How I Learned to Talk with My “Dead" Brother and YOU Can Do This Too! with Rebecca Austill-Clausen
What Researchers Found
The Story
Rebecca Austin Fossum, an occupational therapist, had a spiritual experience while visiting her brother David in the hospital as he died from AIDS complications. At 3 a.m., she sensed his soul had left his body on the ventilator. She held crystals from David and his friend Edward, closed her eyes, and saw a vision of the ocean. A large animal like a manatee with David's brown eyes swam toward her. It entered her body, filling her with love, joy, and the belief that David lived on. A smaller animal, representing Edward, followed and departed. Rebecca felt overwhelming gratitude and peace. After David's death, she experienced visions of him and deceased relatives, erasing guilt and confirming eternal life. She apprenticed in shamanism, learned Reiki and automatic writing, communicated with spirits, sold her therapy business, wrote a book on her awakening, and now teaches Reiki and after-death communication worldwide.
“and i felt the most incredible love and which i later found was a manatee that's”
The account describes a visionary experience during normal waking consciousness at her brother's bedside while he was comatose, lacking any personal medical crisis or clinical death. There are no claims of perceiving external, impossible-to-access events or details that were later verified, rendering it symbolic and internal rather than veridical. The primary limiting factors are absence of sensory access impossibility, verification, and corroborated perceptions.
Score reflects verifiable perceptions reported. A low score indicates the experience was primarily spiritual or subjective, not that it didn't occur.
Score reflects transformation as described. Domains scored 0 indicate the topic was not discussed, not that no change occurred.
Are you here because someone you love has died?
These accounts were gathered because death may not be the end. Thousands of people have experienced something beyond — and come back to tell us about it.
What Researchers Found
The account describes a visionary experience during normal waking consciousness at her brother's bedside while he was comatose, lacking any personal medical crisis or clinical death. There are no claims of perceiving external, impossible-to-access events or details that were later verified, rendering it symbolic and internal rather than veridical. The primary limiting factors are absence of sensory access impossibility, verification, and corroborated perceptions.
Score reflects verifiable perceptions reported. A low score indicates the experience was primarily spiritual or subjective, not that it didn't occur.
Score reflects transformation as described. Domains scored 0 indicate the topic was not discussed, not that no change occurred.