Adventurings in the Psychical Part 3

"I don't think I am a coward, but I confess that for a moment I felt faint. Recovering, and believing that somebody must be playing me a trick, I made a dash after him.

"There was no one there--and no way in which anybody could have got out unknown to me.

"That night I wrote to my father, telling him what had happened. In his reply he informed me that my friend had been killed the same day that I saw him in my cabin on the sh.o.r.e of Lake Superior. He had been playing polo in far-away India, had been thrown from his horse, and had struck on his head, sustaining a wound similar to that I had seen in my vision."

Of a somewhat different order, and at once recalling to mind the adventure of Miss Morison and Miss Lamont at the Pet.i.t Trianon, is an instance reported by an Englishwoman whose name must be withheld, for reasons that will become obvious. With her husband she had recently moved into a fine old mansion surrounded by a splendid park, with a broad stretch of lawn between the trees and the house. The place had for many years been the home of a family of ancient lineage.

One night, shortly after eleven o'clock, when Mrs. M., as I shall call her, had gone to her bedroom, she thought she heard a moaning sound, and some one sobbing as though in great distress. Mr. M. was away from home, the servants slept in another part of the house, and she was quite alone except for a friend who had come to keep her company during her husband's absence, and to whom she had said good night a few minutes before. But being a courageous woman, she resolved to make an investigation and soon located the sound as coming from outdoors.

Tiptoeing over to a window on the staircase landing, she raised the blind and cautiously peered out.

Below, on the lawn, in the pale glow of the moon, she saw an amazing scene. A middle-aged man, stern of face and wearing a general's uniform, was standing menacingly over a young girl, who, with hands clasped in anguish, was on her knees before him. At the sight of his hard, unrelenting expression, Mrs. M.'s one thought was not of fear for herself but pity for the unfortunate girl.

"So much did I feel for her," she said, in narrating the affair, "that without a moment's hesitation I ran down the staircase to the door opening upon the lawn to beg her to come in and tell me her sorrow."

When she reached the door, the figures of the soldier and the girl were still plainly visible on the lawn, and in precisely the same att.i.tude.

But at the sound of her voice they disappeared.

"They did not vanish instantly," Mrs. M. explained, "but more like a dissolving view--that is, gradually. And I did not leave the door until they had gone."

Months afterwards, when calling with her husband at a neighboring house, she noticed on the wall the portrait of a distinguished-looking man in a military uniform. At once she recognized it.

"That," she told her husband, in an undertone, "is a picture of the officer I saw on the lawn."

Aloud she asked: "Whose portrait is that?"

"Why," replied her host, "it is a portrait of my uncle, General Sir X. Y. He was born and died in the house you now occupy. But why do you ask?"

When she had told the story, her host commented:

"What you say is most singular. For it is an unhappy fact that Sir X. Y.'s youngest daughter, a beautiful girl, brought disgrace upon the family, was disowned and driven from home by her father, and died broken-hearted."[5]

[5] Mrs. M.'s detailed account of this experience, with a corroboratory statement by Mr. M., is published in the _Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research_, vol. viii, pp. 178-179.

Not all ghosts, it is pleasant to know, bring notification of impending or already consummated tragedy. Many seem to exist solely for the purpose of giving a warning of trouble which may be averted by taking proper precautions, and sometimes they are a direct means of preventing disaster. Thus, a guest at a Back Bay hotel in Boston was hurrying along a dimly lighted corridor to catch an elevator she thought she saw waiting for her, when unexpectedly the form of a man appeared at the entrance to the elevator. She was almost upon him, and stopped short in order to avoid a collision. At once he disappeared, and she then saw that although the door in the elevator shaft was wide open, the car was at the bottom of the shaft, into which she certainly would have fallen had not the phantasmal figure checked her onward rush.

Or take this instance, reported by Lady Eardley:

"One day I went to my bathroom, locked the door, undressed, and was just about to get into the bath, when I heard a voice say:

"'Unlock the door!'

"I was startled and looked around, but of course no one was there. I had stepped into the bath when I heard the voice twice more, saying:

"'Unlock the door!'

"On this I jumped out and did unlock the door, and then stepped into the bath again. As I got in I fainted away and fell down flat in the water.

Fortunately, as I fell, I was just able to catch at a bell handle, which was attached to the wall above the tub. My pull brought the maid, who found me, she said, lying with my head under water. She picked me up and carried me out. If the door had been locked I would certainly have been drowned."

Still more impressive is an experience in the life of an Englishwoman named Mrs. Jean Gwynne Bettany. Her statement is corroborated by her father and mother.[6]

[6] See "Phantasms of the Living," vol. i, pp. 194-195.

"On one occasion," she says, "I was walking in a country lane. I was reading geometry as I walked along, a subject little likely to produce fancies or morbid phenomena of any kind, when, in a moment, I saw a bedroom in my house known as the 'White Room,' and upon the floor lay my mother, to all appearance dead. The vision must have remained some minutes, during which time my real surroundings appeared to pale and die out; but as the vision faded, actual surroundings came back, at first dimly, and then clearly.

"I could not doubt that what I had seen was real, so, instead of going home, I went at once to the house of our medical man, and he immediately set out with me, on the way putting questions I could not answer, as my mother was to all appearance well when I left home.

"I led the doctor straight to the 'White Room,' where we found my mother actually lying as in my vision. This was true even to minute details.

She had been seized suddenly by an attack at the heart, and would soon have breathed her last but for the doctor's timely advent."

Mrs. Bettany's father, Mr. S. G. Gwynne, adds:

"I distinctly remember being surprised by seeing my daughter, in company with the family doctor, outside the door of my residence; and I asked: 'Who is ill?' She replied: 'Mamma.' She led the way at once to the 'White Room,' where we found my wife lying in a swoon on the floor. It was when I asked when she had been taken ill that I found it must have been after my daughter had left the house. None of the servants in the house knew anything of the sudden illness, which our doctor a.s.sured me would have been fatal had he not arrived when he did."

In this last case, it should be noted the ghost seen was an apparition not of a dead person, but of a living one. This is most important, from the point of view of gaining insight into the nature and characteristics of ghosts.

The investigators who, a matter of twenty-five or thirty years ago, began for the first time to inquire into the subject in a scientific way, early made the interesting discovery that phantasms of the living are seen quite as frequently as phantasms of the dead. Besides which, it was found that ghosts could be produced experimentally--that by a mere act of willing, one person could make another, sometimes miles distant, see a ghost. Many successful experiments of the kind, supported by ample corroborative evidence, are now on record. For example:

Mr. B. F. Sinclair, at the time a resident of Lakewood, New Jersey, had occasion to go to New York to be absent several days. His wife was not feeling well when he left home, and he was greatly worried about her.

"That night," to continue the narrative[7] in his own words, "before I went to bed, I thought I would try to find out, if possible, her condition. I had undressed, and was sitting on the edge of the bed, when I covered my face with my hands and willed myself in Lakewood at home, to see if I could see her. After a little, I seemed to be standing in her room before the bed, and saw her lying there, looking much better.

I felt satisfied she was better, and so spent the week more comfortably regarding her condition.

[7] I quote from Mr. Sinclair's report to the Society for Psychical Research, and published by him in its _Journal_, vol. vii, p. 99.

"On Sat.u.r.day I went home. When she saw me, she remarked:

"'I thought something had surely happened to you. I saw you standing in front of the bed the night you left, as plain as could be, and I have been worrying about you ever since.'

"After explaining my effort to find out her condition, everything became clear to her. She had seen me when I was trying to see her. I thought at the time I was going to see her and make her see me."

In at least one instance another experimenter, a German savant named Wesermann, performed the seemingly impossible feat of creating, by a simple act of volition, a ghost not of himself but of a person who was dead.

Herr Wesermann had been greatly troubled by the conduct of a friend, a young officer in the German army, and in the hope of reforming him, "willed" one evening that at eleven o'clock that night he should see in a dream an apparition of a lady in whom he had once been greatly interested, but who had been dead five years.

It chanced that at eleven o'clock, instead of being in bed and asleep, Herr Wesermann's friend was chatting with a brother officer.

Nevertheless, the apparition came to him at the hour appointed, and was seen, not only by him, but by his companion also.

The door of his chamber seemed to open, and the ghost of his dead sweetheart walked in, "dressed in white, with black kerchief and bared head." Both officers started to their feet, and watched with bulging eyes while the ghost bowed gravely to them, turned, and without a word disappeared.

They followed instantly, rushing into the corridor, but saw only the sentry, who solemnly a.s.sured them that n.o.body but themselves had entered or left the room.[8]

[8] Herr Wesermann's experiments were reported by him in the _Archiv fur den Thierischen Magnetismus_, vol. vi, pp. 136-139.

Facts like these naturally raised in the minds of many of the investigators a belief that quite possibly ghosts could be explained without resorting to the alternative of dogmatically denying their reality or regarding them as supernatural beings. This belief was strengthened by other facts brought to light in the course of experiments to determine the actuality of telepathy, or thought transference as it used to be called.

It was discovered that, under certain favoring conditions, thoughts could indeed be transmitted from mind to mind without pa.s.sing through the ordinary known channels of communication; and furthermore that thoughts thus transmitted were often apprehended, not as mere ideas, but in the form of auditory or visual hallucinations.

Thus, if it were a question of "telepathing" the idea of a certain playing card, say the three of diamonds, the recipient, instead of simply getting the thought, "three of diamonds," might hear an hallucinatory voice saying to him, "three of diamonds," or might see three diamond-shaped objects floating before his eyes, the "ghosts" of three diamonds, so to speak.