End-of-life doctor reveals the haunting sign death may be days away

A doctor who specializes in end-of-life care has revealed a common experience many people have in the days before they die.

Dr Christopher Kerr, a hospice and palliative care physician in Buffalo, New York, said dying patients often report visions of deceased loved ones who cared for or protected them during their lives.

Kerr explained that these patients were adamant that this was not a dream or hallucination, saying that they clearly saw their loved ones and were certain of the vision's meaning. 

'Very little is said between the person in the dream and the dreamer, but everything seems to be understood,' he said in an interview with Oprah Winfrey. 'And what I think is most fascinating, I've been doing it for 27 years. I've never had a patient ask me, "What do you think this means?"'

The doctor added that dying patients knew exactly which deceased loved ones had come to visit them, noting that relatives or spouses with whom the patient had a difficult relationship were not there.

This could mean someone's mother was seen, but not their father, or only one specific spouse visited if the person was married several times.

No matter who was seen just before a patient's death, Kerr said the majority - approximately 88 percent - claimed the experience was positive and said it comforted them in their final days.

The daughter of one of Kerr's patients claimed these visions started two to four months before her mother died, adding there was an understanding that the loved ones who visited her mother would be there in the afterlife waiting to comfort them.

Hospice and palliative care expert Christopher Kerr said the most common experience before death is seeing deceased loved ones comforting you (Stock Image)

During the July 2026 interview on The Oprah Podcast, a woman named Julie revealed specific details of her mother Jean's vision just weeks before she died.

According to Julie, Jean began to see her mother, who had died 30 years earlier, sitting in a chair in the same room the two women were in. 

'Mom is sitting in the chair across the room and um she is waiting for me, and she wants me to know that she's going to be there for me,' Julie recalled her mother saying.

Kerr, who has researched and written about the experiences of people near death, could not say where these visions come from or prove they were real.

However, he observed a common theme in all of these near-death experiences, which was that they provided the patient with a sense of wholeness - meaning the visitations tended to resolve some type of unresolved issue in that person's life.

Kerr added that life often leaves people incomplete. Nearly everyone carries something unfinished, such as a parent dying during their childhood, a parent losing a child, guilt, regrets, broken relationships or the feeling they were not forgiven for some past incident.

The doctor and author called those lingering issues psychic or spiritual wounds, noting that the body carries physical wounds that can no longer be healed when we die, but these visitations often give people a chance to heal the spiritual ones.

'In the end, there's this you're almost put back together by being brought back to family,' Kerr said on the podcast. 'You certainly carry loss. You’ve lost people who are lingering in your heart, and they come back to you. And so that’s a form of healing.'

Kerr said that 88 percent of those who had a visitation before dying viewed the experience as positive and comforting (Stock Image)

Pictured: Dr Christopher Kerr, a researcher who has interviewed over 1,500 people about their experiences before death

Kerr, who has written a book called Death Is But a Dream, has conducted over 1,500 interviews with patients who were still fully lucid before their deaths to document these unexplained encounters.

Julie's mother, Jean, was one of these interviewees and said the visitation by her mother was not the only time deceased loved ones came to see her before the end.

'I was lying in bed, and people were walking very slowly by me. The right-hand side I didn't know, but they were all very friendly, and they touched my arm or my hand when they went by. 

And but the other side were people that I knew,' Jean said in a video testimonial prior to her death.

Jean recalled that her mother, father, uncle and brother-in-law were all there during this particular visitation.

She also revealed that she did not always have the best relationship with her mother, who had visited Jean multiple times, but added that 'we made up for it at the end.'

Kerr described dying as a gradual process, not a sudden, dramatic event. People tend to sleep more towards the end. According to Kerr, death usually happens inside that deepening sleep, not while the person is fully awake and talking.

'People don't die in an awake state. They die in the depths of sleep. And you can't get there unless you're comfortable. And everybody seems to have an understanding of that from a physical perspective. But psychologically, existentially, you also have to find peace,' the doctor explained.