I will conclude this chapter with the following extract from “Lockhart’s Life of Scott:”
- Date of account
- First published 1848
- Source
- The Night-Side of Nature; Or, Ghosts and Ghost-Seers
- Reference
- The Night-Side of Nature; Or, Ghosts and Ghost-Seers · selected passage 129
- Rights
- public_domain
- Language
- English
- Record updated
- 2026-08-24
Record summary
Every one will have heard that persons who have been drowned and recovered, have had—in what would have been their last moments, if no means had been used to revive them—a strange vision of the past, in which their whole life seemed to float before them in review; and I have heard of the same phenomenon taking place, i…
Published source text
Read the available text below. Archive transcriptions may contain OCR errors; later context is labelled separately. A recorded claim is not a finding that it happened.
Source passage
Source text · mention onlyEvery one will have heard that persons who have been drowned and recovered, have had—in what would have been their last moments, if no means had been used to revive them—a strange vision of the past, in which their whole life seemed to float before them in review; and I have heard of the same phenomenon taking place, in moments of impending death, in other forms. Now, as it is not during the struggle for life, but immediately before insensibility ensues, that this vision occurs, it must be the act of a moment; and this renders incomprehensible to us what is said by the seeress of Prevorst, and other somnambules of the highest order, namely, that the instant the soul is freed from the body, it sees its whole earthly career in a single sign: it knows that it is good or evil, and pronounces its own sentence.
Historical context
Contextual commentary · mention onlyThis is a historical account assembled under the reporting and publishing conventions of its period. It may preserve testimony, hearsay, retelling and editorial interpretation together.
Modern context
Contextual commentary · mention onlyA modern comparison can identify recurring descriptions and possible explanations, but the account is not treated as independently verified evidence merely because it appeared in print.
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