LIBRARY
r
Tj
REAL
GHOST STORIES
Collected and Edited
BY
WILLIAM T. STEAD
NEW EDITION
Re-arranged and Introduced
BY
ESTELLE W. STEAD
NEW YORK:
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
1921
RY
E
.
INTRODUCTION.
DURING the last few years I have been urged
by people in all parts of the world to re-issue some
of the wonderful stories of genuine psychic ex-
periences collected by my Father several years
ago.
These stories were published by him in two
volumes in 1891-92 ; the first, entitled Real Ghost
Stories, created so much interest and brought in so
large a number of other stories of genuine ex-
periences that the first volume was soon followed
by a second, entitled More Ghost Stories.
The contents of the two volumes, slightly cur-
tailed, were, a few years later, brought out as one
book ; but the three volumes have long been out
of print and are practically unknown to the present
generation.
I remember when I was a child my Father
read some of these stories aloud to us as he was
making his collection ; and I remember, too,
how thrilled and awed we were, and how at times
they brought a creepy feeling when at night I had
to mount many flights of stairs to my bedroom at
the top of the house.
Reading these stories again, after many years'
study of the subject, I have realised what a wealth
of interesting facts my Father had gathered
together, and that not only the gathered facts,
but his own contributions, his chapter on " The
680690
vi. INTRODUCTION
Ghost That Dwelleth in Each One of Us " and
his comments on the stories, show what an insight
he had into and what an understanding he had
of this vast and wonderful subject.
I felt as I read that those who urged re-publica-
tion were right, that if not a " classic," as some
have called it, it at least merits a place on the
shelves of all who study psychic literature and
are interested in psychic experiences.
I demurred long as to whether I should change
the title. The word " Ghost " has to a great
extent in modern times lost its true meaning to the
majority and is generally associated in many
minds with something uncanny with haunted
houses and weird apparitions filling with terror
those who come into contact with them.
" Stories from the Borderland," " Psychic Ex-
periences," were among the titles which suggested
themselves to me ; but in the end I decided to
keep the old title, and in so doing help to bring the
word " ghost " back to its proper and true place
and meaning.
" Ghost," according to the dictionary, means
" the soul of man ; the soul of a deceased person ;
the soul or spirit separate from the body ; appari-
tion, spectre, shadow " : it comprises, in fact,
all we mean when we think or speak of " Spirit."
We still say " The Holy Ghost " as naturally and
as reverently as we say " The Holy Spirit." So
for the sake of the word itself, and because it
covers everything we speak of as Spirit to-day ;
these two considerations take away all reason
why the word should not be used, and it gives
INTRODUCTION vii.
me great pleasure in re-issuing these stones to
carry on the title originally chosen by my Father.
There is a large collection of stories to be drawn
upon, for besides those given in the two volumes
mentioned, many of equal interest and value
appeared in Borderland, a psychic quarterly edited
and published by my Father for a period of four
years in the nineties and now long out of print.
If this first volume proves that those who advised
me were right in thinking that these experiences
will be a valuable addition to psychic literature,
I propose to bring out two further volumes of
stories from my Father's collection, and I hope
to add to these a volume of stories of a later date,
of which I already have a goodly store. For
this purpose I invite those who have had ex-
periences which they consider will be of interest
and value for such a collection, to send them to me
so that, if suitable and appropriate, they may be
placedfon record.
In bringing this Introduction to a close I should
like to quote what my Father wrote in his Preface
to the last edition published by him, as it em-
bodies what many people are realising to-day.
To them, as to him, the reality of the " Invisibles "
is no longer a speculation. Therefore I feel that
these thoughts of his should have a place in this
new edition of his collection of Real Ghost Stories.
" The reality," he wrote, " of the Invisibles has
long since ceased to be for me a matter of specula-
tion. It is one of the things about which I feel
as certain as I do, for instance, of the existence of
the people of Tierra del Fuego ; and while it is
viii. INTRODUCTION
of no importance to me to know that Tierra del
Fuego is inhabited, it is of vital importance to know
that the spirits of the departed, and also of those
still occupying for a time the moveable biped
telephone which we call our body, can, and given
the right conditions do, communicate with the
physical unconsciousness of the man in the street.
It is a fact which properly apprehended would go
far to remedy some of the worst evils from which
we have to complain. For our conception of life
has got out of form, owing to our constant habit
of mistaking a part for the whole, and everything
looks awry/'
BANK BUILDINGS,
KlNGSWAY, lyONDON, W.C.2.
Easter, 1921.
A PREFATORY WORD.
MANY people will object some have already
objected to the subject of this book. It is an
offence to some to take a ghost too seriously ;
with others it is a still greater offence not to take
ghosts seriously enough. One set of objections
can be paired off against the other ; neither
objection has very solid foundation. The time
has surely come when the fair claim of ghosts to
the impartial attention and careful observation of
mankind should no longer be ignored. In earlier
times people believed in them so much that they
cut their acquaintance ; in later times people
believe in them so little that they will not even
admit their existence. Thus these mysterious
visitants have hitherto failed to enter into that
friendly relation with mankind which many of
them seem sincerely to desire.
But what with the superstitious credulity of
the one age and the equally superstitious unbelief /
of another, it is necessary to begin from the be-
ginning and to convince a sceptical world that
apparitions really appear. In order to do this it is
necessary to insist that your ghost should no longer
be ignored as a phenomenon of Nature. He has a
right, equal to that of any other natural phen-
omenon, to be examined and observed, studied
and defined. It is true that he is a rather difficult
phenomenon ; his comings and goings are rather
intermittent and fitful, his substance is too
shadowy to be handled, and he has avoided hither-
A PREFATORY WORD
to equally the obtrusive inquisitiveness of the
microscope and telescope.
A phenomenon which you can neither handle
nor weigh, analyse nor dissect, is naturally re-
garded as intractable and troublesome ; never-
theless, however intractable and troublesome he
may be to reduce to any of the existing scientific
categories, we have no right to allow his idiosyn-
crasies to deprive him of his innate right to be
regarded as a phenomenon. As such he will be
treated in the following pages, with all the respect
due to phenomena whose reality is attested by a
sufficient number of witnesses. There will be no
attempt in this book to build up a theory of
apparitions, or to define the true inwardness of a
ghost. There will be as many explanations as
there are minds of the significance of the extra-
ordinary narratives which I have collated from
correspondence and from accessible records. Leav-
ing it to my readers to discuss the rival hypotheses,
I will stick to the humbler mission of recording
facts, from which they can form their own judg-
ment.
The ordinary temper of the ordinary man in
daaling with ghosts is supremely unscientific,
but it is less objectionable than that of the pseudo-
scientist. The Inquisitor who forbade free in-
quiry into matters of religion because of human
depravity, was the natural precursor of the Scien-
tist who forbids the exercise of the reason on the
subject of ghosts, on account of inherited ten-
dencies to attribute such phenomena to causes
outside the established order of nature. What
difference there is, is altogether in favour of the
A PREFATORY WORD
Inquisitor, who at least had what he regarded as a
divinely constituted authority, competent and
willing to pronounce final decision upon any
subject that might trouble the human mind.
Science has no such tribunal, and when she forbids
others to observe and to reflect she is no better
than a blind fetish.
Eclipses in old days used to drive whole nations
half mad with fright. To this day the black disc
of the moon no sooner begins to eat into the shining
surface of the sun than millions of savage men feel
" creepy," and begin to tremble at the thought of
the approaching end of the world. But in civilised
lands even the most ignorant regard an eclipse
with imperturbable composure. Eclipses are scien-
tific phenomena observed and understood. It is
our object to reduce ghosts to the same level, or
rather to establish the claim of ghosts to be re-
garded as belonging as much to the order of
Nature as the eclipse. /At present they are dis-
franchised of their natural birthright, and those
who treat them with this injustice need not wonder
if they take their revenge in " creeps/'
The third class of objection takes the ground
that there is something irreligious and contrary to
Christianity in the chronicling of such phenomena.
It is fortunate that Mary Magdalene and the early
disciples did not hold that theory. So far from its
being irreligious to ascertain facts, there is a
subtle impiety in the refusal to face phenomena,
whether natural or supernatural. Either these
things exist or they do not. If they do not exist,
then obviously there can be no harm in a searching
examination of the delusion which possessed the
A PREFATORY WORD
mind of almost every worthy in the Old Testament,
and which was constantly affirmed by the authors
of the New. If, on the other hand, they do exist,
and are perceptible under certain conditions to our
senses, it will be difficult to affirm the impiety of
endeavouring to ascertain what is their nature,
and what light they are able to throw upon the
kingdom of the Unseen. We have no right to shut
our eyes to facts and close our ears to evidence
merely because Moses forbade the Hebrews to
allow witches to live, or because some of the
phenomena carry with them suggestions that do
not altogether harmonise with the conventional
orthodox theories of future life. The whole
question that lies at bottom is whether this world
is divine or diabolic. Those who believe it divine
are bound by that belief to regard every pheno-
menon as a window through which man may gain
fresh glimpses of the wonder and the glory of the
Infinite. In this region, as in all others, faith and
fear go ill together.
It is impossible for any impartial man to read
the narratives of which the present book is com-
posed without feeling that we have at least one
hint or suggestion of quite incalculable possibilities
in telepathy or thought transference. If there be,
as many of these stories seem to suggest, a latent
capacity in the human mind to communicate with
other minds, entirely regardless of the conditions
of time and space, it is undeniable that this would
be a fact of the very first magnitude. It is quite
possible that the telegraph may be to telepathy
what the stage coach is to the steam engine.
Neither can we afford to overlook the fact that
A PREFATORY WORD
these phenomena have in these latter days signally
vindicated their power over the minds of men.
Some of the acutest minds of our time have learned
to recognise in them scientific demonstration of the
existence of the fact that personal individuality
survives death.
If it can be proved that it is occasionally possible
for persons at the uttermost ends of the world to
communicate instantaneously with each other, and
even in some cases to make a vivid picture of
themselves stand before the eyes of those to whom
they speak, no prejudice as to the unhealthy nature
of the inquiry should be allowed to stand in the
way of the examination of such a fact with a view
to ascertaining whether or not this latent capacity
of the human mind can be utilised for the benefit
of mankind. Wild as this suggestion may seem
to-day, it is less fantastic than our grandfathers
a hundred years ago would have deemed a state-
ment that at the end of the nineteenth century
portraits would be taken by the sun, that audible
conversation would be carried on instantaneously
across a distance of a thousand miles, that a ray of
light could be made the agent for transmitting the
human voice across an abyss which no wire had
ever spanned, and that by a simple mechanical
arrangement, which a man can carry in his hand,
it would be possible to reproduce the words, voice,
and accent of the dead. The photograph, the
telegraph, the telephone, and the phonograph were
all more or less latent in what seemed to our
ancestors the kite-flying folly of Benjamin Frank-
lin. Who knows but that in Telepathy we may
have the faint foreshadowing of another latent
A PREFATORY WORD
force, which may yet be destined to cast into the
shade even the marvels of electrical science !
There is a growing interest in all the occult
phenomena to which this work is devoted. It is
in evidence on every hand. The topic is in the air,
and will be discussed and is being discussed,
whether we take notice of it or not. That it has
its dangers those who have studied it most closely
are most aware, but these dangers will exist in any
case, and if those who ought to guide are silent,
these perils will be encountered without the safe-
guards which experience would dictate and pru-
dence suggest. It seems to me that it would be
difficult to do better service in this direction than
to strengthen the hands of those who have for
many years past been trying to rationalise the
consideration of the Science of Ghosts.
It is idle to say that this should be left for ex-
perts. We live in a democratic age and we demo-
cratise everything. It is too late in the day to pro-
pose to place the whole of this department under
the care of any Brahmin caste ; the subject is one
which every common man and woman can under-
stand. It is one which comes home to every human
being, for it adds a new interest to life, and vivifies
the sombre but all-pervading problem of death.
W. T. STEAD.
London, 1891.
CONTENTS
PAGE
PART I. THE GHOST THAT DWELLS IN EACH OF Us.
Chapter I. The Unconscious Personality . .17
II. Louis V. and His Two Souls . . 32
III. Madame B. and Her Three Souls . 45
,, IV. Some Suggested Theories . . 52
PART II. THE THOUGHT BODY, OR THE DOUBLE.
Chapter I. Aerial Journeyings . . .56
,, II. The Evidence of the Psychical Research
Society . . . .72
III. Aimless Doubles . . .86
IV. The Hypnotic Key . . 101
PART III. CLAIRVOYANCE. THE VISION OF THE OUT OF
SIGHT.
Chapter I. The Astral Camera . . .108
,, II. Tragic Happenings Seen in Dreams . 127
,, III. My Own Experience . . 141
PART IV. PREMONITIONS AND SECOND SIGHT.
Chapter I. My Own Extraordinary Premonitions . 145
II. Warnings Given in Dreams . . 160
,, III. Premonitory Warnings . .179
IV. Some Historical and Other Cases \ 192
PART V. GHOSTS OF THE LIVING ON BUSINESS.
Chapter I. Warnings of Peril and Death . 199
II. A Dying Double Demands its Portraits ! 211
PART VI. GHOSTS KEEPING PROMISE.
Chapter I. My Irish Friend . . 222
II. Lord Brougham's Testimony . .231
APPENDIX. Some Historical Ghosts . . 240
' I
REAL GHOST STORIES.
PART I.
THE GHOST THAT DWELLS IN EACH OF US
CHAPTER I.
THE UNCONSCIOUS PERSONALITY.
f< REAL Ghost Stories ! How can there be real
ghost stories when there are no real ghosts ? "
But are there no real ghosts ? You may not
have seen one, but it does not follow that therefore
they do not exist. How many of us have seen
the microbe that kills ? There are at least as
many persons who testify they have seen appari-
tions as there are men of science who have ex-
amined the microbe. You and I, who have seen
neither, must perforce take the testimony of
others. The evidence for the microbe may be con-
clusive, the evidence as to apparitions may be
worthless ; but in both cases it is a case of testi-
mony, not of personal experience.
B
i8 RBAI, GHOST STORIES
The first thing to be done, therefore, is to collect
testimony, and by way of generally widening the
mind and shaking down the walls of prejudice
which lead so many to refuse to admit the clearest
possible evidence as to facts which have not
occurred within their personal experience, I
preface the report of my " Census of Hallucin-
ations " or personal experiences of the so-called
supernatural by a preliminary chapter on the
perplexing subject of " Personality/' This is the
question that lies at the root of all the contro-
versy as to ghosts. Before disputing about whether
or not there are ghosts outside of us, let us face the
preliminary question, whether we have not each of
us a veritable ghost within our own skin ?
Thrilling as are some of the stories of the
apparitions of the living and the dead, they are
less sensational than the suggestion made by
hypnotists and psychical researchers of England
and France, that each of us has a ghost inside
him. They say that we are all haunted by a
Spiritual Presence, of whose existence we are only
fitfully and sometimes never conscious, but which
nevertheless inhabits the innermost recesses of our
personality. The theory of these researchers is
that besides the body and the mind, meaning by
the mind the Conscious Personality, there is also
within our material frame the soul or Unconscious
Personality,the nature of which is shrouded in un-
fathomable mystery. The latest word of ad-
vanced science has thus landed us back to the
apostolic assertion that man is composed of body,
soul and spirit ; and there are some who see in the
THE GHOST THAT DWEU,S IN EACH OF Us 19
scientific doctrine of the Unconscious Personality
a welcome confirmation from an unexpected
quarter of the existence of the soul.
The fairy tales of science are innumerable, and,
like the fairy tales of old romance, they are not
lacking in the grim, the tragic, and even the
horrible. Of recent years nothing has so fascinated
the imagination even of the least imaginative of
men as the theory of disease which transforms
every drop of blood in our bodies into the lists in
which phagocyte and microbe wage the mortal
strife on which our health depends. Every white
corpuscle that swims in our veins is now declared
to be the armed Knight of Life for ever on the
look-out for the microbe Fiend of Death. Day
and night, sleeping and waking, the white knights
Df life are constantly on the alert, for on their
dgilance hangs our existence. Sometimes, how-
ever, the invading microbes come in, not in com-
panies but in platoons, innumerable as Xerxes'
Persians, and then " e'en Roderick's best are
backward borne," and we die. For our life is the
prize of the combat in these novel lists which
science has revealed to our view through the
microscope, and health is but the token of the
triumphant victory of the phagocyte over the
microbe.
But far more enthralling is the suggestion which
psychical science has made as to the existence of a
:ombat not less grave in the very inmost centre
}f our own mental or spiritual existence. The
>trife between the infinitely minute bacilli that
>warm in our blood has only the interest which
2o REAI, GHOST STORIES
attaches to the conflict of inarticulate and appar-
ently unconscious animalculse. The strife to which
researches into the nature and constitution of our
mental processes call attention concerns our con-
scious selves. It suggests almost inconceivable
possibilities as to our own nature, and leaves us
appalled on the brink of a new world of being of
which until recently most of us were unaware.
There are no papers of such absorbing interest
in the whole of the " Proceedings of the Society for
Psychical Research " as those which deal with the
question of the Personality of Man. " I," what
am I ? What is our Ego ? Is this Conscious
Personality which receives impressions through
the five senses, and through them alone, is it the
only dweller in this mortal tabernacle ? May there
not be other personalities, or at least one other
that is not conscious, when we are awake, and
alert, and about, but which conies into semi-
consciousness when we sleep, and can be developed
into complete consciousness when the other person-
ality is thrown into a state of hypnotic trance ?
In other words, am I one personality or two ? Is
my nature dual ? As I have two hemispheres in
my brain, have I two minds or two souls ?
The question will, no doubt, appear fantastic
in its absurdity to those who hear it asked for the
first time ; but those who are at all familiar with
the mysterious but undisputed phenomena of
hypnotism will realize how naturally this question
arises, and how difficult it is to answer it otherwise
than in the affirmative. Every one knows Mr.
I,ouis Stevenson's wonderful story of " Dr. Jekyll
THE GHOST THAT DWEU,S IN EACH OF Us 21
and Mr. Hyde." The dual nature of man, the
warfare between this body of sin and death, and
the spiritual aspirations of the soul, forms part of
the common stock of our orthodox belief. But
the facts which recent researches have brought
to light seem to point not to the old theological
doctrine of the conflict between good and evil in
one soul, but to the existence in each of us of at
least two distinct selfs, two personalities, standing
to each other somewhat in the relation of man and
wife, according to the old ideal when the man is
everything and the woman is almost entirely
suppressed.
Every one is familiar with the phenomenon or\
occasional loss of memory. Men are constantly
losing consciousness, from disease, violence, or
violent emotion, and emerging again into active
life with a gap in their memory. Nay, every night
we become unconscious in sleep, and rarely, if
ever, remember anything that we think of during,
slumber. Sometimes in rare cases there is a
distinct memory of all that passes in the sleeping
and the waking states, and we have read of one
young man whose sleeping consciousness was so
continuous that he led, to all intents and purposes,
two lives. When he slept he resumed his dream
existence at the point when he waked, just as we
resume our consciousness at the point when we fall
asleep. It was just as real to him as the life which
he lived when awake. It was actual, progressive,
continuous, but entirely different, holding no
relation whatever to his waking life. Of his two
existences he preferred that which was spent in
22 REAL, GHOST STORIES
sleep, as more vivid, more varied, and more
pleasurable. This was no doubt an extreme and
very unusual case. But it is not impossible to con-
ceive the possibility of a continuous series of
connected dreams, which would result in giving us
a realizing sense of leading two existences. That
/we fail to realize this now is due to the fact that
/our memory is practically inert or non-existent
during sleep. The part of our mind which dreams
; seldom registers its impressions in regions to
which on waking our conscious personality has
access.
The conception of a dual or even a multiple
personality is worked out in a series of papers by
Mr. F. W. H. Myers*, to which I refer all those
who wish to make a serious study of this novel
and startling hypothesis. But I may at least
attempt to explain the theory, and to give some
outline of the evidence on which it is based.
If I were free to use the simplest illustration
without any pretence at scientific exactitude, I
should say that the new theory supposes that
there are inside each of us not one personality but
two, and that these two correspond to husband
and wife. There is the Conscious Personality,
which stands for the husband. It is vigorous,
alert, active, positive, monopolising all the means
of communication and production. So intense is
its consciousness that it ignores the very existence
of its partner, excepting as a mere appendage and
convenience to itself. Then there is the Uncon-
scious Personality, which corresponds to the wife
* "Human Personality" (I<ongmans, Green & Co.)
THE GHOST THAT DWKIAS IN EACH OF Us 23
who keeps cupboard and storehouse, and the old
stocking which treasures up the accumulated
wealth of impressions acquired by the Conscious
Personality, but who is never able to assert any
right to anything, or to the use of sense or limb
except when her lord and master is asleep or
entranced. When the Conscious Personality has
acquired any habit or faculty so completely that
it becomes instinctive, it is handed on to the Un-
conscious Personality to keep and use, the Con-
scious Ego giving it no longer any attention.
Deprived, like the wife in countries where the
subjection of woman is the universal law, of all
right to an independent existence, or to the use
of the senses or of the limbs, the Unconscious
Personality has discovered ways and means of
communicating other than through the recognised
organs of sense.
How vast and powerful are those hidden organs
of the Unconscious Personality we can only dimly
see. It is through them that Divine revelation is
vouchsafed to man. The visions of the mystic,
the prophecies of the seer, the inspiration of the
sibyl, all come through this Unconscious Soul.
It is through this dumb and suppressed Ego that
we communicate by telepathy, that thought is
transferred without using the five senses. This
under-soul is in touch with the over-soul, which,
in Emerson's noble phrase, " abolishes time and
space." ' This influence of the senses has," he
says, " in most men, overpowered their mind
to that degree that the walls of time and space
have come to look real and insurmountable ; and
24 REAI, GHOST STORIES
to speak with levity of these limits is in the world
the sign of insanity. Yet time and space are but
inverse measures of the force of the soul." It is
this Unconscious Personality which sees the
Strathmore foundering in mid-ocean, which hears a
whisper spoken hundreds of miles off upon the
battlefield, and which witnesses, as if it happened
before the eyes, a tragedy occurring at the Anti-
podes.
In proportion as the active, domineering Con-
scious Personality extinguishes his submissive
unconscious partner, materialism flourishes, and
man becomes blind to the Divinity that underlies
all things. Hence in all religions the first step is
to silence the noisy, bustling master of our earthly
tabernacle, who, having monopolised the five
senses, will listen to no voice which it cannot hear,
and to allow the silent mistress to be open-souled
to God. Hence the stress which all spiritual re-
ligions have laid upon contemplation, upon prayer
and fasting. Whether it is an Indian Yogi, or a
Trappist Monk, or one of our own Quakers, it is
all the same. In the words of the Revivalist
hymn, " We must lay our deadly doing down,"
and in receptive silence wait for the inspiration
from on high. The Conscious Personality has
usurped the visible world ; but the Invisible,
with its immeasurable expanse, is the domain of
the Sub-conscious. Hence we read in the Scrip-
tures of losing life that we may find it ; for things
of time and sense are temporal, but the things
which are not seen are eternal.
It is extraordinary how close is the analogy
TH GHOST THAT DWEU,S IN EACH OF Us 25
when we come to work it out. The impressions
stored up by the Conscious Personality and en-
trusted to the care of the Unconscious are often,
much to our disgust, not forthcoming when wanted.
It is as if we had given a memorandum to our wife
and we could not discover where she had put it.
But night comes ; our Conscious Self sleeps, our
Unconscious Housewife wakes, and turning over
her stores produces the missing impression ; and
when our other self wakes it finds the mislaid
memorandum, so to speak, ready to its hand.
Sometimes, as in the case of somnambulism, the
Sub-conscious Personality stealthily endeavours
to use the body and limbs, from all direct control
over which it is shut out as absolutely as the in-
mate of a Hindu zenana is forbidden to mount the
charger of her warrior spouse. But it is only when
the Conscious Personality is thrown into a state
of hypnotic trance that the Unconscious Per-
sonality is emancipated from the marital despot-
ism of her partner. Then for the first time she is
allowed to help herself to the faculties and senses
usually monopolised by the Conscious Self. But
like the timid and submissive inmate of the zenana
suddenly delivered from the thraldom of her
life-long partner, she immediately falls under the
control of another. The Conscious Personality
of another person exercises over her the same
supreme authority that her own Conscious Per-
sonality did formerly.
There is nothing of sex in the ordinary material
sense about the two personalities. But their union
is so close as to suggest that the intrusion of the
26 REAI, GHOST STORIES
hypnotist is equivalent to an intrigue with a
married woman. The Sub-conscious Personality
is no longer faithful exclusively to its natural
partner ; it is under the control of the Conscious
Personality of another ; and in the latter case the
dictator seems to be irresistibly over-riding for a
time all the efforts of the Conscious Personality to
recover its authority in its own domain.
What proof, it will be asked impatiently, is
there for the splitting of our personality ? The
question is a just one, and I proceed to answer it.
There are often to be found in the records of
lunatic asylums strange instances of a dual
personality, in which there appear to be two
minds in one body, as there are sometimes two
yolks in one egg.
In the Revue des Deux Mondes, M. Jules Janet
records the following experiment which, although
simplicity itself, gives us a very vivid glimpse
of a most appalling complex problem :
" An hysterical subject with an insensitive
limb is put to sleep, and is told, ' After you wake
you will raise your finger when you mean Yes,
and you will put it down when you mean No,
in answer to the questions which I shall ask you/
The subject is then wakened, and M. Janet pricks
the insensitive limb in several places. He asks,
' Do you feel anything ? ' The conscious-awakened
person replies with the lips, ' No/ but at the same
time, in accordance with the signal that has been
agreed upon during the state of hypnotisation,
the finger is raised to signify ' Yes/ It has been
found that the finger will even indicate exactly
THE GHOST THAT DWEU,S IN EACH OF Us 27
the number of times that the apparently insensi-
tive limb has been wounded/'
- . . -*
The Double-Souled Irishman.
Dr. Robinson, of L,ewisham, who has bestowed
much attention on this subject, sends me the
following delightful story about an Irishman who
seems to have incarnated the Irish nationality in
his own unhappy person :
" An old colleague of mine at the Darlington
Hospital told me that he once had an Irish lunatic
under his care who imagined that his body was
the dwelling-place of two individuals, one of
whom was a Catholic, with Nationalist not to
say Fenian proclivities, and the other was a Pro-
testant and an Orangeman. The host of these
incompatibles said he made it a fixed rule that the
Protestant should occupy the right side of his body
and the Catholic the left, ' so that he would not be
annoyed wid them quarrelling in his inside/ The
sympathies of the host were with the green and
against the orange, and he tried to weaken the
latter by starving him, and for months would only
chew his food on the left side of his mouth. The
lunatic was not very troublesome, as a rule, but
the attendants generally had to straight- waistcoat
him on certain critical days such as St. Patrick's
Day and the anniversary of the battle of the Boyne;
because the Orange fist would punch the Fenian
head unmercifully, and occasionally he and the
Fenian leagued together against the Orangeman and
banged him against the wall. This lunatic, when
questioned, said he did his best to keep the peace
28 RKAI, GHOST STORIES
between his troublesome guests, but that some-
times they got out of hand."
Ansel Bourne and A. J. Brown.
A similar case, although not so violent or
chronic in its manifestation, is recorded in Vol.
VII. (Part xix.) of the Psychical Research Society's
Proceedings, as having occurred on Rhode Island
some years ago. An excellent citizen, and a very
religious lay preacher, of the name of Ansel
Bourne, was the subject :
On January 17th, 1887, he went from his
home in Coventry, R.I., to Providence, in order
to get money to pay for a farm which he had
arranged to buy, leaving his horse at Greene
Station, in a stable, expecting to return the same
afternoon from the city. He drew out of the bank
551 dollars, and paid several small bills, after
which he went to his nephew's store, 121, Broad
Street, and then started to go to his sister's house
on Westminster Street. This was the last that was
known of his doings at that time. He did not
appear at his sister's house, and did not return
to Greene.
Nothing was heard of him until March the 14th,
when a telegram came from a doctor in Norris-
town, Philadelphia, stating that he had just been
discovered there. He was entirely unconscious
of having been absent from home, or of the lapse
of time between January 17th and March 14th.
He was brought home by his relatives, who, by dili-
gent inquiry were able to make out that Mr. Ansel
Bourne, five weeks after leaving Rhode Island,
THE GHOST THAT DWEU,S IN EACH OF Us 29
opened a shop in Norristown, and stocked it with
toys and confectionery which he purchased in
Philadelphia. He called himself A. J. Brown, and
lived and did business, and went to meeting, like
any ordinary mortal, giving no one any suspicion
that he was any other than A. J. Brown.
On the morning of Monday, March 14th, about
five o'clock, he heard, he says, an explosion like
the report of a gun or a pistol, and, waking, he
noticed that there was a ridge in his bed not like
the bed he had been accustomed to sleep in. He
noticed the electric light opposite his windows.
He rose and pulled away the curtains and looked
out on the street. He felt very weak, and thought
that he had been drugged. His next sensation
was that of fear, knowing that he was in a place
where he had no business to be. He feared arrest
as a burglar, or possibly injury. He says this is
the only time in his life he ever feared a policeman.
The last thing he could remember before
waking was seeing the Adams express wagons at
the corner of Dorrance and Broad Streets, in
Providence, on his way from the store of his
nephew in Broad Street to his sister's residence
in Westminster Street, on January 17th.
The memory of Ansel Bourne retained absolutely
nothing of the doings of A. J. Brown, whose life
he had lived for nearly two months. Professor
William James hypnotised him, and no sooner
was he put into the trance and was told to
remember what happened January 17th, 1887,
than he became A. J. Brown again, and gave a
clear and connected narrative of all his doings
30 REAI, GHOST STORIES
in the Brown state. He did not remember ever
having met Ansel Bourne. Everything, however,
in his past life, he said, was " mixed up." He
only remembered that he was confused, wanted to
get somewhere and have rest. He did not re-
member how he left Norristown. His mind was
confused, and since then it was a blank. He had
no memory whatever of his name or of his second
marriage and the place of his birth. He remem-
bered, however, the date of his birth, and of his
first wife's death, and his trade. But between
January 17th, 1887, and March 14th he was not
himself but another, and that other one Albert J.
Brown, who ceased to exist consciously on March
14th, but who promptly returned four years after-
wards, when Ansel Bourne was hypnotised, and
showed that he remembered perfectly all that
happened to him between these two dates. The
confusion of his two memories in his earlier life is
puzzling, but it in no way impairs the value of this
illustration of the existence of two independent
memories two selfs, so to speak, within a single
skin.
The phenomenon is not uncommon, especially
with epileptic patients. Every mad-doctor knows
cases in which there are what may be described as
alternating consciousnesses with alternating mem-
ories. But the experiments of the French hypno-
tists carry us much further. In their hands this
Sub-conscious Personality is capable of develop-
ment, of tuition, and of emancipation. In this
little suspected region lies a great resource. For
when the Conscious Personality is hopeless, dis-
THE GHOST THAT DWEU<S IN EACH OF Us 31
eased, or demoralised the Unconscious Personality
can be employed to renovate and restore the
patient, and then when its work is done it can-
become unconscious once more and practically
cease to exist.
CHAPTER II.
Louis V. AND His Two SOULS.
THERE is at present* a patient in France whose
case is so extraordinary that I cannot do better
than transcribe the report of it here, especially
because it tends to show not only that we have
two personalities, but that each may use by pre-
ference a separate lobe of the brain. The Con-
scious Personality occupies the left and controls
the right hand, the Unconscious the right side of
the head and controls the left hand. It also brings
to light a very curious, not to say appalling, fact,
viz., the immense moral difference there may be
between the Conscious and the Unconscious Per-
sonalities. In the American case Bourne was a
character practically identical with Brown. In
this French case the character of each self is
entirely different. What makes the case still more
interesting is that, besides the two personalities
which we all seem to possess, this patient had an
arrested personality, which was only fourteen
years old when the age of his body was over forty.
Here is the report, however, make of it what you
will.
' Louis V. began life (in 1863) as the neglected
child of a turbulent mother. He was sent to a
reformatory at ten years of age, and there showed
himself, as he has always done when his organiza-
* 1891.
THE GHOST THAT DWEU,S IN EACH OF Us 33
tion had given him a chance, quiet, well-behaved,
and obedient. Then at fourteen years old he had a
great fright from a viper a fright which threw
him off his balance, and started the series of
psychical oscillations on which he has been tossed
ever since. At first the symptoms were only
physical, epilepsy and hysterical paralysis of the
legs ; and at the asylum of Bonneval, whither he
was next sent, he worked at tailoring steadily for a
couple of months. Then suddenly he had a hystero-
epileptic attack fifty hours of convulsions and
ecstasy and when he awoke from it he was no
longer paralysed, no longer acquainted with tailor-
ing, and no longer virtuous. His memory was set
back, so to say, to the moment of the viper's
appearance, and he could remember nothing since.
His character had become violent, greedy, quarrel-
some, and his tastes were radically changed. For
instance, though he had before the attack been a
total abstainer, he now not only drank his own
wine, but stole the wine of the other patients.
He escaped from Bonneval, and after a few turbu-
lent years, tracked by his occasional relapses into
hospital or madhouse, he turned up once more at
the Rochefort asylum in the character of a private
of marines, convicted of theft, but considered to be
of unsound mind. And at Rochefort and I^a
Rochelle, by great good fortune, he fell into the
hands of three physicians Professors Bourru and
Burot, and Dr. Mabille able and willing to con-
tinue and extend the observations which Dr.
Camuset at Bonneval, and Dr. Jules Voisin at
Bicetre, had already made on this most precious of
C
34 REAI, GHOST STORIES
mauvais sujets at earlier points in his chequered
career.
" He is now no longer at Rochefort, and Dr.
Burot informs me that his health has much im-
proved, and that his peculiarities have in great
part disappeared. I must, however, for clearness
sake, use the present tense in briefly describing his
condition at the time when the long series of ex-
periments were made.
" The state into which he has gravitated is a
very unpleasing one. There is paralysis and in-
sensibility of the right side, and, as is often the case
in right hemiplegia, the speech is indistinct and
difficult. Nevertheless he is constantly haranguing
any one who will listen to him, abusing his physi-
cians, or preaching with a monkey-like impu-
dence rather than with reasoned clearness
radicalism in politics and atheism in religion.
He makes bad jokes, and if any one pleases him he
endeavours to caress him. He remembers recent
events during his residence at Rochefort asylum,
but only two scraps of his life before that date,
namely, his vicious period at Bonneval and a part
of his stay at Bicetre.
" Except this strange fragmentary memory,
there is nothing very unusual in this condition,
and in many asylums no experiments on it would
have been attempted. Fortunately the physicians
at Rochefort were familiar with the efficacy of the
contact of metals in provoking transfer of hysterical
hemiplegia from one side to the other. They tried
various metals in turn on L,ouis V. I^ead, silver,
and zinc had no effect. Copper produced a slight
THE GHOST THAT DWEU,S IN EACH OF Us 35
return of sensibility in the paralysed arm, but
steel applied to the right arm transferred the whole
insensibility to the left side of the body.
" Inexplicable as such a phenomenon is, it is
sufficiently common, as French physicians hold,
in hysterical cases to excite little surprise. What
puzzled the doctors was the change of character
which accompanied the change of sensibility.
When Louis V. issued from the crisis of transfer
with its minute of anxious expression and panting
breath, he might fairly be called a new man. The
restless insolence, the savage impulsiveness, have
wholly disappeared. The patient is now gentle,
respectful, and modest, can speak clearly, but he
only speaks when he is spoken to. If he is asked
his views on religion and politics, he prefers to
leave such matters to wiser heads than his own.
It might seem that morally and mentally the
patient's cure had been complete.
" But now ask what he thinks of Rochefort ;
how he liked his regiment of marines. He will
blankly answer that he knows nothing of Roche-
fort, and was never a soldier in his life. ' Where
are you then, and what is the date of to-day ? '
' I am at Bicetre ; it is January 2nd, 1884, and I
hope to see M. Voisin, as I did yesterday/
" It is found, in fact, that he has now the mem-
ory of two short periods of life (different from those
which he remembers when his right side is para-
lysed), periods during which, so far as now can be
ascertained, his character was of this same decorous
type, and his paralysis was on his left side.
" These two conditions are what are called his
36 REAI, GHOST STORIES
first and his second, out of a series of six or more
through which he can be made to pass. For
brevity's sake I will further describe his fifth state
only.
"If he is placed in an electric bath, or if a
magnet is placed on his head, it looks at first sight
as though a complete physical cure had been
effected. All paralysis, all defect of sensibility,
has disappeared. His movements are light and
active, his expression gentle and timid, but ask
him where he is, and you will find that he has
gone back to a boy of fourteen, that he is at St.
Urbain, his first reformatory, and that his memory
embraces his years of childhood, and stops short
on the very day on which he had the fright from
the viper. If he is pressed to recollect the incident
of the viper, a violent epileptiform crisis puts a
sudden end to this phase of his personality."
(Vol. IV. pp. 497, 498, 499, " Proceedings of the
Society for Psychical Research.")
This carries us a good deal further. Here we
have not only two distinct personalities, but two
distinct characters, if not three, in one body.
According to the side which is paralysed, the man
is a savage reprobate or a decent modest citizen.
The man seems born again when the steel touches
his'right side. Yet all that has happened has been
that the Sub-conscious Personality has superseded
his Conscious Personality in the control of L,ouis V.
Lucie and Adrienne.
The next case, although not marked by the same
violent contrast, is quite as remarkable, because it
THE GHOST THAT DWEU<S IN EACH OF Us 37
illustrates the extent to which the Sub-conscious
Self can be utilised in curing the Conscious Per-
sonality.
The subject was a girl of nineteen, called
who was highly hysterical, having daily attacks
of several hours' duration. She was also devoid
of the sense of pain or the sense of contact, so that
she " lost her legs in bed/' as she put it.
On her fifth hypnotisation, however, L,ucie
underwent a kind of catalepsy, after which she
returned to the somnambulic state ; but that state
was deeper than before. She no longer made any
sign whether of assent or refusal when she received
the hypnotic commands, but she executed them
infallibly, whether they were to take effect im-
mediately, or after waking.
In L,ucie's case this went further, and the
suggested actions became absolutely a portion of
the trance-life. She executed them without
apparently knowing what she was doing. If, for
instance, in her waking state she was told (in the
tone which in her hypnotic state signified com-
mand) to get up and walk about, she walked about,
but to judge from her conversation she supposed
herself to be still sitting quiet. She would weep
violently when commanded, but while she wept she
continued to talk as gaily and unconcernedly as
if the tears had been turned on by a stop-cock.
Any suggestion uttered by M. Janet in a
brusque tone of command reached the Uncon-
scious Self alone ; and other remarks reached the
subject awake or somnambulic in the ordinary
way. The next step was to test the intelligence of
38 REAI, GHOST STORIES
this hidden " slave of the lamp," if I may so term it
this sub-conscious and indifferent executor of all
that was bidden. How far was its attention alert ?
How far was it capable of reasoning and judg-
ment ? M. Janet began with a simple experi-
ment. ' When I shall have clapped my hands
together twelve times," he said to the entranced
subject before awakening her, " you will go to sleep
again.'* There was no sign that the sleeper under-
stood or heard ; and when she was awakened
the events of the trance were a blank to her as
usual. She began talking to other persons. M.
Janet, at some little distance, clapped his hands
feebly together five times. Seeing that she did not
seem to be attending to him, he went up to her
and said, " Did you hear what I did just now ? "
" No ; what ? ' " Do you hear this ? " and he
clapped his hands once more. " Yes, you clapped
your hands." " How often ? " " Once/' M. Janet
again withdrew and clapped his hands six times
gently, with pauses between the claps. L,ucie paid
no apparent attention, but when the sixth clap of
this second series making the twelfth altogether
was reached, she fell instantly into the trance
again. It seemed, then, that the " slave of the
lamp " had counted the claps through all, and
had obeyed the order much as a clock strikes after
a certain number of swings of the pendulum,
however often you stop it between hour and hour.
Thus far, the knowledge gained as to the un-
conscious element in I^ucie was not direct, but
inferential. The nature of the command which it
could execute showed it to be capable of attention
THE GHOST THAT DWEU,S IN EACH OF Us 39
and memory ; but there was no way of learning its
own conception of itself, if such existed, or of
determining its relation to other phenomena of
I,ucie's trance. And here it was that automatic
writing was successfully invoked ; here we have,
as I may say, the first fruits in France of the new
attention directed to this seldom- trodden field.
M. Janet began by the following simple command :
' When I clap my hands you will write Bonjour."
This was done in the usual scrawling script of
automatism, and L,ucie, though fully awake, was
not aware that she had written anything at all.
M. Janet simply ordered the entranced girl
to write answers to all questions of his after her
waking. The command thus given had a per-
sistent effect, and while the awakened L,ucie
continued to chatter as usual with other persons,
her Unconscious Self wrote brief and scrawling
responses to M. Janet's questions. This was the
moment at which, in many cases, a new and in-
vading separate personality is assumed.
A singular conversation gave to this limited^
creation, this statutory intelligence, an identity \
sufficient for practical convenience. " Do you j
hear me ? " asked Professor Janet. Answer (by /
writing), " No/' " But in order to answer one /
must hear." " Certainly/' " Then how do you \
manage ? " "I don't know." " There must be
somebody that hears me." ' Yes." " Who is it ? "
" Not lyucie." " Oh, some one else ? Shall we call
her Blanche ? ' : " Yes, Blanche." Blanche, how-
ever, had to be changed. Another name had to
be chosen. ' What name will you have ?\^
40 REAI, GHOST STORIES
" No name." " You must, it will be more con-
venient/' ' Well, then, Adrienne." Never, per-
haps, has a personality had less spontaneity about
it.
Yet Adrienne was in some respects deeper
down than lyucie. She could get at the genesis
of certain psychical manifestations of which lyucie
experienced only the results. A striking instance
of this was afforded by the phenomena of the
hystero-epileptic attacks to which this patient was
subject.
lyucie's special terror, which recurred in wild
exclamation in her hysterical fits, was in some way
connected with hidden men. She could not, how-
ever, recollect the incident to which her cries
referred ; she only knew that she had had a severe
fright at seven years old, and an illness in conse-
quence. Now, during these "crises" lyucie
(except, presumably, in the periods of unconscious-
ness which form a pretty constant element in such
attacks) could hear what Prof. Janet said to her.
Adrienne, on the contrary, was hard to get at ;
could no longer obey orders, and if she wrote,
wrote only " J'ai peur, j'ai peur."
M. Janet, however, waited until the attack
was over, and then questioned Adrienne as to the
true meaning of the agitated scene. Adrienne
was able to describe to him the terrifying incident
in her childish life which had originated the con-
fused hallucinations which recurred during the
attack. She could not explain the recrudescence
of the hallucinations ; but she knew what I/ucie
saw, and why she saw it ; nay, indeed, it was
THK GHOST THAT DWEU,S IN EACH OF Us 41
Adrienne, rather than lyUcie, to whom the hallu-
cination was directly visible.
Lucie, it will be remembered, was a hysterical
patient very seriously amiss. One conspicuous
symptom was an almost absolute defect of sensi-
bility, whether to pain, to heat, or to contact,
which persisted both when she was awake and
entranced. There was, as already mentioned, an
entire defect of the muscular sense also, so that
when her eyes were shut she did not know the
position of her limbs. Nevertheless it was re-
marked as an anomaly that when she was thrown
into a cataleptic state, not only did the movements
impressed upon her continue to be made, but the
corresponding or complimentary movements, the
corresponding facial expression, followed just as
they usually follow in such experiments. Thus,
if M. Janet clenched her fist in the cataleptic state,
her arm began to deal blows, and her face assumed
a look of anger. The suggestion which was given
through the so-called muscular sense had operated
in a subject to whom the muscular sense, as tested
in other ways, seemed to be wholly lacking. As
soon as Adrienne could be communicated with, it
was possible to get somewhat nearer to a solution
of this puzzle. I/ucie was thrown into catalepsy ;
then M. Janet clenched her left hand (she began at
once to strike out), put a pencil in her right, and
said, " Adrienne, what are you doing ? ' The left
hand continued to strike, and the face to bear the
look of rage, while the right hand wrote, " I am
furious/ " With whom ? ' ' With F." ' Why ? "
'' I don't know, but I am very angry." M. Janet
42 REAI, GHOST STORIES
then unclenched the subject's left hand, and put
it gently to her lips. It began to "blow kisses/'
and the face smiled. " Adrienne, are you still
angry ? ' " No, that's over.' " And now ? "
" Oh, I am happy ! " " And Lucie ? ' " She
knows nothing ; she is asleep."
In lyucie's case, indeed, these odd manifesta-
tions were as the pure experimentalist might
say only too sanative, only too rapidly tending
to normality. M. Janet accompanied his psycho-
logical inquiries with therapeutic suggestion, tell-
ing Adrienne not only to go to sleep when he
clapped his hands, or to answer his questions in
writing, but to cease having headaches, to cease
having convulsive attacks, to recover normal
sensibility, and so on. Adrienne obeyed, and even
as she obeyed the rational command, her own
Undine-like identity vanished away. The day
came when M. Janet called on Adrienne, andL,ucie
laughed and asked him who he was talking to.
Lucie was now a healthy young woman, but
Adrienne, who had risen out of the unconscious,
had sunk into the unconscious again must I
say ? for ever more.
Few lives so brief have taught so many lessons.
For us who are busied with automatic writing the
lesson is clear. We have here demonstrably what
we can find in other cases only inferentially, an
intelligence manifesting itself continuously by
written answers, of purport quite outside the
normal subject's conscious mind, while yet that
intelligence was but a part, a fraction, an aspect,
of the normal subject's own identity.
THE GHOST THAT DWBUWS IN EACH OF Us 43
And we must remember that Adrienne while
she was, if I may say so, the Unconscious Self
reduced to its simplest expression did, neverthe-
less, manifest certain differences from L,ucie, which,
if slightly exaggerated, might have been very per-
plexing. Her handwriting was slightly different,
though only in the loose and scrawling character
so frequent in automatic script. Again, Adrienne
remembered certain incidents in I,ucie's childhood
which lyucie had wholly forgotten. Once more
and this last suggestion points to positive rather
than to negative conclusions Adrienne possessed
a faculty, the muscular sense, of which L^ucie was
devoid. I am anxious that this point especially
should be firmly grasped, for I wish the reader's
mind to be perfectly open as regards the relative
faculties of the Conscious and the Unconscious
Self. It is plain that we must be on the watch for
completion, for evolution, as well as for partition,
for dissolution, of the corporate being.
F'elida X. and her Submerged Soul.
Side by side with this case we have another in
which the Conscious Personality, instead of being
cured, has been superseded by the Sub-conscious.
It was as if instead of " Adrienne " being sub-
merged by Lucie, " Adrienne " became Lucie and
dethroned her former master. The woman in
question, Felida X., has been transformed.
In her case the somnambulic life has become
the normal life ; the " second state/' which ap-
peared at first only in short, dream-like accesses,
has gradually replaced the ' first state/ which now
44 REAI< GHOST STORIES
recurs but for a few hours at long intervals.
Felida's second state is altogether superior to the
first physically superior, since the nervous pains
which had troubled her from childhood had dis-
appeared ; and morally superior, inasmuch as her
morose, self-centred disposition is exchanged for a
cheerful activity which enables her to attend to
her children and to her shop much more effectively
than when she was in the Hat bete, as she now calls
what was once the only personality that she knew.
In this case, then, which is now of nearly thirty
years' standing, the spontaneous readjustment of
nervous activities the second state, no memory of
which remains in the first state has resulted in an
improvement profounder than could have been
anticipated from any moral or medical treatment
that we know. The case shows us how often the
word "normal" means nothing more than "what
happens to exist." For Felida's normal state was
in fact her morbid state ; and the new condition
which seemed at first a mere hysterical abnor-
mality, has brought her to a life of bodily and
mental sanity, which makes her fully the equal of
average women of her class. (Vol. IV. p. 503.)
CHAPTER III.
MADAME B. AND HER THREE Soui,s.
MARVELOUS as the cases cited in the last
chapter appear, they are thrown entirely into the
shade by the case of Madame B., in which the two
personalities not only exist side by side, but in the
case of the Sub-conscious self knowingly co-exist,
while over or beneath both there is a third person-
ality which is aware of both the other two, and
apparently superior to both. The possibilities
which this case opens up are bewildering indeed.
But it is better to state the case fiist and discuss it
afterwards. Madame B., who is still under Prof.
Richet's observations,* is one of the favourite sub-
jects of the French hypnotiser. She can be put to
sleep at almost any distance, and when hypnotised
completely changes her character. There are
two well-defined personalities in her, and a third
of a more mysterious nature than either of the two
first. The normal waking state of the woman is
called Leonie I., the hypnotic state Leonie II.
The third occult Unconscious Personality of the
lowest depth is called Leonie III.
" This poor peasant/' says Professor Janet,
"is in her normal state a serious and somewhat
melancholy woman, calm and slow, very gentle
and extremely timid. No one would suspect the
existence of the person whom she includes within
* 1891.
46 RBAI, GHOST STORIES
her. Hardly is she entranced when she is meta-
morphosed ; her face is no longer the same ; her
eyes, indeed, remain closed, but the acuteness
of the other senses compensates for the loss of sight.
She becomes gay, noisy, and restless to an in-
supportable degree ; she continues good-natured,
but she has acquired a singular tendency to irony
and bitter jests. ... In this state she does not
recognise her identity with her waking self.
' That good woman is not I/ she says ; ' she is
too stupid ! '
Madame B. has been so often hypnotised, and
during so many years (for she was hypnotised by
other physicians as long ago as 1860), that Leonie
II. has by this time acquired a considerable stock
of memories which Madame B. does not share.
I/eonie II., therefore, counts as properly belonging
to her own history and not to Madame B.'s all
the events which have taken place while Madame
B.'s normal self was hypnotised into unconscious-
ness. It was not always easy at first to under-
stand this partition of past experiences.
" Madame B. in the normal state," says Pro-
fessor Janet, " has a husband and children. L,eonie
II., speaking in the somnambulistic trance, attri-
butes the husband to the ' other ' (Madame B.),
but attributes the children to herself. ... At
last I learnt that her former mesmerisers, as bold
in their practice as certain hypnotisers of to-day,
had induced somnambulism at the time of her
accouchements. I^eonie II., therefore, was quite
right in attributing the children to herself ; the
rule of partition was unbroken, and the somnam-
THE GHOST THAT DWEU,S IN EACH OF Us 47
bulism was characterised by a duplication of the
subject's existence" (p. 391).
Still more extraordinary are L,eonie II /s at-
tempts to make use of Leonie I.'s limbs without
her knowledge or against her will. She will write
postscripts to Leonie I/s letters, of the nature of
which poor L,eonie I. is unconscious.
It seems, however, that when once set up this
new personality can occasionally assume the
initiative, and can say what it wants to say with-
out any prompting. This is curiously illustrated
by what may be termed a conjoint epistle ad-
dressed to Professor Janet by Madame B. and her
secondary self, L,eonie II. "She had/' he says,
" left Havre more than two months when I received
from her a very curious letter. On the first page
was a short note written in a serious and respectful
style. She was unwell, she said worse on some
days than on others and she signed her true
name, Madame B. But over the page began
another letter in quite a different style, and which
I may quote as a curiosity : ' My dear good
sir, I must tell you that B. really makes me
suffer very much ; she cannot sleep, she spits
blood, she hurts me. I am going to demolish her,
she bores me. I am ill also. This is from your
devoted I/eontine ' (the name first given to
Leonie II.).
" When Madame B. returned to Havre I natur-
ally questioned her concerning this curious missive.
She remembered the first letter very distinctly,
but she had not the slightest recollection of the
second. I at first thought there must have been
48 REAI, GHOST STORIES
an attack of spontaneous somnambulism between
the moment when she finished the first letter and
the moment when she closed the envelope. But
afterwards these unconscious, spontaneous letters
became common, and I was better able to study
the mode of their production. I was fortunately
able to watch Madame B. on one occasion while
she went through this curious performance. She
was seated at a table, and held in the left hand the
piece of knitting at which she had been working.
Her face was calm, her eyes looked into space
with a certain fixity, but she was not cataleptic,
for she was humming a rustic tune ; her right
hand wrote quickly, and, as it were, surrepti-
tiously. I removed the paper without her noticing
me, and then spoke to her ; she turned round
wide-awake but was surprised to see me, for in
her state of distraction she had not noticed my
approach. Of the letter which she was writing she
knew nothing whatever.
' lyeonie II. 's independent action is not entirely
confined to writing letters. She observed (appar-
ently) that when her primary self, lyeonie I., dis-
covered these letters she (lyeonie I.) tore them up.
So lyeonie II. hit upon a plan of placing them in a
photographic album into which lyeonie I. could
not look without falling into catalepsy (on account
of an association of ideas with Dr. Gibert, whose
portrait had been in the album). In order to
accomplish an act like this lyeonie II. has to wait
for a moment when lyeonie I. is distracted, or, as
we say, absent-minded. If she can catch her in
this state lyeonie II. can direct lyeonie I/s walks,
THE GHOST THAT DWEU,S IN EACH OF Us 49
for instance, or start on a long railway journey
without baggage, in order to get to Havre as
quickly as possible/'
In the whole realm of imaginative literature, is
there anything to compare to this actual fact of
three selves in one body, each struggling to get
possession of it ? I/onie I., or the Conscious
Personality, is in possession normally, but is
constantly being ousted by L,eonie II., or the Sub-
conscious Personality. It is the old, old case of
the wife trying to wear the breeches. But there is
a fresh terror beyond. For behind both L,eonie I.
and lyeonie II. stands the mysterious lyeonie III.
" The spontaneous acts of the Unconscious
Self," saysM. Janet, here meaning by I' inconscient
the entity to which he has given the name of
L,eonie III., " may also assume a very reasonable
form a form which, were it better understood,
might perhaps serve to explain certain cases of
insanity. Mme. B., during her somnambulism
(i,e, L,eonie II.) had had a sort of hysterical crisis ;
she was restless and noisy and I could not quiet
her. Suddenly she stopped and said to me with
terror. ' Oh, who is talking to me like that ? It
frightens me/ ' No one is talking to you/
' Yes ! there on the left ! ' And she got up and
tried to open a wardrobe on her left hand, to see
if some one was hidden there. ' What is that
you hear ? ' I asked. ' I hear on the left a voice
which repeats, " Enough, enough, be quiet, you are
a nuisance." Assuredly the voice which thus
spoke was a reasonable one, for lyeonie II. was
insupportable ; but I had suggested nothing cf
50 REAI, GHOST STORIKS
the kind, and had no idea of inspiring a hallucin-
ation of hearing. Another day L,eonie II. was
quite calm, but obstinately refused to answer a
question which I asked. Again she heard with
terror the same voice to the left, saying, ' Come,
be sensible, you must answer/ Thus the Uncon-
scious sometimes gave her excellent advice."
And in effect, as soon as L,eonie III. was sum-
moned into communication, she accepted the
responsibility of this counsel. ' What was it that
happened ? " asked M. Janet, " when Leonie II.
was so frightened ? ' " Oh ! nothing. It was I
who told her to keep quiet ; I saw she was annoy-
ing you ; I don't know why she was so frightened."
Note the significance of this incident. Here
we have got at the root of a hallucination. We
have not merely inferential but direct evidence
that the imaginary voice which terrified L,eonie II.
proceeded from a profounder stratum of con-
sciousness in the same individual. In what way,
by the aid of what nervous mechanism, was the
startling monition conveyed ?
Just as Mme. B. was sent, by means of passes,
into a state of lethargy, from which she emerged as
Leonie II., so lyeonie II., in her turn, was reduced
by renewed passes to a state of lethargy from which
she emerged no longer as I^eonie II. but as Leonie
III. This second waking is slow and gradual,
but the personality which emerges is, in one impor-
tant point, superior to either Leonie I. or Leonie II.
Although one among ^the subject's phases, this
phase possesses the memory of every phase.
III., like lyeonie II., knows the normal life
THK GHOST THAT DWBU,S IN EACH OF Us 51
of Leonie L, but distinguishes herself from L,eonie
I., in whom, it must be said, these subjacent per-
sonalities appear to take little interest. But
L,eonie III. also remembers the life of lyeonie II.
condemns her as noisy and frivolous, and is anxious
not to be confounded with her either. " Vous
voyez bien que je ne suis pas cette bavarde, cette
folle ; nous ne nous ressemblons pas du tout."
We ask, in amazement, how many more per-
sonalities may there not be hidden in the human
frame ? Here is simple Madame B., who is not
one person but three first her commonplace
self ; secondly, the clever, chattering Leonie II.,
who is bored by B., and who therefore wants to
demolish her ; and thirdly, the lordly Leonie III.,
who issues commands that strike terror into
Leonie II., and disdains to be identified with
either of the partners in Madame B.'s body.
It is evident, if the hypnotists are right, that the
human body is more like a tenement house than a
single cell, and that the inmates love each other
no more than the ordinary occupants of tene-
mented property. But how many are there of
us within each skin who can say ?
CHAPTER IV.
SOME SUGGESTED THEORIES.
OF theories to account for these strange pheno-
mena there are enough and to spare. I do not for a
moment venture to claim for the man and wife
illustration the slightest scientific value. It is only
a figure of speech which brings out very clearly one
aspect of the problem of personality. The theory
that there are two independent personalities within
the human skin is condemned by all orthodox
psychologists. There is one personality manifest-
ing itself, usually consciously, but occasionally
unconsciously, and the different method of mani-
festation differs so widely as to give the impression
that there could not be the same personality
behind both. A man who is ambidextrous will
sign his name differently with his right or left
hand, but it is the same signature. Mr. Myers
thinks that the Secondary Personality of Sublim-
inal Consciousness is merely a phase of the essential
Unity of the Ego. Some time ago he expressed
himself on this subject as follows :
" I hold that hypnotism (itself a word covering
a vast variety of different states) may be regarded
as constituting one special case which falls under
a far wider category the category, namely, of
developments of a Secondary Personality. I hold
that we each of us contain the potentialities of
many different arrangements of the elements of
THE GHOST THAT DWEI^S IN EACH OF Us 53
our personality, each arrangement being dis-
tinguishable from the rest by differences in the
chain of memories which pertain to it. The
arrangement with which we habitually identify
ourselves what we call the normal or primary
self consists, in my view, of elements selected
for us in the struggle for existence with special
reference to the maintenance of ordinary physical
needs, and is not necessarily superior in any other
respect to the latent personalities which lie along-
side of it the fresh combinations of our personal
elements which may be evoked by accident or
design, in a variety to which we at present can
assign no limit. I consider that dreams, with
natural somnambulism, automatic writing, with
so-called mediumistic trance, as well as certain
intoxications, epilepsies, hysterias, and recurrent
insanities, afford examples of the development of
what I have called secondary mnemonic chains ;
fresh personalities, more or less complete, alongside
the normal state. And I would add that hypnotism
is only the name given to a group of empirical
methods of inducing these fresh personalities."
A doctor in philosophy, to whom I submitted
these pages, writes me as follows : " There can
be no doubt that every man lives a sub-conscious
as well as a conscious life. One side of him is
closed against examination by himself (i.e. un-
conscious) ; the other is conscious of itself. The
former carries on processes of separation, com-
bination, and distribution, of the thought-stuff
handed over to it, corresponding almost exactly
to the processes carried on by the stomach, which,
54 REAL GHOST STORIES
as compared with those of eating, etc., go on in
the dark automatically."
Another doctor, not of philosophy but of medi-
cine, who has devoted special attention to the
phenomenon of sleep, suggests a new illustration
which is graphic and suggestive. He writes :
' With regard to dual or multiple consciousness,
my own feeling has always been that the indi-
viduals stand one behind the other in the chambers
of the mind, or else, as it were, in concentric circles.
You may compare it to the Jewish tabernacle.
First, there is the court of the Gentiles, where
Ego No. 1 chaffers about trifles with the outer
world. While he is so doing Ego No. 2 watches
him from the court of the Levites, but does not
go forth on small occasions. When we ' open out '
to a friend the Levite comes forth, and is in turn
watched by the priest from the inner court. L,et
our emotions be stirred in sincere converse and
out strides the priest, and takes precedence of
the other two, they falling obediently and sub-
missively behind him. But the priest is still
watched by the high priest from the tabernacle
itself, and only on great and solemn occasions
does he make himself manifest by action. When
he does, the other three yield to his authority,
and then we say the man ' speaks with his whole
soul ' and ' from the bottom of his heart/ But
even now the Shekinah is upon the mercy-seat
within the Holy of holies, and the high priest
knows it."
The latest word* of the French psychologists is
thus stated by M. Foiiillee :
* 1891.
THE GHOST THAT DWEU,S IN EACH OF Us 55
" Contemporary psychology deprives us of the
illusion of a definitely limited, impenetrable, and
absolutely autonomous I. The conception of
individual consciousness must be of an idea rather
than of a substance. Though separate in the
universe, we are not separate from the universe.
Continuity and reciprocity of action exist every-
where. This is the great law and the great mys-
tery. There is no such thing as an isolated and
veritably monad being, any more than there is
such a thing as an indivisible point, except in the
abstractions of geometry."
Whatever may be the true theory, it is evident
that there is enough mystery about personality
to make us very diffident about dogmatising,
especially as to what is possible and what is not.
Whether we have one mind or two, let us, at
least, keep it (or them) open.
PART II.
THE THOUGHT BODY, OR THE DOUBLE.
" And as Peter knocked at the door of the. gate, a damsel came to
hearken, named Rhoda. And when she knew Peter's voice, she ran in
and told how Peter stood before the gate. And they said unto her,
Thou art mad. But she constantly affirmed that it v as even so. Then
said they, It is his angel (or double)." ACTS xil. 13-15.
CHAPTER I.
AERIAI, JOURNEYINGS.
I BEGAN to write this in the autumn of 1891
in a small country-house among the Surrey hills,
whither I had retreated in order to find undis-
turbed leisure in which to arrange my ideas and
array my facts. It was a pleasant place enough,
perched on the brow of a heath-covered slope
that dipped down to a ravine, at the head of which
stands Professor Tyndall's house with its famous
screen. Hardly a mile away northward lies the
Devil's Punch Bowl, with its memorial stone
erected in abhorrence of the detestable murder
perpetrated on its rim by ruffians whose corpses
slowly rotted as they swung on the gibbet over-
head ; far to the south spreads the glorious
THE THOUGHT BODY, OR THE DOUBLE 57
amphitheatre of hills which constitute the High-
lands of the South.
The Portsmouth road, along which for hundreds
of years rolled to and fro the tide of martial life
between London and the great Sea Gate of the
Realm, lies near by, silent and almost disused.
Mr. Balfour's land, on the brow of Hindhead, is
enclosed but not yet built upon, although a whole
archipelago of cottages and villas is springing up
amid the heather as the ground slopes towards
Selborne White's Selborne that can dimly be
descried to the westward beyond L/iphook Com-
mon. Memories there are, enough and to spare,
of the famous days of old, and of the not less
famous men of our own time ; but the ghosts
have fled. " There used to be a ghost in the
mill/' said my driver, " and another in a com-
paratively new house over in L,ord Tennyson's
direction, but we hear nothing about them now/'
" Not even at the Murder Stone of the Devil's
Punch Bowl ? ' " Not even at the Murder Stone.
I have driven past it at all hours, and never saw
anything but the stone, of course."
Yet a more suitable spot for a ghost could
hardly be conceived than the rim of the Devil's
Punch Bowl, where the sailor was murdered, and
where afterwards his murderers were hanged. I
visited it late at night, when the young moon
was beginning to struggle through the cloudy
sky, and looked down into the ravine which
Cobbett declared was the most horrid place God
ever made ; but no sign of ghostly visitant could
be caught among the bracken, no sound of the
58 REAI, GHOST STORIES
dead voices was audible in the air. It is the way
with ghosts they seldom appear where they
might be looked for. It is the unexpected in the
world of shadows, as in the workaday world,
which always happens.
Of this I had soon a very curious illustration.
For, although there were no ghosts in the Devil's
Punch Bowl by the Murder Stone, I found that
there had been a ghost in the trim new little villa
in which I was quartered ! It didn't appear to
me at least, it has not done so as yet. But it
appeared to some friends of mine whose statement
is explicit enough. Here was a find indeed." I
spent most of my boyhood within a mile of the
famous haunted house or mill at Willington, but
I had never slept before in a place which ghosts
used as a try sting, place. I asked my hostess
about it. She replied, " Yes, it is quite true ; but,
although you may not believe it, I am the ghost."
' You ? How ? ' ' Yes," she replied, quite
seriously ; "it is quite true what your friends
have told you. They did see what you would
correctly describe as an apparition. That is to
say, they saw a more or less shadowy figure, which
they at once identified, and which then gradually
faded away. It was an apparition in the true
sense of the word. It entered the room without
using the door or window, it was visibly mani-
fested before them, and then it vanished. All
that is quite true. But it is also true that the
ghost, as you call it, was my ghost." ' Your
ghost, but - "I am not dead, you are going
to say. Precisely. But surely you must be well
THOUGHT BODY, OR THE DOUBLE 59
aware of the fact that the ghosts of the living
are much better authenticated than ghosts of the
dead."
My hostess was the daughter of a well-known
London solicitor, who, after spending her early
youth in dancing and riding and other diversions
of young ladies in society who have the advantage
of a house in Park Lane, suddenly became pos-
sessed by a strange, almost savage, fascination for
the occult lore of the ancient East. Abandoning
the frivolities of Mayfair, she went to Girton,
where she plunged into the study of Sanscrit.
After leaving Girton, she applied herself to the
study of the occult side of Theosophy. Then she
married a black magician in the platonic fashion
common to Occultists, early Christians, and
Russian Nihilists, and since then she has prose-
cuted her studies into the invisible world with
ever-increasing .interest.
The Thought Body.
" I see you are incredulous," she replied ; " but,
if you like, I will some time afford you an oppor-
tunity of proving that I am simply speaking the
truth. Tell me, will you speak to me if I appear
to you in my thought body ? ' " Certainly," I
replied, " unless I am struck dumb. Nothing
would please me better. But, of course, I have
never seen a ghost, and no one can say how any
utterly unaccustomed experience may affect him."
' Unfortunately," she replied, " that is too often
the case. All those to whom I have hitherto
appeared have been so scared they could not
60 RSAI, GHOST STORIES
speak/' " But, my dear friend, do you actually
mean to say that you have the faculty of
" Going about in my Thought Body ? Most
certainly. It is not a very uncommon faculty,
but it is one which needs cultivation and develop-
ment." ' But what is a Thought Body ? ' My
hostess smiled : " It is difficult to explain truths
on the plane of thought to those who are immersed
body and soul in matter. I can only tell you that
every person has, in addition to this natural body
of flesh, bones, and blood, a Thought Body, the
exact counterpart in every respect of this material
frame. It is contained within the material body,
as air is contained in the lungs and in the blood.
It is of finer matter than the gross fabric of our
outward body. It is capable of motion with the
rapidity of thought. The laws of space and time
do not exist for the mind, and the Thought
Envelope of which we are speaking moves with
the swiftness of the mind/'
" Then when your thought body appears ? '
" My mind goes with it. I see, I hear, and my
consciousness is with my Thought Envelope. But
I want to have a proper interview while on my
thought journeys. That is why I ask you if you
would try to speak to me if I appear/'
" But/' I objected, " do you really mean that
you hope to appear before me, in my office, as
immaterial as gas, as visible as light, and yet to
speak, to touch ? '
" That is just what I mean," she replied,
laughing, " that and nothing less. I was in your
office the other morning at six o'clock, but no one
THE THOUGHT BODY, OR THE DOUBLE 61
was there. I have not got this curious power as
yet under complete control. But when once we
are able to direct it at will, imagine what possi-
bilities it unfolds ! "
" But/' said I," if you can be seen and touched,
you ought to be photographed ! '
" I wish to be photographed, but no one can
say as yet whether such thought bodies can be
photographed. When next I make the experi-
ment I want you to try. It would be very useful."
Useful indeed ! It does not require very vivid
imagination to see that if you can come and go to
the uttermost parts of the world in your thought
shape, such Thought Bodies will be indispensable
henceforth on every enterprising newspaper. It
would be a great saving on telegraphy. When
my ideal paper comes along, I mentally vowed
I would have my hostess as first member of my
staff. But of course it had got to be proved, and
that not only once but a dozen times, before any
reliance could be placed on it.
" I often come down here," said my hostess
cheerfully, " after breakfast. I just lie down in
my bedroom in town, and in a moment I find
myself here at Hindhead. Sometimes I am seen,
sometimes I am not. But I am here ; seen or
unseen, I see. It is a curious gift, and one which
I am studying hard to develop and to control."
" And what about clothes ? " I asked. "Oh,"
replied my hostess airily, " I go in whatever
clothes I like. There are astral counterparts to
all our garments. It by no means follows that
I appear in the same dress as that which is worn
62 REAI, GHOST STORIES
by my material body. I remember, when I
appeared to your friend, I wore the astral counter-
part of a white silk shawl, which was at the time
folded away in the wardrobe."
At this point, however, in order to anticipate
the inevitable observation that my hostess was
insane, I think I had better introduce the declara-
tions of my two friends, who are quite clear and
explicit as to their recollection of what they saw.
My witnesses are mother and daughter. The
daughter I have seen and interviewed ; the mother
I could not see, but took a statement down from
her husband, who subsequently submitted it in
proof to her for correction. I print the daughter's
statement first.
" About eighteen months ago (in May, 1890) I
was staying at the house of my friend in M
Mansions. Mrs. M. had gone to her country
house at Hindhead for a fortnight and was not
expected back for a week. I was sitting in the
kitchen reading Edna Ly all's ' Donovan/ About
half-past nine o'clock I distinctly heard Mrs. M.
walk up and down the passage which ran from the
front door past the open door of the room in which
I was sitting. I was not thinking of Mrs. M. and
did not at the time realize that she was not in the
flat, when suddenly I heard her voice and saw her
standing at the open door. I saw her quite dis-
tinctly, and saw that she was dressed in the dress
in which I had usually seen her in an evening,
without bonnet or hat, her hair being plaited low
down close to the back of her head. The dress,
I said, was the same, but there were two differ-
THK THOUGHT BODY, OR THE DOUBI.K 63
ences which I noticed at once. In her usual dress,
the silk front was grey ; this time the grey colour
had given place to a curious amber, and over her
shoulders she wore a shawl of white Indian silk.
I noticed it particularly, because the roses em-
broidered on it at its ends did not correspond with
each other. All this I saw a I looked up and heard
her say, ' T , give me that book/ I answered,
half mechanically, ' Yes, Mrs. M./ but felt some-
what startled. I had hardly spoken when Mrs. M.
turned, opened the door leading into the main
building, and went out. I instantly got up and
followed her to the door. It was closed. I opened
it and looked out, but could see nobody. It was
not until then that I fully realised that there was
something uncanny in what I had seen. I was
very frightened, and after having satisfied myself
that Mrs. M. was not in the flat, I fastened the
door, put out the lights, and went to bed, burying
my head under the bedclothes.
" The post next day brought a letter from Mrs.
M. saying that she was coming by eleven o'clock.
I was too frightened to stay in the house, and I
went to my father and told him what I had seen.
He told me to go back and hear what Mrs. M. had
to say about the matter. When Mrs. M. arrived
I told her what I had seen on the preceding
evening. She laughed, and said, Oh ! ' I was
here then, was I ? I did not expect to come here/
With that exception I have seen no apparition
whatever, or had any hallucination of any kind,
neither have I seen the apparition of Mrs. M.
again."
64 RKAI, GHOST STORIES
After hearing this statement I asked Mrs. M.
what she meant by the remark she had made on
hearing Miss C.'s explanation of what she had
witnessed. My hostess replied, " That night when
I passed into the trance state, and lay down on
the couch in the sitting-room at Hindhead, I did
so with the desire of visiting my husband, who
was in his retreat at Wimbledon. That, I should
say, was between nine and half-past. After I came
out of the trance I was conscious that I had been
somewhere, but I did not know where. I started
from Hindhead for Wimbledon, but landed at
M - Mansions, where, no doubt, I was more at
home." ' Then you had no memory of where you
had been ? ' " Not the least." " And what
about the shawl ? ' " The shawl was one that
Miss C. had never seen. I had not worn it for two
years, and the fact that she saw it and described
it, is conclusive evidence against the subjective
character of the vision. The originals of all the
phantom clothes were at M - Mansions at the
time Miss C. saw me wearing them. I was not
wearing the shawl. At the time when she saw it
on my Thought Body it was folded up and put
away in a wardrobe in an adjoining room. She
had never seen it." I asked Miss C. what was
the appearance of Mrs. M. She replied, " She just
looked as she does always, only much more beauti-
ful." How do you account," said I to my hostess,
" for the change in colour of the silk front from
grey to amber ? ' She replied, " It was a freak."
I then asked Mr. C., the father of the last wit-
ness, what had occurred in his wife's experience.
THE THOUGHT BODY, OR THE DOUBLE 65
Here is the statement which his wife made to
him, and which he says is absolutely reliable.
" I was staying at Hindhead, in the lodge con-
nected with the house in which you are staying.
I was in some trouble, and Mrs. M. had been
somewhat anxious about me. I had gone to sleep,
but was suddenly aroused by the consciousness
that some one was bending over me. When I
opened my eyes I saw in shimmering outline a
figure which I recognised at once as that of Mrs. M.
She was bending over me, and her great lustrous
eyes seemed to pierce my very soul. For a time
I lay still, as if paralysed, being unable either to
speak or to move, but at last gaining courage with
time I ventured to strike a match. As soon as I
did so the figure of Mrs. M. disappeared. Feeling
reassured and persuaded that I had been deluded
by my senses, I at last put out the light and com-
posed myself to sleep. To my horror, no sooner
was the room dark than I saw the spectral,
shimmering form of Mrs. M. moving about the
room, and always turning towards me those
wonderful, piercing eyes. I again struck a match,
and again the apparition vanished from the room.
" By this time I was in a mortal terror, and it
was some time before I ventured to put out the
light again, when a third time I saw the familiar
presence which had evidently never left the room,
but simply been invisible in the light. In the
dark it shone by its own radiance. I was taken
seriously ill with a violent palpitation of the heart,
and kept my light burning. I felt so utterly upset
that I could not remain any longer in the place
66 REAI, GHOST STORIES
and insisted next morning on going home. I did
not touch the phantom, I simply saw it saw it
three times, and its haunting persistency rendered
it quite impossible for me to mistake it for any
mere nightmare."
Neither Mrs. nor Miss C. have had any other
hallucinations, and Mrs. C. is strongly sceptical.
>She does not deny the accuracy of the above
statement, but scouts the theory of a Thought
Body, or of any supernatural or occult explanation.
On hearing Mrs. C/s evidence I asked my hostess
whether she was conscious of haunting her guest
in this way. " I knew nothing about it/' she
replied ; "all that I know was that I had been
much troubled about her and was anxious to help
her. I went into a very heavy, deep sleep ; but
until next morning, when I heard of it from Mrs. C.
I had no idea that my double had left my room."
I said, " This power is rather gruesome, for you
might take to haunting me." " I do not think so,
unless there was something to be gained which
could not be otherwise secured, some benefit to be
conferred upon you." " That is to say, if I were
in trouble or dangerously ill, and you were anxious
about me, your double might come and attend
my sick-bed." " That is quite possible," she said
imperturbably. " Well," said I, " when are you
coming to be photographed ? ' " Not for many
months yet," she replied, with a laugh. " For
the Thought Body to leave its corporeal tenement
it needs a considerable concentration of thought,
and an absence of all disturbing conditions or
absorbing preoccupations at the time. I see no
\
THE THOUGHT BODY, OR THE DOUBLE 67
reason why I should not be photographed when
the circumstances are propitious. I shall be very
glad to furnish you with that evidence of the
reality of the Thought Body, but such things
cannot be fixed up to order."
This, indeed, was a ghost to some purpose a
ghost free from all the weird associations of death
and the grave a healthy, utilisable ghost, and a
ghost, above all, which wanted to be photo-
graphed. It seemed too good to be true. Yet
how strange it was ! Here we have just been
discussing whether or not we have each of us two
souls, and, behold ! my good hostess tells me quite
calmly that it is beyond all doubt that we have
two bodies.
Three Other Aerial Wanderers.
A short time after hearing from my hostess
this incredible account of her aerial journeyings,
I received first hand from three other ladies
statements that they had also enjoyed this
faculty of bodily duplication. All four ladies
are between twenty and forty years of age.
Three of them are married. The first says she
has almost complete control over her movements,
but for the most part her phantasmal envelope
is invisible to those whom she visits.
This, it may be said, is mere conscious clair-
voyance, in which the faculty of sight was accom-
panied by the consciousness of bodily presence,
although it is invisible to other eyes. It is,
besides, purely subjective and therefore beside
the mark. Still, it is interesting as embodying
68 REAI, GHOST STORIES
the impressions of a mind, presumably sane, as
to the experiences through which it has consciously
passed. On the same ground I may refer to the
experience of Miss X., the second lady referred
to, who, when lying, as it was believed, at the
point of death, declares that she was quite con-
scious of coming out of her body and looking at
it as it lay in the bed. In all the cases I have yet
mentioned the departure of the phantasmal body
is accompanied by a state of trance on the part
of the material body. There is not dual conscious-
ness, but only a dual body, the consciousness being
confined to the immaterial body.
It is otherwise with the experience of the fourth
wanderer in my text. Mrs. Wedgw r ood, the
daughter-in-law of Mr. Hensleigh Wedgwood, the
well-known philologist, who was Charles Darwin's
cousin, declares that she had once a very extra-
ordinary experience. She was lying on a couch
in an upper room one wintry morning at Shorn-
clirTe, when she felt her Thought Body leave her
and, passing through the window, alight on the
snowy ground. She was distinctly conscious both
in her material body and in its immaterial counter-
part. She lay on the couch watching the move-
ments of the second self, which at the same moment
felt the snow cold under its feet. The second self
met a labourer and spoke to him. He replied as
if somewhat scared. The second self walked down
the road and entered an officer's hut, which was
standing empty. She noted the number of guns.
There were a score or more of all kinds in all
manner of places ; remarked upon the quaint
THE THOUGHT BODY, OR THE DOUBLE 69
looking-glass ; took a mental inventory of the
furniture ; and then, coming out as she went in,
she regained her material body, which all the
while lay perfectly conscious on the couch. Then,
when the two selves were reunited, she went down
to breakfast, and described where she had been.
" Bless me," said an officer, who was one of the
party, " if you have not been in Major 's hut.
You have described it exactly, especially the guns,
which he has a perfect mania for collecting/'
Here the immaterial body was not only visible
but audible, and that not merely to the casual
passer-by, but also to the material body which had
for the moment parted with one of its vital con-
stituents without losing consciousness.
It must, of course, be admitted that, with the
exception of the statement by my two friends as
to the apparition of Mrs. M/s immaterial body,
none of the other statements can pretend to the
slightest evidential value. They may be worth as
much as the confessions of the witches who swore
they were dancing with Satan while their husbands
held their material bodies clasped in their arms ;
but any explanation of subjective hallucination or
of downright lying would be preferred by the
majority of people to the acceptance of the simple
accuracy of these statements. The phenomenon
of the aerial flight is, however, not unfamiliar to
those who are interested in this subject.
Mrs. Besant's Theory.
I asked Mrs. Besant whether she thought my
hostess was romancing, and whether my friend had
70 REAI, GHOST STORIES
not been the victim of some illusion. " Oh, no/'
said Mrs. Besant cheerfully. " There is nothing
improbable about it. Very possibly she has this
faculty. It is not so uncommon as you think.
But its exercise is rather dangerous, and I hope
she is well instructed/' " How ? " I asked.
" Oh/' Mrs. Besant replied, " it is all right if she
knows what she is about, but it is just as dangerous
to go waltzing about on the astral plane as it is for
a girl to go skylarking down a dark slum when
roughs are about. Elementals, with the desire
to live, greedily appropriating the vitality and the
passions of men, are not the pleasantest com-
panions. Nor can other astrals of the dead, who
have met with sudden or violent ends, and whose
passions are unslaked, be regarded as desirable
acquaintances. If she knows what she is about,
well and good. But otherwise she is like a child
playing with dynamite/'
" But what is an astral body ? "
Mrs. Besant replied, " There are several astrals,
each with its own characteristics. The lowest
astral body taken in itself is without conscience,
will, or intelligence. It exists as a mere shadowy
phantasm only as long as the material body lasts/'
" Then the mummies in the Museum ? ' " No
doubt a clairvoyant could see their astrals keeping
their silent watch by the dead. As the body
decays so the astral fades away." " But that
implies the possibility of a decaying ghost ? '
" Certainly. An old friend of mine, a lady who
bears a well-known name, was once haunted for
months by an astral. She was a strong-minded
THE THOUGHT BODY, OR THE DOUBLE 71
girl, and she didn't worry. But it was rather
ghastly when the astral began to decay. As the
corpse decomposed the astral shrank, until at last,
to her great relief, it entirely disappeared."
Mrs. Besant mentioned the name of the lady,
who is well known to many of my readers, and one
of the last to be suspected of such haunting.
CHAPTER II.
THE EVIDENCE OF THE PSYCHICAL RESEARCH
SOCIETY.
IN that great text-book on the subject, " The
Phantasms of the Irving," by Messrs. Gurney,
Myers, and Podmore, the phenomenon of the
Thought Body is shown to be comparatively
frequent, and the Psychical Research Society
have about a hundred recorded instances. I
will only quote here two or three of the more
remarkable cases mentioned in these imposing
volumes.
The best case of the projection of the Thought
Body at will is that described, under the initials
of " S. H. B.," in the first volume of the " Phan-
tasms/' pp. 104-109. Mr. B. is a member of the
Stock Exchange, who is well known to many
intimate friends of mine as a man of high char-
acter. The narrative, which is verified by the
Psychical Research Society, places beyond doubt
the existence of powers in certain individuals which
open up an almost illimitable field of mystery and
speculation. Mr. B/s story, in brief, is this :
" One Sunday night in November, 1881, I was
in Kildare Gardens, when I willed very strongly
that I would visit in spirit two lady friends, the
Misses V., who were living three miles off in
Hogarth Road. I willed that I should do this at
one o'clock in the morning, and having willed it I
THE THOUGHT BODY, OR THE DOUBLE 73
went to sleep. Next Thursday, when I first met
my friends, the elder lady told me she woke up
and saw my apparition advancing to her bed-
side. She screamed and woke her sister, who also
saw me." (A signed statement by both sisters
accompanies this narrative. They fix the time at
one o'clock, and say that Mr. B. wore evening
dress.)
" On December 1st, 1882, I was at Southall.
At half-past nine I sat down to endeavour to fix
my mind so strongly upon the interior of a house
at Kew, where Miss V. and her sister lived, that I
seemed to be actually in the house. I was con-
scious, but I was in a kind of mesmeric sleep.
When I went to bed that night I willed to be in the
front bedroom of that house at Kew at twelve,
and make my presence felt by the inmates. Next
day I went to Kew. Miss V.'s married sister told
me, without any prompting from me, that she had
seen me in the passage going from one room to
another at half-past nine o'clock, and that at
twelve, when she was wide awake, she saw me
come into the front bedroom where she slept and
take her hair, which is very long, into my hand.
She said I then took her hand and gazed into the
palm intently. She said, ' You need not look at
the lines, for I never had any trouble.' She then
woke her sister. When Mrs. I/, told me this I
took out the entry I had made the previous night
and read it to her. Mrs. Iy. is quite sure she was
not dreaming. She had only seen me once, before,
two years previously, at a fancy ball.
" On March 22nd, 1884, I wrote to Mr. Gurney,
74 REAI, GHOST STORIES
of the Psychical Research Society, telling him I
was going to make my presence felt by Miss V.,
at 44, Norland Square, at mid-night. Ten days
afterwards I saw Miss V., when she voluntarily
told me that on Saturday at midnight she dis-
tinctly saw me, when she was quite wide awake.
I came towards her and stroked her hair. She
adds in her written statement, ' The appearance
in my room was most vivid and quite unmis-
takable/ I was then at Baling. "
Here there is the thrice-repeated projection at
will of the Thought Body through space so as
to make it both visible to, and tangible by, friends.
But the Conscious Personality which willed the
visit has not yet unlocked the memory of his un-
scious partner, and Mr. B., although able to go
and see and touch, could bring back no memory cf
his aerial flight. All that he knew was that he
willed and then he slept. The fact that he ap-
peared is attested not by his consciousness, but
by the evidence of those who saw him.
A Visitor from Burmah.
Here is a report of the apparition of a Thought
Body, the material original of which was at the
time in Burmah. The case is important, because
the Thought Body was not recognised at the time,
showing that it could not have been a subjective
revival of the memory of a face. It is sent me by a
gentleman in South Kensington, who wishes to be
mentioned only by his initials, R.S.S.
" Towards the close of 1888 my son, who had
obtained an appointment in the Indian Civil
Service, left England for Burmah,
THE THOUGHT BODY, OR THE: DOUBI/E 75
" A few days after his arrival in Rangoon he
was sent up the country to join the District Com-
missioner of a district still at that period much
harassed by Dacoits.
" After this two mails passed by without news
of him, and as, up to this period, his letters had
reached us with unfailing regularity, we had a
natural feeling of anxiety for his safety. As the
day for the arrival of the third mail drew near I
became quite unreasonably apprehensive of bad
news, and in this state of mind I retired one evening
to bed, and lay awake till long past the middle of
the night, when suddenly, close to my bedside,
appeared very distinctly the figure of a young
man. The face had a worn and rather sad ex-
pression ; but in the few seconds during which it
was visible the impression was borne in upon me
that the vision was intended to be reassuring.
" I cannot explain why I did not at once as-
sociate this form with my son, but it was so unlike
the hale, fresh-looking youth we had parted from
only four or five months previously that I sup-
posed it must be his chief, whom I knew to be his
senior by some five years only.
u I retailed this incident to my son by the next
mail, and was perplexed when I got his reply to
hear that his chief was a man with a beard and
moustache, whereas the apparition was devoid of
either. A little later came a portrait of himself
recently taken. It was the subject of my vision,
of which the traits had remained, and still remain,
in every detail, perfectly distinct in my recol-
lection."
76 REAI, GHOST STORIES
Thought Visits Seen and Remembered.
Here is an account of a visit paid at will, which
is reported at first hand in the " Proceedings of
the Psychical Research Society/' The narrator,
Mr. John Moule, tells how he determined to make
an experiment of the kind now under discussion :
" I chose for this purpose a young lady, a Miss
Drasey, and stated that some day I intended to
visit hei, wherever the place might be, although
the place might be unknown to me ; and told her
if anything particular should occur to note the
time, and when she called at my house again to
state if anything had occurred. One day, about
two months after (I not having seen her in the
interval) , I was by myself in my chemical factory,
Redman Row, Mile End, Condon, all alone,
and I determined to try the experiment, the lady
being in Dalston, about three miles off. I stood,
raised my hands, and willed to act on the lady.
I soon felt that I had expended energy. I im-
mediately sat down in a chair and went to sleep.
I then saw in a dream my friend coming down the
kitchen stairs where I dreamt I was. She saw me,
and exclaimed suddenly, ' Oh ! Mr. Moule/ and
fainted away. This I dreamt and then awoke.
I thought very little about it, supposing I had had
an ordinary dream ; but about three weeks after
she came to my house and related to my wife the
singular occurrence of her seeing me sitting in the
kitchen where she then was, and she fainted away
and nearly dropped some dishes she had in her
hands. All this I saw exactly in my dream, so that
I described the kitchen furniture and where I sat
THE THOUGHT BODY, OR THE DOUBLE 77
as perfectly as if I had been there, though I had
never been in the house. I gave many details,
and she said, ' It is just as if you had been there/ "
(Vol. III. pp. 420, 421.)
Mr. W. A. S., to quote another case, in April,
1871, at two o'clock in the afternoon, was sitting
in a house in Pall Mall. He saw a lady glide in
backwards at the door of the room, as if she had
been slid in on a slide, each part of her dress
keeping its proper place without disturbance.
She glided in until the whole of her could be seen,
except the tip of her nose, her lips, and the tip of
her chin, which were hidden by the edge of the
door. She was an old acquaintance of his, whom
he had not seen for twenty or twenty-five years.
He observed her closely until his brother entered
the house, and coming into the room passed
completely through the phantasm, which shortly
afterwards faded away. Another person in the
room could not see it. Some years afterwards he
learned that she had died the same year, six
months afterwards, from a painful cancer of the
face. It was curious that the phantasm never
showed him the front of its face, which was always
hidden by the door. (Vol. II. p. 517.)
Sometimes, however, the Thought Body is both
conscious and visible, although in most cases when
visible it is not conscious, and retains no memory
of what has passed. When it remembers it is
usually not visible. In Mr. Dale Owen's remark-
able volume, " Footfalls on the Boundary of
Another World," there is a narrative, entitled
" The Visionary Excursion/' in which a lady,
78 REAL GHOST STORIES
whom he calls Mrs. A., whose husband was a
brigadier-general in India, describes an aerial
flight so explicitly that I venture to reprint her
story here, as illustrating the possibility of being
visible and at the same time remembering where
you had been :
In June of the year 1857, a lady, whom I shall
designate as Mrs. A., was residing with her hus-
band, a colonel in the British army, and their
infant child, on Woolwich Common, near London.
One night in the early part of that month, sud-
denly awaking to consciousness, she felt herself
as if standing by the bedside and looking down
upon her own body, which lay there by the side
of her sleeping husband. Her first impression was
that she had died suddenly, and the idea was
confirmed by the pale and lifeless look of the body,
the face void of expression, and the whole appear-
ance showing no sign of vitality. She gazed at it
with curiosity for some time, comparing its dead
look with that of the fresh countenances of her
husband and of her slumbering infant in the cradle
hard by. For a moment she experienced a feeling
of relief that she had escaped the pangs of death ;
but the next she reflected what a grief her death
would be to the survivors, and then came the wish
that she had broken the news to them gradually.
While engaged in these thoughts she felt herself
carried to the wall of her room, with a feeling that
it must arrest her further progress. But no, she
seemed to pass through it into the open air.
Outside the house was a tree ; and this also she
THE THOUGHT BODY, OR THE DOUBLE 79
seemed to traverse as if it interposed no obstacle.
All this occurred without any desire on her part.
She crossed Woolwich Common, visited the
Arsenal, returned to the barracks, and then found
herself in the bed-chamber of an intimate friend,
Miss Iy. M., who lived at Greenwich. She began
to talk ; but she remembered no more until she
waked by her husband's side. Her first words
were, " So I am not dead after all. 1 ' She told her
husband of her excursion, and they agreed to say
nothing about it until they heard from Miss Iy. M.
When they met that lady, two days after, she
volunteered the statement that Mrs. A. had ap-
peared to her about three o'clock in the morning
of the night before last, robed in violet, and had a
conversation with her (" Footfalls on the Boun-
dary of Another World," p. 256.)
A Doctor's Experience of the Dual Body.
Whatever may be thought of the Psychic's
description of her experiences in her thought
journey, they are vivid and realistic. Here is the
description given by a medical man in a well-
known watering-place on the south coast of his
experience in getting into his material body after
an aerial excursion :
" I was engaged to a young lady whom I very
much loved. During the early part of this engage-
ment I visited the Hall in the village, not far from
the Vicarage, where the young lady resided. I
was in the habit of spending from Sunday to
Monday at the Hall. On one of these mornings of
my departure I found myself standing between the
8o REAI, GHOST STORIES
two closed windows in the lady's bedroom. It was
about five o'clock on a bright summer morning.
Her room looked eastward, mine directly west,
and the church stoodbetween the two houses, which
were about five hundred yards apart. I have no
impression whatever how I became transplanted
from the house. The lady was in a camp bedstead,
directly opposite to me, looking at and reaching
out her arms towards me, when my disembodied
spirit instantly disappeared to join the material
body which it had left in some mysterious way.
As I returned and was fitting in to my body on
my left side, when half united I could see within
me the ununited spiritual part on glow like an
electric light, while the other united half was
hidden in total darkness, looking black as through
a thunder cloud, when, like the shutting of a
drawer, the whole body became united, and I
awoke in great alarm, with a belief that if any one
had entered my room and moved my body from
the position in which it lay on its back, the return-
ing spirit could not have joined its material case,
and that death, as it is vulgarly called, would
have been inevitable/'
In the morning at the breakfast-table the young
lady said she had a strange experience. She saw
M.D. in her bedroom, looking at her as she sat up
in bed, and that he disappeared after a short stay ;
but how he got there she could not say, as she was
positive she had locked her bedroom door. So
one experience corroborated the other.*
* Quoted from a remarkable work by James Gillingham, surgical
mechanist, Chard, Somerset. Mr. Gillingham sent me the name of the
doctor, and assures me that the narrative is quite authentic.
THE THOUGHT BODY, OR THE DOUBLE 81
Speaking Doubles.
While discussing the subject, some friends called
at Mowbray House, and were, as usual, asked
to pay toll in the shape of communicating any
experience they had had of the so-called super-
natural. One of my visitors gave me the following
narrative, the details of which are in the possession
of the Psychical Research Society :
" Some years ago my father and another son were
crossing the Channel at night. My mother, who
was living in England, was roused up in the middle
of the night by the apparition of my father. She
declares that she saw him quite distinctly standing
by her bedside, looking anxious and distraught.
Knowing that at that moment he was in mid-
Channel, she augured that some disaster had over-
taken him or the boy. She said, ' Is there some
trouble ? ' He said, ' There is ; the boy
and then he faded from her sight. The curious
part of the story is that my father at that very
time had been thinking on board the steamer of
having to tell his wife of the loss of the boy. The
lad had been missed, and for a short time father
feared he had fallen overboard. Shortly after-
wards he was discovered to be quite safe. But
during the period of suspense father was vividly
conscious of the pain of having to break the news
to his wife. It was subsequently proved by a
comparison of the hour that his double had not
only appeared but had spoken at the very moment
he was thinking of how to tell her the news mid-
way between France and England."
Another case in which the double appeared was
F
82 RKAiy GHOST STORIES
that of Dr. F. R. L,ees, the well-known temperance
controversialist. On communicating with the
Doctor, the following is his reply :
" The little story or incident of which you have
heard occurred above thirty years ago, and may
be related in very few words. Whether it was
coincidence, or transference of vivid thought, I
leave to the judgment of others.
" I had left Leeds for the Isle of Jersey (though
my dear wife was only just recovering from a
nervous fever) to fulfil an important engagement.
On a Good Friday, myself and a party of friends
in several carriages drove round a large portion of
the island, coming back to St. Heliers from Bouley
Bay, taking tea about seven o'clock at Captain
-'s villa. The party broke up about ten o'clock,
and the weather being fine and warm, I walked
to the house of a banker who entertained me.
Naturally, my evening thoughts reverted to my
home, and after reading a few verses in my Testa-
ment, I walked about the room until nearly
eleven, thinking of my wife, and breathing the
prayer, ' God bless you/
" I might not have recalled all the circumstances,
save for the letter I received by the next post
from her, with the query put in : ' Tell me what
you were doing within a few minutes of eleven
o'clock on Friday evening ? I will tell you in my
next why I ask ; for something happened to me/
In the middle of the week the letter came, and
these words in it : ' I had just awoke from a
slight repose, when I saw you in your night-dress
bend over me, and utter the words, " God bless
THE THOUGHT BODY, OR THE DOUBLE 83
you ! ' I seemed also to feel your breath as you
kissed me. I felt no alarm, but comforted, went
off into a gentle sleep, and have been better ever
since/ I replied that this was an exact representa-
tion of my mind and words."
Here there was apparently the instantaneous
reproduction in I^eeds of the image, and not only
of the image but of the words spoken in Jersey,
a hundred miles away. The theory that the
phantasmal body is occasionally detachable from
the material frame accounts for this in a fashion,
and that is more than can be said for any other
hypothesis that has yet been stated. In neither
of these cases did an early death follow the appar-
ition of the dual body.
An Unknown Double Identified.
Neither of these stories, however, is so wonderful
as the following narrative, which is forwarded to
me by a correspondent in North Britain, who
received the statement from a Colonel now serving
in India on the Bengal Staff, whose name is com-
municated on the understanding that it is not to
be made public :
" In the year 1860 I was stationed at Banda, in
Bundelcund, India. There was a good deal of
sickness there at the time, and I was deputed
along with a medical officer to proceed to the
nearest railway station at that time Allahabad,
in charge of a sick officer. I will call myself
Brown, the medical officer Jones, and the sick
officer Robertson. We had to travel very slowly,
Robertson being carried by coolies in a doolie,
84 RBAI, GHOST STORIES
and on this account we had to halt at a rest-
house, or pitch our camp every evening. One
evening, when three marches out of Banda, I had
just come into Robertson's room about midnight
to relieve Jones, for Robertson was so ill that we
took it by turns to watch him, when Jones took
me aside and whispered that he was afraid our
friend was dying, that he did not expect him to
live through the night, and though I urged him
to go and lie down, and that I would call him on
any change taking place, he would not leave.
We both sat down and watched. We had been
there about an hour when the sick man moved
and called out. We both went to his bedside,
and even my inexperienced eyes saw that the end
was near. We were both standing on the same
side of the bed, furthest away from the door.
"Whilst we were standing there the door opened,
and an elderly lady entered, went straight up to the
bed, bent over it, wrung her hands and wept
bitterly. After a few minutes she left ; we both
saw her face. We were so astonished that neither
of us thought of speaking to her, but as soon as
she passed out of the door I recovered myself and,
as quickly as possible, followed her, but could not
find a trace of her. Robertson died that night.
We were then about thirty miles from the nearest
cantonment, and except the rest-house in which
we were, and of which we were the only occupants,
there was not a house near us. Next morning we
started back to Banda, taking the corpse with us
for burial.
'Three months after this Jones went to
THE THOUGHT BODY, OR THE DOUBLE 85
England on leave, and took with him the sword,
watch, and a few other things which had belonged
to the deceased to deliver to his family. On
arrival at Robertson's home, he was shown into
the drawing-room. After waiting a few minutes,
a lady entered the same who had appeared to
both of us in the jungle in India ; it was Robert-
son's mother. She told Jones that she had had a
vision that her son was dangerously ill, and had
written the date, etc., down, and on comparing
notes they found that the date, time, etc., agreed
in every respect.
" People to whom I have told the story laugh
at me, and tell me that I must have been asleep
and dreamed it, but I know I was not, for I remem-
ber perfectly well standing by the bedside when
the lady appeared."
CHAPTER III.
AIMLESS DOUBLES.
The following curious experience is sent me by
a commercial traveller, who gives his name and
address in support of his testimony. Writing from
Nottingham, he says :
" On Tuesday, the 6th October, I had a very
singular experience. I am a commercial traveller,
and represent a firm of cigar manufacturers. I
left my hotel about four o'clock on the above date
to call upon a customer, a Mr. Southam, Myton
Gate, Hull. I met this gentleman in the street,
nearly opposite his office ; he shook hands, and
said, ' How are you ? I am waiting to see a
friend ; I don't think I shall want any cigars this
journey, but look in before eight o'clock/ I
called at 7.30, and spoke to the clerk in the office.
He said, ' Mr. Southam has made out your cheque
and there is also a small order.' I said, ' Thanks,
I should have liked to have seen him ; he made
an appointment this afternoon for about eight.'
The clerk said, ' Where ? ' I said, ' Just outside.'
He said, ' That is impossible, as both Mr. and
Mrs. Southam have been confined to their room
for a fortnight and have never been out.' I said,
' How strange. I said to Mr. S , " You look
different to your usual ; what's the matter with
you ? ' Mr. S- - said, " Don't you see I am in
my deshabille ? " The clerk remarked, ' You must
THE THOUGHT BODY, OR THE DOUBLE 87
have seen his second self, for he has not been up
to-day/ I came away feeling very strange.
" J. P. BROOKS.
" Sydney Villa, Ratcliffe Road, Bridgeford."
Mrs. Eliz. G. I/ , of H - House, sends me
the following report of her experience of the
double. She writes :
" The only time I ever saw an apparition was on
the evening of the last day of May, 1860. The
impression then made is most vivid, and the day
seldom recurs without my thinking of what hap-
pened then.
" It was a little after seven o'clock, the time for
my husband's return from business. I was passing
through the hall into the dining-room, where tea
was laid, when (the front door being open) I saw
my husband coming up the garden path, which
was in a direct line with the hall. It was broad
daylight, and nothing obstructed my view of him,
and he was not more than nine or ten yards from
me. Instead of going to him, I turned back, and
said to the servant in the kitchen, ' Take tea in
immediately, your master is come.' I then went
into the dining-room, expecting him to be there.
To my great surprise the room was empty, and
there was no one in the garden. As my father
was very ill in the next house but one to ours, I
concluded that Mr. I, had suddenly deter-
mined to turn back and enquire how he was before
having tea. In half an hour he came into the room
to me, and I asked how my father was, when, to
my astonishment, he told me that he had not
88 REAI, GHOST STORIKS
called, but had come home direct from the town.
I said, ' You were in the garden half an hour ago,
I saw you as distinctly as I see you now ; if you
were not there then, you are not here now,' and I
grasped his arm as I spoke to convince myself
that it was really he. I thought that my husband
was teasing me by his repeated denials, and that he
would at last confess he was really there ; and it
was only when he assured me in the most positive
and serious manner that he was a mile away at the
time I saw him in the garden, that I could believe
him. I have never been able to account for the
appearance. There was no one I could possibly
have mistaken for Mr. I, . I was in good
health at the time, and had no illness for long
afterwards. My mother is still living, and she can
corroborate my statement, and bear witness to the
deep impression the occurrence made upon me.
I saw my husband as plainly as I have ever seen
him since during the many years we have lived
together."
Two Dundee Doubles.
^Mr. Robert Kidd, of Gray Street, Broughty
Ferry, who has filled many offices in Dundee,
having been twenty-five years a police commis-
sioner and five years a magistrate there, sends me
the following report of two cases of the double :
' A few years ago I had a shop on the High
Street of Dundee one door and one window, a
cellar underneath, the entrance to which was at
one corner of the shop. There was no way of
getting in or out of the cellar but by that stair in
the corner. It was lighted from the street by
THE THOUGHT BODY, OR THB DOUBLE 89
glass, but to protect that there was an iron grating,
which was fixed down. Well, I had an old man,
a servant, named Robert Chester. I sent him a
message one forenoon about 12 o'clock ; he was in
no hurry returning. I remarked to my daughter,
who was book-keeper, whose desk was just by
the trap-door, that he was stopping long. Just
as I spoke he passed the window, came in at the
door, carrying a large dish under his arm, went
right past me, past my daughter, who looked at
him, and went down into the cellar. After a few
minutes, as I heard no noise, I wondered what he
could be about, and went down to see. There
was no Robert there. I cannot tell what my
sensations were when I realized this ; there was
no possibility of his getting out, and we both of
us saw and heard him go down. Well, in about
twenty minutes he re-passed the window, crossed
the floor, and went downstairs, exactly as he had
the first time. There was no hallucination on our
part. My daughter is a clever, highly-gifted
woman ; I am seventy-eight years of age, and
have seen a great deal of the world, a great
reader, etc., etc., and not easily deceived or apt
to be led away by fancy, and I can declare that
his first appearance to us was a reality as much
as the second; We concluded, and so did all his
relations, that it portended his death, but he is
still alive, over eighty years of age. I give this
just as it occurred, without any varnish or ex-
aggeration whatever. The following narrative I
firmly believe, as I knew the parties well, and
that every means were used to prove its truth-
fulness.
go REAI, GHOST STORIES
" Mr. Alexander Drummond was a painter,
who had a big business and a large staff of men.
His clerk was Walter Souter, his brother-in-law,
whose business it was to be at the shop (in North-
gate, Dundee) sharp at six o'clock in the morning,
to take an account of where the men were going,
quantity of material, etc. In this he was assisted
by Miss Drummond. One morning he did not
turn up at the hour, but at twenty past six he
came in at the door and appeared very much
excited ; but instead of stepping to the desk,
where Mr. and Miss Drummond were awaiting
him, he went right through the front shop and
out at a side door. This in sight of Mr. and
Miss D , and also in sight of a whole squad
of workmen. Well, exactly in another twenty
minutes he came in, also very much excited, and
explained that it was twenty minutes past six
when he awakened, and that he had run all the way
from his house (he lived a mile from the place of
business). He was a very exemplary, punctual
man, and when Mr. Drummond asked him where
he went to when he came first, he was dumb-
founded, and could not comprehend what was
meant. To test his truthfulness, Mr. D - went
out to his wife that afternoon, when she told him
the same story ; that it was twenty past six
o'clock when he awoke, and that he was very much
excited about it, as it was the first time he had
slept in. This story I believe as firmly as in my
own case, as it was much talked about at the time,
and I have just told it as it was told to me by all
the parties. Of course I am a total stranger to
THE THOUGHT BODY, OR THK DOUBLE 91
you, and you may require to know something
about me before believing my somewhat singular
stories. I am well known about here, have filled
many offices in Dundee, and have been twenty-
five years a police commissioner, and five years a
magistrate in this place, am very well known to
the Right Honourable C, Ritchie, and also to our
county member, Mr. Barclay. If this little story
throws any light upon our wondrous being I shall
be glad."
A Manchester Parallel.
The following narrative, supplied by Mr. R. P.
Roberts, 10, Exchange Street, Manchester, appears
in the " Proceedings of the Psychical Research
Society." It is a fitting pendant to Mr. Kidd's
story :
' The shop stood at the corner of Castle Street
and Rating Row, Beaumaris, and I lived in the
latter street. One day I went home to dinner at
the usual hour. When I had partly finished I
looked at the clock. To my astonishment it
appeared that the time by the clock was 12.30.
I gave an unusual start. I certainly thought that
it was most extraordinary. I had only half-
finished my dinner, and it was time for me to be
at the shop. I felt dubious, so in a few seconds
had another look, when to my agreeable surprise
I found that I had been mistaken. It was only
just turned 12.15. I could never explain how it
was I made the mistake. The error gave me such
a shock for a few minutes as if something had
happened, and I had to make an effort to shake
off the sensation. I finished my dinner, and
92 RKAI, GHOST STORIES
returned to business at 12.30. On entering the
shop I was accosted by Mrs. Owen, my employer's
wife, who used to assist in the business. She
asked me rather sternly where I had been since
my return from dinner. I replied that I had come
straight from dinner. A long discussion followed,
which brought out the following facts. About a
quarter of an hour previous to my actual entering
the shop (i.e. about 12.15), I was seen by Mr. and
Mrs. Owen and a well-known customer, Mrs.
Jones, to walk into the shop, go behind the
counter, and place my hat upon the peg. As I
was going behind the counter, Mrs. Owen re-
marked, with the intention that I should hear,
' that I had arrived now that I was not wanted.'
This remark was prompted by the fact that a few
minutes previous a customer was in the shop in
want of an article which belonged to the stock
under my charge, and which could not be found
in my absence. As soon as this customer left I
was seen to enter the shop. It was observed by
Mr. and Mrs. Owen and Mrs. Jones that I did not
appear to notice the remark made. In fact, I
looked quite absent-minded and vague. Immedi-
ately after putting my hat on the peg I returned
to the same spot, put my hat on again, and walked
out of the shop, still looking in a mysterious
manner, which induced one of the parties, I think
Mrs. Owen, to say that my behaviour was very
odd, and she wondered where I was off to.
"I, of course, contradicted these statements,
and endeavoured to prove that I could not have
eaten my dinner and returned in a quarter of an
THE THOUGHT BODY, OR THE DOUBLE 93
hour. This, however, availed nothing, and during
our discussion the above-mentioned Mrs. Jones
came into the shop again, and was appealed to at
once by Mr. and Mrs. Owen. She corroborated
every word of their account, and added that she
saw me coming down Rating Row when within a
few yards of the shop ; that she was only a step
or two behind me, and entered the shop in time
to hear Mrs. Owen's remarks about my coming too
late. These three persons gave their statement
of the affair quite independently of each other.
There was no other person near my age in the
Owens' establishment, and there could be no
reasonable doubt that my form had been seen
by them and by Mrs. Jones. They would not
believe my story until my aunt, who had dined
with me, said positively that I had not left the
table before my time was up. You will, no doubt,
notice the coincidence. At the moment when I
felt, with a startling sensation, that I ought to be
at the shop, and when Mr. and Mrs. Owen were
extremely anxious that I should be there, I
appeared to them looking, as they said, ' as if
in a dream or in a state of somnambulism/ '
(" Proceedings of the Psychical Research Society/'
Vol. I. p. 135-6.)
A Very Visible Double.
A correspondent, writing from a Yorkshire
village, sends me the following account of an
apparition of a Thought Body in circumstances
when there was nothing more serious than a
yearning desire on the part of a person whose
94 REAI, GHOST STORIES
phantasm appeared to occupy his old bed. My
correspondent, Mr. J. G. - , says that he took
it down from the lips of one of the most truthful
men he ever knew, and a sensible person to boot.
This person is still living, and I am told he has
confirmed Mr. G -'s story, which is as follows :
" Sixty years ago I was a farm servant at a
place in Pembrokeshire (I can give the name, but
don't wish it to be published). I was about fifteen
years old. I, along with three other men-servants,
slept in a granary in the yard. Our bedchamber
was reached by means of ten broad stone steps.
It was soon after Allhallows time, when all farm
servants change places in that part of the country.
A good and faithful foreman, who had been years
on the farm, had this time desired a change, and
had engaged to service some fifteen miles off, a
change which he afterwards much regretted.
" One night I woke up in my bed some time
during the small hours of the morning, and obedi-
ent to the call of nature, I got up, opened the door,
and stood on the upper step of the stairs. It was
a beautiful moonlight night. I surveyed the yard
and the fields about. To my surprise, but without
the least apprehension, I noticed a man coming
down a field, jump over a low wall, and walk
straight towards me. He stepped the three first
steps one by one, then he took two or three steps
at a stride. I knew the man well and recognised
him perfectly. I knew all the clothes he wore,
particularly a light waistcoat which he put on on
great occasions. As he drew near me I receded to
the doorway, and as he lifted up his two hands,
THE THOUGHT BODY, OR THE DOUBLE 95
as in the act of opening the door, which was open
already, I fled in screaming, and passing my own
bed jumped in between two older men in the next
bed. And neither time nor the sympathy of my
comrades could pacify me for hours.
" I told my tale, which, after searching and
seeing nobody, they disbelieved and put down to
my timidity.
' Next morning, however, just as we were
coming out from breakfast, in the presence of all
of us the discharged foreman was seen coming
down the same field, jumping the wall, walk
toward the sleeping chamber, ascend the steps,
lifting up his two hands to open the door in the
self-same manner in every particular as I had
described, and went straight to the same bed as I
got into.
" I asked him, ' Were you here last night,
John ? '
' No, my boy/ was the answer ; ' my body
was not here, but my mind was. I have run
away from that horrid place, travelled most of
the night, and every step I took my mind was
fixed on this old bed, where my weary bones
might be at rest/ '
I can supply names and all particulars, but do
not wish them to be published.
Seeing Your Own Thought Body.
In his " Footfalls " Mr. Owen records a still
more remarkable case of the duplication of the
body. A gentleman in Ohio, in 1833, had built
a new house, seventy or eighty yards distant from
96 RKAI, GHOST STORIES
his old residence on the other side of a small
ravine. One afternoon, about five o'clock, his
wife saw his eldest daughter, Rhoda, aged sixteen,
holding the youngest, Lucy, aged four, in her
arm, sitting in a rocking-chair, just within the
kitchen door of the new residence. She called the
attention of another sister to what she saw, and
was startled to hear that Rhoda and Lucy were
upstairs in the old house. They were at once sent
for, and on coming downstairs they saw, to their
amazement, their exact doubles sitting on the
doorstep of the new house. All the family col-
lected twelve in all and they all saw the phan-
tasmal Rhoda and Lucy, the real Rhoda and Lucy
standing beside them. The figures seated at the
hall door, and the two children now actually in
their midst, were absolutely identical in appear-
ance, even to each minute particular of dress.
After watching them for five minutes, the father
started to cross the ravine and solve the mystery.
Hardly had he descended the ravine when the
phantasmal Rhoda rose from the rocking chair,
with the child in her arms, and lay down on the
threshold. There she remained a moment or two,
and then apparently sank into the earth. When
the father reached the house no trace could be
found of any human being. Both died within a
year.
A correspondent of my own, a dressmaker in
the North of England, sends me the following
circumstantial account of how she saw her own
double without any mischief following :
" I have a sewing-machine, with a desk at one
THE: THOUGHT BODY, OR THE DOUBLE 97
side and carved legs supporting the desk part ;
on the opposite side the machine part is. The lid
of the machine rests on the desk part when open,
so that it forms a high back. I had this machine
across the corner of a room, so that the desk part
formed a triangle with the corner of the room. I
sat at the machine with my face towards the
corner. To my left was the window, to my right
the fire ; at each side of my chair the doors of
the machine walled me in as I sat working the
treadles. Down each side of the machine are
imitations of drawers. The wood is a beautiful
walnut. I was sewing a long piece of material
which passed from left to right. It was dinner-
time, so I looked down to see how much more I
had to do. It was almost finished, but there, in
the space near the window, betw r een the wall and
the machine, was a full-sized figure of myself
from the waist upwards. The image was lower
than myself, but clear enough, with brown hair
and eyes. How earnestly the eyes regarded me ;
how thoughtfully ! I laughed and nodded at the
image, but still it gazed earnestly at me. At its
neck was a bright red bow, coming unpinned.
Its white linen collar was turned up at the right-
hand corner.
" When I got down to dinner I told my
brother George I had seen Pepper's Ghost, and
it was a distinct image of myself, clear enough,
and yet I could see the wall and the side of the
machine through the image, and George said,
' Had it a red bow and white collar on ? ' ' Oh,
yes/ I said. ' It was just like me, only nicer,
G
98 REAI, GHOST STORIES
and when I laughed and nodded, it looked grave/
1 Very likely/ said George. ' It would think you
very silly. And was its bow coming unpinned ? '
' Yes/ I replied ; ' and the right point of its collar
was turned up/ He reached me a hand-mirror,
and I saw that my bow was coming unpinned and
the right point of my collar was turned up. So
it could not have been a reflection, or it would not
have been the right point, but the left of my collar
that was turned up/'
The Wraith as a Portent.
In the North country it is of popular belief that
to see the ghost of a living man portends his ad-
proaching decease. The Rev. Henry Kendall, of
Darlington, from whose diary (unpublished) I have
the liberty to quote, notes the 'following illustra-
tion of this belief, under date August 16th, 1870 :
" Mrs. W. mentioned a curious incident that
happened in Darlington : how Mrs. Percy, up-
holsterer, and known to several of us, was walking
along the street one day when her husband was
living, and she saw him walking a little way before
her ; then he left the causeway and turned in at a
public-house. When she spoke to him oi this,
he said he had not been near the place, and she was
so little satisfied with his statement that she called
in at the ' public/ and asked them if her husband
had been there, but they told her ' No/ In a very-
short period after this happened he died/'
The phenomenon of a dual body haunted the
imagination of poor Shelley. Shortly before his
death he believed he had seen his wraith :
Tim THOUGHT BODY, OR THE DOUBLE 99
" On the 23rd of June/' says one of his bi-
ographers, ' he was heard screaming at midnight
in the saloon. The Williamses ran in and found
him staring on vacancy. He had had a vision of a
cloaked figure which came to his bedside and
beckoned him to follow. He did so, and when they
had reached the sitting-room, the figure lifted
the hood of his cloak and disclosed Shelley's own
features, and saying, ' Siete soddisfatto ? ' van-
ished. This vision is accounted for on the ground
that Shelley had been reading a drama attributed
to Calderon, named ' El Embozado o El En-
capotado,' in which a mysterious personage who
had been haunting and thwarting the hero all
his life, and is at last about to give him satisfaction
in a duel, finally unmasks and proves to be the
hero's own wraith. He also asks, ' Art thou
satisfied ? ' and the haunted man dies of horror."
On the 29th of June some friends distinctly
saw Shelley walk into a little wood near I,erici,
when in fact he was in a wholly different direction.
This was related by Byron to Mr. Co well.
It is difficult to frame any theory that will
account for this double apparition, except, of
course, the hypothesis of downright lying on the
part of the witnesses. But the hypothesis of the
duplication of the body in this extraordinary fash-
ion is one which cannot be accepted until the
immaterial body is photographed under test
conditions at the same time that the material
body is under safe custody in another place.
Of course, it is well to bear in mind that to all those
who profess to know anything of occult lore, and
ioo REAiv GHOST STORIES
also to those who have the gift of clairvoyance,
there is nothing new or strange in the doctrine of
the immaterial body. Many clairvoyants declare
that they constantly see the apparitions of the
living mingling with the apparitions of the dead.
They are easily distinguishable. The ghost of a
living person is said to be opaque, whereas the
ghost of one from whom life has departed is
diaphanous as gossamer.
All this, of course, only causes the unbeliever
to blaspheme. It is to him every whit as mon-
strous as the old stories of the witches riding on
broomsticks. But the question is not to be settled
by blasphemy on one side or credulity on the
other. There is something behind these phan-
tasmal apparitions ; there is a real substratum
of truth, if we could but get at it. There seems
to be some faculty latent in the human mind, by
which it can in some cases impress upon the eye
and ear of a person at almost any distance the
image and the voice. We may call it telepathy or
what we please. It is a marvellous power, the
mere hint of which indefinitely expands the horizon
of the imagination. The telephone is but a mere
child's toy compared with the gift to transmit not
only the sound of the voice but the actual visible
image of the speaker for hundreds of miles without
any conductor known to man.
CHAPTER IV.
THE HYPNOTIC KEY.
HYPNOTISM is the key which will enable us to
unlock most of these mysteries, and so far as
hypnotism has spoken it does not tend to encourage
the belief that the immaterial body has any sub-
stance other than the hallucination of the person
who sees it. Various cases are reported by hyp-
notist practitioners which suggest that there is an
almost illimitable capacity of the human mind to
see visions and* to hear voices. One very remark-
able case was that of a girl who was told at mid-
summer by the hypnotist, when in the hypnotic
state, that he would come to see her on New Year's
Day. When she awoke from the trance she knew
nothing about the conversation. One hundred
and seventy-one days passed without any reference
to it. But on the 172nd day, being New Year's
Day, she positively declared that the doctor had
entered her room, greeted her, and then departed.
Curiously enough, as showing the purely sub-
jective character of the vision, the doctor ap-
peared to her in the depth of winter, wearing the
light summer apparel he had on when 'he made
the appointment in July. In this case there can be
no question as to the apparition being purely
subjective. The doctor did not make any attempt
to visit her in his immaterial body, but she saw
him and heard him as if he were there.
GHOST STORIES
The late Mr. Gurney conducted some experi-
ments with a hypnotic subject which seem to con-
firm the opinion that the phantasmal body is a
merely subjective hallucination, although, of
course, this would not explain how information
had been actually imparted to the phantasmal
visitant by the person who saw, or imagined they
saw, his wraith. Mr. Gurney 's cases are, however,
very interesting, if only as indicating the absolute
certainty which a hypnotised patient can be made
to feel as to the objectivity of sights and sounds :
" S. hypnotised Zillah, and told her that she
would see him standing in the room at three
o'clock next afternoon, and that she would hear
him call her twice by name. She was told that
he would not stop many seconds. On waking
she had no notion of the ideas impressed upon
her.
" Next day, however, she came upstairs about
five minutes past three, looking ghastly and
startled. She said, ' I have seen a ghost/ I
assumed intense amazement, and she said she was
in the kitchen cleaning some silver, and suddenly
she heard her name called sharply twice over,
' Zillah ! ' in Mr. Smith's voice. She said, ' And I
dropped the spoon I was rubbing, and turned and
saw Mr. S., without his hat, standing at the foot
of the kitchen stairs. I saw him as plain as I see
you/ she said, and looked very wild and vacant.
" The next experiment took place on Wednes-
day evening, July 13th, 1887, when S., told her,
when hypnotised, that the next afternoon, at
three o'clock, she would see me (Mr. Gurney)
THE THOUGHT BODY, OR THE DOUBLE 103
come into the room to her. She was further told
that I would keep my hat on and say, ' Good-
morning/ and that I would remark, ' It is very
warm/ and would then turn round and walk out.
" Next day this is what Zillah reported. She
said, ' I was in the kitchen washing up, and had
just looked at the clock, and was startled to see
how late it was (five minutes to three) when I
heard footsteps coming down the stairs rather a
quick, light step and I thought it was Mr. Sleep '
(the dentist whose rooms are in the house), ' but
as I turned round, with a dish mop in one hand
and a plate in the other, I saw some one with a hat
on who had to stoop as he came down the last
step, and there was Mr. Gurney. He was dressed
just as I saw him last night, black coat and grey
trousers, his hat on, and a roll of paper like manu-
script in his hand, and he said, " Oh ! good-after-
noon;" And then he glanced all round the kitchen
and he glanced at me with an awful look, as if he
was going to murder me, and said, " Warm after-
noon, isn't it ? " and then " Good-afternoon/' or
" Good-day/' I am not sure which, and then
turned and went up the stairs again ; and after
standing thunderstruck a minute, I ran to the foot
of the stairs and saw just like a boot disappearing
on the top step/ She said, ' I think I must be
going crazy. Why should I always see something
at three o'clock each day after! the seance ? '
(Vol. V. pp. 11-13.)
Whatever hypothesis we select to explain these
mysteries, they do not become less marvellous.
Even if we grant that it is mere telepathy, or mind
104 REAI, GHOST STORIES
affecting mind at a distance without the use of
the recognised organs of sense or of any of the
ordinary conducting mediums, what an enormous
extension it gives to the ordinary conception of the
limits of the human mind ! To be able instan-
taneously to paint upon the retina of a friend's
eye the life-like image of ourselves, to make our
voice sound in his ears at a distance of many
miles, and to communicate to his mind inform-
ation which he had never before heard of, all this
is, it may be admitted, as tremendous a draft upon
the credulity of mankind as the favourite Theo-
sophical formula of the astral body. Yet who is
there who, in face of the facts and experiences
recorded above, will venture to deny that one or
other of these hypotheses alone can account for
the phenomena under consideration ?
It is obvious that when once the possibility of
the Double is admitted, many mysteries could be
cleared up, although it is also true that a great
many inconveniences would immediately follow ;
the establishment of the reality of the double
would invalidate every plea of alibi. If a man can
really be in two places at one time, there is an end
to the plea which is most frequently resorted to by
the accused to prove their innocence. There are
other inconveniences, which are alluded to in the
following letter from a lady correspondent, who
believes that she has the faculty in frequent, al-
though uncertain and unconscious, use :
' I saw you yesterday, and you cut me.' Such
was the remark I frequently heard from my friends:
in the broad daylight they saw me in street or
THE THOUGHT BODY, OR THE DOUBLE 105
tram, etc. Once a personal friend followed me
into church on Christmas Day in a city at least
100 miles from where I really was. Another time
I sat two pews in front of a friend at a cathedral
service. When I denied having been there, she
said, ' It's no good talking : I saw you, and you
didn't want to wait forme/ ' But, ' I said, ' you
have my word that I was not there.' ' Yes/ she
said, ' but I have my sight, and I saw you/ Of
course, I naturally thought it was some one like
me, and said, perhaps rather sarcastically, ' Would
it be very strange if any one else bore some resem-
blance to me ? ' ' No/ said my friend, ' it would
not ; but someone else doesn't wear your clothes/
On one occasion I remember three people saw me
where I certainly was not physically present the
same day ; all knew me personally. I often
bought books of a man who kept a second-hand
bookstall. One day he told me that he had a
somewhat rare edition of a book I wanted, but
that it was at the shop. I said, ' I'll come across
to-morrow for it if I make up my mind to give the
price/ The next day I was prevented from going,
and went the day after, to hear it was sold. ' Why
didn't you keep it ? ' I asked. ' I thought you
did not want it when you came yesterday and did
not buy it/ ' But I didn't come yesterday/
' Why, excuse me, you did, and took the book up
and laid it down again while I was serving Mr. M.,
and you went away before I could ask you about
it ; Mr. M. remarked that it was strange you did not
answer him when he spoke/ When I asked the
gentleman referred to, he confirmed the story.
106 REAI, GHOST STORIES
Mrs. B. also saw me lower down the same street
that morning.
" Still it never struck me that it was anything
strange ; I was only rather curious to see the
woman who was so like me. I saw her in an un-
expected manner. Going into my room one night,
I happened to glance down at my bed, and saw a
form there. I thought it strange, yet was not
startled. I bent over it, and recognised my own
features distinctly. I was in perfect health at the
time, and no disaster followed/'
Queen Elizabeth's Double.
In a volume published by Macmillan & Co.,
entitled " Legendary Fictions of the Irish Celt,"
I find the following references to the Double :
(t If this phantom be seen in the morning it
betokens good fortune and long life to its proto-
type ; if in the evening a near death awaits him.
This superstition was known and felt in England
even in the reign of Elizabeth. We quote a passage
from Miss Strickland's account of her last illness :
" ' As her mortal illness drew towards a close,
the superstitious fears of her simple ladies were
excited almost to mania, even to conjuring up a
spectral apparition of the Queen while she was yet
alive. Lady Guildford, who was then in waiting on
the Queen, leaving her in an almost breathless
sleep in her privy chamber, went out to take a
little air, and met her Majesty, as she thought,
three or four chambers off. Alarmed art the
thought of being discovered in the act of leaving
the Royal patient alone, she hurried forward
THE THOUGHT BODY, OR THE DOUBLE 107
in some trepidation in order to excuse herself,
when the apparition vanished away. She re-
turned terrified to the chamber, but there lay the
Queen still in the same lethargic slumber in which
she left her/ "
PART III.
CLAIRVOYANCE THE VISION OF THE
OUT OF SIGHT.
"Moreover, the spirit lifted me up and brought me unto the East
gate, and, behold, at the door of the gate five-and-twenty men, among
whom I saw," etc. EZEKIEI, xi. i.
CHAPTER I.
THE ASTRAI, CAMERA.
WHEN I was staying at Orchard L,ea, in Windsor
Forest, I did most of my writing in a spacious
window on the first floor looking out over the
garden. It opened French fashion, and thereby
occasioned a curious optical illusion, which
may perhaps help to shed some light upon
the phenomena now under consideration. For
when the sun was high in the sky and the French
window was set at a certain angle, the whole of
the flowers, figures, etc., on my right hand ap-
peared reflected upon the lawn on the left hand
as vividly as if they actually existed in duplicate.
So real was the illusion that for some hours I was
under the impression that a broad yellow gravel
CLAIRVOYANCE 1 09
path actually stretched across the lawn on my
left! It was only when a little dog ran along the
spectral path and suddenly vanished into thin air
that I discovered the illusion. Nothing could be
more complete, more life-like. The real persons
who walked up the gravel to the house walked
across the spectral gravel, apparently in duplicate.
Both could be seen at one and the same time. I
instantly thought that they could be photo-
graphed, so as to show the duplication produced
by the illusion. Unfortunately, although the
spectral path was distinctly visible through the
glass to the eye, no impression whatever was left
on the sensitive plate. My friend writes :
" I have tried the phantom path, and I am
sorry to say it is too phantom to make any im-
pression on the plate. All that you get is the blaze
of light from the glass window, some very faint
trees, and no path at all. Possibly, with a June
sun, it might have been different ; but I doubt it,
as one is told never to put the camera facing a
window. It is having to take through the glass
window which is fatal."
This set me thinking: It was a simple optical
illusion, no doubt, similar to that which enabled
Pepper to produce his ghosts at the Polytechnic.
But what was the agency which enabled me to
see the figures and flowers, and trees and gravel,
all transferred, as by the cunning act of some
magician, from the right to the left ? Simply a
swinging pane of perfectly transparent glass. To
those who have neither studied the laws of optics
nor seen the phenomenon in question, it must
no REAL GHOST STORIES
seem impossible that a pellucid window-pane
could transfer so faithfully that which happened
at one end of the garden to the other as to cause
it to be mistaken for reality. Yet there was the
phenomenon before my eyes. The dog ran
double the real dog to the right, the spectral
dog to the left and no one could tell at first sight
" t'other from which/' Now, may it not be that
this supplies a suggestion as to the cause of the
phenomenon of clairvoyance ? Is it not possible
that there may exist in Nature some as yet
undiscovered analogue to the swinging window-
pane which may enable us to see before our eyes
here and now events which are transpiring at the
other end of the world ? In the mysterious, sub-
conscious world in which the clairvoyant lives,
may there not be some subtle, sympathetic lens,
fashioned out of strong affection or some other
relation, which may enable some of us to see that
which is quite invisible to the ordinary eye ?
A Surrey Laundry Seen in Cornwall.
Such thoughts came to my mind when I asked
the Housekeeper whether she had ever seen any
of the phantasmal apparitions of her mistress,
my hostess, Mrs. M. The housekeeper, a com-
fortable, buxom Cornish woman, smiled incredu-
lously. No, she had seen nothing, heard nothing,
believed nothing. "As to phantasmal bodies, she
would prefer to see them first/' " Had she ever
seen a ghost ? ' " No, never/' " Had ever had
any hallucinations ? ' " No," But one thing had
happened, " rather curious " now that she came
CLAIRVOYANCE III
to think of it. Last year, when living on the coast
far down in the west country, she had suddenly
seen as in a dream the house in Hindhead where
we were now standing. She had never been in
Surrey in her life. She had no idea that she would
ever go there, nor did she know that it was in
Surrey. What she saw was the laundry. She was
standing inside it, and remarked to her husband
how strange and large it looked. She looked out
at the windows and saw the house and the sur-
roundings with strange distinctness. Then the
vision faded away, leaving no other impress on the
mind than that she had seen an exceptionally large
laundry close to a small country-house in a place
where she had never been in before.
vSix months passed ; she and her husband had
decided to leave the west country and take a
housekeeper and gardener's post elsewhere. They
replied to an advertisement, were appointed by
my hostess ; they transferred themselves to
Hindhead, where they arrived in the dead of
winter. When they reached their new quarters
she saw, to her infinite astonishment, the precise
place she had seen six months before. The laundry
was unmistakable. There is not such another
laundry in the county of Surrey. There it was,
sure enough, and there was the house, and there
were all the surroundings exactly as she had seen
them down on the south-west coast. She did not
believe in ghosts or phantasmal bodies or such like
things, but one thing she knew beyond all possi-
bility of doubt. She had seen her new home and
laundry on the top of Hindhead, when living in
REAI, GHOST STORIES
the west country six months before she ever set
foot in Surrey, or even knew of the existence of
Mrs. M. ' The moment I saw it I recognised it
and told my husband that it was the identical
place I had seen when in our old home."
William Howitt's Vision.
l-,The Housekeeper's story is very simple, and
almost too commonplace. But its significance lies
in those very characteristics. Here was no con-
suming passion, no bond of sympathy, nothing
whatever material or sentimental to act as the
refracting medium by which the Hindhead laundry
could have been made visible in South Devon.
Yet similar phenomena are of constant occurrence.
A very remarkable case in point is that of William
Howitt who, when on a voyage out to Australia,
saw his brother's house at Melbourne so plainly
that he described it on board ship, and recognised
it the moment he landed. Here is his own version
of this remarkable instance of clairvoyance :
fey Some weeks ago, while yet at sea, I had a]
dream of being at my brother's at Melbourne, and
found his house on a hill at the further end of the
town, and next to the open forest. His garden
sloped a little down the hill to some brick buildings
below ; and there were greenhouses on the right
hand by the wall, as you look down the hill from
the house. As I looked out of the window in my
dream, I saw a wood of dusky-foliaged trees
having a somewhat segregated appearance in their
heads that is, their heads did not make that
dense mass like our trees. ' There,' I said to some
CLAIRVOYANCE 113
one in my dream, ' I see your native forest of
eucalyptus ! '
' This dream I told to my sons and to two of
my fellow-passengers at the time, and on landing,
as we walked over the meadows, long before we
reached the town, I saw this very wood. ' There/
I said, ' is the very wood of my dream. We shall
see my brother's house there ! And so we did.
It stands exactly as I saw it, only looking newer ;
but there, over the wall of the garden, is the wood,
precisely as I saw it and now see it as I sit at the
dining-room window writing. When I looked on
this scene I seem to look into my dream." (Owen's
"Footfalls," p. 118.)
The usual explanation of these things is that
the vision is the revival of some forgotten im-
pressions on the brain. But in neither of the
foregoing cases will that explanation suffice, for
in neither case had the person who saw ever been
in the place of which they had a vision. One
desperate resource, the convenient theory of pre-
existence, is useless here. The fact seems to be
that there is a kind of invisible camera obscura
in Nature, which at odd times gives us glimpses
of things happening or existing far beyond the
range of our ordinary vision. The other day when
in Edinburgh I climbed up to the Camera Obscura
that stands near the castle, and admired the simple
device by which, in a darkened room upon a white,
paper-covered table, the whole panorama of Edin-
burgh life was displayed before me. There were
the " recruities " drilling on the Castle Esplanade ;
there were the passers-by hurrying along High
H
ii4 REAI, GHOST STORIES
Street ; there were the birds on the housetops,
and the landscape of chimneys and steeples, all
revealed as if in the crystal of a wizard's cave.
The coloured shadows chased each other across
the paper, leaving no trace behind. Five hundred
years ago the owner of that camera would have
been burned as a wizard ; now he makes a com-
fortable living out of the threepennypieces of
inquisitive visitors. Is it possible to account for
the phenomena of clairvoyance other than by the
supposition that there exists somewhere in Nature
a gigantic camera obscura which reflects every-
thing, and to which clairvoyants habitually, and
other mortals occasionally, have access ?
Seen and Heard at 150 Miles Range.
The preceding incidents simply record a pre-
vision of places subsequently visited. The follow-
ing are instances in which not only places, but
occurrences, were seen as in a camera by persons
at a distance varying from 150 to several thousand
miles. Space seems to have no existence for the
clairvoyant. They are quoted from the published
" Proceedings of the Psychical Research Society " :
On September 9th, 1848, at the siege of
Mooltan, Major-General R , C.B., then adju-
tant of his regiment, was most severely and
dangerously wounded ; and supposing himself to
be dying, asked one of the officers with him to
take the ring off his ringer and send it to his wife,
who at the time was fully 150 miles distant, at
Ferozepore.
" On the night of September 9th, 1848," writes
CLAIRVOYANCE 115
his wife, " I was lying on my bed between sleeping
and waking, when I distinctly saw my husband
being carried off the field, seriously wounded, and
heard his voice saying, ' Take this ring off my
finger and send it to my wife/ All the next day
I could not get the sight or the voice out of my
mind. In due time I heard of General R
having been severely wounded in the assault of
Mooltan. He survived, however, and is still
living. It was not for some time after the siege
that I heard from General I, , the officer who
helped to carry General R - off the field, that
the request as to the ring was actually made to
him, just as I heard it at Ferozepore at that very
time." (Vol. I. p. 30.)
A Royal Deathbed in France seen in Scotland.
The above case is remarkable because the voice
was transmitted as well as the spectacle. In the
next story the ear heard nothing, but the scene
itself was very remarkable. A correspondent of
the Psychical Research Society writes that whilst
staying with her mother's cousin, Mrs. Elizabeth
Broughton, wife of Mr. Edward Broughton, Edin-
burgh, and daughter of the late Colonel Blanckley,
in the year 1844, she told her the following strange
story :
" She awoke one night and aroused her husband,
telling him that something dreadful had happened
in France. He begged her to go to sleep again
and not to trouble him. She assured him that
she was not asleep when she saw what she insisted
on then telling him what she saw, in fact, was ;
Il6 CLAIRVOYANCE
First, a carriage accident which she did not
actually see, but what she saw was the result
a broken carriage, a crowd collected, a figure
gently raised and carried into the nearest house,
then a figure lying on a bed, which she then recog-
nised as the Duke of Orleans. Gradually friends
collecting round the bed among them several
members of the French royal family the queen,
then the king, all silently, tearfully watching the
evidently dying duke. One man (she could see
his back, but did not know who he was) was a
doctor. He stood bending over the duke, feeling
his pulse, his watch in the other hand. And then
all passed away ; she saw no more. As soon as it
was daylight she wrote down in her journal all
that she had seen. From that journal she read
this to me. It was before the days of electric
telegraph, and two or more days passed before
the Times announced ' The Death of the Duke of
Orleans.' Visiting Paris a short time afterwards,
she saw and recognised the place of the accident
and received the explanation of her impression.
The doctor who attended the dying duke was an
old friend of hers, and as he watched by the bed
his mind had been constantly occupied with her
and her family." Vol. II. p. 160.)
The doctor's sympathy may have been the key
to the secret camera of Nature, but it in no wise
" explains " how a lady in Edinburgh could see
what went on inside a house in Paris so clearly as
to know what had happened two days before the
intelligence reached the Times.
CLAIRVOYANCE 117
An African Event Seen in England.
Here is another story where the event occurred
in Africa and was seen in England. A correspon-
dent from Wadhurst, West Dulwich, S.E., says :-
" My late husband dreamt a certain curious
dream about his brother, Mr. Ralph Holden, who
was at that time travelling in the interior of Africa.
One morning, in June or July, 1861, my husband
woke me with the announcement, ' Ralph is dead.'
I said, ' You must be dreaming/ ' No, I am not
dreaming now ; but I dreamt twice over that I
saw Ralph lying on the ground supported by a
man/ They learnt afterwards that Ralph must
have died about the time when his brother dreamt
about him and that he had died in the arms of his
faithful native servant, lying under a large tree,
where he was afterwards buried. The Holden
family have sketches of the tree and the surround-
ings, and, on seeing it, my husband said, ' Yes,
that is exactly the place where I saw Ralph in my
dream, dying or dead/ J (Vol. I. p. 141.)
A Vision Which Saved Many Lives.
Dr. Horace Bushnell, in his " Nature and the
Supernatural/' tells a story, on the authority of
Captain Yonnt, which differs from the foregoing
in having a definite purpose, which, fortunately,
was attained. Captain Yonnt, a patriarch in the
Napa valley of California, told Dr. Bushnell that
six or seven years before their conversation he had
seen a vision which saved several lives. Here is
his story :
" About six or seven years previous, in a mid-
n8 REAI, GHOST STORIES
winter's night, he had a dream, in which he saw
what appeared to be a company of emigrants
arrested by the snows of the mountains and perish-
ing rapidly by cold and hunger. He noted the very
cast of the scenery, marked by a huge, perpendicu-
lar front of white rock cliff ; he saw the men
cutting off what appeared to be tree-tops rising
out of deep gulfs of snow ; he distinguished the
very features of the persons and the look of their
particular distress. He awoke profoundly im-
pressed by the distinctness and apparent reality
of the dream. He at length fell asleep, and
dreamed exactly the same dream over again. In
the morning he could not expel it from his mind.
Falling in shortly after with an old hunter com-
rade, he told his story, and was only the more
deeply impressed by his recognising without
hesitation the scenery of the dream. This comrade
came over the Sierra, by the Carson Valley Pass,
and declared that a spot in the Pass answered
exactly his description. By this the unsophistical
patriarch was decided. He immediately collected
a company of men, with mules and blankets and
all necessary provisions. The neighbours were
laughing meantime at his credulity. ' No matter/
he said, ' I am able to do this, and I will ; for I
verily believe that the fact is according to my
dream/ The men were sent into the mountains
one hundred and fifty miles distant, directly to
to the Carson Valley Pass. And there they found
the company exactly in the condition of the dream,
and brought in the remnant alive/' (" Nature
and the Supernatural/' p. 14.)
CLAIRVOYANCE 119
The Vision of a Fire.
The wife of a Dean of the Episcopal Church in
one of the Southern States of America was visit-
ing at my house while I was busy collecting
materials for this work. Asking her the usual
question as to whether she had ever experienced
anything of the phenomena usually called super-
natural, apparently because it is not the habitual
experience of every twenty-four hours, she ridi-
culed the idea. Ghosts ? not she. She was a
severely practical, matter-of-fact person, who used
her natural senses, and had nothing to do with
spirits. But was she quite sure ; had nothing ever
occurred to her which she could not explain ?
Then she hesitated and said, " Well, yes ; but
there is nothing supernatural about it. I was
staying away down in Virginia, some hundred
miles from home, when one mornng, about eleven
o'clock, I felt an over-powering sleepiness. I
never sleep in the daytime, and that drowsiness
was, I think, almost my only experience of that
kind. I was so sleepy I went to my room and
lay down. In my sleep I saw quite distinctly my
home at Richmond in flames. The fire had broken
out in one wing of the house, which I saw with
dismay was where I kept all my best dresses.
The people were all about trying to check the
flames, but it was of no use. My husband was
there, walking about before the burning house,
carrying a portrait in his hand. Everything was
quite clear and distinct, exactly as if I had actually
been present and seen everything. After a time
I woke up, and, going downstairs, told my friends
120 REAI, GHOST STORIES
the strange dream I had had. They laughed at
me, and made such game of my vision that I did
my best to think no more about it. I was travelling
about, a day or two passed, and when Sunday
came I found myself in a church where some
relatives were worshipping. When I entered the
pew they looked rather strange, and as soon as the
service was over I asked them what was the
matter. ' Don't be alarmed/ they said, ' there is
nothing serious.' They then handed me a post-
card from my husband, which simply said, ' House
burned out ; covered by insurance/ The date
was the day on which my dream occurred. I
hastened home, and then I learned that everything
had happened exactly as I had seen it. The fire
had broken out in the wing which I had seen
blazing. My clothes were all burnt, and the oddest
thing about it was that my husband, having
rescued a favourite picture from the burning
building, had carried it about among the crowd
for some time before he could find a place in which
to put it safely/' Swedenborg, it will be remem-
bered, also had a clairvoyant vision of a fire at a
great distance.
The Loss of the " Strathmore."
A classic instance of the exercise of this faculty
is the story of the wreck of the Strathmore. In
brief the story is as follows : The father of a son
who had sailed in the Strathmore, an emigrant ship
outward bound from the Clyde, saw one night the
ship foundering amid the waves, and saw that his
son, with some others, had escaped safely to a
CLAIRVOYANCE 121
desert island near which the wreck had taken
place. He was so much impressed by this vision
that he wrote to the owner of the Stmthmore,
telling him what he had seen. His information
was scouted ; but after awhile the Strathmore was
overdue and the owner got uneasy. Day followed
day, and still no tidings of the missing ship. Then,
like Pharaoh's butler, the owner remembered his
sins one day and hunted up the letter describing
the vision. It supplied at least a theory to account
for the vessel's disappearance. All outward
bound ships were requested to look out for any
survivors on the island indicated in the vision.
These orders being obeyed, the survivors of the
Strathmore were found exactly where the father
had seen them. In itself this is sufficient to con-
found all accepted hypotheses. Taken in connec-
tion with other instances of a similar nature, what
can be said of it excepting that it almost necessi-
tates the supposition of the existence of the in-
visible camera obscura which the Theosophists
describe as the astral light ?
The Analogy of the Camera Obscura.
Clairvoyance can often be explained by tele-
pathy, especially when there is strong sympathy
between the person who sees and the person who is
seen. Mr. Edward R. lyipsitt, of Tralee, sends me
the following narrative, which illustrates this
fact :
" I beg to narrate a curious case of telepathy I
experienced when quite a boy. Some ten years
ago I happened to sleep one night in the same room
122 REAI, GHOST STORIES
with a young friend of about my own age. There
existed a very strong sympathy between us. I
got up early and went out for a short walk, leaving
my friend fast asleep in his bed. I went in the
direction of a well-known lake in that district.
After gazing for some moments at the silent waters,
I espied a large black dog making towards me. I
turned my back and fled, the dog following me
for some distance. My boots then being in a bad
condition, one of the soles came off in the flight ;
however, I came away unmolested by the dog.
But how amazed was I when upon entering the
room my friend, who was just rubbing his eyes
and yawning, related to me my adventure word by
word, describing even the colour of the dog and
the very boot (the right one) the sole of which gave
way ! '
Motiveless Visions.
There is often no motive whatever to be dis-
covered in the apparition. A remarkable instance
of this is recorded by Mr. Myers in an article in
the Arena, where the analogy to a camera obscura
is very close. The camera reflects everything that
happens. Nothing is either great or small to its
impartial lens. But if you do not happen to be
in the right place, or if the room is not properly
darkened, or if the white paper is taken off the
table, you see nothing. We have not yet mastered
the conditions of the astral camera. Here, how-
ever, is Mr. Myers' story, which he owes to the
kindness of Dr. Elliott Coues, who happened to
call on Mrs. C the very day on which that
lady received the following letter from her friend
Mrs. B .
CLAIRVOYANCE 123
" ' Monday evening, January 14th, 1889.
' My Dear Friend, I know you will be sur-
prised to receive a note from me so soon, but not
more so than I was to-day, when you were show r n
to me clairvoyantly, in a somewhat embarrassed
position. I doubt very much if there was any
truth in it ; nevertheless, I will relate it, and leave
you to laugh at the idea of it.
' I was sitting in my room sewing this afternoon,
about two o'clock, when what should I see but
your own dear self ; but, heavens ! in what a
position. Now, I don't want to excite your
curiosity too much, or try your patience too long,
so will come to the point at once. You were falling
up the front steps in the yard. You had on your
black skirt and velvet waist, your little straw
bonnet, and in your hand were some papers. When
you fell, your hat went in one direction, and the
papers in another. You got up very quickly, put
on your bonnet, picked up the papers, and lost no
time getting into the house. You did not appear
to be hurt, but looked somewhat mortified. It
was all so plain to me that I had ten to one notions
to dress myself and come over and see if it were
true, but finally concluded that a sober, industrious
woman like yourself w r ould not be stumbling
around at that rate, and thought I'd best not go
on a wild goose chase. Now, what do you think of
such a vision as that ? Is there any possible truth
in it ? I feel almost ready to scream with laughter
whenever I think of it ; you did look too funny,
spreading yourself out in the front yard. " Great
was the fall thereof." '
124 RKAI, GHOST STORIES
"This letter came to us in an envelope addressed :
Mrs. E. A. C , 217 Del. Ave., N.E., Washington,
D.C., and with the postmarks, Washington, D.C.,
Jan. 15, 7 a.m., 1889, and Washington, N.E.C.S.,
Jan. 15, 8 a.m.
" Now the point is that every detail in this tele-
pathic vision was correct. Mrs. C - had actually
(as she tells me in a letter dated March 7th, 1889)
fallen in this way, at this place, in the dress des-
cribed, at 2.41, on January 14th. The coincidence
can hardly have been due to chance. If we suppose
that the vision preceded the accident, we shall
have an additional marvel, which, however, I do
not think we need here face. ' About 2,' in a
letter of this kind, may quite conceivably have
meant 2.41."
The exceeding triviality of the incident often
destroys the possibility of belief in the ordinary
superstition that it was a direct Divine revelation.
This may be plausible in cases of the Strathmore,
where the intelligence was communicated of the
loss of an English ship, but no one can seriously
hold it when the only information to be communi-
cated was a stumble on the stairs.
Considering the enormous advantages which
such an astral camera would place in the hands of
the detective police, I was not surprised to be told
that the officers of the Criminal Investigation
Department in lyondon and Chicago occasionally
consult clairvoyants as to the place where stolen
goods are to be found, or where the missing
criminals may be lurking.
CLAIRVOYANCE 125
Mr. Burt's Dream.
When I was in Newcastle I availed myself of
the opportunity to call upon Mr. Burt, M.P. On
questioning him as to whether he had ever seen a
ghost, he replied in the negative, but remarked
that he had had one experience which had made
a deep impression upon his mind, which partook
more of the nature of clairvoyance than the
apparition of a phantom. " I suppose it was a
dream/' said Mr. Burt. " The dream or vision,
or whatever else you call it, made a deep im-
pression upon my mind. You remember Mr.
Crawford, the Durham miners' agent, was ill for
a long time before his death. Just before his
death he rallied, and we all hoped he was going
to get better. I had heard nothing to the con-
trary, when one morning early I had a very vivid
dream. I dreamed that I was standing by the
bedside of my old friend. I passed my hand over
his brow, and he spoke to me with great tender-
ness, with much greater tenderness than he had
ever spoken before. He said he was going to die,
and that he w r as comforted by the long and close
friendship that had existed between us. I was
much touched by the feeling with which he spoke,
and felt awed as if I were in the presence of death.
When I woke up the impression was still strong
in my mind, and I could not resist the feeling that
Crawford was dying. In a few hours I received
a telegram stating that he was dead. This is more
remarkable because I fully expected he was going
to get better, and at the moment of my dream he
seems to have died. I cannot give any explanation
126 REAI, GHOST STORIES
of how it came about. It is a mystery to me, and
likely to remain so."
This astral camera, to which " future things
unfolded lie/' also retains the imperishable image
of all past events. Mr. Browning's great uncle's
studs brought vividly to the mind of the clair-
voyant a smell of blood, and recalled all the par-
ticulars of the crime of which they had been silent
witnesses. Any article or relic may serve as a
key to unlock the chamber of this hidden camera.
CHAPTER II.
TRAGIC HAPPENINGS SEEN IN DREAMS.
/
An Irish Outrage Seen 'in a Dream.
ONE of the best stories of clairvoyance as a
means of throwing light on crime is thus told by a
correspondent of the Psychical Research Society :
One morning in December, 1836, he had the
following dream, or, he would prefer to call it,
revelation. He found himself suddenly at the
gate of Major N. M.'s avenue, many miles from
his home. Close to him was a group of persons,
one of whom was a woman with a basket on her
arm, the rest men, four of whom were tenants
of his own, while the others were unknown to him.
Some of the strangers seemed to be murderously
assaulting H. W., one of his tenants, and he inter-
fered. f< I struck violently at the man on my left,
and then with greater violence at the man's face
on my right. Finding, to my surprise, that I had
not knocked down either, I struck again and again
with all the violence of a man frenzied at the
sight of my poor friend's murder. To my great
amazement I saw my arms, although visible to
my eye, were without substance, and the bodies
of the men I struck at and my own came close
together after each blow through the shadowy
arms I struck with. My blows were delivered with
more extreme violence than I ever think I exerted,
but I became painfully convinced of my incom-
ia8 REAI, GHOST STORIES
petency. I have no consciousness of what hap-
pened after this feeling of unsubstantiality came
upon me." Next morning he experienced the
stiffness and soreness of violent bodily exercise,
and was informed by his wife that in the course
of the night he had much alarmed her by striking
out again and again with his arms in a terrific
manner, ' as if fighting for his life.' He, in turn,
informed her of his dream, and begged her to re-
member the names of those actors in it who were
known to him. On the morning of the following
day (Wednesday) he received a letter from his
agent, who resided in the town close to the scene
of the dream, informing him that his tenant had
been found on Tuesday morning at Major N. M.'s
gate, speechless and apparently dying from a
fracture of the skull, and that there was no trace
of the murderers. That night he started for the
town, and arrived there on Thursday morning.
On his way to a meeting of magistrates he met the
senior magistrate of that part of the country,
and requested him to give orders for the arrest of
the three men whom, besides H.W., he had recog-
nised in his dream, and to have them examined
separately. This was at once done. The three
men gave identical accounts of the occurrence,
and all named the woman who was with them.
She was then arrested, and gave precisely similar
testimony. They said that between eleven and
twelve on the Monday night they had been walking
homewards along the road, when they were over-
taken by three strangers, two of whom savagely
assaulted H. W., while the other prevented his
CLAIRVOYANCE 129
friends from interfering. H. W. did not die, but
was never the same man afterwards ; he subse-
quently emigrated. (Vol. I. p. 142.)
The advantage which would accrue from the
universal establishment of this instantaneous vision
would not be unmixed. That it is occasionally
very useful is obvious.
A Clairvoyant Vision oj a Murder.
The most remarkable experiment in clairvoyant
detection that I have ever come across is told by
Dr. Backman, of Kalmar, in a recent number of
the " Psychical Research Society's Proceedings."
It is as follows :
" In the month of October, 1888, the neighbour-
hood of Kalmar was shocked by a horrible murder
committed in the parish of Wissefjerda, which was
about fifty kilometres from Kalmar as the crow
flies. What happened was that a farmer named
P. J. Gustafsson had been killed by a shot when
driving, having been forced to stop by stones
having been placed on the road. The murder
had been committed in the evening, and a certain
tramp was suspected, because Gustafsson, in his
capacity of under bailiff, had arrested him, and
he had then undergone several years' penal servi-
tude.
' This was all that I or the public knew about
the case on November 1st of the same'year. The
place where the murder was committed and the
persons implicated in it were quite unknown to me
and the clairvoyant,
" On the same day, November 1st, having some
i
130 REAI, GHOST STORIES
reason to believe that such a trial would be at
least partially successful, I experimented with a
clairvoyant, Miss Agda Olsen, to try if it was
possible to get some information in this way about
such an event.
" The judge of the neighbourhood, who had pro-
mised to be present, was unfortunately prevented
from coming. The clairvoyant was hypnotised in
my wife's presence, and was then ordered ' to
look for the place where the murder had been
committed and see the whole scene, follow the
murderer in his flight, and describe him and his
home and the motive for the murder.' Miss
Olsen then spoke as follows, in great agitation,
sometimes using violent gestures. I took notes
of her exact words and reproduce them here fully.
" ' It is between two villages I see a road
in a wood now it is coming the gun now he is
coming along, driving the horse is afraid of the
stones hold the horse ! hold the horse ! now !
now he is killing him he was kneeling when he
fired blood ! blood ! now he is running in the
wood seize him ! he is running in an opposite
direction to the horse in many circuits not on
any footpaths. He wears a cap and grey clothes
light has long coarse brown hair, which has not
been cut for a long time grey-blue eyes treacher-
ous looks great dark brown beard he is accus-
tomed to work on the land. I believe he has cut
his right hand. He has a scar or a streak between
his thumb and forefinger. He is suspicious and a
coward.
" ' The murderer's home is a red wooden house,
CLAIRVOYANCE 131
standing a little way back from the road. On
the ground-floor is a room which leads into the
kitchen, and from that again into the passage.
There is also a larger room which does not com-
municate with the kitchen. The church of Wissef-
jerda is situated obliquely to your right when you
are standing in the passage.
' His motive was enmity ; it seems as if he
had bought something taken something a
paper. He went away from home at daybreak,
and the murder was committed in the evening/
" Miss Olsen was then awakened, and like all
my subjects, she remembered perfectly what she
had been seeing, which had made a very profound
impression on her ; she added several things which
I did not write down.
" On November 6th (Monday) I met Miss Olsen,
and she told me in great agitation that she had
met the murderer from Wissefjerda in the street.
He was accompanied by a younger person and
followed by two policemen, and was walking from
the police office to the gaol. I at once expressed
my doubts of her being right, partly because
country people are generally arrested by the
country police, partly because they are always
taken directly to gaol. But when she insisted on
it, and maintained that it was the person she had
seen when asleep, I went to the police office.
" I inquired if any one had been arrested on
suspicion of the crime in question, and a police-
constable answered that such was the case, and
that, as they had been taken to the town on
Sunday, they had been kept in the police-station
132 REAI, GHOST STORIES
over night, and after that had been"obliged to go
on foot to gaol, accompanied by two constables."
(The police-constable, T. A. Ljung, states that
Dr. Backman described quite : accurately the
appearance of the house, its furniture, how the
rooms were situated, where the suspected man
lived, and gave a very correct account of Niklas
Jonnasson's personal appearance. The doctor
also asked him if he had observed that Jonnasson
had a scar on his right hand. He said he had
not then observed it, but ascertained later that it
really was so, and Jonnasson said that he got it
from an abscess).
" The trial was a long one, and showed that
Gustafsson had agreed to buy for Jonnasson, but
in his own name, the latter's farm, which was
sold by auction on account of Jonnasson's debts.
This is what is called a thief's bargain. Gustafsson
bought the farm, but kept it for himself. The
statements of the accused men were very vague ;
the father had prepared an alibi with much care,
but it failed to account for just the length of
time that was probably enough to commit the
murder in. The son tried to prove an alibi by
means of two witnesses, but these confessed that
they had given false evidence, which he had bribed
them to do when they were in prison with him on
account of another matter.
" But though the evidence against the defen-
dants was very strong, it was not considered that
there was sufficient legal evidence, and, there
being no jury in Sweden, they were left to the
verdict of posterity/' (pp. 213-216.)
CLAIRVOYANCE 133
A Terrible Vision of Torture at Sea.
The following marvellous story of a vision
reaches me from Scotland. The Rev. D. McQueen
writes me from 165, Dalkeith-road, Edinburgh,
December 14th, as follows :
"I have been much interested 'in your Ghost
Stories. I wish to inform you of one I have heard,
and which I think eclipses in interest, minuteness
of detail, and tragical pathos anything I have
ever known, and which, if published and edited
by your graphic pen, would cause a sensation in
every scientific society in Great Britain.
"It is not in my power to write the whole story,
as it is nearly sufficient for a pamphlet by itself,
but its accuracy can be vouched for by many of
the most respectable and intelligent people in the
neighbourhood of Old Cumnock. I heard the
story some years ago, and would have written you
sooner, only I wished to make inquiries as to the
whereabouts of the subject of the remarkable
vision.
"About twenty years ago a young man belong-
ing to Ayrshire embarked from an Australian port
to re- visit his friends in this country. His mother
and father still live. The former saw all that
befell her son from the moment he set foot on
the deck till he was consigned to the sea. She
can describe the port from which he sailed, the
crew of the ship, his fellow passengers. It was a
weird story, for her son, by name George, was
done to death by the brutality of the officers.
This was partially corroborated by a passenger
named Gilmour, who called on her after his arrival
134 REAI, GHOST STORIES
in London. When he entered the house she said,
' Why did you allow them to ill-use my son/ He
started, and said, ' Who told you ? ' She related
all that happened during the weeks her son was ill,
and when she finished her guest fainted. Accord-
ing to her, her son was ill-used from the time he
started till his death. For example, she saw
her son struck by a ball of ropes, as she said (a
cork fender). He said that was so. She saw him
put into a strait jacket and lowered into the hold
of the ship, which actually took place. She saw
them playing cards on deck and putting the coun-
ters into her son's pocket, which were actually
found in his clothes when they came back. She
can describe the berth her son occupied, the
various parts of the ship, with an accuracy that is
surprising to one that never has been on board
ship. And last of all she tells the manner of his
burial, the dress, the service that was read, the
body moving, the protest of one passenger that
he was not dead. She had a succession of trances
by day and night which are unparalleled. She
saw some of the painful scenes in church, and has
been known to cry out in horror and agony. If
you could only get some one to take it down from
her own lips she alone can tell it you would
make a narrative that would thrill the heart of
every reader in the kingdom. The woman is
reliable. She is the wife of a well-to-do farmer.
Her name is Mrs. Arthur, Benston Farm, Old
Cumnock.
" I have written an incoherent letter, as I am
hurried at present, but I hope you will see your
CLAIRVOYANCE 135
way to investigate it. I say again, I have never
heard so weird and true a tale. But get the lady
to tell her own story. It is wonderful ! wonder-
ful ! "
On January 9th, 1892, the Rev. A. Macdonald,
of the U.P. Manse, Old Cumnock, wrote to me
as follows :
" I have much pleasure in replying to the ques-
tions you put to me, whether I am aware of the
clairvoyant experiences of Mrs. Arthur (Benston,
New Cumnock), and whether I consider her a re-
liable witness.
"It is many years since I heard Mrs. Arthur
relate her strange visions, and there are other
friends, beside myself, who have heard the same
narrative from her own lips.
"Mrs. Arthur, I hold, is incapable of inventing
the story which she tells, for she is a truthful,
conscientious, and Christian woman. She herself
believes in the reality of the vision as firmly as
she believes in her own existence. The death
of her son on his way back from Australia was the
cause of a sorrow too deep for the mother to weave
such a romance around it. Further, her state-
ments are not the accretions of after years, but
were told, and told freely, at the time when her
son was known to have died. This is about twenty
years ago. During these twenty years she has not
varied in her statements, and repeats them still
with all the faith and with all the circumstantial
details of the first narration.
"I consider her vision extending as it does from
the time the homeward-bound vessel left the
136 REAI, GHOST STORIES
harbour, over many days, until the burial of her
son's body at sea worthy of a place alongside
the best of the Ghost Stories you have given
to the world."
Mr. Arthur, the son of the percipient in this
strange story, wrote to me as follows from L,och-
side, New Cumnock, Ayrshire, on the 14th Jan-
uary, 1892 :-
" My mother, Mrs. Arthur, of Benston, New
Cumnock, Ayrshire, received your valued favour of
8th inst., together with a copy of the Christmas
Number of the Review of Reviews. The circum-
stances you refer to happened twenty-one years
ago, a short account of which appeared in a Scotch
paper, and a much fuller one appeared in an
Australian paper, but, unfortunately, no copy
has been preserved, even the diary in which the
particulars were written has been destroyed.
" It would not serve any good purpose for you to
send a shorthand writer to interview my mother,
as she is approaching fourscore years, and her
memory is rapidly failing. I believe I can get a
very full account (barring minutia) from a younger
brother. But if the young man who was a fellow-
passenger with my brother (when my brother
died at sea off the Cape of Good Hope) is still
alive, he is the proper party to give a full and
minute account. He was the party who informed
my parents of my brother's death. My mother
lost no time in visiting him for particulars. I
think the young man's name was Gilmour. He
was then in the neighbourhood of Edinburgh.
When he began to narrate what had taken place,
CLAIRVOYANCE 137
my mother stopped him and asked him to listen
to her. She then went on to say that on a certain
date, while she was about her usual household
duties, her son came into the room where she was,
said so and so and so and so, and walked out. Mr.
Gilmour said that what she had said was exactly
what had occurred during his illness, and the date
he had visited her was the day of his death.
" I was at this time living in Belize, British
Honduras. On my mentioning this circumstance
to some of my friends there, Mr. Cockburn, who
was Police Magistrate in Belize, said that his
daughter, Miss Cockburn, had a similar experience.
He lived at that time in Grenada, and Miss Cock-
burn was at school in England. One day she was
out walking with the other school girls ; suddenly
she saw her mother walking along the street in
front of her. Miss C. ran off to speak to her, but
before she caught her up, her mother turned down a
side street. When the daughter reached the
corner the mother was nowhere to be seen. Miss
Cockburn wrote to her mother, telling her what
she had seen, by the outgoing mail. Her letter
crossed one from her father, telling her that her
mother had died that day."
Clairvoyance is closely related to the phenomen-
on of the Double, for the clairvoyant seems to have
either the faculty of transporting herself to dis-
tant places, or of bringing the places within range
of her sight. Here is a narrative sent me by Mr.
Masey, Fellow of the Geological Society, writing to
me from 8, Gloucester Road, Kew, which illus-
trates the connection between clairvoyance and
138 REAI, GHOST STORIES
" Mrs. Mary Masey, who resided on RedclifTe
Hill, Bristol, at the beginning of this century, was
a member of the Society of Friends, and was held
in high esteem for piety.
" A memorable incident in her life was that one
night she dreamt that a Mr. John Henderson, a
noted man of the same community, had gone to
Oxford, and that he had died there. In the course
of the next day, Mr. Henderson called to take
leave of her, saying he was going to Oxford to
study a subject concerning which he could not
obtain the information he wanted in Bristol.
Mrs. Masey said to him, ' John Henderson, thou
wilt die there/
" Some time afterwards, Mrs. Masey woke her
husband one night, saying, ' Remember, John
Henderson died at Oxford at two o'clock this
morning, and it is now three/ Her husband,
Philip Masey, made light of it ; but she told him
that while asleep she had been transported to
Oxford, where she had never been before, and
that she had entered a room there, in which she
saw Mr. John Henderson in bed, the landlady
supporting his head, and the landlord with several
other persons standing around. While gazing at
him some one gave him medicine, and the patient,
turning round, perceived her, and exclaimed, ' Oh,
Mrs. Masey, I am going to die ; I am so glad you
are come, for I want to tell you that my father
is going to be very ill, and you must go and see
him/ He then proceeded to describe a room in his
father's house, and a bureau in it, ' in which is a
box containing a remedy ; give it him, and he will
CLAIRVOYANCE 139
recover/ Her impression and recollection of all
the persons in the room at Oxford was most
vivid, and she even described the appearance
of the house on the opposite side of the street.
The only person she appeared not to have seen in
the room was a clergyman who was present. The
husband of Mrs. Masey accompanied Mr. Hender-
son's father to the funeral, and on their journey
from Bristol to Oxford by coach (the period being
before railways and telegraphs existed), Mr. Philip
Masey related to him the particulars of his son's
death, as described by his wife, which, on arrival,
they found to have been exactly as told by Mrs.
Masey.
" Mrs. Masey was so much concerned about the
death of Mr. Henderson, jun., that she forgot all
about the directions he had given her respecting
the approaching illness of his father, but some
time afterwards she was sent for by the father,
who was very ill. She then remembered the
directions given her by the son on his death-bed
at Oxford. She immediately proceeded to the
residence of Mr. Henderson, and on arrival at the
house she found the room, the bureau, the box,
and the medicine exactly as had been foretold
to her. She administered the remedy as directed,
and had the pleasure of witnessing the beneficial
effect by the complete recovery of Mr. Henderson
from a serious illness."
Here we have almost every variety of psychic
experience. First of all there is second sight pure
and simple ; second, there is the aerial journey of
the Double, with the memory of everything that
140 REAI, GHOST STORIES
had been seen and heard at the scene which it
had witnessed ; third, there is communication of
information which at that moment was not known
to the percipient ; fourth, we have another pre-
diction ; and finally, we have a complete verifi-
cation and fulfilment of everything that was
witnessed. It is idle to attempt to prove the
accuracy of statements made concerning one who
has been dead nearly a hundred years, but the
vStory, although possessing no evidential value,
is interesting as an almost unique specimen of the
comprehensive and complicated prophetic ghost
and clairvoyant story.
These facts, which are well accredited, would
seem to show that in the book of Job Elihu was
not far wrong when he said, "In slumberings
upon the bed God openeth the ears of men and
sealeth their destruction/' Or, to quote from an
author who uses more modern dialect, it justifies
Abercromby's remark that " the subject of dream-
ing appears to be worthy of careful investigation,
and there is much reason to believe that an
extensive collection of authentic facts, carefully
analysed, would unfold principles of very great
interest in reference to the philosophy of the
mental powers/ 5
Clairvoyance is a gift, and a comparatively rare
gift. It is a gift which requires to be much more
carefully studied and scientifically examined than
it has been hitherto. It is a by-path to many
secrets. It may hold in it the clue to the acquisi-
tion of great faculties, hitherto regarded as for-
bidden to mere mortals.
CHAPTER III.
MY OWN EXPERIENCE.
IT is difficult for those who are not clairvoyant
to understand what those who are clairvoyant des-
cribe, often with the most extraordinary precision
and detail. Unfortunately for myself I am not a
clairvoyant, but on one occasion I had an ex-
perience which enabled me to understand some-
thing of clairvoyant vision. I had been working
late at night, and had gone to bed at about two
o'clock in the morning somewhat tired, having
spent several hours in preparing " Real Ghost
Stories " for the press. I got into bed, but was
not able to go to sleep, as usual, as soon as my
head touched the pillow. I suppose my mind had
been too much excited by hard work right up to the
moment of going to bed for me readily to go to
sleep. I shut my eyes and waited for sleep to come;
instead of sleep, however, there came to me a
succession of curiously vivid clairvoyant pictures.
There was no light in the room, and it was per-
fectly dark ; I had my eyes shut also. But, not-
withstanding the darkness, I suddenly was con-
scious of looking at a scene of singular beauty.
It was as if I saw a living miniature about the size
of a magic-lantern slide. At this moment I can
recall the scene as if I saw it again. It was a
seaside piece. The moon was shining upon the
water, which rippled slowly on to the beach.
142 REAI, GHOST STORIES
Right before me a long mole ran out into the
water. On either side of the mole irregular rocks
stood up above the sea-level. On the shore stood
several houses, square and rude, which resembled
nothing that I had ever seen in house architecture.
No one was stirring, but the moon was there, and
the sea and the gleam of the moonlight on the
rippling waters was just as if I had been looking
out upon the actual scene. It was so beautiful
that I remember thinking that if it continued I
should be so interested in looking at it that I
should never go to sleep. I was wide awake, and
at the same time that I saw the scene I distinctly
heard the dripping of the rain outside the window.
Then suddenly, without any apparent object or
reason, the scene changed. The moonlit sea
vanished, and in its place I was looking right
into the interior of a reading-room. It seemed
as if it had been used as a schoolroom in the day-
time and was employed as a reading-room in the
evening. I remember seeing one reader, who had
a curious resemblance to Tim Harrington, although
it was not he, hold up a magazine or book in his
hand and laugh. It was not a picture it was
there. The scene was just as if you were looking
through an opera-glass ; you saw the play of the
muscles, the gleaming of the eye, every movement
of the unknown persons in the unnamed place into
which you were gazing. I saw all that without
opening my eyes, nor did my eyes have anything
to do with it. You see such things as these, as
it were, with another sense, which is more inside
your head than in your eyes. This was a very poor
CLAIRVOYANCE 143
and paltry experience, but it enabled me to under-
stand better than any amount ot disquisition
how it is that clairvoyants see The pictures
were apropos of nothing ; they had been sug-
gested by nothing I had been reading or talking of,
they simply came as if I had been able to look
through a glass at what was occurring somewhere
else in the world. I had my peep and then it
passed, nor have I had a recurrence of a similar
experience.
Crystal-Gazing.
Crystal-gazing is somewhat akin to clairvoy-
ance. There are some people who cannot look
into an ordinary globular bottle without seeing
pictures form themselves, without any effort or
will on their part, in the crystal globe. This is an
experience which I have never been able to enjoy.
But I have seen crystal-gazing going on at a table
at which I have been sitting on one or two occa-
sions with rather remarkable results. The ex-
periences of Miss X. in crystal-gazing have been
told at length and in detail in the " Proceedings
of the Psychical Research Society." On looking
into the crystal on two occasions as a test, to see
if she could see me when she was several miles
off, she saw, not me, but a different friend of mine
on each occasion, whom she had never seen, but
whom she immediately identified on seeing them
afterwards at my office.
Crystal-gazing seems to be the least dangerous
and most simple of all methods of experimenting.
You simply look into a crystal globe the size of a
five-shilling piece, or a water-bottle which is full
144 REAI, GHOST STORIES
of clear water, and is placed so that too much light
does not fall upon it, and then simply look at it.
You make no incantations and engage in no
mumbo- jumbo business ; you simply look at it
for two or three minutes, taking care not to tire
yourself, winking as much as you please, but
fixing your thought upon whoever it is you wish
to see. Then, if you have the faculty, the glass
will cloud over with a milky mist, and in the centre
the image is gradually precipitated in just the
same way as a photograph forms on the sensitive
plate. At least, the description given by crystal-
gazers as to the way in which the picture appears
reminded me of nothing so much as what I saw
when I stood inside the largest camera in the world,
in which the Ordnance Survey photographs its
maps at Southampton.
PART IV.
PREMONITIONS AND SECOND SIGHT.
" But there are many such things in Nature, though we have not
the right key to them. We all walk in mysteries. We are surround-
ed by an atmosphere of which we do not know what is stirring in it,
or how it is connected with our own spirit. So much is certain that
in particular cases we can put out the feelers of our soul beyond its
bodily limits, and that a presentiment, nay, an actual insight into, the
immediate future is accorded to it." Goethe's "Conversations with
IJckermann."
CHAPTER I.
MY OWN EXTRAORDINARY PREMONITIONS.
IF clairvoyance partakes of the nature of the
camera obscura, by which persons can see at a
distance that which is going on beyond the direct
range of their vision, it is less easy to suggest aa^
analogy to explain the phenomena of premonition
or second sight. Although I have never seen a
ghost for none of my hallucinations are scenic
I may fairly claim to have a place in this census
on the ground of the extraordinary premonitions
I have had at various times of coming events.
The second sight of the Highlander is always
scenic ; he does not hear so much as he sees. If
death is foreshadowed, the circumstances preced-
J
146 REAI, GHOST STORIES
ing and following the event pass as in dramatic
scene before the eyes of the seer. It is much as if
the seers had access to a camera obscura which
enabled them not only to see that which was
occurring at the same moment in various parts of
the world, but in its magic mirror could reflect
events which have not yet been as if they were
already existent.
The phenomena of premonition, combined with
the faculties of clairvoyance by which the per-
cipient is able to reproduce the past, make a great
breach in our conceptions of both time and space.
To the Deity, in the familiar line of the hymn,
" future things unfolded lie " ; but from time to
time future things, sometimes most trivial, some-
times most important, are unfolded to the eye
of mortal man. Why or how one does not know.
All that he can say is that the vision came and
went in obedience to some power over which he
had no conscious control. The faculty of fore-
seeing, which in its higher forms constitutes no
small part of a prophet's power, is said to exist
among certain families, and to vary according to
the locality in which they are living. Men who
have second sight in Skye are said to lose it on the
mainland. But residence in Skye itself is not
sufficient to give the Englishman the faculty once
said to be possessed by its natives. In England it
is rare, and when it exists it is often mixed up with
curious and somewhat bewildering superstitions,
signs and omens portending death and disaster,
which can][hardly be regarded as being more than
seventh cousins of the true faculty.
PREMONITIONS AND SECOND SIGHT 147
I can make no claim to the proud prerogative of
the seer, but upon several occasions I have had
some extraordinary premonitions of what was
about to happen. I can give no explanation as
to how they came, all that I know is they arrived,
and when they arrived I recognised them beyond
all possibility of mistake. I have had three or four
very striking and vivid premonitions in my life
which have been fulfilled to the letter. I have
others which await fulfilment. Of the latter I will
not speak here although I have them duly
recorded for were I to do so I should be accused
of being party to bringing about the fulfilment of
my own predictions. Those which have already
been fulfilled, although of no general importance
to any one else, were of considerable importance
to me, as will be seen by the brief outline con-
cerning three of them.
Leaving Darlington Fore-seen.
The first occasion on which I had an abso-
lutely unmistakable intimation of the change
about to occur in my own circumstances was in
1880, the year in which I left the editorship of the
Northern Echo to become the assistant of Mr. John
Morley* on the Pall Mall Gazette.
On New Year's Day, 1880, it was forcibly im-
pressed upon my mind that I was to leave Darling-
ton in the course of that year. I remember on the
1st of January meeting a journalistic confrere
on my way from Darlington station to the Northern
Echo office. After wishing him a Happy New Year,
I said, " This is the last New Year's Day I shall
* Now I<ord Morley.
148 REAI, GHOST STORIES
ever spend in Darlington ; I shall leave the
Northern Echo this year/' My friend looked at
me in some amazement, and said, " And where
are you going to ? ' ' To London," I replied,
' because it is the only place which could tempt
me from my present position, which is very com-
fortable, and where I have perfect freedom to say
my say/' " But," said my friend, somewhat
dubiously, " what paper are you going to ? '
" I have no idea in the world/' I said ; " neither
do I know a single London paper which would
offer me a position on their staff of any kind,
let alone one on which I would have any liberty
of utterance. I see no prospect of any opening
anywhere. But I know for certain that before the
year is out I shall be on the staff of a Condon
paper/' " Come," said my friend, " this is super-
stition, and with a wife and family I hope you will
do nothing rashly." " You need not fear as to
that/' I said ; " I shall not seek any position else-
where, it will have to come to me if I have to go
to it. I am not going to throw myself out of a
berth until I know where my next place is to be.
Humanly speaking, I see no chance of my leaving
Darlington, yet I have no more doubt than of my
own existence that I shall be gone by this time
next year." We parted.
The General Election soon came upon us, and
when the time came for renewing my engagement
on the Northern Echo, I had no option but to
renew my contract and bind myself to remain at
Darlington until July, 1880. Although I signed
the contract, when the day arrived on which I
PREMONITIONS AND SECOND SIGHT 149
had either to give notice or renew my engagement,
I could not shake from me the conviction that I
was destined to leave Darlington at least six
months before my engagement expired. At that
time the Pall Mall Gazette was edited by Mr.
Greenwood, and was, of all the papers in the land,
the most antipathetic to the principles upon which
I had conducted the Northern Echo.
The possibility of my becoming assistant editor
to the editor of the Pall Mall Gazette seemed at
that time about as remote as that of the Moderator
of the Free Church of Scotland receiving a car-
dinal's hat from the Pope of Rome. Nevertheless,
no sooner had Mr. Gladstone been seated in power
than Mr. George Smith handed over the Pall Mall
Gazette to his son-in-law, Mr. Henry Yates Thomp-
son. Mr. Greenwood departed to found and edit
the St. James' Gazette, and Mr. Morley became
editor. Even then I never dreamed of going to the
Pall Mall. Two other North-country editors and
I, thinking that Mr. Morley was left in rather a
difficulty by the secession of several of the Pall
Mall staff, agreed to send up occasional contri-
butions solely for the purpose of enabling Mr.
Morley to get through the temporary difficulty in
which he was placed by being suddenly summoned
to edit a daily paper under such circumstances.-
Midsummer had hardly passed before Mr.
Thompson came down to Darlington and offered
me the assistant editorship. The proprietor of the
Northern Echo kindly waived his right to my ser-
vices in deference to the request of Mr. Morley.
As a result I left the Northern Echo in September,
150 RKAiv GHOST STORIES
1880, and my presentiment was fulfilled. At the
time when it was first impressed upon my mind,
no living being probably anticipated the possi-
bility of such a change occurring in the Pall Mall
Gazette as would render it possible for me to be-
come assistant editor, so that the presentiment
could in no way have been due to any possible
calculation of chances on my part.
The Editorship of the " Pall Mall Gazette."
The second presentiment to which I shall refer
was also connected with the Pall Mall Gazette.
and was equally clear and without any suggestion
from outward circumstances. It was in October,
1883. My wife and I were spending a brief holiday
in the Isle of Wight, and I remember that the
great troopers, which had just brought back Lord
Wolseley's army from the first Egyptian cam-
paign, were lying in the Solent when we crossed.
One morning about noon we were walking in the
drizzling rain round St. Catherine's Point. It
was a miserable day, the ground slippery and the
footpath here and there rather difficult to follow.
Just as we were at about the ugliest part of our
climb I felt distinctly, as it were, a voice within
myself saying. You will have to look sharp and
make ready, because by a certain date (which as
near as I can recollect was the 16th of March next
year) you will have sole charge of the Pall Mall
Gazette.
I was just a little startled and rather awed
because, as Mr. Morley was then in full command
PREMONITIONS AND SECOND SIGHT 151
and there was no expectation on his part of aban-
doning his post, the inference which I immediately
drew was that he was going to die. So firmly was
this impressed upon my mind that for two hours I
did not like to speak about it to my wife. We
took shelter for a time from the rain, but after-
wards, on going home, I spoke on the subject
which filled me with sadness, not without reluc-
tance, and said to my wife, " Something has
happened to me which has made a great impression
upon my mind. When we were beside St. Cather-
ine's Lighthouse I got into my head that Mr.
Morley was going to die." " Nonsense," she said,
' what made you think that ? '; " Only this,"
said I, " that I received an intimation as clear
and unmistakable as that which I had when I was
going to leave Darlington, that I had to look sharp
and prepare for taking the so 1 e charge of the Pall
Mall Gazette on March 16th next. That is all, and
I do not see how that is likely to happen unless Mr.
Morley is going to die." " Nonsense," said my
wife, "he is not going to die ; he is going to get
into Parliament, that is what is going to happen."
' Well," said I, " that may be. Whether he dies
or whether he gets into Parliament, the one thing
certain to me is that I shall have sole charge of the
Pall Mall Gazette next year, and I am so convinced
of that that when we return to London I shall
make all my plans on the basis of that certainty."
And so I did. I do not hedge and hesitate at
burning my boats.
As soon as I arrived at the Pall Mall Gazette
office, I announced to Mr. Thompson, to Mr.
152 REAI, GHOST STORIES
Morley, and to Mr. Milner,* who was then on the
staff, that Mr. Morley was going to be in Parlia-
ment before March next year, for I need hardly
say that I never mentioned my first sinister
intimation. I told Mr. Morley and the others
exactly what had happened, namely, that I had
received notice to be ready to take sole charge of
the Pall Mall Gazette by March 16th next. They
shrugged their shoulders, and Mr. Morley scouted
the idea. He said he had almost given up the idea
of entering Parliament, all preceding negotiations
had fallen through, and he had come to the con-
clusion that he would stick to the Pall Mall Gazette.
I said that he might come to what conclusion he
liked, the fact remained that he was going to go.
I remember having a talk at the time with Mr.
Milner about it. I remarked that the worst of
people having premonitions is that they carefully
hide up their prophecies until after the event, and
then no one believed in them. " This time no one
shall have the least doubt as to the fact that I have
had my premonition well in advance of the fact.
It is now October. I have told everybody whom it
concerns whom I know. If it happens not to come
to pass I will never have faith in my premonitions
any more, and you may chaff me as much as you
please as to the superstition. But if it turns up
trumps, then please remember that I have played
doubles or quits and won."
Nobody at the office paid much attention to my
vision, and a couple of months later Mr. Morley
came to consult me as to some slight change which
he proposed to make in the terms of his engage-
* Now Lord Milner.
PREMONITIONS AND SECOND SIGHT 153
ment which he was renewing for another year.
As this change affected me slightly he came, with
that courtesy and consideration which he always
displayed in his dealings with his staff, to ask
whether I should have any objection to this alter-
ation. As he was beginning to explain what this
alteration would be I interrupted him. " Excuse
me, Mr. Morley," said I, " when will this new
arrangement come into effect ? ': " In May, I
think," was the reply. "Then," said I, "you
do not need to discuss it with me. I shall have
sole charge of the Pall Mall Gazette before that
time. You will not be here then, you will be in
Parliament." " But," said Mr. Morley, " that is
only your idea. What I want to know is whether
you agree to the changes which I propose to make
and which will somewhat affect your work in the
office ? ' M But," I replied, " it is no use talking
about that matter to me. You will not be here,
and I shall be carrying on the Pall Mall Gazette ;
then what is the use of talking about it." Then
Mr. Morley lifted his chin slightly in the air,
and looking at me with somewhat natural disdain,
he asked, " And, pray, do you mean to tell me that
I have not to make a business arrangement be-
cause you have had a vision ? ' " Not at all,
said I ; " you, of course, will make what business
arrangements you please, I cannot expect you
to govern your conduct by my vision ; but as I
shall have charge of the paper it is no use discussing
the question with me. You can make what ar-
rangements you please so far as I am concerned.
They are so much waste paper. I ask you nothing
154 REAiy GHOST SOTRIES
about the arrangement, because I know it will
never come into effect so far as relates to my
work on the paper." Finding that I was im-
practicable, Mr. Morley left and concluded his
arrangement without consultation. One month
later Mr. Ashton Dilke sickened with his fatal
illness, and Mr. Morley was elected on February
24th, 1884, as Liberal candidate for Newcastle-on-
Tyne. J remember that when the news came to
Northumberland Street, the first remark which
Mr. Thompson made was, " Well, Stead's presen-
timent is coming right after all."
I remember all through that contest, when the
issue was for some time somewhat in doubt, feeling
quite certain that if Mr. Morley did not get in he
would die, or he would find some other constitu-
ency. I had no vision as to the success of his
candidature at Newcastle. The one thing certain
was that I was to have charge of the paper, and
that he was to be out of it. When he was elected
the question came as to what should be done ?
The control of the paper passed almost entirely
into my hands at once, and Mr. Morley would have
left altogether on the day mentioned in my vision,
had not Mr. Thompson kindly interfered to secure
me a holiday before saddling me with the sole
responsibility. Mr. Morley, therefore, remained
till midsummer ; but his connection with the
paper was very slight, parliamentary duties, as
he understood them, being incompatible with
close day-to-day editing of an evening paper.
Here, again, it could not possibly have been
said that my premonition had any share in bringing
PREMONITIONS AND SECOND SIGHT 155
about its realisation. It was not known by Mr.
Ashton Dilke's most intimate friends in October
that he would not be able to face another session.
I did not even know that he was ill, and my vision,
so far from being based on any calculation of Mr.
Morley's chances of securing a seat in Parliament,
was quite independent of all electoral changes.
My vision, my message, my premonition, or what-
ever you please to call it, was strictly limited to one
point, Mr. Morley only coming into it indirectly.
I was to have charge of certain duties which neces-
sitated his disappearance from Northumberland
Street. Note also that my message did not say
that I was to be editor of the Pall Mall Gazette
on Mr. Morley's departure, nor was I ever in
strict title editor of that paper. I edited it, but
Mr. Yates Thompson was nominally editor-in-
chief, nor did I ever admit that I was editor until
I was in the dock at the Old Bailey, when it would
have been cowardly to have seemed to evade the
responsibility of a position which I practically
occupied, although, as a matter of fact, the post
was never really conferred upon me.
My Imprisonment.
The third instance which I will quote is even
more remarkable, and entirely precluded any
possibility of my premonition having any influ-
ence whatever in bringing about its realization.
During what is known as the Armstrong trial it
became evident from the judge's ruling that a
conviction must necessarily follow. I was accused
of having conspired to take Eliza Armstrong from
156 REAI, GHOST STORIES
her parents without their consent. My defence
was that her mother had sold the child through a
neighbour for immoral purposes. I never alleged
that the father had consented, and the judge ruled
with unmistakable emphasis that her mother's
consent, even if proved, was not sufficient. Here
I may interpolate a remark to the effect that if
Mrs. Armstrong had been asked to produce her
marriage lines the sheet anchor of the prosecution
would have given way, for long after the trial it
was discovered that from a point of law Mr. Arm-
strong had no legal rights over Eliza, as she was
born out of wedlock. The council in the case,
however, said we had no right to suggest this,
however much we suspected it, unless we were
prepared with evidence to justify the suggestion.
As at that time we could not find the register of
marriage at Somerset House the question was not
put, and we were condemned largely on the false
assumption that her father had legal rights as
custodian of his daughter. And this, as it hap-
pened, was not the case. This, however, by the
way.
When the trial was drawing to a close, convic-
tion being certain, the question was naturally
discussed as to what the sentence would be.
Many of my friends, including those actively en-
gaged in the trial on both sides, were strongly of
opinion that under the circumstances it was cer-
tain I should only be bound over in my own
recognisance to come up for judgment when
called for. The circumstances were almost un-
precedented ; the judge, and the Attorney-General,
PREMONITIONS AND SECOND SIGHT 157
who prosecuted, had in the strongest manner
asserted that they recognised the excellence of the
motives which had led me to take the course which
had landed me in the dock. The Attorney-General
himself was perfectly aware that his Government
could never have passed the Criminal L,aw Amend-
ment Act would never even have attempted to
do so but for what I had done. The jury had
found me guilty, but strongly recommended me
to mercy on the ground, as they said, that I had
been deceived by my agent. The conviction was
very general that no sentence of imprisonment
would be inflicted.
I was never a moment in doubt. I knew I was
going to gaol from the moment Rebecca Jarrett
broke down in the witness-box. This may be
said to be nothing extraordinary ; but what was
extraordinary was that I had the most absolute
conviction that I was going to gaol for two months.
I was told by those who considered themselves
in a position to speak with authority that I was
perfectly safe, that I should not be imprisoned,
and that I should make preparations to go abroad
for a holiday as soon as the trial was over.
To all such representations I always replied by
asserting with the most implicit confidence that I
was certain to go to gaol, and that my sentence
would be two months. When, however, on Nov-
ember, 10th, 1885, I stood in the dock to receive
sentence, and received from the judge a sentence
of three months, I was very considerably taken
aback. I remember distinctly that I had to re-
member where I was in order to restrain the
158 RKAI, GHOST STORIES
almost irresistible impulse to interrupt the judge
and say, " I beg your pardon, my lord, you have
made a mistake, the sentence ought to have been
two months/' But mark what followed. When I
had been duly confined in Coldbath-on-the-Fields
Prison, I looked at the little card which is fastened
on the door of every cell giving the name of the
prisoner, his offence, and the duration of his
sentence. I found to my great relief that my
presentiment had not been wrong after all. I
had, it is true, been sentenced to three months'
imprisonment, but the sentence was dated from
the first day of the sessions. Our trial had been a
very long one, and there had been other cases
before it. The consequence was that the judge's
sentence was as near two months as he possibly
could have passed. My actual sojourn in gaol was
two months and seven days. Had he sentenced
me to two months' imprisonment I should only
have been in gaol one month and seven days.
These three presentiments were quite unmis-
takable, and were not in the least to be confounded
with the ordinary uneasy forebodings which come
and go like clouds in a summer sky. Of the pre-
monitions which still remain unfulfilled I will
say nothing, excepting that they govern my action,
and more or less colour the whole of my life. No
person can have had three or four premonitions
such as those which I have described without
feeling that such premonitions are the only cer-
tainties of the future. They will be fulfilled, no
matter how incredible they may appear ; and
amid the endless shifting circumstances of our life,
PREMONITIONS AND SECOND SIGHT 159
these fixed points, towards which we are inevitably
tending, help to give steadiness to a career, and a
feeling of security to which the majority of men are
strangers.* Premonitions are distinct from
dreams, although many times they are communi-
cated in sleep. Whether in the sleeping or waking
stage there are times when mortal men gain, as it
were, chance glimpses behind the veil which con-
ceals the future. Sometimes this premonition
takes the shape of a deep indwelling consciousness,
based not on reason or on observation, that for us
awaits some great work to be done, which we know
but dimly, but which is, nevertheless, the one
reality of life.
"One of the premonitions referred to by my Father was fulfilled on
that fatal night in April, 1912, when the Titanic struck an iceberg and
sunk with 1,600 souls, and his life on this plane ended.
He had known for years and stated the fact to many that he would
not die in his bed and that his "passing" would be sudden and
dramatic that he would, as he put it, "die in his boots."
As to the actual cause or place of his "passing" he had no
premonition but rather inclined to the idea that he would be kicked
to death in the streets by an angry mob whilst defending some
unpopular cause. E. W. STEAD.
CHAPTER II.
WARNINGS GIVEN IN DREAMS.
In my case each of my premonitions related to
an important crisis in my life, but often pre-
monitions are of a very different nature. One
which was told me when I was in Glasgow came
in a dream, but it is so peculiar that it is worthy of
mention in this connection. The Rev. William
Ross, minister of the Church of Cowcaddens, in
Glasgow, is a Highlander. On the Sunday evening
after I had addressed his congregation, the con-
versation turned on premonitions and second
sight, and he told me the following extraordinary
dream : When he was a lad, living in the High-
lands, at a time when he had never seen a game of
football, or knew anything about it, he awoke
in the morning with a sharp pain in his ankle.
This pain, which was very acute, and which con-
tinued with him throughout the whole day, was
caused, he said, by an experience which he had gone
through in a dream. He found himself in a strange
place and playing at a game which he did not
understand, and which resembled nothing that he
had seen played among his native hills. He was
running rapidly, carrying a big black thing in his
arms, when suddenly another youth ran at him
and kicked him violently on the ankle, causing
such intense pain that he woke. The pain, instead
of passing away, as is usual when we happen
PREMONITIONS AND SECOND SIGHT 161
anything in dreamland, was very acute, and he
continued to feel it throughout the day.
Time passed, and six months after his dream he
found himself on the playing fields at Edinburgh,
engaged in his first game of football. He was a
long-legged country youth and a swift runner, and
he soon found that he could rush a goal better by
taking the ball and carrying it than by kicking it.
After having made one or two goals in this way,
he was endeavouring to make a third, when,
exactly as he had seen in his dream, a player on the
opposite side swooped upon him and kicked him
heavily upon the ankle. The blow was so severe
that he was confined to the house for a fortnight.
The whole scene was exactly that which he had
witnessed in his dream. The playing fields, the
game, the black round ball in his arms, and finally
the kick on the ankle. It would be difficult to
account for this on any ground of mere coinci-
dence, the chances against it are so enormous.
It is a very unusual thing for any one to suffer
physical pain in the waking state from incidents
which take place in dreams.
A Premonition of a Bad Debt.
When in Edinburgh I had the good fortune
to meet a gentleman, who had held an impor-
tant position of trust in connection with the
Indian railways. Speaking on the subject of
premonitions, he said that on two occasions he had
had very curious premonitions of coming events
in dreams. One was very trivial, the other more
serious, but both are quite inexplicable on the
K
162 REAI, GHOST STORIES
theory of coincidence. The evidential value is
enhanced by the fact that each time he men-
tioned his dreams to his wife before the realisation
came about. I saw his wife and she confirmed his
stories. The first was curious from its simplicity.
A certain debtor owed Mr. T. an amount of some
30. One morning he woke up and informed his
wife that he had had a very disagreeable dream,
to the effect that the money would never be paid,
and that all he would recover of the debt was seven
pounds odd shillings and sixpence. The number
of shillings he had forgotten, but he remembered
distinctly the pounds and the sixpence. A few
days later he received an intimation that some-
thing had gone wrong with the debtor, and the total
sum which he ultimately recovered was the exact
amount which he had heard in his dream and had
mentioned on the following morning to his wife.
A Dream of Death.
His other dream was more curious. An ac-
quaintance of his in India was compelled to return
home on furlough on account of the ill-health of his
wife, and he agreed to let his bungalow to Mr. T.
One morning Mr. T. woke up and told his wife
of what he had dreamt. He had gone to Luck-
now railway station to take possession of Mr.
C's. bungalow, but when stepping on the platform
the stationmaster had told him that Mr. C. was
dead, and that he hoped it would not make any
difficulties about the bungalow. So deeply im-
pressed was he with the dream that he telegraphed
to his friend C. to ask when he was going to start
PREMONITIONS AND SECOND SIGHT 163
for England,, feeling by no means sure that the
reply telegram might not announce that he was
dead. The telegram, however, came back in due
course. Mr. C. stated that he was going to leave
on such and such a date. Reassured, therefore,
Mr. T. dismissed the idea of the dream as a sub-
jective delusion. At the appointed time he de-
parted for Lucknow. When he alighted he was
struck by the strange resemblance of the scene
to that in his dream, and this was further recalled
to his mind when the stationmaster came up to
him and said, not that Mr. C. was dead but that he
was seriously ill, and that he hoped it would not
make any difference about the bungalow. Mr. T.
began to be uneasy. The next morning, when he
entered the office, his chief said to him, " You
will be very sorry to hear that Mr. C. died last
night." Mr. T. has never had any other hallucin-
ations, nor has he any theory to account for his
dreams. All that he knows is that they occurred,
and that in both cases what he saw was realised
in one case to the very letter, and in the other with
a curious deviation which adds strong confirmatory
evidence to the bond fides of the narrator. Both
stories are capable of ample verification if suffi-
cient trouble were taken, as the telegram in one
case could be traced, the death proved, and in the
other the receipt might probably be found.
DREAMS which give timely notice of coming
accidents are, unfortunately, quite as often useless
as they are efficacious for the protection of those
to whom they are sent. Mr. Kendall, from whose
psychical diary I have often quoted, sends me the
164 REAI, GHOST STORIES
following story of a dream which occurred, but
which failed to save the dreamer's leg, although he
struggled against it, and did his best to avert his
evil fate :
' Taking tea at a friend's house in the road where
I live, I met with the Rev. Mr. Johnson, super-
intendent of the South Shields Circuit among the
Primitive Methodists. He spoke with great con-
fidence of the authenticity of a remarkable dream
which he related. He used to reside at Shipley,
near Bradford. His class-leader there had lost a
leg, and he had heard direct from himself the
circumstances under which the loss took place
and the dream that accompanied. This class-
leader was a blacksmith at a manufacturing mill
which was driven by a water-wheel. He knew
the wheel to be out of repair, when one night he
dreamed that at the close of the day's work the
manager detained him to repair it, that his foot
slipped and became entangled between the two
wheels, and was injured and afterwards ampu-
tated. In consequence he told his wife the dream
in the morning, and made up his mind to be out
of the way that evening, if he was wanted to repair
the wheel. During the day the manager announced
that the wheel must be repaired when the work-
people left that evening, but the blacksmith
determined to make himself scarce before the hour
arrived. He fled to a wood in the vicinity, and
thought to hide himself there in its recesses. He
came to a spot where some timber lay which be-
longed to the mill, and detected a lad stealing
some pieces of wood from the heap. He pursued
PREMONITIONS AND SECOND SIGHT 165
him in order to rescue the stolen property, became
excited, and forgot all about his resolution. He
found himself ere he was aware of it back at the
mill just as the workpeople were being dismissed.
He could not escape, and as he was principal smith
he had to go upon the wheel, but he resolved to be
very careful. In spite of his care, however, his
foot slipped and got entangled between the two
wheels just as he had dreamed. It was crushed so
badly that he had to be carried to the Bradford
Infirmary, where the leg was amputated above
the knee. The premonitory dream was thus ful-
filled throughout/'
A Death Warning.
A much more painful story and far more detailed
is contained in the fifth volume of the " Proceed-
ings of the Psychical Research Society," on the
authority of C. F. Fleet, of 26, Grosvenor Road,
Gainsborough. He swears to the authenticity of
the facts. The detailed story is full of the tragic
fascination which attaches to the struggle of a
brave man, repeatedly warned of his coming
death, struggling in vain to avert the event which
was to prove fatal, and ultimately perishing within
the sight of those to whom he had revealed the
vision. The story in brief is as follows : Mr. Fleet
was third mate on the sailing ship Persian Empire,
which left Adelaide for London in 1868. One of
the crew, Cleary by name, dreamed before starting
that on Christmas morning, as the Persian Empire
was passing Cape Horn in a;heavy gale, he was
166 RKAI, GHOST STORIES
boat hanging in davits over the side. He and
another got into the boat, when a fearful sea
broke over the ship, washing them both out of the
boat into the sea, where they were both drowned.
The dream made such an impression upon him
that he was most reluctant to join the ship, but
he overcame his scruples and sailed. On Christmas
Eve, when they were nearing Cape Horn, Cleary
had a repetition of his dream, exact'in all particu-
lars. He uttered a terrible cry, and kept mutter-
ing, " I know it will come true/' On Christmas
Day, exactly as he had foreseen, Cleary and the
rest of the watch were ordered to secure a boat
hanging in the davits. Cleary flatly refused.
He said he refused because he knew he would be
drowned, that all the circumstances of his dream
had come true up to that moment, and if he went
into that boat he would die. He was taken below
to the captain, and his refusal to discharge duty
was entered in the log. Then the chief officer,
Douglas, took the pen to sign his name. Cleary
suddenly looked at him and exclaimed, " I will
go to my duty for now I know the other man in
my dream/' He told Douglas, as they were on
deck, of his dream. They got into the boat, and
when they were all making tight a heavy sea
struck the vessel with such force that the crew
would have been, washed overboard had they not
clung to the mast. The boat was turned over,
and Douglas and Cleary were flung into the sea.
They swam for a little time, and then went down.
It was just three months after he had dreamed of
it before leaving Adelaide.
PREMONITIONS AND SECOND SIGHT 167
Here we have inexorable destiny fulfilling itself
in spite of the struggles of its destined victim. It
reminds me of a well-known Oriental story, which
tells how a friend who was with Solomon saw the
Angel of Death looking at him very intently.
On learning from Solomon whom the strange visitor
was, he felt very uncomfortable under his gaze,
and asked Solomon to transport him on his magic
carpet to Damascus. No sooner said than done.
Then said the Angel of Death to Solomon, " The
reason why I looked so intently at your friend was
because I had orders to take him at Damascus,
and, behold, I found him at Jerusalem. Now,
therefore, that he has transported himself thither
I shall be able to obey my orders/'
A Life Saved by a Dream.
The Rev. Alexander Stewart, Lly.D., F.S.A., etc.,
Nether Lochaber, sends me the following instance
of a profitable premonition :
" It was in the winter of 1853 that my brother-
in-law, Mr. Kenneth Morrison, came on a visit
to us here at the Manse of Nether I^ochaber. Mr.
Morrison was at that time chief officer of the
steamship City of Manchester, of the Inman line,
one of the ocean ' greyhounds ' of her day, sailing
between Liverpool and Philadelphia.
" In my service here, at the time of Mr. Morri-
son's visit, was a native of Lochaber, Angus Mac-
Master by name, an active, intelligent man, of
about thirty years of age, a most useful man, a
capital shot, an expert angler, and one of the best
violinists in the West Highlands. No great wonder.
168 REAI, GHOST STORIES
therefore, that Morrison took a liking for Angus,
and that the end of it was that Morrison invited
Angus to join him on board the City of Manchester,
where, it was arranged, he should act as one of the
steerage stewards, and, at the same time, as Mr.
Morrison's valet. To this Angus very willingly
agreed, and so it was that when Mr. Morrison's
leave of absence expired, he and Angus joined the
City of Manchester at Liverpool.
" Within a twelvemonth afterwards, Mr. Morri-
son wrote to say that he was about to be pro-
moted to the command of the new Inman Steam-
ship City of Glasgow at that time, of her class and
kind, the finest ship afloat and that having got a
few weeks' holiday, he was coming down to visit
his friends in L,ochaber, bringing Angus MacMaster
along with him, for he had proved so good and
faithful a servant that he was resolved not to part
with him.
" Sooner than was expected, and when his
leave had only extended to some twenty days,
Captain Morrison was summoned to Liverpool
to take charge of his ship, which had already
booked her full complement of passengers, and
taken in most of her cargo, and only required
some little putting to rights, which had better be
done under her commander's supervision, before
she sailed on her maiden trip to Philadelphia.
' I must be off the day after to-morrow/ said
Morrison, as he handed the letter to me across the
table. ' Please send for Angus,' he continued,
' I wish him to come at once, that we may be
ready to start by Wednesday morning.' This
PREMONITIONS AND SECOND SIGHT 169
was at the breakfast table on a Monday morning ;
and that same evening Angus, summoned by a
special messenger from the glen in which he was
staying with his friends, arrived at the Manse,
but in so grave and cheerless a mood that I noticed
it at once, and wondered what could be the matter
with him. Taking him into a private room, I said,
' Angus, Captain Morrison leaves the day after
to-morrow. You had better get his things packed
at once. And, by the way, what a lucky fellow
you are ! If you did so well on the City of Man-
chester, you will in a year or two make quite a
fortune in the City of Glasgow.' To my astonish-
ment Angus replied, ' I am not going in the City
of Glasgow at least, not on this voyage and I
wish you could persuade Captain Morrison the
best and kindest master ever man had not to go
either.' ' Not going ? What in the world do you
mean, Angus ? ' was my very natural exclamation
of surprise. ' Well, sir/ said Angus (the reader
will please understand that our talk was in Gaelic).
1 Well, sir/ said Angus, ' You must not be angry
with me if I tell you that on the last three nights
my father, who has been dead nine years, as you
know, has appeared to me and warned me not
to go on this voyage, for that it will prove dis-
astrous. Whether in dream or waking vision of
the night, I cannot say ; but I saw him, sir, as
distinctly as I now see you ; clothed exactly as I
remember him in life ; and he stood by my bed-
side, and with up-lifted hand and warning finger,
and with a most solemn and earnest expression of
countenance, he said, " Angus, my beloved son,
170 REAI, GHOST STORIES
don't go on this voyage. It will not be a prosper-
ous one/' On three nights running has my father
appeared to me in this form, and with the same
words of warning ; and although much against
my will, I have made up my mind that in the face
of such warning, thrice repeated, it would be
wrong in me to go on this voyage. It does not
become me to do it, but I wish you, sir, would tell
Captain Morrison what I have now told you ; and
persuade him if possible to make the best excuse
he can, and on no account to go on this voyage
in the City of Glasgow.' I said all I could, of course,
and when Captain Morrison was told of it, he, too,
said all he could to shake Angus from his resolu-
tion ; but all in vain. And so it was that Morrison
left without him ; poor Angus actually weeping
as he bade his master good-bye.
" Early in March of that year, the City of
Glasgow, with a valuable cargo and upwards of
five hundred passengers on board, sailed under
Morrison's command for Philadelphia ; and all
that was good and prosperous was confidently
predicted of the voyage of so fine a ship under
charge of so capable a commander. When suffi-
cient time had expired, and there was still no
word of the ship's arrival at Philadelphia, Angus
came to enquire if we had heard anything about
her. I could only reply that there was as yet no
word of her, but that the owners, in reply to my
inquiries, were confident of her safety their
theory being that something had gone wrong
with her engines, and that she was probably pro-
ceeding under sail. ' Pray God it may be so ! '
PREMONITIONS AND SECOND SIGHT 171
said Angus, with the tears in his eyes ; and then in
his own emphatic language ach s'eagal learn,
aon chuid dhuibhse na dhomhsa nach tig fios na
forfhais oiree gu brath (but great is my fear that
neither to you, sir, nor to me shall word of her
safety, or message from her at all ever arrive).
And it was even so : from the day she left the
Mersey until this day no word of the City of
Glasgow has ever been heard. It was the opinion
of those best able to offer a probable conjecture
at the time, that she must have come into contact
with an iceberg, and instantly gone down with all
on board.
" I may add that Angus was a Catholic, and
that Father Macdonald, his priest, told me shortly
afterwards that Angus, before my messenger
calling him to the Manse could have reached him,
had communicated the thrice-repeated dream or
vision to him in confession, and precisely in the
same terms he used in describing it to me. When
no hope of the safety of the City of Glasgow could
any longer be entertained, Angus emigrated to
Australia, whence after the lapse of several years,
he wrote me to say that he was well and doing well.
Whether he is still in life, or gone over to the
majority, I do not know."
A Highlander's Dream of his Drowning.
Another story, which was sent me by my old
friend the housekeeper ot the Hon. Auberon
Herbert's Highland retreat on the shores of Loch
Awe, is an awtul tale of destiny, the premonition
of which only renders it more tragic.
172 REAI, GHOST STORIES
They were all sitting round the fire one winter
night each relating his best story. Each had told
his story of the most wonderful things he had
heard or seen in the Ghost line except Martin
Barraw from Uist who sat silently listening to all.
" Come, Martin/ 1 said the man of the house " are
you not going to tell a story, I am sure you know
many ? "
" Well yes," said Martin. " I know some and
there is one strange one, running in my mind all
this night, that I have never told to anyone yet,
but I think I must tell it to-night/'
"Oh, yes, do, Martin," cried all present.
" Well," said Martin, " you all I am sure remem-
ber the night of the fatal boat accident at Portroch
ferry, when Murdoch McL,ane, big David the
Gamekeeper, and Donald McRae, the ferryman
were drowned and I was the only one saved of the
four."
" Yes we do that Martin, remember it well," said
the good man, " that was the night the Taybridge
was blown down, it was a Sunday night the
28th of Dec. '79."
" Yes you are right that was the very night. Well
you know Murdoch and I were Salmon watching
down the other side of the L,och that winter. Well
one night about the middle of November we were
sitting by the side of Altanlarich, it would be
about midnight, we had sat for some time without
speaking I thought Murdoch was asleep and I was
very nearly so, when suddenly Murdoch sprung
to his feet with a jump that brought me to mine
in a second.
PREMONITIONS AND SECOND SIGHT 173
"Goodness what is wrong with you/' said I,
looking round in every direction to see what
startled him but could see nothing.
' O dear, dear ! what a horrid dream I have
had/ said he. 'A dream/ said I. ' My ' I thought
you had seen a ghost or something by the spring
you gave/
' Well ! you would spring too if you could and you
drowning. ' Then he told me that he thought it was
the 28th of December and there was such a storm he
had never seen anything like it in his life before.
' We were crossing the loch at the ferry/ said he.
' We had the big white boat and four oars on her.
Big David the keeper Donald the ferryman you
and I. And man but it was awful. The boat
right up on end at times every wave washing over
us and filling the boat more and more, and no
way of bailing her, because no one could let go his
oar, you and I were on the weather side, and Big
David and Donald on the other, they of course
had the worst of it, we got on until we were near
the other side, the waves were getting bigger and
the boat getting heavier, we were going to run for
the creek, when she was struck by a huge wave
that filled her up to the seats and sent David and
Donald on their backs, they lost their oars, and
the next wave came right over her and down she
went. The other two never were seen, you and I
came up and tried to swim to the shore, you got
near enough to catch a rope that was thrown
you, but I could not get through the tremendous
waves and was just going down when I awoke
with such a start/
174 REAL GHOST STORIES
" 'My what a frightful dream/ said I. 'I should
not like to have such a dream although I do not
believe in dreams or Ghosts or these things it
was the rain falling on your face did it.'
" ' Well ! may be it was said he/ but all the same I
could see he was thinking a good deal about it
all night, although I tried to laugh him out of ;t.
Well time passed until about the beginning of
December there was heavy rain Murdoch went
home to see his wife and family as all the rivers
were flooded and there was no need of watching.
He was on his way back to his work on the evening
of the next day, when he got to the ferry, it was
raining and blowing like to blow the breeks off a
Hieland man as they say. 'Dear me Murdoch/
said Donald the ferryman, 'you surely, don't mean
to go out to-night/
" ' It is very stormy/ said Murdoch, ' if you
would be so kind as come over for me at six
o'clock in the morning I would go home again I
must be down passed the Governor's before he gets
up you know.'
" ' Oh ! I'll do that for you Murdoch/ said Donald.
So Murdoch went home again that night and
next morning by six o'clock he was at the ferry
again. ' Well done, Donald. You are a man of
your word/ said he, as he saw what he thought
was Donald on the pier waiting him with his
boat along side, the morning was calm and fair
though pretty dark, he thought it strange Donald
did not answer him, but hurrying down the pier
was about to step into the boat, when he felt
someone strike him a violent blow on the ear with
PREMONITIONS AND SECOND SIGHT 175
the open hand. Looking sharply round he was
astonished to find no one near, but he thought
as he turned round he had seen a dark shadow
disappear in the distance.
" ' God be with us/ said he, turning to Donald,
' what was that ? ' He was horror struck to see a
most hideous object for what he had taken to be
Donald, glaring at him with eyes of fire. ' God have
mercy on my soul/ said he, as he turned to run, but
he had no sooner done so than he was seized by a
grasp of iron and pressed down towards the boat,
then began a struggle for life. He wrestled and
struggled with all his strength and you know he
was a very strong man, but he could do
nothing in the iron grasp of his foe, and
that foe a mere shadow, he was surely and
steadly forced towards the boat, he was being
forced over the side of the pier and into the boat
through which he could see the waves rolling
quite clearly, it was a mere shadow also
' " Oh God help me/ he cried from the depth of
his heart as he gave himself up for lost. Suddenly
as though forced by some unseen power the grasp
that held him ceased and Murdoch fell back upon
the pier unconscious.
"How long he lay he could not say, but it was
Donald throwing water in his face that brought
him round, they went into the Hotel where the
people were just getting up, and he got a glass
of brandy to steady his nerves, and after a short
time they started and Murdoch got back to his
work sometime during the day, where he told me
the whole affair.
176 REAL GHOST STORIES
" Poor Murdoch was much changed after that,
for the few days that he lived you could easily see
the thing was pressing upon his mind a good deal.
" I need not tell you of the boat accident, you all
know that well enough already, how Murdoch's
dream became true even to the very letter. Mr.
Ross the Minister was preaching in the little
church up here we went to put him across the
I/och and it was while coming back that we were
caught in the storm and the boat was swamped.
Big David and Donald never were seen. Murdoch
and I tried to swim to the shoie but he only got a
short way when he also sank and was drowned. I
got near enough to catch a rope that they threw
out to me and they pulled me in although I was
just about dead too."
There are many cases of this unavailing warning.
Mr. T. A. Hamilton, of Ryedale Terrace, Max-
welltown, Dumfries, writes :
" Thirty years ago I had the misfortune to lose
my right eye under peculiar circumstances, and
the night previous to the day on which it hap-
pened my sister dreamt that it had happened
under precisely the same circumstances to which it
did, and related her dream to the household before
it had occurred. The distance between the scene
of the accident and the house in which she slept
was eight miles."
How a Betting Man was Converted.
One of the most interesting cases of premoni-
tions occurring in a dream is that which I have
received from the Rev. Mr. Champness, who is
PREMONITIONS AND SECOND SIGHT 177
very well known in the Wesleyan denomination,
and whose reputation for sterling philanthropy
and fervent evangelical Christianity is much wider
than his denomination. Here is the story, as Mr.
Champ ness sends it me :
" Some years ago, when working as an Evange-
list, it was arranged that I should conduct a Mission
in a town which I had never visited before, and
where, so far as I remember, I did not know a
single person, though I ought to say I was very
much interested in what I had heard about the
place, and had been led to think with some anxiety
about the Mission. It would appear that on the
Saturday night preceding the Mission a man in the
town dreamed that he was standing opposite the
chapel where the Mission was to be held, and that
while he was standing there watching the people
leave the chapel, a minister, whom he had never
seen before, came up to him and spoke to him
with great earnestness about religious matters.
He was so much impressed by the dream that he
awoke his wife, and told her how excited he was.
On the Sunday morning he went to the chapel, and
greatly to his astonishment, when I came into the
pulpit he saw that I was the man whom he had
seen in his dream. I need not say that he was
very much impressed, and took notice of every-
thing that the preacher said and did. When he
got home he reminded his wife of the dream he
had had, and said, ' The man I saw in my dream
was the preacher this morning, and preaches again
to-night/ This interested his wife so much that
she went to chapel with him in the evening. He
i,
178 REAI, GHOST STORIES
attended on Monday and Tuesday evenings. On
the Tuesday evening after the service he waited
outside the chapel. To his great surprise, when I
came out of the chapel I walked straight up to him,
and spoke to him energetically, just as he had seen
on the Saturday night. The whole thing was gone
over again in reality, just as it had been done in the
vision. On the Wednesday evening he was there
again, and I remonstrated with those who had not
yielded to the claims of Jesus Christ. I pushed
them very hard, and was led to say, without pre-
meditation, ' What hinders you ? Why do you
not yield yourself to Christ ? Have you something
on a horse ? ' Strange to say, there was a race
to be run next day, and he had backed the favour-
ite, and stood to win 8 to 1 . As he said afterwards,
' I could not lug a racehorse to the penitent form/
After the service, he went straight to the man with
whom he had made the bet, and said, ' That bet's
off/ at which the man was very glad, us ne expected
to lose the bet. Sure enough, when the race was
run the one that had been backed did win, but
he had given up any intention of winning money
in that way, and that night decided to become a
Christian. He has since then died, and I have
good hope of seeing him in the country where we
may perhaps understand these things better than
we do now/'
CHAPTER III.
PREMONITORY WARNINGS.
ONE of the most curiously detailed premonitory
dreams that I have ever seen is one mentioned
in Mr. Kendall's " Strange Footsteps." It is
supplied by the Rev. Mr. Lupton, Primitive
Methodist minister, a man of high standing in his
Connection, whose mind is much more that of the
lawyer than that of poet or dreamer :
" By the District Meeting Hull District) of 1833,
I was restationed for the Malton Circuit, with the
late Rev. T. Batty. I was then superintendent of
the Lincoln Circuit ; and, up to a few days before
the change, Mrs. I,upton and myself were full of
anticipation of the pleasures we should enjoy
among our old friends on being so much nearer
home. But some time before we got the news of
our destination, one night I cannot now give
the date, but it was during the sittings of the
Conference I had a dream, and next morning I
said to my wife, ' We shall not go to Malton, as we
expect, but to some large town : I do not know its
name, but it is a very large town. The house we
shall occupy is up a flight of stairs, three stories
high. We shall have three rooms on one level :
the first the kitchen will have a closed bed in
the right corner, a large wooden box in another
corner, and the window will look down upon a
small grass plot. The room adjoining will be
i8o REAI, GHOST STORIES
the best room : it will have a dark carpet, with
six hair-seated mahogany chairs. The other will
be a small bed-room. We shall not worship in a
chapel, but in a large hall, which will be tormed
like a gallery. There will be a pulpit in it, and a
large circular table before it. The entrance to it
will be by a flight of stairs, like those in a church
tower. After we have ascended so far, the stairs
will divide one way leading up to the left, to the
top of the place. This will be the principal en-
trance, and it leads to the top of the gallery, which
is entered by a door covered with green baize
fastened with brass nails. The other stairs lead to
the floor of the place ; and, between the door and
the hall, on the right-hand side, in a corner, is a
little room or vestry : in that vestry there will be
three men accustomed to meet that will cause us
much trouble ; but I shall know them as soon as
ever I see them, and we shall ultimately overcome
them, and do well.'
" By reason of some mishap or misadventure, the
letter from Conference was delayed, so that only
some week or ten days prior to the change I got a
letter that informed me my station was Glasgow.
You may judge our surprise and great disappoint-
ment ; however, after much pain for mind, and
much fatigue of body and expense (for there were
no railways then, and coaching was coaching in
those days), we arrived at No. 6, Rotten Row,
Glasgow, on the Saturday, about half-past three.
To our surprise we found the entrance to our house
up a flight of stairs (called in Scotland turnpike
stairs) such as I saw in my dream. The house was
PREMONITIONS AND SECOND SIGHT 181
hree stories high also, and when we entered the
itchen door, lo, there was the closed bed, and
here the box (in Scotland called a bunker). I
aid to Mrs. Lupton, ' Look out of the window/
,nd she said, ' Here is the plot of grass.' I then
id, ' Look in to the other rooms/ and she replied,
Yes, they are as you said/ My colleague, Mr. J.
ohnson, said, ' We preach in the Mechanics'
nstitution Hall, North Hanover Street, George
treet, and you will have to preach there in the
norning.' Well, morning came ; and, accompanied
y Mr. Johnson, I found the place. The entrance
as as I had seen in my dream. But we entered the
all by the right ; there was the little room in the
rner. We entered it, and one of the men I had
een in my dream, J. M'M , was standing in it.
Ye next entered the hall ; there was the pulpit
nd the circular table before it. The hall was
alleried to the top ; and, lo, the entrance door
at the top was covered with green baize and brass
nails. Only one man was seated, J. P -; he
was another of the men I saw in my dream. I
did not wait long before J. Y- , the other man,
entered. My dream was thus so far fulfilled. Well,
we soon had very large, overflowing congregations.
The three men above named got into loose, dis-
sipated habits ; and, intriguing for some months,
caused us very much trouble, seeking, in conjunc-
tion with my colleague, to form a division and
make a party and church for him. But, by God's
help, their schemes were frustrated, and I left
the station in a healthy and prosperous state/'
Mrs. Dean, of 44, Oxford Street, writes as
follows :
182 REAL GHOST STORIES
" Early this summer, in sleep, I saw my mother
very ill in agony, and woke, repeating the words, ;
'Mother is dying/ I looked anxiously for a]
letter in the morning, but no sign of one ; and to
several at breakfast I told my dream, and still felt
anxious as the day wore on. In the afternoon,
about three o'clock, a telegram came, saying,
'Mother a little better; wait another wire/'
About an hour afterwards came a letter with a
cheque enclosed for my fare, urging n:e to come
home at once, ' for mother, we fear, is dying/ My!
mother recovered ; but upon going home a short
time after, I saw my mother just as she then was
at that time, and my stepfather used the words
just as I received them ' Mother is dying/ They
live in Liverpool, and I am in London."
The following is from the diary of the Rev.
Henry Kendall, from which I have frequently
quoted :-
" Mr. Mar ley related this evening a curious inci-
dent that occurred to himself long ago. When
he was a young man at home with his parents,
residing at Aycliffe, he was lying wide awake one
morning at early dawn in the height of summer
when his father came into his bedroom dressed
just as he was accustomed to dress red waistcoat,
etc. but with the addition of a tasselled nightcap
which he sometimes kept on during the da}'. His
father had been ailing for some time, and said to
him, ' Crawford, I want you to make me a pro-
mise before I die/ His son replied, ' I will,
father ; what is it ? ' ' That you will take care
of your mother/ ' Father, I promise you/
PREMONITIONS AND SECOND SIGHT 183
' Then/ said the father, ' I can die happy/
and went out at the window. This struck Mr. M.
as an exceedingly odd thing ; he got out of bed
and looked about the room and satisfied himself
that he had made no mistake, but that he had
really talked with his father and seen him go out
at the window. In the morning, when he entered
his father's room, the first words he heard were,
' Crawford, I want you to make me a promise
before I die/' Mr. M. replied, ' Father, I will ;
what is it ? ' ' That you will take care of your
mother/' 'Father, I promise you/ 'Then I
can die happy/ Thus the conversation that took
place during the night under such singular circum-
stances was repeated verbatim in the morning ;
and while it implied that the father had been pre-
viously brooding over the subject of his wife's
comfort after he should be taken away, it also
supplied important evidence that the strange
affair of the night was not mere imagination on the
part of the son. The father died soon afterwards."
A Spectral Postman.
Of a somewhat similar nature, although in this
case it was visible and not audible, is that told me
by the Rev. J. A. Dalane, of West Hartlepool,
who, on August 14th, 1886, about three o'clock in
the morning, saw a hand very distinctly, as in
daylight, holding a letter addressed in the hand-
writing of an eminent Swedish divine. Both the
hand and the letter appeared very distinctly for
the space of about two minutes. Then he saw a
similar hand holding a sheet of foolscap paper on
184 REAL GHOST STORIES
which he saw some writing, which he, however,
was not able to read. After a few minutes this
gradually faded and vanished away. This was
repeated three different times. As soon as it had
disappeared the third time he got up, lighted the
gas, and wrote down the facts. Six hours after-
wards, at nine o'clock, the post brought a letter
which in every particular corresponded to the
spectral letter which had been three times shown
to him in the early morning.
An Examination Paper Seen in Dream.
The Rev. D. Morris, chaplain of Walton Gaol,
near Liverpool, had a similar, although more
useful experience, as follows :
"In December, 1853, I sat for a schoolmaster's
certificate at an examination held in the Normal
College, Cheltenham. The questions in the various
subjects were arranged in sections according to
their value, and printed on the margin of stiff
blue-coloured foolscap, to which the answers were
limited. It had been the custom at similar ex-
aminations in previous years for the presiding
examiners to announce beforehand the daily sub-
jects of examinations, but on this occasion the
usual notice was omitted.
" After sitting all day on Monday, my brain was
further excited by anxious guessings of the mor-
row's subjects, and perusals of my note-books.
That night I had little restful sleep, for I dreamt
that I was busy at work in the examination hall,
I had in my dream vividly before me the Geometry
(Euclid) paper. I was so impressed with what
PREMONITIONS AND SECOND SIGHT 185
I had seen that I told my intimate friends to get
up the bottom question in each section (that being
the bearer of most marks), and, it is needless to
say, I did the same myself. When the geometry
paper was distributed in the hall by the examiners,
to my wonder it was really in every respect, ques-
tions and sections, the paper that I had seen in
my dream on the Monday night.
" Nothing similar to it happened to me before
or since. The above fact has never been recorded
in any publication."
Forebodings and Dreams.
An instance in which a dream was useful in pre-
venting an impending catastrophe is recorded of a
daughter of Mrs. Rutherford, the granddaughter
of Sir Walter Scott. This lady dreamed more
than once that her mother had been murdered
by a black servant. She was so much upset
by this that she returned home, and to her
great astonishment, and not a little to her dismay,
she met on entering the house the very black
servant she had met in her dream. He had been
engaged in her absence. She prevailed upon a
gentleman to watch in an adjoining room during
the following night. About three o'clock in the
morning the gentleman hearing footsteps on the
stairs, came out and met the servant carrying a
quantity of coals. Being questioned as to where
he was going, he answered confusedly that he was
going to mend the mistress's fire, which at three
o'clock in the morning in the midde of summer
was evidently impossible. On further investiga-
1 86 REAL GHOST STORIES
tion, a strong knife was found hidden in the coals.
The lady escaped, but the man was subsequently
hanged for murder, and before his execution he
confessed that he intended to have assassinated
Mrs. Rutherford.
A correspondent in Dalston sends me an account
of an experience which befell him in 1871, when a
lady strongly advised him against going from
Liverpool to a place near Wigan, where he had an
appointment on a certain day. As he could not
put off the appointment, she implored him not
to go by the first train. In deference to her fore-
boding, he went by the third train, and on arriving
at his destination found that the first train had
been thrown off the line and had rolled down an
embankment into the fields below. The warning
in this case, he thinks, probably saved his life.
Another correspondent, Mr. A. N. Browne, of
19, Wellington Avenue, Liverpool, communicates
another instance of a premonitory dream, which
unfortunately did not avail to prevent the disaster:
" My sister-in-law was complaining to me on a
warm August day, in 1882, of being out of sorts,
upset and altogether depressed. I took her a bit
to task, asked her why she was depressed, and
elicited that she was troubled by dreaming the
preceding night that her son Frank, who was
spending his holidays with his uncle near Preston,
was drowned. Of course I ridiculed the idea of a
dream troubling any one. But she only answered
that her dreams often proved more than mere
sleep-disturbers. That was told to me at 2 p.m.
or about. At 6.30 we dined, and all thought of
PREMONITIONS AND SECOND SIGHT 187
the dream had vanished out of my mind and my
sister-in-law seemed to have overcome her de-
pression. We were sitting in the drawing-room,
say 8 p.m., when a telegram arrived. My sister-in-
law received it, turned to her husband and said,
1: is for you, Tom/ He opened it and cried,
'My God ! My God ! ' and fell into a chair. My
sister-in-law snatched the telegram from her
husband, looked at it, screamed, and fell prostrate.
I in turn took the telegram, and read, ' Frank fell
in the river here to-day, and was drowned/ It
was a telegram from the youth's uncle, with whom
he had been staying/'
Dr. H. Grosvenor Shaw, M.R.C.S., medical
officer to one of the asylums under the London
County Council, sends me the following briet but
striking story, which bears upon the subject under
discussion :
Four men were playing whist. The man dealing
stopped to drink, and whilst drinking the man ner.t
to him poked him in the side, telling him to hurry
up. Some of the fluid he was drinking entered the
larynx, and before he could recover his breath he
fell back, hitting his head against the door post,
and lay on the ground stunned for something
under a minute. When he came to he was natur-
ally dazed, and for the moment surprised at his
surroundings. He said he had been at the bed-
side of his friend mentioning his name who was
dying. The next morning a telegram came to
say the friend was dead, and he died, it was ascer-
tained at the exact time the accident at the card
table took place. I would remark the dead man
i88 REAI, GHOST STORIES
had been enjoying perfect health, and no one had
received any information that he was ill, which
illness was sudden/'
A Vision of Coming Death.
One familiar and very uncanny form of pre-
monition, or of foreseeing, is that in which a coffin
is seen before the death of some member of the
household. The following narrative is communi-
cated to me by Mrs. Crofts, of 22, Blurton Road,
Clapton. She is quite clear that she actually saw
what she describes :
" A week prior to the death of my husband, when
he and I had retired to rest, I lay for a long while
endeavouring to go to sleep, but failed ; and after
tossing about for some time I sat up in bed, and
having sat thus for some time was surprised to see
the front door open, I could see the door plainly
from where I was, cur bedroom door being always
kept open. I was astonished but not afraid when,
immediately after the door opened, two men en-
tered bearing a coffin which they carried upstairs,
right into the room where I was, and laid it down
on the hearth-rug by the side of the bed, and then
went away shutting the front door after them. I
was of course somewhat troubled over the matter,
and mentioned it to my husband when having
breakfast the following morning. He insisted that
I had been dreaming, and I did not again let the
matter trouble my mind. A week that day my
husband died very suddenly. I was engaged in one
of the rooms upstairs the evening afterwards,
when a knock came to the door, which was an-
PREMONITIONS AND SECOND SIGHT 189
swered by my mother, and I did not take any
notice until I heard the footsteps of those coming
up the stairs, when I looked out, and lo ! I beheld
the two men whom I had seen but a week pre-
viously carry and put the coffin in exactly the
same place that they had done on their previous
visit. I cannot describe to you my feelings, but
from that time until the present I am convinced
that, call them what you like apparitions, ghosts,
or forewarnings they are a reality/ 1
Profitable Premonitions.
There are, however, cases in which a premonition
has been useful to those who have received timely
warning of disaster. The ill-fated Pegasus, that
went down carrying with it the well-known Rev.
J. Morell Mackenzie, an uncle of the well-known
physician, who preserves a portrait of the dis-
tinguished divine among his heirlooms, is associ-
ated with a premonition which saved the life of a
lady and her cousin, the wives of two Church of
England ministers. They had intended to sail in
the Pegasus on Wednesday, but a mysterious and
unaccountable impression compelled one of the
ladies to insist that they should leave on the Satur-
day. They had just time to get on board, and so
escaped going by the Pegasus which sailed on the
following Wednesday and was wrecked, only two
on board being saved.
Like to this story, in so far as it records her
avoidance of an accident by the warning of a
dream, but fortunately not resembling it in its
more ghostly detail, is the story told in Mrs.
igo REAI, GHOST STORIES
Sidgwick's paper on the Evidence for Premoni-
tions, on the authority of Mrs. Raey, of 99, Hol-
land Road, Kensington. She dreamed that she
was driving from Mortlake to Roehampton. She
was upset in her carriage close to her sister's house.
She forgot about her dream, and drove in her
carriage from Mortlake to her sister's house. But
just as they were driving up the lane the horse
became very restive. Three times the groom had
to get down to see what was the matter, but the
third time the dream suddenly occurred to her
memory. She got out and insisted on walking to
the house. He drove off by himself, the horse
became unmanageable, and in a few moments she
came upon carriage, horse, and groom, all in a
confused mass, just as she had seen the night
befoie, but not in the same spot. But for the
dream she would certainly not have alighted from
the carriage.
The Visions of an Engine-Driver.
In the same paper there is an account of a re-
markable series of dreams which occurred to Mr.
J. W. Skelton, an American engine-driver, which
were first published in Chicago in 1886. Six times
his locomotive had been upset at high speed, and
each time he had dreamed of it two nights before,
and each time he had seen exactly the place and
the side on which the engine turned over. The
odd thing in his reminiscences is that on one occa-
sion he dreamed that atter he had been thrown off
the line a person in white came down from the sky
with a span of white horses and a black chariot,
PREMONITIONS AND SECOND SIGHT 191
who picked him off the engine and drove him up
to the sky in a south-easterly direction. In telling
the story he says that every point was fulfilled
excepting that and he seems to regard it quite as
a grievance the chariot of his vision never
arrived. On one occasion only his dream was not
fulfilled, and in that case he believed the accident
was averted solely through the extra precaution
that he used in consequence of his vision.
Wanted a Dream Diary.
Of premonitions, especially of premonitions in
dreams, it is easy to have too much. The best
antidote for an excessive surfeit of such things
is to note them down when they occur. When you
have noted down 100 dreams, and find that one
has come true, you may effectively destroy the
superstitious dread that is apt to be engendered
by stories such as the foregoing. It would be one
excellent result of the publication of this volume
if all those who are scared abotit dreams and
forebodings would take the trouble to keep a dream
diary, noting the dream and the fulfilment or
falsification following. By these means they can
not only confound sceptics, who accuse them of
prophesying after the event, but what is much
more important, they can most speedily rid them-
selves of the preposterous delusion that all dreams
alike, whether they issue from the ivory gate or the
gate of horn, are equally to be held in reverence.
A quantitative estimate of the value of dreams is
one of those things for which psychical science still
sighs in vain.
i94 REAI, GHOST STORIES
Tontschkoff three months before Napoleon's In-
vasion. The countess, whose husband was a general
in the Russian army, dreamed that her father came
to the room, holding her only son by the hand, and,
in a tone of great sadness, said, " All thy comforts
are gone ; thy husband has fallen at Borodino."
As her husband at that time was sleeping beside
her she dismissed the matter as a mere dream.
But when it was repeated a second and a third
time, she awoke her husband and asked him
where Borodino was. She told him her dream, and
they searched through the maps with the greatest
care, but could not discover any such place. Three
months later Napoleon entered Russia, and fought
the bloody battle which opened the way to Moscow
near the river Borodino, from which an obscure
village takes its name. Her father holding her son
by the hand, announced her husband's death, in
the exact terms that she had heard him use in her
dream three months before. She instantly recog-
nised the inn in which she was then staying as the
place that she had seen in her dream.
Goethe's Grandfather.
Goethe, in his Autobiography, records the fact
that his maternal grandfather had a premonition
of his election to the alder manic dignity, not
unlike that which I had about my premotion to
the Pall Mall. Goethe writes :
" We knew well enough that he was often in-
formed, in remarkable dreams, of things which
were to happen. For example, he assured his wife,
at a time when he was still one of the youngest
PREMONITIONS AND SECOND SIGHT 195
magistrates, that at the very next vacancy he
should be appointed to a seat on the board of
aldermen. And when, very soon after, one of the
aldermen was struck with a fatal stroke of apop-
lexy, he ordered that on the day when the choice
was to be made by lot the house should be arranged
and everything prepared to receive the guests
coming to congratulate him on his elevation ; and,
sure enough, it was for him that the golden ball
was drawn which decides the choice of aldermen in
Frankfort. The dream which foreshadowed to him
this event he confided to his wife as follows : He
found himself in session with his colleagues, and
everything was going on as usual, when an alder-
man, the same who afterwards died, descended
from his seat, came to my grandfather, politely
begged him to take his place, and then left the
chamber. Something similar happened on the
provost's death. It was usual in such cases to
make great haste to fill the vacancy, seeing that
there was always ground to fear that the Emperor,
who used to nominate the provost, would some
day or other reassert his ancient privilege. On
this particular occasion the sheriff received orders
at midnight to call an extra session for the next
morning. When in his rounds the officer reached
my grandfather's house, he begged for another bit
of candle to replace that which had just burned
down in his lantern. ' Give him a whole candle/
said my grandfather to the woman ; ' it is for me
he is taking all this trouble/ The event justified
his words. He was actually chosen provost. And
it is worthy of notice that the person who drew
i94 REAI, GHOST STORIES
Tontschkoff three months before Napoleon's In-
vasion. The countess, whose husband was a general
in the Russian army, dreamed that her father came
to the room, holding her only son by the hand, and,
in a tone of great sadness, said, " All thy comforts
are gone ; thy husband has fallen at Borodino/'
As her husband at that time was sleeping beside
her she dismissed the matter as a mere dream.
But when it was repeated a second and a third
time, she awoke her husband and asked him
where Borodino was. She told him her dream, and
they searched through the maps with the greatest
care, but could not discover any such place. Three
months later Napoleon entered Russia, and fought
the bloody battle which opened the way to Moscow
near the river Borodino, from which an obscure
village takes its name. Her father holding her son
by the hand, announced her husband's death, in
the exact terms that she had heard him use in her
dream three months before. She instantly recog-
nised the inn in which she was then staying as the
place that she had seen in her dream.
Goethe's Grandfather.
Goethe, in his Autobiography, records the fact
that his maternal grandfather had a premonition
of his election to the aldermanic dignity, not
unlike that which I had about my premotion to
the Pall Mall. Goethe writes :
" We knew well enough that he was often in-
formed, in remarkable dreams, of things which
were to happen. For example, he assured his wife,
at a time when he was still one of the youngest
PREMONITIONS AND SECOND SIGHT 195
magistrates, that at the very next vacancy he
should be appointed to a seat on the board of
aldermen. And when, very soon after, one of the
aldermen was struck with a fatal stroke of apop-
lexy, he ordered that on the day when the choice
was to be made by lot the house should be arranged
and everything prepared to receive the guests
coming to congratulate him on his elevation ; and,
sure enough, it was for him that the golden ball
was drawn which decides the choice of aldermen in
Frankfort. The dream which foreshadowed to him
this event he confided to his wife as follows : He
found himself in session with his colleagues, and
everything was going on as usual, when an alder-
man, the same who afterwards died, descended
from his seat, came to my grandfather, politely
begged him to take his place, and then left the
chamber. Something similar happened on the
provost's death. It was usual in such cases to
make great haste to fill the vacancy, seeing that
there was always ground to fear that the Emperor,
who used to nominate the provost, would some
day or other reassert his ancient privilege. On
this particular occasion the sheriff received orders
at midnight to call an extra session for the next
morning. When in his rounds the officer reached
my grandfather's house, he begged for another bit
of candle to replace that which had just burned
down in his lantern. ' Give him a whole candle/
said my grandfather to the woman ; ' it is for me
he is taking all this trouble/ The event justified
his words. He was actually chosen provost. And
it is worthy of notice that the person who drew
196 REAI, GHOST STORIES
in his stead, having the third and last chance,
the two silver balls were drawn'first, and thus the
golden one remained for him at^the bottom of the
bag/' (Quoted by Owen, in " Footfalls on the
Boundary of Another World/')
Miss X.'s Dogcart.
Some people have this gift of seeing in advance
very much developed. There is, for instance, Miss
X --, of the Psychical Research Society, whose
exploits in seeing a dogcart and its passengers half
an hour before they really arrived, has taken its
place as the classical illustration of this fantastic
faculty of intermittent foresight. As the story is
so well authenticated, and has become a leading
case in the discussion, I reprint the passage in
which it occurs from the " Proceedings of the
Psychical Research Society/'
The narrative is by a friend of the recipient :
" About eight years ago (April, 1882), X. and I
were staying in a country house, in a neighbour-
hood quite strange to us both. One morning, soon
after our arrival, we drove with a party of four or
five others in a waggonette to the neighbouring
town, and, on our return, as we came in sight of
the house, X. remarked to our hostess, ' You have
very early visitors ; who are your friends ? '
" We all turned to find the cause of the question,
but could see no one, and as we were still in view
of the front door on which Miss X/s eyes were
fixed, we asked her what she could possibly be
dreaming of. She then described to us, the more
minutely that we all joined in absolute denial of
PREMONITIONS AND SECOND SIGHT 197
the existence of anything at all, the appearance
of a dog-cart standing at the door of the house with
a white horse and two men, one of whom had got
down and was talking to a terrier ; she even com-
mented upon the dress of one of the gentlemen,
who was wearing an ulster, she said, a detail which
we certainly should not have supposed it possible
for her to recognise at such a distance from the
spot. As we drove up the drive X. drew attention
to the fresh wheel marks, but here also we were all
unable to see as she did, and when we arrived at
the house and found no sign of cart and visitors,
and on inquiry learned that no one had been near
in our absence, we naturally treated the whole story
as a mistake, caused by X.'s somewhat short sight.
" Shortly after she and I were in an upstairs
room in the front of the house, when the sound of
wheels was heard, and I went to the window to see
what it might be. ' There's your dog-cart, after
all ! ' I exclaimed ; for there before the door was
the identical dog-cart as X. had described it,
correct in every detail, one of the gentlemen-
having got down to ring the ball being at the
moment engaged in playing with a small fox-
terrier. The visitors were strangers to our friends
officers from the barracks near, who had driven
over with an invitation to a ball.
" C. having read over D.'s account, had added,
' This is substantially the same account as I heard
from one of the party in the carriage/ Mr. Myers
adds, ' I heard C., an old family servant, tell the
story independently with the same details.'
" Both D. and I were surprised at her accurate
198 REAI, GHOST STORIES
knowledge of the story, which she had not learnt
from us, but from another lady present on the
occasion." (" Proceedings of the Psychical Re-
search Society/ Vol. VI. p. 374.)
PART V.
GHOSTS OF THE LIVING ON BUSINESS.
" 'A strange coincidence,' to use a phrase
By which such things are settled nowadays." BYRON.
CHAPTER I.
WARNINGS OF PERII, AND DEATH.
IT is said that every family has a skeleton in
its cupboard. It would be equally true to say that
every family has a ghost in its records. Sometimes
it is a ghost of the living, sometimes of the dead ;
but there are few who, if they inquire among their
relatives, will not find one or more instances of
apparitions, which, however small their evidential
credentials, are implicitly accepted as genuine by
those who witnessed them. In taking the Census
of Hallucinations I made inquiry of an old school-
fellow of mine, who, after I came to Wimbledon,
was minister of the Congregational Church in that
suburb. He subsequently removed to Portsmouth,
where I found him with his father one morning,
on the occasion of the laying of the foundation-
stone of the new Sunday school. On mentioning
the subject of the Census of Ghosts, the Rev, Mr.
200 REAI, GHOST STORIES
Talbot, senior, mentioned a very remarkable
apparition which, unlike most apparitions, ap-
peared in time to save the life of its owner.
How a Double Saved a Life.
The Rev. Mr. Talbot, the father of my late
pastor, gave me the following account of the
apparition :
" My mother had an extraordinary power of
foreseeing and also of seeing visions. Of her pre-
monitions and dreams I could give you many
instances ; but as that is not the point at present, I
will give you the narrative of her other faculty,
that of seeing spiritual or phantasmal forms which
were not visible to others. We were sitting at tea
one evening when my mother suddenly exclaimed,
* Dear me, Mrs. Lister is coming up the path, with
her handkerchief to her eyes as if crying, on her
way to the door. What can have brought her
out at this time ? There seems to be something
the matter with her head. I will go to the door
and let her in/ So saying, my mother arose and
went to the front door, where she firmly expected
to find Mrs. Lister. None of the rest of us had seen
Mrs. Lister come up the path, but as our attention
might have been occupied in another direction we
did not think anything of it. To my mother's
astonishment, when she reached the door Mrs.
Lister was not visible. She came back into the
room much disturbed. ' There is something the
matter with Mrs. Lister/ she said. ' I am certain
there is. Yoke the horse and we will drive over
at once to the Listers' house which stood about
GHOSTS OF THE IRVING ON BUSINESS 201
one mile from our place and see what is the
matter.'
' My father, knowing from of old that mother
had reason for what she said, yoked the horse and
drove off with my mother as rapidly as possible
to lister's house. When they arrived there they
knocked at the door ; there was no answer.
Opening the door they found no one downstairs.
My mother then went to Mrs. Lester's bedroom and
found the unfortunate lady, apparently breathing
her last, lying in a pool of blood. Her husband,
in a fit of insanity, had severely beaten her and
left her for dead, and then went and drowned
himself in a pond.
11 My father immediately went off for a doctor,
who was able to stitch up Mrs. Lister's worst
wounds and arrest the bleeding. In the end Mrs.
Lister recovered, owing her life entirely to the
fortunate circumstance that at the moment of
losing consciousness she had apparently been able
to project a visual phantasm of herself before the
window of our tea-room. She was a friend of my
mother's, and no doubt in her dire extremity had
longed for her company. This longing in Mrs.
Lister, in some way unknown to us, probably
produced the appearance which startled my
mother and led to her prompt appearance on the
scene of the tragedy."
This story was told me by Mr. Talbot, who was
then a boy, seated at the table at which his mother
witnessed the apparition, and was regarded by
him as absolutely true. Evidence in support of it
now will be somewhat difficult to get, as almost
202 REAI, GHOST STORIES
all the witnesses have passed over to the majority,
but I have no reason to doubt the truth of the
story.
More Doubles Seeking Help.
The story of Mrs. Lister's double appearing to
Mrs. Talbot when in imminent peril of death,
however it may be scouted by the sceptics, is at
least entirely in accord with many other narratives
of the kind.
A member of the Psychical Research Society in
Southport sends me the following account of an
apparition of a severely wounded man, which
bears considerable resemblance to Mr. Talbot's,
although its evidential value is nothing like so good.
Its importance rests solely in the fact that the
apparition appeared as the result, not of death,
but of a very serious injury which might have had
fatal consequences :
" Some years ago, a lady named L,. B. was
staying with relations at Beckenham, her husband
being away at a shooting party in Essex. On a
certain afternoon, when she had, as she says, no
especial reason for her husband being recalled
to her mind, she was somewhat surprised, on
looking out of her bedroom window, to see him, as
she imagined, entering the front garden gate.
Wondering what could have been the cause of the
unexpected arrival, she exclaimed to her sister-
in-law, ' Why, there's Tom ! ' and went downstairs
thinking to meet him entering the house. He was
nowhere to be seen. Not long afterwards there
arrived the news that her husband had been shot
accidentally and considerably injured. Directly
GHOSTS OF THE DIVING ON BUSINESS 203
they met she related to him her curious vision,
and on comparing notes it was discovered that it
had certainly taken place more or less at the same
hour as the accident, the husband declaring that
as he fainted away his wife was most distinctly
present in his thoughts. There was, unfortunately,
no means of exactly fixing the hour, but there was
no doubt at the time that the two occurrences
viz. the hallucination and the accident must
have anyhow taken place within a short time of
one another, if not simultaneously/'
Here we have an incident not unlike that which
occurred to Mrs. Talbot the unexpected appari-
tion of the phantasm or dual body of one who at
the moment was in imminent danger of death.
Tales of this class are somewhat rare, but when
they do occur they indicate conclusively that there
is no connection between the apparition of the
wraith and the decease of the person to whom it
belongs.
Here is another story that is sent me by a
correspondent in Belsize Park Gardens, who
vouches for the bona fides of the lady on whose
authority he tells the tale :
" A Scotch waitress in my employ, whilst laying
the cloth for dinner one day, was startled by per-
ceiving her father's face looking at her through the
window. She rushed out of the room and opened
the front door, expecting to see him. Greatly
surprised at finding no trace of him, after carefully
searching the front garden, and looking up anc
down the road, she came in, and sitting down in the
hall nearly fainted with fright. On inquiring
204 RBAI, GHOST STORIES
for particulars she told me she had distinctly seen
her father's face, with a distressed expression upon
it, looking earnestly at her. She seemed much
troubled, and felt sure something was wrong. A
few days after this vision a letter came, saying that
her father (a Scotch gamekeeper) had been thrown
from a dog-cart and nearly killed. She left my
employ to go and nurse him/'
Two Doubles Summon a Priest to Their Deathbeds.
The next narrative should rather have come
under the head of premonitions, but as the pre-
monition in this case was accompanied by an
apparition, I include it in the present chapter.
It is, in its way, even more remarkable than Mr.
Talbot's story. It is more recent, it is prophetic,
and the apparitions of two living men appeared
together to predict the day of their death. The
narrative rests on the excellent authority of the
Rev. Father Fleming, the hard-working Catholic
priest of Slindon, in Sussex. I heard of it from
one of his parishioners who is a friend of mine, and
on applying to Father Fleming, he was kind enough
to write out the following account of his strange
experience, for the truth of every word of which he
is prepared to vouch. In all the wide range of
spectral literature I know no story that is quite
like this :
" I was spending my usual vacation in Dublin
in the year 1868, I may add very pleasantly, since
I was staying at the house of an old friend of my
father's, and whilst there was treated with the
attention which is claimed by an honoured guest,
GHOSTS OF THE LIVING ON BUSINESS 205
and with as much kindness and heartiness as if I
were a member of his family. I was perfectly
comfortable, perfectly at home. As to my pro-
fessional engagements, I was free for the whole
time of my holiday, and could not in any manner
admit a scruple or doubt as to the manner in which
my work was done in my absence, for a fully quali-
fied and earnest clergyman was supplying for me.
Perhaps this preamble is necessary to show that
my mind was at rest, and that nothing in the
ordinary course of events would have recalled me
so suddenly and abruptly to the scene of my
labours at Woolwich. I had about a week of my
unexpired leave of absence yet to run when what I
am about to relate occurred to me. No comment
or explanation is offered. It is simply a narrative.
' I had retired to rest at night, my mind per-
fectly at rest, and slept, as young men do in robust
health, until about four o'clock in the morning.
It appeared to me about that hour that I was
conscious of a knock at the door. Thinking it to
be the man-servant who was accustomed to call
me in the morning, I at once said, " Come in.'
To my surprise there appeared at the foot of the
bed two figures, one a man of medium height,
fair and well fleshed, the other tall, dark, and
spare, both dressed as artisans belonging to Wool-
wich Arsenal. On asking them what they wanted,
the shorter man replied, ' My name is C s. I
belong to Woolwich. I died on of , and
you must attend me/
" Probably the novelty of the situation and
feelings attendant upon it, prevented me from
206 REAL GHOST STORIES
noticing that he had used the past tense. The
reply which I received to my question from the
other man was like in form, ' My name is M 11,
I belong to Woolwich, I died on - - of , and
you must attend me/ I then remarked that the
past tense had been used, and cried out, ' Stop !
You said " died," and the day you mentioned has
not come yet ? ' at which they both smiled, and
added, ' We know this very well ; it was done to
fix your attention, but ' and they seemed to say
very earnestly and in a marked manner you
must attend us ! " at which they disappeared,
leaving me awe-stricken, surprised, and thor-
oughly aroused from sleep. Whether what I
narrate was seen during sleep, or when wholly
awake, I do not pretend to say. It appeared to me
that I was perfectly awake and perfectly conscious.
Of this I had no doubt at the time, and I can
scarcely summon up a doubt as to what I heard
and saw whilst I am telling it. As I had lighted
my lamp, I rose, dressed, and seating myself at a
table in the room, read and thought, and, I need
hardly say, from time to time prayed, and fer-
vently, until day came. When I was called in the
morning, I sent a message to the lady of the house
to say that I should not go to the University
Chapel to say Mass that morning, and should be
present at the usual family breakfast at nine.
" On entering the dining-room my hostess very
kindly inquired after my health, naturally sur-
mising that I had omitted Mass from illness, or at
least want of rest and consequent indisposition.
I merely answered that I had not slept well, and
GHOSTS OF THE LIVING ON BUSINESS 207
that there was something weighing heavily upon
my mind which obliged me to return at once to
Woolwich. After the usual regrets and leave-
takings, I started by the mid-day boat for England.
As the first date mentioned by my visitors gave
me time, I travelled by easy stages, and spent more
than two days on the road, although I could not
remain in Dublin after I had received what ap-
peared to me then, and appears to me still, as a
solemn warning.
" On my arrival at Woolwich, as may be easily
imagined, my brother clergy were very puzzled at
my sudden and unlooked-for return, and con-
cluded that I had lost my reckoning, thinking
that I had to resume my duties a week earlier
than I was expected to do. The other assistant
priest was waiting for my return to start on his
vacation and he did so the very evening of my
return. Scarcely, however, had he left the town
when the first of my visitors sent in a request for
me to go at once to attend him. You may, perhaps,
imagine my feelings at that moment. I am sure
you cannot realise them as I do even now after the
lapse of so many years. Well, I lost no time. I
had, in truth, been prepared, except hat and
umbrella, from the first hour after my return. I
went to consult the books in which all the sick-
calls were entered and to speak to our aged,
respected sacristan who kept them. He remarked
at once, ' You do not know this man, father ; his
children come to our school, but he is, or has
always been, considered as a Protestant.' Ex-
pressing my surprise, less at the fact than at his^J
208 REAL GHOST STORIES
statement, I hurried to the bedside of the sufferer.
After the first few words of introduction were over
he said, ' I sent for you, father, on Friday morning
early and they told me that you were away from
home, but that you were expected back in a few
days, and I said I would wait/ I found the sick
man had been stricken down by inflammation of
the lungs, and that the doctor gave no hope of
his recovery, yet that he would probably linger
some days. I applied myself very earnestly in-
deed to prepare the poor man for death. Again
the next day, and every day until he departed
this life, did I visit him and spent not minutes but
hours by his bedside.
" A few days after the first summons came the
second. The man had previously been a stranger
to me, but I recognised him by his name and
appearance. As I sat by his bedside he told me,
as the former had already done, that he had sent
for me, had been told that I was absent, and had
declared that he would wait for me. Thus far their
cases were alike. In each case there \vas a great
wrong to be undone, a conscience to be set right
that had erred and erred deeply and not merely
that, it is probable, from the circumstances of
their lives, that it was necessary that their spiritual
adviser should have been solemnly warned. They
made their peace with God, and I have seldom
assisted at a deathbed and felt greater consolation
than I did in each and both of these. Even now,
after the lapse of many years, I cannot help feeling
that I received a very solemn warning in Dublin,
and am not far wrong in calling it, the Shadow of
Death. T. O. FLEMING."
GHOSTS OF THE LIVING ON BUSINESS 209
A Double From Shipboard.
During my visit to vScotland in the month
of October the subject of Ghosts naturally
formed the constant topic of conversation, and
many stories were told of all degrees of value
bearing upon the subject. The following narrative
came to me as follows : We had been visiting the
Forth Bridge, driving down from Edinburgh in the
public conveyance. Shortly before our visit three
men had fallen from one of the piers of the bridge
and been killed. The question was mooted as to
whether or not they would haunt the locality, and
from this the conversation naturally turned to
apparitions of all kinds.
As we reached Edinburgh on our return a
middle-aged passenger who had been seated on a
seat in front turned round and said, " What do
you make of this story, for the truth of which I
can vouch : A young sailor, whose vessel at
that moment was lying at Limerick Harbour, ap-
peared to his father, who at that time was at home
with the rest of his family in Dublin. He appeared
to him in the early morning. At breakfast his
father told the rest of his family that he had seen
his son, who had said to him : ' In my locker you
will find a Bible in the pocket of my coat. In that
Bible you will find a place-keeper which was given
me by my sweetheart after I left home, and on it
are the words, " Remember me/' That day at
noon the young sailor, after making ready dinner
for the crew, went up aloft, missed his footing,
fell, and was killed. His effects were fastened up
in his locker and sent through the Customs House
N
210 REAL GHOST STORIES
to his father. When they arrived the locker was
opened, and exactly as the apparition had des-
cribed the Bible was found in the pocket of the
coat, and in the Bible a place-keeper, which none
of the family had seen, on which were the words
' Remember me.' " But," said I to my fellow-
passenger, " how do you know that the story is
true ? ' " Because/' he said, " the sailor was my
brother, and I remember my father telling us about
the vision at the breakfast-table."
Unfortunately I did not ask for the name and
address of my informant. We were just alighting
from the drag, and I contented myself with giving
him my name and address, and asking him to write
out an account with full particulars, dates, etc.
with verification. This he promised to do, but,
unfortunately, he seems to have forgotten his
promise, and a story which, if fully verified, would
be very valuable, can only be mentioned as a
sample of the narratives which are reported on
every hand if people show any disposition to
receive them with interest, or, in fact, with any-
thing but scornful contempt.
CHAPTER II.
A DYING DOUBLE DEMANDS ITS PORTRAITS !
^ PERHAPS the most remarkable and most authen-
tic ghost is a ghost which appeared at Newcastle,
for the purpose of demanding its photographs !
The story was first told me by the late secretary
of the Bradford Association of Helpers, Mr. Snow-
den Ward. I subsequently obtained it first hand
from the man who saw the ghost. Running from
the central railway station at Newcastle, a broad
busy thoroughfare connects Neville Street with
Grainger Street. On one side stands St. John's
Church, on the other the Savings Bank, and a
little past the Savings Bank, proceeding from the
station, stand the shops and offices of Grainger
Street. It is a comparatively new street, and is
quite one of the last places in the world where ore
would expect to find visitants of a ghostly nature.
Nevertheless, it was in one of the places of business
in this busy and bustling thoroughfare that the
ghost in question appeared, for that it did appear
there can be no manner of doubt. Even if all the
^ther cases published in this book were discarded
as lacking in evidential value, this would of itself
suffice to establish the fact that apparitions appear,
for the circumstances are such as to preclude the
adoption of any of the usual hypotheses to account
for the apparition. I called upon Mr. Dickinson
at 43, Grainger Street, on October 14th, examined
212 REAL GHOST STORIES
his premises, was shown the entry in his book, and
cross-examined himself and Miss Simon, the lady
clerk, who figures in the subsequent narrative.
It will probably be best to reprint the statement,
which originally appeared in the Practical Photo-
grapher, merely filling in names and supplementing
it here and there with a little more detail :
" On Saturday, the 3rd of January this year,"
said Mr. Dickinson, " I arrived at my place of
business, 43, Grainger Street, Newcastle, a few
minutes before 8 a.m. The outer door is protected
by an iron gate in which is a smaller lock-up gate,
through which I passed into the premises. Having
opened the office and turned the gas on at the meter,
and lit the gas fire, I stood at the office counter
for a few minutes waiting for the lad who takes
down the iron gate at the front door."
Mr. Dickinson told me that the reason he was
down so early was because the lad who usually
brought the keys was ill, and he had come earlier
than usual on that account. The place is lit with
electric light. Mr. Dickinson does not remember
turning on the light, although, as it was only eight
o'clock on the 3rd of January, he must have done
so in order to read the entry in the book.
Before the lad came, a gentleman called to
inquire if his photographs were finished.
He was a stranger to him. He came into the
room and came up to the counter in the ordinary
way. He was wearing a hat and overcoat, and
there was nothing unusual about his appearance
excepting that he did not seem very well. "He
said to me, ' Are my photographs ready ? ' I
GHOSTS OF THE IRVING ON BUSINESS 213
said, ' Who are you ? We are not opened yet/
He said his name was Thompson. I asked him if
he had the receipt (which usually accompanies
any inquiry), and he replied that he had no receipt,
but his photograph was taken on December 6th
and that the prints were promised to be sent to
him before this call.
"I then asked him whether it was a cash order or
a subscription one. The reason for asking this is
because we have two books in which orders are
entered. He said he had paid for them at the
time ; his name would therefore be in the cash
orders. Having got the date and his name, I
referred to my book, and found the order as he
stated. I read out to him the name and address,
to which he replied, ' That is right/
"Here is an exact copy of the entry in the
order book :
7976. Sat., Dec. 6th, /90.
Mr. J. S. Thompson,
154, William vStreet, Hebburn Quay.
6 cabinets. 7/- pd.
" The above was written in pencil ; on the margin
was written in ink, ' Dec. 16,' which, Mr. Dickin-
son explained, is the date on which the negative
came to the office, named and numbered, and
ready to go to the printers.
" Below this again was written in ink.
5th. 3 Cabinets gratis, neg. broken, letter sent
asking to re-sit.
" In my book I found a date given, on which the
negative was ready to be put into the printer's
hands ; and the date being seventeen days pre-
214 REAiv GHOST STORIES
vious, I had no hesitation in saying, ' Well, if
you call later on you will get some ; ' and I called
his attention to the fact that it was very early,
and explained to him that the employes would not
be at work until nine o'clock, and if he could call
after that time he would be certain to get some
of his photographs. He said ' I have been travel-
ling all night, and cannot call again/
" Some short time before I had been at a
hydropathic establishment in Yorkshire, and had
travelled home at night. When he said he had
been travelling all night, I remembered my own
journey, and I thought perhaps he had been to
some hydropathic establishment to benefit his
health ; and finding that he was getting no better,
he had come back, perhaps to die, for he looked
wretchedly ill. He spoke weariedly and rather
impatiently, when he said he could not call again.
" With that, he turned abruptly and went out.
Anxious to retain his good-will, I shouted after
him, ' Can I post what may be done ? ' but I got
no answer. I turned once more to the book, looked
at the number, and on a slip of paper wrote
No. 7976, Thompson, post. (This I wrote with
pen and ink, and have the paper yet.)/'
Mr. Dickinson said he had handed over this
piece of paper to a representative of the Psychical
Research Society who had lost it. It was, however,
a mere memorandum written on the back of a
traveller's card.
" At nine o'clock, when Miss Simon (clerk and
reception room attendant, a bright, intelligent
young lady) came, I handed the slip of paper to her,
GHOSTS OF THE LIVING ON BUSINESS 215
and asked her to have it attended to, telling her
that the man had called for them, and seemed
much disappointed that he had not received them
before. Miss Simon, with considerable surprise,
exclaimed, ' Why, an old man called about these
photographs yesterday (Friday), and I told him
they could not be ready this week owing to the
bad weather, and that we were nearly three weeks
behind with our work/ I suggested that it was
quite time Mr. Thompson's were ready, and in-
quired who was printing the order. I was told
that it was not in print, and, pointing to a pile
of negatives, Miss Simon said ' Thompson's is
amongst that lot, and they have been waiting
quite a fortnight/ I asked to be shown the nega-
tive, and about half an hour later Miss S. called
me saying ' This is Thompson's negative/
" I took it in my hands and looked at it care-
fully, remarking, ' Yes, thaUs it ; that is the chap
who called this morning/ '
Mr. Dickinson said he had no difficulty in recog-
nising it, although the man wore a hat and top-
coat when he called, whereas in the portrait the
sitter wore neither hat nor top coat.
" Miss Simon again referred to the fact that she
had told the man who had called on the previous
day that none were done, or could be done that
week. ' Well,' I said, ' put this to one side, and
will see to it myself on Monday, and endeavour
to hurry it forward/ On the Monday (January
5th) I was in one of the printing-rooms, and about
10.30 a.m., having one or two printing-frames
empty, I thought of Thompson's negative, and
216 REAL GHOST STORIES
accordingly went down to the office and asked
Miss S. for it. ' Oh ! yes,' she replied, ' and here
are a few more equally urgent, you may take them
as well.' I said, ' That cannot be, as I have only
two or three frames at liberty ' (she had about
twenty negatives in her hand, holding them out
to me) ; ' give me Thompson's first, and let me
get my mind at rest about it.' To which she
answered, ' His is amongst this lot, I will have
to pick it out.' (Each negative was in a paper
bag.)
" I offered to help her, and she commenced at
one end of the batch and I at the other ; and
before we got halfway through I came across one
which I knew was very urgent, and turned away
to look up the date of taking it, when crash ! went
part of the negatives on the floor. This accident
seemed so serious that I was almost afraid to pick
up the fallen negatives, but on doing so, one by
one, I was greatly relieved to find only one was
broken ; but, judge of my horror to find that that
one was Thompson's !
" I muttered something (not loud, but deep),
and would fain have relieved my feelings, but the
presence of ladies restrained me (this accident
being witnessed also by my head printer, Miss L.).
' I could not honestly blame Miss Simon for
this each thought the other was holding the lot,
and between us we let them drop.
' The negative was broken in two, right across
the forehead of figure. I put the pieces carefully
away, and taking out a memo, form, wrote to Mr.
Thompson, asking him to kindly give another
GHOSTS OF THE LIVING ON BUSINESS 217
sitting, and offering to recoup him for his trouble
and loss of time. This letter was posted five
minutes after the negative was broken, and the
affair was forgotten by me for the time.
" However, on Friday, January 9th, I was in
the printing-room upstairs, when I was signalled
by the whistle which communicates with the
office, and Miss Simon asked if I could go down,
as the gentleman had called about the negative.
I asked ' What negative ? ' ' Well/ she replied,
' the one we broke/
" ' Mr. Thompson's/ I answered. ' I am very
busy and cannot come down, but you know the
terms I offered him ; send him up to be taken
at once.'
" ' But he is dead ! ' said Miss Simon.
" ' Dead ! ' I exclaimed, and without another
word I hastened down the stairs to my office. Here
I saw an elderly gentleman, who seemed in great
trouble.
" ' Surely/ said I to him, ' you don't mean to
say that this man is dead ? '
" ' It is only too true/ he replied.
" ' Well, it must have been dreadfully sudden/
I said, sympathetically, " because I saw him only
last Saturday.'
" The old gentleman shook his head sadly, and
said, ' You are mistaken, for he died last Satur-
day/
" ' Nay/ I returned, ' I am not mistaken, for I
recognised him by the negative/
"However, the father (for such was his relation-
ship to my sitter) persisted in saying I was mis-
2i 8 REAI, GHOST STORIES
taken, and that it was he who called on the Friday
and not his son, and, he said, ' I saw that young
lady (pointing to Miss Simon), and she told me
the photographs would not be ready that week/
' That is quite right/ said Miss Simon, ' but
Mr. Dickinson also saw a gentleman on the Satur-
day morning, and, when I showed Mr. Dickinson
the negative, he said, " Yes, that's the man who
called/' I told Mr. Dickinson then of your having
called on the Friday/
" Still Mr. Thompson, sen., seemed to think that
we were wrong, and many questions and cross-
questions I put to him only served to confirm
him in his opinion that I had got mixed ; but
this he said no one was authorised to call, nor
had they any friend or relative who would know
of the portraits being ordered, neither was there
any one likely to impersonate the man who had
sat for his portrait.
" I had no further interview with the old gentle-
man until a week later, when he was much calmer
in his appearance and conversation, and at this
interview he told me that his son died on Satur-
day, January 3rd, at about 2.30 p.m. ; he also
stated that at the time I saw him (the sitter) he
was unconscious, and remained so up to the time
of his death. I have not had any explanation of
this mysterious visit up to present date, February
26th, 1891.
" It is curious to me that I have no recollection
of hearing the man come upstairs, or of him going
down. In appearance he was pale and careworn,
and looked as though he fiad been very ill. This
GHOSTS OF THE IRVING ON BUSINESS 219
thought occurred to me when he said he had been
travelling all night.
JAMES DICKINSON.
43, Grainger Street, Newcastle."
Miss Simon, in further conversation with me,
stated that when the father called on Friday night
and asked for the photographs, he came late, at
least after the electric light was lit. He seemed
disappointed, but made no further remark when
he was told they were not ready. Mr. Dickinson
stated that in conversation with the father after-
wards, he told him that his son, on the Friday, had
been delirious and had cried out for his photo-
graphs so frequently that they Had tried to get
them, and that was why he had called on Friday
night. Hebburn is on the south side of the Tyne,
about four miles from Newcastle. The father was
absolutely certain that it was physically impossible
for his son to have left the house. He did not
leave it. They knew the end was approaching,
and he and his wife were in constant attendance
at the death-bed. He also stated that- it was im-
possible, from the position of the bedroom, for him
to have left the house, even if he had been able
to get out of bed without their hearing him. As a
matter of fact, he did not get out of bed, and at the
moment when his Double was talking to Mr. Dickin-
son in Grainger Street he was lying unconscious
at Hebburn.
It is impossible to explain this on the theory that
Mr. Dickinson visualised the impression left upon
his mind by Mr. Thompson, for Mr. Dickinson
had never seen Mr. Thompson in his life. Neither
220 REAL GHOST STORIES
could be have given apparent objectivity to a
photograph which he might possibly have seen,
although Mr. Dickinson asserts that he had never
seen the photograph until it was brought him on
the Saturday morning. If he had done so by any
chance he would not have fitted his man with a
top-coat and hat. It cannot, therefore, be re-
garded as a subjective hallucination ; besides, the
evidence afforded by the looking up of the book,
the making an entry of what occurred, and the
conversation which took place, in which the visitor
mentioned facts which were not present in Mr.
Dickinson's own mind, but which he verified there
and then by looking up his books, bring it as near
certainty as it is possible to arrive in a case such as
this. Whoever the visitor was, it was not a sub-
jective hallucination on the part of Mr. Dickinson.
It is equally impossible to believe that it was
the actual Mr. Thompson, because he was at that
moment within six hours of death, and the evi-
dence of his father is that his son at that moment
was physically incapable of getting out of bed,
and that he was actually lying unconscious before
their eyes at Hebburn at the moment when his
apparition was talking to Mr. Dickinson at New-
castle. The only other hypothesis that can be
brought forward is that some one personated
Thompson. Against this we have the fact that
Mr. Dickinson, who had never seen Thompson,
recognised him immediately as soon as he saw
the negative of his portrait.
Further, if any one had come from Hebburn on
behalf of Thompson, he would not have asserted
GHOSTS OF THE LIVING ON BUSINESS 221
that he was Thompson himself, knowing, as he
would, that he was speaking to a photographer,
who, if the photographs had been ready, would at
once have compared the photographs with the
person standing before him, when the attempted
personation would at once have been detected.
Besides, no one was likely to have been so anxious
about the photographs as to come up to Newcastle
an hour before the studio opened in order to get
them.
We may turn it which way we please, there is no
hypothesis which will fit the facts except the
assumption that there is such a thing as a Thought
Body, capable of locomotion and speech, which can
transfer itself wherever it pleases, clothing itself
with whatever clothes it desires to wear, which are
phantasmal like itself. Short of that hypothesis,
I do not see any explanation possible ; and yet,
if we admit that hypothesis, what an immense
vista of possibilities is opened up to our view !
PART VI.
GHOSTS KEEPING PROMISE.
" There is something in that ancient superstition
Which erring as it is, onr fancy loves." SCOTT.
CHAPTER. I.
MY IRISH FRIEND.
MANY of the apparitions that are reported are of
phantasms that appear in fulfilment of a promise
made to survivors during life. Of this class I came,
in the course of my census, upon a very remarkable
case.
Among my acquaintances is an Irish lady, the
widow of an official who held a responsible position
in the Dublin Post Office. She is Celt to her back-
bone, wUh all the qualities of her race. After
her husband's death she contracted an unfortunate
marriage which really was no marriage legally
with an engineer of remarkable character and no
small native talent. He, however, did not add to
his other qualities the saving virtues of principle
and honesty. Owing to these defects my friend
woke up one fine morning to find that her new
husband had been married previously, and that his
wife was still living.
GHOSTS KEEPING PROMISE 223
On making this discovery she left her partner
and came to I/mdon, where I met her. She is a
woman of very strong character, and of some
considerable although irregular ability. She has
many superstitions, and her dreams were some-
thing wonderful to hear. After she had been in
lyondon two years her bigamist lover found out
where she was, and leaving his home in Italy
followed her to London. There was no doubt
as to the sincerity of his attachment to the woman
whom he had betrayed, and the scenes which
took place between them were painful, and at one
time threatened to have a very tragic ending.
Fortunately, although she never ceased to
cherish a very passionate affection for her lover,
she refused to resume her old relations with him,
and after many stormy scenes he departed for
Italy, loading her with reproaches. Some months
after his departure she came to me and told me
she was afraid something had happened to him.
She had heard him calling her outside her window,
and. shortly afterwards saw him quite distinctly
in her room. She was much upset about it.
I pooh-poohed the story, and put it down to a
hallucination caused by the revival of the stormy
and painful scenes of the parting. Shortly after-
wards she received news from Italy that her late
husband, if we may so call him, had died about
the same time she heard him calling her by her
name under her window in East L,ondon,
I only learnt when the above was passing
through the pressTthat the unfortunate man,
whose phantasm appeared to my friend, died
224 RBAI, GHOST STORIES
suddenly either by his own hand or by accident.
On leaving London he drank on steadily, hardly
being sober for a single day. After a prolonged
period of intoxication he went out of the house,
and was subsequently found dead, either having
thrown himself or fallen over a considerable height,
at the foot of which he was found dead.
I asked Mrs. G. F. to write out for me, .as
carefully as she could remember it after the lapse
of two years, exactly what she saw and heard.
Here is her report :
The Promise.
" In the end of the summer of 1886 it happened
one morning that Irwin and myself were awake
at 5.30 a.m., and as we could not go to sleep again,
we lay talking of our future possible happiness and
present troubles. We were at the lime sleeping in
Room No. 16, Hotel Washington, overlooking
the Bay of Naples. We agreed that nothing
would force us to separate in this life neither
poverty nor persecution from his family, nor any
other thing on earth. (I believed myself his wife
then.) We each agreed that we would die together
rather than separate. We spoke a great* deal that
morning about our views of what was or was not
likely to be the condition of souls after death,
and whether it was likely that spirits could com-
municate, by any transmitted feeling or apparition,
the fact that they had died to their surviving
friends. Finally, we made a solemn promise to
each other that whichever of us died first would
appear to the other after death if such was per-
mitted.
GHOSTS KEEPING PROMISE 225
'Well, after the fact of his being already
married came to light, we parted. I left him, and
he followed me to London on December '87.
During his stay here I once asked if he
had ever thought about our agreement as to
as to who should die first appealing to the other ;
and he said, 'Oh, Georgie, you do not need to
remind me ; my spirit is a part of yours, and can
never be separated nor dissolved even through
all eternity ; no, not even though you treat me as
you do ; even though you became the wife of
another you cannot divorce our spirits. And
whenever my spirit leaves this earth I will appear
to you/
' Well, in the beginning of August '88 he left
England for Naples ; his last words were that I
would never again see him ; I should see him, but
not alive, for he would put an end to his life and
heart-break. After that he never wrote to me ;
still I did not altogether think he would kill him-
self. On the 22nd or 23rd of the following Nov-
ember ('88), I posted a note to him at Sarno post
office. No reply came, and I thought it might be
he was not at Sarno, or was sick, or travelling,
and so did not call at the post office, and so never
dreamed of his being dead."
Its Fulfilment.
" Time went on and nothing occurred till
November 27th (or I should say 28th, for it
occurred at 12.30, or between 12 and 1 a.m., I
forget the exact time). It was just at that period
when I used to sit up night after night till 1, 2, and
o
226 REAiv GHOST STORIES
3 o'clock a.m. at home doing the class books ; on
this occasion I was sitting close to the fire, with
the table beside me, sorting cuttings. Looking up
from the papers my eyes chanced to fall on the
door, which stood about a foot and a half open,
and right inside, but not so far in but that his
clothes touched the edge of the door, stood Irwin ;
he was dressed as I last had seen him overcoat,
tall hat, and his arms were down by his sides in
his natural, usual way. He stood in his exact own
perfectly upright attitude, and held his head and
face up in a sort of dignified way, which he used
generally to adopt on all occasions of importance
or during a controversy or dispute. He had his
face turned towards me, and looked at me
with a terribly meaning expression, very pale,
and as if pained by being deprived of the power of
speech or of local movements.
" I got a shocking fright, for I thought at first
sight he was living, and had got in unknown to me
to surprise me. I felt my heart jump with fright,
and I said, ' Oh ! ' but before I had hardly finished
the exclamation, his figure was fading way, and,
horrible to relate, it faded in such a way that the
flesh seemed to fade out of the clothes, or at all
events the hat and coat were longer visible than
the whole man. I turned white and cold, felt an
awful dread ; I was too much afraid to go near
enough to shut the door when he had vanished.
I was so shaken and confused, and half paralysed,
I felt I could not even cry out ; it was as if
something had a grip on my spirit, I feared to stir,
and sat up all night, fearing to take my eyes off
GHOSTS KEEPING PROMISE 227
the door, not daring to go and shut it. Later on
I got an umbrella and walked tremblingly, and
pushed the door close without fastening it. I
feared to touch it with my hand. I felt such a
relief when I saw daylight and heard the landlady
moving about.
" Now, though I was frightened, I did not for
a moment think he was dead, nor did it enter my
mind then about our agreement. I tried to shake
off the nervousness, and quite thought it must be
something in my sight caused by imagination, and
nerves being overdone by sitting up so late for so
many nights together. Still, I thought it dread-
fully strange, it was so real."
A Ghost's Cough.
" Well, about three days passed, and then I was
startled by hearing his voice outside my window,
as plain as a voice could be, calling, ' Georgie ! Are
you there, Georgie ? ' I felt certain it was really
him come back to England. I could not mistake
his voice. I felt quite flurried, and ran out to the
hall door, but no one in sight. I went back in,
and felt rather upset and disappointed, for I would
have been glad if he had come back again, and began
to wish he really would turn up. I then thought to
myself, ' Well, that was so queer. Oh, it must
be Irwin, and perhaps he is just hiding in some
hall door to see if I will go out and^let him in, or
what I will do. So out I went again. This time
I put my hat on, and ran along and peeped into
hall doors where he might be hiding, but with no
result. Later on that night I could have sworn
228 REAL GHOST STORIES
I heard him cough twice right at the window, as if
he did it to attract attention. Out I went again.
No result.
' Well, to make a long story short, from that
night till about nine weeks after that voice called
to me, and coughed, and coughed, sometimes
every night for a week, then three nights a week,
then miss a night and call on two nights, miss three
or four days, and keep calling me the whole night
long, on and off-, up till 12 midnight or later. One
time it would be, ' Georgie ! It's me I Ah, Geor-
gie ! ' Or, ' Georgie, are you in ? Will you speak
to Irwin ? ' Then a long pause, and at the end of,
say, ten minutes, a most strange, unearthly sigh,
or a cough a perfectly intentional, forced cough,
other times nothing but, ' Ah, Georgie ! ' On one
night there was a dreadful fog. He called me so
plain, I got up and said, ' Oh, really ! that man
must be here ; he must be lodging somewhere near,
as sure as life ; if he is not outside I must be going
mad in my mind or imagination/ I went and
stood outside the hall door steps in the thick black
fog. No lights could be seen that night. I called
out, ' Irwin ! Irwin ! here, come on. I know you're
there, trying to humbug me, I saw you in town ;
come on in, and don't be making a fool of yourself.'
" Well, I declare to you, a voice that seemed
within three yards of me, replied out of the fog,
' It's only Irwin,' and a most awful, and great,
and supernatural sort of sigh faded away in the
distance. I went in, feeling quite unhinged and
nervous, and could not sleep. After that night
it was chiefly sighs and coughing, and it was kept
GHOSTS KEEPING PROMISE 229
up until one day, at the end of about nine weeks,
my letter was returned marked, ' Signor O'Neill e
morto/ together with a letter from the Consul to
say he had died on November 28th, 1888, the
day on which he appeared to me.' 1
The Question of Dates.
^ On inquiring as to dates and verification Mrs.
F - replied :
" I don't know the hour of his death, but if you
write to Mr. Turner, Vice Consul, Naples, he can
get it for you. He appeared to me at the hour I
say ; of course there is a difference of time between
here and Naples. The strange part is that once I
was informed of his death by human means (the
letter), his spirit seemed to be satisfied, for no
voice ever came again after ; it was as if he wanted
to inform and make me know he had died, and as
if he knew I had not been informed by human
agency.
" I was so struck with the apparition of Novem-
ber 28th, that I made a note of the date at the time
so as to tell him of it when next I wrote. My letter
reached Sarno a day or two after he died. There
is no possible doubt about the voice being his, for
he had a peculiar and uncommon voice, one such as
I never heard any exactly like, or like at all in any
other person. And in life he used to call me
through the window as he passed, so I would know
who it was knocked at the door, and open it.
When he said, ' Ah ! ' after death, it was so awfully
sad and long drawn out, and as if expressing that
now all was over and our separation and his being
230 REAI, GHOST STORIES
dead was all so very, very pitiful and unutterable ;
the sigh was so real, so almost solid, and dis-
cernible and unmistakable, till at the end it seemed
to have such a supernatural, strange, awful dying-
away sound, a sort of fading, retreating into dis-
tance sound, that gave the impression that it was
not quite all spirit, but that the spirit had some
sort of visible and half -material being or condition.
This was especially so the night of the fog, when
the voice seemed nearer to me as I stood there,
and as if it was able to come or stay nearer to me
because there was a fog to hide its materialism.
On each of the other occasions it seemed to keep
a good deal further off than on that night, and
always sounded as if at an elevation of about 10ft.
or lift, from the ground, except the night of the
fog, when it came down on a level with me as well
as nearer.
GEORGINA F ."
CHAPTER II
BROUGHAM'S TESTIMONY.
WHEN we come to the question of the apparition
pure and simple, one of the best-known leading
cases is that recorded by Lord Brougham, who was
certainly one of the hardest-headed persons that
ever lived, a Lord Chancellor, trained from his
youth up to weigh evidence. The story is given as
follows in the first volume of " Lord Brougham's
Memoirs " :
" A most remarkable thing happened to me,
so remarkable that I must tell the story from the
beginning. After I left the High School I went
with G , my most intimate friend, to attend the
classes in the University. There was no divinity
class, but we frequently in our walks discussed
many grave subjects among others, the immortal-
ity of the soul and a future state. This question, and
the possibility of the dead appearing to the living,
were subjects of much speculation, and we actually
committed the folly of drawing up an agreement,
written with our blood, to the effect that which-
ever of us died the first should appear to the other,
and thus solve any doubts we had entertained of
the ' life after death/
" After we had finished our classes at the college,
G- - went to India, having got an appointment
there in the Civil Service. He seldom wrote to me,
and after the lapse of a few years I had nearly
232 REAI, GHOST STORIES
forgotten his existence. . . . One day I had taken,
as I have said, a warm bath ; and, while lying in
it and enjoying the comfort of the heat, I turned
my head round, looking towards the chair on
which I had deposited my clothes, as I was about
to get out of the bath. On the chair sat G ,
looking calmly at me. How I got out of the bath
I know not ; but on recovering my senses I found
myself sprawling on the floor. The apparition,
or whatever it was that had taken the likeness of
G , had disappeared.
" This vision had produced such a shock that I
had no inclination to talk about it, or to speak
about it even to Stewart, but the impression it
made upon me was too vivid to be easily forgotten,
and so strongly was I affected by it that I have
here written down the whole history, with the date,
December 19th, and all the particulars, as they are
now fresh before me. No doubt I had fallen asleep,
and that the appearance presented so distinctly
before my eyes was a dream I cannot for a moment
doubt ; yet for years I had had no communication
with G , nor had there been anything to recall
him to my recollection. Nothing had taken place
concerning our Swedish travels connected with
G- , or with India, or with anything relating
to him, or to any member of his family. I recol-
lected quickly enough our old discussion, and
the bargain we had made. I could not discharge
from my mind the impression that G - must
have died, and that his appearance to me was
to be received by me as a proof of a future state.
This was on December 19th, 1799.
GHOSTS KEEPING PROMISE 233
" In October, 1862, Lord Brougham added as a
postscript :- ' I have just been copying out from
my journal the account of this strange dream,
" Certissima mortis imago ! " And now to finish
the story begun about sixty years since. Soon
after my return to Edinburgh there arrived a letter
from India announcing G- -'s death, and stating
that he died on December 19th/
A Vow Fulfilled.
Very many of the apparitions of this description
appear in connection with a promise made during
lifetime to do so. A lady correspondent sends me
the following narrative, which she declares she
had from the sister of a student at the Royal
Academy who was personally known to her. He
told the story first to his mother, who is dead, so
that all chance of verifying the story is impossible.
It may be quoted, however, as a pendant to L,ord
Brougham's vision, and is much more remarkable
than his, inasmuch as the phantom was seen by
several persons at the same time :
" I think it was about the year 1856 as nearly as
I can remember, that a party of young men,
students of the Royal Academy, and some of them
members also, used to meet in a certain room in
London, so many evenings in the week, to smoke
and chat. One of them the son of a colonel in the
army, long since dead this only son kept yet a
remnant, if no more, of the faith of his childhood,
cherished in him by his widowed mother with
jealous care, as he detailed to her from time to
time fragments of the nightly discussions against
the immortality of the soul.
234
GHOST STORIES
" On one particular evening the conversation
drifted into theological matters this young Aca-
demician taking up the positive side, and asserting
his belief in a hereafter of weal or woe for all human
life.
" Two or three of the others endeavoured to
put him down, but he, maintaining his position
quietly, provoked a suggestion, half in earnest
and half in jest, from one of their number, that
the first among them who should die, should appear
to the rest of their assembly afterwards in that
room at the usual hour of meeting. The suggestion
was received with jests and laughter by some, and
with graver faces by others but at last each man
solemnly entered into a pledge that if he were the
first to die amongst them, he would, if permitted,
return for a few brief seconds to this earth and
appear to the rest to certify to the truth.
" Before very long one young man's place was
empty. No mention being made of the vow that
they had taken, probably time enough had elapsed
for it to have been more or less, for the present,
forgotten.
' The meetings continued. One evening when
they were sitting smoking round the fire, one of
the party uttered an exclamation, causing the rest
to look up. Following the direction of his gaze,
each man saw distinctly for himself a shadowy
figure, in the likeness of the only absent one of their
number, distinctly facing them on the other side
of the room. The eyes looked earnestly, with a
yearning, sad expression in them, slowly upon
each member there assembled, and then vanished
GHOSTS KEEPING PROMISE 235
as a rainbow fades out of existence from the
evening sky.
" For a few seconds no one spoke, then the most
confirmed unbeliever among them tried to explain
it all away, but his words fell flat, and no one
echoed his sentiments ; and then the widow's
son spoke. ' Poor - - is dead ' he said, ' and
has appeared to us according to his vow/ Then
followed a comparison of their sensations during
the visitation, and all agreed in stating that they
felt a cold chill similar to the entrance of a winter
fog at door or window of a room which has been
warm, and when the appearance had faded from
their view the cold breath also passed away.
" I think, but will not be positive on this, the
son of the widow lady died long after this event,
but how long or how short a time I never heard ;
but the facts of the above story were told me by
the sister of this young man. I also knew their
mother well. She was of a gentle, placid dis-
position, by no means excitable or likely to credit
any superstitious tales. Her son returned home
on that memorable evening looking very white
and subdued, and, sinking into a chair, he told her
he should never doubt again the truths that she
had taught him, and a little reluctantly he told her
the above, bit by bit, as it were, as she drew it from
him."
A similar story to the foregoing one was supplied
me by the wife of the Rev. Bloomfield James,
Congregational minister at Wimbledon. (1891).
It is as follows :
" My mother, aunt, and Miss E., of Bideford,
236 REAI, GHOST STORIES
North Devon, were at school together at Teign-
mouth. The two latter girls formed a great
friendship, and promised whichever died first
would come to the other. About the year 1815
or 1816 my aunt Charlotte was on the stair coming
from her room when she saw Miss E. walking up.
Aunt was not at all frightened, as she was ex-
pecting her friend on a visit, and called out, ' Oh,
how glad I am to see you, but why did you not
write ! ' A few days afterwards news came of Miss
E.'s death on that evening/'
It is very rare that the apparition speaks ;
usually it simply appears, and leaves those who see
it to draw their own inferences. But sometimes
the apparition shows signs of the wound which
caused its death. The most remarkable case of
this description is that in which lieutenant Colt,
of the Fusiliers, reported his death at Sebastopol to
his brother in Scotland more than a fortnight
before the news of the casualty arrived in this
country.
The Case of Lieutenant Colt.
Captain G. F. Russell Colt, of Gartsherrie,
Coatbridge, N.B., reports the case as follows to the
Psychical Society (Vol. i. page 125) :-
" I had a very dear brother (my eldest brother),
Oliver, lieutenant in the 7th Royal Fusiliers. He
was about nineteen years old, and had at that time
been some months before Sebastopol. I corres-
ponded frequently with him, and once when he
wrote in low spirits, not being well, I said in answer
that he was to cheer up, but that if anything did
GHOSTS KEEPING PROMISE 237
happen to him he was to let me know by appearing
to me in my room. This letter, I found subse-
quently, he received as he was starting to receive
the sacrament from a clergyman who has since
related the fact to me.
" Having done this he went to the entrench-
ments and never returned, as in a few hours after-
wards the storming of the Redan commenced.
He, on the captain of his company falling, took his
place and led his men bravely on. He had just
led them within the walls, though already wounded
in several places, when a bullet struck him in the
right temple and he fell amongst heaps of others,
where he was found in a sort of kneeling posture
(being propped up by the other dead bodies) thirty-
six hours afterwards. His death took place, or
rather he fell, though he may not have died
immediately, on September 8th, 1855.
" That night I awoke suddenly and saw facing
the window of my room by my bedside, surrounded
by a light sort of phosphorescent mist, as it were,
my brother kneeling. I tried to speak but could
not. I buried my head in the bedclothes, not at
all afraid (because we had all been brought up not
to believe in ghosts and apparitions), but simply
to collect my ideas, because I had not been thinking
or dreaming of him, and indeed had forgotten all
about what I had written to him a fortnight
before. I decided that it must be fancy and the
moonlight playing on a towel, or something out of
place ; but on looking up again there he was,
looking lovingly, imploringly, and sadly at me.
I tried again to speak, but found myself tongue-
238 REAL GHOST STORIES
tied. I could not utter a sound. I sprang out of
bed, glanced through the window, and saw that
there was no moon, but it was very dark and raining
hard, by the sound against the panes. I turned
and still saw poor Oliver. I shut my eyes, walked
through it, and reached the door of the room. As I
turned the handle, before leaving the room, I
looked once more back. The apparition turned
round his head slowly, and again looked anxiously
and lovingly at me, and I saw then for the first
time a wound on the right temple with a red
stream from it. His face was of a waxy pale tint,
but transparent looking, and so was the reddish
mark. But it was almost impossible to describe
his appearance. I only know I shall never forget
it. I left the room and went into a friend's room,
and lay on the sofa the rest of the night. I told him
why, I also told others in the house, but when I told
my father he ordered me not to repeat such non-
sense, and especially not to let my mother know.
" On the Monday following I received a note
from Sir Alexander Milne to say that the Redan
was stormed, but no particulars. I told my friend
to let me know if he saw the name among the
killed and wounded before me. About a fortnight
later he came to my bedroom in his mother's house
in Athole Crescent in Edinburgh, with a very grave
face. I said, ' I suppose it is to tell me the sad news
I expect/ and he said, 'Yes/ Both the colonel
of the regiment and one or two officers who saw
the body confirmed the fact that the appearance
was much according to my description, and the
death-wound was exactly where I had seen it.
GHOSTS KEEPING PROMISE 239
His appearance, if so, must have been some hours
after death, as he appeared to me a few minutes
after two in the morning.
" Months later his little Prayer-book and the
letter I had written to him were returned to
Inveresk, found in the inner breast pocket of the
tunic which he wore at his death. I have them
now."
APPENDIX.
SOME HISTORICAL GHOSTS.
THE following collection presents a list of names
more or less well known with which ghost
stories of some kind are associated. The authority
for these stories, though in many cases good, is so
varied in quality that they are not offered as
evidential of anything except the wide diversity
of the circles in which such things find acceptance
Royal.
HENRY IV., of France, told d'Aubigne (see d'Au-
bigne Histoire Universelle) that in presence of
himself, the Archbishop of Lyons, and three
ladies of the Court, the Queen (Margaret of
Valois) saw the apparition of a certain cardinal
afterwards found to have died at the moment.
Also he (Henry IV.) was warned of his ap-
proaching end, not long before he was murdered
by Ravaillac, by meeting an apparition in a
thicket in Fontainebleau. " (Sully 's Memoirs.")
ABEI, THE FRATRICIDE, King of Denmark was
buried in unconsecrated ground, and still
haunts the wood of Poole, near the city of
Sleswig.
VAI,DEMAR IV, haunts Gurre Wood, near Elsinore.
APPENDIX 241
CHARGES XI., of Sweden, accompanied by his
chamberlain and state physician, witnessed the
trial of the assassin of Gustavus III., which
occurred nearly a century later.
JAMES IV., of Scotland, after vespers in the chapel
at lyinlithgow, was warned by an apparition
against his intended expedition into England.
He, however, proceeded, and was warned again
at Jedburgh, but, persisting, fell at Flodden
Field.
CHARLES I., OF ENGLAND, when resting at Daven-
tree on the Eve of the battle of Naseby, was
twice visited by the apparition of Str afford,
warning him not to meet the Parliamentary
Army, then quartered at Northampton. Being
persuaded by Prince Rupert to disregard the
warning, the King set off to march northward,
but was surprised on the route, and a disastrous
defeat followed.
ORLEANS, DUKE OF, brother of Louis XIV., called
his eldest son (afterwards Regent) by his second
title, Due de Chartres, in preference to the more
usual one of Due de Valois. This change is said
to have been in consequence of a communica-
tion made before his birth by the apparition of
his father's first wife, Henrietta of England,
reported to have been poisoned.
Historical Women.
ELIZABETH, QUEEN is said to have been warned of
her death by the apparition of her own double.
(So, too, Sir Robert Napier and L,ady Diana
Rich).
242 REAL GHOST STORIES
CATHERINE DE MEDICIS saw, in a vision, the battle
of Jarnac, and cried out, " Do you not see the
Prince of Conde dead in the hedge ? ' This
and many similar stories are told by Margaret of
Valois in her Memoirs.
PHIUPPA, WIFE OF THE DUKE OF LORRAINE, when
a girl in a convent, saw in vision the battle of
Pavia, then in progress, and the captivity of the
king her cousin, and called on the nuns about
her to pray.
JOAN OF ARC was visited and directed by various
Saints, including the Archangel Michael, S.
Catherine, S. Margaret, etc.
Lord Chancellors.
ERSKINE, LORD, himself relates (Lady Morgan's
" Book of the Boudoir," 1829, vol. i. 123) that
the spectre of his father's butler, whom he did
not know to be dead, appeared to him in broad
daylight, " to meet your honour," so it ex-
plained, " and to solicit your interference with
my lord to recover a sum due to me which the
steward at the last settlement did not pay,"
which proved to be the fact.
Cabinet Ministers.
BUCKINGHAM, DUKE OF, was exhorted to amend-
ment and warned of approaching assassination
by apparition of his father, Sir George VilHers,
who was seen by Mr. Towers, surveyor of works
at Windsor. All occurred as foretold.
CASTI.EREAGH, LORD (who succeeded the above
as Foreign Secretary), when a young man,
APPENDIX 243
quartered with his regiment in Ireland, saw the
apparition of " The Radiant Boy/' said to be
an omen of good. Sir Walter Scott speaks of
him as one of two persons " of sense and credi-
bility, who both attested supernatural appear-
ances on their own evidence."
PEEL, SIR ROBERT, and his brother, both saw
Lord Byron in London in 1810, while he was,
in fact, lying dangerously ill at Patras. During
the same fever, he also appeared to others, and
was even seen to write down his name among
the inquirers after the King's health.
Emperors.
TRAJAN, Emperor, was extricated from Antioch
during an earthquake, by a spectre which drove
him out of a window. (Dio Cassius, lib. Ixviii.)
CARACALLA, Emperor, was visited by the ghost
of his father Severus.
JULIAN THE APOSTATE, Emperor, (1) when hesi-
tating to accept the Empire, saw a female figure,
" The Genius of the Empire," who said she
would remain with him, but not for long. (2)
Shortly before his death, he saw his genius
leave him with a dejected air. (3) He saw a
phantom prognosticating the death of the
Emperor Constans. (See S. Basil.)
THEODOSIUS, Emperor, when on the eve of a
{. battle, was reassured of the issue by the appar-
ition of two men ; also seen independently by
one of his soldiers.
244 REAI. GHOST STORIES
Soldiers.
CURTIUS RUFUS (pro-consul of Africa) is reported
by Pliny to have been visited, while still young
and unknown, by a gigantic female the Genius
of Africa who foretold his career. (Pliny,
b. vii. letter 26.)
Juuus C^esAR was marshalled across the Rubicon
by a spectre, which seized a trumpet from one
of the soldiers and sounded an alarm.
XERXES, after giving up the idea of carrying war
into Greece, was persuaded to the expedition by
the apparition of a young man, who also visited
Artabanus, uncle to the king, when, upon
Xerxes 1 request, Artabanus assumed his robe
and occupied his place. (Herodotus, vii.)
BRUTUS was visited by a spectre, supposed to be
that of Julius Caesar, who announced that they
would meet again at Philippi, where he was
defeated in battle, and put an end to his own
fife.
DRUSUS, when seeking to cross the Elbe, was
deterred by a female spectre, who told him to turn
back and meet his approaching end. He died
before reaching the Rhine.
PAUSANIUS, General of the Lacedaemonians, in-
advertently caused the death of a young lady of
good family, who haunted him day and night,
urging him to give himself up to justice. (Plu-
tarch in Simone.)
Dio, General, of Syracuse, saw a female apparition
sweeping furiously in his house, to denote that
his family would shortly be swept out of Syra-
APPENDIX 245
cuse, which, through various accidents was
shortly the case.
NAPOLEON, at S. Helena, saw and conversed with
the apparition of Josephine, who warned him of
his approaching death. The story is narrated
by Count Montholon, to whom he told it.
BLUCHER, on the very day of his decease, related
to the King of Prussia that he had been warned
by the apparition of his entire family, of his
approaching end.
Fox, GENERAL, went to Flanders with the Duke
of York shortly before the birth of his son. Two
years later he had a vision of the child dead
and correctly described its appearance and sur-
roundings, though the death occurred in a house
unknown to him.
GARFIELD, GENERAL, when a child of six or seven,
saw and conversed with his father, lately de-
ceased. He also had a premonition, which
proved correct, as to the date of his death the
anniversary of the battle of Wickmauga, in
which he took a brave part.
LINCOLN, PRESIDENT, had a certain premonitory
dream which occurred three times in relation to
important battles, and the fourth on the eve of
his assassination.
COLIGNI, ADMIRAL, was three times warned to quit
Paris before the Feast of St. Bartholemew but
disregarded the premonition and perished in the
Massacre (1572).
246 REAL GHOST STORIES
Men of Letters.
PETRARCH saw the apparition of the bishop of his
diocese at the moment of death.
EPIMENIDES, a poet contemporary with Salon, is
reported by Plutarch to have quitted his body
at will and to have conversed with spirits.
DANTE, JACOPO, son of the poet, was visited in a
dream by his father, who conversed with him and
told him where to find the missing thirteen
cantos of the Commedia.
TASSO saw and conversed with beings invisible
to those about him.
GOETHE saw his own double riding by his side
under conditions which really occurred years
later. His father, mother, and grandmother
were all ghost-seers.
DONNE, DR., when in Paris, saw the apparition of
his wife in London carrying a dead child at the
very hour a dead infant was in fact born.
BYRON, LORD is said to have seen the Black Fria r
of Newstead on the eve of his ill-fated marriage-
Also, with others, he saw the apparition of
Shelley walk into a wood at L,erici, though they
knew him at the time to be several miles away.
SHELLEY, while in a state of trance, saw a figure
wrapped in a cloak which beckoned to him and
asked, Siete soddisfatto ? are you satisfied ?
BENVENUTO CELLINI, when in captivity at Rome
5 by order of the Pope, was dissuaded from suicide
by the apparition of a young man who fre-
quently visited and encouraged him.
APPENDIX 247
MOZART was visited by a mysterious person who
ordered him to compose a Requiem, and came
frequently to inquire after its progress, but
disappeared on its completion, which occurred
just in time for its performance at Mozart's
own funeral.
BEN JONSON, when staying at Sir Robert Cotton's
house, was visited by the apparition of his
eldest son with a mark of a bloody cross upon
his forehead at the moment of his death by the
plague. He himself told the story to Drummond
of Hawthornden.
THACKERAY, W. M. writes, " It is all very well for
you who have probably never seen spirit mani-
festations, to talk as you do, but had you seen
what I have witnessed you would hold a different
opinion/'
MRS. BROWNING'S spirit appeared to her sister
with warning of death. Robert Browning writes,
Tuesday, July 21st, 1863, " Arabel (Miss Bar-
rett) told me yesterday that she had been much
agitated by a dream which happened the night
before Sunday, July 19th. She saw her,
and asked, When shall I be with you ? The
reply was, Dearest, in five years, where upon
Arabel awoke. She knew in her dream that it
was not to the living she spoke." In five years,
within a month of their completion, Miss Barrett
died, and Browning writes, " I had forgotten
the date of the dream, and supposed it was only
three years, and that two had still to run."
BISHOP, and his brother, when at Cam-
bridge each had a vision of their mother looking
248 REAL GHOST STORIES
sadly at them, and saying she would not be able
to keep her promise of visiting them. She
died at the time.
DR. GUTHRIE was directed, by repeated pullings
at his coat, to go in a certain direction, con-
trary to previous intention, and was thus the
means of saving the life of a parishioner.
Mii,i,ER, HUGH, tells, in his " Schools and School-
masters/' of the apparition of a bloody hand,
seen by himself and the servant but not by
others present. Accepted as a warning of the
death of his father.
PORTER, ANNA MARIA, when living at Esher, was
visited one afternoon by an old gentleman
a neighbour, who frequently came in to tea.
On this occasion he left the room without speak-
ing, and fearing that something had happened
she sent to inquire, and found that he had died
at the moment of his appearance.
EDGWORTH, MARIA, was waiting with her family
for an expected guest, when the vacant chair
was suddenly occupied by the apparition of a
sailor cousin, who stated that his ship had been
wrecked and he alone saved. The event proved
the contrary he alone was drowned.
MARRYAT, CAPTAIN the story is told by his
daughter while staying in a country-house
in the North of England saw the family ghost
an ancestress of the time of Queen Elizabeth who
had poisoned her husband. He tried to shoot
her, but the ball passed harmlessly into the door
behind, and the lady faded away always
smiling.
APPENDIX 249
DE STAEL, MADAME, was haunted by the spirit
of her father, who counselled and helped her
in all times of need.
ly.E.Iy.'s ghost was seen by Dr. Madden in the
room in which she died at Cape Coast Castle.
DE MORGAN, PROFESSOR, writes : " I am perfectly
convinced that I have both seen and heard, in a
manner that should make unbelief impossible,
things called spiritual which cannot be taken
by a rational being to be capable of explanation
by imposture, coincidence, or mistake/*
FOOTE, SAMUEL, in the year 1740, while visiting
at his father's house in Truro, was kept awake
by sounds of sweet music. His uncle was about
the same time murdered by assassins.
Men of Science.
DAVY, SIR HUMPHREY, when a young man, suffer-
ing from yellow fever on the Gold Coast, was
comforted by visions of his guardian angel, who,
years after, appeared to him again incarnate
in the person of his nurse during his last illness.
HARVEY, WILLIAM, the discoverer of the circula-
tion of the blood, used to relate that his life was
saved by a dream. When a young man he was
proceeding to Padua, when he was detained
with no reason alleged by the governor at
Dover. The ship was wrecked, and all on board
lost, and it was then explained that the governor
had received orders in a dream to prevent a
person, to whose description Harvey answered,
from going on board that night.
250 REAL GHOST STORIES
FARQUHAR, SIR WAITER, physician (made a
baronet in 1796), visited a patient at Pomeroy
Castle. While waiting alone a lady appeared
to him, exhibiting agony and remorse (who
proved to be the family ghost) prognosticating,
the death of the patient, which followed.
CLARK, SIR JAMES, WIFE OF, while living in their
house in Brook Street, saw the apparition of her
son, Dr. J. Clark, then in India, carrying a dead
baby wrapped in an Indian shawl. Shortly
afterwards, he did, in fact, send home the body
of a child for interment, which had died at the
hour noted, to fill up the coffin it was wrapped
up in an Indian scarf.
HERBERT OF CHERBURY, LORD, one of the first to
systematise deism, when in doubt whether he
should publish his " De Veritate," as advised by
Grotius, prayed for a sign, and heard sounds
" like nothing on earth, which did so comfort
and cheer me, that I took my petition as
granted."
BACON, FRANCIS, was warned in a dream of his
father's approaching end, which occurred in a
few days.
Theologians.
LUTHER, MARTIN, was visited by apparitions,
one, according to Melancthon, who announced
his coming by knocking at the door.
MELANCTHON says that the apparition of a vener-
able person came to him in his study and told
him to warn his friend Grynaeus to escape at
once from the danger of the Inquisition, a warn-
ing which saved his life.
APPENDIX 251
ZWINGU was visited by an apparition " with a
perversion of a text of Scripture/'
OBERUN, PASTOR, was visited almost daily by his
deceased wife, who conversed with him, and was
visible not only to himself, but to all about him.
Fox, GEORGE, while walking on Pendle Hill, York-
shire, saw his future converts coming towards
him " along a river-side, to serve the Lord."
NEWMAN, CARDINAL, relates in a letterjan. 3rd,
1833, that when in quarantine in Malta, he and
his companions heard footsteps not to be
accounted for by human agency.
WILBERFORCE, BISHOP, experienced remarkable
premonitions, and phenomena even more start-
ling are attributed to him.
SAINTS. The stories of visions, apparitions, etc.
which are told in connection with the Saints are
far too numerous to quote. The following,
however, may be referred to as of special inter-
est : (1) Phantasms of the Living. St. Ignatius
Loyala, Gennadius (the friend of St. Augustine),
St. Augustine himself, twice over (he tells the
story himself, Serm. 233), St. Benedict and St.
Meletius, all appeared during life in places dis-
tant from their actual bodily whereabouts.
(2) Phantasms of the Dead. St. Anselm saw the
slain body of William Rufus, St. Basil that of
Julian the Apostate, St. Benedict the ascent to
heaven of the soul of St. Germanus, bishop of
Capua all at the moment of death. St. Augus-
tine and St. Edmund, Archbishops of Canter-
bury, are said to have conversed with spirits.
St. Ambrose and St. Martin of Tours received
252 REAL GHOST STORIES
information concerning relics from the original
owners of the remains. (3) Premonitions. St.
Cyprian and St. Columba each foretold the date
and manner of his own death as revealed in
visions.
Miscellaneous.
HARCOURT, COUNTESS when Lady Nuneham,
mentioned one morning having had an agitating
dream, but was met with ridicule. Later in the
day Lord Harcourt her husband's father-
was missing. She exclaimed, " Look in the
well/' and fainted away. He was found there
with a dog, which he had been trying to save.
AKSAKOFF, MME., wife of Chancellor Aksakoff,
on the night of May 12th, 1855, saw the appari-
tion of her brother, who died at the time. The
story is one very elaborate as to detail.
RICH, LADY DIANA, was warned of her death by
a vision of her own double in the avenue of
Holland House.
BREADALBANE, MAY, LADY, her sister (both
daughters of Lord Holland), was also warned in
vision of her death.
THE DAUGHTER OF SIR CHARLES LEE. This story,
related by the Bishop of Gloucester, 1662, is
very well known. On the eve of her intended
marriage with Sir W. Perkins, she was visited
by her mother's spirit, anouncing her approach-
ing death at twelve o'clock next day. She
occupied the intervening time with suitable
preparations, and died calmly at the hour
foretold.
APPENDIX
253
BERESFORD, LADY, wife of Sir Tristam, before her
marriage in 1687, made a secret engagement
with Lord Tyrone, that which ever should die
first would appear to the other. He fulfilled his
promise on October 15th, 1693, and warned her
of her death on her forty-eighth birthday. All
was kept secret, but after the fated day had
passed, she married a second time, and appeared
to enter on a new lease of life. Two years later,
when celebrating her birthday, she accidentally
discovered that she was two years younger than
had been supposed, and expired before night.
The story is one of the best known and most
interesting in ghost-lore.
FANSHAWE, LADY, when visiting in Ireland, heard
the banshee of the family with whom she was
visiting, one of whom did in fact die during the
night. She also relates (in her " Memoirs/' p.
28) that her mother once lay as dead for two
days and a night. On her return to life she
informed those about her that she had asked of
tw r o apparitions, dressed in long, white gar-
ments, for leave, like Hezekiah, to live for
fifteen years, to see her daughter grow up,
and that it was granted. She died in fifteen
years from that time.
MAIDSTONE LADY, saw a fly of fire as premonitory
of the deaths first, of her husband, who died
in a sea-fight with the Dutch, May 28th, 1672,
and second, of her mother-in-law, Lady Win-
chilsea.
CHEDWORTH, LORD, was visited by a friend and
fellow-sceptic, saying he had died that night
254 REAI, GHOST STORIES
and had realised the existence of another world.
While relating the vision the news arrived of his
friend's death.
RAMBOUIU,ET, MARQUIS OF, had just the same
experience. A fellow-unbeliever, his cousin,
the Marquis de Precy , visited him in Paris, saying
that he had been killed in battle in Flanders,
and predicting his cousin's death in action,
which shortly occurred in the battle of the
Faubourg St. Antoine. (Quoted by Calmet from
" Causes Celebres," xi. 370.)
LYTTI,ETON, LORD (third), died Nov. 27th, 1799,
was warned of his death three days earlier,
and exhorted to repentance. The story, very
widely quoted, first appears in the Gentleman's
Magazine, vol. Ixxxv. 597. He also himself
appeared to Mr. Andrews, at Dart ford Mills,
who was expecting a visit from him at the time.
MIDDI<ETON, LORD, was taken prisoner by the
Roundheads after the battle of Worcester.
While in prison he was comforted by the appar-
ition of the laird Bocconi, whom he had known
while trying to make a party for the king in
Scotland, and who assured him of his escape in
two days, which occurred.
BAI.CARRES, LORD, when confined in Edinburgh
Castle on suspicion of Jacobitism, was visited
by the apparition of Viscount Dundee shot at
that moment at Killiecrankie.
HOU,AND, LORD (the first), who was taken prisoner
at the battle of St. Neot's in 1624, is said still
to haunt Holland House, dressed in the cap
and clothes in which he was executed.
APPENDIX 255
MONTGOMERY, COUNT OF, was warned by an
apparition to flee from Paris, and thus escaped
the Massacre of St. Bartholemew. (See Coligni.)
SHELBURNE, LORD, eldest son of the Marquis of
Lansdowne, is said, in Mrs. Schimmelpenninck's
Memoirs, to have had, when five years old, a
premonitory vision of his own funeral, with full
details as to stoppages, etc. Dr. Priestley was
sent for, and treated the child for slight fever.
When about to visit his patient (whom he ex-
pected to find recovered) a few days later, he
met the child running bare-headed in the snow.
When he approached to rebuke him the figure
disappeared, and he found that the boy had
died at the moment. The funeral was arranged
by the father then at a distance exactly
in accordance with the premonition.
EGUNTON, LORD, was three times warned of his
death by the apparition of the family ghost,
the Bodach Glas the dark-grey man. The
last appearance was when he was playing golf
on the links at St. Andrews, October 4th, 1861.
He died before night.
CORNWALL, THE DUKE OF, in 1100, saw the spectre
of William Rufus pierced by an arrow and
dragged by the devil in the form of a buck, on
the same day that he was killed. (Story told
in the " Chronicle of Matthew Paris/')
CHESTERFIELD, EARL OF (second), in 1652, saw,
on waking, a spectre with long white robes and
black face. Accepting it as intimation of some
illness of his wife, then visiting her father at
Networth, he set off early to inquire, and met
256 REAI, GHOST STORIES
a servant with a letter from Lady Chesterfield,
describing the same apparition.
MOHUN, LORD, killed in a duel in Chelsea Fields,
appeared at the moment of his death, in 1642,
to a lady in James's Street, Covent Garden,
and also to the sister (and her maid) of Glanvil
(author of " Sadducismus Triumphatus ").
SWIFTE, EDMUND LENTHAI,, keeper of the Crown
jewels from 1814, himself relates (in Notes and
Queries, 1860, p. 192) the appearance, in Anne
Boleyn's chamber in the Tower, of " a cylin-
drical figure like a glass tube, hovering between
the table and the ceiling " -visible to himself
and his wife, but not to others present.
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