Page:The Naturalisation of the Supernatural.pdf/236

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216
Phantasms of the Dead

the death, but only a few hours before the receipt of the news by normal means.

No. 43. From Miss Kitching[1]

Miss Kitching, then in Saratoga, N. Y., on the morning of the 33rd August, 1888, had in a dream a painful impression of the death of her brother in Algeria. But the death had taken place on the 20th, and the cablegram announcing it had been designedly held over in New York; from which town it was actually despatehed to Saratoga a few hours after the dream.

No. 44. From Mas. G. T. HALY[2]

122 Coningham Road, Shepherd's Bush, W.

On waking in broad daylight, I saw, like a shadowed reflection, a. very long coffin stretching quite across the ceiling of my room, and as I lay gazing at it, and wondering at its length and whose death it could foreshadow, my eyes fell on a shadowy figure of an absent nephew with his back towards me, searching, as it were, in my bookshelf. That morning's post brought me the news of his death in Australia. He was six foot two or three inches in height, and a book had been my last present to him on his leaving England, taken from that very bookcase.

Mr. Gurney saw Mrs. Haly in November, 1884, and learnt that this, and an appearance of lights, are the only hallucinations of sight Mrs. Haly has had, and that she clearly recognised her nephew's figure. The event occurred in the winter of 1872–3, some six weeks after the nephew's death. It will be noted that, though the death had occurred several weeks previously, the phantasm was not

  1. Journal. S. P. R., June, 1893.
  2. Proceedings, S. P. R., vol. iii.. p. 91.