serious attention as his candor was above suspicion, and his judgment
held in the highest esteem. He formed part of an embassy sent to Henry
IV. of France, and had been two days in Paris, thinking constantly and
anxiously of his wife, whom he had left ill in London. Towards noon he
suddenly fell into a kind of trance, and when he recovered his senses
related to his friends that he had seen his beloved wife pass him twice,
as she walked across the room, her hair dishevelled and her child dead
in her arms. When she passed him the second time, she looked sadly into
his face and then disappeared. His fears were aroused to such a degree
by this vision that he immediately dispatched a special messenger to
England, and twelve days later he received the afflicting news that on
that day and at that hour his wife had, after great and protracted
suffering, been delivered of a still-born infant (Beaumont, p. 96). In
Macnish's excellent work on "Sleep," we find (p. 180) the following
account: "A Mr. H. went one day, apparently in the enjoyment of full
health, down the street, when he saw a friend of his, Mr. C., who was
walking before him. He called his name aloud, but the latter pretended
not to hear him, and steadily walked on. H. hastened his steps to
overtake him, but his friend also hurried on, and thus remained at the
same distance from him; thus the two walked for some time, till suddenly
Mr. C. entered a gateway, and when Mr. H. was about to follow, slammed
the door violently in his face. Perfectly amazed at such unusual
conduct, Mr. H. opened the door and looked down the long passage, upon
which it opened, but saw no one. Determined to solve the mystery, he
hurried to his friend's house, and there, to his great astonishment,
learnt that Mr. C. had been confined to his bed for some days. It was
not until several weeks later that the two friends met at the house of a
common acquaintance; Mr. H. told Mr. C. of his adventure, and added
laughingly, that having seen his double, he was afraid Mr. C. would not
live long. These words were received by all with hearty laughter; but
only a few days after this meeting the unfortunate friend was seized
with a violent illness, to which he speedily succumbed." What is most
remarkable, however, is that Mr. H. also followed him, quite
unexpectedly, soon to the grave. Whatever may have been the nature of
the event itself, it cannot be doubted that the minds of both friends
were far more deeply impressed by its mysteriousness than they would
probably have been willing to acknowledge to themselves, and that the
nervous excitement thus produced brought out an illness lurking already
in their system, and rendered it fatal. A very remarkable case was that
of a distinguished diplomat, related by A. Moritz in his "Psychology."
He was lying in bed, sleepless, when he noticed his pet dog becoming
restless, and apparently disturbed to the utmost by a rustling and
whisking about in the room, which he heard but could not explain.
Suddenly a kind of white vapor rose by his bed-side, and gradually
assumed the outline and even the features of his mother; he especially
noticed a purple ribbon in her cap. He jumped out of bed and endeavored
to embrace her, but she fled before him and as suddenly vanished,
leaving a bright glare at the place where she had disappeared. It was
found, afterwards, that at that hour--10 o'clock A. M.--the old lady had
been ill unto death, lying still and almost breathless on her couch; she
had felt the anguish of death in her heart, and had thought so anxiously
of her son and her sister, that her first question when she recovered
was, whether she had not perhaps been visited by the two persons who had
thus occupied her whole mind. It was also ascertained that, contrary to
a life's habit, she had on that day worn a purple ribbon in her
night-cap. A German professor once succeeded in establishing the
connection which undoubtedly exists between the will of certain persons
and their appearance to others. He had only been married a year in 1823,
when he was compelled to leave his wife and to undertake a long and
perilous journey. Once, sitting in a peculiarly sad and dejected mood
alone in a room of his hotel, he longed so ardently for the society of
his wife, that he felt in his heart as if, by a great effort of will, he
should be able to see her. He made the effort, and, behold! he saw her
sitting at her work-table, busily engaged in sewing, and himself, as was
his habit, on a low foot-stool by her side. She tried to conceal her
work from his eyes. A few days later a messenger reached him, sent by
his wife, who was in great consternation and anxiety. On that day she
also had suddenly seen her husband seated by her side, attentively
watching her at work, and continuing there till her father entered the
room, upon which the professor had instantly disappeared. When he
returned to his house he made minute inquiries as to the work he had
seen in the hands of his wife, and this was of such peculiar character
as to exclude all ideas of a mere dream on his part. Here also the
supreme will of the professor must have endowed him for the moment with
exceptional powers, enabling him to make himself visible to his wife,
while the latter, with the ardent love which bound her to her husband,
was at the same moment sympathetically excited, and thus enabled to
second his will, and to behold him as she was accustomed to see him most
frequently.
Owen in his "Footfalls on the Boundary of Another World," reports fully
a remarkable case here repeated only in outline. Robert Bruce, thirty
years old, served as mate on board a merchant vessel on the line between
Liverpool and St. John in New Brunswick. When the ship was near the
banks he was one day about noon busy calculating the longitude, and
thinking that the captain was in his cabin--the next to his own--he
called out to him: How have you found it? Looking back over his
shoulder, he saw the captain writing busily at his desk, and as he heard
no answer, he went in and repeated his question. To his horror the man
at the desk raised his head and revealed to him the face of an entire
stranger, who regarded him fixedly. In a state of great excitement he
rushed to the upper deck, where he found the captain and told him what
had occurred. Thereupon both went down; there was no one in the cabin,
but on the captain's slate an unknown hand had written these words:
Steer NW.! No effort was spared to solve the mystery; the whole vessel
was searched from end to end, but no stranger was discovered; even the
handwriting of every member of the crew was examined, but nothing found
resembling in the least degree the mysterious warning. After some
hesitation the captain decided, as nothing was likely to be lost by so
doing, to obey the behest and ordered the helmsman to steer northwest. A
few hours later they encountered the wreck of a vessel fastened to an
iceberg, with a large crew and a number of passengers, in expectation of
certain death. When the unfortunate men were brought back by the ship's
boats, Bruce suddenly started in utter amazement, for in one of the
saved men he recognized, by dress and features, the person he had seen
at the captain's desk in the cabin. The stranger was requested to write
down the words: Steer NW.! and when the words were compared with those
still standing on the slate, they were identical! Upon inquiry it turned
out that the shipwrecked man had at noon fallen into a deep sleep,
during which he had seen a ship approaching to their rescue. When he had
been waked half an hour later he had confidently assured his
fellow-sufferers that they would be rescued, describing even the vessel
that was to come to their assistance. Words cannot convey the amazement
of the unfortunate men when they saw, a few hours afterwards, a ship
bear down upon them, which bore all the marks predicted by their
companion, and the latter assured Robert Bruce that everything on board
the vessel appeared to him perfectly familiar.
Cases in which men have been seen at the same time at two different
places are not less frequent, though here the explanation is much less
easy. A French girl, Emilie Sagee, had even to pay a severe penalty for
such a peculiarity: she was continually met with at various places at
once, and as she could not give a satisfactory excuse for being at one
place when her duties required her to be at another, she was suspected
of sad misconduct. She lived as governess in a boarding-school in
Livonia, and the girls of the institute saw her at the same time sitting
among them and walking below in the garden by the side of a friend, and
not unfrequently two Miss Sagees would be seen standing before the
blackboard, looking exactly alike and performing the same motions,
although one of them only wrote with chalk on the board. Once, while she
was helping a friend to lace her dress behind, the latter looked into
the mirror and to her horror saw two persons standing there, whereupon
she fell down fainting. The poor French girl lost her place not less
than nineteen times on account of her double existence (Owen,
"Footfalls," etc., p. 348).
Occasionally this "double" appears to others at the same time that it is
seen by the owner himself. Thus the Empress Elizabeth, of Russia, was
seen by a Count O. and the Imperial Guards, seated in full regalia on
her throne, in the throne-room, while she was lying fast asleep in her
bed. The vision was so distinct, and the terror of the beholders so
great, that the Empress was actually waked, and informed of what had
happened, by her lady-in-waiting, who had herself seen the whole scene.
The dauntless Empress did not hesitate for a moment; she dressed hastily
and went to the throne-room; when the doors were thrown open, she saw
herself, as the others had seen her; but so far from being terrified
like her servants, she ordered the guard to fire at the apparition. When
the smoke had passed away, the hall was empty--but the brave Empress
died a few months latter (_Bl. aus Prevost_, V. p. 92). Jung Stilling
mentions another striking illustration. A young lieutenant, full of
health and in high spirits, returns home from a merry meeting with old
friends. As he approaches the house in which he lives, he sees lights in
his room and, to his great terror, himself in the act of being undressed
by his servant; as he stands and gazes in speechless wonder, he sees
himself walk to his bed and lie down. He remains for some time
dumbfounded and standing motionless in the street, till at last a dull,
heavy crash arouses him from his revery. He makes an effort, goes to the
door and rings the bell; his servant, who opens the door, starts back
frightened, and wonders how he could have dressed so quickly and gone
out, as he had but just helped him to undress. When they enter the
bedroom, however, they are both still more amazed, for there they find a
large part of the ceiling on the bed of the officer, which is broken to
pieces by the heavy mortar that had fallen down. The young lieutenant
saw in the warning a direct favor of Providence and lived henceforth so
as to show his gratitude for this almost miraculous escape ("Jenseits,"
p. 105).
Not unfrequently the seeing of a "double" is the result of physical or
mental disease. Persons suffering of catalepsy are especially prone to
see their own forms mixing with strange persons, who people the room in
which they are confined. Insanity, also, very often begins with the
idea, that the patient's own image is constantly by his side,
accompanying him like his shadow wherever he goes, and finally
irritating him beyond endurance. In these cases there is, of course,
nothing at work but a diseased imagination, and with the return of
health the visions also disappear.
Perhaps the most important branch of this subject is the theory,
cherished by all nations and in all ages, that the dying possess at the
last moment and by a supreme effort, the mysterious power of making
themselves perceptible to friends at a distance. We leave out, here
also, the numerous instances told of saints, because they are generally
claimed by the Catholic Church as miracles. One of the oldest
well-authenticated cases of the kind, occurred at the court of Cosmo
de' Medici, in 1499. In the brilliant circle of eminent men which the
great merchant prince had gathered around him, two philosophers, Michael
Mercatus, papal prothonotary, and Marsilius Ficinus were prominent by
their vast erudition, their common devotion to Platonic philosophy, and
the ardent friendship which bound them to each other. They had solemnly
agreed that he who should die first, should convey to the other some
information about the future state. Ficinus died first, and his friend,
writing early in the morning near a window, suddenly heard a horseman
dashing up to his house, checking his horse and crying out: "Michael!
Michael! nothing is more true than what is said of the life to come!"
Mercatus immediately opened the window and saw his bosom friend riding
at full speed down the road, on his white horse, until he was out of
sight. He returned, full of thought, to his studies; but wrote at once
to inquire about his friend. In due time the answer came, that Ficinus
had died in Florence at the very moment in which Mercatus had seen him
in Rome. Our authority for this remarkable account is the Cardinal
Baronius, who knew Mercatus and heard it from his own lips; but the
dates which he mentions do not correspond with the annals of history. He
places the event in the year 1491, but Michele de' Mercati was papal
prothonotary under Sixtus V. (1585-90) and could, therefore, not have
been the friend of Ficinus, the famous physician and theologian, who
was one of Savonarola's most distinguished adherents.
Nor can we attach much weight to the old ballads of Roland, which recite
in touching simplicity the anguish of Charlemagne, when he heard from
afar the sound of his champion's horn imploring him to come to his
assistance, although the two armies were at so great a distance from
each other that when the Emperor at last reached the ill-fated valley of
Ronceval, his heroic friend had been dead for some days. Calderon
depicts in like manner, but with the peculiar coloring of the Spanish
devotee, how the dying Eusebio calls his absent friend Alberto to his
bedside, to hear his last confession, and how the latter, obeying the
mysterious summons, hastens there to fulfil his solemn promise.
A well-known occurrence of this kind is reported by Cotton Mather as
having taken place in New England. On May 2d, 1687, at 5 o'clock A. M.,
a young man, called Beacon, then living in Boston, suddenly saw his
brother, whom he had left in London, standing before him in his usual
costume, but with a bleeding wound in his forehead. He told him that he
had been foully murdered by a reprobate, who would soon reach New
England; at the same time he described minutely the appearance of his
murderer, and implored his brother to avenge his death, promising him
his assistance. Towards the end of June official information reached the
colony that the young man had died on May 2d, at 5 o'clock A. M., from
the effects of his wounds. But here, also, several inconsistencies
diminish the value of the account. In the first place, the narrator has
evidently forgotten the difference in time between London and Boston in
America, or he has purposely falsified the report, in order to make it
more impressive. Then the murderer never left his country; although he
was tried for his crime, escaped the penalty of death by the aid of
influential friends. It is, however, possible that he may have had the
intention of seeking safety abroad at the time he committed the murder.
The apparition of the great Cardinal of Lorraine at the moment of death,
is better authenticated. D'Aubigne tells us (_Hist. Univer._ 1574, p.
719) that the queen Catherine of Medici, was retiring one day, at an
earlier hour than usual, in the presence of the King of Navarre, the
Archbishop of Lyons, and a number of eminent persons, when she suddenly
hid her eyes under her hands and cried piteously for help. She made
great efforts to point out to the bystanders the form of the Cardinal,
whom she saw standing at the foot of her bed and offering her his hand.
She exclaimed repeatedly: "Monsieur le Cardinal, I have nothing to do
with you!" and was in a state of most fearful excitement. At last one of
the courtiers had the wit to go to the Cardinal's house, and soon
returned with the appalling news that the great man had died in that
very hour. To this class of cases belongs also the well-known vision of
Lord Lyttleton, who had been warned that he would die on a certain day,
at midnight, and who did die at the appointed hour, although his
friends had purposely advanced every clock and watch in the house by
half an hour, and he himself had gone to bed with his mind relieved of
all anxiety. Jarvis, in his "Accreditated Ghost Stories," p. 13, relates
the following remarkable case: "When General Stuart was Governor of San
Domingo, in the early part of our war of independence, he was one day
anxiously awaiting a certain Major von Blomberg, who had been expected
for some time. At last he determined to dictate to his secretary a
dispatch to the Home Government on this subject, when steps were heard
outside, and the major himself entered, desiring to confer with the
Governor in private. He said: 'When you return to England, pray go into
Dorsetshire to such and such a farm, where you will find my son, the
fruit of a secret union with Lady Laing. Take care of the poor orphan.
The woman who has reared him has the papers that establish his
legitimacy; they are in a red morocco pocket-book. Open it and make the
best use you can of the papers you will find. You will never see me
again.' Thereupon the major walked away, but nobody else had seen him
come or go, and nobody had opened the house for him. A few days later,
news reached the island that the vessel on which Blomberg had taken
passage, had foundered, and all hands had perished, at the very hour
when the former had appeared to his friend the Governor. It became also
known that the two friends had pledged each other, not only that the
survivor should take care of the children of him who died first, but
also that he should make an effort to appear to him if permitted to do
so. The Governor found everything as it had been told him; he took
charge of his friend's son, who became a _protege_ of Queen Charlotte,
when she heard the remarkable story, and was educated as a companion of
the future George IV."
Lord Byron tells the following story of Captain Kidd. He was lying one
night in his cabin asleep, when he suddenly felt oppressed by a heavy
weight apparently resting on him; he opened his eyes, and by the feeble
light of a small lamp he fancied he saw his brother, dressed in full
uniform, and leaning across the bed. Under the impression that the whole
is a mere idle delusion of his senses, he turns over and falls asleep
once more. But the sense of oppression returns, and upon opening his
eyes he sees the same image as before. Now he tries to seize it, and to
his amazement touches something wet. This terrifies him, and he calls a
brother officer, but when the latter enters, nothing is to be seen.
After the lapse of several months Captain Kidd received information that
in that same night his brother had been drowned in the Indian Sea. He
himself told the story to Lord Byron, and the latter endorsed its
accuracy (_Monthly Rev._, 1830, p. 229).
One of the most remarkable interviews of this kind, which continued for
some time, and led to a prolonged and interesting conversation during
which the three senses of sight, hearing, and touch, were alike
engaged, is that which a Mrs. Bargrave had on the 8th of September,
1805. According to an account given by Jarvis ("Accred. Ghost Stories,"
Lond., 1823), she was sitting in her house in Canterbury, in a state of
great despondency, when a friend of hers, Miss Veal, who lived at Dover,
and whom she had not seen for two years and a half, entered the room.
The two ladies had formerly been very intimate, and found equal comfort,
during a period of great sorrow, in reading together works treating of
future life and similar subjects. Her friend wore a traveling suit, and
the clocks were striking noon as she entered; Mrs. Bargrave wished to
embrace her, but Miss Veal held a hand before her eyes, stating that she
was unwell and drew back. She then added that she was on the point of
making a long journey, and feeling an irresistible desire to see her
friend once more, she had come to Canterbury. She sat down in an
armchair and began a lengthened conversation, during which she begged
her friend's pardon for having so long neglected her, and gradually
turned to the subject which had been uppermost in Mrs. Bargrave's mind,
the views entertained by various authors of the life after death. She
attempted to console the latter, assuring her that "a moment of future
bliss was ample compensation for all earthly sufferings," and that "if
the eyes of our mind were as open as those of the body, we should see a
number of higher beings ready for our protection." She declined,
however, reading certain verses aloud at her friend's request, "because
holding her head low gave her the headache." She frequently passed her
hand over her face, but at last begged Mrs. Bargrave to write a letter
to her brother, which surprised her friend very much, for in the letter
she wished her brother to distribute certain rings and sums of money
belonging to her among friends and kinsmen. At this time she appeared to
be growing ill again, and Mrs. Bargrave moved close up to her in order
to support her, in doing so she touched her dress and praised the
materials, whereupon Miss Veal told her that it was recently made, but
of a silk which had been cleaned. Then she inquired after Mrs.
Bargrave's daughter, and the latter went to a neighboring house to fetch
her; on her way back she saw Miss Veal at a distance in the street,
which was full of people, as it happened to be market-day, but before
she could overtake her, her friend had turned round a corner and
disappeared.
Upon inquiry it appeared that Miss Veal, whom she had thus seen, whose
dress she had touched, and with whom she had conversed for nearly two
hours, had died the day before! When the question was discussed with the
relatives of the deceased, it was found that she had communicated
several secrets to her Canterbury friend. The fact that her dress was
made of an old silk-stuff was known to but one person, who had done the
cleaning and made the dress, which she recognized instantly from the
description. She had also acknowledged to Mrs. Bargrave her
indebtedness to a Mr. Breton for an annual pension of ten pounds, a fact
which had been utterly unknown during her lifetime.
In Germany a number of such cases are reported, and often by men whose
names alone would give authority to their statements. Thus the
philosopher Schopenhauer (_Parerga_, etc., I. p. 277) mentions a sick
servant girl in Frankfort on the Main, who died one night at the Jewish
hospital of the former Free City. Early the next morning her sister and
her niece, who lived several miles from town, appeared at the gate of
the institution to make inquiries about their kinswoman. Both, though
living far apart, had seen her distinctly during the preceding night,
and hence their anxiety. The famous writer E. M. Arndt, also, quotes a
number of striking revelations which were in this manner made to a lady
of his acquaintance. Thus he was once, in 1811, visiting the Island of
Ruegen, in the Baltic, and having been actively engaged all day, was
sitting in an easy-chair, quietly nodding. Suddenly he sees his dear old
aunt Sophie standing before him; on her face her well-known sweet smile,
and in her arms her two little boys, whom he loved like his own. She was
holding them out to him as if she wished to say by this gesture: "Take
care of the little ones!" The next day his brother joined him and
brought him the news that their aunt had died on the preceding evening
at the hour when she had appeared to Arndt. Wieland, even, by no means
given to credit easily accounts of supernatural occurrences, mentions
in his "Euthanasia" a Protestant lady of his acquaintance, whose mind
was frequently filled with extraordinary visions. She was a
somnambulist, and subject to cataleptic attacks. A Benedictine monk, an
old friend of the family, had been ordered to Bellinzona, in
Switzerland, but his correspondence with his friends had never been
interrupted for years. Years after his removal the above-mentioned lady
was taken ill, and at once predicted the day and hour of her death. On
the appointed day she was cheerful and perfectly composed; at a certain
hour, however, she raised herself slightly on her couch, and said with a
sweet smile, "Now it is time for me to go and say good-bye to Father C."
She immediately fell asleep, then awoke again, spoke a few words, and
died. At the same hour the monk was sitting in Bellinzona at his
writing-table, a so-called pandora, a musical instrument, by his side.
Suddenly he hears a noise like an explosion, and looking up startled,
sees a white figure, in whom he at once recognizes his distant friend by
her sweet smile. When he examined his instrument he found the
sounding-board cracked, which, no doubt, had given rise to his hearing
what he considered a "warning voice." The Rev. Mr. Oberlin, well-known
and much revered in Germany, and by no means forgotten in our own
country, where a prosperous college still bears his name, declares in
his memoirs that he had for nine years constant intercourse with his
deceased wife. He saw her for the first time after her death in broad
daylight and when he was wide awake; afterwards the conversations were
carried on partly in the day and partly at night. Other people in the
village in which he lived saw her as well as himself. Nor was it by the
eye only that the pious, excellent man judged of her presence;
frequently, when he extended his hand, he would feel his fingers gently
pressed, as his wife had been in the habit of doing when she passed by
him and would not stop. But there was much bitterness and sorrow also
mixed up with the sweetness of these mysterious relations. The
passionate attachment of husband and wife could ill brook the terrible
barrier that separated them from each other, and often the latter would
look so wretched and express her grief in such heartrending words that
the poor minister was deeply afflicted. The impression produced on his
mind was that her soul, forced for unknown reasons to remain for some
time in an intermediate state, remained warmly attached to earthly
friends and lamented the inability to confer with them after the manner
of men. After nine years the husband's visions suddenly ended and he was
informed in a dream that his wife had been admitted into a higher
heaven, where she enjoyed the promised peace with her Saviour, but could
no longer commune with mortal beings.
It is well known that even the great reformer, Martin Luther, knew of
several similar cases, and in his "Table Talk" mentions more than one
remarkable instance.