When Doctors Near Copperfield, Mount Prospect Witness the Impossible
The phenomenon of clocks stopping at the moment of death—reported by families, nurses, and even physicians—persists in the folklore of hospitals in Copperfield, Mount Prospect, Illinois and beyond. While skeptics attribute this to confirmation bias (we notice stopped clocks only when someone dies), "Physicians' Untold Stories" by Dr. Scott Kolbaba presents accounts in which the clock-stopping phenomenon occurred in conjunction with other anomalies—electronic equipment failing, call lights activating, and staff independently reporting sensing the moment of death from other parts of the hospital. This clustering of anomalies is difficult to explain through confirmation bias alone, as it requires multiple independent observers to simultaneously experience the same bias about different phenomena. For readers in Copperfield, Mount Prospect, these clustered accounts transform a familiar folk belief into a legitimate subject of inquiry.
About the Author
Dr. Scott J. Kolbaba, MD is an internist at Northwestern Medicine in Wheaton, Illinois. He interviewed more than 200 physicians about their most extraordinary experiences.
Physicians' Untold Stories
by Scott J. Kolbaba, MD • 4.5 stars (1018 reviews)
Miraculous experiences doctors are hesitant to share with their patients, or ANYONE!
Order on Amazon →Meant to awe, instruct, and inspire — stories that will convince even the harshest skeptic. — From the introduction to Physicians' Untold Stories
Medical Fact
Nurses who have worked in the same unit for decades sometimes refer to a long-deceased patient by name, feeling their continued presence.
Physician Burnout & Wellness Near Copperfield, Mount Prospect
Physicians practicing in Copperfield, Mount Prospect, Illinois work at the intersection of modern medicine and experiences that resist explanation. In conversations that rarely leave the break room or the on-call suite, doctors in and around Copperfield, Mount Prospect have reported encounters with phenomena that their training never prepared them for — from patients who describe verifiable details about events that occurred while they were clinically dead, to deathbed visions shared simultaneously by multiple family members, to recoveries that defy every prognostic model available.
The medical community in Copperfield, Mount Prospect includes physicians across every stage of their careers — residents navigating the exhaustion of training, mid-career practitioners balancing clinical demands with family life, and veteran physicians carrying decades of experiences that challenge the boundaries of conventional medicine. Burnout touches all of them differently, but a common thread runs through: the desire to remember why they chose medicine in the first place, and the rare but profound moments that remind them.
Physician Burnout by Specialty
Percentage reporting at least one symptom (Medscape, 2024)
Medical Fact
Some hospital rooms are informally known as "active rooms" by long-term staff — rooms where unexplained events occur more frequently than elsewhere.
Near-Death Experiences Reported by Physicians Near Copperfield, Mount Prospect
Midwest NDE researchers near Copperfield, Mount Prospect, Illinois benefit from a regional culture that values common sense over theoretical purity. While East Coast academics debate whether NDEs constitute evidence for consciousness surviving death, Midwest clinicians focus on the practical question: how does this experience affect the patient sitting in front of me? This pragmatic orientation produces research that is less philosophically ambitious but more clinically useful.
The University of Michigan's consciousness research program has produced findings that challenge the assumption that brain death means consciousness death. Physicians near Copperfield, Mount Prospect, Illinois who follow this research know that the EEG surge observed in dying brains—a burst of organized electrical activity in the final moments—may represent the physiological correlate of the NDE. The dying brain isn't shutting down; it's lighting up.
Medical Fact
Some intensive care physicians describe sensing a "warmth" or "light" leaving a patient's body at the moment of death.
Physician Wellness, Grief & Finding Meaning Near Copperfield, Mount Prospect
Hospital gardens near Copperfield, Mount Prospect, Illinois planted by volunteers from the Master Gardener program provide healing spaces that cost almost nothing but deliver measurable benefits. Patients who spend time in these gardens show lower blood pressure, reduced pain medication needs, and shorter hospital stays. The Midwest's agricultural expertise, applied to hospital landscaping, produces therapeutic landscapes that pharmaceutical companies cannot replicate.
Farming community resilience near Copperfield, Mount Prospect, Illinois is a medical resource that no pharmaceutical company can patent. The farmer who breaks an arm during harvest doesn't have the luxury of rest—and that determined functionality, while medically suboptimal, reflects a spirit that accelerates healing through sheer will. Midwest physicians learn to work with this resilience rather than against it.
Did You Know?
Hospitals are among the most haunted buildings in folklore worldwide — and the physician testimonies in this book suggest there may be a reason.
Faith, Medicine & the Unexplained in Copperfield, Mount Prospect, Illinois
The Midwest's tradition of bedside Bibles near Copperfield, Mount Prospect, Illinois—placed by the Gideons in hotel rooms and hospital nightstands since 1899—represents a passive faith-medicine intervention whose impact is impossible to quantify. The patient who opens a Gideon Bible at 3 AM during a sleepless, pain-filled night and finds comfort in the Psalms is receiving spiritual care delivered by a book placed there by a stranger who believed it would matter.
Scandinavian immigrant communities near Copperfield, Mount Prospect, Illinois brought a Lutheran tradition of sisu—a Finnish concept of inner strength and endurance—that shapes how patients approach illness and recovery. The Midwest patient who refuses pain medication, insists on walking the day after surgery, and apologizes for being a burden isn't being difficult. They're practicing a faith-inflected stoicism that their grandparents brought from Helsinki.
Reader Ratings Distribution
Based on 1,018 Goodreads ratings
Did You Know?
The white coat ceremony, now held at nearly every U.S. medical school, was first introduced at Columbia University in 1993.
Watch Dr. Kolbaba Share These Stories
Did You Know?
Dr. Kolbaba found that physicians who acknowledged the limits of medical science were often the most respected by their patients.
Medical Heritage in Illinois
Illinois stands as one of the most important states in American medical history. Rush Medical College, founded in Chicago in 1843, was one of the first medical schools in the Midwest, and Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine (1859) produced generations of leading physicians. The University of Chicago, under Dr. Charles Huggins, won the Nobel Prize in 1966 for his work on hormonal treatment of prostate cancer. Cook County Hospital, established in 1866, pioneered the nation's first blood bank in 1937 under Dr. Bernard Fantus and served as the model for the television show ER.
Chicago was also where Dr. Daniel Hale Williams performed one of the first successful open-heart surgeries in 1893 at Provident Hospital, which he founded to train African American physicians and nurses. The Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago (now the Shirley Ryan AbilityLab) became the nation's top-ranked rehabilitation hospital. Loyola University Medical Center and the University of Illinois Hospital rounded out Chicago's extraordinary concentration of medical institutions. Downstate, the Southern Illinois University School of Medicine in Springfield addressed the rural physician shortage, and the Mayo Clinic-trained physicians who practice throughout the state, including Dr. Scott Kolbaba at Northwestern Medicine, represent Illinois's deep connection to the highest standards of American internal medicine.
About the Book
Dr. Kolbaba has described the physicians he interviewed as "the bravest people I know" for sharing their stories.
Supernatural Folklore and Ghost Traditions in Illinois
Illinois is among the most haunted states in America, with ghost stories spanning from Chicago's bustling streets to the quiet prairies downstate. Resurrection Mary, the ghost of a young woman who appears to motorists on Archer Avenue near Resurrection Cemetery in Justice, is one of the most famous vanishing hitchhiker legends in the world; multiple witnesses have reported picking up a blonde woman in a white dress who vanishes from their car as they pass the cemetery gates. Bachelor's Grove Cemetery in the Rubio Woods forest preserve near Midlothian has been called the most haunted cemetery in America, with documented sightings of a phantom farmhouse, a woman holding an infant, and a ghostly farmer with a plow horse.
The Bartonville State Hospital (Peoria State Hospital), which operated from 1902 to 1973, is famous for the legend of 'Old Book,' a patient named A. Bookbinder who was a fixture at the hospital's funerals—when he died, his apparition was reportedly seen mourning at his own funeral service, witnessed by hospital staff. In Cairo, Illinois, at the southern tip of the state, the ghost of a Civil War soldier haunts the Magnolia Manor. The Congress Plaza Hotel in Chicago's Loop has Room 441, which has been permanently sealed due to persistent reports of violent paranormal activity.
About the Book
Dr. Kolbaba's speaking engagements often include Q&A sessions where audience members share their own unexplained experiences.
Haunted Hospitals and Medical Landmarks in Illinois
Manteno State Hospital (Manteno): This psychiatric hospital, operating from 1930 to 1985, gained infamy for a 1939 incident in which an experimental malaria treatment killed several patients. The abandoned campus, with its tunnels and crumbling wards, is heavily investigated by paranormal teams who report hearing patients' voices, seeing faces in windows of sealed buildings, and encountering cold spots throughout the tunnel system.
Bartonville State Hospital (Peoria): Operating from 1902 to 1973 as the Peoria State Hospital, this massive facility housed thousands of mentally ill patients. The legend of 'Old Book,' an intellectually disabled patient who attended every funeral on the grounds, became the hospital's most famous ghost story—when Bookbinder died, dozens of staff witnessed his apparition crying at his own graveside. The abandoned Bowen Building is considered the epicenter of paranormal activity, with reports of screaming, shadow people, and phantom lights.
Types of Phenomena in the Book
Distribution across 26 physician accounts
Research Finding
Hope — the belief that things can get better — has been shown to activate the brain's reward circuitry and reduce pain perception.
How This Book Can Help You
Illinois is the home state of Physicians' Untold Stories, as Dr. Scott Kolbaba practices internal medicine at Northwestern Medicine in the Chicago suburbs. His Mayo Clinic training and decades of practice in the heart of the Midwest inform every story in the book. The medical culture of Illinois—where Rush, Northwestern, the University of Chicago, and Cook County Hospital represent the full spectrum of American medicine—is precisely the environment where scientifically trained physicians find themselves confronting experiences that defy their training. Dr. Kolbaba's book emerged from this Illinois medical community, where colleagues felt safe sharing their most profound and unexplainable patient encounters.
The Midwest's culture of minding one's own business near Copperfield, Mount Prospect, Illinois means that many physicians have kept extraordinary experiences private for decades. This book creates a crack in that wall of privacy—not by demanding disclosure, but by demonstrating that disclosure is safe, that the profession can handle these accounts, and that sharing them serves the patients who will have similar experiences and need to know they're not alone.
Research Finding
Deep breathing exercises have been shown to lower blood pressure by 10-15 mmHg in hypertensive patients within minutes.
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