A Peak in Darien: Visions from a Deathbed

 

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On this day in 1816 Keats published On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer. But did you know the poem gave a name to a kind of deathbed vision called “A Peak in Darien”?

A “Peak in Darien” experience is when a person on their death bed sees the apparition of someone who has died, but whose death is unknown to the them. It describes gazing into the afterlife and inexplicably seeing someone that you believe to still be alive, only to find out later that the person has indeed died.

Sometimes, the news of this death is a surprise to everyone in the room with the dying person, and sometimes the news of the death is known, but has been kept from the dying person as a type of mercy.

Check out my Weird Wednesday blog post for the whole story, and some writing prompts, such as:

*No news is not good news. The “Peak in Darien” might actually be an answer that your characters have been both hoping for and dreading. When a loved one goes missing, the pain of not knowing what happened is immense. Someone seeing this person in the afterlife could at least let everyone know that the missing person is dead.

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