Page:The Naturalisation of the Supernatural.pdf/91

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
Spontaneous Thought Transference
71

which frightened the barber and myself very greatly. I remained sitting there nearly an hour before I could go on. On arriving home about 6 p.m. I told Mrs. Castle that I came near getting in a bad fix. On her asking "When?" I said "About an hour and a half ago." She then described her sudden constricted sensation about that same time, and her telling Mrs. Baldwin of it.

This is the only time I have had such a sensation in my throat.

Mr. Castle adds that there have been other apparent instances of thought transference between himself and Mrs. Castle.

Mrs. Baldwin writes to say that she remembers the incident described.

The narrative recalls the experimental cases of "community of sensation" referred to in the last chapter. But here agent and percipient instead of being in the same room were several miles apart. It is to be noted that in the present case, as in our own experiments, the discomfort caused appears to have been by no means of an ideal character. In another case of the kind Mr. E. E. Robinson tells us that lying in bed one Sunday morning he experienced an acute pain in his thumb, and held up the hand to see if it had actually been injured. At the moment Mrs. Robinson, who was dressing, exclaimed that her thumb hurt her so much as to cause difficulty in dressing.[1]

It occasionally happens that the influence of a distant friend appears to be reflected, not in the

  1. Journal, S. P. R., May, 1907.