In April we pointed out that parapsychologist Alexander Imich had become the world’s oldest living man. Sadly, Imich’s tenure was a short one, with the 111-year-old Polish immigrant passing away on the weekend in Manhattan.
Imich had been studying various psychic claims since the 1930s, when he researched the séances of a Polish medium known as ‘Matylda S.’. Eighty years on, the supercentenarian was still keen to research the possibility of an afterlife, this time though via direct experience. At such an advanced age, Imich was well aware of his mortality, noting to a friend recently that “the compensation for dying is that I will learn all the things I was not able to learn here on Earth.”
Interestingly, the New York Times obituary notes that Imich appeared to have deathbed visions in the days leading up to his passing:
Mr. Mannion said that Mr. Imich was highly agitated four days before his death, speaking Polish and Russian to spirits he felt were around him. He was treated with medication before his death.
As I noted in my recent book Stop Worrying! There Probably is an Afterlife, the fascinating phenomena associated with end-of-life experiences (ELEs), such as deathbed visions, aren’t restricted to occurring in the minutes or seconds before passing…they can occur, days, weeks and sometimes even months before. And they are hardly rare: a recent British survey found that almost two-thirds of doctors, nurses and hospice carers reported witnessing ‘end-of-life experiences’ such as death-bed visions in their patients.
What does seem different in this case (though not unheard of) is that Imich was reportedly “highly agitated” during these final days, whereas death-bed visions are usually a helpful aid to the ‘transition’ between life and death, bringing the dying to a place of peace and contentment. It might depend on what Imich was saying to the ‘spirits’ though…was it agitation, or excitement, and if the former, was it because he didn’t want to die, or rather due to other circumstances (e.g. the spirits weren’t talking back to him).
In any case, farewell and godspeed to Alexander Imich…I hope the secrets have all been revealed to you now.
Related:
