Alzheimer patient rises from deathbed, regains memory to recite poem, then passes away

Interview with Dr. Michael Nahm biologist and researcher on the phenomenon known as terminal lucidity and its connection to near-death experience science.

Alex Tsakiris: In the papers that you’ve authored you have some really intriguing case studies and you’ve done quite a thorough job of scanning the literature, looking for these case studies, interviewing folks and getting new case information as well. The classic one, and one I really enjoyed, is someone who’s suffered from Alzheimer’s for a long period of time, and is more or less completely disabled. The woman I remember is a case in Iceland. She’s lying in bed and all of the sudden she sits up, and as clear as day looks at her son and recites this really beautiful poem, recites it perfectly, and then falls back into the this state of whatever that locked-up state severe Alzheimer’s sufferers have where she really can’t do anything. So tell us a little bit about that case or another case that just really befuddles the idea we have about how the brain works in these really hampered situations like Alzheimer’s.

Dr. Michael Nahm: Yes, I perfectly agree that’s one of the most intriguing cases and it relates to an Alzheimer’s [patient], a person with a long time Alzheimer’s disease history. And in fact we have collected quite a number of these cases. It seems that the Alzheimer’s cases are somehow very prominent in our case collection. And they are particularly interesting because Alzheimer’s disease destroys the brain to a very great extent so that in the end, in a terminal stage of this disease, people usually are non-responsive. They cannot do anything. They don’t talk. They just lie in their bed and this case was also in this category. It was actually related to me by Erlendur Haraldsson whom you may know from his many publications also on near-death related issues. So he related [this case] to me and I cannot tell you anymore about it but we have many other cases in which people suddenly seem to surprise their bystanders by addressing them personally while they didn’t know or recognize them for years before. They suddenly sat up or seemed to have access to their memory and talked about their lives; talked about their problems they had with let’s say the church, or the fear of death. And then they just leaned back and seemed to die very soon after this episode where everybody thinks, wow, he is recovering or she is recovering and is coming back to life. But quite the contrary, this person is very often in such cases about to die. And many nurses and caretakers have actually confirmed that they know this phenomenon. If a person who has been absent for a very long time suddenly becomes clear, they already get alerts and think, oh wow, this person is actually going to die.

Read Excerpts From The Interview:

Alex Tsakiris: The end result of those experiments [on terminal lucidity and near-death experience] is — this really happened.  But, as soon as we get past that fact we have all these, “how many angels fit on the head of a pin” questions. So, you can use traditional science… materialistic science… you can use it really well to say whether or not this is observable, but once you get beyond that, is it really possible to say much that’s meaningful?

Dr. Michael Nahm: To a certain degree, yes, because what science does and should do is collect evidence. For my part, I always have the feeling there’s a very large imbalance especially in frontier areas of science between what we can observe and what people expect to make out of these observations. Sometimes they go, “okay, perhaps out-of-body experiences, and the vertical observations from out-of-body experiences, perhaps they are real, but we don’t have a theory so it can’t be real.” They put too much emphasis on not having a theory, but to me, that’s not the right approach.

Dr. Nahm discusses specific cases he’s examined on terminal lucidity and how Alzheimer’s patients have experienced intervals of clear awareness just before their passing–[2min.54sec-9min.10sec]

[easy-tweet tweet=”NDEs/OBEs… they put too much emphasis on not having a theory, that’s not the right approach — Michael Nahm” via=”no” usehashtags=”no”]

Alex Tsakiris: I was going to ask you what some of your colleagues who are more skeptical of the entire near-death experience science field have to say about terminal lucidity. Maybe in asking that I’d also ask why more people aren’t open to what these end-of-life care providers tell us? Because as you said, it’s been my experience that when you talk to these people it’s just standard stuff. They’re like, yeah, we see that all the time. We know what that means. The person encountering spirit, out-of-body spirit encounters by their loved ones… oh yeah, happens all the time around here. I mean, why isn’t anyone talking to these people? They seem to have a wealth of information about this but I don’t think your colleagues have been so receptive to the idea of terminal lucidity. What do they say?

Dr. Michael Nahm: Well let’s say the typical physician or the typical neuroscientists, they will say, well we know that phenomenon. It’s one of these lucid intervals that every person has with a neurological disease or psychiatric disease. Every now and then they become lucid and sometimes it just happens around the same time they also die. So they just regard it as an accident. There is nothing really interesting about that, it’s just one of these things. But I agree that the [people] who actually work with the dying, they have a very different point of view because these lucid intervals are so strikingly different from other lucid intervals they might have had some years before. And I think one reason why the physicians don’t engage in too much dialogue, or the practicians, is because the practicians are those who care for the dying. They are perhaps somehow afraid to relate to the science authorities or to the boss of the hospital. I think that if you talk to these people sometimes this comes through. They experience it a lot but they don’t have a real background or a social background, or colleagues with whom they could talk and share their experience. Sometimes they also like to do it more privately and they don’t go public with it because it might be that they will face some problems.

 Researching the origins of the Tibetan Book of the Dead, Dr. Nahm talks about the influential role this ancient text has played in our concept of death, how it’s been open to  misinterpretation–[16min.43sec-24min.06sec]

Alex Tsakiris: One of the things I wanted to talk about today is the very interesting article you sent me on the Tibetan Book of the Dead. And what you explore is how we sometimes misuse and misunderstand what that document really is and what it really means. So I was hoping we could spend a few minutes talking about the Tibetan Book of the Dead and what you discovered.

Dr. Michael Nahm: What you’ve said already sketches nicely what I wanted to say with this paper. Because, let’s put it this way, I became motivated to write about the Tibetan Book of the Dead because of personal experiences I’ve had with adherence of Tibetan traditions. And when I talked about near-death experiences, what the people experienced, typical stages of let’s say pleasurable western NDEs, they will just go on and say no, that’s not related to dying. When you want to know what people experience when they really die, you have to read the Tibetan Book of the Dead.

Alex Tsakiris: Right. This is the ultimate authority. This is two thousand years–or five thousand years old.

Dr. Michael Nahm: And this is really what people said to me. And I said, look guys, I have some good literature about near death experiences why don’t you go and read that? No. Because Padmasambhava has written [the book] two thousand years ago and things like that. So I felt compelled to let’s say, clear things up and to compile or to show for the first time it seems, how the Tibetan Book of the Dead was developed in a very specific Tibetan spiritual tradition over the course of many centuries by different individuals who are in part even known as a person. It’s not that some two thousand or whatever years ago some god appeared and said, “Now write this down and this is what happens. Now go and meditate and you can verify it in a scientific way.” That’s just not what it is. And even in Tibet in the different traditions that exist there you find many different approaches to describe what happens to a person dying. There are even contradictions to current NDE research, to other cultures’ concepts of what happens to people when they die. So I think it’s really neat to put that document into the proper context, and this is what I’ve tried to do.

Alex Tsakiris: And I think you do [this] very nicely and very convincingly. And as you just outlined, I see you pulling apart two problems with how we use the Tibetan Book of the Dead. The first is as you just said, there’s this history that’s completely intertwined with a religious tradition and a cultural tradition that has certain biases and certain motivations that aren’t generally associated with pure science or the pure telling of human experience. It gets into spiritual salesmanship to a certain extent because it can’t do otherwise. And it’s not putting it down, it’s just the way things work. The history of any religious tradition gets into at some point the idea of promoting and perpetuating the tradition because it has to to survive. The other thing you pull apart is the complicating factor that as we’ve absorbed it into the west we’ve applied our own filters on it: this is a psychological text about transformation or it’s a very scientific approach to it or it’s a humanistic approach. It’s really about people not about spirituality so much. So maybe you can speak to both of those. You’ve spoken to one but if there’s anything you want to add to how the cultural influences of Tibetan Buddhism and the religious influences might have distorted what we got through the original experiences. And then how we in the west have added this layer of disinformation or misinformation really. I don’t think they were intentionally trying to misinform people, but how that’s been layered on top of it.

Dr. Michael Nahm: I can talk a little about that but basically the real person to talk about [it] would be Brian Cuevas, the one who unearthed all this and who described all this in the book that I mainly draw from in my Tibetan text. He’s the one who showed how the psychological, the scientific, and also the humanistic approach was adopted and promoted by westerners. So I’ve just recapitulated that part in my paper. But I think it’s true. We also have to put that book and its earliest translation in English or in western language into the context of when it appeared. And it appeared much earlier than the book of let’s say Raymond Moody who popularized NDE research in the ‘70s. So the Tibetan Book was much earlier and had a greater impact because the desire of the people who know what’s going on when people die was still there but there weren’t many sources to consult except from very obscure parasychological books and studies, or psychical research but many people don’t know about this excellent work. But anyway this Tibetan book of the Dead, it radiated the huge attraction [during] these times and filled a gap. And it was easy to utilize it for any kind of fashionable concepts of psychology and religion and so on. So finally the westerners with a quite limited spirituality at that time, they had the solution. Look at those old guys. They worked it out. That’s how it is. So that came a great relieve and I think that’s one of the reasons why it became so successful.

Alex Tsakiris: So where do come down on the end of it in terms of how you think we should approach looking at the Tibetan Book of the Dead. And in particular, how we should understand it in light of more contemporary near death experience science?

Dr. Michael Nahm: I think it is one out of many different ways to describe what happens around the time that people die. But I’m not so sure westerners can really do much with it.

Speculating on future developments in near-death research, Dr. Nahm is confident we can apply current tools to apprehend these experiences and what they potentially reveal about extended consciousness--[26min.57sec-32min.28sec]

Alex Tsakiris: This gets to the larger question of where can we really go with near-death experience research, if you will, or science? It seems to me that we have this huge wall–it’s the evidential wall and we’ve leaped over it even though there are a lot of people who don’t want to leap over it with us. It’s like, hey, this is real. This happens. This seems to completely undermine this dorky idea that we’ve had of how the mind is wholly a product of the brain. That seems to be cast aside by this research but I’m not sure what we can do beyond that. I remember interviewing Raymond Moody who can sometimes be very difficult to listen to. He talks in rhymes and sometimes has these weird associations that he makes. One thing he was really insistent on and it stuck with me–I don’t know if it’s true or not–he said that when it comes to NDEs, we need a completely different system of logic. And I would extend that and say a system of language before we can ever talk about this stuff scientifically. So I wonder if this whole field just brings us up to the point of saying, okay, something very strange is going on. Then I’m always a little leery when we extend beyond that and say, this is a completely new realm that we’ve discovered but we can use all our same tools. We can just pack them on our back and bring them with us as we investigate this. I don’t know that we can.

Dr. Michael Nahm: I think that we can of course go there and use our methods that we use in other science disciplines. I always prefer an experimental approach like [with] out-of-body experiences, why not try to investigate them experimentally like Charles Tart has done for example, and some other people earlier.

Alex Tsakiris: I’m with you on all of that, Michael, but the end-result of all those experiments is just this is real, this really happened. As soon as we get past that we have all these how many angels fit on the head of a pin questions. So you can use traditional science–materialistic science and you can use it really well to say whether or not this is observable inside of our shared conscious experience that we have. But once you get beyond that, is it really possible to say much that’s at all meaningful beyond that?

Dr. Michael Nahm: To a certain degree, yes, because what science does and should do is collect evidence. In the best cases prove but of course that’s difficult. For my part, I always have the feeling there’s a very large imbalance especially in frontier areas of science between what we can observe and what people expect to make out of these observations. Sometimes they go, okay, perhaps out-of-body experiences, vertical observations from out-of-body experiences…perhaps they are real but we don’t have a theory so it can’t be real. They put too much emphasis on not having a theory but for me that’s not the right approach. I think if we have the facts and I think we have quite good facts we can go on to thinking what does that all mean but we should not expect to come up with a sound, waterproof theory with explanations and predictions…I think it would be nice if it [were] the case but I always have the impression that reality or even consciousness is larger than what I can penetrate with my human logic. And I think if you go into the realm of quantum physics or even in the theories of relativity and all of [these] physicians trying to find a theory of everything…I don’t think they will succeed because we will not be able to penetrate the foundations of nature, the foundations of existence with bottom-up causality and logic. I think it’s begging too much and when we talk about frontier areas of science and near-death experiences, I don’t think our logic will help us to fully understand but it’s enough to understand the basics. Even without having a solid theory about how does dualism work, how does the mind and the brain interact? I don’t know if we’ll ever understand that fully but that doesn’t mean I reject it because the theory is lacking.

When Alzheimer’s Victims Suddenly ‘Perk Up’ Just Before Death — What’s Going On?

By Stafford Betty

An elderly woman never speaks, no longer recognizes her loved ones when they come to visit, and shows no expression. By the looks of her, she is a human vegetable. And she’s been this way for over a year. Her brain’s cerebral cortex and hippocampus — necessary for memory, thought, language, and normal consciousness — are severely shrunk. Her brain bears little resemblance to a healthy one.

Yet something utterly astonishing is about to happen. As reported by both the nursing staff of her care unit and her family members: “Unexpectedly, she calls her daughter and thanks her for everything. She has a phone conversation with her grandchildren, exchanges kindness and warmth. She says farewell and shortly thereafter dies.”

Similar cases have been scattered side notes in the medical literature, but recently a small body of researchers, such as Bruce Greyson, professor of psychiatry and neurobehavioral sciences at the University of Virginia, and Michael Nahm in Freiburg, Germany, have begun to take a careful look at the phenomenon and agreed to call it terminal lucidity, or TL. Professor Alexander Batthyany, who teaches cognitive science at the University of Vienna, is currently running a large-scale study on the phenomenon — the first of its kind. He is sending out detailed questionnaires to caregivers of Alzheimer’s victims, mostly nurses and medical doctors, and as the questionnaires trickle in, new mysteries arise as fast as older ones are clarified. The case cited above comes from Batthyany’s database.

Almost all brain scientists have assumed up until now that a severely-damaged brain makes normal cognition impossible. But Batthyany’s preliminary results, presented at the annual IANDS Congress in Newport, California, last month, suggests that normal cognition, or lucidity, does occur in spite of a severely-damaged brain — not often, but in about 5-10 percent of Alzheimer’s cases. And only when death is very near.

This has led him to wonder how terminal lucidity — which he describes as “close to a miracle, given what we know about brain function and cognition” — can occur. What is actually going on during those amazing moments? We know that there is no observable change in the brain — the cerebral cortex doesn’t suddenly grow billions of new neurons — so what accounts for TL?

Conventional brain science has no explanation. It has long assumed that as the brain goes, so goes the mind; for the brain is what gives rise to the mind. The return of mental clarity and memory in a brain ravaged by Alzheimer’s is not supposed to happen. Yet it does in some cases.

This has given rise to some unorthodox speculation. Could it be that the conventional wisdom is wrong? Is it possible that the mind’s sudden and short-lived return to normalcy just before death is brought about, not by some inexplicable surge in brain functioning, but by the mind’s distancing itself from the brain? What if the brain does not give rise to the mind, as commonly thought? What if the mind uses the brain as its organ? What if the mind of an Alzheimer’s victim is like the sun in eclipse, and the moon obscuring the sun like the sick brain? Batthyany is far from claiming this, but he does wonder about it. Indeed, the analogy of eclipse is his.

To put it differently, it is possible that the conscious self — the thinking, feeling being that we are — is very much intact when we are stricken by Alzheimer’s, but has been hampered from expressing itself in the normal way because of its involvement with a sick brain. In the early stages of the disease, Alzheimer’s victims are often painfully aware that they can’t formulate their thoughts; it’s like trying to formulate a message on a computer when it has a virus. There is nothing wrong with you, the user of the computer, but your message comes out scrambled or incoherent because you’re stuck with a faulty instrument. And if you can’t get it fixed, you might give up trying to communicate altogether. But the onset of death alters the situation. You begin to peel away from the brain and suddenly find yourself able to remember, think, and communicate normally.

How this communication once free from the brain is accomplished is of course mysterious — but no more so, Batthyany says, than communication through it. Batthyany’s research is in its very early stages. He hopes that more questionnaires, thousands more, will bring more clarity and tip the scales in one direction of another.

Batthyany is aware of research on the near-death experience and deathbed visions. On the surface both suggest a view of the self that he is contemplating here — that the conscious self is an autonomous agent working through a material brain. He is not ready, however, to claim that his research into terminal lucidity points to survival beyond death. But it may suggest a crucial distinction between the brain, which obviously dies, and the self — the user of the brain — which might not. At the moment his position, as told me via email, is that “more studies are needed, that our study is ongoing, and that it is far too early to draw any strong conclusions other than that TL does occur, even if only rarely, and that it is a solid mystery which needs to be studied in more detail.”

In the meantime, cases of terminal lucidity continue to occur, and there are lessons to be learned for all of us. One of Batthyany’s respondents confessed how she used to consider her advanced Alzheimer’s patients as “human vegetables.” A single instance of TL changed her outlook completely: “Had you seen what I saw, you could understand that dementia can affect the soul but not destroy it. I only wish I had known this earlier.”

Professor Batthyany is always looking for more cases of TL. If you know of any, he asks that you feel free to contact him by email at 

alexander.batthyany@gmail.com.

Do Alzheimer’s, Dementia Prove the Soul Doesn’t Exist?

NEWPORT BEACH, Calif.—Occasionally, just before death, people with Alzheimer’s disease or dementia who’ve been completely incoherent for many years will seem to return suddenly to their senses. Their memories, personality, and entire mind—so long shrouded by the disease that loved ones had lost hope of their return—shine forth in a final blaze. This phenomenon is known as terminal lucidity.

Some say it refutes the philosophical argument that the “soul” is merely a function of the brain.

The late philosopher Paul Edwards made his “Alzheimer’s Argument Against the Soul” in 1995. He used the example of “Mrs. D.” Mrs. D was a kind and generous lady, often helping others. Alzheimer’s drastically changed that. “All her elegance was gone. She no longer recognized her children, and then in the advanced stage, became extremely aggressive. She who always helped others and was kind to others suddenly started to beat up other elderly patients,” quoted Robert Mays, a near-death experiences researcher. Mays gave a presentation on terminal lucidity at the International Association for Near-Death Studies (IANDS) 2014 Conference on Aug. 30, on behalf of Dr. Alexander Batthyany, a professor in the cognitive science department at the University of Vienna.

Edwards argued that the case of Mrs. D shows the mind or soul does not exist separately from the brain. When the brain is damaged, the person’s mind is damaged. Mrs. D was kind when her brain was functioning, but her personality disappeared when her brain ceased to function properly, proving that the brain creates the mind.

Batthyany said that Edwards makes an “intuitively compelling” argument. But terminal lucidity may suggest the mind is not destroyed with the brain, Batthyany said.

If the mind were dependent on parts of the brain for existence, it is hard to see how a whole person—a person who can make connections between this memory and that, a person who can calmly and rationally interact with others and perform coherent actions—could return. If parts of the brain were so badly affected by the disease, one would expect only a fragmented individual to remain.

Alzheimer's Diseased Brain

The diagram on the right shows a brain affected by Alzheimer’s disease. The diagram on the left shows a healthy brain. (Wikimedia Commons)

Alzheimer's Diseased Brain

Above is a brain affected by Alzheimer’s disease. Below is a healthy brain. (Hersenbank/Wikimedia Commons)

Batthyany asks whether Edwards’s argument would be as compelling if the loss of cognition were only temporary. What if Mrs. D were in a state of drug-induced confusion or some dream state with effects similar to Alzheimer’s? Would it make a difference in how Edwards viewed the case if Mrs. D’s mind returned to normal functioning and her personality remained intact?

In terminal lucidity, it almost looks as if the mind distances itself from a diseased brain, if only briefly, and close to the actual dying process, said Batthyany. When one reads such reports, one cannot help but get the impression that the mind is also hidden behind and constrained by the brain, he said: “Much like the moon eclipses the sun, the brain eclipses the self.”

The Data

Further studies need to be done on terminal lucidity to understand the phenomenon and all of its implications, Batthyany said. In a survey of 800 caregivers, only 32 responded. These 32 caregivers had cumulatively cared for 227 Alzheimer’s or dementia patients. About 10 percent of these patients had a sudden and brief return to lucidity. However, these caregivers were self-selected, warned Batthyany. The low response rate may well mean that the phenomenon is rare, and that we received replies primarily from those who had witnessed terminal lucidity in their dying patients. Currently, we do not know how often the phenomenon really takes place. Most people with dementia still die with dementia. Yet cases of terminal lucidity have a lasting impact on those witnessing them.

A caregiver was quoted as saying: “Before this happened, I had become fairly cynical about the human vegetables I cared for. Now, I understand that I am caring for nurslings of immortality. Had you seen what I saw, you would understand that dementia can affect the soul, but it will not destroy it.”

Studies carried out by Michael Nahm and Bruce Greyson, including one published in the Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease in 2010, are based on analyses of recorded cases from 100 years ago or earlier. More current information is needed, Batthyany said.

‘Thanks for Everything’

A few cases were cited in Batthyany’s presentation, including the following: “An elderly woman with dementia, almost mute, no longer recognizes people, non-expressive. Unexpectedly one day, she called her daughter and thanked her for everything … [she] had a phone conversation with the grandchildren, exchanged kindness and warmth, and said farewell, and shortly afterwards, she died.”

In another case study, the patient was mute and disoriented and hadn’t seemed to notice or understand when her husband, whose name was Urs, died. A few months after her husband’s death, she sat up in bed, stretched out her hand, and said, “Urs! Yes, yes, ready.” She died shortly afterward.

Though this case was somewhat ambiguous, Batthyany said, it was nonetheless untypical of hallucinatory delusions sometimes observed in Alzheimer patients  in that it was calm, orderly, and based on traces of memory that hadn’t been observed in the patient in a long time. It also showed a similarity to many near-death experiences, in which people who have brushes with death or who die for a few moments before being resuscitated often report seeing loved ones who help them “cross over.” Near-death experiencers also often report hovering above their physical bodies, seeing beings or scenes in the afterlife, feelings of euphoria, et cetera.

A Philosopher’s Take

As he seeks further scientific data, Batthyany considers also the words of philosophers. He quoted Spinoza: “You can have light without shadow, but you cannot have shadow without light.”

Lucidity, the mind’s normal state, is the light. Dementia and confusion are the shadows.

Batthyany also said: “You can have truth without error, but you cannot have error without truth.” Error is a deviation, as dementia and Alzheimer’s are deviations from the brain’s normal functioning. There may yet be a true mind or a light shining behind the distorted shadows of the disease.

Studies carried out by Michael Nahm and Bruce Greyson, including one published in the Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease in 2010, are based on analyses of recorded cases from 100 years ago or earlier. More current information is needed, Batthyany said.

‘Thanks for Everything’

A few cases were cited in Batthyany’s presentation, including the following: “An elderly woman with dementia, almost mute, no longer recognizes people, non-expressive. Unexpectedly one day, she called her daughter and thanked her for everything … [she] had a phone conversation with the grandchildren, exchanged kindness and warmth, and said farewell, and shortly afterwards, she died.”

In another case study, the patient was mute and disoriented and hadn’t seemed to notice or understand when her husband, whose name was Urs, died. A few months after her husband’s death, she sat up in bed, stretched out her hand, and said, “Urs! Yes, yes, ready.” She died shortly afterward.

Though this case was somewhat ambiguous, Batthyany said, it was nonetheless untypical of hallucinatory delusions sometimes observed in Alzheimer patients  in that it was calm, orderly, and based on traces of memory that hadn’t been observed in the patient in a long time. It also showed a similarity to many near-death experiences, in which people who have brushes with death or who die for a few moments before being resuscitated often report seeing loved ones who help them “cross over.” Near-death experiencers also often report hovering above their physical bodies, seeing beings or scenes in the afterlife, feelings of euphoria, et cetera.

A Philosopher’s Take

As he seeks further scientific data, Batthyany considers also the words of philosophers. He quoted Spinoza: “You can have light without shadow, but you cannot have shadow without light.”

Lucidity, the mind’s normal state, is the light. Dementia and confusion are the shadows.

Batthyany also said: “You can have truth without error, but you cannot have error without truth.” Error is a deviation, as dementia and Alzheimer’s are deviations from the brain’s normal functioning. There may yet be a true mind or a light shining behind the distorted shadows of the disease.

I’m as sworn to radical rationalism as the next neo-Darwinian materialist. That said, over the years I’ve had to “quarantine,” for lack of a better word, a few anomalous personal experiences that have stubbornly defied my own logical understanding of them.

Once, for instance, I was staying at a hotel in Fort Lauderdale when I had a vivid dream in which there was a knock at the door. I opened it to find my mother’s good friend, Sally, trembling and distraught. “It’s Blaze,” she said to me, weeping inconsolably about her golden retriever. “I can’t find him. He’s not here.” It was such an odd dream that I even shared it with my father the next morning over breakfast. “Weird,” he said, shrugging his shoulders. Later that day at my mom’s house, the phone rang. It was Sally. “It’s Blaze,” she said immediately, sobbing into the phone. “We put him to sleep this morning. I keep expecting him to be in the house but he’s not here, Jesse.”

I can live with the uncertainty surrounding these very few incidents without getting all … unscientific. “Think of all the dreams you’ve had that haven’t come true,” I can tell myself. “So you get one that seems like a premonition. Big deal.” In any event, none of these events have been particularly meaningful to me, just minor hiccups in a naturally ordered universe.

Except for one. Possibly. When my mother died in early 2000, we had a final farewell that some researchers might consider paranormal. At the time, it did strike me as remarkable—and after all these years, I still can’t talk about it without getting emotional. The night before she died at the age of 54 (after a long battle with ovarian cancer), I was sleeping in my mother’s bedroom alongside her. The truth was that I’d already grieved her loss a few days earlier, from the moment she lapsed into what the Hospice nurses had assured us was an irretrievable coma. So at this point, waiting for her body to expire as a physical machine wasn’t as difficult as the loss of “her” beforehand, which is when I’d completely broken down. It had all happened so quickly and, I suppose being young and in denial about how imminent her death really was, I hadn’t actually gotten around to telling her how very grateful I was to have had her as my mom and how much I loved her. But then, around 3am, I awoke to find her reaching her hand out to me, and she seemed very much aware. She was too weak to talk but her eyes communicated all. We spent about five minutes holding hands: me sobbing, kissing her cheeks, telling her everything I’d meant to say before but hadn't. Soon she closed her eyes again, this time for good. She died the next day.

I didn’t quite see the experience as “supernatural” when it happened. And I'm not sure I do today either. But I also didn’t have a name for the experience then. In fact, one didn’t even exist. It does now: terminal lucidity.

Let’s have a more detailed look at the phenomenon in question. The term was coined only five years ago by German biologist Michael Nahm. His 2009 article in The Journal of Near-Death Studies was the first modern review article on the curious subject of cognitively impaired people becoming clearheaded as their death approaches. According to him, cases of “terminal lucidity” had been recorded for millennia, from accounts by classical scholars such as Hippocrates, Cicero and Plutarch to 19th-century medical luminaries like Benjamin Rush (who wrote the first American treatise on mental illness). It’s just that, apparently, no one had thought to label or conceptualize these elusive incidents in any formal way before.

Here’s how Nahm defined terminal lucidity in that original article:

The (re-)emergence of normal or unusually enhanced mental abilities in dull, unconscious, or mentally ill patients shortly before death, including considerable elevation of mood and spiritual affectation, or the ability to speak in a previously unusual spiritualized and elated manner.

The author characterizes terminal lucidity as one of the more common, but lesser known, ELEs (or “end-of-life experiences”). Others on his list include deathbed visions, apparitions, near-death/out-of-body experiences, telepathic impressions, and so on.

But terminal lucidity is a vague concept, needless to say. First of all, what exactly should qualify as the time period “shortly before death”: minutes, hours, days … months? In a follow-up article by Nahm appearing that same year in The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, and coauthored with the psychiatrist Bruce Greyson of the University of Virginia, we get some clarification on this. Of 49 case studies of terminal lucidity, the vast majority (84 percent) occurred within a week of death; 43 percent, in fact, transpired the final day of life.

They divide the phenomenon into two general classes, however. In the first subtype, “the severity of mental derangement improve[s] slowly in conjunction with the decline of bodily vitality.” This occurs in some patients with chronic mental illness when their psychiatric symptoms become less pronounced, or disappear altogether, starting around a month before their deaths. Thus, the lucid periods emerge gradually, like clouds parting. The authors offer three Russian case studies from the 1970s as examples, all schizophrenic patients “without prior lucid intervals, living in seemingly stable psychotic mental states for many years.” One man who’d been completely catatonic for nearly two decades allegedly “became almost normal” before he finally passed away.

In the second subtype of terminal lucidity, the authors tell us, “full mental clarity can appear quite abruptly and unexpectedly just hours or days before death.” In one study, 70 percent of caretakers in a British nursing home said they’d personally observed people with dementia becoming lucid shortly before their deaths. (That figure sounded far more impressive to me before I realized there were only 10 respondents.) A 92-year-old woman with advanced Alzheimer’s disease, for instance, hadn’t recognized her family for years, but the day before her death, she had a pleasantly bright conversation with them, recalling everyone’s name. She was even aware of her own age and where she’d been living all this time. “Such incidents happen regularly,” write Nahm and Greyson.

In another example of this second, more abrupt subtype, earlier this year the authors detailed the extraordinary case of a young German woman named Anna (“Käthe”) Katharina Ehmer, who died in 1922. Her case is especially valuable, according to them, because it was witnessed by two highly respected and influential local figures: Wilhem Wittneben, the chief physician at what was then one of the largest insane asylums in Germany (Hephata), and Friedrich Happich, the director of that same institution. Over the years, both Wittneben and Happich relayed the experience many times in speeches and writings, and their independent descriptions of the incident cross-verified each other.

Käthe was among the most profoundly disabled of the patients at the asylum. Happich paints a vivid picture of her mental status. “From birth on,” he writes, “she was seriously retarded. She had never learned to speak a single word. She stared for hours on a particular spot, then fidgeted for hours without a break. She gorged her food, fouled herself day and night, uttered an animal-like sound, and slept … never [taking] notice of her environment even for a second.” As if that weren’t enough, Käthe suffered several severe meningitis infections over the years that had damaged her cortical brain tissue.

Yet, despite all this, as the woman lay dying (shortly after having her leg amputated from osseous tuberculosis—talk about bad luck), Wittneben, Happich, and other staff members at the facility gathered in astonishment at her bedside. “Käthe,” wrote Happich, “who had never spoken a single word, being entirely mentally disabled from birth on, sang dying songs to herself. Specifically, she sang over and over again, ‘Where does the soul find its home, its peace? Peace, peace, heavenly peace!’” For half an hour she sang. Her face, up to then so stultified, was transfigured and spiritualized. Then, she quietly passed away.”

The religious undertones make my eyebrows rise in spontaneous cynicism, but at face value, one has to admit that the story of Käthe Ehmer is something of a puzzle. And in their extensive literature review on the subject—not an easy task, given that “terminal lucidity” couldn’t be used as a search term prior to that first 2009 article—Nahm and Greyson found a total of 81 references to similar cases, reported by 51 different authors. Nineteenth century physicians and psychiatrists, they point out, wrote most of these accounts. By the 20th century, they speculate, doctors simply stopped reporting these incidents altogether because they failed to jive with contemporary scientific materialism.

Yet, even if terminal lucidity is a genuine phenomenon, who’s to say there isn’t a logical scientific explanation, one involving some unknown brain physiology? Nahm and Greyson don’t discount this possibility entirely, but for cases involving obvious brain damage (such as strokes, tumors, advanced Alzheimer’s disease) that should render the patient all but vegetative, not functioning normally, it’s a genuine medical mystery. According to the authors, terminal lucidity also isn’t all just in the perceiver’s head. Rather, they write, “it seems to be more common than usually assumed, and reflects more than just a collection of anecdotes that on closer scrutiny emerge as wishful thinking.” This then, to them, leaves open the possibility of something more spiritually significant, with the “transcendantal subject” (i.e., the soul) loosening itself from the physical substrate of the brain as death approaches and being able to enter “usually hidden realms.”

I remain a skeptic. Still, I really don’t know how my mother managed those five minutes of perfect communion with me when, ostensibly, all of her cognitive functions were already lost. Was it her immortal soul? One last firestorm in her dying brain?

Honestly, I’m just glad it happened.

List of Publications

  Books:

         Nahm M (2012). Wenn die Dunkelheit ein Ende findet. Terminale Geistesklarheit und andere Phänomene in Todesnähe. Amerang: Crotona; 286 pp.

         Nahm M (2007). Evolution und Parapsychologie. Norderstedt: Books on Demand; 400 pp.

Articles:  

Nahm M, Rousseau D, Greyson B (2017). Asymmetry between cerebral structures and cognitive functioning: A review and case collection. Submitted.

Klein SD, Kohler S, Krüerke D, Templeton AJ, Weibel A, Haraldsson E, Nahm M, Wolf U (2017). Erfahrungen am Lebensende: eine Umfrage bei Ärzten und

       Pflegenden eines Spitals für anthroposophisch erweiterte Medizin [End-of-life experiences: a survey among physicians and nurses in a hospital

       for anthroposophically extended medicine]. Submitted.

Nahm M (2017). Terminal Lucidity. Article for the online Psi Encyclopedia of the Society for Psychical Research. Available at http://psi-encyclopedia.spr.ac.uk/articles/terminal-lucidity

Ludwiger I von, Nahm M (2016). Apport phenomena of medium Herbert Baumann (1911-1998): Report on personal experiences. Journal of Scientific Exploration,

       30, 337-358.

Nahm M (2016). Book review: S Mehne: Der große Abflug - Wie ich durch meine Nahtoderfahrung die Angst vor dem Tod verlor [The great departure - how I

       lost the fear of death through my near-death experience]. Zeitschrift für Anomalistik, 16, 484-488.

Nahm M (2016). Albert Heim (1849-1937): The multifaceted geologist who influenced research into near-death experiences and suggestion therapy.

       Explore: The Journal of Science and Healing, 12, 256-258.

Nahm M (2016). Letter to the editor: The role of animals as co-percipients of apparitions in the work of Emil Mattiesen (1875-1939). Journal of the Society for

       Psychical Research, 80, 119-121.

Nahm M (2016). Further comments about Kai Mügge’s alleged mediumship and recent developments. Journal of Scientific Exploration, 30, 56-62.

Nahm M (2015). Mysterious ways: The riddle of the homing ability in dogs and other vertebrates. Journal of the Society for Psychical Research, 79, 140-155.

Nahm M (2015). Promissory mediumship. Paranormal Review, 74, 15.

Nahm M (2014). Book review: Timon Kuff: Okkulte Ästhetik – Wunschfiguren des Unbewussten im Werk von Albert von Schrenck-Notzing [Occult Aesthetics.

       Wish-Figures of the Unconscious in the Work of Albert von Schrenck-Notzing]. Journal of the Society for Psychical Research, 78, 172-173.

Nahm M (2014). Commentary on the Essay Review „William Jackson Crawford on the Goligher Circle“ by Michael Tymn. Journal of Scientific Exploration, 28, 345-349.

Nahm M (2014). The development and the phenomena of a circle for physical mediumship. Journal of Scientific Exploration, 28, 229-283.

Nahm M, Greyson B (2013-2014). The death of Anna Katharina Ehmer. A case study in terminal lucidity. Omega, 68, 77-87.

Nahm M, Navarini AA, Kelly EW (2013). Canities subita: A reappraisal of evidence based on 196 case reports published in the medical literature.

       International Journal of Trichology, 5, 63-68.

       Link:   http://www.ijtrichology.com/article.asp?issn=0974-7753;year=2013;volume=5;issue=2;spage=63;epage=68;aulast=Nahm

Alvarado CS, Nahm M, Sommer A (2012). Notes on early interpretations of mediumship. Journal of Scientific Exploration, 26, 855-865.  

Nahm M (2012). The sorcerer of Cobenzl and his legacy: The life of Baron Karl Ludwig von Reichenbach, his work and its aftermath. Journal of Scientific

       Exploration, 26, 381-407.

Nahm M, Greyson B, Kelly EW, Haraldsson E (2012). Terminal lucidity: A review and a case collection. Archives of Gerontology and Geriatrics, 55, 138-142.

Alvarado CS, Nahm M (2011). Psychic phenomena and the vital force: Hereward Carrington on “Vital energy and psychical phenomena”. Journal of the

       Society for Psychical Research, 75, 91-103.

Nahm M (2011). Reflections on the context of near-death experiences. Journal of Scientific Exploration, 25, 453-478.

Nahm M (2011). The Tibetan Book of the Dead: Its history and controversial aspects of its contents. Journal of Near-Death Studies, 29, 373-398.

Nahm M (2011). Book review: Göran Brusewitz: Conscious connections. About Parapsychology and Holistic Biology. Journal of Scientific Exploration, 25, 407-411.

Nahm M, Hassler D (2011). Thoughts about thought bundles: A commentary on Jürgen Keil’s paper “Questions of the reincarnation type”. Journal of

       Scientific Exploration, 25, 305–318.

Nahm M (2010). Book review: Janice M. Holden, Bruce Greyson und Debbie James: The handbook of near-death experiences. 30 years of

       investigation. Journal of Parapsychology, 74, 182-189.

Nahm M (2010). Book review: Anabela Cardoso: Electronic voices: Contact with another dimension? Zeitschrift für Anomalistik, 10, 176-181.

Nahm M (2010). Book review: Gerda Lier: Das Unsterblichkeitsproblem. Grundannahmen und Voraussetzungen. Zeitschrift für Anomalistik, 10, 136-144.

Nahm M (2010). Letter to the editor: On mediumistic communications by living agents. Journal of the Society for Psychical Research, 74, 53-56.

Nahm M, Nicolay J (2010). Essential features of eight published Muslim near-death experiences: An addendum to Joel Ibrahim Kreps’s “The search

       for Muslim near-death experiences”. Journal of Near-Death Studies, 29, 255-263.

Nahm M (2009). Terminal lucidity in people with mental illness and other mental disability: An overview and implications for possible explanatory models.

       Journal of Near-Death Studies, 28, 87-106.

Nahm M (2009). Four ostensible near-death experiences of Roman times with peculiar features: Mistake cases, correction cases, xenoglossy, and a

       prediction. Journal of Near-Death Studies, 27, 211-222.

Nahm M (2009). Book review: Forward ever, backward never? Betrachtungen zum Tagungsband „Charting the future of parapsychology“.

       Zeitschrift für Anomalistik, 9, 216-237.

Nahm M, Greyson B (2009). Terminal lucidity in patients with chronic schizophrenia and dementia: A Survey of the Literature. Journal of Nervous

       and Mental Disease, 197, 942-944.

Book Chapters:

Nahm M (2015). Außerkörperliche Erfahrungen. In: Mayer G, Schetsche M, Schmied-Knittel I, Vaitl D (eds). An den Grenzen der Erkenntnis. Handbuch

       der wissenschaftlichen Anomalistik. Stuttgart: Schattauer; pp. 151-163.

Nahm M (2013). Terminale Geistesklarheit und andere Rätsel des menschlichen Bewusstseins. In: Serwaty A, Nicolay J (eds). Nahtoderfahrung und

       Bewusstseinsforschung. Goch: Santiago; pp. 78-134.

Other Publications:

Nahm M (2013). Letztes Erwachen. Terminale Geistesklarheit und andere Rätsel des menschlichen Bewusstseins. Raum & Zeit, 31, 98-102.

Nahm M (2012). Troldmanden fra Kobenzl og hans betydning: Baron Karl Ludwig von Reichenbachs liv og forskning. Dansk Tidsskrift for Psykisk Forskning, 1, 8-32.

Nahm M (2012). “Les matérialistes auront toujours une explication pour tout” (Interview). Nexus, 84, 72-75.

Nahm M (2012). Geistige Klarheit von kranken Menschen kurz vor ihrem Tod. Psi-Info, 25, 103-107.

Nahm M (2012). Rätselhaftes Bewusstsein im Licht moderner Forschung (Interview). Bio, 5, 116-118.

Nahm M (2012). Zehn Fragen zu dem Thema ‚Unglaubliche Erlebnisse am Rande des Todes‘ (Interview). Wendezeit, 2, 14-15.

Nahm M (2012). Terminale Geistesklarheit (Interview). Die andere Realität, 30(2), 27.

Nahm M (2012). Todesnähe-Visionen (Book excerpt). Bewusst Sein, 280, 8-19.

Nahm M (2009). Charles Darwin. Leben und Werk des Begründers der Evolutionstheorie. Tattva Viveka, 39, 8-14.

Nahm M, Haraldsson E (2009). Geistige Klarheit von psychisch kranken Menschen kurz vor dem Tod. Tattva Viveka, 40, 70-75.

Nahm M (2008). Wissenschaft und Spiritualität im Licht der Parapsychologie. Tattva Viveka, 37, 68-72.

Alvarado_Nahm_2011_Carrington_JSPR.pdf

Alvarado_Nahm_Sommer_2012_Mediumship_JSE.pdf

Ludwiger_Nahm_2016_Apport Phenomena Baumann_JSE.pdf

Nahm_2009_NDEs_Roman_Times_JNDS.pdf

Nahm_2009_Terminal_Lucidity_JNDS.pdf

Nahm_2010_Book Review_Handbook_NDEs_JP.pdf

Nahm_2010_Communications by Living Agents_JSPR.pdf

Nahm_2011_Book_Review_Brusewitz_JSE.pdf

Nahm_2011_Context_NDEs_JSE.pdf

Nahm_2011_Tibetan Book of the Dead_JNDS.pdf

Nahm_2012_Reichenbach_JSE.pdf

Nahm_2014_Book_Review_Kuff_JSPR.pdf

Nahm_2014_Crawford_Commentary_JSE.pdf

Nahm_2014_Physical_Mediumship_JSE.pdf

Nahm_2015_Animal Homing_JSPR.pdf

Nahm_2015_Promissory Mediumship_PR.pdf

Nahm_2016_Animals Apparitions_JSPR.pdf

Nahm_2016_Book Review Mehne_ZfA.pdf

Nahm_2016_Further Comments on KM_JSE.pdf

Nahm_Hassler_2011_CORT_Commentary_JSE.pdf

Nahm_Nicolay_2010_Muslim_NDEs_JNDS.pdf