Hospice nurse explains 'death stare' and what it means when someone is dying
A caring nurse has shared her fascinating knowledge about a phenomenon known as the "death stare" explaining the real meaning behind this common sign is that someone is nearing the end of their life.
Julie McFadden, 41, is a nurse who helps people at the end of their lives. Based in sunny Los Angeles she's built up a huge following online by sharing her understanding to help people not be scared of death.
Recently, she posted on YouTube to talk about something that people often do when they're dying, revealing it's common for their eyes to become "stuck" looking at one point. She explained: "If you don't know much about what happens in your last moments, some things happen to most people.
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"One of the things is called a death stare, which is when someone's focus gets really stuck on part of the room, and no matter what you do - even if you snap fingers right in front of their face - they won't move their eyes."
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"Sometimes they just gaze into space. Sometimes they chat to someone who isn't there. Sometimes they have a big grin on their faces, like they're seeing something that's obviously bringing them joy. This is what we call the 'death stare'." Julie shared that often along with the "death stare", people also have something called "end-of-life visions," where the person dying thinks they see someone they "usually love and recognise" who has already "passed away".
"They will sometimes have conversations right in front of us with these people that we don't see," she said about the strange things that happen. Recalling one spooky tale, she shared how she had visited an old man who was showing signs of nearing the end and had been doing the "death stare" and having "end-of-life visions". She explained that the man's wife looked after him; they were both nearly 100 years old and had been together for 70 years.
"I instantly loved these two. They were so, so, so sweet," Julie said fondly. "He was what I call 'pleasantly confused'," Julie said, meaning he knew his wife but wasn't great at chatting or understanding everything. Julie noticed he would smile at her, then look away as if he saw something, and then grin really big. "And he kept doing it the whole time I was there ... When he did that, I couldn't get him to look at me. Then he would suddenly have this big smile," she remembered.
Julie spoke to the man's wife about these signs as she always feels it's important families know it could indicate that they might die soon. Explaining that these occurrences usually happen a few weeks or a month before someone dies, Julie wasn't surprised when the wife shared with her that she'd noticed her husband had been giving the "death stare" multiple times a day for about a week.
Apparently, when the wife had finally managed to get an answer from him about what he was looking at, which Julie noted, doesn't always happen, he had said it was "Jesus". Julie emphasised that the point of the story wasn't that he was seeing Jesus but that he was happy and smiling.
However, the story took a strange turn from there. During her visit, the wife led Julie into the living room and started showing her family albums. She mentioned that her sister had recently passed away and because they had all been close, she didn't have the heart to tell her husband about her sister's death, thinking it would just make him sad and that he'd probably quickly forget as well.
After about a week of keeping it from him, she gave in, out of guilt, and decided to tell her husband that her sister - his sister-in-law - had passed. To this, he'd calmly told his wife that he already knew as much - because the sister had told him. Julie says he had told his wife: "She came to me last week and said she had died." With that, he'd said it "smiling, like he was okay with it," she continued. "I'm getting you chills just telling you this story," the nurse admitted.
Julie is set to release a book later this year titled Nothing to Fear, which has been billed as a "comforting and informative guide that demystifies our end-of-life journey".
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