CLAIRVOYANCE AND CRYSTAL-GAZING
The word clairvoyance has acquired a decidedly sinister meaning in most
people's minds. It is associated with professional spiritistic mediums,
who lay claim to supernatural powers which they are ready, at a moment's
notice, to exercise for all who are credulous enough to pay the fee they
demand. Newspapers throughout the country daily contain advertisements
of clairvoyants of this type, arrant humbugs, most of them, but often
able, through cunningly acquiring information regarding their "sitters'"
lives and family relationships, to persuade their victims that while
"entranced" they are actually in contact with the "spirit world."
Repeated exposures of their fraudulent methods have not driven them out
of business, but have inspired a widespread and healthy distrust of
their pretensions.
Nevertheless, it would be rash to conclude, as many of us do, that there
is no such thing as genuine clairvoyance, by which is meant the ability
to perceive distant scenes and events as if one were bodily present at
the place of their occurrence. That such a faculty exists, although
usable only on rare occasions, and that there is nothing in the
least supernatural about it, are facts definitely established by the
scientifically trained investigators who have been diligently attacking
this and other psychical problems the past twenty-five years. Their
researches have made it evident that in order to explain genuine
clairvoyant phenomena it is not necessary to postulate the intervention
of "spirits," or the flight through space of the clairvoyant's "astral
body." At most, clairvoyance is simply a special form of telepathy,
differing in degree but not in kind from the phenomena discussed in the
preceding chapter.
There is absolutely no evidence to justify the hypothesis of so-called
"independent clairvoyance," advocated by occultists of every shade of
spiritistic belief, and utilized by unscrupulous tricksters to dazzle
the imagination of their dupes. On the other hand, as I hope to make
convincingly clear, there is plenty of proof that the scenes which
the true clairvoyant perceives, and is frequently able to describe
with graphic detail, are in reality only mental images, visual
hallucinations, developed by the same process that enables any ordinary
telepathic message to be apprehended.
It must be acknowledged, however, that the telepathic connection
is sometimes extremely difficult to trace; as, for example, in the
few indisputable instances, reported by Professor James and other
trustworthy investigators, in which the services of clairvoyants have
been successfully invoked to find the bodies of persons drowned or
otherwise accidentally killed under circumstances seemingly precluding
any one from having knowledge of the place or manner of their death.
A typical case of the kind occurred a few years ago in connection with
the mysterious death of a New Hampshire girl, Miss Bertha Huse, of
Enfield, who was drowned in Mascoma Lake.
For three days after the disappearance of Miss Huse, one hundred and
fifty of her townspeople searched vainly for her. She had last been seen
alive on a long bridge crossing the lake, and it was supposed that she
had fallen from it or had deliberately committed suicide. The waters
were dragged but without result, and failure also attended the efforts
of a professional diver from Boston employed by a sympathetic citizen.
Meantime, in the little town of Lebanon, some miles distant, a Mrs.
Titus fell into a trance, during which she talked to her husband and
described to him a spot in the lake where she said the body of the Huse
girl was lying. So strongly was Mr. Titus impressed by her statements
that, next day, he took her to Enfield, where the diver, following her
instructions, quickly found the body in the place located by her.
Mrs. Titus afterwards gave other, if less sensational, demonstrations of
a similar character; and Professor James, who made a close study of her
case, publicly stated his belief that her experiences form "a decidedly
solid document in favor of the admission of a supernormal faculty of
seership--whatever preciser meaning may later come to be attached to
such a phrase."
There are also on record certain well-attested dreams presenting the
same difficulty of identifying the agent, or sender, of the clairvoyant
vision. A characteristic dream of this sort is reported by Mrs. Alfred
Wedgwood, daughter-in-law of the English savant, Hensleigh Wedgwood.
"I spent the Christmas holidays with my father-in-law in Queen Anne
Street," says Mrs. Wedgwood,[16] "and in the beginning of January I had
a remarkably vivid dream, which I told to him next morning at breakfast.
[16] _Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research_,
vol. vii, pp. 47-48.
"I dreamed I went to a strange house, standing at the corner of a
street. When I reached the top of the stairs I noticed a window opposite
with a little colored glass, short muslin blinds running on a brass rod.
The top of the ceiling had a window veiled by colored muslin. There were
two small shrubs on a little table. The drawing-room had a bow window,
with the same blinds; the library had a polished floor, with the same
blinds.
"As I was going to a child's party at a cousin's, whose house I had
never seen, I told my father-in-law I thought that that would prove to
be the house.
"On January tenth I went with my little boy to the party, and, by
mistake, gave the driver a wrong number. When he stopped at number
twenty, I had misgivings about the house, and remarked to the cabman
that it was not a corner house. The servant could not tell me where Mrs.
H. lived, and had not a blue-book. Then I thought of my dream, and, as
a last resource, I walked down the street, looking up for the peculiar
blinds I had observed in my dream. These I met with at number fifty, a
corner house, and, knocking at the door, was relieved to find that it
was the house of which I was in search.
"On going up-stairs, the room and windows corresponded with what I had
seen in my dream, and the same little shrubs in their pots were standing
on the landing. The window in which I had seen the colored glass was
hidden by the blind being down, but I learned on inquiry that it was
really there."
In this case the dream, though devoid of any dramatic feature, served a
useful purpose, as did a much more spectacular dream occurring to Doctor
A. K. Young, an Irish magistrate and land-owner.[17] In his dream he
suddenly found himself standing at the gate of a friend's park, many
miles from home. Near by were a group of persons, one 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 making a murderous attack on one of his tenants, and he ran to his
rescue.
[17] The evidence relating to this dream will be found in
"Phantasms of the Living," vol. i, pp. 381-383.
"I struck violently at the man on my left," he says, "and then with
greater violence at the man to my right. Finding to my surprise that I
did not knock either of them down, 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 that 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 think
I ever 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 Doctor Young awoke feeling stiff and sore, and his wife
informed him that he had greatly alarmed her during the night by
striking out "as if fighting for his life." He then told her of his
curious dream, and asked her to remember the names of the actors in it
recognized by him. The following day he received a letter from his land
agent stating that the tenant whom he had dreamed he saw attacked had
been found unconscious, and apparently dying, at the very spot where
Doctor Young had in his dream tried to defend him; and that there was
no clue to his assailants.
That night Doctor Young started for the scene of the tragedy, and
immediately upon his arrival applied to the local magistrate for
warrants for the arrest of the three men whom, besides the injured
tenant, he had recognized in the vision. All three, when arrested and
questioned separately, told the same story, confirming the details of
the dream, even to the incident of the presence of the woman with the
basket. They had said nothing about the affair because they were afraid
it would make trouble for them, but they denied any complicity in it,
asserting that while walking home with them between eleven and twelve
at night, the tenant--who, by the way, ultimately recovered--had been
attacked by a couple of strangers, whose companions had prevented them
from interfering to protect him.
According to Mrs. Young, it was between eleven and twelve o'clock on the
night of the fight that her sleeping husband had frightened her by his
violent actions.
Here the telepathic impulse causing the clairvoyant dream may have
come either from the injured tenant himself or from one of the three
spectators known to Doctor Young. The difficulty is to conceive an
adequate reason for any of them thinking of him, even subconsciously.
But, granting for argument's sake the possibility of independent
clairvoyance, the still more thorny question at once arises why his
"astral body" should have chosen to journey to that precise spot at
that precise moment.
The obstacles in the way of such a conception as independent
clairvoyance are too serious to be overcome. Nor is it necessary
to resort to it, in view of the fact that in the vast majority of
clairvoyant cases it is possible to establish definitely the telepathic
association.
Here, by way of illustration, is a typical case, fully as impressive as
Doctor Young's, but leaving no doubt as to its origin. It was reported
to the Society for Psychical Research by Mrs. Hilda West, daughter of
Sir John Crowe, who was at the time British consul general for Norway.
"My father and brother," runs Mrs. West's narrative, "were on a journey
during the winter. I was expecting them home, without knowing the exact
day of their return. I had gone to bed at the usual time, about eleven
P. M. Some time in the night I had a vivid dream, which made a great
impression on me.
"I dreamed I was looking out of a window, when I saw father driving in
a Spids sledge, followed in another by my brother. They had to pass a
cross-road, on which another traveler was driving very fast, also in a
sledge with one horse. Father seemed to drive on without observing the
other fellow, who would, without fail, have driven over father if he had
not made his horse rear, so that I saw my father drive under the hoofs
of the horse. Every moment I expected the horse would fall down and
crush him. I cried out 'Father! Father!' and woke in a great fright.
"The next morning my father and brother returned. I said to them: 'I am
so glad to see you arrive quite safely, as I had such a dreadful dream
about you last night.' My brother said: 'You could not have been in
greater fright about him than I was.' And then he related to me what had
happened, which tallied exactly with my dream. My brother in his fright,
when he saw the feet of the horse over father's head, called out: 'Oh,
father! Father!'"
Compare with this the very similar instance of clairvoyance in a waking
or semi-waking state, experienced by Mrs. Helen Avery Robinson, of
Anchorage, Kentucky, and communicated by her, with a corroborative
letter from her son, to Professor Hyslop:
"My son and a friend had driven across the country to dine and spend the
evening with friends. The rest of the household had retired for the
night. I was awakened by the telephone, and looked at the clock, finding
it eleven-thirty. I knew my son would soon be in, and thought of a
window down-stairs, which I felt might not have been locked, and I
determined to remain awake and ask my son to make sure it was secure.
"As I lay waiting and listening for him, I suddenly saw their vehicle, a
light break-cart, turn over, my son jump out, land on his feet, run to
the struggling horse's head, his friend hold on to the lines, and in a
moment it was gone and I knew all was right and felt no disturbance.
"I met my son as he came in, and spoke of the window. He said: 'We
tipped over, mother.' I replied: 'Yes, I know it. I saw you.' And
described what I saw, which he said was just as it happened. I did not
see them before they started out, as his friend called for him with his
horse and vehicle, so I did not know in what style they went."
It should be added that the spot where the cart was overturned was so
far from the Robinson house that, even had it been broad daylight, Mrs.
Robinson could not possibly have witnessed the accident from her
bedroom.
In the same way a young man named Frederic Marks, in Wallingford,
Connecticut, clairvoyantly--and most dramatically--beheld an accident
occurring to his brother, Charles, on Oneida Lake, in New York State,
hundreds of miles from Wallingford.[18] Charles Marks and a friend,
Arthur Bloom, had gone for a sail on the lake, were caught in a storm,
and almost wrecked through the giving way of their boom. Charles,
however, springing into the bow, managed to make the boom fast again,
and they succeeded in running to shore.
[18] The evidence relating to this case is published in the
_Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research_,
vol. vii, pp. 359-364.
It was when their danger was greatest that they were seen clairvoyantly
by Frederic Marks, who, it being a rainy afternoon in Wallingford, was
lounging in his room.
"I do not think I fell asleep," he testifies, "nor did I seem fully
awake. But all at once I seemed to be facing a severe storm of wind and
rain. As I looked into the storm a small boat with a sail came, driven
helplessly along through a seething, boiling mass of water. Two young
men were in it, one trying to steer and control the boat, the other
apparently trying to dip out water and work on the sail.
"One of the two, in a moment of greatest peril, tried to tear down the
sail from its mast. The face of my brother came clearly into view, with
an expression on it that remains with me now. The boat righted and sped
on. I saw a low shore that it was driving toward. The boat grew fainter
as it neared the shore, and consciousness came back to me, and, whatever
it was, whether a dream or a vision, passed away."
Fortunately, young Marks did not keep his singular experience to
himself, but hastened down-stairs and told his employer--a Mr. Bristol,
with whom he was living--of what he had seen. He was laughed at, of
course, and assured that it was "only a dream." But three or four days
afterward a letter arrived from Charles Marks, bringing unexpected
verification of his brother's story.
Even more detailed, in point of clairvoyant perception of a distant
scene, is the strange dream of a physician, Doctor C. Golinski, of
Krementchug, Russia. It was Doctor Golinski's custom to take a nap
during the day, and one afternoon he lay down on a sofa as usual, about
half-past three. While asleep, he says:[19]
[19] _Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research_,
vol. vii, pp. 39-41.
"I dreamed that the doorbell rang, and that I had the usual rather
disagreeable sensation that I must get up and go to some sick person.
Then I found myself transported directly into a little room with dark
hangings. To the right of the door leading into the room is a chest of
drawers, and on this I see a little paraffin lamp of a special pattern.
To the left of the door I see a bed, on which lies a woman suffering
from severe hemorrhage. I do not know how I come to know that she has
a hemorrhage, but I know it. I examine her, but rather to satisfy my
conscience than for any other reason, as I know beforehand how things
are, although no one speaks to me. Afterward I dream vaguely of medical
assistance which I give, and then I awake."
It was then half-past four. About ten minutes later the doorbell rang,
and Doctor Golinski was summoned to a patient. His surprise may be
imagined when he found that he was ushered into the identical room of
his dream. So astonished was he that he immediately approached the bed
on which his patient was lying, and said to her:
"You are suffering from a hemorrhage."
"Yes," was her reply, in a tone of great astonishment. "But how do you
know it?"
She then told him, in answer to his questions, that the hemorrhage had
set in about one o'clock, but had not been severe enough to alarm her
until between three and four; and that it was not until nearly half-past
four that she had decided to send for him.
Nearly every instance of spontaneous clairvoyance that is sufficiently
authenticated to compel credence, resembles these cases, and the
similarity between them and cases of ordinary telepathic hallucination,
as described in the chapter on telepathy, is too striking, it seems to
me, to leave any doubt regarding their true nature. The only points of
difference are that there is a greater amount of detail in clairvoyant
visions, and that the percipient often experiences a sensation of
being actually present at the scene beheld. But this latter fact is
easily comprehensible when we remember that the same sensation of
"otherplaceness" is often experienced in dreams that have no clairvoyant
significance, and experienced with an equal feeling of reality,
dissipated only when the dreamer awakes. As to the greater amount of
detail, it is only necessary to assume that in clairvoyant cases the
telepathic action is intensified by some favoring condition in the
percipient's mind, just as some non-clairvoyant dreams are more detailed
and vivid than others.
Besides which, the telepathic basis of clairvoyance has been
experimentally demonstrated. One of the investigators for the Society
for Psychical Research, Mr. G. A. Smith, once hypnotized a lady and
requested her to "look into" the business office of a friend of his and
tell him what she saw there. Much to his surprise she immediately began
to describe the office with great exactness, although he was positive
she had never visited it.
It then occurred to him that possibly she was acquiring her knowledge of
it by telepathy from his own mind, and to test this theory he thought of
an imaginary umbrella, which he pictured to himself as lying open on his
friend's writing table. In a minute or so, the clairvoyant uttered a cry
of astonishment, and exclaimed:
"Why, how strange! There's a large umbrella open on the table!"
Usually, however, experiments like this fail, the entranced clairvoyant
being able to discriminate between the thoughts which correspond to
reality and those which are wholly imaginary. But that the process
involved in clairvoyance is unquestionably telepathic has been otherwise
proved by the fact that when conditions are imposed on clairvoyants
absolutely excluding the possibility of thought transference from one
mind to another, they are conspicuously unsuccessful in their efforts to
obtain results. If, as often happens, they are able to describe distant
places which they have never seen but with which other persons are
necessarily familiar, they are nevertheless unable to state, for
example, the number on a bank note, chosen at random from among others
and placed in their hands in a sealed box without anybody previously
ascertaining just what the number is.
Such a test, if successful, would be decisive proof of independent
clairvoyance; but I have yet to learn of any clairvoyant who has been
able to meet it, although the effort has been frequently made. It should
be pointed out that, in order to give it evidential value, there must
not be the slightest possibility of any one even glancing at the bank
note before it is put into the sealed box; for, as has already been
said, it is now known that the eye is far keener than we usually
realize, and that the merest glance may often put us in possession of
facts which, sinking into the memory, may afterward emerge to astonish
and perhaps mystify us. Once they were lodged in the mind, a clairvoyant
could, of course, obtain these facts from us telepathically, and thus
achieve a seeming success even in the bank note or some similar test.
Indeed, this power of subconscious perception is of itself sufficient
to explain many undoubtedly genuine instances of clairvoyance. There
is obviously no need to go beyond it to account for such a clairvoyant
dream as the following, reported by a lady who has declined to allow
her name to be published:
"A number of years ago I was invited to visit a friend who lived at a
large and beautiful country seat on the Hudson. Shortly after my arrival
I started, with a number of other guests, to make a tour of the very
extensive grounds. We walked for an hour or more, and thoroughly
explored the place. Upon my return to the house, I discovered that I had
lost a gold cuff-stud, which I valued for association's sake. I merely
remembered that I wore it when we started out, and did not think of or
notice it again until my return, when it was missing. As it was quite
dark, it seemed useless to search for it, especially as it was the
season of autumn and the ground was covered with dead leaves.
"That night I dreamed that I saw a withered grapevine clinging to a
wall, and with a pile of dead leaves at its base. Underneath the leaves,
in my dream, I distinctly saw my stud gleaming. The following morning I
asked the friends with whom I had been walking the previous afternoon
if they remembered seeing any such wall and vine, as I did not. They
replied that they could not recall anything answering the description. I
did not tell them why I asked, as I felt somewhat ashamed of the dream;
but, during the morning, I made some excuse to go out on the grounds
alone. I walked hither and thither, and, after a long time, I suddenly
came upon the wall and vine exactly as they looked in my dream.
"I had not the slightest recollection of seeing them, or passing by them
on the previous day. The dead leaves at the base were lying heaped up,
as in my dream. I approached cautiously, feeling rather uncomfortable
and decidedly silly, and pushed them aside. I had scattered a large
number of the leaves when a gleam of gold struck my eye, and there lay
the stud, exactly as in my dream."[20]
[20] _Proceedings of the American Society for Psychical
Research_, vol. i, pp. 361-362.
Akin to this is an exceptionally interesting case that was reported to
me by a young lady attending college at Greeley, Colorado. Her father,
it appears, had sent her a check, which for a day or two she delayed
cashing. Then, being without money, she looked for it in the place where
she supposed she had put it, but, to her dismay, discovered that it was
not there. A thorough search of her room failed to bring it to light,
and, as it was not a personal check of her father's, she was greatly
worried, thinking that it might be impossible to duplicate it.
A couple of nights later she had a curious dream in which she saw
herself standing in front of a bookcase in the college library. On a
certain shelf were five books, one bound in blue, another in yellow,
and between them three with a white binding. She took down one of the
white-covered volumes, opened it idly, and in the middle of the book
found her check.
Next morning she awoke with no memory of the dream, nor did she recall
it when, later in the day, she visited the college library and came
across this identical placing of books. It recurred to her only when she
glanced into one of the white-covered volumes. Feeling rather "foolish,"
and also not a little apprehensive, she took down a second volume of the
same set, opened it, and there, sure enough, was the missing check!
She then remembered that the book in which it was found had been in
her room for some hours the day she received her father's letter. What
happened, I have no doubt, was that she absentmindedly slipped the
check into the book, and then, so far as her upper consciousness was
concerned, forgot all about it. But subconsciously she would remember
and subconsciously would be reminded of it the day before the dream
when, in the college library, she happened to see the same book again,
without, perchance, any conscious knowledge of seeing it. That night, in
sleep, her mind busied itself once more with the problem of the missing
check, this time to good purpose.
Very similar is a dream for which I am indebted to Mr. Andrew Lang, who
got it from the dreamer, an English lawyer. This gentleman had sat up
late to write letters, and about half-past twelve went out to post them.
On his return he missed a check for a large amount received by him
during the day. He searched everywhere in vain, went to bed, and soon
fell asleep. Then he dreamed that he saw the check curled around an area
railing not far from his own door. Waking, he was so impressed that,
although it was not yet daylight, he got up, dressed, walked out of the
house, and found the check at the spot indicated by his dream.
In another case a Californian, visiting in Sullivan County, New York,
lost a gold ring given him by his sister. That night he dreamed he saw
it lying in the sand beneath a swing, in which he had been sitting in
the afternoon. It was actually there, as he ascertained by looking
next day. Similarly, a clerk in a customs house recovered a valuable
document, the loss of which would have cost him his position. And the
wife of a clergyman, the Reverend W. F. Brand, of Emmorton, Maryland,
had revealed to her in a dream the hiding-place of a sum of money which,
six months before, she had put away at her husband's request, but had
afterward accidentally slipped into a bundle of shawls.
Decidedly, we not only see more than we are aware of, but we also
remember more and for a far longer time than is usually supposed.
Which brings me to another point of great importance to the student of
clairvoyance and other psychical problems, and also, as will appear
in a later chapter, of tremendous significance in affairs of everyday
life. The tenacity of memory is such that nothing one sees is really
forgotten. It merely slips, as it were, into some subterranean region
of the mind, whence, days and months and even years afterward, it may
be recalled. Of this we have incontrovertible proof in the phenomena
of crystal-gazing, a species of clairvoyance in which, by gazing into
a crystal or a glass of water, or any small body with a reflecting
surface, it is sometimes possible to perceive hallucinatory pictures
of people and places situated far beyond the gazer's normal field of
vision, and occasionally depicting events occurring at the moment they
are seen in the crystal.
Occultists, as will readily be understood, set great store by
crystal-gazing, finding in it positive proof of spirit action. But again
it is unnecessary, even in the most extraordinary instances recorded,
to adopt any other explanatory hypothesis than that of telepathy, and
in most cases the source of the visions can be traced directly to
latent memories in the gazer's own mind.
This has been beautifully demonstrated by Miss Goodrich-Freer, a lady
who developed the faculty of crystal-gazing for the express purpose of
studying and analyzing its hallucinatory images. Not everybody, I should
perhaps say, can attain the degree of mental passivity requisite to
seeing pictures in the crystal, but fortunately for the cause of
scientific progress, Miss Goodrich-Freer was eminently successful.
With the aid of her crystal, Miss Goodrich-Freer has frequently recalled
dates and other information which she had forgotten and wished to
remember; and on at least one occasion, under exceptionally peculiar
circumstances, she was enabled to supply an address which was of no
special interest to her, but was of special interest to a relative. Here
is her own account of the episode:[21]
[21] In the _Proceedings of the Society for Psychical
Research_, vol. viii, p. 489.
"A relative of mine was talking one day with a caller in the room next
to that in which I was reading, and beyond wishing that they were
_farther_, I paid no attention to anything they said, and certainly
could have declared positively that I did not hear a word. Next day I
saw in a polished mahogany table, '1, Earl's Square, Notting Hill.' I
had no idea whose this address might be; but some days later my relative
remarked: 'H. (the caller aforesaid) has left Kensington. She told me
her address the other day, but I did not write it down.' It occurred to
me to ask: 'Was it, 1, Earl's Square?' And this turned out to be the
case."
On another occasion, she says in the long report she has made on the
subject to the Society for Psychical Research, she saw in the crystal
the picture of a dark-colored wall, covered with white jessamine. She
had been taking a walk that morning through the streets of London, and
she thought that perhaps the crystal image represented some spot she had
passed in her walk, though this seemed unlikely, both because she could
not remember having seen such a wall, and because jessamine-covered
walls are by no means common in London streets. But the next day she
retraced her steps, and presently came to the identical scene of her
crystal vision, the sight of it bringing the immediate recollection that
at the moment she passed this spot the day before she had been engaged
in absorbing conversation with a friend, and her attention was wholly
preoccupied. The fact, however, of its reproduction in the crystal made
it evident that, by the subtle power of subconscious perception she had
obtained a perfect mental image of it.
Similarly, while busied one day with household accounts, she opened the
drawer of her writing table to get her bank-book, and her hand came
in contact with her crystal. Welcoming the suggestion of a change in
occupation, she took it up, and began to gaze into it. But, she says:
"Figures were still uppermost, and the crystal had nothing more
attractive to show me than the combination seven-six-nine-four.
Dismissing this as probably the number of the cab I had driven in that
day, or a chance grouping of the figures with which I had been occupied,
I laid aside the crystal and took up my bank-book, which I certainly had
not seen for some months, and found, to my surprise, that the number
on the cover was 7694. Had I wished to recall the figures, I should,
without doubt, have failed, and could not even have guessed at the
number of digits or the value of the first figure."
It is not surprising to find Miss Goodrich-Freer adding:
"Certainly, one result of crystal-gazing is to teach one to abjure the
verb 'to forget' in all its moods and tenses."
Still it is possible that in the act of opening the drawer, she caught a
glimpse, without realizing it, of the number on the bank-book. There are
many cases, though, in her experience and in the experience of other
crystal-gazers, proving absolutely that latent memories dating back even
to childhood may be thus recalled; and similar evidence is forthcoming
from hallucinations experienced without the aid of a crystal. A
"psychic" with whom Professor Hyslop has often experimented, and whose
home is in Brooklyn, used to have a recurrent visual hallucination of a
bright blue sky overhead, a garden with a high fence, and a peculiar
chain pump in the garden, situated at the back of the house.
Some time later she left Brooklyn to pay a visit to her girlhood home in
Ohio, where she met a lady who invited her to tea. After tea they went
into the garden, and there, to her amazement, she saw the high fence
and the chain pump of her hallucination. She felt quite sure that she
had never been in the place until that day, and it looked very much
as though she had been given a supernatural revelation of it. But the
mystery was solved on her return to Brooklyn.
Telling her mother of her odd experience, she asked if she thought there
was any possibility she could have visited that particular house and
garden in her younger days.
"Why, yes," was the unexpected reply. "When you were a little girl, two
or three years old, I often took you to it."
But not all crystal visions may thus be attributed to the emergence of
subconscious perceptions or the recrudescence of forgotten memories.
There are some in which the telepathic action of mind upon mind is
clearly manifested, and in which the crystal seems to serve as a
mechanical aid, enabling the percipient to become aware of the
telepathic message. In no case, however, as I have already said, is it
necessary to go beyond telepathy to find an adequate explanation.
The same applies to the still more singular phenomena to which we shall
turn next--the phenomena of automatic speaking and writing, regarded
by many as affording incontrovertible proof of the validity of the
spiritistic belief that the dead can and do communicate with the
living.