Walk Towards The White Light And Hope It's Not The Fridge Door Left Open

The Manawatu Standard reports:

The person lying on the bed was covered in a grey sheet folded down to his shoulders. His mouth and eyes were closed, his hair was combed, and it looked like his hands were clasped together at his waist.

From his vantage point, floating near the ceiling, Trevor James realised he was looking at his own body.

Three figures dressed in surgical or mortuary gowns and caps, swathed in misty grey, appeared in the room.

Mr James recognised them as his long-dead parents and his brother. They stared at the figure on the bed, their mouths opened, but there was no sound. They beckoned.

Mr James was entranced by the sliver of brilliant white light he could see in the gap at the bottom of the door. He did not move toward it, and after a while, the figures melted away.

Mr James woke up alive next morning.

He was wearing the clothes he lay down in the previous evening. The sense of great peace and harmony had gone. He was disoriented and afraid.

There was no landline where he was living on the outskirts of Feilding, so he managed to stumble out and call for help.

An ambulance came. His vital signs were very low, his pallor deathly white. The eventual medical explanation was that he had had a stroke.

Two years on, the 69-year-old has tried to explain away the experience, but can't.

I try hard not to comment on the writing style of others ('cos I ain't no literary talent), but that was painful to read.

Anyway, back to the report. There are two possibilities here.

• Some kind of supernatural event occurred.
• He was hallucinating.

Being a sceptic when it comes to these things*, I’m inclined to chose the second option. It’s not that I'm unwilling to accept the possibility of the supernatural. But I want to see evidence. That is my attitude towards all such matters: ghost sightings, UFOs, psychic powers, whatever.

When science can explain something adequately, and when there is no firm evidence of the supernatural, I prefer science.

In this case, we know that people hallucinate. Many others have reported these experiences happening during surgery or while in hospital. But we also know that drugs and anaesthesia can do weird things to the brain.

Still, I can see that having that kind of vision would be a bit of an eye-opener.

* My late mother was very much into this stuff, was a practising clairvoyant (by which I mean she gave consultations and made a living from giving readings), and very much believed in the supernatural. I am told by some that she had "the Power”. I don’t. Even when I was younger and wanted to believe in “the Power” I felt nothing. As I grew older and wiser(??) my mother’s beliefs became an issue I generally just steered clear of.