Terminal Lucidity (Dr. Michael Nahm)

Terminal Lucidity: The Researchers Attempting to Prove Your Mind Lives On Even After You Die

One of the strangest stories of death you’ll ever hear is the tale of Anna Katharina Ehmer, a wildly deranged, developmentally delayed German woman who was raised in a mental institution. Anna was locked in a permanent mute state, her brain ravaged by meningitis. Yet at the moment of her passing, this presumably deaf-mute woman somehow transformed into a songbird. She serenaded Death. Before that moment, Anna had never once spoken in her entire life.

The doctors and hospital staff who witnessed Anna’s concertina for Death were rendered speechless themselves; some sobbed in bewilderment; others felt they’d witnessed a miracle of the soul. In particular, here’s how one of her doctors, Friedrich Happich, recalled the moment:

One day I was called by one of our physicians, who is respected both as a scientist and a psychiatrist. He said: “Come immediately to Käthe, she is dying!” When we entered the room together, we did not believe our eyes and ears. Käthe, 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. Like myself and the nurse who had cared for her, the physician had tears in his eyes.

We witnessed the dying of this girl with deepest emotions. Her death posed many questions to us. Obviously, Käthe had only superficially participated in all that happened in her surroundings. In reality, she had apparently internalized much of it. Because, where did she know the text and the melody of this song from, if not from her surroundings? Moreover, she had comprehended the contents of this song and used it appropriately in the most critical hour of her life. This appeared like a miracle to us.

It wasn’t until 2008 — some 75 years later — that modern science finally invented a term for what happened to Anna Katharina Ehmer: “terminal lucidity.” German biologist Michael Nahm coined the term. Thanks to a recent appointment at the Institute for Frontier Areas of Psychology and Mental Health, in Freiburg, Germany, he studies the phenomenon of these startling, spontaneous exhibitions of impossible physical and mental feats at the hour of one’s death.

 • A short example of Michael Nahm's work with Terminal Lucidity.

 https://melmagazine.com/en-us/story/terminal-lucidity-the-researchers-attempting-to-prove-your-mind-lives-on-even-after-you-die

Dr Michael Nahm is one of the scientific investigators (along with Stephen Braude) who has published papers in the Journal of Scientific Investigation, investigating the so-called "promissory mediumship" of Kai Muegge:
- [Only admins are allowed to see this link]

- Further Comments about Kai Mügge’s Alleged Mediumship and Recent Developments
(ABSTRACT from the Journal of Scientific Exploration)

There is a lot of controversy surrounding these investigations, as said medium has fiercely defended the claims of fraudulent practices against him, and there exists a lot of online spatted to-ing and fro-ing following on since publication of those papers.

- Rebuttal to Fraud Charges by Michael Nahm against medium Kai Mugge

As always, of course, people must make up their own minds as to the truth of what is, or isn't ....
- preferably seeking out, weighing up and dissecting all available relevant information before reaching and accepting any sort of conclusion.

---

I am personally very interested concerning this "terminal lucidity" research, as it is something I heard much about as a child and indeed grew up accepting as normal and common - in particular the reports of people on their deathbeds apparently seeing and speaking coherently with deceased relatives (that no-one else could see), often with a happy smile livening up their faces, just before taking their last breath, or extending a hand or arm as if in response to some unseen waiting outstretched arms.

I witnessed it for myself (in 2003) with my aunt (my mother's sister) who had been in hospital for three months after suffering a stroke in the recovery room following an operation. I visited her every day during that time. She recognised all her visitors, understood what we were saying but could not lift her head up from the pillow and for much of the time at first could converse and interact with stilted, slurred speech. However, the last 3 weeks or so she deteriorated, just lay there, sleeping a lot, and for the brief times when she did wake she would just lie there with this tired, vacant look on her face. She had at this stage been moved from the ward to a room of her own.
One day just before her passing, while there in the hospital with her on my own, she all of a sudden sat bolt upright in the bed, her face animatedly lit with a radiant smile and pointing to a corner at the end of her bed, the other side from where I was sitting, exclaimed quite clearly "Oh look, there's Eily!" (her sister - my mother). I looked to where she was pointing but no-one was there, I remember looking hard and almost willing that I would be able to see what she was seeing too, but even though I could see no-one, I just knew that my mother was there and the reason was that my aunt's time was close and she had come to greet her and be with her when she crossed over.
I replied gently to my aunt No, [mam's] not here, but still sitting upright and looking over at the same place she very clearly and precisely replied "Yes she IS. Look!", pointing her whole arm out strongly again to the same spot. (She had not been able to move a finger up to this point, let alone sit up in the bed and thrust her arm out like that.)

Neglected until recently, the phenomenon of ‘terminal lucidity’ is attracting renewed interest on the part of scientific researchers, particularly in the context of psychical ‘near-death’ phenomena.

Doesnt it seem a waste of time and money for these scientific researchers to be spending on something that has already been known about since time immemorial. Why the sudden interest in providing scientific proof of things already known? Are these scientists running out of subjects to keep them in work?

Misty wrote:

Neglected until recently, the phenomenon of ‘terminal lucidity’ is attracting renewed interest on the part of scientific researchers, particularly in the context of psychical ‘near-death’ phenomena.

Doesnt it seem a waste of time and money for these scientific researchers to be spending on something that has already been known about since time immemorial. Why the sudden interest in providing scientific proof of things already known? Are these scientists running out of subjects to keep them in work?

I usually refer to it as 're-inventing the wheel'. It's just one of many things nowadays that leave me rhetorically asking why folk try to show/prove/disprove something that's been known about forever. (or so it seems)

Now I've reached the age where it won't be long before I re-acquaint myself with all the 'stuff' I'm regularly talking to others about, trying to explain to them, and I'm largely past-caring what folk do.

Put crudely I just can't be arsed!

mac wrote:

Misty wrote:

Neglected until recently, the phenomenon of ‘terminal lucidity’ is attracting renewed interest on the part of scientific researchers, particularly in the context of psychical ‘near-death’ phenomena.

Doesnt it seem a waste of time and money for these scientific researchers to be spending on something that has already been known about since time immemorial. Why the sudden interest in providing scientific proof of things already known? Are these scientists running out of subjects to keep them in work?

I usually refer to it as 're-inventing the wheel'. It's just one of many things nowadays that leave me rhetorically asking why folk try to show/prove/disprove something that's been known about forever. (or so it seems)

Now I've reached the age where it won't be long before I re-acquaint myself with all the 'stuff' I'm regularly talking to others about, trying to explain to them, and I'm largely past-caring what folk do.

Put crudely I just can't be arsed!

I would suggest it's not so much 're-inventing the wheel' - moreso a maintenance of ... checking the 'wholeness' of the wheel; i.e. checking for missing, rusty or substandard replaced (or misplaced) spokes, hubs, nuts and bolts ...

Much of the published information put forward as factually proven and correct where the scientific community is concerned depends on peer review. However, the process of peer review within mainstream science is lacking in many areas. There is a considerable amount of bias involved, depending on the study subject of the research; which journals (and authors/researchers) are accepted as reputable, the type of studies included (e.g. single blind, double-blind etc), and also an imbalance in the collective reviewers' experience or individual expertise in the subjects being researched.
(see [Only admins are allowed to see this link] - Is Peer Review all it's cracked up to be?)

On Michael Nahm's website, he states:

"People have sometimes asked me why I am interested in so many seemingly diverse topics such as unsolved riddles of evolution, different philosophies of biology, phenomena in near-death states, out-of-body experiences, the sudden whitening of hair after emotional shock, and parapsychology including its history, and the study of mediumship.

For me, all these topics are part of biology. They all concern the study of living organisms, and approaches to interpret their existence in the best possible way.

I am convinced that by studying frontier areas of biology and issues typically not covered by standard biological courses and textbooks, we can learn a lot about organisms including human beings, and about nature as a whole."

Concerning his own research study on 'Sudden Whitening of Hair', he writes:

"For centuries, it has been claimed that human hair can turn white 'over night.' Yet, this astonishing claim has so far not been investigated systematically. Still, several authors of the medical setting wrote articles that are commonly thought to have shown that human hair cannot turn white within one or a few days. Typically, authors of such articles devaluate existing reports of sudden whitening, and stress that inanimate organic matter without metabolism cannot change its colour.

The most frequently cited 'review' paper of this kind was written by Josef Jelinek in 1972. Jelinek, however, included only a very small fraction of the existing case reports in his paper and omitted practically all first-hand observations published by physicians in the medical literature. Moreover, the summaries of the few case reports he included in his review contain conspicious errors, and one must wonder how thoroughly Jelinek had read the original publications.
In short, Jelinek's paper is a good example of bad science. It nicely illustrates how a 'science myth' is created on virtually no foundation, and is perpetuated for decades without being questioned."

Again, this is another area where I have personally witnessed the occurrence, and so proven to be feasible and factually true (the sudden overnight whitening of hair of a 4-year-old girl who was in a car accident where both her parents were killed outright). It happened back in my hometown village in Ireland. I was about 10 at the time. My parents ran a guest house in the main street of the village. The crash happened in the middle of the night almost outside our house. There was a small Gardai barracks (police station) in the village with one guard (policeman) and one police sergeant. The police sergeant lived in our house a long-term paying guest, and was just like one of the family. My older sister used to type up all the police reports for the Barracks. Both parents of the little girl were killed outright in the crash, and she was brought into our house where she had a bed for the night. The next morning, every single long strand of that little girl's dark auburn-coloured hair had turned completely white! I saw it myself - the before, and the after.

These above-mentioned 'science myths' need to be addressed and brought to the attention of the public in general, and we need people like Michael Nahm, innovative individuals who are prepared to put their own reputations at risk by delving into subjects not readily accepted within the tightly controlled 'scientific method'. We know that science does not hold all the answers. We also know that the materialistic sector does not hold room for all the questions.

I suppose when you look on it that way it does put a different perspective on it.
There are different models and makes of wheels too, and ever-changing and improving usages for them. You would not put an old cart wheel or a Mini Clubman wheel onto a Mercedes Benz and expect it to do the same job!