I really never felt so profoundly ashamed of myself in my whole life as
when my father-in-law, Professor W. Bryce Murray, of Oriel College,
Oxford, sent me the last number of the Proceedings of the Society for
the Investigation of Supernatural Phenomena. As I opened the pamphlet, a
horrible foreboding seized me that I should find in it, detailed at full
length, with my name and address in plain printing (not even asterisks),
that extraordinary story of his about the mysterious occurrence in
Piccadilly. I turned anxiously to page 14, which I saw was neatly folded
over at the corner; and there, sure enough, I came upon the Professor's
remarkable narrative, which I shall simply extract here, by way of
introduction, in his own admirable and perspicuous language.
"I wish to communicate to the Society," says my respected relation, "a
curious case of wraiths or doubles, which came under my own personal
observation, and for which I can vouch on my own authority, and that of
my son-in-law, Dr. Owen Mansfield, keeper of Accadian Antiquities at the
British Museum. It is seldom, indeed, that so strange an example of a
supernatural phenomenon can be independently attested by two trustworthy
scientific observers, both still living.
"On the 12th of May, 1873--I made a note of the circumstance at the
time, and am therefore able to feel perfect confidence as to the strict
accuracy of my facts--I was walking down Piccadilly about four o'clock
in the afternoon, when I saw a simulacrum or image approaching me from
the opposite direction, exactly resembling in outer appearance an
undergraduate of Oriel College, of the name of Owen Mansfield. It must
be carefully borne in mind that at this time I was not related or
connected with Mr. Mansfield in any way, his marriage with my daughter
having taken place some eleven months later: I only knew him then as a
promising junior member of my own College. I was just about to approach
and address Mr. Mansfield, when a most singular and mysterious event
took place. The simulacrum appeared spontaneously to glide up towards me
with a peculiarly rapid and noiseless motion, waved a wand or staff
which it bore in its hands thrice round my head, and then vanished
hastily in the direction of an hotel which stands at the corner of
Albemarle Street. I followed it quickly to the door, but on inquiry of
the porter, I learned that he himself had observed nobody enter. The
simulacrum seems to have dissipated itself or become invisible suddenly
in the very act of passing through the folding glass portals which give
access to the hotel from Piccadilly.
"That same evening, by the last post, I received a hastily-written note
from Mr. Mansfield, bearing the Oxford postmark, dated Oriel College, 5
p.m., and relating the facts of an exactly similar apparition which had
manifested itself to him, with absolute simultaneity of occurrence. On
the very day and hour when I had seen Mr. Mansfield's wraith in
Piccadilly, Mr. Mansfield himself was walking down the Corn Market in
Oxford, in the direction of the Taylor Institute. As he approached the
corner, he saw what he took to be a vision or image of myself, his
tutor, moving towards him in my usual leisurely manner. Suddenly, as he
was on the point of addressing me with regard to my Aristotle lecture
the next morning, the image glided up to him in a rapid and evasive
manner, shook a green silk umbrella with a rhinoceros-horn handle three
times around his head, and then disappeared incomprehensibly through the
door of the Randolph Hotel. Returning to college in a state of
breathless alarm and surprise, at what he took to be an act of incipient
insanity or extreme inebriation on my part, Mr. Mansfield learnt from
the porter, to his intense astonishment, that I was at that moment
actually in London. Unable to conceal his amazement at this strange
event, he wrote me a full account of the facts while they were still
fresh in his memory: and as I preserve his note to this day, I append a
copy of it to my present communication, for publication in the Society's
Transactions.
"There is one small point in the above narrative to which I would wish
to call special attention, and that is the accurate description given by
Mr. Mansfield of the umbrella carried by the apparition he observed in
Oxford. This umbrella exactly coincided in every particular with the one
I was then actually carrying in Piccadilly. But what is truly
remarkable, and what stamps the occurrence as a genuine case of
supernatural intervention, is the fact that _Mr. Mansfield could not
possibly ever have seen that umbrella in my hands, because I had only
just that afternoon purchased it at a shop in Bond Street_. This, to my
mind, conclusively proves that no mere effort of fancy or visual
delusion based upon previous memories, vague or conscious, could have
had anything whatsoever to do with Mr. Mansfield's observation at least.
It was, in short, distinctly an objective apparition, as distinguished
from a mere subjective reminiscence or hallucination."
As I laid down the Proceedings on the breakfast table with a sigh, I
said to my wife (who had been looking over my shoulder while I read):
"Now, Nora, we're really in for it. What on earth do you suppose I'd
better do?"
Nora looked at me with her laughing eyes laughing harder and brighter
than ever. "My dear Owen," she said, putting the Proceedings promptly
into the waste paper basket, "there's really nothing on earth possible
now, except to make a clean breast of it."
I groaned. "I suppose you're right," I answered, "but it's a precious
awkward thing to have to do. However, here goes." So I sat down at once
with pen, ink, and paper at my desk, to draw up this present narrative
as to the real facts about the "Mysterious Occurrence in Piccadilly."