I Saw Death in the Eyes of Five People Before they Died
An ability that I prayed would go away
Is it possible to actually see death coming for someone by looking into the person’s eyes?
They say that the eyes are the mirror to the soul. But the eyes of those close to death seem to no longer mirror their souls, but rather reflect the presence of an eerie non-presence and the darkness of a once-lit dwelling.
This is what I’ve seen — five times too many.
And each time, I could see that the house was there and the doors and windows were unlocked but the lights were out. And it seemed like the person that lived there just wasn’t home.
The first time I saw death in someone’s eyes, I didn’t realize that’s what I was seeing. It was in high school. And I just happened to be walking in the hallway beside a guy who was a good bit taller than I am, even at 5' 10". He must have been at least 6' 9".
He glanced down at me and my eyes caught his for a few seconds. And, it startled the daylights out of me! I’d always felt this guy was scary-looking but that day it was a different scary.
He looked creepily similar to the character Lurch on The Addams Family, and not just because of his height. The resemblance was in his face with the enlarged head, squared jaw, protruding brow bone, big bushy eyebrows, and piercing eyes. Except, this time, his eyes seemed hollow and glassy.
A week later, he was dead.
He was shot in the chest by a guy he had bullied and beat up a number of times on his neighborhood block. In fact, he had just beat up on that guy a few moments before he was shot. Word on the street was that he tried to run into the house after being shot and died in the doorway while his father was holding the door open.
When I heard about it, the thought occurred to me about how he had looked at me a week earlier with those eerie-looking eyes. But, I brushed it off as a coincidence.
That was person #1.
The next time I saw death in somebody’s eyes beforehand was about six months later. I was walking home one day from a friend’s house, and on the way, I walked past a guy in our neighborhood sitting on some store steps.
He had that glassy, distant, not-really-there look in his eyes, and I felt a wave of clammy air rush over me. But, I didn’t make the connection and quickly forgot about it.
Two weeks later, he was dead!
It wasn’t difficult for me to put two and two together afterward. I had seen that he was going to die in his eyes when I walked past him that day!
He too had been shot, just like the first guy. But he was shot by a bakery store owner that he was trying to rob. He first shot the store owner, and the owner somehow snatched the gun away from him and shot him back — they both died.
“Oh my God,” I whispered to myself with my hand over my mouth.
My mind was racing, comparing what I had seen in the first guy’s eyes and now this one. It was not likely a coincidence at this point. I felt fearful. Why was I able to see this?
That was person #2.
I didn’t tell anyone about this newly discovered ability. I just hoped that it wouldn’t happen again. But, my hope was shattered about three months later when another guy died after I’d seen that death look in his eyes, just like the other two.
This one belonged to my church. He had just joined the church two weeks prior to me seeing that far-off, glassy, hollow, and dark look in his eyes when we made eye contact. This time, I was conscious of it. We spoke and I watched him walk away, wondering if what I had seen was what I thought it was but hoped it wasn’t.
Two months later, he was dead.
When I was told about it, my anxiety threw me into a panic. I was told that he too was shot, just like the other two guys. He had been shot in the back by a gang member. One of the reasons he had joined the church was because he wanted to turn his life around.
That was person #3.
“Is it me?” I asked myself. “Am I killing guys by looking at them? I knew that was a crazy thought, but still. “Or am I really just seeing into their grim near futures?”
This time, I didn’t keep it to myself. I told a couple of my friends about all three incidents of me seeing death in the eyes of these three guys who died. They didn’t believe me and they basically didn’t believe that it was possible.
I wished it wasn’t possible. I didn’t want to be able to see that somebody was going to die soon. So, I prayed and prayed to God to take that ability away from me. It was just too much.
Seven years would go by before I saw the death look again in someone else’s eyes. And, it caught me by surprise.
I was working as a supervisor in the Administrative Services Department for a major bank, and one of my colleagues whom I would talk and joke with every day came into my office to have me sign some forms.
I’ll never forget that her name was Krista, and when she approached my desk, I noticed that she was walking almost like in a trance. I spoke to her and she didn’t say anything, as she usually does. She just mechanically handed me the papers, and she had that “look” glassing her eyes over.
My heart sank.
“Krista, are you alright?” I asked her.
And she answered in a dry tone. “I’m fine.” And she turned around and walked away.
It was almost like she was already gone but just not dead yet. It was haunting, and I was so hoping that I didn’t see what I thought I saw in her eyes — the dead eyes.
Exactly one week later to the day, she was dead.
I hadn’t seen her since she had come into my office behaving strangely. She had taken the week off. I broke down when they told me. I was inconsolable. But, I didn’t dare tell my coworkers about my ability and that I had seen that she was going to die soon. I kept that to myself.
Krista died in a car accident. She was T-boned when she pulled out into an intersection in front of a truck, which caused her to hit her head on her driver’s side window. Her brain swelled up and it killed her. I went to her wake.
That was person #4.
The fifth person’s eyes that foretold her death to me was especially significant. But, it did not give me cause for alarm but rather a sense of calm because she had been in a state of suffering for many years and particularly within her last year in this life.
The fifth person was my mom.
Four years prior, mom had fallen in the dining room for seemingly no reason. She didn’t trip on anything. She just temporarily blacked out for a few seconds.
I heard her hit the floor and ran to her. She was conscious but confused as to why she was on the floor. That was the beginning of the end for my mother. Subsequent tests revealed that she had some type of dark spot on her liver and exploratory surgery was necessary.
It turned out that about 25% of her liver had to be removed, due to it being necrotic. I’m told that it looked like black tar on a portion of her liver. We were assured that it was not cancer.
I asked, “Then what is it? How can something like that not be cancer?”
The surgeon said it was likely caused by drug toxicity, particularly acetaminophen, ibuprofen, and pain pills, which my mom overused in an attempt to self-medicate for chronic pain from degenerative spine disease.
One evening, I was sitting in my mom’s bedroom with her at home. She was sitting up on the bed. The television was on but we weren’t watching it. I was talking to her but I noticed that when she looked at me, her eyes were not actually focused on looking at me.
Her eyes had that long-gone look and the hollowness I’d seen four times before. I was talking to her but she just looked at me and slowly turned her head toward the TV, as if in a trance. I went to her and held her hand.
Mom’s condition progressively worsened over the next few weeks and she complained of pain that she attributed to her degenerative spine. One day, she had slipped off of the bed from a sitting position when trying to get up. I was unable to get her off of the floor, so I called my brother who came over and helped me pick her up.
We called the ambulance and when they took her, I knew that she would not be coming home.
After some imaging, the results showed that mom had cancer in her colon that they said had spread all over her liver and there was nothing that they could do.
Mom was admitted to hospice two weeks after I had seen death coming for her in the dimness of her stare.
She had suffered excruciating pain in hospice after they gave her some shot to ‘calm her’, after which she suddenly could no longer speak. And it crushed me that it took me a while to realize that her attempts to raise her arms were to alert us to her pain.
She managed to grunt out. “I have pain throughout my body.”
I went ballistic.
“What did you give her?” I asked the nurse in a raised tone.
“She wasn’t in any pain before we brought her over here from the hospital!” “I’m going to need you all to give her something so that she doesn’t hurt. Why should anybody have to hurt on their deathbed up in here?”
The nurse: “Well, we’re not here to do them in. We just are supposed to make them comfortable.”
“WELL, SHE’S NOT COMFORTABLE!” I screamed.
“Just give her something to knock her out! She’s dying anyway.” Through tears, I told her, “She’s dying. My momma is dying. I don’t want her to be in pain.”
And, as God as my witness, if they didn’t do something about her being in so much pain, they were going to have to call the police on me.
Another more compassionate nurse came in and injected relief to my mother through her IV, and my mom calmed down. My brother held her left hand, my sister held her right hand, and I had my hands at her feet, as I sang softly to her a familiar song by William McDowell:
I surrender all to you, oh God (I surrender all to you) Everything I give to you, oh God (everything I give to you) Withholding nothing (withholding nothing) Withholding nothing (withholding nothing) It all belongs to you (withholding nothing) Withholding nothing (withholding nothing)
And, as I sang, we heard her say “Yes,” like she always did whenever she was in worship. Then she said, “I have peace.”
Three days later, late at night after I had been there to visit her briefly and knew that her soul had already left even though her body was still taking shallow breaths, I got the call from the hospice nurse that my mother had passed away. She was 79 years old.
That was person #5.
Again, I prayed not to have the ability to see death in anybody else’s eyes, and I haven’t since. But, I know if it’s there and I happen to be looking, I’ll see it. And, I do not look forward to that at all.
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