In his book Death-bed Visions, William Barrett was "anxious to prove that even people who have been skeptical all their lives of any survival after death have sometimes given evidence that at the very end they knew there was an afterlife." Mr. Barrett gave "considerable time and thought to the subject, and looked forward to making the groups of cases as complete and representative as possible before publication. This, however, was not to be, for he himself, in the midst of active work, passed suddenly into 'that little-known country' towards which his thought had so often taken wing." (excerpted from the the Preface to Death-bed Visions)