There are instances, then, of people occasionally having visions which
seem to be in some way caused by departed persons. Sometimes the
percipient has only one experience of the kind in his life; more often
he has several, for this seeing power is somehow temperamental--a sort
of gift, like the alleged second sight of the Highlander. It was well
known to St Paul, as his reference to "discerning of spirits" shows
(1 _Cor._, xii). With some people the experience is fairly common. And
in a very few persons the gift is so strong that it is to some extent
under control. I say to some extent, and I wish to use words very
carefully and to have them understood very clearly at this point. I
know several people, who by putting themselves into a passive and
receptive condition, but without any trance state, can generally get
evidential messages from somewhere; that is, messages embodying facts
which the sensitive did not normally know. And some of this matter
seems to be due to telepathy from the dead. But it cannot be done at
will. I believe that professional mediums who sit for all comers for a
fee are often, and indeed generally, quite honest people, but that they
cannot distinguish between their own imaginations and what really comes
through. Professor Murray, when saying what came into his head, did not
know whether it was right or not; that is, he did not know, until he was
told, whether he had really got the thing telepathically or whether
it was an idea thrown up by his own imagination. So with professional
mediums. They give out the ideas that come to them, but as a rule they
cannot distinguish; and, the power not being entirely under control,
there is often a large mixture of their own imagination.
I have, however, the good fortune to be acquainted with a sensitive who
has the unusual power of being able to distinguish; and this is a great
advantage, rendering verbatim note-taking much easier, and eliminating
any necessity for balancing hits against misses. If nothing comes, he
sits silent or talks ordinarily. If he gets anything, it is practically
always correct. The amount of his success varies, and he will not sit
for people in general. I know many people who have asked him to visit
them, offering handsome payment, but he usually declines. He says he
cannot do it to order, and would be upset if he failed and caused
disappointment. He comes to me, however, because I understand and
always tell him that he need not worry if he gets nothing. In fact the
meeting is regarded as a social call and not as a seance. We talk for
a while about ordinary things, and in half-an-hour or so, if the medium
can get his mind placid enough and is in good trim generally, he will
begin to see and describe spirits present, often getting their names
and all sorts of details. These come for the most part in flashes, and
I take down every word he says, in shorthand, without giving any help
or indication as to whether he is right or wrong. Sometimes in a whole
afternoon he will have only one or two of these gleams, and on one
occasion he got nothing. With conditions at their best he will talk
almost continuously for an hour, the flashes following each other
closely; and sometimes a spirit will remain visible for several
minutes, moving about the room. About a dozen of these interviews are
described in detail in my book _Psychical Investigations_, and other
investigations of the same sensitive by two very able friends of mine
in another town are described in _New Evidences in Psychical Research_.
Perhaps one or two illustrative incidents may make things clearer.
The first time Wilkinson came to see me he said, in the middle of
ordinary talk, that he saw with me the form of a woman who looked about
fifty-four, and whom he described, saying further that her name was
Mary. Taking up a piece of paper and a pencil, he wrote in an abstracted
manner the words "Roundfield Place". He looked at it, without reading
it aloud, then said: "That will be a house", and proceeded to write
something else. I got up to look, and found "Roundfield Place. Yes" (the
"Yes" written in answer to his remark "That will be a house") and a
signature "Mary". Now it happens that my mother's name was Mary,
that the description applied to her, and that she died, in 1886, at
Roundfield Place, not the house to which Wilkinson came, whither we
removed in 1897. Other similar things were said, about other deceased
relatives, all true.
In this kind of thing it is our duty to stick to known causes before
admitting unknown, and my first supposition was that Wilkinson had
primed himself with information. He could have ascertained most of the
things by local inquiry, though it would not be very easy, for my mother
had been dead twenty-two years, and only middle-aged or elderly people
would remember her. Further interviews with him, however, soon carried
me beyond the fraud theory--for holding which I now apologise to him,
feeling considerably ashamed--for he gave me messages from many people
whose association with me I feel sure he did not know, and also some
family matter of a very private kind, characteristic of the spirit who
purported to be communicating, but known to only four living people. I
then fell back on telepathy, assuming that the medium was reading my
mind. But, pursuing my investigations, I received information which I
did not know but which turned out true. For example, Wilkinson on one
occasion described a Ruth and Jacob Robertshaw, giving details about
them and saying that Ruth had a very spiritual appearance, with a sort
of radiance about her, indicating that she had been a very good woman,
and giving other particulars. All this meant nothing to me, for the
names were unknown. But, as I had on some other occasions found that
spirits were described who were relatives of my last visitor, I asked
the person who had last entered the room--except inhabitants of the
house--whether she had known people of these names. It turned out that
they were connexions of hers with whom she had been in close touch
during life, and everything said by the medium was correct. Now in the
first place this incident ruled out fraud, for Miss North's visit had
occurred three days before, and Wilkinson would have had to have
detectives watching both doors of my house, from first thing in the
morning to the last thing at night, to find out who my last visitor
had been; or he would have had to be in league with a servant or a
neighbour, and even thus could hardly have succeeded, for servants
are sometimes out--moreover, similar things have happened during the
_regime_ of different servants--and neighbours could not easily watch
both doors during dark winter evenings. Further, our neighbours are
friends of ours, non-spiritualists, and not acquainted with Wilkinson.
And, after getting to know who my last visitor was, information about
her deceased relatives would have had to be hunted up. I could give
further reasons for believing that fraud was an untenable hypothesis,
but I must be brief. What, next, about telepathy? Well, I had no
conscious knowledge of these people, so the medium could not have got
his information from my conscious mind. It is possible to assume that
I knew it subliminally, and that the medium abstracted it from those
hidden levels of my mind. This is a guess, but a legitimate guess. It
is the guess that Miss Dougall (author of _Pro Christo et Ecclesia_)
makes in criticising this very incident in the book of essays called
_Immortality_, by Canon Streeter and others. She suggests that on the
occasion of Miss North's visit my mind had photographed the contents
of hers, without my knowing it, and that the medium developed the
photograph and read off the required information. It may be so, but it
seems to me far-fetched. Miss Dougall, I may add, is a member of the
S.P.R., and her criticism is instructed criticism, worthy of careful
attention. But I cannot accept her theory, which seems to me more
wonderful and to require more credulity than the spirit theory. For it
is to be observed that the assumed mind-reading is of a character quite
different from anything that has been experimentally established. In
telepathic experiments, like those of Professor Murray, some incarnate
person is _trying_ to communicate the thought. This is not the case in
my sittings with Wilkinson. I am not trying to communicate anything to
him; very much the contrary. And I do not find, after long and careful
observation, any parallelism between what he says and what I happen to
be thinking about. There is, in short, no evidence for the supposition
that my mind is read. The evidence points unmistakably to discarnate
agency--telepathy _from the dead_.