The Unknown Guest Part 3

"Well, then, doctor," she replies, with a smile, "if it is in the interest of my health, that is all the more reason why you should let me go out."

The excuse is a plausible one and even irresistible; but the husband, wishing to carry the struggle against destiny to the last, declares that he will accompany his wife. The doctor remains alone, feeling somewhat anxious, in spite of the rather farcical turn which the incident has taken. Suddenly, a piercing shriek is heard and the noise of a body falling. He runs out and finds Mme.-- wild with fright and apparently dying in her husband's arms. At the moment when, leaving him for an instant, she opened the door of the place where she was going, a rat, the first seen there for twenty years, rushed at her and gave her so great a start that she fell flat on her back. And all the rest of the prediction was fulfilled to the letter, hour by hour and detail by detail.

3

To make it quite clear in what spirit I am undertaking this study and to remove at the beginning any suspicion of blind or systematic credulity, I am anxious, before going any further, to say that I fully realize that cases of this kind by no means carry conviction. It is quite possible that everything happened in the subconscious imagination of the subject and that she herself created, by self-suggestion, her illness, her fright, her fall and her miscarriage and adapted herself to most of the circ.u.mstances which she had foretold in her secondary state. The appearance of the rat at the fatal moment is the only thing that would suggest a precise and disquieting vision of an inevitable future event. Unfortunately, we are not told that the rat was perceived by other witnesses than the patient, so that there is nothing to prove that it also was not imaginary. I have therefore quoted this inadequate instance only because it represents fairly well the general aspect and the indecisive value of many similar cases and enable us to note once and for all the objections which can be raised and the precautions which we should take before entering these suspicious and obscure regions.

We now come to an infinitely more significant and less questionable case related by Dr. Joseph Maxwell, the learned and very scrupulous author of Les Phenomenes Psychiques, a work which has been translated into English under the t.i.tle of Metapsychical Phenomena. It concerns a vision which was described to him eight days before the event and which he told to many people before it was accomplished. A sensitive perceived in a crystal the following scene: a large steamer, flying a flag of three horizontal bars, black, white and red, and bearing the name Leutschland, was sailing in mid-ocean. The boat was suddenly enveloped in smoke; a great number of sailors, pa.s.sengers and men in uniform rushed to the upper deck; and the boat went down.

Eight days afterwards, the newspapers announced the accident to the Deutschland, whose boiler had burst, obliging the steamboat to stand to.

The evidence of a man like Dr. Maxwell, especially when we have to do with a so-to-speak personal incident, possesses an importance on which it is needless to insist. We have here, therefore, several days beforehand, the very clear prevision of an event which, moreover, in no way concerns the percipient: a curious detail, but one which is not uncommon in these cases. The mistake in reading Leutschland for Deutschland, which would have been quite natural in real life, adds a note of probability and authenticity to the phenomenon. As for the final act, the foundering of the vessel in the place of a simple heaving to, we must see in this, as Dr. J. W. Pickering and W. A. Sadgrove suggest, "the subconscious dramatization of a subliminal inference of the percipient." Such dramatization, moreover, are instinctive and almost general in this cla.s.s of visions.

If this were an isolated case, it would certainly not be right to attach decisive importance to it; "but," Dr. Maxwell observes, "the same sensitive has given me other curious instances; and these cases, compared with others which I myself have observed or with those of which I have received first-hand accounts, render the hypothesis of coincidence very improbable, though they do not absolutely exclude it."[1]

[1] Maxwell: Metapsychical Phenomena, p. 202.

4

Another and perhaps more convincing case, more strictly investigated and established, a case which clearly does not admit of explanation, by the theory of coincidence, worthy of all respect though this theory be, is that related by M. Theodore Flournoy, science professor at the university of Geneva, in his remarkable work, Esprits et Mediums. Professor Flournoy is known to be one of the most learned and most critical exponents of the new science of metapsychics. He even carries his fondness for natural explanations and his repugnance to admit the intervention of superhuman powers to a point where it is often difficult to follow him. I will give the narrative as briefly as possible. It will be found in full on pp. 348 to 362 of his masterly book.

In August, 1883, a certain Mme. Buscarlet, whom he knew personally, returned to Geneva after spending three years with the Moratief family at Kazan as governess to two girls. She continued to correspond with the family and also with a Mme.

Nitchinof, who kept a school at Kazan to which Mlles. Moratief, Mme. Buscarlet's former pupils, went after her departure.

On the night of the 9th of December (O. S.) of the same year, Mme. Buscarlet had a dream which she described the following morning in a letter to Mme. Moratief, dated 10 December. She wrote, to quote her own words:

"You and I were on a country-road when a carriage pa.s.sed in front of us and a voice from inside called to us. When we came up to the carriage, we saw Mlle. Olga Popoi lying across it, clothed in white, wearing a bonnet trimmed with yellow ribbons. She said to you:

"'I called you to tell you that Mme. Nitchinof will leave the school on the 17th.'

"The carriage then drove on."

A week later and three days before the letter reached Kazan, the event foreseen in the dream was fulfilled in a tragic fashion.

Mme. Nitchinof died on the 16th of an infectious disease; and on the 17th her body was carried out of the school for fear of infection.

It is well to add that both Mme. Buscarlet's letter and the replies which came from Russia were communicated to Professor Flournoy and bear the postmark dates.

Such premonitory dreams are frequent; but it does not often happen that circ.u.mstances and especially the existence of a doc.u.ment dated previous to their fulfilment give them such incontestable authenticity.

We may remark in pa.s.sing the odd character of this premonition, which however is fully in accordance with the habits of our unknown guest. The date is fixed precisely; but only a veiled and mysterious allusion (the woman lying across the carriage and cloaked in white) is made to the essential part of the prediction, the illness and death.

Was there a coincidence, a vision of the future pure and simple, or a vision of the future suggested by telepathic influence? The theory of coincidence can be defended, if need be, here as everywhere else, but would be very extraordinary in this case. As for telepathic influence, we should have to suppose that, on the 9th of December, a week before her death, Mme. Nitchinof had in her subconsciousness a presentiment of her end and that she transmitted this presentiment across some thousands of miles, from Kazan to Geneva, to a person with whom she had never been intimate. It is very complex, but possible, for telepathy often has these disconcerting ways. If this were so, the case which would be one of latent illness or even of self-suggestion; and the preexistence of the future, without being entirely disproved, would be less clearly established.

5

Let us pa.s.s to other examples. I quote from an excellent article of the importance of precognitions, by Messrs. Pickering and Sadgrove, which appeared in the Annales des Sciences Psychiques for 1 February 1908, the summary of an experiment by Mrs. A. W.

Verrall told in full detail in Vol. XX of the Proceedings. Mrs.

Verrall is a celebrated "automatist"; and her "cross-correspondence" occupy a whole volume of the Proceedings.

Her good faith, her sincerity, her fairness and her scientific precision are above suspicion; and she is one of the most active and respected members of the Society for Psychical Research.

On the 11th of May, 1901, at 11.10 p.m., Mrs. Verrall wrote as follows:

"Do not hurry date this hoc est quod volui--tandem. {greek here} A. W. V. {greek here}. calx pedibus inhaerens difficultatem superavit. magnopere adiuvas persectando semper. Nomen inscribere iam possum--sic, en tibi!"[1]

[1] Xenoglossy is well known not to be unusual in automatic writing; sometimes even the 'automatist' speaks or writes languages of which he is completely ignorant. The Latin and Greek pa.s.sages are translated as follows:

"This is what I have wanted at last. Justice and joy speak a word to the wise. A.W.V. and perhaps someone else. Chalk sticking to the feet has got over the difficulty. You help greatly by always persevering. Now I can write a name--thus, here it is!"

After the writing comes a humorous drawing representing a bird walking.

That same night, as there were said to be "uncanny happenings" in some rooms near the London Law Courts, the watchers arranged to sit through the night in the empty rooms. Precautions were taken to prevent intrusion and powdered chalk was spread on the floor of the two smaller rooms, "to trace anybody or anything that might come or go." Mrs. Verrall knew nothing of the matter. The phenomena began at 12:43 A.M. and ended at 2:09 A.M. The watchers noticed marks on the powdered chalk. On examination it was seen that the marks were "clearly defined bird's footprints in the middle of the floor, three in the left-hand room and five in the right-hand room." The marks were identical and exactly 2 3/4 inches in width; they might be compared to the footprints of a bird about the size of a turkey. The footprints were observed at 2:30 A. M.; the unexplained phenomena had begun at 12:43 that same morning. The words about "chalk sticking to the feet" are a singularly appropriate comment on the events; but the remarkable point is that Mrs. Verrall wrote what we have said ONE HOUR AND THIRTY-THREE MINUTES BEFORE THE EVENTS TOOK PLACE.

The persons who watched in the two rooms were questioned by Mr.

J. G. Piddington, a member of the council of the S. P. R., and declared that they had not any expectation of what they discovered.

I need hardly add that Mrs. Verrall had never heard anything about the happenings in the haunted house and that the watchers were completely ignorant of Mrs. Verrall's existence.

Here then is a wry curious prediction of an event, insignificant in itself, which is to happen, in a house unknown to the one who foretells it, to people whom she does not know either. The spiritualists, who score in this case, not without some reason, will have it that a spirit, in order to prove its existence and its intelligence, organized this little scene in which the future, the present and the past are all mixed up together. Are they right? Or is Mrs. Verrall's subconsciousness roaming like this, at random, in the future? It is certain that the problem has seldom appeared under a more baffling aspect.

6

We will now take another premonitory dream, strictly controlled by the committee of the S. P. R.[1] Early in September, 1893, Annette, wife of Walter Jones, tobacconist, of Old Gravel Lane, East London, had her little boy ill. One night she dreamt that she saw a cart drive up and stop near when she was. It contained three coffins, "two white and one blue. One white coffin was bigger than the other; and the blue was the biggest of the three." The driver took out the bigger white coffin and left it at the mother's feet, driving off with the others. Mrs. Jones told her dream to her husband and to a neighbour, laying particular stress on the curious circ.u.mstance that one of the coffins was blue.

[1] Proceedings, vol. xi., p. 493.

On the 10th of September, a friend of Mr. and Mrs. Jones was confined of a boy, who died on the 29th of the same month. Their own little boy died on the following Monday, the 2nd of October, being then sixteen months old. It was decided to bury the two children on the same day. On the morning of the day chosen, the parish priest informed Mr. and Mrs. Jones that another child had died in the neighbourhood and that its body would be brought into church along with the two others. Mrs. Jones remarked to her husband:

"If the coffin is blue, then my dream will come true. For the two other coffins were white."

The third coffin was brought; it was blue. It remains to be observed that the dimensions of the coffins corresponded exactly with the dream premonitions, the smallest being that of the child who died first, the next that of the little Jones boy, who was sixteen months old, and the largest, the blue one, that of a boy six years of age.

Let us take, more or less at random, another case from the inexhaustible Proceedings.[1] The report is written by Mr. Alfred Cooper and attested by the d.u.c.h.ess of Hamilton, the Duke of Manchester and another gentleman to whom the d.u.c.h.ess related the incident before the fulfilment of the prophetic vision:

[1] Proceedings, vol. xi., p. 505.

"A fortnight before the death of the late Earl of L.--," says Mr.

Cooper, "in 1882, I called upon the Duke of Hamilton, in Hill Street, to see him professionally. After I had finished seeing him, we went into the drawing-room where the d.u.c.h.ess was, and the duke said to me:

"'Oh, Cooper, how is the earl?'

"The d.u.c.h.ess said, 'What earl?' and, on my answering, 'Lord L--,'

she replied:

"'That is very odd. I have had a most extraordinary vision. I went to bed, but, after being in bed a short time, I was not exactly asleep, but thought I saw a scene as if from a play before me. The actors in it were Lord L--, in a chair, as if in a fit, with a man standing near him with a red beard. He was by the side of a bath, over which bath a red lamp was distinctly shown.'