From Orb to Angel?

The 1874 book Dead and Gone by James Samuel Pollock (which you can read here) is a a book deserving much more attention than the very little attention it has received so far.  It is a book filled with accounts of paranormal experiences, such as apparition sightings, dreams that seemed to foretell death, and deathbed visions. In some of the accounts we hear of balls of light. On page 120 we read this:

"Shortly after, when the room was dark, she saw the light again. It appeared as a globe of white light, and gradually formed itself into an angel. Both Mr. and Mrs. B- saw this. Next day their baby died."

On the same page we read another account involving an orb:

"When he inquired of her the cause of her comfort, she said, ' Father, I have seen with my own eyes the things of which I doubted. My soul went forth from the body, and I saw the holy angels, and the souls of the blessed, and^the rewards of the just. I saw also my own body, with the eyes of my soul, lying pale and bloodless on the floor of my cell, as it were dried up and without juice.'  The abbot asked what appearance the soul had out of the body. She answered, 'The appearance of a ball of fire, like the moon, and able to see on all sides.'  She added, however, that when the soul, or an angel, manifests itself to men, it takes the lineaments of a body."

This account matches quite a few accounts of near-death experiences. In such accounts a person will often report floating out of his body, and being able to see in all directions rather than only in a single direction. On page 136 we read this:

"Miss A. M. K. is the youngest of three sisters, who lived in London in the year 1865. She had gone to rest one night, when she saw a blue globe of light in her room. She was greatly excited, and rushed at the light, when it disappeared."

On page 159 we read this:

"The man of God, Godric, saw, while he was praying, an intense light penetrating into the darkness of the night, and two walls of brightness reaching from earth to heaven. Between these walls angels, were flying up to heaven, bearing, with songs of joy, the soul of Abbot Robert, one on the right hand, the other on the left. The soul, as far as it could be seen, was like a globe of fire."

 On page 203 we read this:

"She observed that the room was lighted up. A little ball of light was floating about the room, and her father was outside the window, looking in upon her.... At the time of the vision her father had been dead a few months, and her infant only a few days."