Creepy Last Words: What 29 People Said Right Before Dying
“My grandfather on his deathbed said, ‘they have no eyes’; still gives me chills.”
1. “They have no eyes.”
“My grandfather on his deathbed said, ‘they have no eyes’; still gives me chills.”
2. “Fire! Fire! There’s fire everywhere!”
“I had an old lady flag me down in the hallway a few days before she died and with her emaciated face and bulging eyes, she said, ‘You know where I’m going.’ I asked her what she meant and she repeated herself. ‘You know where I’m going when I die. And it ain’t up.’
I was taken aback and asked her if she wanted to talk with the priest we have on staff. She shook her head and said, ‘It’s too late for that.’
A few days later, she was eating her supper and started screaming. She yelled, ‘Fire! Fire! There’s fire everywhere!’ She died a few hours later, quite suddenly.
I didn’t sleep that night and I really hope her soul found some rest.”
3. “The body is in the woods next to the oak tree.”
“Surgeon here. Not sure if this is ‘creepy’ but a man on his deathbed kept repeating ‘the body is in the woods next to the oak tree’ over and over until he passed.
The police were notified and they did search some woods behind the man’s house but never found anything.”
—ReallyUnbelievable
4. “The next time you wash me I will be dead.”
“I once worked as a nurse and I had a gentleman who didn’t want a wash one morning and said to me ‘the next time you wash me I will be dead.’ I thought he was just being morbid like the old guys are and then he asked to his wife and got quite agitated, I went to continue with the other patients and I got a call to help with someone who died…turns out he was right.”
5. “Am I dead? I’m in hell.”
“I’m a lab person, and I had to go to the ER to draw blood from a code stroke patient that just came in, BC the EMTs couldn’t get it.
I got there it was just me and him before he went to CT and he looked at me and said ‘Am I dead? I’m in hell.’
He died a couple hours later. Poor old man.”
6. “I see a bright light…Horses…No eyes…No…NO…NOOO!”
“ER physician here, had heard many last words from patients but the creepiest one has to be of a man who was on his last breaths as he succumbed to renal failure. He said, ‘I see a bright light…Horses…No eyes…No…NO…NOOO!’ as he’d loudly yell, at this point he was crashing when he suddenly woke up, looked up and with his last breath he said ‘I understand…’ and he died.
We know in the medical field that these situations are provoked by a cascade of neurotransmitters in disarray due to tissue and organ failure but I sometimes have my doubts and perhaps we are seeing more than we are led to believe.”
7. “He’s in all black, and he’s got a top hat on. And his eyes are red.”
“A nice old lady who told my CNA she wanted to wear all white. When asked why, she said ‘the man in black is here.’ She looked in the corner of the room. The CNA looked, but there was no one there. That’s when I came into the room. We asked her to describe what she was seeing and she said ‘he’s in all black, and he’s got a top hat on.’ Then she whispered, ‘and his eyes are red’ while her eyes moved across the room to directly behind the CNA, like she was watching him move closer to us. She died later that night. But it was unexpected. That room creeped me out for a long time after that.”
8. “The spiders are eating papa.”
“I was in the army in Pakistan to for humanitarian support after an earthquake. There was a very serious school bus crash when a road gave was and a dozen kids were killed.
The first kid that we took off the ‘ambulance’ and put on the stretcher to carry into our triage tent said (more like screamed) something in Urdu. When we got there the doc asked the translators what he said, it was ‘the spiders are eating papa.’
We all just looked at each other for a second, then just proceeded with triage.”
9. “Why is this happening to me?”
“I work in a cardiac ICU. We had a patient who had a pulmonary artery rupture (a rare, but known complication of a Swan-Ganz catheter). One minute he was joking around with us and the next bright red blood was spewing out of his mouth. His last words before he died were ‘Why is this happening to me?’ It still haunts me years later.”
10. “You look like an angel.”
“I’m a nurse and was previously working at an assisted living community on the dementia/Alzheimer’s unit. My very favorite patient had been declining pretty steadily so I was checking on him very frequently. We would have long chats and joke around with each other, but in the last two weeks of his life, he stopped talking completely and didn’t really acknowledge conversation directed at him at all. I finished my medication rounds for the evening and went to see him before I left. I told him I was leaving for the night and that I’d see him the following day, and he looked me in the eyes and smiled SO genuinely and said, ‘You look like an angel.’ I thought it was so sweet because he had not seemed lucid in weeks. He died the next morning. It really messed with me.”
11. “Get home safe, little one.”
“‘Get home safe, little one.’ It wasn’t what he said—he said the same thing to me any time I had him as a patient for the evening. It was how he said it. He gave me this look and pause like he knew. The DNRs in my experience, always know when it’s time. It’s creepy.”
12. “Oh shit, oh shit, OH NOOOOOOO!!!!”
“Ugh. I was a hospice nurse for many years. Super gratifying job for a nurse, surprisingly. As a ‘regular’ nurse, you are rarely offered thanks. Hospice nursing is an island unto itself. Mostly peaceful, lots of times sad, often a blessing.
This is sad, but also creepy, and I wouldn’t believe it if I hadn’t seen it. Had a 20-year-old kid, gang member, who was dying of primary liver cancer. Super unusual, aggressive, and terminal. He was angry at the universe. His family was there to comfort him, but he literally spit in their faces. Every ounce of energy he had left was angry and mean and ugly. His mom would beg him to lighten up and accept Jesus into his heart. He would swing at her and tell her to eff herself. The family remained bedside, in hopes he would chill out at the end.
His last day, hours, moments, he was angry. The family called me into the room, and told me they thought he was going (he wasn’t responding, Cheyne-Stokes breaths, eyes glossy and skin cold–the end was imminent.) His lovely mother, in her dearest attempt, whispered to him to go towards the light, to her Jesus. With his dying breath he opened his eyes, looked at her and said ‘Eff your Jesus!!!’ A second or two later, he slowly turned his head to the to the left, and got the most horrific look on his face as if he was looking at something we couldn’t see, and horrified, like in a bad movie, his face contorted, and he screamed with his last breath, eyes wide, ‘Oh shit, oh shit, OH NOOOOOOO!!!!,’ then made a guttural noise and promptly fell back into the bed and died. Every family member was shaking and too frightened to speak, and I left the room and took two days off. I don’t care if I never find out what he saw.”
13. “Bob, Bob, here I come. Oh, honey I’ve missed you so much!”
“My grandma died in 1989 my grandfather (Bob) died around 1965. She never remarried, never dated, but she did have a great life.
When she was dying she yelled, ‘Bob, Bob, here I come. Oh, honey I’ve missed you so much!’
We always joked that we were glad she didn’t yell, ‘Bob, who the hell is that?’”
14. “It’s about damn time you got here! I’ve been waiting!”
“My mom was watching over my great-grandfather in the hospital. He’d been unresponsive for a day or so, when suddenly he said: ‘It’s about damn time you got here! I’ve been waiting!’ And then he died.”
15. “Kill me.”
“DNR patient was on comfort cares. Was on a high dose of morphine and hallucinating. She would alternate between grasping for things not there and trying to climb out of bed. She was too unsteady to walk so my job was to sit in the room and make sure she was safe. She tried to get up and I went to ask her what she needed. She grabbed my arm and pulled me down towards her face and said, very angrily, ‘kill me.’ That one fucked with me for a while.”
16. “The old gray mare ain’t what she used to be.”
“Checked in on a patient before the end of my shift and she was in good spirits, had been joking with me the whole time. Her condition was tenuous (new trach) but she had been positive throughout. I asked how she was doing and she replied by singing ‘The old gray mare ain’t what she used to be’ and wished me a good night. I came in the next morning and she had coded and died overnight.”
17. “Bill’s here, love, I’ve got to go.”
“I’ve commented this somewhere before but it’s stayed with me! I’m an RN and while I was a student I was caring for a lady who had end-stage renal failure, had a DNAR and was shutting down. We were having a little chat, well I was chatting away while helping her put on some lotion, when she stopped, looked over my shoulder and said ‘Bill’s here, love, I’ve got to go’ and swiftly stopped breathing. Read her old notes and Bill was her deceased husband.”
18. “Don’t tell me she’s dead, where is she???”
“I worked a bank shift in A&E a few months ago. A young man was in a horrible car crash, his face was covered in blood and had a compound fracture of his clavicle but conscious, he was screaming ‘Don’t tell me she’s dead, where is she???’ before succumbing to his injuries an hour later. His girlfriend had died instantly in the crash.”
19. “Something’s going to happen.”
“I’m a hospital chaplain: When I was a CPE intern (a greenhorn) I went to see a patient in the ICU who had 10 to 12 oranges on her table. We talked about oranges for about 20 minutes and then she said, ‘Something’s going to happen.’
I went to check on her the next day and the nurse mentioned that she passed the previous night. I asked if anyone else talked with her and she said no. So, the last conversation she had was about oranges with me. I kind of wish we talked about something else; however, the nurse said that was a worthy conversation that the patient wanted to talk about. It made me feel better.”
20. “There are actual angels who keep coming into my room.”
“This afternoon, my wife and I were just remembering an amazing friend of mine, Kevin, who died a little more than 18 years ago. We did the math and realized that the son he left behind is now the same age that Kevin was when he passed, which gave me pause, to say the least. Kevin died from a recurrence of the same type of cancer that had first shown up in him while he was still in his teens. The same cancer (seriously, fuck cancer) had also taken his father also at the age of 34 when Kev was just about the same age as his kid. He was a warm, funny, kind, no-bullshit guy who had zero capacity for flowery talk or mysticism, you know? He was a real cash-and-carry kind of dude. So, you’ll understand why his last conversation with me has comforted me for nearly two decades, now.
I went in to visit him at the hospital on what ended up being the final day of his life and, when he and I were finally alone, he leaned over to me and said ‘Stan, there have been angels in my room, on and off, since just before sunrise.’ I ask him if he thought it was the morphine (which, normally, he would have been the first to suggest/lol), and he said ‘No, I’m not fucking with you, buddy…I’m not talking about ‘feeling’ angels or anything….There are actual angels who keep coming into my room.’ I asked him if they were frightening and he replied, ‘No, they’re actually making me calm the fuck down a little bit.’ He passed, later that evening.
You know, I have always had (and still have) doubts about there being anything after this life. And, of course, the pragmatic part of my brain recognizes that it certainly could have been the medications he was taking, or some further metastasis to his brain, right? But, if I’m being honest about what my gut tells me, or, my heart? There were angels in my friend’s room..”
21. “I’m going to see you again, brother.”
“My grandfather’s brother, he died exactly six hours after my grandfather and just minutes before he died he said, ‘I’m going to see you again, brother.’
He didn’t know at the time that my granddad (his brother) had died. The family were going to tell him the next morning because he was having a bad day.”
22. “Don’t be sad.”
“I’m working on my mother’s eulogy for tomorrow’s wake. I’m going to go into detail for anyone that is smoking because I think it’s something you should reconsider.
My mom was diagnosed with terminal lung and pancreatic cancer, mass had developed around her vocal cords and made it hard for her to speak. She smoked all of her life, and it finally caught up with her. It attacked her quick, from time she was diagnosed, to time she passed away, it was less than two weeks. First she lost her voice, then she had difficulty breathing, became weak, she couldn’t walk too far, then she could only walk a little, then nothing at all, she had trouble eating. The night she died I let her smoke her cigarette, (doctor said it didn’t matter anymore) and my sister and I took mom into her bed and I knew as did my sister, it was the last time, we spent a few hours with her, holding her and I got up, lost it a bit, and my mom said ‘Don’t be sad’ loudly with all her might.
I was fortunate to be with my mother at that time, she was due to have hospice that Monday but she did not make it, lung cancer kills quickly. I hope none of you have to deal with that, consider it that next cigarette, it’s just a matter of time. Well, enough preaching.”
23. “Are you going to bury me today?”
“Not a medical professional, but my dad was dying at home and had been pretty out of it for a few days. The few times he was conscious, he would talk about all the people in his room and that they were climbing the walls, staring at him from under the bed, generally crazy shit. The last thing he said before the end was to my sister: ‘Are you going to bury me today?’ Totally fucked all of us up. He died the next day.”
24. “I have faced death many times before.”
“The guy was gobbling down his breakfast and was refusing to have his blood glucose checked. And we knew that he would need insulin because of his history. I expressed my concern and he told me, ‘I have faced death many times before.’ He’s nearly blind, missing a few digits, you get the picture.
I came back 30 minute later to check on him. He was unconscious and turning nearly blue. We coded him and recovered him to the ICU basically brain-dead. They pulled the plug on him a week later. Turned out he had choked on a piece of egg from the breakfast he was eating.”
25. “The Devil has been in my room all night, but don’t worry, God is with you.”
“‘The Devil has been in my room all night, but don’t worry, God is with you.’ This man had like the worst death ever, too. He had a horrendous seizure and died with his eyes wide open and had a horrible grimace on his face. He had also been yelling all night about the ‘Devil’ and saying over and over, ‘Get out of here! This building’s gonna blow!’”
26. “Help, they’re torturing me.”
“I had a resident at end of life on comfort care. I went into say goodbye and she opened her eyes, looked right at me, and said ‘Help, they’re torturing me.’ It was awful, she was drugged to hell and gone but obviously still feeling pain.”
27. “I see the line. Tell mom I’ll be back.”
“I’m a paramedic—an elderly woman (cc of dizziness) grabbed my arm and asked me to tell the man with no head to get off of her dresser. She coded immediately after, from NSR to asystole like someone snapped their fingers.
A second one was a 9-year-old struck by a vehicle—he said, ‘I see the line. Tell mom I’ll be back.’ His eyes rolled back in his head, and he went into v-tach. We worked him all the way to the hospital, and for another 40 minutes in the trauma bay before he passed.”
28. “Why are they here?”
“My grandmother when dying—told my mum (her daughter)—‘no, I do want to go yet’ and kept asking my mum, ‘why are they here?’ She (grandma) realized she was making the transition.”
29. “Tomorrow I’ll be dead and so will you.”
“When my grandmother was dying someone had to me with her all day, one night my cousin volunteered to sit with her and was just talking with a half-lucid woman. The house she lives in was creepy, the lights from the family room didn’t reach the stairs or the hallway so the light you had was it. Around 1AM my grandmother starts making faces at the stairs and when my cousin asks what’s wrong grandma responds ‘I just wish that man on the stairs would quit staring at us.’
Later on into the night my cousin mentions how more family is arriving the next day and grandma says ‘well it doesn’t matter, tomorrow I’ll be dead and so will you.’
My cousin didn’t volunteer to sit with Grandma after that night.”
