The Naturalisation of the Supernatural/Chapter 6
CHAPTER VI
TELEPATHIC HALLUCINATIONS
IN the following pages a few specimen cases will be cited to illustrate the questions dealt with in the last chapter. In the selection of these examples I have not, however, confined myself to the material brought together by the census, but have drawn also upon the records accumulated by the Society since 1894. In view, however, of the deterioration in the quality of the evidence effected by the lapse of time, as shown in the last chapter, I have endeavoured to select narratives where the record was comparatively recent; in one case only of those cited in the present chapter does the interval between record and event exceed ten years; in most of the examples the account, if not actually written before the event was known, is dated only a few days later.
In the first case we have to deal with an auditory hallucination. The coincidence in this case may appear very trivial. But it is to be noted that the percipient at the time connected her experience with the presumed agent. Further, it made sufficient impression upon her to lead her to mention it in a letter. The correspondence has fortunately been preserved, and I have been permitted to see it and to verify the extracts quoted. The account which follows was written in 1889.
No. 32. From Miss C. Clark[1]
I heard some one sobbing, one evening last August (1888), about 10 p.m. It was in the house, in Dunbar, Scotland, as I was preparing to go to bed. Feeling convinced that it was my younger sister, I advised another sister not to go into the next room, whence the sounds seemed to proceed. After waiting with me for a few minutes, this sister went into the dining-room, and returned to me saying that our youngest sister was in the dining-room and not crying at all. Then I at once thought there must be something the matter with my greatest friend, a girl of twenty-four, then in Lincolnshire. I wrote next day asking her if at that hour on the previous night she had been crying. In her next letter she said yes; she was suffering great pain with toothache, just at the time, and was unable to restrain a few sobs. . . .
This has been the only similar experience I have had.
The following are extracts from the contemporary correspondence.
Extracts from Letters
I. (From Miss Clark to Miss Maughan.)
Were you crying on Sunday night near 11 o'clock? because I distinctly heard some one crying, and supposed it was H in the next room, but she was n't there at all. Then I thought . . . that it might be you. . . .
[Continuation of letter of August 22nd, not posted until 23rd.—F. P.]
Thank you very much for your letter just come. I am so sorry your face is sore; did it make you cry on Sunday night?
II. (From Miss Maughan to Miss Clark, received by the latter on August 23, 1888.)
Tuesday evening, August 21nd. 1888.
[Post-mark Spilsby, August 22nd, 1888.]
. . . On Sunday we went to see Wroxham Broad. . . . We had an immense amount of walking to do altogether, and I think I got a little cold in my face in the morning, and all night I suffered with it, and my face is swelled still. . . .
III. (From Miss Maughan to Miss Clark, received by the latter August 26, 1888.)
I am putting bread poultices on my gurus. I have never had such a huge swelling before, and it won't go down. It is so horribly uncomfortable. . . .
Saturday afternoon.—Thanks for letter. Yes, I was crying on Sunday night—only on account of the pain. It was awful, but I only cried quietly, as Edith was asleep. . .
But visual hallucinations are at once more impressive and more valuable as evidence. I will begin with a case in which it is hard to know whether to class the percipient's impression as an illusion or a hallucination. The point is not of material importance since the impression, whatever its nature, was of an exceptional, if not actually unique character in the percipient's experience. The vision, it will be seen, preceded the death by rather more than twelve hours, but occurred during the period of the fatal seizure.
No. 33. From Prince Victor Duleep Singh[2]
On Saturday, October 21, 1893, I was in Berlin with Lord Carnarvon. We went to a theatre together and returned before midnight. I went to bed, leaving, as I always do, a bright light in the room (electric light). As I lay in bed I found myself looking at an oleograph which hung on the wall opposite my bed. I saw distinctly the face of my father, the Maharajah Duleep Singh, looking at me, as it were out of this picture; not like a portrait of him, but his real head. I continued looking and still saw my father looking at me with an intent expression. Though not in the least alarmed, I was so puzzled that I got out of bed to see what the picture really was. It was an oleograph commonplace picture of a girl holding a rose and leaning out of a balcony, an arch forming a background. The girl's face was quite small, whereas my father's head was the size of life and filled the frame.
I was in no special anxiety about my father at the time, and had for some years known him to be seriously out of health; but there had been no news to alarm me about him.
Next morning (Sunday) I told the incident to Lord Carnarvon.
That evening (Sunday) late, on returning home, Lord Carnarvon brought two telegrams into my room and handed them to me. I said at once, "My father is dead." That was the fact. He had had an apoplectic seizure on the Saturday evening at about nine o'clock, from which he never recovered, but continued unconscious and died on the Sunday, early in the afternoon. My father had often said to me that if I was not with him when he died he would try and come to me.
I am not subject to hallucinations, and have only once had any similar experience, when, as a schoolboy, I fancied I saw the figure of a dead schoolboy who had died in the room which I slept in with my brother; but I attached no importance to this.
Lord Carnarvon writes:
I can confirm Prince V. Duleep Singh's account. I heard the incident from him on the Sunday morning. The same evening, at about 12 P.M., he received a telegram notifying him of his father's sudden illness and death. We had no knowledge of his father's illness. He has never told me of any similar previous occurrence.
The Maharajah Duleep Singh died on Sunday, October 22, 1893.
We have several cases in which the sight of a material object appears to have facilitated the hallucination. Thus Edmund Gurney has quoted, in Phantasms of the Living, a case where a young girl saw a familiar face growing out of a pansy.[3] In another case the percipient saw the figure of her mother in a white dimity curtain at the foot of the bed. When the curtain was shaken the figure disappeared.[4] In Case 41 below, the percipient saw a face form on the panels of a wardrobe illuminated by the moon.
In the next case the vision seems to have been seen within an hour of the death. Here again the hallucination appears not to have been completely externalised.
No. 34. From Madame Broussiloff[5]
On the 16th (28th) of February of this year (1895) between 9 and 10 o'clock in the evening, I, the undersigned, was sitting in our drawing-room—the small one—facing the large drawing-room which I could see in its entire length. My husband, his brother with his wife, and my mother were also sitting in the same room with me round a large round table. I was writing down my household accounts for the day, whilst the others were carrying on some gay conversation. Having accidentally raised my head and looked into the large drawing-room, I noticed, with astonishment, that a large grey shadow had passed from the door of the dining-room to that of the ante-chamber; and it came into my head that the figure I had seen bore a striking resemblance in stature to Colonel Av[6]-Meinander, an acquaintance of ours, who had lived in this very lodging for a long time. At the first moment I wished to say at once that a ghost had just flashed before me, but stopped, as I was afraid of being laughed at by my husband's brother and his wife, and also of being scolded by my husband, who, in view of the excitement which I showed when such phenomena were taking place, tried to convince me that they were the fruit of my fancy. As I knew that Meinander was alive and well, and was commander of the "Malorosstisky" 40th regiment of dragoons, I did not say anything then; but when I was going to bed, I related to my mother what I had seen, and the next morning could not refrain from mentioning it to my husband.
Our astonishment was extreme when on the 18th of February (2nd of March) we learned that Nicholas Ottovitch Av-Meinander had actually died after a short illness on the 16th (28th) of February at 9 o'clock in the evening, in the town of Stashovo,[7] where his regiment is stationed.
Madame Broussiloff's mother, Madame Hagemeister, and Colonel Broussiloff write independently to say that they remember hearing of Madame Broussiloff's, experience before the news of the death came. Colonel Broussiloff adds that from the obituary notice in the Novoie Vremia, No. 6816, it appears that Colonel Meinander died at 9 p.m. on February 16th (28th).
The narrative in this case presents a rather unusual feature. The percipient was in company with several other persons, but her experience was unshared. In the great majority of cases the seer of the hallucination was alone, a peculiarity which is no doubt due to the dreamlike nature of the experience: when more than one person is present it is frequently the case that the hallucination is shared by all. The problem involved in this "collective" percipience will be discussed later.
In the next case the percipient's vision occurred about two hours after the death of the child. It seems possible that in this case the telephone clerk acted as agent.[8]
No. 35. From Mrs. Michell[9]
On the 25th of last month I was sitting in the nursery, and my little daughter Gwendoline was playing with her dolls, and she suddenly laughed so as to attract my attention, and I asked her what she was laughing at. She said, "O mother, I thought I saw little Jack in that chair"—a vacant chair in the room—and indicating her little cousin. About five minutes after this the clerk telephoned from the office saying he had just received a telegram from Penzance announcing the death of little Jack. It was about half-past nine in the morning when the incident occurred in the nursery at St. Helens. The death in Penzance took place at about half-past seven on the same morning.
In reply to our further inquiries, Mr. Michell wrote:
Gwendoline is five years and four months old.
I am not aware that she has had any previous experience of the kind related to Mr. Macdonald, but that the one in question is a fact I have not the slightest doubt.
She knows the clerk at our office, and he has often conversed with her, and occasionally played with her in an ordinary way.
The impression she had was just prior to the clerk's telephoning my wife, and although the clerk did not think about my daughter missing Jack at all, yet Mrs. Michell herself was anxiously wondering what the news respecting Jack would be.
There was no one else in the nursery besides my wife and daughter, but Mrs. Michell was very deeply impressed with the matter, and then to receive the message very shortly after forced the matter upon her mind still deeper, and she told me immediately I arrived home."Little Jack," it should be added, died from convulsions in teething.
The percipient's impression in the next case passed through three separate stages. It began with a vivid sense of an actual presence; it then assumed the form of a transparent hallucination apparently like that seen by Madame Broussiloff; in its final stage the experience, though of a very unusual type, must be classed as a pseudo-hallucination, inasmuch as it did not actually enter the percipient's field of physical vision.
No. 36. From MR. PERCY KEARNE[10]
24th December, 1894.
On the evening of February 10, 1894, I was sitting in my room expecting the return of two friends from a concert in the provinces where they had been performing. The friends in question had lived with me for some years, and we were more than usually attached to one another. I had no knowledge by what particular train they intended returning to town, but knew when the last train they could catch was due to arrive in London (9.5 p.m.) and how long to a few minutes they would take from the terminus to get home (about 10 p.m.). Our profession entails a great deal of travelling; my friends have had plenty of experience in this direction, and there was no question of their being well able to look after themselves. I may just add that one of these friends has made the same journey weekly for the last eight or nine years, so that I knew quite well his usual time of arrival at Liverpool Street.
On the day mentioned they were performing at an afternoon concert, and I had every reason to believe they would be tired and get home as soon as possible. I allowed half-an-hour beyond the usual time (10.30 p.m.) of arrival to elapse before I got at all uneasy, speculating as people will under such circumstances as to what was keeping them, although arguing to myself all the time that there was not the slightest occasion for alarm. I then took up a book in which I was much interested, sitting in an easy chair before the fire with a reading lamp close to my right side, and in such a position that only by deliberately turning round could I see the window on my left, before which heavy chenille curtains were drawn. I had read some twenty minutes or so, was thoroughly absorbed in the book, my mind was perfectly quiet, and for the time being my friends were quite forgotten, when suddenly without a moment's warning my whole being seemed roused to the highest state of tension or aliveness, and I was aware, with an intenseness not easily imagined by those who have never experienced it, that another being or presence was not only in the room but close to me. I put my book down, and although my excitement was great, I felt quite collected and not conscious of any sense of fear. Without changing my position, and looking straight at the fire, I knew somehow that my friend A. H. was standing at my left elbow, but so far behind me as to be hidden by the arm-chair in which I was leaning back. Moving my eyes round slightly without otherwise changing my position, the lower portion of one leg became visible, and I instantly recognised the grey-blue material of trousers he often wore, but the stuff appeared semi-transparent, reminding me of tobacco smoke in consistency. I could have touched it with my hand without moving more than my left arm. With that curious instinctive wish not to see more of such a "figure," I did no more than glance once or twice at the apparition, and then directed my gaze steadily at the fire in front of me. An appreciable space of time passed——probably several seconds in all, but seeming in reality much longer—when the most curious thing happened. Standing upright between me and the window on my left, and at a distance of about four feet from me and almost immediately behind my chair, I saw perfectly distinctly the figure of my friend—the face very pale, the head slightly thrown back, the eyes shut, and on one side of the throat, just under the jaw, a wound with blood on it. The figure remained motionless with the arms close to the sides, and for some time, how long I can't say, I looked steadily at it; then all at once roused myself, turned deliberately round, the figure vanished, and I realised instantly that I had seen the figure behind me without moving from my first position—an impossible feat physically. I am perfectly certain I never moved my position from the first appearance of the figure as seen physically until it disappeared on my turning.
Mr. Kearne then made a note of the time, and within an hour his friends returned.
My friend B. then came up, saying, "Come and see A. H., what a state he is in." I found him in the bathroom with his collar and shirt torn open, the front of the latter with blood upon it, and bathing a wound under his jaw which was bleeding. His face was very pale, and he was evidently suffering from a shock of some kind. As soon as I could I got an account of what had happened.
They had arrived in London punctually, and feeling tired, although in good spirits, drove with a third gentleman, who had been performing with them, to a restaurant opposite King's Cross Station to have some supper. Before leaving the restaurant, my friend, A. H. (whose apparition I saw), complained of feeling faint from the heat of the place, went out into the street to get some fresh air, and had hardly got into the open when he felt his senses leave him, and he fell heavily forward, striking his jaw on the edge of the kerb, then rolling over on his back. On recovering consciousness, two policemen were standing over him, one of whom—failing to unfasten his collar to give him air—had cut both that and his tie. After informing the rest of the party of what had happened, a cab was called, and my two friends were driven home as quickly as possible. The exact time that my friend A. H. fainted was not of course noted by them; but judging by the average time a cab takes to do the distance, cut rather short on this occasion in the effort to get A. H. home quickly, it would correspond within three minutes to the time when the apparition appeared to me.
The two friends referred to, Mr. Alfred Hobday and Mr. Arthur Bent, append their signatures to the narrative, in corroboration of its accuracy so far as they are concerned.
In the following case the phantasm was sufficiently distinct and lifelike for the colour of the dress to be noted. The experience, it will be seen, was impressive enough to induce the percipient to make a note of the circumstance in her diary.
No. 37. From Miss Hervey
I saw the figure of my cousin (a nurse in Dublin) coming upstairs, dressed in grey. I was in Tasmania, and the time that I saw her was between 6 and 7 p.m. on April 21st, 1888.
I had just come in from a ride and was in the best of health and spirits. I was between 31 and 32 years of age.
I had lived with my cousin, and we were the greatest of friends, but my going to Tasmania in 1887 had, of course, separated us. She was a nurse, and at the time I saw her in April, 1888, she was dying of typhus fever, a fact unknown to me till 6 weeks after her death. Her illness lasted only 5 days, and I heard of her death at the same time as of her illness.
There was no one present with me at the time, but I narrated what I had seen to the friend with whom I was living, and asked why my cousin, Ethel B., should have been dressed in grey. My friend said that was the dress of the nurses in that particular hospital; a fact unknown to me.
The impression of seeing my cousin was so vivid that I wrote a long letter to her that night, saying I had had this vision. The letter, arriving after she was dead, was returned to me and I destroyed it."
I called on Miss Hervey on July 21, 1892. She explained that she was staying at the time of her experience with Lady H. Miss Hervey and Lady H. had just returned from a drive, and Miss Hervey was leaving her room to cross the upper landing to Lady H.'s room to have tea. On passing the stairs she saw the figure coming up. She recognised it at once and ran away to Lady H., without waiting to see the figure disappear, and told her what she had seen. Lady H. laughed at her, but told her to note it in her diary. This Miss Hervey did. I saw the entry: "Saturday, April 21st, 1888, 6 P.M. Vision of [nickname given] on landing in grey dress." The news of death did not arrive till June. Date of death, April 22, 1888, at 4.30 p.m.
Lady H. writes:
Dear Sir—Your letter dated April 6th has followed me back to England, and I should have answered it a week or two sooner, but I thought my son from Tasmania might be able to throw some light on your search for a definite corroboration of Miss Hervey's account of an apparition which she tells you she saw when in Tasmania with us in 1888. He, however, can do little more than I can for its confirmation. He recollects that Miss Hervey made such a statement at the time, and I seem to remember something about it, but nothing really definite.
The dress of the nurses at the hospital in question is a check pattern of white and blue with a little red. It has a greyish tone at a distance, but the colour coincidence is not sufficiently striking to carry much weight. The difference of time between Tasmania and Dublin is about ten hours, so that the vision preceded the death by about thirty-two hours.
The great bulk of the cases in our collection are of the same type as the five narratives last quoted: the figure seen is more or less realistic; it is recognised by the person to whom it appears; and the percipient is a relative or intimate friend. We now pass to cases which in one respect or another differ from this clearly defined type.
The following case presents a grotesque feature which is almost without parallel in our records.In this case also the percipient, it will be observed,was in the company of others. The case was forwarded to us on May 5, 1892, by Mr. Raper of Trinity College, Oxford, who writes that he heard an account of the incident very soon after its occurrence.
No. 38 From M. J. Dovz[12]
Just before last Christmas I went over to Liverpool with one of my brothers and my sister. It was a very fine, clear day, and there was a great crowd of people shopping in the streets. We were walking down Lord-street, one of the principal streets, when, passing me, I saw an old uncle of mine whom I knew very little, and had not seen for a very long time, although he lived near me. I saw three distinct shapes hobbling past (he was lame) one after the other in a line. It did n't seem to strike me at the moment as being in the least curious, not even there being three shapes in a line. I said to my sister, "I have just seen Uncle E., and I am sure he is dead." I said this as it were mechanically, and not feeling at all impressed. Of course my brother and sister laughed. We thought nothing more about it while in Liverpool. The first thing my mother said to us on getting home was, "I have some news "; and then she told us that this uncle had died very early that morning. I don't know the particular hour. I saw the three shapes at about 12 in the morning. I felt perfectly fit and well, and was not thinking of my uncle in the least, nor did I know he was ill. Both my brother and my sister heard me say that I had seen him and believed he was dead, and they were equally astonished at hearing of his death on our return home. My uncle and I knew each other very little. In fact, he hardly knew me by sight, although he knew me well when I was a small child.
Miss Dove wrote to her brother on the 17th May,1892:
I do remember distinctly your saying to me in Liverpool, "three men have passed me exactly like Uncle E., he must be dead," and that we heard afterwards he had died that day, but I do not remember the date.
The uncle, it appears, was found dead in his bed on that morning, having died in the course of the night.
The grotesque character of the central incident in this narrative illustrates unmistakably the fundamental character of hallucinations. The mere fact that the curious vision did not strike the narrator at the time as odd, and did not make any emotional impression, is in itself a proof that he was not fully master of his faculties. A like partial dissociation of consciousness may no doubt be presumed to have existed in the case of Prince Duleep Singh's vision (No. 33) and in the case of Mr. Percy Kearne (No. 36). In order to appreciate their significance it is important to bear in mind that these apparitions are after all of the nature of dreams; and that the critical faculties of the percipient may in some cases be altogether in abeyance at the moment, however wide awake he may be immediately before and after the experience. In the case of post-hypnotic hallucinations or enjoined actions we are often able experimentally to determine the momentary recurrence of a state of dream consciousness.[13] A painstaking critic of our evidence, Herr Edmund Parish, affirms the absolute identity of the two classes of impressions: "there is absolutely no distinction, either theoretical or practical, to be drawn between the sense deceptions of the dream state and those of waking consciousness." But the statement is made for controversial purposes, and requires considerable modification. We need not now concern ourselves about theoretic distinctions between the two classes of phenomena. But for practical purposes, especially for the purpose of the present enquiry, there are two very important distinctions between waking hallucinations and the hallucinations of sleep which we call dreams. In the first place, the waking vision is of much rarer occurrence, and much more impressive, as the common experience of mankind, apart from the census, is sufficient to show. In the second place, the waking experience is likely to be more accurately remembered, not only, or even mainly, because of its rarity and impressiveness, but because it has a fixed place in time and generally in space also. Whatever the actual state of the percipient's consciousness at the moment, the vision at any rate forms a link in the chain of waking experiences.[14]
In some cases the impression made upon the percipient, though fairly distinct, is not referred to any particular person, until its coincidence with a death gives it retrospective significance. Thus a doctor tells us that about 7.30 on a December morning "when just on the point of rising, I became conscious that a dark form, distinctly that of a female of medium height, was passing round the foot of the bed, and glided up to my side. When it reached me I raised myself in bed and felt with my hand, but it passed through the shadow."
Later it appeared that the vision occurred within half an hour of the death of a patient; and the percipient only then realised the likeness of the phantasmal figure to that of the deceased person. Of course a case of this kind has little evidential importance, even though the hallucination was unique in the percipient's experience. But we have other cases of this type."[15]
Hitherto it has been assumed that the "agent" in these spontaneous cases is the dying man, or, generally speaking, the principal actor in the crisis which gives rise to the percipient's experience. But though this assumption is perhaps usually correct, it is by no means a necessary corollary of the hypothesis of thought transference. And in many cases we have clear indications that the telepathic impulse may have originated in the minds of some of those cognisant of the death at the time.
In the following narrative, for instance, the vision represented the widow of the deceased, and appears to have coincided not with the death, which had taken place about one and one half hours previously, but with the subsequent conversation in which the thoughts of the survivors turned towards the percipient. The account is written in the form of a letter to Mrs. Sidgwick, by a lady well known to her, who prefers to remain anonymous. The percipient was in London at the time of the vision. J. W. was an old man who had been a ploughman, and afterwards kept the general shop and post-office in the remote country village where his death took place.
No. 39. From Miss R.[16]
On the night of Saturday, March 4th, or rather, early morning of March 5th [1905], I awoke and sat up to reach for something on the table beside my bed. The room was not dark, as the curtains were drawn back, and the blinds were up, and there are some strong lights in the street outside. As I sat up all seemed dark except that I saw a face for a second, and the same face a little farther to the right and a little lower down, also for a second. I am not sure whether I saw the two faces (which were exactly the same) at the same moment or one just after the other, but I think the sight of them overlapped. The faces were of Mrs. J. W., who lives at the village at home. I only saw her head, all else being swallowed in darkness. I noticed her black cap, without any white, which she always wears. Her face was not strongly illuminated, and wore her usual expression. There was no appearance of life or action about it.
I was sufficiently struck by this to say to myself that I would write to you next morning about it, so that if there was any coincidence about it you would have evidence beforehand. I also turned over to the other side of my bed, took up the watch standing there and noticed the time by it was 4.19 a.m. As this watch was 5 minutes fast by "Big Ben," the real time must have been just 4.14 a.m. Unluckily when I woke next morning the whole thing went clean out of my recollection, and I never thought of it again till this morning (March 7th), when I received a letter from Mrs. N. [wife of the clergyman at Miss R.'s country home], dated March 6th, who among other things wrote as follows:
"Poor old J. W. at the village died yesterday morning early. He has been ill for a long time."
Miss R. adds that in the absence of a written memorandum she could not determine with certainty whether the date of her vision was on the morning of the 5th or 6th; but from independent evidence she is "pretty confident" that it was the 5th. It appears from Mrs. N.'s further letters that J. W. died at about 2.50 a.m. on the 5th, and that between 4 and 5 a.m. on that date Mrs. J. W. and her daughter-in-law were talking much of Miss R. and of her great kindness to them: Mrs. W. adding that she would like to offer Miss R. her corner cupboard.
In this case the "agency" of Mrs. W. would seem to be indicated by all the circumstances of the case. We have other instances in which a similar explanation is suggested. Thus Mrs. McAlpine saw a vision of her baby-nephew, six months old, at the time of his death. In this case it seems more natural to assume that the agent was some person tending the child, rather than the child itself.[17] In another case a woman dreamt of the death of a child and the arrangements for the funeral; the dream occurring more than twenty-four hours after the death.[18]
The following case of the apparition of a dog at about the time of death may, it is suggested, be similarly explained.
No. 40. From Mrs. Bagot[19]
I was at Mentone in the spring of 1883, having left at home with the gardener a very favourite black and tan terrier, "Judy." I was sitting at table d'hôte with my daughter and husband and suddenly saw Judy run across the room, and exclaimed, "Why, there's Judy!" There was no dog in the room or hotel, but I distinctly saw her, and when I went upstairs after table d'hôte, told my other daughter, Mrs. Wodehouse, what I had seen.
The next letter from home told me that Judy had gone out in the morning well, had apparently picked up some poison, as she was taken ill and died in half an hour; but I cannot say whether it was on the same day that I had seen her.
She was almost a human dog, so wonderfully intelligent and understanding, and devoted to me.
Mrs. Bagot's daughter, Mrs. Wodehouse, sent to us a copy of the entries in her diary under the dates March 24 and 28, 1883.
(Copy of Diary.) March 24th, 1883. Easter Eve (Mentone). —"Drove with A. and picked anemones. Lovely bright day. But my head ached too much to enjoy it. Went to bed after tea and read Hettner's Renaissance. Mamma saw Judy's ghost at table d' hôte!"
March 28th, Wednesday (Monte Carlo).—"Mamma and A. came over for the day. Judy dead, poor old dear."
It will be seen that no exact correspondence is made out between the vision and the death; but it is clear that the apparition was seen before the news of the death was received. In this case it is not difficult to suppose that the agent may have been the person in whose charge the dog had been left. But to return for a moment to Case 39. It will be seen that Miss R. not only made no note of her experience but actually forgot all about it until she received the news of the death of W. As the vision had not been mentioned to any one we have no proof, beyond the percipient's word, for the actual occurrence of the experience. That guarantee is no doubt in nearly all cases sufficient, so far as the narrator's good faith is concerned. In this particular case the details are related with such obvious care that there can, it is thought, be little doubt of their substantial accuracy. But Professor Royce of Harvard has suggested that in cases of this kind, when the impression is not noted down or mentioned beforehand, there may occur, on the receipt of the news of death or disaster, an instantaneous and irresistible hallucination of memory, which may give rise to a belief in a previous dream or other warning presaging the facts. For this assumed hallucination of memory he suggests the name "pseudo-presentiment." Professor Royce can bring forward little support for his hypothesis of an instantaneous hallucination; but an illusion of memory, magnifying and rearranging the details of a recent dream, seems in some cases not improbable. In any case, however, we should not place much reliance upon an experience not communicated to others or even remembered until after the event which gave it significance.[20]
As already indicated, we have many cases in which two or three persons in company have a similar and simultaneous hallucinatory experience. For the sake of simplicity I have deferred giving instances of collective percipience of this kind until a later chapter. The case where percipients not in the same room have simultaneous impressions is much rarer. The following instance of this type may be quoted. The case, it will be seen, exceeds the limit of ten years for the interval between event and record which we had set before ourselves as a standard, but the narrative bears on the face of it the impress of accuracy.
No. 41. From the Rev. Charles L. Tweedale, F. R. A. S.[21]
July 24th, 1996
On the night of January 10th, 1879, I had retired early to rest. I awoke out of my first sleep to find the moon shining into my room. As I awoke my eyes were directed towards the panels of a cupboard, or wardrobe, built into the east wall of my room, and situated in the north-east corner. I watched the moonlight on the panels. As I gazed I suddenly saw a face form on the panels of the cupboard or wardrobe. Indistinct at first, it gradually became clearer until it was perfectly distinct as in life, when I saw the face of my grandmother. What particularly struck me at the moment and burnt itself into my recollection was the fact that the face wore an old-fashioned frilled or goffered cap. I gazed at it for a few seconds, during which it was as plain as the living face, when it faded gradually into the moonlight and was gone. I was not alarmed, but, thinking that I had been deceived by the moonlight and that it was an illusion, I turned over and went off to sleep again. In the morning when at breakfast I began telling the experience of the night to my parents. I had got well into my story, when, to my surprise, my father suddenly sprang up from his seat at the table and leaving his food almost untouched hurriedly left the room. As he walked towards the door I gazed after him in amazement, saying to mother, "Whatever is the matter with father?" She raised her hand to enjoin silence. When the door had closed I again repeated my question. She replied, "Well, Charles, it is the strangest thing I ever heard of, but when I awoke this morning your father informed me that he was awakened in the night and saw his mother standing by his bedside, and that when he raised himself to speak to her she glided away." This scene and conversation took place at about 8.30 a.m. on the morning of January 11th. Before noon we received a telegram announcing the death of my father's mother during the night.
We found that the matter did not end here, for my father was afterwards informed by his sister that she also had seen the apparition of her mother standing at the foot of her bed.
Thus, this remarkable apparition was manifested to three persons independently. My apartment, in which I saw the vision, was at the other side of the house to that occupied by my parents, and was entirely separate and apart from their room, while my father's sister was nearly 20 miles away at Heckmondwike.
Mr. Tweedale's experience and that of his father occurred at about 2 a.m.; the death took place at 12.15 a.m. The appearance to Mr. Tweedale's aunt, Mrs. Hodgson, took place eighteen hours after the death, news of which had been intentionally kept from the percipient on account of her serious illness. Mr. Hodgson has given us an account of this vision.
Mrs. Tweedale writes:
June 22d, 1906.
I have carefully read my son's account of the strange appearance to him and my late husband, Dr. Tweedale. I perfectly well remember the matter, my son telling us of what he had seen and my husband telling me of the apparition to him, also the telegram informing us of the death during the night.
I distinctly remember my husband also being informed by his sister of the appearance to her.
It should be added that Mr. Tweedale sees in the fact that the vision appeared to three persons independently after the death had occurred, a proof that the personality survives death.
It need scarcely be said that the facts are susceptible of other explanations. The apparitions may, as already suggested, have been due to a telepathic impulse from the mind of the survivors. Or, in the case of Mr. Tweedale and his father, we may suppose that the impulse actually originated with the dying woman, but that it remained latent in the subconsciousness of the percipients for some two hours before a favourable opportunity occurred for its emergence into the upper consciousness. We have evidence in the case of dreams, crystal visions, and in various hypnotic cases, that an impression may thus lie latent for some hours before it attains full realisation.
- ↑ Proceedings, S. P. R.. vol. x. p. 291.
- ↑ Journal, S. P. R., December, 1894.
- ↑ Vol. ii., p. 28.
- ↑ Journal, S. P. R.. June, 1896.
- ↑ Ibid, July, 1895
- ↑ Particle equivalent to the German "von" (the name is a Swedish one).
- ↑ Government of Radom, Poland, 1200 versts from Petersburg.
- ↑ See, in this connection, Cases 39 and 40 in the present chapter, and cases 42 and others in Chapter X.
- ↑ Journal, S. P. R., January, 1895.
- ↑ Journal, S. P. R.. February, 1895.
- ↑ Proceedings, S. P. R.. vol. 11., pp. 282–283. The account was written in answer to the census questions.
- ↑ Journal. S. P. R.. January, 1895.
- ↑ In some of these experimental eases the subject is found completely to forget his own vision or action immediately afterwards. It would seem therefore that the state of dissociation in the case of spontaneous hallucinations is not as a rule very far-reaching.
- ↑ See Parish, Hallucinations and Illusions, pp. 291, et seqq. Parish is a critic who has every intention of being impartial. In discussing telepathy he has summed up the Lehmann-Sidgwick controversy in favour of the Society for Psychical Research or rather against the Danish experimenters (op. cit. p. 320). But in the whole passage referred to he seems to have been misled by a parti pris. Apart from the fact that we have some definite evidence, in the census tables, of the comparative rarity of waking hallucinations, and of the rate at which they tend to be forgotten, Parish himself recognises and insists upon the fact that the dissociation of consciousness, which is the chief cause of forgetfulness, is, in the case of what are commonly called waking hallucinations, less profound than in ordinary sleep. For a fuller criticism of the argument against telepathy in Parish's book, see Miss Johnson's review (Proceedings. S. P. R.. vol. xi.. p. 163).
- ↑ Proceedings, vol. x., p. 265. See especially the narrative of the Countess Eugénie Kapnist, given in my Apparitions and Thought Transference p. 252.
- ↑ Journal. S. P. R. November. 1906.
- ↑ Proceedings, S. P. R., vol. x., p. 281. See also the curious case related by Miss Hawkins-Dempster. Ibid. p. 261.
- ↑ See below, Case 42, Chapter X.
- ↑ Journal, S. P. R., April, 1896.
- ↑ See Professor Royce's letter in Mind for April, 1888.
- ↑ Journal, S. P. R., November, 1906.