February 11, 2002: The Compassionate Coroner, Death and the Hereafter - Dr. Janis Amatuzio
Dr. Amatuzio recounts the case of a 22-year-old man killed in a car accident whose former babysitter, 2,000 miles away in California, was visited by his spirit on the night of his death. She also describes a widow whose deceased husband appeared three nights after his death, telling her that her thought of him would "send him rushing to her side." A third account involves a patient who died during surgery, left his body through the top of his head, and could hear the thoughts of everyone in the room.
Art shares the story of Pam Reynolds, who was clinically dead for an hour during brain surgery and returned with verified details of the operating room. Dr. Amatuzio explains that while she began her career as a strict skeptic, the accumulating weight of these first-person accounts has moved her from hope to genuine belief that consciousness survives physical death.
Key Moments
Speaker for the dead: Amatuzio embraces Art's borrowed phrase "speaker for the dead" to describe a coroner's job: examining the body and the death scene to tell the story the deceased can no longer tell.
Greg's mother and the babysitter Sheila: A mother tells Amatuzio that her dead son Greg appeared at his old babysitter Sheila's bedside in California three nights running. He told Sheila he was "with Vernie now" - a grandmother who had died two years before Greg was born.
The widow and the heart tumor: After autopsy reveals a rare papillary fibroelastoma killed her husband, the widow tells Amatuzio she had been furious about the delay. Then she confides she needs to tell the doctor what happened the third night after his death.
Our love will be forever: The widow describes waking at 4 a.m. to footsteps. Her dead husband walked through the bedroom door glowing, sat on the bed and told her their love was forever and that just thinking of him would send him rushing to her side.
Out of body through the top of his head: A patient tells Amatuzio that after vena cava filter surgery he left his body through the top of his head, hovered near the ceiling, heard the thoughts of the staff and tried to tell the panicked doctor he was fine - then watched the patient in the next bed leave the same way during a cardiac arrest.