Part 44 (1/2)

In conversation with Mr. F. G., now forty-three years of age, he says that there was a very special sympathy between his mother, sister, and himself.

When he saw the apparition he was seated at a small table, about two feet in diameter, and had his left elbow on the table. The scratch which he saw was on the right side of his sister's nose, about three fourths of an inch long, and was a somewhat ragged mark. His home at the time of the incident was in St. Louis. His mother died within two weeks after the incident. His sister's face was hardly a foot away from his own. The sun was s.h.i.+ning upon it through the open window. The figure disappeared like an instantaneous evaporation.

Mr. G. has had another experience, but of a somewhat different character. Last fall the impression persisted for some time of a lady friend of his, and he could not rid himself for some time of thoughts of her. He found afterwards that she died at the time of the curious persistence of his impression.

Mr. G. appears to be a first-cla.s.s witness.

R. HODGSON.

I have ranked this case _prima facie_ as a perception by the spirit of her mother's approaching death. That coincidence is too marked to be explained away: the son is brought home in time to see his mother once more by perhaps the only means which would have succeeded; and the mother herself is sustained by the knowledge that her daughter loves and awaits her. Mr. Podmore[226] has suggested, on the other hand, that the daughter's figure was a mere projection from the mother's mind: a conception which has scarcely any a.n.a.logy to support it; for the one ancient case of Wesermann's projection of a female figure to a distance (_Journal_ S.P.R., vol. iv. p. 217) remains, I think, the sole instance where an agent has generated a hallucinatory figure or group of figures which did not, at any rate, _include_ his own. I mean that he may spontaneously project a picture of himself as he is or dreams himself to be situated, perhaps with other figures round him, but not, so far as our evidence goes, the single figure of some one other than himself.

Whilst not a.s.suming that this rule can have no exceptions, I see no reason for supposing that it has been transgressed in the present case.

Nay, I think that the very fact that the figure was not that of the corpse with the dull mark on which the mother's regretful thoughts might dwell, but was that of the girl in health and happiness, with the symbolic _red_ mark worn simply as a test of ident.i.ty, goes far to show that it was not the _mother's_ mind from whence that image came. As to the spirit's own knowledge of the fate of the body after death, there are other cases which show, I think, that this specific form of _post-mortem_ perception is not unusual.

VII. C. From _Proceedings_ S.P.R., vol. x. pp. 380-82.

From Miss L. Dodson:--

_September 14th, 1891._

On June 5th, 1887, a Sunday evening,[227] between eleven and twelve at night, being awake, my name was called three times. I answered twice, thinking it was my uncle, ”Come in, Uncle George, I am awake,” but the third time I recognised the voice as that of my mother, who had been dead sixteen years. I said, ”Mamma!” She then came round a screen near my bedside with two children in her arms, and placed them in my arms and put the bedclothes over them and said, ”Lucy, promise me to take care of them, for their mother is just dead.” I said, ”Yes, mamma.” She repeated, ”_Promise_ me to take care of them.” I replied, ”Yes, I promise you”; and I added, ”Oh, mamma, stay and speak to me, I am so wretched.” She replied, ”Not yet, my child,” then she seemed to go round the screen again, and I remained, feeling the children to be still in my arms, and fell asleep. When I awoke there was nothing. Tuesday morning, June 7th, I received the news of my sister-in-law's death. She had given birth to a child three weeks before, which I did not know till after her death.

I was in bed, but not asleep, and the room was lighted by a gaslight in the street outside. I was out of health, and in anxiety about family troubles. My age was forty-two. I was quite alone. I mentioned the circ.u.mstance to my uncle the next morning. He thought I was sickening for brain fever. [I have had other experiences, but] only to the extent of having felt a hand laid on my head, and sometimes on my hands, at times of great trouble.

LUCY DODSON.

Mr. C. H. Cope, who sent the case, wrote in answer to our questions:--

BRUSSELS, _October 17th, 1891_.

I have received replies from Miss Dodson to your inquiries.

(1) ”Yes [I was] perfectly awake [at the time].”

(2) ”Was she in anxiety about her sister-in-law?” ”None whatever; I did not know a second baby had been born; in fact, had not the remotest idea of my sister-in-law's illness.”

(3) ”Did she think at the time that the words about the children's mother having just died referred to her sister-in-law? Had she two children?” ”No, I was at a total loss to imagine whose children they were.”

(4) ”I was living in Albany Street, Regent's Park, at the time. My sister-in-law, as I heard afterwards, was confined at St. Andre (near Bruges), and removed to Bruges three days prior to her death.

(_N.B._--She had two children including the new-born baby.)”

(5) ”My late uncle only saw business connections, and having no relations or personal friends in London, save myself, would not have been likely to mention the occurrence to any one.”

Mr. Cope also sent us a copy of the printed announcement of the death, which Miss Dodson had received. It was dated, ”Bruges, June 7th, 1887,”

and gave the date of death as June 5th. He quotes from Miss Dodson's letter to him, enclosing it, as follows: ”[My friend], Mrs. Grange, tells me she saw [my sister-in-law] a couple of hours prior to her death, which took place about nine o'clock on the evening of June 5th, and it was between eleven and twelve o'clock the same night my mother brought me the two little children.”

Professor Sidgwick writes:--