Part 3 (1/2)

The foregoing is corroborated by Mrs Sinclair. She states that she saw her husband, not as he was dressed at the moment of the experiment, but ”in a suit that hung in a closet at home.” The apparition caused her great anxiety, so that her husband's view of her improved appearance was not really true. The son, Mr George Sinclair, avers that in his mother's vision his father's face was ”drawn and set, as if he was either dead or trying to accomplish something which was beyond him.”

Another case investigated by the Society is also striking. The date is 1896.

”'One night, two or three years ago, I came back from the theatre to my mother's flat at 6 S---- Street; and after I had been into her bedroom and told her all about it, I went to bed about one A.M. I had not been asleep long when I started up frightened, fancying that I had heard someone walk down the pa.s.sage towards my mother's room; but, hearing nothing more, went to sleep again. I started up alarmed in the same way three or four times before dawn.

”'In the morning, upon inquiry, my mother (who was ill at the time) only told me that she had had a very disturbed night.

”'Then I asked my brother, who told me that he had suffered in the same way as I had, starting up several times in a frightened manner. On hearing this my mother then told me that she had seen an apparition of Mr Pelham. Later in the day Mr Pelham came in, and my mother asked him casually if he had been doing anything last night; upon which he told us that he had come to bed willing that he should visit and appear to us. We made him promise not to repeat the experiment.'

”Mrs E., the mother, states that she was recovering from influenza at the time. At half-past ten, as she lay reading:

”'A strange, creepy sensation came over me, and I felt my eyes were drawn towards the left-hand side of the room. I felt I must look, and there, distinct against the curtain, was a blue luminous mist.

”'This time I was impelled to cast my eyes downward to the side of my bed, and there, creeping upwards towards me, was the same blue luminous mist. I was too terrified to move, and remember keeping the book straight up before my face, as though to ward off a blow, at the same time exerting all my strength of will and determination not to be afraid--when, suddenly, as if with a jerk, above the top of my book came the brow and eyes of Mr Pelham.'

”Instantly her fears ceased. She 'remembered that Mr Pelham had experimented on her before at night'; and 'in one moment mist and face were gone.'

”For his part, Mr Pelham explains that he 'carefully imagined'

himself going down the steps of his house, and so along the streets, to Mrs E.'s flat, and to her drawing-room and bedroom; he then went to bed with his mind fixed on the visit and soon fell asleep. He has made other trials, but without any positive success, though during one of them Mrs E. was wakened suddenly by the feeling that someone was in the room, and it occurred to her that Mr Pelham was again experimenting.”

The occurrences above related are most significant, if true, and I am bound to say the _bona fides_ of the narrators seems to me indisputable.

Is it a spirit showing itself partially dissociated from the living organism; evincing independence, a certain intelligence and a certain permanence? Or is this a mere image of the agent, conceived in his own brain and projected telepathically to the brain of the percipient? So far, we are merely groping our way. Yet, is it not possible that we have laid hands upon a credible explanation of the eternal mystery of ”ghosts”? We shall see.

CHAPTER IV

DREAMS

Having partially discussed the subject of phantasms projected from the brain of the agent to that of the percipient, I must now briefly describe another group for which the evidence is very abundant--that of ”veridical” dreams. This is a term used to describe apparitions coinciding with other events in such a manner as to suggest a connection. Your dream or hallucination is said to be veridical when it conveys an idea which is both true and previously unknown to you.

Making every allowance for the element of chance, there is a ma.s.s of evidence which mere coincidence cannot explain away. Yet we must not overlook the frequency of dreams, even of a striking character, which may once or twice in a million times actually hit on the coincident event. But besides coincidence, there is at times another normal explanation. Mr Podmore relates how a neighbour of his on the night of 24th June 1894 dreamed President Carnot had been a.s.sa.s.sinated. He told his family before the morning paper announcing the news had been opened.

As has been pointed out, in a case of that kind it seems possible that the information may have reached the sleeper in his dreams from the shouts of a newsboy, or even from the conversation of pa.s.sers-by in the street.

Before any supernormal theory, we must admit the possibility of a normal communication, however far-fetched it may seem. In each of the instances about to be related the fact of the dream was either recorded by the dreamer or related to a friend before the fact of any coincidence was suspected.

One of the best-known cases is that of Canon Warburton, who writes:

”Somewhere about the year 1848 I went up from Oxford to spend a day or two with my brother, Acton Warburton, then a barrister, living at 10 Fish Street, Lincoln's Inn. When I got to his chambers I found a note on the table apologising for his absence, and saying that he had gone to a dance somewhere in the West End, and intended to be home soon after one o'clock.

Instead of going to bed I dozed in an arm-chair, but started up wide awake exactly at one, ejaculating: 'By Jove! he's down!'

and seeing him coming out of a drawing-room into a brightly illuminated landing, catching his foot in the edge of the top stair, and falling headlong, just saving himself by his elbows and hands. (The house was one which I have never seen, nor did I know where it was.) Thinking very little of the matter, I fell a-doze again for half-an-hour and was awakened by my brother suddenly coming in and saying, 'Oh, there you are! I have just had as narrow an escape of breaking my neck as I ever had in my life. Coming out of the ballroom I caught my foot, and tumbled full-length down the stairs.'

”That is all. It may have been 'only a dream,' but I always thought it must have been something more.”

A member of the Society for Psychical Research narrates that on 7th October 1900 he woke abruptly in the small hours of the morning with a painful conviction upon him that his wife, who was that night sleeping in another part of the house, had burst a varicose vein in the calf of her leg, and that he could feel the swelled place three inches long:

”I wondered whether I ought to get up and go down to her room on the first floor, and considered whether she would be able to come up to me; but I was only partly awake, though in acute distress. My mind had been suddenly roused, but my body was still under the lethargy of sleep. I argued with myself that there was sure to be nothing in it, that I should only disturb her, and so shortly went off to sleep again.

”On going to her room this morning I said I had had a horrid dream, which had woke me up, to the effect that she had burst a varicose vein, of which just now care has to be taken. 'Why,'