The TRUTH about the 'death stare': Hospice nurse lifts the lid on phenomenon that signals a person is going to pass away

A hospice nurse has shared intriguing insight into the 'death stare' - revealing the truth about the common phenomenon that signals when someone is close to passing away. 

Julie McFadden, 41, is a registered nurse based in Los Angeles who specializes in hospice care - and has built a social media following of millions in sharing insights to help destigmatize the process of 'death and dying,' as her website declares. 

Recently, she took to YouTube to share details about something that happens to dying people as they're passing away - revealing how their eyes can become 'fixated' on a single point. 

'If you're not familiar with the end-of-life phenomena, there's a few things that happen at the end of life to most people,' she explained.

'One of the things is called a death stare, which is when someone gets really fixated on a certain part of the room, and no matter what you do - you can snap your finger right in front of their face - an they will not move their gaze.'

Hospice nurse Julie McFadden, 41, took to social media to describe the end-of-life sign known as the 'death stare'

'Sometimes they just stare. Sometimes they will talk to someone who you don't see. Sometimes they'll have a big smile on their face, like they're seeing something that's obviously making them very happy. So that's called the "death stare."'

The 'death stare' is frequently accompanied by what Julie called 'end-of-life visioning,' in which the dying person claims to see someone that they 'usually love and know' who has 'died already.'

'They will sometimes have conversations right in front of us with these people that we don't see,' she added of the eerie occurrence. 

She then shared a hair-raising story in which an elderly man was already exhibiting both the 'death stare' and 'end-of-life visioning' when she'd checked in on him for a 'follow up visit.'

The man's caregiver was his wife; both were in their mid- to late- 90s and had been married for 70 years.

'I instantly loved these two. They were so, so, so sweet,' Julie gushed.

'He was what I call "pleasantly confused,"' Julie continued, explaining that he knew who his wife was and was polite to everyone, but couldn't exactly hold a conversation or seem to know what was going on more generally. 

'I noticed that he would be looking at me and smiling, then suddenly turn his head and be fixated on another part of the room, and then smile this huge smile, like he was seeing something over there,' Julie further recalled.

'Sometimes they just stare. Sometimes they will talk to someone who you don't see. Sometimes they'll have a big smile on their face,' she elaborated of close-to-death patients

'And he kept doing it throughout the whole visit … I could not get his attention when he would do that. And then suddenly this big smile would come on his face.'

Julie decided to call the wife over: 'I wanted his wife to see this because a lot of times these end-of-life phenomena can kind of give you a timeline of when this person may be dying.'

It usually starts a few weeks to a month before their final moment, Julie added, and emphasized she wants 'family members to also see it and know what's going on.'

The wife then told Julie the man had already been doing the 'death stare' for about a week, multiple times a day.

With that, the wife had gotten an answer from her husband as to what he was looking at - which, Julie said, 'doesn't always happen.'

'"He said 'Jesus,"' the wife told Julie.

Julie went on to emphasize that 'the point of the story is not that he was seeing Jesus.

'Because many people say they see many different things. And it usually depends on what religion they are.

'Sometimes they don't see any kind of deity at all. They say, you know, "I see beautiful clouds" or "I see flowers." Some people see Jesus or God or angels.

'But the great thing is, whatever he was seeing, he was very happy, and he was smiling,' Julie stressed.

The Los Angeles-based nurse has been doing hospice care for more than 15 years

But things got stranger from there.

The wife took Julie into the living room and began showing her her family albums.

She also brought up that her sister had just passed.

Given that the wife, her sister and the husband were all very close, she didn't have the heart to tell her husband about her sister's death, thinking it would just make him 'super sad' and that he'd probably quickly forget as well.

But after about a week, out of guilt, the wife 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.

'"She came to me last week and said she had died,"' the husband had told his wife about her sister, according to Julie.

With that, he'd said it 'smiling, like he was okay with it,' she continued of the wife's story. 

'I'm getting you chills just telling you this story,' the nurse further admitted.

This isn't the first time Julie has opened up about 'end-of-life' tendencies she's witnessed.

Last year, she dove into 'end-of-life visions' and how eerily 'logical' the exchanges around them can be.

'They're usually functional and logical and questioning me, "Why am I seeing my dead mom, do you see her?"' she said.

Later this year, Julie is also set to release a book titled Nothing to Fear, billed as a 'comforting and informative guide that demystifies our end-of-life journey.'