Chapter I.

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REAL GHOST STORIES

Collected and Edited

By

WILLIAM T. STEAD

NEW EDITION

Re-arranged and Introduced

By

ESTELLE W. STEAD

NEW YORK:

GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY

1921

INTRODUCTION.

During the last few years I have been urged by people in all parts of

the world to re-issue some of the wonderful stories of genuine psychic

experiences collected by my Father several years ago.

These stories were published by him in two volumes in 1891-92; the

first, entitled _Real Ghost Stories_, created so much interest and

brought in so large a number of other stories of genuine experiences

that the first volume was soon followed by a second, entitled _More

Ghost Stories_.

The contents of the two volumes, slightly curtailed, were, a few years

later, brought out as one book; but the three volumes have long been out

of print and are practically unknown to the present generation.

I remember when I was a child my Father read some of these stories aloud

to us as he was making his collection; and I remember, too, how thrilled

and awed we were, and how at times they brought a creepy feeling when at

night I had to mount many flights of stairs to my bedroom at the top of

the house.

Reading these stories again, after many years' study of the subject, I

have realised what a wealth of interesting facts my Father had gathered

together, and that not only the gathered facts, but his own contributions,

his chapter on "The Ghost That Dwelleth in Each One of Us" and his

comments on the stories, show what an insight he had into and what an

understanding he had of this vast and wonderful subject.

I felt as I read that those who urged re-publication were right, that if

not a "classic," as some have called it, it at least merits a place on

the shelves of all who study psychic literature and are interested in

psychic experiences.

I demurred long as to whether I should change the title. The word

"Ghost" has to a great extent in modern times lost its true meaning to

the majority and is generally associated in many minds with something

uncanny--with haunted houses and weird apparitions filling with terror

those who come into contact with them.

"Stories from the Borderland," "Psychic Experiences," were among the

titles which suggested themselves to me; but in the end I decided to

keep the old title, and in so doing help to bring the word "ghost" back

to its proper and true place and meaning.

"Ghost," according to the dictionary, means "the soul of man; the soul

of a deceased person; the soul or spirit separate from the body;

apparition, spectre, shadow":--it comprises, in fact, all we mean when

we think or speak of "Spirit." We still say "The Holy Ghost" as

naturally and as reverently as we say "The Holy Spirit." So for the sake

of the word itself, and because it covers everything we speak of as

Spirit to-day; these two considerations take away all reason why the

word should not be used, and it gives me great pleasure in re-issuing

these stories to carry on the title originally chosen by my Father.

There is a large collection of stories to be drawn upon, for besides

those given in the two volumes mentioned, many of equal interest and

value appeared in _Borderland_, a psychic quarterly edited and

published by my Father for a period of four years in the nineties and

now long out of print.

If this first volume proves that those who advised me were right in

thinking that these experiences will be a valuable addition to psychic

literature, I propose to bring out two further volumes of stories from

my Father's collection, and I hope to add to these a volume of stories

of a later date, of which I already have a goodly store. For this

purpose I invite those who have had experiences which they consider will

be of interest and value for such a collection, to send them to me so

that, if suitable and appropriate, they may be placed on record.

In bringing this Introduction to a close I should like to quote what my

Father wrote in his Preface to the last edition published by him, as it

embodies what many people are realising to-day. To them, as to him, the

reality of the "Invisibles" is no longer a speculation. Therefore I feel

that these thoughts of his should have a place in this new edition of

his collection of _Real Ghost Stories_.

"The reality," he wrote, "of the Invisibles has long since ceased to be

for me a matter of speculation. It is one of the things about which I

feel as certain as I do, for instance, of the existence of the people of

Tierra del Fuego; and while it is of no importance to me to know that

Tierra del Fuego is inhabited, it is of vital importance to know that

the spirits of the departed, and also of those still occupying for a

time the moveable biped telephone which we call our body, can, and given

the right conditions _do_, communicate with the physical

unconsciousness of the man in the street. It is a fact which properly

apprehended would go far to remedy some of the worst evils from which we

have to complain. For our conception of life has got out of form, owing

to our constant habit of mistaking a part for the whole, and everything

looks awry."

Estelle W. Stead

Bank Buildings,

Kingsway, London, W.C.2.

_Easter_, 1921.

A PREFATORY WORD.

Many people will object--some have already objected--to the subject of

this book. It is an offence to some to take a ghost too seriously; with

others it is a still greater offence not to take ghosts seriously

enough. One set of objections can be paired off against the other;

neither objection has very solid foundation. The time has surely come

when the fair claim of ghosts to the impartial attention and careful

observation of mankind should no longer be ignored. In earlier times

people believed in them so much that they cut their acquaintance; in

later times people believe in them so little that they will not even

admit their existence. Thus these mysterious visitants have hitherto

failed to enter into that friendly relation with mankind which many of

them seem sincerely to desire.

But what with the superstitious credulity of the one age and the equally

superstitious unbelief of another, it is necessary to begin from the

beginning and to convince a sceptical world that apparitions really

appear. In order to do this it is necessary to insist that your ghost

should no longer be ignored as a phenomenon of Nature. He has a right,

equal to that of any other natural phenomenon, to be examined and

observed, studied and defined. It is true that he is a rather difficult

phenomenon; his comings and goings are rather intermittent and fitful,

his substance is too shadowy to be handled, and he has avoided hitherto

equally the obtrusive inquisitiveness of the microscope and telescope.

A phenomenon which you can neither handle nor weigh, analyse nor

dissect, is naturally regarded as intractable and troublesome;

nevertheless, however intractable and troublesome he may be to reduce to

any of the existing scientific categories, we have no right to allow his

idiosyncrasies to deprive him of his innate right to be regarded as a

phenomenon. As such he will be treated in the following pages, with all

the respect due to phenomena whose reality is attested by a sufficient

number of witnesses. There will be no attempt in this book to build up a

theory of apparitions, or to define the true inwardness of a ghost.

There will be as many explanations as there are minds of the

significance of the extraordinary narratives which I have collated from

correspondence and from accessible records. Leaving it to my readers to

discuss the rival hypotheses, I will stick to the humbler mission of

recording facts, from which they can form their own judgment.

The ordinary temper of the ordinary man in dealing with ghosts is

supremely unscientific, but it is less objectionable than that of the

pseudo-scientist. The Inquisitor who forbade free inquiry into matters

of religion because of human depravity, was the natural precursor of the

Scientist who forbids the exercise of the reason on the subject of

ghosts, on account of inherited tendencies to attribute such phenomena

to causes outside the established order of nature. What difference there

is, is altogether in favour of the Inquisitor, who at least had what he

regarded as a divinely constituted authority, competent and willing to

pronounce final decision upon any subject that might trouble the human

mind. Science has no such tribunal, and when she forbids others to

observe and to reflect she is no better than a blind fetish.

Eclipses in old days used to drive whole nations half mad with fright.

To this day the black disc of the moon no sooner begins to eat into the

shining surface of the sun than millions of savage men feel "creepy,"

and begin to tremble at the thought of the approaching end of the world.

But in civilised lands even the most ignorant regard an eclipse with

imperturbable composure. Eclipses are scientific phenomena observed and

understood. It is our object to reduce ghosts to the same level, or

rather to establish the claim of ghosts to be regarded as belonging as

much to the order of Nature as the eclipse. At present they are

disfranchised of their natural birthright, and those who treat them with

this injustice need not wonder if they take their revenge in "creeps."

The third class of objection takes the ground that there is something

irreligious and contrary to Christianity in the chronicling of such

phenomena. It is fortunate that Mary Magdalene and the early disciples

did not hold that theory. So far from its being irreligious to ascertain

facts, there is a subtle impiety in the refusal to face phenomena,

whether natural or supernatural. Either these things exist or they do

not. If they do not exist, then obviously there can be no harm in a

searching examination of the delusion which possessed the mind of almost

every worthy in the Old Testament, and which was constantly affirmed by

the authors of the New. If, on the other hand, they do exist, and are

perceptible under certain conditions to our senses, it will be difficult

to affirm the impiety of endeavouring to ascertain what is their nature,

and what light they are able to throw upon the kingdom of the Unseen. We

have no right to shut our eyes to facts and close our ears to evidence

merely because Moses forbade the Hebrews to allow witches to live, or

because some of the phenomena carry with them suggestions that do not

altogether harmonise with the conventional orthodox theories of future

life. The whole question that lies at bottom is whether this world is

divine or diabolic. Those who believe it divine are bound by that belief

to regard every phenomenon as a window through which man may gain fresh

glimpses of the wonder and the glory of the Infinite. In this region, as

in all others, faith and fear go ill together.

It is impossible for any impartial man to read the narratives of which

the present book is composed without feeling that we have at least one

hint or suggestion of quite incalculable possibilities in telepathy or

thought transference. If there be, as many of these stories seem to

suggest, a latent capacity in the human mind to communicate with other

minds, entirely regardless of the conditions of time and space, it is

undeniable that this would be a fact of the very first magnitude. It is

quite possible that the telegraph may be to telepathy what the stage

coach is to the steam engine. Neither can we afford to overlook the fact

that these phenomena have in these latter days signally vindicated their

power over the minds of men. Some of the acutest minds of our time have

learned to recognise in them scientific demonstration of the existence

of the fact that personal individuality survives death.

If it can be proved that it is occasionally possible for persons at the

uttermost ends of the world to communicate instantaneously with each

other, and even in some cases to make a vivid picture of themselves

stand before the eyes of those to whom they speak, no prejudice as to

the unhealthy nature of the inquiry should be allowed to stand in the

way of the examination of such a fact with a view to ascertaining

whether or not this latent capacity of the human mind can be utilised

for the benefit of mankind. Wild as this suggestion may seem to-day, it

is less fantastic than our grandfathers a hundred years ago would have

deemed a statement that at the end of the nineteenth century portraits

would be taken by the sun, that audible conversation would be carried on

instantaneously across a distance of a thousand miles, that a ray of

light could be made the agent for transmitting the human voice across an

abyss which no wire had ever spanned, and that by a simple mechanical

arrangement, which a man can carry in his hand, it would be possible to

reproduce the words, voice, and accent of the dead. The photograph, the

telegraph, the telephone, and the phonograph were all more or less

latent in what seemed to our ancestors the kite-flying folly of Benjamin

Franklin. Who knows but that in Telepathy we may have the faint

foreshadowing of another latent force, which may yet be destined to cast

into the shade even the marvels of electrical science!

There is a growing interest in all the occult phenomena to which this

work is devoted. It is in evidence on every hand. The topic is in the

air, and will be discussed and is being discussed, whether we take

notice of it or not. That it has its dangers those who have studied it

most closely are most aware, but these dangers will exist in any case,

and if those who ought to guide are silent, these perils will be

encountered without the safeguards which experience would dictate and

prudence suggest. It seems to me that it would be difficult to do better

service in this direction than to strengthen the hands of those who have

for many years past been trying to rationalise the consideration of the

Science of Ghosts.

It is idle to say that this should be left for experts. We live in a

democratic age and we democratise everything. It is too late in the day

to propose to place the whole of this department under the care of any

Brahmin caste; the subject is one which every common man and woman can

understand. It is one which comes home to every human being, for it adds

a new interest to life, and vivifies the sombre but all-pervading

problem of death.

W. T. Stead.

_London_, 1891.

CONTENTS

PAGE

Part I.--The Ghost That Dwells in Each of Us.

Chapter I. The Unconscious Personality 17

" II. Louis V. and His Two Souls 32

" III. Madame B. and Her Three Souls 45

" IV. Some Suggested Theories 52

Part II.--The Thought Body, or the Double.

Chapter I. Aerial Journeyings 56

" II. The Evidence of the Psychical Research Society 72

" III. Aimless Doubles 86

" IV. The Hypnotic Key 101

Part III.--Clairvoyance.--The Vision of the Out of Sight.

Chapter I. The Astral Camera 108

" II. Tragic Happenings Seen in Dreams 127

" III. My Own Experience 141

Part IV.--Premonitions and Second Sight.

Chapter I. My Own Extraordinary Premonitions 145

" II. Warnings Given in Dreams 160

" III. Premonitory Warnings 179

" IV. Some Historical and Other Cases 192

Part V.--Ghosts of the Living on Business.

Chapter I. Warnings of Peril and Death 199

" II. A Dying Double Demands its Portraits! 211

Part VI.--Ghosts Keeping Promise.

Chapter I. My Irish Friend 222

" II. Lord Brougham's Testimony 231

Appendix.--Some Historical Ghosts 240

REAL GHOST STORIES.

PART I.

THE GHOST THAT DWELLS IN EACH OF US.

Chapter I.

The Unconscious Personality.

"Real Ghost Stories!--How can there be real ghost stories when there are

no real ghosts?"

But are there no real ghosts? You may not have seen one, but it does not

follow that therefore they do not exist. How many of us have seen the

microbe that kills? There are at least as many persons who testify they

have seen apparitions as there are men of science who have examined the

microbe. You and I, who have seen neither, must perforce take the

testimony of others. The evidence for the microbe may be conclusive, the

evidence as to apparitions may be worthless; but in both cases it is a

case of testimony, not of personal experience.

The first thing to be done, therefore, is to collect testimony, and by

way of generally widening the mind and shaking down the walls of

prejudice which lead so many to refuse to admit the clearest possible

evidence as to facts which have not occurred within their personal

experience, I preface the report of my "Census of Hallucinations" or

personal experiences of the so-called supernatural by a preliminary

chapter on the perplexing subject of "Personality." This is the question

that lies at the root of all the controversy as to ghosts. Before

disputing about whether or not there are ghosts outside of us, let us

face the preliminary question, whether we have not each of us a

veritable ghost within our own skin?

Thrilling as are some of the stories of the apparitions of the living

and the dead, they are less sensational than the suggestion made by

hypnotists and psychical researchers of England and France, that each of

us has a ghost inside him. They say that we are all haunted by a

Spiritual Presence, of whose existence we are only fitfully and

sometimes never conscious, but which nevertheless inhabits the innermost

recesses of our personality. The theory of these researchers is that

besides the body and the mind, meaning by the mind the Conscious

Personality, there is also within our material frame the soul or

Unconscious Personality, the nature of which is shrouded in unfathomable

mystery. The latest word of advanced science has thus landed us back to

the apostolic assertion that man is composed of body, soul and spirit;

and there are some who see in the scientific doctrine of the Unconscious

Personality a welcome confirmation from an unexpected quarter of the

existence of the soul.

The fairy tales of science are innumerable, and, like the fairy tales of

old romance, they are not lacking in the grim, the tragic, and even the

horrible. Of recent years nothing has so fascinated the imagination even

of the least imaginative of men as the theory of disease which

transforms every drop of blood in our bodies into the lists in which

phagocyte and microbe wage the mortal strife on which our health

depends. Every white corpuscle that swims in our veins is now declared

to be the armed Knight of Life for ever on the look-out for the microbe

Fiend of Death. Day and night, sleeping and waking, the white knights of

life are constantly on the alert, for on their vigilance hangs our

existence. Sometimes, however, the invading microbes come in, not in

companies but in platoons, innumerable as Xerxes' Persians, and then

"e'en Roderick's best are backward borne," and we die. For our life is

the prize of the combat in these novel lists which science has revealed

to our view through the microscope, and health is but the token of the

triumphant victory of the phagocyte over the microbe.

But far more enthralling is the suggestion which psychical science has

made as to the existence of a combat not less grave in the very inmost

centre of our own mental or spiritual existence. The strife between the

infinitely minute bacilli that swarm in our blood has only the interest

which attaches to the conflict of inarticulate and apparently

unconscious animalculæ. The strife to which researches into the nature

and constitution of our mental processes call attention concerns our

conscious selves. It suggests almost inconceivable possibilities as to

our own nature, and leaves us appalled on the brink of a new world of

being of which until recently most of us were unaware.

There are no papers of such absorbing interest in the whole of the

"Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research" as those which deal

with the question of the Personality of Man. "I," what am I? What is our

Ego? Is this Conscious Personality which receives impressions through

the five senses, and through them alone, is it the only dweller in this

mortal tabernacle? May there not be other personalities, or at least one

other that is not conscious, when we are awake, and alert, and about,

but which comes into semi-consciousness when we sleep, and can be

developed into complete consciousness when the other personality is

thrown into a state of hypnotic trance? In other words, am I one

personality or two? Is my nature dual? As I have two hemispheres in my

brain, have I two minds or two souls?

The question will, no doubt, appear fantastic in its absurdity to those

who hear it asked for the first time; but those who are at all familiar

with the mysterious but undisputed phenomena of hypnotism will realize

how naturally this question arises, and how difficult it is to answer it

otherwise than in the affirmative. Every one knows Mr. Louis Stevenson's

wonderful story of "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde." The dual nature of man,

the warfare between this body of sin and death, and the spiritual

aspirations of the soul, forms part of the common stock of our orthodox

belief. But the facts which recent researches have brought to light seem

to point not to the old theological doctrine of the conflict between

good and evil in one soul, but to the existence in each of us of at

least two distinct selfs, two personalities, standing to each other

somewhat in the relation of man and wife, according to the old ideal

when the man is everything and the woman is almost entirely suppressed.

Every one is familiar with the phenomenon of occasional loss of memory.

Men are constantly losing consciousness, from disease, violence, or

violent emotion, and emerging again into active life with a gap in their

memory. Nay, every night we become unconscious in sleep, and rarely, if

ever, remember anything that we think of during slumber. Sometimes in

rare cases there is a distinct memory of all that passes in the sleeping

and the waking states, and we have read of one young man whose sleeping

consciousness was so continuous that he led, to all intents and

purposes, two lives. When he slept he resumed his dream existence at the

point when he waked, just as we resume our consciousness at the point

when we fall asleep. It was just as real to him as the life which he

lived when awake. It was actual, progressive, continuous, but entirely

different, holding no relation whatever to his waking life. Of his two

existences he preferred that which was spent in sleep, as more vivid,

more varied, and more pleasurable. This was no doubt an extreme and very

unusual case. But it is not impossible to conceive the possibility of a

continuous series of connected dreams, which would result in giving us a

realizing sense of leading two existences. That we fail to realize this

now is due to the fact that our memory is practically inert or

non-existent during sleep. The part of our mind which dreams seldom

registers its impressions in regions to which on waking our conscious

personality has access.

The conception of a dual or even a multiple personality is worked out in

a series of papers by Mr. F. W. H. Myers[1], to which I refer all those

who wish to make a serious study of this novel and startling hypothesis.

But I may at least attempt to explain the theory, and to give some

outline of the evidence on which it is based.

[1] "Human Personality" (Longmans, Green & Co.)

If I were free to use the simplest illustration without any pretence at

scientific exactitude, I should say that the new theory supposes that

there are inside each of us not one personality but two, and that these

two correspond to husband and wife. There is the Conscious Personality,

which stands for the husband. It is vigorous, alert, active, positive,

monopolising all the means of communication and production. So intense

is its consciousness that it ignores the very existence of its partner,

excepting as a mere appendage and convenience to itself. Then there is

the Unconscious Personality, which corresponds to the wife who keeps

cupboard and storehouse, and the old stocking which treasures up the

accumulated wealth of impressions acquired by the Conscious Personality,

but who is never able to assert any right to anything, or to the use of

sense or limb except when her lord and master is asleep or entranced.

When the Conscious Personality has acquired any habit or faculty so

completely that it becomes instinctive, it is handed on to the

Unconscious Personality to keep and use, the Conscious Ego giving it no

longer any attention. Deprived, like the wife in countries where the

subjection of woman is the universal law, of all right to an independent

existence, or to the use of the senses or of the limbs, the Unconscious

Personality has discovered ways and means of communicating other than

through the recognised organs of sense.

How vast and powerful are those hidden organs of the Unconscious

Personality we can only dimly see. It is through them that Divine

revelation is vouchsafed to man. The visions of the mystic, the

prophecies of the seer, the inspiration of the sibyl, all come through

this Unconscious Soul. It is through this dumb and suppressed Ego that

we communicate by telepathy,--that thought is transferred without using

the five senses. This under-soul is in touch with the over-soul, which,

in Emerson's noble phrase, "abolishes time and space." "This influence

of the senses has," he says, "in most men, overpowered their mind to

that degree that the walls of time and space have come to look real and

insurmountable; and to speak with levity of these limits is in the world

the sign of insanity. Yet time and space are but inverse measures of the

force of the soul." It is this Unconscious Personality which sees the

_Strathmore_ foundering in mid-ocean, which hears a whisper spoken

hundreds of miles off upon the battlefield, and which witnesses, as if

it happened before the eyes, a tragedy occurring at the Antipodes.

In proportion as the active, domineering Conscious Personality

extinguishes his submissive unconscious partner, materialism flourishes,

and man becomes blind to the Divinity that underlies all things. Hence

in all religions the first step is to silence the noisy, bustling master

of our earthly tabernacle, who, having monopolised the five senses, will

listen to no voice which it cannot hear, and to allow the silent

mistress to be open-souled to God. Hence the stress which all spiritual

religions have laid upon contemplation, upon prayer and fasting. Whether

it is an Indian Yogi, or a Trappist Monk, or one of our own Quakers, it

is all the same. In the words of the Revivalist hymn, "We must lay our

deadly doing down," and in receptive silence wait for the inspiration

from on high. The Conscious Personality has usurped the visible world;

but the Invisible, with its immeasurable expanse, is the domain of the

Sub-conscious. Hence we read in the Scriptures of losing life that we

may find it; for things of time and sense are temporal, but the things

which are not seen are eternal.

It is extraordinary how close is the analogy when we come to work it

out. The impressions stored up by the Conscious Personality and

entrusted to the care of the Unconscious are often, much to our disgust,

not forthcoming when wanted. It is as if we had given a memorandum to

our wife and we could not discover where she had put it. But night

comes; our Conscious Self sleeps, our Unconscious Housewife wakes, and

turning over her stores produces the missing impression; and when our

other self wakes it finds the mislaid memorandum, so to speak, ready to

its hand. Sometimes, as in the case of somnambulism, the Sub-conscious

Personality stealthily endeavours to use the body and limbs, from all

direct control over which it is shut out as absolutely as the inmate of

a Hindu zenana is forbidden to mount the charger of her warrior spouse.

But it is only when the Conscious Personality is thrown into a state of

hypnotic trance that the Unconscious Personality is emancipated from the

marital despotism of her partner. Then for the first time she is allowed

to help herself to the faculties and senses usually monopolised by the

Conscious Self. But like the timid and submissive inmate of the zenana

suddenly delivered from the thraldom of her life-long partner, she

immediately falls under the control of another. The Conscious

Personality of another person exercises over her the same supreme

authority that her own Conscious Personality did formerly.

There is nothing of sex in the ordinary material sense about the two

personalities. But their union is so close as to suggest that the

intrusion of the hypnotist is equivalent to an intrigue with a married

woman. The Sub-conscious Personality is no longer faithful exclusively

to its natural partner; it is under the control of the Conscious

Personality of another; and in the latter case the dictator seems to be

irresistibly over-riding for a time all the efforts of the Conscious

Personality to recover its authority in its own domain.

What proof, it will be asked impatiently, is there for the splitting of

our personality? The question is a just one, and I proceed to answer it.

There are often to be found in the records of lunatic asylums strange

instances of a dual personality, in which there appear to be two minds

in one body, as there are sometimes two yolks in one egg.

In the _Revue des Deux Mondes_, M. Jules Janet records the

following experiment which, although simplicity itself, gives us a very

vivid glimpse of a most appalling complex problem:--

"An hysterical subject with an insensitive limb is put to sleep, and is

told, 'After you wake you will raise your finger when you mean Yes, and

you will put it down when you mean No, in answer to the questions which

I shall ask you.' The subject is then wakened, and M. Janet pricks the

insensitive limb in several places. He asks, 'Do you feel anything?' The

conscious-awakened person replies with the lips, 'No,' but at the same

time, in accordance with the signal that has been agreed upon during the

state of hypnotisation, the finger is raised to signify 'Yes.' It has

been found that the finger will even indicate exactly the number of

times that the apparently insensitive limb has been wounded."

_The Double-Souled Irishman._

Dr. Robinson, of Lewisham, who has bestowed much attention on this

subject, sends me the following delightful story about an Irishman who

seems to have incarnated the Irish nationality in his own unhappy

person:--

"An old colleague of mine at the Darlington Hospital told me that he

once had an Irish lunatic under his care who imagined that his body was

the dwelling-place of two individuals, one of whom was a Catholic, with

Nationalist--not to say Fenian--proclivities, and the other was a

Protestant and an Orangeman. The host of these incompatibles said he

made it a fixed rule that the Protestant should occupy the right side of

his body and the Catholic the left, 'so that he would not be annoyed wid

them quarrelling in his inside.' The sympathies of the host were with

the green and against the orange, and he tried to weaken the latter by

starving him, and for months would only chew his food on the left side

of his mouth. The lunatic was not very troublesome, as a rule, but the

attendants generally had to straight-waistcoat him on certain critical

days--such as St. Patrick's Day and the anniversary of the battle of the

Boyne; because the Orange fist would punch the Fenian head unmercifully,

and occasionally he and the Fenian leagued together against the

Orangeman and banged him against the wall. This lunatic, when

questioned, said he did his best to keep the peace between his

troublesome guests, but that sometimes they got out of hand."

_Ansel Bourne and A. J. Brown._

A similar case, although not so violent or chronic in its manifestation,

is recorded in Vol. VII. (Part xix.) of the Psychical Research Society's

Proceedings, as having occurred on Rhode Island some years ago. An

excellent citizen, and a very religious lay preacher, of the name of

Ansel Bourne, was the subject:--

On January 17th, 1887, he went from his home in Coventry, R.I., to

Providence, in order to get money to pay for a farm which he had

arranged to buy, leaving his horse at Greene Station, in a stable,

expecting to return the same afternoon from the city. He drew out of the

bank 551 dollars, and paid several small bills, after which he went to

his nephew's store, 121, Broad Street, and then started to go to his

sister's house on Westminster Street. This was the last that was known

of his doings at that time. He did not appear at his sister's house, and

did not return to Greene.

Nothing was heard of him until March the 14th, when a telegram came from

a doctor in Norristown, Philadelphia, stating that he had just been

discovered there. He was entirely unconscious of having been absent from

home, or of the lapse of time between January 17th and March 14th. He

was brought home by his relatives, who, by diligent inquiry were able to

make out that Mr. Ansel Bourne, five weeks after leaving Rhode Island,

opened a shop in Norristown, and stocked it with toys and confectionery

which he purchased in Philadelphia. He called himself A. J. Brown, and

lived and did business, and went to meeting, like any ordinary mortal,

giving no one any suspicion that he was any other than A. J. Brown.

On the morning of Monday, March 14th, about five o'clock, he heard, he

says, an explosion like the report of a gun or a pistol, and, waking, he

noticed that there was a ridge in his bed not like the bed he had been

accustomed to sleep in. He noticed the electric light opposite his

windows. He rose and pulled away the curtains and looked out on the

street. He felt very weak, and thought that he had been drugged. His

next sensation was that of fear, knowing that he was in a place where he

had no business to be. He feared arrest as a burglar, or possibly

injury. He says this is the only time in his life he ever feared a

policeman.

The last thing he could remember before waking was seeing the Adams

express wagons at the corner of Dorrance and Broad Streets, in

Providence, on his way from the store of his nephew in Broad Street to

his sister's residence in Westminster Street, on January 17th.

The memory of Ansel Bourne retained absolutely nothing of the doings of

A. J. Brown, whose life he had lived for nearly two months. Professor

William James hypnotised him, and no sooner was he put into the trance

and was told to remember what happened January 17th, 1887, than he

became A. J. Brown again, and gave a clear and connected narrative of

all his doings in the Brown state. He did not remember ever having met

Ansel Bourne. Everything, however, in his past life, he said, was "mixed

up." He only remembered that he was confused, wanted to get somewhere

and have rest. He did not remember how he left Norristown. His mind was

confused, and since then it was a blank. He had no memory whatever of

his name or of his second marriage and the place of his birth. He

remembered, however, the date of his birth, and of his first wife's

death, and his trade. But between January 17th, 1887, and March 14th he

was not himself but another, and that other one Albert J. Brown, who

ceased to exist consciously on March 14th, but who promptly returned

four years afterwards, when Ansel Bourne was hypnotised, and showed that

he remembered perfectly all that happened to him between these two

dates. The confusion of his two memories in his earlier life is

puzzling, but it in no way impairs the value of this illustration of the

existence of two independent memories--two selfs, so to speak, within a

single skin.

The phenomenon is not uncommon, especially with epileptic patients.

Every mad-doctor knows cases in which there are what may be described as

alternating consciousnesses with alternating memories. But the

experiments of the French hypnotists carry us much further. In their

hands this Sub-conscious Personality is capable of development, of

tuition, and of emancipation. In this little suspected region lies a

great resource. For when the Conscious Personality is hopeless,

diseased, or demoralised the Unconscious Personality can be employed to

renovate and restore the patient, and then when its work is done it can

become unconscious once more and practically cease to exist.

Chapter II.

Louis V. and His Two Souls.

There is at present[2] a patient in France whose case is so

extraordinary that I cannot do better than transcribe the report of it

here, especially because it tends to show not only that we have two

personalities, but that each may use by preference a separate lobe of

the brain. The Conscious Personality occupies the left and controls the

right hand, the Unconscious the right side of the head and controls the

left hand. It also brings to light a very curious, not to say appalling,

fact, viz., the immense moral difference there may be between the

Conscious and the Unconscious Personalities. In the American case Bourne

was a character practically identical with Brown. In this French case

the character of each self is entirely different. What makes the case

still more interesting is that, besides the two personalities which we

all seem to possess, this patient had an arrested personality, which was

only fourteen years old when the age of his body was over forty. Here is

the report, however, make of it what you will.

[2] 1891.

"Louis V. began life (in 1863) as the neglected child of a turbulent

mother. He was sent to a reformatory at ten years of age, and there

showed himself, as he has always done when his organization had given

him a chance, quiet, well-behaved, and obedient. Then at fourteen years

old he had a great fright from a viper--a fright which threw him off his

balance, and started the series of psychical oscillations on which he

has been tossed ever since. At first the symptoms were only physical,

epilepsy and hysterical paralysis of the legs; and at the asylum of

Bonneval, whither he was next sent, he worked at tailoring steadily for

a couple of months. Then suddenly he had a hystero-epileptic

attack--fifty hours of convulsions and ecstasy--and when he awoke from

it he was no longer paralysed, no longer acquainted with tailoring, and

no longer virtuous. His memory was set back, so to say, to the moment of

the viper's appearance, and he could remember nothing since. His

character had become violent, greedy, quarrelsome, and his tastes were

radically changed. For instance, though he had before the attack been a

total abstainer, he now not only drank his own wine, but stole the wine

of the other patients. He escaped from Bonneval, and after a few

turbulent years, tracked by his occasional relapses into hospital or

madhouse, he turned up once more at the Rochefort asylum in the

character of a private of marines, convicted of theft, but considered to

be of unsound mind. And at Rochefort and La Rochelle, by great good

fortune, he fell into the hands of three physicians--Professors Bourru

and Burot, and Dr. Mabille--able and willing to continue and extend the

observations which Dr. Camuset at Bonneval, and Dr. Jules Voisin at

Bicetre, had already made on this most precious of _mauvais sujets_

at earlier points in his chequered career.

"He is now no longer at Rochefort, and Dr. Burot informs me that his

health has much improved, and that his peculiarities have in great part

disappeared. I must, however, for clearness sake, use the present tense

in briefly describing his condition at the time when the long series of

experiments were made.

"The state into which he has gravitated is a very unpleasing one. There

is paralysis and insensibility of the right side, and, as is often the

case in right hemiplegia, the speech is indistinct and difficult.

Nevertheless he is constantly haranguing any one who will listen to him,

abusing his physicians, or preaching--with a monkey-like impudence

rather than with reasoned clearness--radicalism in politics and atheism

in religion. He makes bad jokes, and if any one pleases him he

endeavours to caress him. He remembers recent events during his

residence at Rochefort asylum, but only two scraps of his life before

that date, namely, his vicious period at Bonneval and a part of his stay

at Bicetre.

"Except this strange fragmentary memory, there is nothing very unusual

in this condition, and in many asylums no experiments on it would have

been attempted. Fortunately the physicians at Rochefort were familiar

with the efficacy of the contact of metals in provoking transfer of

hysterical hemiplegia from one side to the other. They tried various

metals in turn on Louis V. Lead, silver, and zinc had no effect. Copper

produced a slight return of sensibility in the paralysed arm, but steel

applied to the right arm transferred the whole insensibility to the left

side of the body.

"Inexplicable as such a phenomenon is, it is sufficiently common, as

French physicians hold, in hysterical cases to excite little surprise.

What puzzled the doctors was the change of character which accompanied

the change of sensibility. When Louis V. issued from the crisis of

transfer with its minute of anxious expression and panting breath, he

might fairly be called a new man. The restless insolence, the savage

impulsiveness, have wholly disappeared. The patient is now gentle,

respectful, and modest, can speak clearly, but he only speaks when he is

spoken to. If he is asked his views on religion and politics, he prefers

to leave such matters to wiser heads than his own. It might seem that

morally and mentally the patient's cure had been complete.

"But now ask what he thinks of Rochefort; how he liked his regiment of

marines. He will blankly answer that he knows nothing of Rochefort, and

was never a soldier in his life. 'Where are you then, and what is the

date of to-day?' 'I am at Bicetre; it is January 2nd, 1884, and I hope

to see M. Voisin, as I did yesterday.'

"It is found, in fact, that he has now the memory of two short periods

of life (different from those which he remembers when his right side is

paralysed), periods during which, so far as now can be ascertained, his

character was of this same decorous type, and his paralysis was on his

left side.

"These two conditions are what are called his first and his second, out

of a series of six or more through which he can be made to pass. For

brevity's sake I will further describe his fifth state only.

"If he is placed in an electric bath, or if a magnet is placed on his

head, it looks at first sight as though a complete physical cure had

been effected. All paralysis, all defect of sensibility, has

disappeared. His movements are light and active, his expression gentle

and timid, but ask him where he is, and you will find that he has gone

back to a boy of fourteen, that he is at St. Urbain, his first

reformatory, and that his memory embraces his years of childhood, and

stops short on the very day on which he had the fright from the viper.

If he is pressed to recollect the incident of the viper, a violent

epileptiform crisis puts a sudden end to this phase of his personality."

(Vol. IV. pp. 497, 498, 499, "Proceedings of the Society for Psychical

Research").

This carries us a good deal further. Here we have not only two distinct

personalities, but two distinct characters, if not three, in one body.

According to the side which is paralysed, the man is a savage reprobate

or a decent modest citizen. The man seems born again when the steel

touches his right side. Yet all that has happened has been that the

Sub-conscious Personality has superseded his Conscious Personality in

the control of Louis V.

_Lucie and Adrienne._

The next case, although not marked by the same violent contrast, is

quite as remarkable, because it illustrates the extent to which the

Sub-conscious Self can be utilized in curing the Conscious Personality.

The subject was a girl of nineteen, called Lucie, who was highly

hysterical, having daily attacks of several hours' duration. She was

also devoid of the sense of pain or the sense of contact, so that she

"lost her legs in bed," as she put it.

On her fifth hypnotisation, however, Lucie underwent a kind of

catalepsy, after which she returned to the somnambulic state; but that

state was deeper than before. She no longer made any sign whether of

assent or refusal when she received the hypnotic commands, but she

executed them infallibly, whether they were to take effect immediately,

or after waking.

In Lucie's case this went further, and the suggested actions became

absolutely a portion of the trance-life. She executed them without

apparently knowing what she was doing. If, for instance, in her waking

state she was told (in the tone which in her hypnotic state signified

command) to get up and walk about, she walked about, but to judge from

her conversation she supposed herself to be still sitting quiet. She

would weep violently when commanded, but while she wept she continued to

talk as gaily and unconcernedly as if the tears had been turned on by a

stop-cock.

Any suggestion uttered by M. Janet in a brusque tone of command reached

the Unconscious Self alone; and other remarks reached the subject--awake

or somnambulic--in the ordinary way. The next step was to test the

intelligence of this hidden "slave of the lamp," if I may so term

it--this sub-conscious and indifferent executor of all that was bidden.

How far was its attention alert? How far was it capable of reasoning and

judgment? M. Janet began with a simple experiment. "When I shall have

clapped my hands together twelve times," he said to the entranced

subject before awakening her, "you will go to sleep again." There was no

sign that the sleeper understood or heard; and when she was awakened the

events of the trance were a blank to her as usual. She began talking to

other persons. M. Janet, at some little distance, clapped his hands

feebly together five times. Seeing that she did not seem to be attending

to him, he went up to her and said, "Did you hear what I did just now?"

"No; what?" "Do you hear this?" and he clapped his hands once more.

"Yes, you clapped your hands." "How often?" "Once." M. Janet again

withdrew and clapped his hands six times gently, with pauses between the

claps. Lucie paid no apparent attention, but when the sixth clap of this

second series--making the twelfth altogether--was reached, she fell

instantly into the trance again. It seemed, then, that the "slave of the

lamp" had counted the claps through all, and had obeyed the order much

as a clock strikes after a certain number of swings of the pendulum,

however often you stop it between hour and hour.

Thus far, the knowledge gained as to the unconscious element in Lucie

was not direct, but inferential. The nature of the command which it

could execute showed it to be capable of attention and memory; but there

was no way of learning its own conception of itself, if such existed, or

of determining its relation to other phenomena of Lucie's trance. And

here it was that automatic writing was successfully invoked; here we

have, as I may say, the first fruits in France of the new attention

directed to this seldom-trodden field. M. Janet began by the following

simple command: "When I clap my hands you will write Bonjour." This was

done in the usual scrawling script of automatism, and Lucie, though

fully awake, was not aware that she had written anything at all.

M. Janet simply ordered the entranced girl to write answers to all

questions of his after her waking. The command thus given had a

persistent effect, and while the awakened Lucie continued to chatter as

usual with other persons, her Unconscious Self wrote brief and scrawling

responses to M. Janet's questions. This was the moment at which, in many

cases, a new and invading separate personality is assumed.

A singular conversation gave to this limited creation, this statutory

intelligence, an identity sufficient for practical convenience. "Do you

hear me?" asked Professor Janet. Answer (by writing), "No." "But in

order to answer one must hear." "Certainly." "Then how do you manage?"

"I don't know." "There must be somebody that hears me." "Yes." "Who is

it?" "Not Lucie." "Oh, some one else? Shall we call her Blanche?" "Yes,

Blanche." Blanche, however, had to be changed. Another name had to be

chosen. "What name will you have?" "No name." "You must, it will be more

convenient." "Well, then, Adrienne." Never, perhaps, has a personality

had less spontaneity about it.

Yet Adrienne was in some respects deeper down than Lucie. She could get

at the genesis of certain psychical manifestations of which Lucie

experienced only the results. A striking instance of this was afforded

by the phenomena of the hystero-epileptic attacks to which this patient

was subject.

Lucie's special terror, which recurred in wild exclamation in her

hysterical fits, was in some way connected with hidden men. She could

not, however, recollect the incident to which her cries referred; she

only knew that she had had a severe fright at seven years old, and an

illness in consequence. Now, during these "crises" Lucie (except,

presumably, in the periods of unconsciousness which form a pretty

constant element in such attacks) could hear what Prof. Janet said to

her. Adrienne, on the contrary, was hard to get at; could no longer obey

orders, and if she wrote, wrote only "J'ai peur, j'ai peur."

M. Janet, however, waited until the attack was over, and then questioned

Adrienne as to the true meaning of the agitated scene. Adrienne was able

to describe to him the terrifying incident in her childish life which

had originated the confused hallucinations which recurred during the

attack. She could not explain the recrudescence of the hallucinations;

but she knew what Lucie saw, and why she saw it; nay, indeed, it was

Adrienne, rather than Lucie, to whom the hallucination was directly

visible.

Lucie, it will be remembered, was a hysterical patient very seriously

amiss. One conspicuous symptom was an almost absolute defect of

sensibility, whether to pain, to heat, or to contact, which persisted

both when she was awake and entranced. There was, as already mentioned,

an entire defect of the muscular sense also, so that when her eyes were

shut she did not know the position of her limbs. Nevertheless it was

remarked as an anomaly that when she was thrown into a cataleptic state,

not only did the movements impressed upon her continue to be made, but

the corresponding or complimentary movements, the corresponding facial

expression, followed just as they usually follow in such experiments.

Thus, if M. Janet clenched her fist in the cataleptic state, her arm

began to deal blows, and her face assumed a look of anger. The

suggestion which was given through the so-called muscular sense had

operated in a subject to whom the muscular sense, as tested in other

ways, seemed to be wholly lacking. As soon as Adrienne could be

communicated with, it was possible to get somewhat nearer to a solution

of this puzzle. Lucie was thrown into catalepsy; then M. Janet clenched

her left hand (she began at once to strike out), put a pencil in her

right, and said, "Adrienne, what are you doing?" The left hand continued

to strike, and the face to bear the look of rage, while the right hand

wrote, "I am furious." "With whom?" "With F." "Why?" "I don't know, but

I am very angry." M. Janet then unclenched the subject's left hand, and

put it gently to her lips. It began to "blow kisses," and the face

smiled. "Adrienne, are you still angry?" "No, that's over." "And now?"

"Oh, I am happy!" "And Lucie?" "She knows nothing; she is asleep."

In Lucie's case, indeed, these odd manifestations were--as the pure

experimentalist might say--only too sanative, only too rapidly tending

to normality. M. Janet accompanied his psychological inquiries with

therapeutic suggestion, telling Adrienne not only to go to sleep when he

clapped his hands, or to answer his questions in writing, but to cease

having headaches, to cease having convulsive attacks, to recover normal

sensibility, and so on. Adrienne obeyed, and even as she obeyed the

rational command, her own Undine-like identity vanished away. The day

came when M. Janet called on Adrienne, and Lucie laughed and asked him

who he was talking to. Lucie was now a healthy young woman, but

Adrienne, who had risen out of the unconscious, had sunk into the

unconscious again--must I say?--for ever more.

Few lives so brief have taught so many lessons. For us who are busied

with automatic writing the lesson is clear. We have here demonstrably

what we can find in other cases only inferentially, an intelligence

manifesting itself continuously by written answers, of purport quite

outside the normal subject's conscious mind, while yet that intelligence

was but a part, a fraction, an aspect, of the normal subject's own

identity.

And we must remember that Adrienne--while she was, if I may say so, the

Unconscious Self reduced to its simplest expression--did, nevertheless,

manifest certain differences from Lucie, which, if slightly exaggerated,

might have been very perplexing. Her handwriting was slightly different,

though only in the loose and scrawling character so frequent in

automatic script. Again, Adrienne remembered certain incidents in

Lucie's childhood which Lucie had wholly forgotten. Once more--and this

last suggestion points to positive rather than to negative

conclusions--Adrienne possessed a faculty, the muscular sense, of which

Lucie was devoid. I am anxious that this point especially should be

firmly grasped, for I wish the reader's mind to be perfectly open as

regards the relative faculties of the Conscious and the Unconscious

Self. It is plain that we must be on the watch for completion, for

evolution, as well as for partition, for dissolution, of the corporate

being.

_Félida X. and her Submerged Soul._

Side by side with this case we have another in which the Conscious

Personality, instead of being cured, has been superseded by the

Sub-conscious. It was as if instead of "Adrienne" being submerged by

Lucie, "Adrienne" became Lucie and dethroned her former master. The

woman in question, Félida X., has been transformed.

In her case the somnambulic life has become the normal life; the "second

state," which appeared at first only in short, dream-like accesses, has

gradually replaced the "first state," which now recurs but for a few

hours at long intervals. Félida's second state is altogether superior to

the first--physically superior, since the nervous pains which had

troubled her from childhood had disappeared; and morally superior,

inasmuch as her morose, self-centred disposition is exchanged for a

cheerful activity which enables her to attend to her children and to her

shop much more effectively than when she was in the _état béte_, as

she now calls what was once the only personality that she knew. In this

case, then, which is now of nearly thirty years' standing, the

spontaneous readjustment of nervous activities--the second state, no

memory of which remains in the first state--has resulted in an

improvement profounder than could have been anticipated from any moral

or medical treatment that we know. The case shows us how often the word

"normal" means nothing more than "what happens to exist." For Félida's

normal state was in fact her morbid state; and the new condition which

seemed at first a mere hysterical abnormality, has brought her to a life

of bodily and mental sanity, which makes her fully the equal of average

women of her class. (Vol. IV. p. 503.)

Chapter III.

Madame B. and Her Three Souls.

Marvellous as the cases cited in the last chapter appear, they are

thrown entirely into the shade by the case of Madame B., in which the

two personalities not only exist side by side, but in the case of the

Sub-conscious self knowingly co-exist, while over or beneath both there

is a third personality which is aware of both the other two, and

apparently superior to both. The possibilities which this case opens up

are bewildering indeed. But it is better to state the case first and

discuss it afterwards. Madame B., who is still under Prof. Richet's

observations,[3] is one of the favourite subjects of the French

hypnotiser. She can be put to sleep at almost any distance, and when

hypnotised completely changes her character. There are two well-defined

personalities in her, and a third of a more mysterious nature than

either of the two first. The normal waking state of the woman is called

Léonie I., the hypnotic state Léonie II. The third occult Unconscious

Personality of the lowest depth is called Léonie III.

[3] 1891.

"This poor peasant," says Professor Janet, "is in her normal state a

serious and somewhat melancholy woman, calm and slow, very gentle and

extremely timid. No one would suspect the existence of the person whom

she includes within her. Hardly is she entranced when she is

metamorphosed; her face is no longer the same; her eyes, indeed, remain

closed, but the acuteness of the other senses compensates for the loss

of sight. She becomes gay, noisy, and restless to an insupportable

degree; she continues good-natured, but she has acquired a singular

tendency to irony and bitter jests.... In this state she does not

recognise her identity with her waking self. 'That good woman is not I,'

she says; 'she is too stupid!'"

Madame B. has been so often hypnotised, and during so many years (for

she was hypnotised by other physicians as long ago as 1860), that Léonie

II. has by this time acquired a considerable stock of memories which

Madame B. does not share. Léonie II., therefore, counts as properly

belonging to her own history and not to Madame B.'s all the events which

have taken place while Madame B.'s normal self was hypnotised into

unconsciousness. It was not always easy at first to understand this

partition of past experiences.

"Madame B. in the normal state," says Professor Janet, "has a husband

and children. Léonie II., speaking in the somnambulistic trance,

attributes the husband to the 'other' (Madame B.), but attributes the

children to herself.... At last I learnt that her former mesmerisers, as

bold in their practice as certain hypnotisers of to-day, had induced

somnambulism at the time of her accouchements. Léonie II., therefore,

was quite right in attributing the children to herself; the rule of

partition was unbroken, and the somnambulism was characterised by a

duplication of the subject's existence" (p. 391).

Still more extraordinary are Léonie II.'s attempts to make use of Léonie

I.'s limbs without her knowledge or against her will. She will write

postscripts to Léonie I.'s letters, of the nature of which poor Léonie

I. is unconscious.

It seems, however, that when once set up this new personality can

occasionally assume the initiative, and can say what it wants to say

without any prompting. This is curiously illustrated by what may be

termed a conjoint epistle addressed to Professor Janet by Madame B. and

her secondary self, Léonie II. "She had," he says, "left Havre more than

two months when I received from her a very curious letter. On the first

page was a short note written in a serious and respectful style. She was

unwell, she said--worse on some days than on others--and she signed her

true name, Madame B. But over the page began another letter in quite a

different style, and which I may quote as a curiosity:--'My dear good

sir,--I must tell you that B. really makes me suffer very much; she

cannot sleep, she spits blood, she hurts me. I am going to demolish her,

she bores me. I am ill also. This is from your devoted Leontine' (the

name first given to Léonie II).

"When Madame B. returned to Havre I naturally questioned her concerning

this curious missive. She remembered the first letter very distinctly,

but she had not the slightest recollection of the second. I at first

thought there must have been an attack of spontaneous somnambulism

between the moment when she finished the first letter and the moment

when she closed the envelope. But afterwards these unconscious,

spontaneous letters became common, and I was better able to study the

mode of their production. I was fortunately able to watch Madame B. on

one occasion while she went through this curious performance. She was

seated at a table, and held in the left hand the piece of knitting at

which she had been working. Her face was calm, her eyes looked into

space with a certain fixity, but she was not cataleptic, for she was

humming a rustic tune; her right hand wrote quickly, and, as it were,

surreptitiously. I removed the paper without her noticing me, and then

spoke to her; she turned round wide-awake but was surprised to see me,

for in her state of distraction she had not noticed my approach. Of the

letter which she was writing she knew nothing whatever.

"Léonie II.'s independent action is not entirely confined to writing

letters. She observed (apparently) that when her primary self, Léonie

I., discovered these letters she (Léonie I.) tore them up. So Léonie II.

hit upon a plan of placing them in a photographic album into which

Léonie I. could not look without falling into catalepsy (on account of

an association of ideas with Dr. Gibert, whose portrait had been in the

album). In order to accomplish an act like this Léonie II. has to wait

for a moment when Léonie I. is distracted, or, as we say, absent-minded.

If she can catch her in this state Léonie II. can direct Léonie I.'s

walks, for instance, or start on a long railway journey without baggage,

in order to get to Havre as quickly as possible."

In the whole realm of imaginative literature, is there anything to

compare to this actual fact of three selves in one body, each struggling

to get possession of it? Léonie I., or the Conscious Personality, is in

possession normally, but is constantly being ousted by Léonie II., or

the Subconscious Personality. It is the old, old case of the wife trying

to wear the breeches. But there is a fresh terror beyond. For behind

both Léonie I. and Léonie II. stands the mysterious Léonie III.

"The spontaneous acts of the Unconscious Self," says M. Janet, here

meaning by _l'inconscient_ the entity to which he has given the

name of Léonie III., "may also assume a very reasonable form--a form

which, were it better understood, might perhaps serve to explain certain

cases of insanity. Mme. B., during her somnambulism (_i.e._ Léonie

II.) had had a sort of hysterical crisis; she was restless and noisy and

I could not quiet her. Suddenly she stopped and said to me with terror.

'Oh, who is talking to me like that? It frightens me.' 'No one is

talking to you.' 'Yes! there on the left!' And she got up and tried to

open a wardrobe on her left hand, to see if some one was hidden there.

'What is that you hear?' I asked. 'I hear on the left a voice which

repeats, "Enough, enough, be quiet, you are a nuisance."' Assuredly the

voice which thus spoke was a reasonable one, for Léonie II. was

insupportable; but I had suggested nothing of the kind, and had no idea

of inspiring a hallucination of hearing. Another day Léonie II. was

quite calm, but obstinately refused to answer a question which I asked.

Again she heard with terror the same voice to the left, saying, 'Come,

be sensible, you must answer.' Thus the Unconscious sometimes gave her

excellent advice."

And in effect, as soon as Léonie III. was summoned into communication,

she accepted the responsibility of this counsel. "What was it that

happened?" asked M. Janet, "when Léonie II. was so frightened?" "Oh!

nothing. It was I who told her to keep quiet; I saw she was annoying

you; I don't know why she was so frightened."

Note the significance of this incident. Here we have got at the root of

a hallucination. We have not merely inferential but direct evidence that

the imaginary voice which terrified Léonie II. proceeded from a

profounder stratum of consciousness in the same individual. In what way,

by the aid of what nervous mechanism, was the startling monition

conveyed?

Just as Mme. B. was sent, by means of passes, into a state of lethargy,

from which she emerged as Léonie II., so Léonie II., in her turn, was

reduced by renewed passes to a state of lethargy from which she emerged

no longer as Léonie II. but as Léonie III. This second waking is slow

and gradual, but the personality which emerges is, in one important

point, superior to either Léonie I. or Léonie II. Although one among the

subject's phases, this phase possesses the memory of every phase. Léonie

III., like Léonie II., knows the normal life of Léonie I., but

distinguishes herself from Léonie I., in whom, it must be said, these

subjacent personalities appear to take little interest. But Léonie III.

also remembers the life of Léonie II.--condemns her as noisy and

frivolous, and is anxious not to be confounded with her either. "Vous

voyez bien que je ne suis pas cette bavarde, cette folle; nous ne nous

ressemblons pas du tout."

We ask, in amazement, how many more personalities may there not be

hidden in the human frame? Here is simple Madame B., who is not one

person but three--first her commonplace self; secondly, the clever,

chattering Léonie II., who is bored by B., and who therefore wants to

demolish her; and thirdly, the lordly Léonie III., who issues commands

that strike terror into Léonie II., and disdains to be identified with

either of the partners in Madame B.'s body.

It is evident, if the hypnotists are right, that the human body is more

like a tenement house than a single cell, and that the inmates love each

other no more than the ordinary occupants of tenemented property. But

how many are there of us within each skin who can say?

Chapter IV.

Some Suggested Theories.

Of theories to account for these strange phenomena there are enough and

to spare. I do not for a moment venture to claim for the man and wife

illustration the slightest scientific value. It is only a figure of

speech which brings out very clearly one aspect of the problem of

personality. The theory that there are two independent personalities

within the human skin is condemned by all orthodox psychologists. There

is one personality manifesting itself, usually consciously, but

occasionally unconsciously, and the different method of manifestation

differs so widely as to give the impression that there could not be the

same personality behind both. A man who is ambidextrous will sign his

name differently with his right or left hand, but it is the same

signature. Mr. Myers thinks that the Secondary Personality of Subliminal

Consciousness is merely a phase of the essential Unity of the Ego. Some

time ago he expressed himself on this subject as follows:--

"I hold that hypnotism (itself a word covering a vast variety of

different states) may be regarded as constituting one special case which

falls under a far wider category--the category, namely, of developments

of a Secondary Personality. I hold that we each of us contain the

potentialities of many different arrangements of the elements of our

personality, each arrangement being distinguishable from the rest by

differences in the chain of memories which pertain to it. The

arrangement with which we habitually identify ourselves--what we call

the normal or primary self--consists, in my view, of elements selected

for us in the struggle for existence with special reference to the

maintenance of ordinary physical needs, and is not necessarily superior

in any other respect to the latent personalities which lie alongside of

it--the fresh combinations of our personal elements which may be evoked

by accident or design, in a variety to which we at present can assign no

limit. I consider that dreams, with natural somnambulism, automatic

writing, with so-called mediumistic trance, as well as certain

intoxications, epilepsies, hysterias, and recurrent insanities, afford

examples of the development of what I have called secondary mnemonic

chains; fresh personalities, more or less complete, alongside the normal

state. And I would add that hypnotism is only the name given to a group

of empirical methods of inducing these fresh personalities."

A doctor in philosophy, to whom I submitted these pages, writes me as

follows:--"There can be no doubt that every man lives a sub-conscious as

well as a conscious life. One side of him is closed against examination

by himself (_i.e._ unconscious); the other is conscious of itself.

The former carries on processes of separation, combination, and

distribution, of the thought-stuff handed over to it, corresponding

almost exactly to the processes carried on by the stomach, which, as

compared with those of eating, etc., go on in the dark automatically."

Another doctor, not of philosophy but of medicine, who has devoted

special attention to the phenomenon of sleep, suggests a new

illustration which is graphic and suggestive. He writes:--

"With regard to dual or multiple consciousness, my own feeling has

always been that the _individuals_ stand one behind the other in

the chambers of the mind, or else, as it were, in concentric circles.

You may compare it to the Jewish tabernacle. First, there is the court

of the Gentiles, where Ego No. 1 chaffers about trifles with the outer

world. While he is so doing Ego No. 2 watches him from the court of the

Levites, but does not go forth on small occasions. When we 'open out' to

a friend the Levite comes forth, and is in turn watched by the priest

from the inner court. Let our emotions be stirred in sincere converse

and out strides the priest, and takes precedence of the other two, they

falling obediently and submissively behind him. But the priest is still

watched by the high priest from the tabernacle itself, and only on great

and solemn occasions does he make himself manifest by action. When he

does, the other three yield to his authority, and then we say the man

'speaks with his whole soul' and 'from the bottom of his heart.' But

even now the Shekinah is upon the mercy-seat within the Holy of holies,

and the high priest knows it."

The latest word[4] of the French psychologists is thus stated by M.

Foüillée:--

"Contemporary psychology deprives us of the illusion of a definitely

limited, impenetrable, and absolutely autonomous I. The conception of

individual consciousness must be of an idea rather than of a substance.

Though separate _in_ the universe, we are not separate _from_

the universe. Continuity and reciprocity of action exist everywhere.

This is the great law and the great mystery. There is no such thing as

an isolated and veritably monad being, any more than there is such a

thing as an indivisible point, except in the abstractions of geometry."

[4] 1891.

Whatever may be the true theory, it is evident that there is enough

mystery about personality to make us very diffident about dogmatising,

especially as to what is possible and what is not.

Whether we have one mind or two, let us, at least, keep it (or them)

open.

PART II.

THE THOUGHT BODY, OR THE DOUBLE.

"And as Peter knocked at the door of the gate, a damsel came to hearken,

named Rhoda. And when she knew Peter's voice, she ran in and told how

Peter stood before the gate. And they said unto her, Thou art mad. But

she constantly affirmed that it was even so. Then said they, It is his

angel (or double)."--Acts xil. 13-15.

Chapter I.

Aerial Journeyings.

I began to write this in the autumn of 1891 in a small country-house

among the Surrey hills, whither I had retreated in order to find

undisturbed leisure in which to arrange my ideas and array my facts. It

was a pleasant place enough, perched on the brow of a heath-covered

slope that dipped down to a ravine, at the head of which stands

Professor Tyndall's house with its famous screen. Hardly a mile away

northward lies the Devil's Punch Bowl, with its memorial stone erected

in abhorrence of the detestable murder perpetrated on its rim by

ruffians whose corpses slowly rotted as they swung on the gibbet

overhead; far to the south spreads the glorious amphitheatre of hills

which constitute the Highlands of the South.

The Portsmouth road, along which for hundreds of years rolled to and fro

the tide of martial life between London and the great Sea Gate of the

Realm, lies near by, silent and almost disused. Mr. Balfour's land, on

the brow of Hindhead, is enclosed but not yet built upon, although a

whole archipelago of cottages and villas is springing up amid the

heather as the ground slopes towards Selborne--White's Selborne--that

can dimly be descried to the westward beyond Liphook Common. Memories

there are, enough and to spare, of the famous days of old, and of the

not less famous men of our own time; but the ghosts have fled. "There

used to be a ghost in the mill," said my driver, "and another in a

comparatively new house over in Lord Tennyson's direction, but we hear

nothing about them now." "Not even at the Murder Stone of the Devil's

Punch Bowl?" "Not even at the Murder Stone. I have driven past it at all

hours, and never saw anything--but the stone, of course."

Yet a more suitable spot for a ghost could hardly be conceived than the

rim of the Devil's Punch Bowl, where the sailor was murdered, and where

afterwards his murderers were hanged. I visited it late at night, when

the young moon was beginning to struggle through the cloudy sky, and

looked down into the ravine which Cobbett declared was the most horrid

place God ever made; but no sign of ghostly visitant could be caught

among the bracken, no sound of the dead voices was audible in the air.

It is the way with ghosts--they seldom appear where they might be looked

for. It is the unexpected in the world of shadows, as in the workaday

world, which always happens.

Of this I had soon a very curious illustration. For, although there were

no ghosts in the Devil's Punch Bowl by the Murder Stone, I found that

there had been a ghost in the trim new little villa in which I was

quartered! It didn't appear to me--at least, it has not done so as yet.

But it appeared to some friends of mine whose statement is explicit

enough. Here was a find indeed. I spent most of my boyhood within a mile

of the famous haunted house or mill at Willington, but I had never slept

before in a place which ghosts used as a trysting place. I asked my

hostess about it. She replied, "Yes, it is quite true; but, although you

may not believe it, I am the ghost." "You? How?" "Yes," she replied,

quite seriously; "it is quite true what your friends have told you. They

did see what you would correctly describe as an apparition. That is to

say, they saw a more or less shadowy figure, which they at once

identified, and which then gradually faded away. It was an apparition in

the true sense of the word. It entered the room without using the door

or window, it was visibly manifested before them, and then it vanished.

All that is quite true. But it is also true that the ghost, as you call

it, was my ghost." "Your ghost, but----" "I am not dead, you are going

to say. Precisely. But surely you must be well aware of the fact that

the ghosts of the living are much better authenticated than ghosts of

the dead."

My hostess was the daughter of a well-known London solicitor, who, after

spending her early youth in dancing and riding and other diversions of

young ladies in society who have the advantage of a house in Park Lane,

suddenly became possessed by a strange, almost savage, fascination for

the occult lore of the ancient East. Abandoning the frivolities of

Mayfair, she went to Girton, where she plunged into the study of

Sanscrit. After leaving Girton, she applied herself to the study of the

occult side of Theosophy. Then she married a black magician in the

platonic fashion common to Occultists, early Christians, and Russian

Nihilists, and since then she has prosecuted her studies into the

invisible world with ever-increasing interest.

_The Thought Body._

"I see you are incredulous," she replied; "but, if you like, I will some

time afford you an opportunity of proving that I am simply speaking the

truth. Tell me, will you speak to me if I appear to you in my thought

body?" "Certainly," I replied, "unless I am struck dumb. Nothing would

please me better. But, of course, I have never seen a ghost, and no one

can say how any utterly unaccustomed experience may affect him."

"Unfortunately," she replied, "that is too often the case. All those to

whom I have hitherto appeared have been so scared they could not speak."

"But, my dear friend, do you actually mean to say that you have the

faculty of----" "Going about in my Thought Body? Most certainly. It is

not a very uncommon faculty, but it is one which needs cultivation and

development." "But what is a Thought Body?" My hostess smiled: "It is

difficult to explain truths on the plane of thought to those who are

immersed body and soul in matter. I can only tell you that every person

has, in addition to this natural body of flesh, bones, and blood, a

Thought Body, the exact counterpart in every respect of this material

frame. It is contained within the material body, as air is contained in

the lungs and in the blood. It is of finer matter than the gross fabric

of our outward body. It is capable of motion with the rapidity of

thought. The laws of space and time do not exist for the mind, and the

Thought Envelope of which we are speaking moves with the swiftness of

the mind."

"Then when your thought body appears?"

"My mind goes with it. I see, I hear, and my consciousness is with my

Thought Envelope. But I want to have a proper interview while on my

thought journeys. That is why I ask you if you would try to speak to me

if I appear."

"But," I objected, "do you really mean that you hope to appear before

me, in my office, as immaterial as gas, as visible as light, and yet to

speak, to touch?"

"That is just what I mean," she replied, laughing, "that and nothing

less. I was in your office the other morning at six o'clock, but no one

was there. I have not got this curious power as yet under complete

control. But when once we are able to direct it at will, imagine what

possibilities it unfolds!"

"But," said I, "if you can be seen and touched, you ought to be

photographed!"

"I wish to be photographed, but no one can say as yet whether such

thought bodies can be photographed. When next I make the experiment I

want you to try. It would be very useful."

Useful indeed! It does not require very vivid imagination to see that if

you can come and go to the uttermost parts of the world in your thought

shape, such Thought Bodies will be indispensable henceforth on every

enterprising newspaper. It would be a great saving on telegraphy. When

my ideal paper comes along, I mentally vowed I would have my hostess as

first member of my staff. But of course it had got to be proved, and

that not only once but a dozen times, before any reliance could be

placed on it.

"I often come down here," said my hostess cheerfully, "after breakfast.

I just lie down in my bedroom in town, and in a moment I find myself

here at Hindhead. Sometimes I am seen, sometimes I am not. But I am

here; seen or unseen, I see. It is a curious gift, and one which I am

studying hard to develop and to control."

"And what about clothes?" I asked. "Oh," replied my hostess airily, "I

go in whatever clothes I like. There are astral counterparts to all our

garments. It by no means follows that I appear in the same dress as that

which is worn by my material body. I remember, when I appeared to your

friend, I wore the astral counterpart of a white silk shawl, which was

at the time folded away in the wardrobe."

At this point, however, in order to anticipate the inevitable

observation that my hostess was insane, I think I had better introduce

the declarations of my two friends, who are quite clear and explicit as

to their recollection of what they saw.

My witnesses are mother and daughter. The daughter I have seen and

interviewed; the mother I could not see, but took a statement down from

her husband, who subsequently submitted it in proof to her for

correction. I print the daughter's statement first.

"About eighteen months ago (in May, 1890) I was staying at the house of

my friend in M---- Mansions. Mrs. M. had gone to her country house at

Hindhead for a fortnight and was not expected back for a week. I was

sitting in the kitchen reading Edna Lyall's 'Donovan.' About half-past

nine o'clock I distinctly heard Mrs. M. walk up and down the passage

which ran from the front door past the open door of the room in which I

was sitting. I was not thinking of Mrs. M. and did not at the time

realize that she was not in the flat, when suddenly I heard her voice

and saw her standing at the open door. I saw her quite distinctly, and

saw that she was dressed in the dress in which I had usually seen her in

an evening, without bonnet or hat, her hair being plaited low down close

to the back of her head. The dress, I said, was the same, but there were

two differences which I noticed at once. In her usual dress, the silk

front was grey; this time the grey colour had given place to a curious

amber, and over her shoulders she wore a shawl of white Indian silk. I

noticed it particularly, because the roses embroidered on it at its ends

did not correspond with each other. All this I saw as I looked up and

heard her say, 'T----, give me that book.' I answered, half

mechanically, 'Yes, Mrs. M.,' but felt somewhat startled. I had hardly

spoken when Mrs. M. turned, opened the door leading into the main

building, and went out. I instantly got up and followed her to the door.

It was closed. I opened it and looked out, but could see nobody. It was

not until then that I fully realised that there was something uncanny in

what I had seen. I was very frightened, and after having satisfied

myself that Mrs. M. was not in the flat, I fastened the door, put out

the lights, and went to bed, burying my head under the bedclothes.

"The post next day brought a letter from Mrs. M. saying that she was

coming by eleven o'clock. I was too frightened to stay in the house, and

I went to my father and told him what I had seen. He told me to go back

and hear what Mrs. M. had to say about the matter. When Mrs. M. arrived

I told her what I had seen on the preceding evening. She laughed, and

said, 'Oh! I was here then, was I? I did not expect to come here.' With

that exception I have seen no apparition whatever, or had any

hallucination of any kind, neither have I seen the apparition of Mrs. M.

again."

After hearing this statement I asked Mrs. M. what she meant by the

remark she had made on hearing Miss C.'s explanation of what she had

witnessed. My hostess replied, "That night when I passed into the trance

state, and lay down on the couch in the sitting-room at Hindhead, I did

so with the desire of visiting my husband, who was in his retreat at

Wimbledon. That, I should say, was between nine and half-past. After I

came out of the trance I was conscious that I had been somewhere, but I

did not know where. I started from Hindhead for Wimbledon, but landed at

M---- Mansions, where, no doubt, I was more at home." "Then you had no

memory of where you had been?" "Not the least." "And what about the

shawl?" "The shawl was one that Miss C. had never seen. I had not worn

it for two years, and the fact that she saw it and described it, is

conclusive evidence against the subjective character of the vision. The

originals of all the phantom clothes were at M---- Mansions at the time

Miss C. saw me wearing them. I was not wearing the shawl. At the time

when she saw it on my Thought Body it was folded up and put away in a

wardrobe in an adjoining room. She had never seen it." I asked Miss C.

what was the appearance of Mrs. M. She replied, "She just looked as she

does always, only much more beautiful." "How do you account," said I to

my hostess, "for the change in colour of the silk front from grey to

amber?" She replied, "It was a freak."

I then asked Mr. C., the father of the last witness, what had occurred

in his wife's experience. Here is the statement which his wife made to

him, and which he says is absolutely reliable. "I was staying at

Hindhead, in the lodge connected with the house in which you are

staying. I was in some trouble, and Mrs. M. had been somewhat anxious

about me. I had gone to sleep, but was suddenly aroused by the

consciousness that some one was bending over me. When I opened my eyes I

saw in shimmering outline a figure which I recognised at once as that of

Mrs. M. She was bending over me, and her great lustrous eyes seemed to

pierce my very soul. For a time I lay still, as if paralysed, being

unable either to speak or to move, but at last gaining courage with time

I ventured to strike a match. As soon as I did so the figure of Mrs. M.

disappeared. Feeling reassured and persuaded that I had been deluded by

my senses, I at last put out the light and composed myself to sleep. To

my horror, no sooner was the room dark than I saw the spectral,

shimmering form of Mrs. M. moving about the room, and always turning

towards me those wonderful, piercing eyes. I again struck a match, and

again the apparition vanished from the room.

"By this time I was in a mortal terror, and it was some time before I

ventured to put out the light again, when a third time I saw the

familiar presence which had evidently never left the room, but simply

been invisible in the light. In the dark it shone by its own radiance. I

was taken seriously ill with a violent palpitation of the heart, and

kept my light burning. I felt so utterly upset that I could not remain

any longer in the place and insisted next morning on going home. I did

not touch the phantom, I simply saw it--saw it three times, and its

haunting persistency rendered it quite impossible for me to mistake it

for any mere nightmare."

Neither Mrs. nor Miss C. have had any other hallucinations, and Mrs. C.

is strongly sceptical. She does not deny the accuracy of the above

statement, but scouts the theory of a Thought Body, or of any

supernatural or occult explanation. On hearing Mrs. C.'s evidence I

asked my hostess whether she was conscious of haunting her guest in this

way. "I knew nothing about it," she replied; "all that I know was that I

had been much troubled about her and was anxious to help her. I went

into a very heavy, deep sleep; but until next morning, when I heard of

it from Mrs. C. I had no idea that my double had left my room." I said,

"This power is rather gruesome, for you might take to haunting me." "I

do not think so, unless there was something to be gained which could not

be otherwise secured, some benefit to be conferred upon you." "That is

to say, if I were in trouble or dangerously ill, and you were anxious

about me, your double might come and attend my sick-bed." "That is quite

possible," she said imperturbably. "Well," said I, "when are you coming

to be photographed?" "Not for many months yet," she replied, with a

laugh. "For the Thought Body to leave its corporeal tenement it needs a

considerable concentration of thought, and an absence of all disturbing

conditions or absorbing preoccupations at the time. I see no reason why

I should not be photographed when the circumstances are propitious. I

shall be very glad to furnish you with that evidence of the reality of

the Thought Body, but such things cannot be fixed up to order."

This, indeed, was a ghost to some purpose--a ghost free from all the

weird associations of death and the grave--a healthy, utilisable ghost,

and a ghost, above all, which wanted to be photographed. It seemed too

good to be true. Yet how strange it was! Here we have just been

discussing whether or not we have each of us two souls, and, behold! my

good hostess tells me quite calmly that it is beyond all doubt that we

have two bodies.

_Three Other Aerial Wanderers._

A short time after hearing from my hostess this incredible account of

her aerial journeyings, I received first hand from three other ladies

statements that they had also enjoyed this faculty of bodily

duplication. All four ladies are between twenty and forty years of age.

Three of them are married. The first says she has almost complete

control over her movements, but for the most part her phantasmal

envelope is invisible to those whom she visits.

This, it may be said, is mere conscious clairvoyance, in which the

faculty of sight was accompanied by the consciousness of bodily

presence, although it is invisible to other eyes. It is, besides, purely

subjective and therefore beside the mark. Still, it is interesting as

embodying the impressions of a mind, presumably sane, as to the

experiences through which it has consciously passed. On the same ground

I may refer to the experience of Miss X., the second lady referred to,

who, when lying, as it was believed, at the point of death, declares

that she was quite conscious of coming out of her body and looking at it

as it lay in the bed. In all the cases I have yet mentioned the

departure of the phantasmal body is accompanied by a state of trance on

the part of the material body. There is not dual consciousness, but only

a dual body, the consciousness being confined to the immaterial body.

It is otherwise with the experience of the fourth wanderer in my text.

Mrs. Wedgwood, the daughter-in-law of Mr. Hensleigh Wedgwood, the

well-known philologist, who was Charles Darwin's cousin, declares that

she had once a very extraordinary experience. She was lying on a couch

in an upper room one wintry morning at Shorncliffe, when she felt her

Thought Body leave her and, passing through the window, alight on the

snowy ground. She was distinctly conscious both in her material body and

in its immaterial counterpart. She lay on the couch watching the

movements of the second self, which at the same moment felt the snow

cold under its feet. The second self met a labourer and spoke to him. He

replied as if somewhat scared. The second self walked down the road and

entered an officer's hut, which was standing empty. She noted the number

of guns. There were a score or more of all kinds in all manner of

places; remarked upon the quaint looking-glass; took a mental inventory

of the furniture; and then, coming out as she went in, she regained her

material body, which all the while lay perfectly conscious on the couch.

Then, when the two selves were reunited, she went down to breakfast, and

described where she had been. "Bless me," said an officer, who was one

of the party, "if you have not been in Major ----'s hut. You have

described it exactly, especially the guns, which he has a perfect mania

for collecting."

Here the immaterial body was not only visible but audible, and that not

merely to the casual passer-by, but also to the material body which had

for the moment parted with one of its vital constituents without losing

consciousness.

It must, of course, be admitted that, with the exception of the

statement by my two friends as to the apparition of Mrs. M.'s immaterial

body, none of the other statements can pretend to the slightest

evidential value. They may be worth as much as the confessions of the

witches who swore they were dancing with Satan while their husbands held

their material bodies clasped in their arms; but any explanation of

subjective hallucination or of downright lying would be preferred by the

majority of people to the acceptance of the simple accuracy of these

statements. The phenomenon of the aerial flight is, however, not

unfamiliar to those who are interested in this subject.

_Mrs. Besant's Theory._

I asked Mrs. Besant whether she thought my hostess was romancing, and

whether my friend had not been the victim of some illusion. "Oh, no,"

said Mrs. Besant cheerfully. "There is nothing improbable about it. Very

possibly she has this faculty. It is not so uncommon as you think. But

its exercise is rather dangerous, and I hope she is well instructed."

"How?" I asked. "Oh," Mrs. Besant replied, "it is all right if she knows

what she is about, but it is just as dangerous to go waltzing about on

the astral plane as it is for a girl to go skylarking down a dark slum

when roughs are about. Elementals, with the desire to live, greedily

appropriating the vitality and the passions of men, are not the

pleasantest companions. Nor can other astrals of the dead, who have met

with sudden or violent ends, and whose passions are unslaked, be

regarded as desirable acquaintances. If she knows what she is about,

well and good. But otherwise she is like a child playing with dynamite."

"But what is an astral body?"

Mrs. Besant replied, "There are several astrals, each with its own

characteristics. The lowest astral body taken in itself is without

conscience, will, or intelligence. It exists as a mere shadowy phantasm

only as long as the material body lasts." "Then the mummies in the

Museum?" "No doubt a clairvoyant could see their astrals keeping their

silent watch by the dead. As the body decays so the astral fades away."

"But that implies the possibility of a decaying ghost?" "Certainly. An

old friend of mine, a lady who bears a well-known name, was once haunted

for months by an astral. She was a strong-minded girl, and she didn't

worry. But it was rather ghastly when the astral began to decay. As the

corpse decomposed the astral shrank, until at last, to her great relief,

it entirely disappeared."

Mrs. Besant mentioned the name of the lady, who is well known to many of

my readers, and one of the last to be suspected of such haunting.

Chapter II.

The Evidence of the Psychical Research Society.

In that great text-book on the subject, "The Phantasms of the Living,"

by Messrs. Gurney, Myers, and Podmore, the phenomenon of the Thought

Body is shown to be comparatively frequent, and the Psychical Research

Society have about a hundred recorded instances. I will only quote here

two or three of the more remarkable cases mentioned in these imposing

volumes.

The best case of the projection of the Thought Body at will is that

described, under the initials of "S. H. B.," in the first volume of the

"Phantasms," pp. 104-109. Mr. B. is a member of the Stock Exchange, who

is well known to many intimate friends of mine as a man of high

character. The narrative, which is verified by the Psychical Research

Society, places beyond doubt the existence of powers in certain

individuals which open up an almost illimitable field of mystery and

speculation. Mr. B.'s story, in brief, is this:--

"One Sunday night in November, 1881, I was in Kildare Gardens, when I

willed very strongly that I would visit in spirit two lady friends, the

Misses V., who were living three miles off in Hogarth Road. I willed

that I should do this at one o'clock in the morning, and having willed

it I went to sleep. Next Thursday, when I first met my friends, the

elder lady told me she woke up and saw my apparition advancing to her

bedside. She screamed and woke her sister, who also saw me." (A signed

statement by both sisters accompanies this narrative. They fix the time

at one o'clock, and say that Mr. B. wore evening dress.)

"On December 1st, 1882, I was at Southall. At half-past nine I sat down

to endeavour to fix my mind so strongly upon the interior of a house at

Kew, where Miss V. and her sister lived, that I seemed to be actually in

the house. I was conscious, but I was in a kind of mesmeric sleep. When

I went to bed that night I willed to be in the front bedroom of that

house at Kew at twelve, and make my presence felt by the inmates. Next

day I went to Kew. Miss V.'s married sister told me, without any

prompting from me, that she had seen me in the passage going from one

room to another at half-past nine o'clock, and that at twelve, when she

was wide awake, she saw me come into the front bedroom where she slept

and take her hair, which is very long, into my hand. She said I then

took her hand and gazed into the palm intently. She said, 'You need not

look at the lines, for I never had any trouble.' She then woke her

sister. When Mrs. L. told me this I took out the entry I had made the

previous night and read it to her. Mrs. L. is quite sure she was not

dreaming. She had only seen me once before, two years previously, at a

fancy ball.

"On March 22nd, 1884, I wrote to Mr. Gurney, of the Psychical Research

Society, telling him I was going to make my presence felt by Miss V., at

44, Norland Square, at mid-night. Ten days afterwards I saw Miss V.,

when she voluntarily told me that on Saturday at midnight she distinctly

saw me, when she was quite wide awake. I came towards her and stroked

her hair. She adds in her written statement, 'The appearance in my room

was most vivid and quite unmistakable.' I was then at Ealing."

Here there is the thrice-repeated projection at will of the Thought Body

through space so as to make it both visible to, and tangible by,

friends. But the Conscious Personality which willed the visit has not

yet unlocked the memory of his unconscious partner, and Mr. B., although

able to go and see and touch, could bring back no memory of his aerial

flight. All that he knew was that he willed and then he slept. The fact

that he appeared is attested not by his consciousness, but by the

evidence of those who saw him.

_A Visitor from Burmah._

Here is a report of the apparition of a Thought Body, the material

original of which was at the time in Burmah. The case is important,

because the Thought Body was not recognised at the time, showing that it

could not have been a subjective revival of the memory of a face. It is

sent me by a gentleman in South Kensington, who wishes to be mentioned

only by his initials, R.S.S.

"Towards the close of 1888 my son, who had obtained an appointment in

the Indian Civil Service, left England for Burmah.

"A few days after his arrival in Rangoon he was sent up the country to

join the District Commissioner of a district still at that period much

harassed by Dacoits.

"After this two mails passed by without news of him, and as, up to this

period, his letters had reached us with unfailing regularity, we had a

natural feeling of anxiety for his safety. As the day for the arrival of

the third mail drew near I became quite unreasonably apprehensive of bad

news, and in this state of mind I retired one evening to bed, and lay

awake till long past the middle of the night, when suddenly, close to my

bedside, appeared very distinctly the figure of a young man. The face

had a worn and rather sad expression; but in the few seconds during

which it was visible the impression was borne in upon me that the vision

was intended to be reassuring.

"I cannot explain why I did not at once associate this form with my son,

but it was so unlike the hale, fresh-looking youth we had parted from

only four or five months previously that I supposed it must be his

chief, whom I knew to be his senior by some five years only.

"I retailed this incident to my son by the next mail, and was perplexed

when I got his reply to hear that his chief was a man with a beard and

moustache, whereas the apparition was devoid of either. A little later

came a portrait of himself recently taken. It was the subject of my

vision, of which the traits had remained, and still remain, in every

detail, perfectly distinct in my recollection."

_Thought Visits Seen and Remembered._

Here is an account of a visit paid at will, which is reported at first

hand in the "Proceedings of the Psychical Research Society." The

narrator, Mr. John Moule, tells how he determined to make an experiment

of the kind now under discussion:--

"I chose for this purpose a young lady, a Miss Drasey, and stated that

some day I intended to visit her, wherever the place might be, although

the place might be unknown to me; and told her if anything particular

should occur to note the time, and when she called at my house again to

state if anything had occurred. One day, about two months after (I not

having seen her in the interval), I was by myself in my chemical

factory, Redman Row, Mile End, London, all alone, and I determined to

try the experiment, the lady being in Dalston, about three miles off. I

stood, raised my hands, and willed to act on the lady. I soon felt that

I had expended energy. I immediately sat down in a chair and went to

sleep. I then saw in a dream my friend coming down the kitchen stairs

where I dreamt I was. She saw me, and exclaimed suddenly, 'Oh! Mr.

Moule,' and fainted away. This I dreamt and then awoke. I thought very

little about it, supposing I had had an ordinary dream; but about three

weeks after she came to my house and related to my wife the singular

occurrence of her seeing me sitting in the kitchen where she then was,

and she fainted away and nearly dropped some dishes she had in her

hands. All this I saw exactly in my dream, so that I described the

kitchen furniture and where I sat as perfectly as if I had been there,

though I had never been in the house. I gave many details, and she said,

'It is just as if you had been there.'" (Vol. III. pp. 420, 421.)

Mr. W. A. S., to quote another case, in April, 1871, at two o'clock in

the afternoon, was sitting in a house in Pall Mall. He saw a lady glide

in backwards at the door of the room, as if she had been slid in on a

slide, each part of her dress keeping its proper place without

disturbance. She glided in until the whole of her could be seen, except

the tip of her nose, her lips, and the tip of her chin, which were

hidden by the edge of the door. She was an old acquaintance of his, whom

he had not seen for twenty or twenty-five years. He observed her closely

until his brother entered the house, and coming into the room passed

completely through the phantasm, which shortly afterwards faded away.

Another person in the room could not see it. Some years afterwards he

learned that she had died the same year, six months afterwards, from a

painful cancer of the face. It was curious that the phantasm never

showed him the front of its face, which was always hidden by the door.

(Vol. II. p. 517.)

Sometimes, however, the Thought Body is both conscious and visible,

although in most cases when visible it is not conscious, and retains no

memory of what has passed. When it remembers it is usually not visible.

In Mr. Dale Owen's remarkable volume, "Footfalls on the Boundary of

Another World," there is a narrative, entitled "The Visionary

Excursion," in which a lady, whom he calls Mrs. A., whose husband was a

brigadier-general in India, describes an aerial flight so explicitly

that I venture to reprint her story here, as illustrating the

possibility of being visible and at the same time remembering where you

had been:--

In June of the year 1857, a lady, whom I shall designate as Mrs. A., was

residing with her husband, a colonel in the British army, and their

infant child, on Woolwich Common, near London.

One night in the early part of that month, suddenly awaking to

consciousness, she felt herself as if standing by the bedside and

looking down upon her own body, which lay there by the side of her

sleeping husband. Her first impression was that she had died suddenly,

and the idea was confirmed by the pale and lifeless look of the body,

the face void of expression, and the whole appearance showing no sign of

vitality. She gazed at it with curiosity for some time, comparing its

dead look with that of the fresh countenances of her husband and of her

slumbering infant in the cradle hard by. For a moment she experienced a

feeling of relief that she had escaped the pangs of death; but the next

she reflected what a grief her death would be to the survivors, and then

came the wish that she had broken the news to them gradually.

While engaged in these thoughts she felt herself carried to the wall of

her room, with a feeling that it must arrest her further progress. But

no, she seemed to pass through it into the open air. Outside the house

was a tree; and this also she seemed to traverse as if it interposed no

obstacle. All this occurred without any desire on her part.

She crossed Woolwich Common, visited the Arsenal, returned to the

barracks, and then found herself in the bed-chamber of an intimate

friend, Miss L. M., who lived at Greenwich. She began to talk; but she

remembered no more until she waked by her husband's side. Her first

words were, "So I am not dead after all." She told her husband of her

excursion, and they agreed to say nothing about it until they heard from

Miss L. M.

When they met that lady, two days after, she volunteered the statement

that Mrs. A. had appeared to her about three o'clock in the morning of

the night before last, robed in violet, and had a conversation with her

("Footfalls on the Boundary of Another World," p. 256.)

_A Doctor's Experience of the Dual Body._

Whatever may be thought of the Psychic's description of her experiences

in her thought journey, they are vivid and realistic. Here is the

description given by a medical man in a well-known watering-place on the

south coast of his experience in getting into his material body after an

aerial excursion:--

"I was engaged to a young lady whom I very much loved. During the early

part of this engagement I visited the Hall in the village, not far from

the Vicarage, where the young lady resided. I was in the habit of

spending from Sunday to Monday at the Hall. On one of these mornings of

my departure I found myself standing between the two closed windows in

the lady's bedroom. It was about five o'clock on a bright summer

morning. Her room looked eastward, mine directly west, and the church

stood between the two houses, which were about five hundred yards apart.

I have no impression whatever how I became transplanted from the house.

The lady was in a camp bedstead, directly opposite to me, looking at and

reaching out her arms towards me, when my disembodied spirit instantly

disappeared to join the material body which it had left in some

mysterious way. As I returned and was fitting in to my body on my left

side, when half united I could see within me the ununited spiritual part

on glow like an electric light, while the other united half was hidden

in total darkness, looking black as through a thunder cloud, when, like

the shutting of a drawer, the whole body became united, and I awoke in

great alarm, with a belief that if any one had entered my room and moved

my body from the position in which it lay on its back, the returning

spirit could not have joined its material case, and that death, as it is

vulgarly called, would have been inevitable."

In the morning at the breakfast-table the young lady said she had a

strange experience. She saw M.D. in her bedroom, looking at her as she

sat up in bed, and that he disappeared after a short stay; but how he

got there she could not say, as she was positive she had locked her

bedroom door. So one experience corroborated the other.[5]

[5] Quoted from a remarkable work by James Gillingham, surgical

mechanist, Chard, Somerset. Mr. Gillingham sent me the name of

the doctor, and assures me that the narrative is quite

authentic.

_Speaking Doubles._

While discussing the subject, some friends called at Mowbray House, and

were, as usual, asked to pay toll in the shape of communicating any

experience they had had of the so-called supernatural. One of my

visitors gave me the following narrative, the details of which are in

the possession of the Psychical Research Society:--

"Some years ago my father and another son were crossing the Channel at

night. My mother, who was living in England, was roused up in the middle

of the night by the apparition of my father. She declares that she saw

him quite distinctly standing by her bedside, looking anxious and

distraught. Knowing that at that moment he was in mid-Channel, she

augured that some disaster had overtaken him or the boy. She said, 'Is

there some trouble?' He said, 'There is; the boy----' and then he faded

from her sight. The curious part of the story is that my father at that

very time had been thinking on board the steamer of having to tell his

wife of the loss of the boy. The lad had been missed, and for a short

time father feared he had fallen overboard. Shortly afterwards he was

discovered to be quite safe. But during the period of suspense father

was vividly conscious of the pain of having to break the news to his

wife. It was subsequently proved by a comparison of the hour that his

double had not only appeared but had spoken at the very moment he was

thinking of how to tell her the news midway between France and England."

Another case in which the double appeared was that of Dr. F. R. Lees,

the well-known temperance controversialist. On communicating with the

Doctor, the following is his reply:--

"The little story or incident of which you have heard occurred above

thirty years ago, and may be related in very few words. Whether it was

coincidence, or transference of vivid thought, I leave to the judgment

of others.

"I had left Leeds for the Isle of Jersey (though my dear wife was only

just recovering from a nervous fever) to fulfil an important engagement.

On a Good Friday, myself and a party of friends in several carriages

drove round a large portion of the island, coming back to St. Heliers

from Bouley Bay, taking tea about seven o'clock at Captain ----'s villa.

The party broke up about ten o'clock, and the weather being fine and

warm, I walked to the house of a banker who entertained me. Naturally,

my evening thoughts reverted to my home, and after reading a few verses

in my Testament, I walked about the room until nearly eleven, thinking

of my wife, and breathing the prayer, 'God bless you.'

"I might not have recalled all the circumstances, save for the letter I

received by the next post from her, with the query put in: 'Tell me what

you were _doing within a few minutes of eleven o'clock_ on Friday

evening? I will tell you in my next why I ask; for something happened to

me.' In the middle of the week the letter came, and these words in

it:--'I had just awoke from a slight repose, when I saw you in your

night-dress bend over me, and utter the words, "God bless you!" I seemed

also to feel your breath as you kissed me. I felt no alarm, but

comforted, went off into a gentle sleep, and have been better ever

since.' I replied that this was an exact representation of my mind and

words."

Here there was apparently the instantaneous reproduction in Leeds of the

image, and not only of the image but of the words spoken in Jersey, a

hundred miles away. The theory that the phantasmal body is occasionally

detachable from the material frame accounts for this in a fashion, and

that is more than can be said for any other hypothesis that has yet been

stated. In neither of these cases did an early death follow the

apparition of the dual body.

_An Unknown Double Identified._

Neither of these stories, however, is so wonderful as the following

narrative, which is forwarded to me by a correspondent in North Britain,

who received the statement from a Colonel now serving in India on the

Bengal Staff, whose name is communicated on the understanding that it is

not to be made public:--

"In the year 1860 I was stationed at Banda, in Bundelcund, India. There

was a good deal of sickness there at the time, and I was deputed along

with a medical officer to proceed to the nearest railway station at that

time Allahabad, in charge of a sick officer. I will call myself Brown,

the medical officer Jones, and the sick officer Robertson. We had to

travel very slowly, Robertson being carried by coolies in a doolie, and

on this account we had to halt at a rest-house, or pitch our camp every

evening. One evening, when three marches out of Banda, I had just come

into Robertson's room about midnight to relieve Jones, for Robertson was

so ill that we took it by turns to watch him, when Jones took me aside

and whispered that he was afraid our friend was dying, that he did not

expect him to live through the night, and though I urged him to go and

lie down, and that I would call him on any change taking place, he would

not leave. We both sat down and watched. We had been there about an hour

when the sick man moved and called out. We both went to his bedside, and

even my inexperienced eyes saw that the end was near. We were both

standing on the same side of the bed, furthest away from the door.

"Whilst we were standing there the door opened, and an elderly lady

entered, went straight up to the bed, bent over it, wrung her hands and

wept bitterly. After a few minutes she left; we both saw her face. We

were so astonished that neither of us thought of speaking to her, but as

soon as she passed out of the door I recovered myself and, as quickly as

possible, followed her, but could not find a trace of her. Robertson

died that night. We were then about thirty miles from the nearest

cantonment, and except the rest-house in which we were, and of which we

were the only occupants, there was not a house near us. Next morning we

started back to Banda, taking the corpse with us for burial.

"Three months after this Jones went to England on leave, and took with

him the sword, watch, and a few other things which had belonged to the

deceased to deliver to his family. On arrival at Robertson's home, he

was shown into the drawing-room. After waiting a few minutes, a lady

entered--the same who had appeared to both of us in the jungle in India;

it was Robertson's mother. She told Jones that she had had a vision that

her son was dangerously ill, and had written the date, etc., down, and

on comparing notes they found that the date, time, etc., agreed in every

respect.

"People to whom I have told the story laugh at me, and tell me that I

must have been asleep and dreamed it, but I know I was not, for I

remember perfectly well standing by the bedside when the lady appeared."

Chapter III.

Aimless Doubles.

The following curious experience is sent me by a commercial traveller,

who gives his name and address in support of his testimony. Writing from

Nottingham, he says:--

"On Tuesday, the 6th October, I had a very singular experience. I am

a commercial traveller, and represent a firm of cigar manufacturers.

I left my hotel about four o'clock on the above date to call upon a

customer, a Mr. Southam, Myton Gate, Hull. I met this gentleman in

the street, nearly opposite his office; he shook hands, and said,

'How are you? I am waiting to see a friend; I don't think I shall

want any cigars this journey, but look in before eight o'clock.' I

called at 7.30, and spoke to the clerk in the office. He said, 'Mr.

Southam has made out your cheque and there is also a small order.' I

said, 'Thanks, I should have liked to have seen him; he made an

appointment this afternoon for about eight.' The clerk said,

'Where?' I said, 'Just outside.' He said, 'That is impossible, as

both Mr. and Mrs. Southam have been confined to their room for a

fortnight and have never been out.' I said, 'How strange. I said to

Mr. S----, "You look different to your usual; what's the matter with

you?" Mr. S---- said, "Don't you see I am in my _deshabille_?"' The

clerk remarked, 'You must have seen his second self, for he has not

been up to-day.' I came away feeling very strange.

"J. P. Brooks.

"Sydney Villa, Ratcliffe Road, Bridgeford."

Mrs. Eliz. G. L----, of H---- House, sends me the following report of

her experience of the double. She writes:--

"The only time I ever saw an apparition was on the evening of the last

day of May, 1860. The impression then made is most vivid, and the day

seldom recurs without my thinking of what happened then.

"It was a little after seven o'clock, the time for my husband's return

from business. I was passing through the hall into the dining-room,

where tea was laid, when (the front door being open) I saw my husband

coming up the garden path, which was in a direct line with the hall. It

was broad daylight, and nothing obstructed my view of him, and he was

not more than nine or ten yards from me. Instead of going to him, I

turned back, and said to the servant in the kitchen, 'Take tea in

immediately, your master is come.' I then went into the dining-room,

expecting him to be there. To my great surprise the room was empty, and

there was no one in the garden. As my father was very ill in the next

house but one to ours, I concluded that Mr. L---- had suddenly

determined to turn back and enquire how he was before having tea. In

half an hour he came into the room to me, and I asked how my father was,

when, to my astonishment, he told me that he had not called, but had

come home direct from the town. I said, '_You were in the garden half

an hour ago_, I saw you as distinctly as I see you now; if you were

not there _then_, you are not here _now_,' and I grasped his

arm as I spoke to convince myself that it was really he. I thought that

my husband was teasing me by his repeated denials, and that he would at

last confess he was really there; and it was only when he assured me in

the most positive and serious manner that he was a mile away at the time

I saw him in the garden, that I could believe him. I have never been

able to account for the appearance. There was no one I could possibly

have mistaken for Mr. L----. I was in good health at the time, and had

no illness for long afterwards. My mother is still living, and she can

corroborate my statement, and bear witness to the deep impression the

occurrence made upon me. I _saw_ my husband as plainly as I have

ever seen him since during the many years we have lived together."

_Two Dundee Doubles._

Mr. Robert Kidd, of Gray Street, Broughty Ferry, who has filled many

offices in Dundee, having been twenty-five years a police commissioner

and five years a magistrate there, sends me the following report of two

cases of the double:--

"A few years ago I had a shop on the High Street of Dundee--one door and

one window, a cellar underneath, the entrance to which was at one corner

of the shop. There was no way of getting in or out of the cellar but by

that stair in the corner. It was lighted from the street by glass, but

to protect that there was an iron grating, which was fixed down. Well, I

had an old man, a servant, named Robert Chester. I sent him a message

one forenoon about 12 o'clock; he was in no hurry returning. I remarked

to my daughter, who was a book-keeper, whose desk was just by the

trap-door, that he was stopping long. Just as I spoke he passed the

window, came in at the door, carrying a large dish under his arm, went

right past me, past my daughter, who looked at him, and went down into

the cellar. After a few minutes, as I heard no noise, I wondered what he

could be about, and went down to see. There was no Robert there. I

cannot tell what my sensations were when I realized this; there was no

possibility of his getting out, and we both of us saw and heard him go

down. Well, in about twenty minutes he re-passed the window, crossed the

floor, and went downstairs, exactly as he had the first time. There was

no hallucination on our part. My daughter is a clever, highly-gifted

woman; I am seventy-eight years of age, and have seen a great deal of

the world, a great reader, etc., etc., and not easily deceived or apt to

be led away by fancy, and I can declare that his first appearance to us

was a reality as much as the second; We concluded, and so did all his

relations, that it portended his death, but he is still alive, over

eighty years of age. I give this just as it occurred, without any

varnish or exaggeration whatever. The following narrative I firmly

believe, as I knew the parties well, and that every means were used to

prove its truthfulness.

"Mr. Alexander Drummond was a painter, who had a big business and a

large staff of men. His clerk was Walter Souter, his brother-in-law,

whose business it was to be at the shop (in Northgate, Dundee) sharp at

six o'clock in the morning, to take an account of where the men were

going, quantity of material, etc. In this he was assisted by Miss

Drummond. One morning he did not turn up at the hour, but at twenty past

six he came in at the door and appeared very much excited; but instead

of stepping to the desk, where Mr. and Miss Drummond were awaiting him,

he went right through the front shop and out at a side door. This in

sight of Mr. and Miss D----, and also in sight of a whole squad of

workmen. Well, exactly in another twenty minutes he came in, also very

much excited, and explained that it was twenty minutes past six when he

awakened, and that he had run all the way from his house (he lived a

mile from the place of business). He was a very exemplary, punctual man,

and when Mr. Drummond asked him where he went to when he came first, he

was dumbfounded, and could not comprehend what was meant. To test his

truthfulness, Mr. D---- went out to his wife that afternoon, when she

told him the same story; that it was twenty past six o'clock when he

awoke, and that he was very much excited about it, as it was the first

time he had slept in. This story I believe as firmly as in my own case,

as it was much talked about at the time, and I have just told it as it

was told to me by all the parties. Of course I am a total stranger to

you, and you may require to know something about me before believing my

somewhat singular stories. I am well known about here, have filled many

offices in Dundee, and have been twenty-five years a police

commissioner, and five years a magistrate in this place, am very well

known to the Right Honourable C. Ritchie, and also to our county member,

Mr. Barclay. If this little story throws any light upon our wondrous

being I shall be glad."

_A Manchester Parallel._

The following narrative, supplied by Mr. R. P. Roberts, 10, Exchange

Street, Manchester, appears in the "Proceedings of the Psychical

Research Society." It is a fitting pendant to Mr. Kidd's story:--

"The shop stood at the corner of Castle Street and Rating Row,

Beaumaris, and I lived in the latter street. One day I went home to

dinner at the usual hour. When I had partly finished I looked at the

clock. To my astonishment it appeared that the time by the clock was

12.30. I gave an unusual start. I certainly thought that it was most

extraordinary. I had only half-finished my dinner, and it was time for

me to be at the shop. I felt dubious, so in a few seconds had another

look, when to my agreeable surprise I found that I had been mistaken. It

was only just turned 12.15. I could never explain how it was I made the

mistake. The error gave me such a shock for a few minutes as if

something had happened, and I had to make an effort to shake off the

sensation. I finished my dinner, and returned to business at 12.30. On

entering the shop I was accosted by Mrs. Owen, my employer's wife, who

used to assist in the business. She asked me rather sternly where I had

been since my return from dinner. I replied that I had come straight

from dinner. A long discussion followed, which brought out the following

facts. About a quarter of an hour previous to my actual entering the

shop (_i.e._ about 12.15), I was seen by Mr. and Mrs. Owen and a

well-known customer, Mrs. Jones, to walk into the shop, go behind the

counter, and place my hat upon the peg. As I was going behind the

counter, Mrs. Owen remarked, with the intention that I should hear,

'that I had arrived now that I was not wanted.' This remark was prompted

by the fact that a few minutes previous a customer was in the shop in

want of an article which belonged to the stock under my charge, and

which could not be found in my absence. As soon as this customer left I

was seen to enter the shop. It was observed by Mr. and Mrs. Owen and

Mrs. Jones that I did not appear to notice the remark made. In fact, I

looked quite absent-minded and vague. Immediately after putting my hat

on the peg I returned to the same spot, put my hat on again, and walked

out of the shop, still looking in a mysterious manner, which induced one

of the parties, I think Mrs. Owen, to say that my behaviour was very

odd, and she wondered where I was off to.

"I, of course, contradicted these statements, and endeavoured to prove

that I could not have eaten my dinner and returned in a quarter of an

hour. This, however, availed nothing, and during our discussion the

above-mentioned Mrs. Jones came into the shop again, and was appealed to

at once by Mr. and Mrs. Owen. She corroborated every word of their

account, and added that she saw me coming down Rating Row when within a

few yards of the shop; that she was only a step or two behind me, and

entered the shop in time to hear Mrs. Owen's remarks about my coming too

late. These three persons gave their statement of the affair quite

independently of each other. There was no other person near my age in

the Owens' establishment, and there could be no reasonable doubt that my

form had been seen by them and by Mrs. Jones. They would not believe my

story until my aunt, who had dined with me, said positively that I had

not left the table before my time was up. You will, no doubt, notice the

coincidence. At the moment when I felt, with a startling sensation, that

I ought to be at the shop, and when Mr. and Mrs. Owen were extremely

anxious that I should be there, I appeared to them looking, as they

said, 'as if in a dream or in a state of somnambulism.'" ("Proceedings

of the Psychical Research Society," Vol. I. p. 135-6.)

_A Very Visible Double._

A correspondent, writing from a Yorkshire village, sends me the

following account of an apparition of a Thought Body in circumstances

when there was nothing more serious than a yearning desire on the part

of a person whose phantasm appeared to occupy his old bed. My

correspondent, Mr. J. G. ----, says that he took it down from the lips

of one of the most truthful men he ever knew, and a sensible person to

boot. This person is still living, and I am told he has confirmed Mr.

G----'s story, which is as follows:--

"Sixty years ago I was a farm servant at a place in Pembrokeshire (I can

give the name, but don't wish it to be published). I was about fifteen

years old. I, along with three other men-servants, slept in a granary in

the yard. Our bedchamber was reached by means of ten broad stone steps.

It was soon after Allhallows time, when all farm servants change places

in that part of the country. A good and faithful foreman, who had been

years on the farm, had this time desired a change, and had engaged to

service some fifteen miles off, a change which he afterwards much

regretted.

"One night I woke up in my bed some time during the small hours of the

morning, and obedient to the call of nature, I got up, opened the door,

and stood on the upper step of the stairs. It was a beautiful moonlight

night. I surveyed the yard and the fields about. To my surprise, but

without the least apprehension, I noticed a man coming down a field,

jump over a low wall, and walk straight towards me. He stepped the three

first steps one by one, then he took two or three steps at a stride. I

knew the man well and recognised him perfectly. I knew all the clothes

he wore, particularly a light waistcoat which he put on on great

occasions. As he drew near me I receded to the doorway, and as he lifted

up his two hands, as in the act of opening the door, which was open

already, I fled in screaming, and passing my own bed jumped in between

two older men in the next bed. And neither time nor the sympathy of my

comrades could pacify me for hours.

"I told my tale, which, after searching and seeing nobody, they

disbelieved and put down to my timidity.

"Next morning, however, just as we were coming out from breakfast, in

the presence of all of us the discharged foreman was seen coming down

the same field, jumping the wall, walking toward the sleeping chamber,

ascending the steps, lifting up his two hands to open the door in the

self-same manner in every particular as I had described, and went

straight to the same bed as I got into.

"I asked him, 'Were you here last night, John?'

"'No, my boy,' was the answer; 'my body was not here, but my mind was. I

have run away from that horrid place, travelled most of the night, and

every step I took my mind was fixed on this old bed, where my weary

bones might be at rest.'"

I can supply names and all particulars, but do not wish them to be

published.

_Seeing Your Own Thought Body._

In his "Footfalls" Mr. Owen records a still more remarkable case of the

duplication of the body. A gentleman in Ohio, in 1833, had built a new

house, seventy or eighty yards distant from his old residence on the

other side of a small ravine. One afternoon, about five o'clock, his

wife saw his eldest daughter, Rhoda, aged sixteen, holding the youngest,

Lucy, aged four, in her arm, sitting in a rocking-chair, just within the

kitchen door of the new residence. She called the attention of another

sister to what she saw, and was startled to hear that Rhoda and Lucy

were upstairs in the old house. They were at once sent for, and on

coming downstairs they saw, to their amazement, their exact doubles

sitting on the doorstep of the new house. All the family

collected--twelve in all--and they all saw the phantasmal Rhoda and

Lucy, the real Rhoda and Lucy standing beside them. The figures seated

at the hall door, and the two children now actually in their midst, were

absolutely identical in appearance, even to each minute particular of

dress. After watching them for five minutes, the father started to cross

the ravine and solve the mystery. Hardly had he descended the ravine

when the phantasmal Rhoda rose from the rocking chair, with the child in

her arms, and lay down on the threshold. There she remained a moment or

two, and then apparently sank into the earth. When the father reached

the house no trace could be found of any human being. Both died within a

year.

A correspondent of my own, a dressmaker in the North of England, sends

me the following circumstantial account of how she saw her own double

without any mischief following:--

"I have a sewing-machine, with a desk at one side and carved legs

supporting the desk part; on the opposite side the machine part is. The

lid of the machine rests on the desk part when open, so that it forms a

high back. I had this machine across the corner of a room, so that the

desk part formed a triangle with the corner of the room. I sat at the

machine with my face towards the corner. To my left was the window, to

my right the fire; at each side of my chair the doors of the machine

walled me in as I sat working the treadles. Down each side of the

machine are imitations of drawers. The wood is a beautiful walnut. I was

sewing a long piece of material which passed from left to right. It was

dinnertime, so I looked down to see how much more I had to do. It was

almost finished, but there, in the space near the window, between the

wall and the machine, was a full-sized figure of myself from the waist

upwards. The image was lower than myself, but clear enough, with brown

hair and eyes. How earnestly the eyes regarded me; how thoughtfully! I

laughed and nodded at the image, but still it gazed earnestly at me. At

its neck was a bright red bow, coming unpinned. Its white linen collar

was turned up at the right-hand corner.

"When I got down to dinner I told my brother George I had seen Pepper's

Ghost, and it was a distinct image of myself, clear enough, and yet I

could see the wall and the side of the machine through the image, and

George said, 'Had it a red bow and white collar on?' 'Oh, yes,' I said.

'It was just like me, only nicer, and when I laughed and nodded, it

looked grave.' 'Very likely,' said George. 'It would think you very

silly. And was its bow coming unpinned?' 'Yes,' I replied; 'and the

right point of its collar was turned up.' He reached me a hand-mirror,

and I saw that my bow was coming unpinned and the right point of my

collar was turned up. So it could not have been a reflection, or it

would not have been the right point, but the left of my collar that was

turned up."

_The Wraith as a Portent._

In the North country it is of popular belief that to see the ghost of a

living man portends his approaching decease. The Rev. Henry Kendall, of

Darlington, from whose diary (unpublished) I have the liberty to quote,

notes the following illustration of this belief, under date August 16th,

1870:--

"Mrs. W. mentioned a curious incident that happened in Darlington: how

Mrs. Percy, upholsterer, and known to several of us, was walking along

the street one day when her husband was living, and she saw him walking

a little way before her; then he left the causeway and turned in at a

public-house. When she spoke to him of this, he said he had not been

near the place, and she was so little satisfied with his statement that

she called in at the 'public,' and asked them if her husband had been

there, but they told her 'No.' In a very short period after this

happened he died."

The phenomenon of a dual body haunted the imagination of poor Shelley.

Shortly before his death he believed he had seen his wraith:--

"On the 23rd of June," says one of his biographers, "he was heard

screaming at midnight in the saloon. The Williamses ran in and found him

staring on vacancy. He had had a vision of a cloaked figure which came

to his bedside and beckoned him to follow. He did so, and when they had

reached the sitting-room, the figure lifted the hood of his cloak and

disclosed Shelley's own features, and saying, 'Siete soddisfatto?'

vanished. This vision is accounted for on the ground that Shelley had

been reading a drama attributed to Calderon, named 'El Embozado o El

Encapotado,' in which a mysterious personage who had been haunting and

thwarting the hero all his life, and is at last about to give him

satisfaction in a duel, finally unmasks and proves to be the hero's own

wraith. He also asks, 'Art thou satisfied?' and the haunted man dies of

horror."

On the 29th of June some friends distinctly saw Shelley walk into a

little wood near Lerici, when in fact he was in a wholly different

direction. This was related by Byron to Mr. Cowell.

It is difficult to frame any theory that will account for this double

apparition, except, of course, the hypothesis of downright lying on the

part of the witnesses. But the hypothesis of the duplication of the body

in this extraordinary fashion is one which cannot be accepted until the

immaterial body is photographed under test conditions at the same time

that the material body is under safe custody in another place. Of

course, it is well to bear in mind that to all those who profess to know

anything of occult lore, and also to those who have the gift of

clairvoyance, there is nothing new or strange in the doctrine of the

immaterial body. Many clairvoyants declare that they constantly see the

apparitions of the living mingling with the apparitions of the dead.

They are easily distinguishable. The ghost of a living person is said to

be opaque, whereas the ghost of one from whom life has departed is

diaphanous as gossamer.

All this, of course, only causes the unbeliever to blaspheme. It is to

him every whit as monstrous as the old stories of the witches riding on

broomsticks. But the question is not to be settled by blasphemy on one

side or credulity on the other. There is something behind these

phantasmal apparitions; there is a real substratum of truth, if we could

but get at it. There seems to be some faculty latent in the human mind,

by which it can in some cases impress upon the eye and ear of a person

at almost any distance the image and the voice. We may call it telepathy

or what we please. It is a marvellous power, the mere hint of which

indefinitely expands the horizon of the imagination. The telephone is

but a mere child's toy compared with the gift to transmit not only the

sound of the voice but the actual visible image of the speaker for

hundreds of miles without any conductor known to man.

Chapter IV.

The Hypnotic Key.

Hypnotism is the key which will enable us to unlock most of these

mysteries, and so far as hypnotism has spoken it does not tend to

encourage the belief that the immaterial body has any substance other

than the hallucination of the person who sees it. Various cases are

reported by hypnotist practitioners which suggest that there is an

almost illimitable capacity of the human mind to see visions and to hear

voices. One very remarkable case was that of a girl who was told at

midsummer by the hypnotist, when in the hypnotic state, that he would

come to see her on New Year's Day. When she awoke from the trance she

knew nothing about the conversation. One hundred and seventy-one days

passed without any reference to it. But on the 172nd day, being New

Year's Day, she positively declared that the doctor had entered her

room, greeted her, and then departed. Curiously enough, as showing the

purely subjective character of the vision, the doctor appeared to her in

the depth of winter, wearing the light summer apparel he had on when he

made the appointment in July. In this case there can be no question as

to the apparition being purely subjective. The doctor did not make any

attempt to visit her in his immaterial body, but she saw him and heard

him as if he were there.

The late Mr. Gurney conducted some experiments with a hypnotic subject

which seem to confirm the opinion that the phantasmal body is a merely

subjective hallucination, although, of course, this would not explain

how information had been actually imparted to the phantasmal visitant by

the person who saw, or imagined they saw, his wraith. Mr. Gurney's cases

are, however, very interesting, if only as indicating the absolute

certainty which a hypnotised patient can be made to feel as to the

objectivity of sights and sounds:--

"S. hypnotised Zillah, and told her that she would see him standing in

the room at three o'clock next afternoon, and that she would hear him

call her twice by name. She was told that he would not stop many

seconds. On waking she had no notion of the ideas impressed upon her.

"Next day, however, she came upstairs about five minutes past three,

looking ghastly and startled. She said, 'I have seen a ghost.' I assumed

intense amazement, and she said she was in the kitchen cleaning some

silver, and suddenly she heard her name called sharply twice over,

'Zillah!' in Mr. Smith's voice. She said, 'And I dropped the spoon I was

rubbing, and turned and saw Mr. S., without his hat, standing at the

foot of the kitchen stairs. I saw him as plain as I see you,' she said,

and looked very wild and vacant.

"The next experiment took place on Wednesday evening, July 13th, 1887,

when S., told her, when hypnotised, that the next afternoon, at three

o'clock, she would see me (Mr. Gurney) come into the room to her. She

was further told that I would keep my hat on and say, 'Good-morning,'

and that I would remark, 'It is very warm,' and would then turn round

and walk out.

"Next day this is what Zillah reported. She said, 'I was in the kitchen

washing up, and had just looked at the clock, and was startled to see

how late it was (five minutes to three) when I heard footsteps coming

down the stairs--rather a quick, light step--and I thought it was Mr.

Sleep' (the dentist whose rooms are in the house), 'but as I turned

round, with a dish mop in one hand and a plate in the other, I saw some

one with a hat on who had to stoop as he came down the last step, and

there was Mr. Gurney. He was dressed just as I saw him last night, black

coat and grey trousers, his hat on, and a roll of paper like manuscript

in his hand, and he said, "Oh! good-afternoon;" and then he glanced all

round the kitchen and he glanced at me with an awful look, as if he was

going to murder me, and said, "Warm afternoon, isn't it?" and then

"Good-afternoon," or "Good-day," I am not sure which, and then turned

and went up the stairs again; and after standing thunderstruck a minute,

I ran to the foot of the stairs and saw just like a boot disappearing on

the top step.' She said, 'I think I must be going crazy. Why should I

always see something at three o'clock each day after the seance?'" (Vol.

V. pp. 11-13.)

Whatever hypothesis we select to explain these mysteries, they do not

become less marvellous. Even if we grant that it is mere telepathy, or

mind affecting mind at a distance without the use of the recognised

organs of sense or of any of the ordinary conducting mediums, what an

enormous extension it gives to the ordinary conception of the limits of

the human mind! To be able instantaneously to paint upon the retina of a

friend's eye the life-like image of ourselves, to make our voice sound

in his ears at a distance of many miles, and to communicate to his mind

information which he had never before heard of, all this is, it may be

admitted, as tremendous a draft upon the credulity of mankind as the

favourite Theosophical formula of the astral body. Yet who is there who,

in face of the facts and experiences recorded above, will venture to

deny that one or other of these hypotheses alone can account for the

phenomena under consideration?

It is obvious that when once the possibility of the Double is admitted,

many mysteries could be cleared up, although it is also true that a

great many inconveniences would immediately follow; the establishment of

the reality of the double would invalidate every plea of _alibi_.

If a man can really be in two places at one time, there is an end to the

plea which is most frequently resorted to by the accused to prove their

innocence. There are other inconveniences, which are alluded to in the

following letter from a lady correspondent, who believes that she has

the faculty in frequent, although uncertain and unconscious, use:--

"'I saw you yesterday, and you cut me.' Such was the remark I frequently

heard from my friends: in the broad daylight they saw me in street or

tram, etc. Once a personal friend followed me into church on Christmas

Day in a city at least 100 miles from where I really was. Another time I

sat two pews in front of a friend at a cathedral service. When I denied

having been there, she said, 'It's no good talking: I saw you, and you

didn't want to wait for me.' 'But,' I said, 'you have my word that I was

not there.' 'Yes,' she said, 'but I have my sight, and I saw you.' Of

course, I naturally thought it was some one like me, and said, perhaps

rather sarcastically, 'Would it be very strange if any one else bore

some resemblance to me?' 'No,' said my friend, 'it would not; but

someone else doesn't wear your clothes.' On one occasion I remember

three people saw me where I certainly was not physically present the

same day; all knew me personally. I often bought books of a man who kept

a second-hand bookstall. One day he told me that he had a somewhat rare

edition of a book I wanted, but that it was at the shop. I said, 'I'll

come across to-morrow for it if I make up my mind to give the price.'

The next day I was prevented from going, and went the day after, to hear

it was sold. 'Why didn't you keep it?' I asked. 'I thought you did not

want it when you came yesterday and did not buy it.' 'But I didn't come

yesterday.' 'Why, excuse me, you did, and took the book up and laid it

down again while I was serving Mr. M., and you went away before I could

ask you about it; Mr. M. remarked that it was strange you did not answer

him when he spoke.' When I asked the gentleman referred to, he confirmed

the story. Mrs. B. also saw me lower down the same street that morning.

"Still it never struck me that it was anything strange; I was only

rather curious to see the woman who was so like me. I saw her in an

unexpected manner. Going into my room one night, I happened to glance

down at my bed, and saw a form there. I thought it strange, yet was not

startled. I bent over it, and recognised my own features distinctly. I

was in perfect health at the time, and no disaster followed."

_Queen Elizabeth's Double._

In a volume published by Macmillan & Co., entitled "Legendary Fictions

of the Irish Celt," I find the following references to the Double:--

"If this phantom be seen in the morning it betokens good fortune and

long life to its prototype; if in the evening a near death awaits him.

This superstition was known and felt in England even in the reign of

Elizabeth. We quote a passage from Miss Strickland's account of her last

illness:--

"'As her mortal illness drew towards a close, the superstitious fears of

her simple ladies were excited almost to mania, even to conjuring up a

spectral apparition of the Queen while she was yet alive. Lady

Guildford, who was then in waiting on the Queen, leaving her in an

almost breathless sleep in her privy chamber, went out to take a little

air, and met her Majesty, as she thought, three or four chambers off.

Alarmed at the thought of being discovered in the act of leaving the

Royal patient alone, she hurried forward in some trepidation in order to

excuse herself, when the apparition vanished away. She returned

terrified to the chamber, but there lay the Queen still in the same

lethargic slumber in which she left her.'"

PART III.

CLAIRVOYANCE--THE VISION OF THE OUT OF SIGHT.

"Moreover, the spirit lifted me up and brought me unto the East gate,

and, behold, at the door of the gate five-and-twenty men, among whom I

saw," etc.--Ezekiel xi. 1.

Chapter I.

The Astral Camera.

When I was staying at Orchard Lea, in Windsor Forest, I did most of my

writing in a spacious window on the first floor looking out over the

garden. It opened French fashion, and thereby occasioned a curious

optical illusion, which may perhaps help to shed some light upon the

phenomena now under consideration. For when the sun was high in the sky

and the French window was set at a certain angle, the whole of the

flowers, figures, etc., on my right hand appeared reflected upon the

lawn on the left hand as vividly as if they actually existed in

duplicate. So real was the illusion that for some hours I was under the

impression that a broad yellow gravel path actually stretched across the

lawn on my left. It was only when a little dog ran along the spectral

path and suddenly vanished into thin air that I discovered the illusion.

Nothing could be more complete, more life-like. The real persons who

walked up the gravel to the house walked across the spectral gravel,

apparently in duplicate. Both could be seen at one and the same time. I

instantly thought that they could be photographed, so as to show the

duplication produced by the illusion. Unfortunately, although the

spectral path was distinctly visible through the glass to the eye, no

impression whatever was left on the sensitive plate. My friend writes:--

"I have tried the phantom path, and I am sorry to say it is too phantom

to make any impression on the plate. All that you get is the blaze of

light from the glass window, some very faint trees, and no path at all.

Possibly, with a June sun, it might have been different; but I doubt it,

as one is told never to put the camera facing a window. It is having to

take through the glass window which is fatal."

This set me thinking. It was a simple optical illusion, no doubt,

similar to that which enabled Pepper to produce his ghosts at the

Polytechnic. But what was the agency which enabled me to see the figures

and flowers, and trees and gravel, all transferred, as by the cunning

act of some magician, from the right to the left? Simply a swinging pane

of perfectly transparent glass. To those who have neither studied the

laws of optics nor seen the phenomenon in question, it must seem

impossible that a pellucid window-pane could transfer so faithfully that

which happened at one end of the garden to the other as to cause it to

be mistaken for reality. Yet there was the phenomenon before my eyes.

The dog ran double--the real dog to the right, the spectral dog to the

left--and no one could tell at first sight "t'other from which." Now,

may it not be that this supplies a suggestion as to the cause of the

phenomenon of clairvoyance? Is it not possible that there may exist in

Nature some as yet undiscovered analogue to the swinging windowpane

which may enable us to see before our eyes here and now events which are

transpiring at the other end of the world? In the mysterious,

subconscious world in which the clairvoyant lives, may there not be some

subtle, sympathetic lens, fashioned out of strong affection or some

other relation, which may enable some of us to see that which is quite

invisible to the ordinary eye?

_A Surrey Laundry Seen in Cornwall._

Such thoughts came to my mind when I asked the Housekeeper whether she

had ever seen any of the phantasmal apparitions of her mistress, my

hostess, Mrs. M. The housekeeper, a comfortable, buxom Cornish woman,

smiled incredulously. No, she had seen nothing, heard nothing, believed

nothing. "As to phantasmal bodies, she would prefer to see them first."

"Had she ever seen a ghost?" "No, never." "Had ever had any

hallucinations?" "No." But one thing had happened, "rather curious" now

that she came to think of it. Last year, when living on the coast far

down in the west country, she had suddenly seen as in a dream the house

in Hindhead where we were now standing. She had never been in Surrey in

her life. She had no idea that she would ever go there, nor did she know

that it was in Surrey. What she saw was the laundry. She was standing

inside it, and remarked to her husband how strange and large it looked.

She looked out at the windows and saw the house and the surroundings

with strange distinctness. Then the vision faded away, leaving no other

impress on the mind than that she had seen an exceptionally large

laundry close to a small country-house in a place where she had never

been in before.

Six months passed; she and her husband had decided to leave the west

country and take a housekeeper and gardener's post elsewhere. They

replied to an advertisement, were appointed by my hostess; they

transferred themselves to Hindhead, where they arrived in the dead of

winter. When they reached their new quarters she saw, to her infinite

astonishment, the precise place she had seen six months before. The

laundry was unmistakable. There is not such another laundry in the

county of Surrey. There it was, sure enough, and there was the house,

and there were all the surroundings exactly as she had seen them down on

the south-west coast. She did not believe in ghosts or phantasmal bodies

or such like things, but one thing she knew beyond all possibility of

doubt. She had seen her new home and laundry on the top of Hindhead,

when living in the west country six months before she ever set foot in

Surrey, or even knew of the existence of Mrs. M. "The moment I saw it I

recognised it and told my husband that it was the identical place I had

seen when in our old home."

_William Howitt's Vision._

The Housekeeper's story is very simple, and almost too commonplace. But

its significance lies in those very characteristics. Here was no

consuming passion, no bond of sympathy, nothing whatever material or

sentimental to act as the refracting medium by which the Hindhead

laundry could have been made visible in South Devon. Yet similar

phenomena are of constant occurrence. A very remarkable case in point is

that of William Howitt who, when on a voyage out to Australia, saw his

brother's house at Melbourne so plainly that he described it on board

ship, and recognised it the moment he landed. Here is his own version of

this remarkable instance of clairvoyance:--

"Some weeks ago, while yet at sea, I had a dream of being at my brother's

at Melbourne, and found his house on a hill at the further end of the

town, and next to the open forest. His garden sloped a little down the

hill to some brick buildings below; and there were greenhouses on the

right hand by the wall, as you look down the hill from the house. As I

looked out of the window in my dream, I saw a wood of dusky-foliaged

trees having a somewhat segregated appearance in their heads--that is,

their heads did not make that dense mass like our trees. 'There,' I said

to some one in my dream, 'I see your native forest of eucalyptus!'

"This dream I told to my sons and to two of my fellow-passengers at the

time, and on landing, as we walked over the meadows, long before we

reached the town, I saw this very wood. 'There,' I said, 'is the very

wood of my dream. We shall see my brother's house there! And so we did.

It stands exactly as I saw it, only looking newer; but there, over the

wall of the garden, is the wood, precisely as I saw it and now see it as

I sit at the dining-room window writing. When I looked on this scene I

seem to look into my dream." (Owen's "Footfalls," p. 118.)

The usual explanation of these things is that the vision is the revival

of some forgotten impressions on the brain. But in neither of the

foregoing cases will that explanation suffice, for in neither case had

the person who saw ever been in the place of which they had a vision.

One desperate resource, the convenient theory of pre-existence, is

useless here. The fact seems to be that there is a kind of invisible

camera obscura in Nature, which at odd times gives us glimpses of things

happening or existing far beyond the range of our ordinary vision. The

other day when in Edinburgh I climbed up to the Camera Obscura that

stands near the castle, and admired the simple device by which, in a

darkened room upon a white, paper-covered table, the whole panorama of

Edinburgh life was displayed before me. There were the "recruities"

drilling on the Castle Esplanade; there were the passers-by hurrying

along High Street; there were the birds on the housetops, and the

landscape of chimneys and steeples, all revealed as if in the crystal of

a wizard's cave. The coloured shadows chased each other across the

paper, leaving no trace behind. Five hundred years ago the owner of that

camera would have been burned as a wizard; now he makes a comfortable

living out of the threepennypieces of inquisitive visitors. Is it

possible to account for the phenomena of clairvoyance other than by the

supposition that there exists somewhere in Nature a gigantic camera

obscura which reflects everything, and to which clairvoyants habitually,

and other mortals occasionally, have access?

_Seen and Heard at 150 Miles Range._

The preceding incidents simply record a prevision of places subsequently

visited. The following are instances in which not only places, but

occurrences, were seen as in a camera by persons at a distance varying

from 150 to several thousand miles. Space seems to have no existence for

the clairvoyant. They are quoted from the published "Proceedings of the

Psychical Research Society":

On September 9th, 1848, at the siege of Mooltan, Major-General R----,

C.B., then adjutant of his regiment, was most severely and dangerously

wounded; and supposing himself to be dying, asked one of the officers

with him to take the ring off his finger and send it to his wife, who at

the time was fully 150 miles distant, at Ferozepore.

"On the night of September 9th, 1848," writes his wife, "I was lying on

my bed between sleeping and waking, when I distinctly saw my husband

being carried off the field, seriously wounded, and heard his voice

saying, 'Take this ring off my finger and send it to my wife.' All the

next day I could not get the sight or the voice out of my mind. In due

time I heard of General R---- having been severely wounded in the

assault of Mooltan. He survived, however, and is still living. It was

not for some time after the siege that I heard from General L----, the

officer who helped to carry General R---- off the field, that the

request as to the ring was actually made to him, just as I heard it at

Ferozepore at that very time." (Vol. I. p. 30.)

_A Royal Deathbed in France seen in Scotland._

The above case is remarkable because the voice was transmitted as well

as the spectacle. In the next story the ear heard nothing, but the scene

itself was very remarkable. A correspondent of the Psychical Research

Society writes that whilst staying with her mother's cousin, Mrs.

Elizabeth Broughton, wife of Mr. Edward Broughton, Edinburgh, and

daughter of the late Colonel Blanckley, in the year 1844, she told her

the following strange story:--

"She awoke one night and aroused her husband, telling him that something

dreadful had happened in France. He begged her to go to sleep again and

not to trouble him. She assured him that she was not asleep when she saw

what she insisted on then telling him--what she saw, in fact, was;

First, a carriage accident--which she did not actually see, but what she

saw was the result--a broken carriage, a crowd collected, a figure

gently raised and carried into the nearest house, then a figure lying on

a bed, which she then recognised as the Duke of Orleans. Gradually

friends collecting round the bed--among them several members of the

French royal family--the queen, then the king, all silently, tearfully

watching the evidently dying duke. One man (she could see his back, but

did not know who he was) was a doctor. He stood bending over the duke,

feeling his pulse, his watch in the other hand. And then all passed

away; she saw no more. As soon as it was daylight she wrote down in her

journal all that she had seen. From that journal she read this to me. It

was before the days of electric telegraph, and two or more days passed

before the _Times_ announced 'The Death of the Duke of Orleans.'

Visiting Paris a short time afterwards, she saw and recognised the place

of the accident and received the explanation of her impression. The

doctor who attended the dying duke was an old friend of hers, and as he

watched by the bed his mind had been constantly occupied with her and

her family." (Vol. II. p. 160.)

* * *

The doctor's sympathy may have been the key to the secret camera of

Nature, but it in no wise "explains" how a lady in Edinburgh could see

what went on inside a house in Paris so clearly as to know what had

happened two days before the intelligence reached the _Times_.

_An African Event Seen in England._

Here is another story where the event occurred in Africa and was seen in

England. A correspondent from Wadhurst, West Dulwich, S.E., says:--

"My late husband dreamt a certain curious dream about his brother, Mr.

Ralph Holden, who was at that time travelling in the interior of Africa.

One morning, in June or July, 1861, my husband woke me with the

announcement, 'Ralph is dead.' I said, 'You must be dreaming.' 'No, I am

not dreaming now; but I dreamt twice over that I saw Ralph lying on the

ground supported by a man.' They learnt afterwards that Ralph must have

died about the time when his brother dreamt about him and that he had

died in the arms of his faithful native servant, lying under a large

tree, where he was afterwards buried. The Holden family have sketches of

the tree and the surroundings, and, on seeing it, my husband said, 'Yes,

that is exactly the place where I saw Ralph in my dream, dying or

dead.'" (Vol. I. p. 141.)

_A Vision Which Saved Many Lives._

Dr. Horace Bushnell, in his "Nature and the Supernatural," tells a

story, on the authority of Captain Yonnt, which differs from the

foregoing in having a definite purpose, which, fortunately, was

attained. Captain Yonnt, a patriarch in the Napa valley of California,

told Dr. Bushnell that six or seven years before their conversation he

had seen a vision which saved several lives. Here is his story:--

"About six or seven years previous, in a mid-winter's night, he had a

dream, in which he saw what appeared to be a company of emigrants

arrested by the snows of the mountains and perishing rapidly by cold and

hunger. He noted the very cast of the scenery, marked by a huge,

perpendicular front of white rock cliff; he saw the men cutting off what

appeared to be tree-tops rising out of deep gulfs of snow; he

distinguished the very features of the persons and the look of their

particular distress. He awoke profoundly impressed by the distinctness

and apparent reality of the dream. He at length fell asleep, and dreamed

exactly the same dream over again. In the morning he could not expel it

from his mind. Falling in shortly after with an old hunter comrade, he

told his story, and was only the more deeply impressed by his

recognising without hesitation the scenery of the dream. This comrade

came over the Sierra, by the Carson Valley Pass, and declared that a

spot in the Pass answered exactly his description. By this the

unsophistical patriarch was decided. He immediately collected a company

of men, with mules and blankets and all necessary provisions. The

neighbours were laughing meantime at his credulity. 'No matter,' he

said, 'I am able to do this, and I will; for I verily believe that the

fact is according to my dream.' The men were sent into the mountains one

hundred and fifty miles distant, directly to the Carson Valley Pass. And

there they found the company exactly in the condition of the dream, and

brought in the remnant alive." ("Nature and the Supernatural," p. 14.)

_The Vision of a Fire._

The wife of a Dean of the Episcopal Church in one of the Southern States

of America was visiting at my house while I was busy collecting

materials for this work. Asking her the usual question as to whether she

had ever experienced anything of the phenomena usually called

supernatural, apparently because it is not the habitual experience of

every twenty-four hours, she ridiculed the idea. Ghosts? not she. She

was a severely practical, matter-of-fact person, who used her natural

senses, and had nothing to do with spirits. But was she quite sure; had

nothing ever occurred to her which she could not explain? Then she

hesitated and said, "Well, yes; but there is nothing supernatural about

it. I was staying away down in Virginia, some hundred miles from home,

when one morning, about eleven o'clock, I felt an over-powering

sleepiness. I never sleep in the daytime, and that drowsiness was, I

think, almost my only experience of that kind. I was so sleepy I went to

my room and lay down. In my sleep I saw quite distinctly my home at

Richmond in flames. The fire had broken out in one wing of the house,

which I saw with dismay was where I kept all my best dresses. The people

were all about trying to check the flames, but it was of no use. My

husband was there, walking about before the burning house, carrying a

portrait in his hand. Everything was quite clear and distinct, exactly

as if I had actually been present and seen everything. After a time I

woke up, and, going downstairs, told my friends the strange dream I had

had. They laughed at me, and made such game of my vision that I did my

best to think no more about it. I was travelling about, a day or two

passed, and when Sunday came I found myself in a church where some

relatives were worshipping. When I entered the pew they looked rather

strange, and as soon as the service was over I asked them what was the

matter. 'Don't be alarmed,' they said, 'there is nothing serious.' They

then handed me a postcard from my husband, which simply said, 'House

burned out; covered by insurance.' The date was the day on which my

dream occurred. I hastened home, and then I learned that everything had

happened exactly as I had seen it. The fire had broken out in the wing

which I had seen blazing. My clothes were all burnt, and the oddest

thing about it was that my husband, having rescued a favourite picture

from the burning building, had carried it about among the crowd for some

time before he could find a place in which to put it safely."

Swedenborg, it will be remembered, also had a clairvoyant vision of a

fire at a great distance.

_The Loss of the "Strathmore."_

A classic instance of the exercise of this faculty is the story of the

wreck of the _Strathmore_. In brief the story is as follows:--The

father of a son who had sailed in the _Strathmore_, an emigrant

ship outward bound from the Clyde, saw one night the ship foundering

amid the waves, and saw that his son, with some others, had escaped

safely to a desert island near which the wreck had taken place. He was

so much impressed by this vision that he wrote to the owner of the

_Strathmore_, telling him what he had seen. His information was

scouted; but after awhile the _Strathmore_ was overdue and the

owner got uneasy. Day followed day, and still no tidings of the missing

ship. Then, like Pharaoh's butler, the owner remembered his sins one day

and hunted up the letter describing the vision. It supplied at least a

theory to account for the vessel's disappearance. All outward bound

ships were requested to look out for any survivors on the island

indicated in the vision. These orders being obeyed, the survivors of the

_Strathmore_ were found exactly where the father had seen them. In

itself this is sufficient to confound all accepted hypotheses. Taken in

connection with other instances of a similar nature, what can be said of

it excepting that it almost necessitates the supposition of the

existence of the invisible camera obscura which the Theosophists

describe as the astral light?

_The Analogy of the Camera Obscura._

Clairvoyance can often be explained by telepathy, especially when there

is strong sympathy between the person who sees and the person who is

seen. Mr. Edward R. Lipsitt, of Tralee, sends me the following

narrative, which illustrates this fact:--

"I beg to narrate a curious case of telepathy I experienced when quite a

boy. Some ten years ago I happened to sleep one night in the same room

with a young friend of about my own age. There existed a very strong

sympathy between us. I got up early and went out for a short walk,

leaving my friend fast asleep in his bed. I went in the direction of a

well-known lake in that district. After gazing for some moments at the

silent waters, I espied a large black dog making towards me. I turned my

back and fled, the dog following me for some distance. My boots then

being in a bad condition, one of the soles came off in the flight;

however, I came away unmolested by the dog. But how amazed was I when

upon entering the room my friend, who was just rubbing his eyes and

yawning, related to me my adventure word by word, describing even the

colour of the dog and the very boot (the right one) the sole of which

gave way!"

_Motiveless Visions._

There is often no motive whatever to be discovered in the apparition. A

remarkable instance of this is recorded by Mr. Myers in an article in

the _Arena_, where the analogy to a camera obscura is very close. The

camera reflects everything that happens. Nothing is either great or

small to its impartial lens. But if you do not happen to be in the right

place, or if the room is not properly darkened, or if the white paper is

taken off the table, you see nothing. We have not yet mastered the

conditions of the astral camera. Here, however, is Mr. Myers' story,

which he owes to the kindness of Dr. Elliott Coues, who happened to call

on Mrs. C---- the very day on which that lady received the following

letter from her friend Mrs. B----.

"'Monday evening, January 14th, 1889.

"'My Dear Friend,--I know you will be surprised to receive a note

from me so soon, but not more so than I was to-day, when you were

shown to me clairvoyantly, in a somewhat embarrassed position. I

doubt very much if there was any truth in it; nevertheless, I will

relate it, and leave you to laugh at the idea of it.

"'I was sitting in my room sewing this afternoon, about two o'clock,

when what should I see but your own dear self; but, heavens! in what

a position. Now, I don't want to excite your curiosity too much, or

try your patience too long, so will come to the point at once. You

were falling up the front steps in the yard. You had on your black

skirt and velvet waist, your little straw bonnet, and in your hand

were some papers. When you fell, your hat went in one direction, and

the papers in another. You got up very quickly, put on your bonnet,

picked up the papers, and lost no time getting into the house. You

did not appear to be hurt, but looked somewhat mortified. It was all

so plain to me that I had ten to one notions to dress myself and

come over and see if it were true, but finally concluded that a

sober, industrious woman like yourself would not be stumbling around

at that rate, and thought I'd best not go on a wild goose chase.

Now, what do you think of such a vision as that? Is there any

possible truth in it? I feel almost ready to scream with laughter

whenever I think of it; you did look _too_ funny, spreading

yourself out in the front yard. "Great was the fall thereof."'

"This letter came to us in an envelope addressed: Mrs. E. A. C----, 217

Del. Ave., N.E., Washington, D.C., and with the postmarks, Washington,

D.C., Jan. 15, 7 a.m., 1889, and Washington, N.E.C.S., Jan. 15, 8 a.m.

"Now the point is that every detail in this telepathic vision was

correct. Mrs. C---- had actually (as she tells me in a letter dated

March 7th, 1889) fallen in this way, at this place, in the dress

described, at 2.41, on January 14th. The coincidence can hardly have

been due to chance. If we suppose that the vision preceded the accident,

we shall have an additional marvel, which, however, I do not think we

need here face. 'About 2,' in a letter of this kind, may quite

conceivably have meant 2.41."

The exceeding triviality of the incident often destroys the possibility

of belief in the ordinary superstition that it was a direct Divine

revelation. This may be plausible in cases of the _Strathmore_,

where the intelligence was communicated of the loss of an English ship,

but no one can seriously hold it when the only information to be

communicated was a stumble on the stairs.

Considering the enormous advantages which such an astral camera would

place in the hands of the detective police, I was not surprised to be

told that the officers of the Criminal Investigation Department in

London and Chicago occasionally consult clairvoyants as to the place

where stolen goods are to be found, or where the missing criminals may

be lurking.

_Mr. Burt's Dream._

When I was in Newcastle I availed myself of the opportunity to call upon

Mr. Burt, M.P. On questioning him as to whether he had ever seen a

ghost, he replied in the negative, but remarked that he had had one

experience which had made a deep impression upon his mind, which partook

more of the nature of clairvoyance than the apparition of a phantom. "I

suppose it was a dream," said Mr. Burt. "The dream or vision, or

whatever else you call it, made a deep impression upon my mind. You

remember Mr. Crawford, the Durham miners' agent, was ill for a long time

before his death. Just before his death he rallied, and we all hoped he

was going to get better. I had heard nothing to the contrary, when one

morning early I had a very vivid dream. I dreamed that I was standing by

the bedside of my old friend. I passed my hand over his brow, and he

spoke to me with great tenderness, with much greater tenderness than he

had ever spoken before. He said he was going to die, and that he was

comforted by the long and close friendship that had existed between us.

I was much touched by the feeling with which he spoke, and felt awed as

if I were in the presence of death. When I woke up the impression was

still strong in my mind, and I could not resist the feeling that

Crawford was dying. In a few hours I received a telegram stating that he

was dead. This is more remarkable because I fully expected he was going

to get better, and at the moment of my dream he seems to have died. I

cannot give any explanation of how it came about. It is a mystery to me,

and likely to remain so."

This astral camera, to which "future things unfolded lie," also retains

the imperishable image of all past events. Mr. Browning's great uncle's

studs brought vividly to the mind of the clairvoyant a smell of blood,

and recalled all the particulars of the crime of which they had been

silent witnesses. Any article or relic may serve as a key to unlock the

chamber of this hidden camera.

Chapter II.

Tragic Happenings Seen in Dreams.

_An Irish Outrage Seen in a Dream._

One of the best stories of clairvoyance as a means of throwing light on

crime is thus told by a correspondent of the Psychical Research Society:

One morning in December, 1836, he had the following dream, or, he would

prefer to call it, revelation. He found himself suddenly at the gate of

Major N. M.'s avenue, many miles from his home. Close to him was a group

of persons, one of whom was a woman with a basket on her arm, the rest

men, four of whom were tenants of his own, while the others were unknown

to him. Some of the strangers seemed to be murderously assaulting H. W.,

one of his tenants, and he interfered. "I struck violently at the man on

my left, and then with greater violence at the man's face on my right.

Finding, to my surprise, that I had not knocked down either, I struck

again and again with all the violence of a man frenzied at the sight of

my poor friend's murder. To my great amazement I saw my arms, although

visible to my eye, were without substance, and the bodies of the men I

struck at and my own came close together after each blow through the

shadowy arms I struck with. My blows were delivered with more extreme

violence than I ever think I exerted, but I became painfully convinced

of my incompetency. I have no consciousness of what happened after this

feeling of unsubstantiality came upon me." Next morning he experienced

the stiffness and soreness of violent bodily exercise, and was informed

by his wife that in the course of the night he had much alarmed her by

striking out again and again with his arms in a terrific manner, 'as if

fighting for his life.' He, in turn, informed her of his dream, and

begged her to remember the names of those actors in it who were known to

him. On the morning of the following day (Wednesday) he received a

letter from his agent, who resided in the town close to the scene of the

dream, informing him that his tenant had been found on Tuesday morning

at Major N. M.'s gate, speechless and apparently dying from a fracture

of the skull, and that there was no trace of the murderers. That night

he started for the town, and arrived there on Thursday morning. On his

way to a meeting of magistrates he met the senior magistrate of that

part of the country, and requested him to give orders for the arrest of

the three men whom, besides H. W., he had recognised in his dream, and

to have them examined separately. This was at once done. The three men

gave identical accounts of the occurrence, and all named the woman who

was with them. She was then arrested, and gave precisely similar

testimony. They said that between eleven and twelve on the Monday night

they had been walking homewards along the road, when they were overtaken

by three strangers, two of whom savagely assaulted H. W., while the

other prevented his friends from interfering. H. W. did not die, but was

never the same man afterwards; he subsequently emigrated. (Vol. I. p.

142.)

The advantage which would accrue from the universal establishment of

this instantaneous vision would not be unmixed. That it is occasionally

very useful is obvious.

_A Clairvoyant Vision of a Murder._

The most remarkable experiment in clairvoyant detection that I have ever

come across is told by Dr. Backman, of Kalmar, in a recent number of the

"Psychical Research Society's Proceedings." It is as follows:--

"In the month of October, 1888, the neighbourhood of Kalmar was shocked

by a horrible murder committed in the parish of Wissefjerda, which was

about fifty kilometres from Kalmar as the crow flies. What happened was

that a farmer named P. J. Gustafsson had been killed by a shot when

driving, having been forced to stop by stones having been placed on the

road. The murder had been committed in the evening, and a certain tramp

was suspected, because Gustafsson, in his capacity of under bailiff, had

arrested him, and he had then undergone several years' penal servitude.

"This was all that I or the public knew about the case on November 1st

of the same year. The place where the murder was committed and the

persons implicated in it were quite unknown to me and the clairvoyant.

"On the same day, November 1st, having some reason to believe that such

a trial would be at least partially successful, I experimented with a

clairvoyant, Miss Agda Olsen, to try if it was possible to get some

information in this way about such an event.

"The judge of the neighbourhood, who had promised to be present, was

unfortunately prevented from coming. The clairvoyant was hypnotised in

my wife's presence, and was then ordered 'to look for the place where

the murder had been committed and see the whole scene, follow the

murderer in his flight, and describe him and his home and the motive for

the murder.' Miss Olsen then spoke as follows, in great agitation,

sometimes using violent gestures. I took notes of her exact words and

reproduce them here fully.

"'It is between two villages--I see a road--in a wood--now it is

coming--the gun--now he is coming along, driving--the horse is afraid of

the stones--hold the horse! hold the horse! now! now he is killing

him--he was kneeling when he fired--blood! blood!--now he is running in

the wood--seize him!--he is running in an opposite direction to the

horse in many circuits--not on any footpaths. He wears a cap and grey

clothes--light--has long coarse brown hair, which has not been cut for a

long time--grey-blue eyes--treacherous looks--great dark brown beard--he

is accustomed to work on the land. I believe he has cut his right hand.

He has a scar or a streak between his thumb and forefinger. He is

suspicious and a coward.

"'The murderer's home is a red wooden house, standing a little way back

from the road. On the ground-floor is a room which leads into the

kitchen, and from that again into the passage. There is also a larger

room which does not communicate with the kitchen. The church of

Wissefjerda is situated obliquely to your right when you are standing in

the passage.

"'His motive was enmity; it seems as if he had bought something--taken

something--a paper. He went away from home at daybreak, and the murder

was committed in the evening.'

"Miss Olsen was then awakened, and like all my subjects, she remembered

perfectly what she had been seeing, which had made a very profound

impression on her; she added several things which I did not write down.

"On November 6th (Monday) I met Miss Olsen, and she told me in great

agitation that she had met the murderer from Wissefjerda in the street.

He was accompanied by a younger person and followed by two policemen,

and was walking from the police office to the gaol. I at once expressed

my doubts of her being right, partly because country people are

generally arrested by the country police, partly because they are always

taken directly to gaol. But when she insisted on it, and maintained that

it was the person she had seen when asleep, I went to the police office.

"I inquired if any one had been arrested on suspicion of the crime in

question, and a police-constable answered that such was the case, and

that, as they had been taken to the town on Sunday, they had been kept

in the police-station over night, and after that had been obliged to go

on foot to gaol, accompanied by two constables." (The police-constable,

T. A. Ljung, states that Dr. Backman described quite accurately the

appearance of the house, its furniture, how the rooms were situated,

where the suspected man lived, and gave a very correct account of Niklas

Jonnasson's personal appearance. The doctor also asked him if he had

observed that Jonnasson had a scar on his right hand. He said he had not

then observed it, but ascertained later that it really was so, and

Jonnasson said that he got it from an abscess).

"The trial was a long one, and showed that Gustafsson had agreed to buy

for Jonnasson, but in his own name, the latter's farm, which was sold by

auction on account of Jonnasson's debts. This is what is called a

thief's bargain. Gustafsson bought the farm, but kept it for himself.

The statements of the accused men were very vague; the father had

prepared an _alibi_ with much care, but it failed to account for

just the length of time that was probably enough to commit the murder

in. The son tried to prove an _alibi_ by means of two witnesses,

but these confessed that they had given false evidence, which he had

bribed them to do when they were in prison with him on account of

another matter.

"But though the evidence against the defendants was very strong, it was

not considered that there was sufficient legal evidence, and, there

being no jury in Sweden, they were left to the verdict of posterity."

(pp. 213-216.)

_A Terrible Vision of Torture at Sea._

The following marvellous story of a vision reaches me from Scotland. The

Rev. D. McQueen writes me from 165, Dalkeith-road, Edinburgh, December

14th, as follows:--

"I have been much interested in your Ghost Stories. I wish to inform you

of one I have heard, and which I think eclipses in interest, minuteness

of detail, and tragical pathos anything I have ever known, and which, if

published and edited by your graphic pen, would cause a sensation in

every scientific society in Great Britain.

"It is not in my power to write the whole story, as it is nearly

sufficient for a pamphlet by itself, but its accuracy can be vouched for

by many of the most respectable and intelligent people in the

neighbourhood of Old Cumnock. I heard the story some years ago, and

would have written you sooner, only I wished to make inquiries as to the

whereabouts of the subject of the remarkable vision.

"About twenty years ago a young man belonging to Ayrshire embarked from

an Australian port to re-visit his friends in this country. His mother

and father still live. The former saw all that befell her son from the

moment he set foot on the deck till he was consigned to the sea. She can

describe the port from which he sailed, the crew of the ship, his fellow

passengers. It was a weird story, for her son, by name George, was done

to death by the brutality of the officers. This was partially

corroborated by a passenger named Gilmour, who called on her after his

arrival in London. When he entered the house she said, 'Why did you

allow them to ill-use my son.' He started, and said, 'Who told you?' She

related all that happened during the weeks her son was ill, and when she

finished her guest fainted. According to her, her son was ill-used from

the time he started till his death. For example, she saw her son struck

by a ball of ropes, as she said (a cork fender). He said that was so.

She saw him put into a strait jacket and lowered into the hold of the

ship, which actually took place. She saw them playing cards on deck and

putting the counters into her son's pocket, which were actually found in

his clothes when they came back. She can describe the berth her son

occupied, the various parts of the ship, with an accuracy that is

surprising to one that never has been on board ship. And last of all she

tells the manner of his burial, the dress, the service that was read,

the body moving, the protest of one passenger that he was not dead. She

had a succession of trances by day and night which are unparalleled. She

saw some of the painful scenes in church, and has been known to cry out

in horror and agony. If you could only get some one to take it down from

her own lips--she alone can tell it--you would make a narrative that

would thrill the heart of every reader in the kingdom. The woman is

reliable. She is the wife of a well-to-do farmer. Her name is Mrs.

Arthur, Benston Farm, Old Cumnock.

"I have written an incoherent letter, as I am hurried at present, but I

hope you will see your way to investigate it. I say again, I have never

heard so weird and true a tale. But get the lady to tell her own story.

It is wonderful! wonderful!"

On January 9th, 1892, the Rev. A. Macdonald, of the U.P. Manse, Old

Cumnock, wrote to me as follows:--

"I have much pleasure in replying to the questions you put to me,

whether I am aware of the clairvoyant experiences of Mrs. Arthur

(Benston, New Cumnock), and whether I consider her a reliable witness.

"It is many years since I heard Mrs. Arthur relate her strange visions,

and there are other friends, beside myself, who have heard the same

narrative from her own lips.

"Mrs. Arthur, I hold, is incapable of inventing the story which she

tells, for she is a truthful, conscientious, and Christian woman. She

herself believes in the reality of the vision as firmly as she believes

in her own existence. The death of her son on his way back from

Australia was the cause of a sorrow too deep for the mother to weave

such a romance around it. Further, her statements are not the accretions

of after years, but were told, and told freely, at the time when her son

was known to have died. This is about twenty years ago. During these

twenty years she has not varied in her statements, and repeats them

still with all the faith and with all the circumstantial details of the

first narration.

"I consider her vision--extending as it does from the time the

homeward-bound vessel left the harbour, over many days, until the burial

of her son's body at sea--worthy of a place alongside the best of the

Ghost Stories you have given to the world."

Mr. Arthur, the son of the percipient in this strange story, wrote to me

as follows from Loch-side, New Cumnock, Ayrshire, on the 14th January,

1892:--

"My mother, Mrs. Arthur, of Benston, New Cumnock, Ayrshire, received

your valued favour of 8th inst., together with a copy of the Christmas

Number of the _Review of Reviews_. The circumstances you refer to

happened twenty-one years ago, a short account of which appeared in a

Scotch paper, and a much fuller one appeared in an Australian paper,

but, unfortunately, no copy has been preserved, even the diary in which

the particulars were written has been destroyed.

"It would not serve any good purpose for you to send a shorthand writer

to interview my mother, as she is approaching fourscore years, and her

memory is rapidly failing. I believe I can get a very full account

(barring _minutiæ_) from a younger brother. But if the young man

who was a fellow-passenger with my brother (when my brother died at sea

off the Cape of Good Hope) is still alive, he is the proper party to

give a full and minute account. He was the party who informed my parents

of my brother's death. My mother lost no time in visiting him for

particulars. I think the young man's name was Gilmour. He was then in

the neighbourhood of Edinburgh. When he began to narrate what had taken

place, my mother stopped him and asked him to listen to her. She then

went on to say that on a certain date, while she was about her usual

household duties, her son came into the room where she was, said so and

so and so and so, and walked out. Mr. Gilmour said that what she had

said was exactly what had occurred during his illness, and the date he

had visited her was the day of his death.

"I was at this time living in Belize, British Honduras. On my mentioning

this circumstance to some of my friends there, Mr. Cockburn, who was

Police Magistrate in Belize, said that his daughter, Miss Cockburn, had

a similar experience. He lived at that time in Grenada, and Miss

Cockburn was at school in England. One day she was out walking with the

other school girls; suddenly she saw her mother walking along the street

in front of her. Miss C. ran off to speak to her, but before she caught

her up, her mother turned down a side street. When the daughter reached

the corner the mother was nowhere to be seen. Miss Cockburn wrote to her

mother, telling her what she had seen, by the outgoing mail. Her letter

crossed one from her father, telling her that her mother had died that

day."

Clairvoyance is closely related to the phenomenon of the Double, for the

clairvoyant seems to have either the faculty of transporting herself to

distant places, or of bringing the places within range of her sight.

Here is a narrative sent me by Mr. Masey, Fellow of the Geological

Society, writing to me from 8, Gloucester Road, Kew, which illustrates

the connection between clairvoyance and the Double:--

"Mrs. Mary Masey, who resided on Redcliffe Hill, Bristol, at the

beginning of this century, was a member of the Society of Friends, and

was held in high esteem for piety.

"A memorable incident in her life was that one night she dreamt that a

Mr. John Henderson, a noted man of the same community, had gone to

Oxford, and that he had died there. In the course of the next day, Mr.

Henderson called to take leave of her, saying he was going to Oxford to

study a subject concerning which he could not obtain the information he

wanted in Bristol. Mrs. Masey said to him, 'John Henderson, thou wilt

die there.'

"Some time afterwards, Mrs. Masey woke her husband one night, saying,

'Remember, John Henderson died at Oxford at two o'clock this morning,

and it is now three.' Her husband, Philip Masey, made light of it; but

she told him that while asleep she had been transported to Oxford, where

she had never been before, and that she had entered a room there, in

which she saw Mr. John Henderson in bed, the landlady supporting his

head, and the landlord with several other persons standing around. While

gazing at him some one gave him medicine, and the patient, turning

round, perceived her, and exclaimed, 'Oh, Mrs. Masey, I am going to die;

I am so glad you are come, for I want to tell you that my father is

going to be very ill, and you must go and see him.' He then proceeded to

describe a room in his father's house, and a bureau in it, 'in which is

a box containing a remedy; give it him, and he will recover.' Her

impression and recollection of all the persons in the room at Oxford was

most vivid, and she even described the appearance of the house on the

opposite side of the street. The only person she appeared not to have

seen in the room was a clergyman who was present. The husband of Mrs.

Masey accompanied Mr. Henderson's father to the funeral, and on their

journey from Bristol to Oxford by coach (the period being before

railways and telegraphs existed), Mr. Philip Masey related to him the

particulars of his son's death, as described by his wife, which, on

arrival, they found to have been exactly as told by Mrs. Masey.

"Mrs. Masey was so much concerned about the death of Mr. Henderson,

jun., that she forgot all about the directions he had given her

respecting the approaching illness of his father, but some time

afterwards she was sent for by the father, who was very ill. She then

remembered the directions given her by the son on his death-bed at

Oxford. She immediately proceeded to the residence of Mr. Henderson, and

on arrival at the house she found the room, the bureau, the box, and the

medicine exactly as had been foretold to her. She administered the

remedy as directed, and had the pleasure of witnessing the beneficial

effect by the complete recovery of Mr. Henderson from a serious

illness."

Here we have almost every variety of psychic experience. First of all

there is second sight pure and simple; second, there is the aerial

journey of the Double, with the memory of everything that had been seen

and heard at the scene which it had witnessed; third, there is

communication of information which at that moment was not known to the

percipient; fourth, we have another prediction; and finally, we have a

complete verification and fulfilment of everything that was witnessed.

It is idle to attempt to prove the accuracy of statements made

concerning one who has been dead nearly a hundred years, but the story,

although possessing no evidential value, is interesting as an almost

unique specimen of the comprehensive and complicated prophetic ghost and

clairvoyant story.

These facts, which are well accredited, would seem to show that in the

book of Job Elihu was not far wrong when he said, "In slumberings upon

the bed God openeth the ears of men and sealeth their destruction." Or,

to quote from an author who uses more modern dialect, it justifies

Abercromby's remark that "the subject of dreaming appears to be worthy

of careful investigation, and there is much reason to believe that an

extensive collection of authentic facts, carefully analysed, would

unfold principles of very great interest in reference to the philosophy

of the mental powers."

Clairvoyance is a gift, and a comparatively rare gift. It is a gift

which requires to be much more carefully studied and scientifically

examined than it has been hitherto. It is a by-path to many secrets. It

may hold in it the clue to the acquisition of great faculties, hitherto

regarded as forbidden to mere mortals.

Chapter III.

My Own Experience.

It is difficult for those who are not clairvoyant to understand what

those who are clairvoyant describe, often with the most extraordinary

precision and detail. Unfortunately for myself I am not a clairvoyant,

but on one occasion I had an experience which enabled me to understand

something of clairvoyant vision. I had been working late at night, and

had gone to bed at about two o'clock in the morning somewhat tired,

having spent several hours in preparing "Real Ghost Stories" for the

press. I got into bed, but was not able to go to sleep, as usual, as

soon as my head touched the pillow. I suppose my mind had been too much

excited by hard work right up to the moment of going to bed for me

readily to go to sleep. I shut my eyes and waited for sleep to come;

instead of sleep, however, there came to me a succession of curiously

vivid clairvoyant pictures. There was no light in the room, and it was

perfectly dark; I had my eyes shut also. But, notwithstanding the

darkness, I suddenly was conscious of looking at a scene of singular

beauty. It was as if I saw a living miniature about the size of a

magic-lantern slide. At this moment I can recall the scene as if I saw

it again. It was a seaside piece. The moon was shining upon the water,

which rippled slowly on to the beach. Right before me a long mole ran

out into the water. On either side of the mole irregular rocks stood up

above the sea-level. On the shore stood several houses, square and rude,

which resembled nothing that I had ever seen in house architecture. No

one was stirring, but the moon was there, and the sea and the gleam of

the moonlight on the rippling waters was just as if I had been looking

out upon the actual scene. It was so beautiful that I remember thinking

that if it continued I should be so interested in looking at it that I

should never go to sleep. I was wide awake, and at the same time that I

saw the scene I distinctly heard the dripping of the rain outside the

window. Then suddenly, without any apparent object or reason, the scene

changed. The moonlit sea vanished, and in its place I was looking right

into the interior of a reading-room. It seemed as if it had been used as

a schoolroom in the daytime and was employed as a reading-room in the

evening. I remember seeing one reader, who had a curious resemblance to

Tim Harrington, although it was not he, hold up a magazine or book in

his hand and laugh. It was not a picture--it was there. The scene was

just as if you were looking through an opera-glass; you saw the play of

the muscles, the gleaming of the eye, every movement of the unknown

persons in the unnamed place into which you were gazing. I saw all that

without opening my eyes, nor did my eyes have anything to do with it.

You see such things as these, as it were, with another sense, which is

more inside your head than in your eyes. This was a very poor and paltry

experience, but it enabled me to understand better than any amount of

disquisition how it is that clairvoyants see. The pictures were

_apropos_ of nothing; they had been suggested by nothing I had been

reading or talking of, they simply came as if I had been able to look

through a glass at what was occurring somewhere else in the world. I had

my peep and then it passed, nor have I had a recurrence of a similar

experience.

_Crystal-Gazing._

Crystal-gazing is somewhat akin to clairvoyance. There are some people

who cannot look into an ordinary globular bottle without seeing pictures

form themselves, without any effort or will on their part, in the

crystal globe. This is an experience which I have never been able to

enjoy. But I have seen crystal-gazing going on at a table at which I

have been sitting on one or two occasions with rather remarkable

results. The experiences of Miss X. in crystal-gazing have been told at

length and in detail in the "Proceedings of the Psychical Research

Society." On looking into the crystal on two occasions as a test, to see

if she could see me when she was several miles off, she saw, not me, but

a different friend of mine on each occasion, whom she had never seen,

but whom she immediately identified on seeing them afterwards at my

office.

Crystal-gazing seems to be the least dangerous and most simple of all

methods of experimenting. You simply look into a crystal globe the size

of a five-shilling piece, or a water-bottle which is full of clear

water, and is placed so that too much light does not fall upon it, and

then simply look at it. You make no incantations and engage in no

mumbo-jumbo business; you simply look at it for two or three minutes,

taking care not to tire yourself, winking as much as you please, but

fixing your thought upon whoever it is you wish to see. Then, if you

have the faculty, the glass will cloud over with a milky mist, and in

the centre the image is gradually precipitated in just the same way as a

photograph forms on the sensitive plate. At least, the description given

by crystal-gazers as to the way in which the picture appears reminded me

of nothing so much as what I saw when I stood inside the largest camera

in the world, in which the Ordnance Survey photographs its maps at

Southampton.

PART IV.

PREMONITIONS AND SECOND SIGHT.

"But there are many such things in Nature, though we have not the right

key to them. We all walk in mysteries. We are surrounded by an

atmosphere of which we do not know what is stirring in it, or how it is

connected with our own spirit. So much is certain--that in particular

cases we can put out the feelers of our soul beyond its bodily limits,

and that a presentiment, nay, an actual insight into, the immediate

future is accorded to it."--Goethe's "Conversations with Eckermann."

Chapter I.

My Own Extraordinary Premonitions.

If clairvoyance partakes of the nature of the camera obscura, by which

persons can see at a distance that which is going on beyond the direct

range of their vision, it is less easy to suggest an analogy to explain

the phenomena of premonition or second sight. Although I have never seen

a ghost--for none of my hallucinations are scenic--I may fairly claim to

have a place in this census on the ground of the extraordinary

premonitions I have had at various times of coming events. The second

sight of the Highlander is always scenic; he does not hear so much as he

sees. If death is foreshadowed, the circumstances preceding and

following the event pass as in dramatic scene before the eyes of the

seer. It is much as if the seers had access to a camera obscura which

enabled them not only to see that which was occurring at the same moment

in various parts of the world, but in its magic mirror could reflect

events which have not yet been as if they were already existent.

The phenomena of premonition, combined with the faculties of

clairvoyance by which the percipient is able to reproduce the past, make

a great breach in our conceptions of both time and space. To the Deity,

in the familiar line of the hymn, "future things unfolded lie"; but from

time to time future things, sometimes most trivial, sometimes most

important, are unfolded to the eye of mortal man. Why or how one does

not know. All that he can say is that the vision came and went in

obedience to some power over which he had no conscious control. The

faculty of foreseeing, which in its higher forms constitutes no small

part of a prophet's power, is said to exist among certain families, and

to vary according to the locality in which they are living. Men who have

second sight in Skye are said to lose it on the mainland. But residence

in Skye itself is not sufficient to give the Englishman the faculty once

said to be possessed by its natives. In England it is rare, and when it

exists it is often mixed up with curious and somewhat bewildering

superstitions, signs and omens portending death and disaster, which can

hardly be regarded as being more than seventh cousins of the true

faculty.

I can make no claim to the proud prerogative of the seer, but upon

several occasions I have had some extraordinary premonitions of what was

about to happen. I can give no explanation as to how they came, all that

I know is they arrived, and when they arrived I recognised them beyond

all possibility of mistake. I have had three or four very striking and

vivid premonitions in my life which have been fulfilled to the letter. I

have others which await fulfilment. Of the latter I will not speak

here--although I have them duly recorded--for were I to do so I should

be accused of being party to bringing about the fulfilment of my own

predictions. Those which have already been fulfilled, although of no

general importance to any one else, were of considerable importance to

me, as will be seen by the brief outline concerning three of them.

_Leaving Darlington Fore-seen._

The first occasion on which I had an absolutely unmistakable intimation

of the change about to occur in my own circumstances was in 1880, the

year in which I left the editorship of the _Northern Echo_ to

become the assistant of Mr. John Morley[6] on the _Pall Mall

Gazette_.

[6] Now Lord Morley.

On New Year's Day, 1880, it was forcibly impressed upon my mind that I

was to leave Darlington in the course of that year. I remember on the

1st of January meeting a journalistic confrère on my way from Darlington

station to the _Northern Echo_ office. After wishing him a Happy

New Year, I said, "This is the last New Year's Day I shall ever spend in

Darlington; I shall leave the _Northern Echo_ this year." My friend

looked at me in some amazement, and said, "And where are you going to?"

"To London," I replied, "because it is the only place which could tempt

me from my present position, which is very comfortable, and where I have

perfect freedom to say my say." "But," said my friend, somewhat

dubiously, "what paper are you going to?" "I have no idea in the world,"

I said; "neither do I know a single London paper which would offer me a

position on their staff of any kind, let alone one on which I would have

any liberty of utterance. I see no prospect of any opening anywhere. But

I know for certain that before the year is out I shall be on the staff

of a London paper." "Come," said my friend, "this is superstition, and

with a wife and family I hope you will do nothing rashly." "You need not

fear as to that," I said; "I shall not seek any position elsewhere, it

will have to come to me if I have to go to it. I am not going to throw

myself out of a berth until I know where my next place is to be. Humanly

speaking, I see no chance of my leaving Darlington, yet I have no more

doubt than of my own existence that I shall be gone by this time next

year." We parted.

The General Election soon came upon us, and when the time came for

renewing my engagement on the _Northern Echo_, I had no option but

to renew my contract and bind myself to remain at Darlington until July,

1880. Although I signed the contract, when the day arrived on which I

had either to give notice or renew my engagement, I could not shake from

me the conviction that I was destined to leave Darlington at least six

months before my engagement expired. At that time the _Pall Mall

Gazette_ was edited by Mr. Greenwood, and was, of all the papers in

the land, the most antipathetic to the principles upon which I had

conducted the _Northern Echo_.

The possibility of my becoming assistant editor to the editor of the

_Pall Mall Gazette_ seemed at that time about as remote as that of

the Moderator of the Free Church of Scotland receiving a cardinal's hat

from the Pope of Rome. Nevertheless, no sooner had Mr. Gladstone been

seated in power than Mr. George Smith handed over the _Pall Mall

Gazette_ to his son-in-law, Mr. Henry Yates Thompson. Mr. Greenwood

departed to found and edit the _St. James' Gazette_, and Mr. Morley

became editor. Even then I never dreamed of going to the _Pall

Mall_. Two other North-country editors and I, thinking that Mr.

Morley was left in rather a difficulty by the secession of several of

the _Pall Mall_ staff, agreed to send up occasional contributions

solely for the purpose of enabling Mr. Morley to get through the

temporary difficulty in which he was placed by being suddenly summoned

to edit a daily paper under such circumstances.

Midsummer had hardly passed before Mr. Thompson came down to Darlington

and offered me the assistant editorship. The proprietor of the

_Northern Echo_ kindly waived his right to my services in deference

to the request of Mr. Morley. As a result I left the _Northern

Echo_ in September, 1880, and my presentiment was fulfilled. At the

time when it was first impressed upon my mind, no living being probably

anticipated the possibility of such a change occurring in the _Pall

Mall Gazette_ as would render it possible for me to become assistant

editor, so that the presentiment could in no way have been due to any

possible calculation of chances on my part.

_The Editorship of the "Pall Mall Gazette."_

The second presentiment to which I shall refer was also connected with

the _Pall Mall Gazette_, and was equally clear and without any

suggestion from outward circumstances. It was in October, 1883. My wife

and I were spending a brief holiday in the Isle of Wight, and I remember

that the great troopers, which had just brought back Lord Wolseley's

army from the first Egyptian campaign, were lying in the Solent when we

crossed. One morning about noon we were walking in the drizzling rain

round St. Catherine's Point. It was a miserable day, the ground slippery

and the footpath here and there rather difficult to follow. Just as we

were at about the ugliest part of our climb I felt distinctly, as it

were, a voice within myself saying: You will have to look sharp and make

ready, because by a certain date (which as near as I can recollect was

the 16th of March next year) you will have sole charge of the _Pall

Mall Gazette_.

I was just a little startled and rather awed because, as Mr. Morley was

then in full command and there was no expectation on his part of

abandoning his post, the inference which I immediately drew was that he

was going to die. So firmly was this impressed upon my mind that for two

hours I did not like to speak about it to my wife. We took shelter for a

time from the rain, but afterwards, on going home, I spoke on the

subject which filled me with sadness, not without reluctance, and said

to my wife, "Something has happened to me which has made a great

impression upon my mind. When we were beside St. Catherine's Lighthouse

I got into my head that Mr. Morley was going to die." "Nonsense," she

said, "what made you think that?" "Only this," said I, "that I received

an intimation as clear and unmistakable as that which I had when I was

going to leave Darlington, that I had to look sharp and prepare for

taking the sole charge of the _Pall Mall Gazette_ on March 16th

next. That is all, and I do not see how that is likely to happen unless

Mr. Morley is going to die." "Nonsense," said my wife, "he is not going

to die; he is going to get into Parliament, that is what is going to

happen." "Well," said I, "that may be. Whether he dies or whether he

gets into Parliament, the one thing certain to me is that I shall have

sole charge of the _Pall Mall Gazette_ next year, and I am so

convinced of that that when we return to London I shall make all my

plans on the basis of that certainty." And so I did. I do not hedge and

hesitate at burning my boats.

As soon as I arrived at the _Pall Mall Gazette_ office, I announced

to Mr. Thompson, to Mr. Morley, and to Mr. Milner,[7] who was then on

the staff, that Mr. Morley was going to be in Parliament before March

next year, for I need hardly say that I never mentioned my first

sinister intimation. I told Mr. Morley and the others exactly what had

happened, namely, that I had received notice to be ready to take sole

charge of the _Pall Mall Gazette_ by March 16th next. They shrugged

their shoulders, and Mr. Morley scouted the idea. He said he had almost

given up the idea of entering Parliament, all preceding negotiations had

fallen through, and he had come to the conclusion that he would stick to

the _Pall Mall Gazette_. I said that he might come to what

conclusion he liked, the fact remained that he was going to go.

[7] Now Lord Milner.

I remember having a talk at the time with Mr. Milner about it. I

remarked that the worst of people having premonitions is that they

carefully hide up their prophecies until after the event, and then no

one believed in them. "This time no one shall have the least doubt as to

the fact that I have had my premonition well in advance of the fact. It

is now October. I have told everybody whom it concerns whom I know. If

it happens not to come to pass I will never have faith in my

premonitions any more, and you may chaff me as much as you please as to

the superstition. But if it turns up trumps, then please remember that I

have played doubles or quits and won."

Nobody at the office paid much attention to my vision, and a couple of

months later Mr. Morley came to consult me as to some slight change

which he proposed to make in the terms of his engagement which he was

renewing for another year. As this change affected me slightly he came,

with that courtesy and consideration which he always displayed in his

dealings with his staff, to ask whether I should have any objection to

this alteration. As he was beginning to explain what this alteration

would be I interrupted him. "Excuse me, Mr. Morley," said I, "when will

this new arrangement come into effect?" "In May, I think," was the

reply. "Then," said I, "you do not need to discuss it with me. I shall

have sole charge of the _Pall Mall Gazette_ before that time. You

will not be here then, you will be in Parliament." "But," said Mr.

Morley, "that is only your idea. What I want to know is whether you

agree to the changes which I propose to make and which will somewhat

affect your work in the office?" "But," I replied, "it is no use talking

about that matter to me. You will not be here, and I shall be carrying

on the _Pall Mall Gazette_; then what is the use of talking about

it." Then Mr. Morley lifted his chin slightly in the air, and looking at

me with somewhat natural disdain, he asked, "And, pray, do you mean to

tell me that I have not to make a business arrangement because you have

had a vision?" "Not at all," said I; "you, of course, will make what

business arrangements you please,--I cannot expect you to govern your

conduct by my vision;--but as I shall have charge of the paper it is no

use discussing the question with me. You can make what arrangements you

please so far as I am concerned. They are so much waste paper. I ask you

nothing about the arrangement, because I know it will never come into

effect so far as relates to my work on the paper." Finding that I was

impracticable, Mr. Morley left and concluded his arrangement without

consultation. One month later Mr. Ashton Dilke sickened with his fatal

illness, and Mr. Morley was elected on February 24th, 1884, as Liberal

candidate for Newcastle-on-Tyne. I remember that when the news came to

Northumberland Street, the first remark which Mr. Thompson made was,

"Well, Stead's presentiment is coming right after all."

I remember all through that contest, when the issue was for some time

somewhat in doubt, feeling quite certain that if Mr. Morley did not get

in he would die, or he would find some other constituency. I had no

vision as to the success of his candidature at Newcastle. The one thing

certain was that I was to have charge of the paper, and that he was to

be out of it. When he was elected the question came as to what should be

done? The control of the paper passed almost entirely into my hands at

once, and Mr. Morley would have left altogether on the day mentioned in

my vision, had not Mr. Thompson kindly interfered to secure me a holiday

before saddling me with the sole responsibility. Mr. Morley, therefore,

remained till midsummer; but his connection with the paper was very

slight, parliamentary duties, as he understood them, being incompatible

with close day-to-day editing of an evening paper.

Here, again, it could not possibly have been said that my premonition

had any share in bringing about its realisation. It was not known by Mr.

Ashton Dilke's most intimate friends in October that he would not be

able to face another session. I did not even know that he was ill, and

my vision, so far from being based on any calculation of Mr. Morley's

chances of securing a seat in Parliament, was quite independent of all

electoral changes. My vision, my message, my premonition, or whatever

you please to call it, was strictly limited to one point, Mr. Morley

only coming into it indirectly. I was to have charge of certain duties

which necessitated his disappearance from Northumberland Street. Note

also that my message did not say that I was to be _editor_ of the

_Pall Mall Gazette_ on Mr. Morley's departure, nor was I ever in

strict title editor of that paper. I edited it, but Mr. Yates Thompson

was nominally editor-in-chief, nor did I ever admit that I was editor

until I was in the dock at the Old Bailey, when it would have been

cowardly to have seemed to evade the responsibility of a position which

I practically occupied, although, as a matter of fact, the post was

never really conferred upon me.

_My Imprisonment._

The third instance which I will quote is even more remarkable, and

entirely precluded any possibility of my premonition having any

influence whatever in bringing about its realization. During what is

known as the Armstrong trial it became evident from the judge's ruling

that a conviction must necessarily follow. I was accused of having

conspired to take Eliza Armstrong from her parents without their

consent. My defence was that her mother had sold the child through a

neighbour for immoral purposes. I never alleged that the father had

consented, and the judge ruled with unmistakable emphasis that her

mother's consent, even if proved, was not sufficient. Here I may

interpolate a remark to the effect that if Mrs. Armstrong had been asked

to produce her marriage lines the sheet anchor of the prosecution would

have given way, for long after the trial it was discovered that from a

point of law Mr. Armstrong had no legal rights over Eliza, as she was

born out of wedlock. The council in the case, however, said we had no

right to suggest this, however much we suspected it, unless we were

prepared with evidence to justify the suggestion. As at that time we

could not find the register of marriage at Somerset House the question

was not put, and we were condemned largely on the false assumption that

her father had legal rights as custodian of his daughter. And this, as

it happened, was not the case. This, however, by the way.

When the trial was drawing to a close, conviction being certain, the

question was naturally discussed as to what the sentence would be. Many

of my friends, including those actively engaged in the trial on both

sides, were strongly of opinion that under the circumstances it was

certain I should only be bound over in my own recognisance to come up

for judgment when called for. The circumstances were almost

unprecedented; the judge, and the Attorney-General, who prosecuted, had

in the strongest manner asserted that they recognised the excellence of

the motives which had led me to take the course which had landed me in

the dock. The Attorney-General himself was perfectly aware that his

Government could never have passed the Criminal Law Amendment Act--would

never even have attempted to do so--but for what I had done. The jury

had found me guilty, but strongly recommended me to mercy on the ground,

as they said, that I had been deceived by my agent. The conviction was

very general that no sentence of imprisonment would be inflicted.

I was never a moment in doubt. I knew I was going to gaol from the

moment Rebecca Jarrett broke down in the witness-box. This may be said

to be nothing extraordinary; but what was extraordinary was that I had

the most absolute conviction that I was going to gaol for two months. I

was told by those who considered themselves in a position to speak with

authority that I was perfectly safe, that I should not be imprisoned,

and that I should make preparations to go abroad for a holiday as soon

as the trial was over.

To all such representations I always replied by asserting with the most

implicit confidence that I was certain to go to gaol, and that my

sentence would be two months. When, however, on November, 10th, 1885, I

stood in the dock to receive sentence, and received from the judge a

sentence of three months, I was very considerably taken aback. I

remember distinctly that I had to remember where I was in order to

restrain the almost irresistible impulse to interrupt the judge and say,

"I beg your pardon, my lord, you have made a mistake, the sentence ought

to have been _two_ months." But mark what followed. When I had been

duly confined in Coldbath-on-the-Fields Prison, I looked at the little

card which is fastened on the door of every cell giving the name of the

prisoner, his offence, and the duration of his sentence. I found to my

great relief that my presentiment had not been wrong after all. I had,

it is true, been sentenced to three months' imprisonment, but the

sentence was dated from the first day of the sessions. Our trial had

been a very long one, and there had been other cases before it. The

consequence was that the judge's sentence was as near two months as he

possibly could have passed. My actual sojourn in gaol was two months and

seven days. Had he sentenced me to two months' imprisonment I should

only have been in gaol one month and seven days.

These three presentiments were quite unmistakable, and were not in the

least to be confounded with the ordinary uneasy forebodings which come

and go like clouds in a summer sky. Of the premonitions which still

remain unfulfilled I will say nothing, excepting that they govern my

action, and more or less colour the whole of my life. No person can have

had three or four premonitions such as those which I have described

without feeling that such premonitions are the only certainties of the

future. They will be fulfilled, no matter how incredible they may

appear; and amid the endless shifting circumstances of our life, these

fixed points, towards which we are inevitably tending, help to give

steadiness to a career, and a feeling of security to which the majority

of men are strangers.[8] Premonitions are distinct from dreams, although

many times they are communicated in sleep. Whether in the sleeping or

waking stage there are times when mortal men gain, as it were, chance

glimpses behind the veil which conceals the future. Sometimes this

premonition takes the shape of a deep indwelling consciousness, based

not on reason or on observation, that for us awaits some great work to

be done, which we know but dimly, but which is, nevertheless, the one

reality of life.

[8] One of the premonitions referred to by my Father was

fulfilled on that fatal night in April, 1912, when the Titanic

struck an iceberg and sunk with 1,600 souls, and his life on

this plane ended.

He had known for years and stated the fact to many that he would

not die in his bed and that his "passing" would be sudden and

dramatic--that he would, as he put it, "die in his boots."

As to the actual cause or place of his "passing" he had no

premonition--but rather inclined to the idea that he would be

kicked to death in the streets by an angry mob whilst defending

some unpopular cause. E. W. Stead.