News & Information

Updates from the Alliance community.

The dying dream of the dead to be at peace with life

The dying dream of the dead to be at peace with life

Hannah Fuchs & Elisa Rabitti · August 1, 2026

This column publishes links to evidence-based articles on dreams that are written for a non-research audience. Here we offer two on the topic of what people dream when they are about to die, and how these dreams may help them through the process. 
 The first, published by Germany's international news source DW, is a conversation with Christopher Kerr, a neurobiologist, palliative care physician and hospice doctor in the US who has been studying dreams and visions at the end of life since the late 1990s. The dying dream of the dead to be at peace with life by Hannah Fuchs 
 The second, found on VICE Magazine's website, delves deeper into an Italian study led by Elisa Rabitti that is mentioned in the first. The researchers interviewed 239 palliative care professionals—nurses, hospice volunteers, psychologists, and doctors—about the dreams and visions their terminally ill patients had described to them. 
 This is what you dream about right before you die by Ashley Fike