The voice in the car: hospice nurse Julie McFadden’s shared-death experience

Step 1

Before the story · Julie’s account

An intensive care nurse moves on to caring for dying patients at home

Julie McFadden worked for about seven or eight years as an intensive care nurse. Then she moved to hospice, which is care at the end of life. She visited patients in their homes.

In her book, she says she has seen hundreds of people die.

One of those patients stayed with her more than any other.

Step 2

A few months earlier · Julie’s account, in her book

Randy, a young patient with cancer, lives alone in an apartment full of things and is afraid of dying

Randy was young and was dying of pancreatic cancer. He lived alone and found it very hard to throw anything away, so his apartment was packed with things up to the ceiling. It wasn’t a safe place. He also had a lot of anxiety around people and hardly anyone to help him.

The hospice team helped him get his life in order. Randy lived longer than expected, about eight or nine months. During the visits, he and Julie talked a lot. They talked about his childhood, his time in the army, and what happens when we die.

Randy was very afraid of dying. He would ask her whether he should be.

In the end, his last days came.

Step 3

The last day · Randy, very ill · Julie’s account

Julie sees that Randy will die soon, says goodbye to him, and asks to be told

In his last days, Randy was very restless, which often happens at the end of life. A nurse stayed with him at his home day and night. Julie went to see him every day.

On one of those visits, Julie saw that he had very little time left. He was no longer conscious. Julie went over to the bed, closed her eyes, and quietly said goodbye to him.

Before leaving, she asked the nurse who was staying with him to text or call her when he died.

She went out to her car, parked in front of the house.

Step 5

As the voice ended · In the car · Julie’s account

A message arrives from the nurse: Randy has just died

It was a message from the nurse who had stayed at the house. It said that Randy had died.

Julie says she thought she already knew, because Randy had just shown her.

She didn’t tell the nurse anything about what she had experienced.

For years, she told almost no one.

Step 6

Years later · Julie’s account, on social media, on podcasts, and in a book

Julie tells the story in public years later, and some details change from one version to another

Julie says it took her years to tell it because she was afraid people would think she was crazy. She began telling it once she was already known on social media as “Hospice Nurse Julie.”

We have found four versions of the story told by her. The oldest is a TikTok video from October 2023. In 2024 she told it on the comedian Howie Mandel’s podcast and in her book Nothing to Fear. In 2025 she told it on another podcast, Next Level Soul.

In all four, the order is the same. First the voice in the car, for about thirty seconds, and then the message. None of them gives the year or the time.

Other details change. In the 2023 video, the person who dies is a young woman she cared for many years ago. In the 2024 and 2025 versions, it is a man. In the book, his name is Randy. In 2024 she says she told only her best friend, and in 2025 that she told no one.

The question from the beginning remains: could she have known the moment Randy died?