Observations placeholder
Bozzano, Professor Ernesto - Psychic phenomena at the moment of death – 36
Identifier
027305
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
A description of the experience
Ernesto Bozzano - Psychic phenomena at the moment of death [110 cases suggesting survival after death]
Fifth category - Cases in which the dying family members are the only ones to perceive the ghosts of the deceased.
46-th case. - In this first episode, the attendant has the perception of a rudimentary ghost, probably in the process of formation. I'm extracting it from the Journal of the S. P. R. (1908, p. 312). The narrator and recipient is a sister of a member of the Society in question. She's writing:
On the first day of November 1905, I was on duty as a nurse in the hospital and had an interesting experience.
I was looking after a certain Mrs. S., who had cancer, had been in bed for six months in hospital, and that morning was in agony. She had been in a coma for about five hours and the rate of breathing had been reduced to three aspirations per minute. I was left alone to assist her, with the assignment to watch for any change in her conditions and to protect her from flies.
I was sitting by the bed, reading a magazine article and, from time to time, looking at the patient.
Around five at noon (there was no clock in the room), while I raised my eyes to the dying woman, I saw a human figure on the other side of the bed. I say a human figure because it was undoubtedly such in form, although one did not see the features of it, and seemed as a whole composed of mist or condensed vapor, with uncertain and confused edges. Its height was pretty much like mine (5 feet and 7 inches).
There was a window on each side of the bed, and a screen of wood covered with canvas was behind the form. I noticed that the joints of the screen were visible through the vaporous body of the ghost. I felt no sensation of fear, although I did not feel inclined to question the apparition. I put down the magazine I was reading, remaining completely absorbed in the contemplation of the ghost for a period of time that I estimate at ten or fifteen minutes. After that, another nurse entered the room, and the figure began to fade, dissolve, and eventually disappear.
I felt the pulse of the dying woman in her neck, and I found that it was still perceptible, even though she had stopped breathing. When the figure was present, she was still breathing...