Once an atheist, Janssen is now a writer and advocate for what are called deathbed visions — extraordinary experiences reported by the dying.
Scott Janssen, a longtime hospice social worker in North Carolina, never expected his career to change his beliefs about life, death, and the afterlife. Once an atheist, Janssen is now a writer and advocate for what are called deathbed visions — extraordinary experiences reported by the dying.
A patient’s final moments
Janssen recalls visiting Buddy, an elderly man caring for his wife May, who had suffered from Alzheimer’s. For nine months, Janssen never heard May speak. But shortly before her death, Buddy showed him photographs that stunned him.
The images captured May sitting upright, smiling and speaking — despite years of silence. Buddy said she looked toward someone unseen, thanked him for caring for her, and whispered, “It’s beautiful.”
Janssen was astonished. “I was in uncharted territory,” he said. “The woman’s brain had been progressively eroded. How could she know what Buddy had been doing?”
From skeptic to believer
When Janssen began hospice work 33 years ago, he dismissed such accounts as “a bunch of bulls**t,” blaming medication or oxygen deprivation. He described himself as an existentialist who believed life had no meaning.
But over decades, he encountered hundreds of patients who reported visions — from soldiers who saw glowing comrades to fathers who said children visited to guide them. One man even predicted the exact day of his death after such an encounter.
“These [deathbed visitations] tend to be thematically consistent,” Janssen explained. “There’s a beginning, a middle and an end. Somebody arrives and lets them know, ‘I’m going to be here with you when you depart.’”