Occultism and Common Sense Part 2

This story, circ.u.mstantially narrated by an American general, recalls Mr Rider Haggard's celebrated dream that he saw his dog, Bob, in a dying condition, probably about three hours after the dog's death.

But we need not pause on such bypaths as these.

Perhaps the simplest form of thought-transference at a distance is that in which we find a vague mental unrest, unaccompanied by any visual or auditory hallucination. Cases are not infrequently met with where the patient suffers from acute depression and anxiety which are not connected at the time with any definite event. _The Journal of the Society for Psychical Research_, July, 1895, yields the following.

Miss W. writes:

"On January 17th of this year (1895) I was haunted all day with an indefinable dread, amounting to positive terror if I yielded in the least to its influence. A little before six o'clock I went to my maid's room and casually inquired of her whether she believed in presentiments. She answered: 'Don't let them get hold of you; it is a bad habit.' I replied: 'This is no ordinary presentiment. All day long I have felt that something terrible is impending; of what nature I do not know. I have fought against it, but to no purpose. It is a terror I am positively _possessed_ with.' I was proceeding to describe it in fuller detail, when my mother entered the room with a telegram in her hand. One glance at her face told me that my foreboding had not been a groundless depression. The telegram was to the effect that my brother had been taken very ill at Cambridge and needed my mother at once to nurse him.

"I presume that the intensity of my foreboding was due to the very serious nature of his illness.

"I experienced at different times what are in common parlance termed 'presentiments'; but only on one other occasion has the same peculiar _terror_ (a chilling conviction of impending trouble) beset me."

This is corroborated both by the maid and Miss W.'s brother, an undergraduate at King's College, Cambridge, who had met with a serious accident the same afternoon. The affection between brother and sister was, it is related, very close.

Of a well-known type of case the following is a good example. The Hon.

Mrs Fox Powys is the narrator:--

"July 1882.

"I was expecting my husband home, and shortly after the time he ought to have arrived (about ten P.M.) I heard a cab drive up to the door, the bell ring, my husband's voice talking with the cabman, the front door open and his step come up the stairs. I went to the drawing-room, opened it, and to my astonishment saw no one. I could hardly believe he was not there, the whole thing was so vivid, and the street was particularly quiet at the time. About twenty minutes or so after this my husband _really_ arrived, though nothing sounded to me more real than it did the first time. The train was late, and he had been thinking I might be anxious."

In response to further inquiries, Mrs Powys added:

"To me the whole thing was very noisy and real, but no one else can have heard anything, for the bell I heard ring was not answered. It was a quiet street in town, and there was no vehicle of any kind pa.s.sing at the time; and on finding no one on the landing as I expected, I went at once to the window, and there was nothing to be seen, and no sound to be heard, which would have been the case had the cab been driven off."

Here the expectation of Mr Fox Powys' arrival seems to have caused an auditory hallucination. In other cases of a similar nature the hallucination is visual, the percipient actually seeing the figure of the expected person.

The authors of "Phantasms of the Living" give the following case as an "interesting puzzle" and invite the reader to decide whether or not it affords evidence for telepathy. The narrator, Mr W. A. S., is described as an unexceptionable witness who has never had any other visual hallucination.

"January 14th, 1883.

"In the month of April 1871, about two o'clock in the afternoon, I was sitting in the drawing-room of my father's house in Pall Mall. The window of the room fronted south; and the sun was shining brightly in at the window. I was sitting between the fireplace and the window, with my back to the light; my niece was sitting on the opposite side of the fireplace; and opposite me at the farther corner of the room was a door partly open, leading directly to the staircase. I saw what I supposed at the first moment to be dirty soapy water running in at the door; and I was in the act of jumping up to scold the housemaid for upsetting the water, when I saw that the supposed water was the tail or train of a lady's dress. The lady glided in backwards, as if she had been slid in on a slide, each part of her dress keeping its place without disturbance. She glided in till I could see the whole of her, _except the tip of her nose, her lips and the tip of her chin, which were hidden by the edge of the door_. Her head was slightly turned over her shoulder, and her eye also turned, so that it appeared fixed upon me. She held her arm, which was a very fine one, in a peculiar way, as if she were proud of it.

She was dressed in a pale blue evening dress, worked with white lace. I instantly recognised the figure as that of a lady whom I had known some twenty-five years or more before; and with whom I had frequently danced. She was a bright, dashing girl, a good dancer, and we were good friends, but nothing more. She had afterwards married and I had occasionally heard of her, but do not think I had seen her for certainly more than twenty or twenty-five years. She looked much as I used to see her--with long curls and bright eyes, but perhaps something stouter and more matronly.

"I said to myself: 'This is one of those strange apparitions I have often heard of. I will watch it as carefully as I can.' My niece, who did not see the figure, in the course of a minute or two exclaimed: 'Uncle A., what is the matter with you? You look as if you saw a ghost!' I motioned her to be quiet, as I wished to observe the thing carefully; and an impression came upon me that if I moved, the thing would disappear. I tried to find out whether there was anything in the ornaments on the walls, or anything else which could suggest the figure; but I found that all the lines close to her cut the outline of her figure at all sorts of angles, and none of these coincided with the outline of her figure, and the colour of everything around her strongly contrasted with her colour. In the course of a few minutes, I heard the door bell ring, and I heard my brother's voice in the hall. He came upstairs and walked right through the figure into the room. The figure then began to fade away rather quickly; and though I tried I could in no way recall it.

"I frequently told the story in society, treating it always as something internal rather than external and supposing that the lady was still alive; and rather making a joke of it than otherwise. Some years afterwards I was staying with some friends in Suffolk and told the story at the dinner-table, saying that it was no ghost as the lady was still alive. The lady of the house said: 'She is not alive, as you suppose, but she has been dead some years.' We looked at the peerage and found she had died in 1871. (I afterwards found out that she had died in November, whereas the apparition was in April.) The conversation continued about her, and I said: 'Poor thing, I am sorry she is dead. I have had many a merry dance with her. What did she die of?' The lady of the house said: 'Poor thing indeed, she died a wretched death; she died of cancer in the face.' She never showed me the front of her face; it was always concealed by the edge of the door."

I will now concern myself with the power of an agent to project himself phantasmally--that is, to make his form and features manifest to some percipient at a distance as though he were actually present. In Gurney's "Phantasms of the Living" is given at length a case of a simple nature.

Here there was not one but two percipients.

On a certain Sunday evening in November 1881, having been reading of the great power which the human will is capable of exercising, I determined with the whole force of my being that I would be present in spirit in the front bedroom on the second floor of a house situated at 22 Hogarth Road, Kensington, in which room slept two ladies of my acquaintance--viz. Miss L. S.

V., and Miss E. C. V., aged respectively twenty-five and eleven years. I was living at this time at 23 Kildare Gardens, a distance of about three miles from Hogarth Road, and I had not mentioned in any way my intention of trying this experiment to either of the above ladies, for the simple reason that it was only on retiring to rest upon this Sunday night that I made up my mind to do so. The time at which I determined I would be there was one o'clock in the morning, and I also had a strong intention of making my presence perceptible.

"On the following Thursday I went to see the ladies in question, and in the course of conversation (without any allusion to the subject on my part) the elder one told me that on the previous Sunday night she had been much terrified by perceiving me standing by her bedside, and that she screamed when the apparition advanced towards her, and awoke her little sister, who saw me also.

"I asked her if she was awake at the time, and she replied most decidedly in the affirmative, and upon my inquiring the time of the occurrence she replied about one o'clock in the morning.

"This lady, at my request, wrote down a statement of the event and signed it.

"This was the first occasion upon which I tried an experiment of this kind, and its complete success startled me very much.

"Besides exercising my power of volition very strongly, I put forth an effort which I cannot find words to describe. I was conscious of a mysterious influence of some sort permeating in my body, and had a distinct impression that I was exercising some force with which I had been hitherto unacquainted, but which I can now at certain times set in motion at will.

"S. H. B."

The account given by Miss Verity is as follows:--

"January 18th, 1883.

"On a certain Sunday evening, about twelve months since, at our house in Hogarth Road, Kensington, I distinctly saw Mr B. in my room, about one o'clock. I was perfectly awake and was much terrified. I awoke my sister by screaming, and she saw the apparition herself. Three days after, when I saw Mr B., I told him what had happened; but it was some time before I could recover from the shock I had received, and the remembrance is too vivid to be ever erased from my memory.

"L. S. Verity."

Miss E. C. Verity says:

"I remember the occurrence of the event described by my sister in the annexed paragraph, and her description is quite correct.

I saw the apparition which she saw, at the same time and under the same circ.u.mstances.

"E. C. Verity."

"The witnesses (comments Gurney) have been very carefully cross-examined by the present writer. There is not the slightest doubt that their mention of the occurrence to S. H.

B. was spontaneous. They had not at first intended to mention it; but when they saw him their sense of its oddness overcame their resolution. Miss Verity is a perfectly sober-minded and sensible witness, with no love of marvels, and with a considerable dread and dislike of this particular form of marvel."

On another occasion the agent announced privately to the investigator that he would project himself at a stated time. He did so; and the lady wrote as follows:--

"44 Norland Square, W.

"On Sat.u.r.day night, March 22nd, 1884, at about midnight, I had a distinct impression that Mr S. H. B. was present in my room, and I distinctly saw him whilst I was quite widely awake. He came towards me, and stroked my hair. I _voluntarily_ gave him this information when he called to see me on Wednesday, April 2nd, telling him the time and the circ.u.mstances of the apparition, without any suggestion on his part. The appearance in my room was most vivid and quite unmistakable.

"L. S. Verity."

Mr B.'s own account runs thus:

"On Sat.u.r.day, March 22nd, I determined to make my presence perceptible to Miss V., at 44 Norland Square, Notting Hill, at twelve midnight, and as I had previously arranged with Mr Gurney that I should post him a letter on the evening on which I tried my next experiment (stating the time and other particulars), I sent a note to acquaint him with the above facts.

"About ten days afterwards I called upon Miss V., and she voluntarily told me that on March 22nd, at twelve o'clock midnight, she had seen me so vividly in her room (whilst widely awake) that her nerves had been much shaken, and she had been obliged to send for a doctor in the morning.

"S. H. B."

Another case of a similar nature is reported by the American branch of the Society for Psychical Research:

"On July 5th, 1887, I left my house in Lakewood to go to New York to spend a few days. My wife was not feeling well when I left, and after I had started I looked back and saw her standing in the door looking disconsolate and sad at my leaving. The picture haunted me all day, and at night, 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 while 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. On Sat.u.r.day I went home. When she saw me she remarked: 'I don't know whether I am glad to see you or not, for I thought something had happened to you. I saw you standing in front of the bed the night (about 8.30 or before 9) you left, and as plain as could be, and I have been worrying myself about you ever since. I sent to the office and to the depot daily to get some message from you.' After explaining my effort to find out her condition, everything became plain to her. She had seen me when I was trying to see her and find out her condition. I thought at the time I was going to see her and make her see me.

"B. F. Sinclair."