the Sacraments in perfect knowledge, he asked for some chrysanthemum flowers, which he had planted on his son's tomb. During the following night my daughter came to replace me at the bedside of her father, but at about five o'clock she called me back: the patient was rapidly getting worse and seemed happy to see me again. I sat next to the bed and took one of his hands in mine.

"Now you will stay, will not you? he said, and you will not go away until ... " he hesitated to pronounce the fatal word.

"I will not leave you," I replied.

"Thank you," he murmured.

After that, we all remained silent.

Presumably, he had lost the use of the voice and no longer felt the touch of my hands, since, to make sure of my presence, he murmured from time to time: "Caress! caress!" I gently rubbed this poor, icy hand, and his face regained a quieter expression.

Suddenly we saw him hold out his hand and make a gesture to shake another:

‘- Yes, yes, my Paul.’

- Do you see Paul? I asked.

"Yes, I see him," he replied, almost astonished at this question. We all had the same thought: Paul comes to assist him and help him to die.

We were certainly thinking of another death bed with which I was alone, eighteen months before, but I do not think any of us had the idea of a tangible intervention of our dear deceased; it could not therefore be involuntary transmission of thought.

My poor husband repeated several times the gesture of shaking hands with an invisible being; after which, without any spasm, his soul exhaled from his body with a small sigh, and a supreme serenity descended on his face.