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THE CONTEMPORAR Y SCIENCE SERIES. 
 Edited by HAVELOCK ELLIS. 
 
 APPARITIONS 
 AND THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 
 
APPARITIONS 
 
 AND 
 
 THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE: 
 
 AN EXAMINATION OF THE EVIDENCE 
 FOR TELEPATHY. 
 
 BY 
 
 FRANK PODMORE, M.A. 
 
 LONDON: 
 
 WALTER SCOTT, LTD., PATERNOSTER SQUARE. 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS, 
 153-157 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK. 
 
 1896. 1 ^ ' 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Introductory i 
 
 Position of the subject — Founding of the Society for 
 Psychical Research — Definition of telepathy — General 
 difficulties of the inquiry — Special sources of error — 
 Fraud — Hyperesthesia — Muscle-reading — Thought-forms 
 and number-habit. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 Experimental Transference of Simple Sensa- 
 tions in the Normal State ... ... 18 
 
 Transference of Tastes — Of pain, by Mr. M. Guthrie and 
 others — Of sounds — Of ideas not definitely classed, by 
 Professor Richet, the American Society for Psychical 
 Research, Dr. Ochorowicz — Transference of visual images, 
 by Dr. Blair Thaw, Mr. Guthrie, Professor Oliver Lodge, 
 Herr Max Dessoir, Herr Schmoll, Dr. von Schrenck- 
 Notzing, and others. 
 
vi 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 Experimental Transference of Simple Sensa- 
 tions with Hypnotised Percipients 
 
 Transference of tastes, by Dr. Azam— Of pain, by 
 Edmund Gurney — Of visual images, by Dr. Liebeault, 
 Professor and Mrs. Henry Sidgwick, Dr. Gibotteau, Dr. 
 Blair Thaw. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 Experimental Production of Movements and 
 other Effects 
 
 Inhibition of action by silent willing, by Edmund Gurney, 
 Professor Barrett, and others — Origination of action by 
 silent willing, by Dr. Blair Thaw, M. J. H. P., and 
 others — Planchette-writing, by Rev. P. H. Newnham, Mr. 
 R. H. Buttemer— Table-tilting, by the Author, by Professor 
 Richet — Production of local anaesthesia, by Edmund 
 Gurney, Mrs. H. Sidgwick. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 Experimental Production of Telepathic Effects 
 at a Distance 
 
 Induction of sleep, by Dr. Gibert and Professor Janet, 
 Professor Richet, Dr. Dufay — Of hysteria and other effects, 
 by Dr. Tolosa-Latour, M. J. H. P. —Transference of ideas 
 of sound, by Miss X., M. J. Ch. Roux— Of visual 
 images, by Miss Campbell, M. Leon Hennique, Mr. Kirk, 
 Dr. Gibotteau. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 vii 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 General Criticism of the Evidence for Spon- 
 taneous Thought-Transference .,. ... 143 
 
 On chance coincidence — Misrepresentation — Errors of 
 observation— Errors of inference— Errors of narration — 
 Errors of memory — " Pseudo-presentiment " — Precautions 
 against error — " Where are the letters?" — The spontaneous 
 cases as a true natural group. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 Transference of Ideas and Emotions ... ... 161 
 
 Transference of pain, Mr. Arthur Severn— f "^mell, Miss X. 
 — Of ideas, Miss X., Mrs. Barber — Of visual images, Mr. 
 Haynes, Professor Richet, Dr. Dupre — Of emotion, Mr. F. 
 H. Krebs, Dr. N., Miss Y. — Of motor impulses, Archdeacon 
 Bruce, Professor Venturi. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 Coincident Dreams ... ... 185 
 
 Discussion of the evidence for telepathy derivable from 
 dreams — Chance-coincidence — Simultaneous dreams, the 
 Misses Bidder — Transference of sensation in dreams, Pro- 
 fessor Royce, Mrs. Harrison — Dreams conveying news of 
 death, etc., Mr. J. T., Mr. R. V. Boyle, Captain Camp- 
 bell, Mr. E. W. Hamilton, Mr. Edward A. Goodall— Clair- 
 voyant dream, Mrs. E. J. 
 
viii CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 PACE 
 
 On Hallucination in General ... 207 
 
 Common misconceptions— Hypnotic hallucinations, experi- 
 ments by MM. Binet and Fere, Mr. Myers — Point de rep&re 
 — Post-hypnotic hallucinations, Professor Liegeois, Edmund 
 Gurney — Spontaneous hallucinations, Professor Sidgwick's 
 census — Table showing classification of spontaneous hallu- 
 cinations — Origin of hallucinations, sometimes telepathic 
 — Proof of this, calculation of chance-coincidence, allow- 
 ance for defects of memory — Conclusion. 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 Induced Telepathic Hallucinations 226 
 
 Possible misconceptions — Accounts of experiments, by Rev. 
 Clarence Godfrey, Herr Wesermann, Mr. H. P. Sparks, and 
 
 A. H. W. Cleave, Mrs B , Dr. von Schrenck-Notzing, 
 
 Dr. Wiltse, Mr. Kirk. 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 Spontaneous Telepathic Hallucinations ... 247 
 
 Auditory hallucinations, Miss Clark, Mr. William Tudor 
 — Visual hallucinations— Incompletely developed, Countess 
 Eugenie Kapnist, Miss L. Caldecott, Dr. Carat— Com- 
 pletely developed, Miss Berta Hurly, Mrs. Mc Alpine, 
 Miss Mabel Gore Booth— Hallucinations affecting two 
 senses, Rev. Matthew Frost, M. A . 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 ix 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 J'AGE 
 
 Collective Hallucinations 268 
 
 Illusions, epidemic hallucinations, illusions of memory — 
 Explanations of collective hallucination — Auditory hallucin- 
 ations, Mr. C. H. Cary, Miss Newbold — Visual hallucina- 
 tions, Mrs. Greiffenberg, Mrs. Milman and Miss Camp- 
 bell, Mr. and Mrs. C , Mr. Falkinburg, Dr. W. O. S., 
 
 Rev. C. H. Jupp — Collective hallucinations with percipients 
 apart, Sister Martha and Madame Houdaille, Sir Lawrence 
 Jones and Mr. Herbert Jones. 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 Some Less Common Types of Telepathic Hallu- 
 cination ... ... ... ... 297 
 
 Reciprocal cases, Rev. C. L. Evans and Miss — A 
 
 misinterpreted message, Miss C. L. Hawkins-Dempster — 
 
 Heteroplastic hallucination, Mrs. G , Frances Reddell, 
 
 Mr. John Husbands, Mr. J — " Haunted houses," 
 
 Mrs. Knott and others, Surgeon-Major W. and others. 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 On Clairvoyance in Trance ... ... ... 326 
 
 Definition of clairvoyance — Accounts of phenomena observed 
 with Mrs. Piper, by Professor Lodge, Professor W. James, 
 and others — Accounts of experiments by Mr. A. W. Dobbie, 
 Dr. Wiltse, Mr. W. Boyd, Dr. F , Dr. Backman. 
 
X 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 On Clairvoyance in the Normal State ... 351 
 
 Observations of M. Keulemans— Crystal-visions, MissX., 
 Dr. Backman, Miss A. and Sir Joseph Barnby— Spontan- 
 eous clairvoyance, Mrs. Paquet, Mr. F. A. Marks, Mrs. 
 L. Z. — Clairvoyance in dream, Mrs. Freese — Clairvoyant 
 perceptivity in an experiment, Dr. Gibotteau. 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 Theories and Conclusions 371 
 
 Resume, the proof apparent — The proof presumptive — The 
 alleged influence of magnets and metals — The alleged 
 marvels of spiritualism — Usage of the word telepathy — On 
 various theories of telepathy — Difficulties of a physical 
 explanation— Value of theory as a guide to investigation — 
 Is telepathy a rudimentary or a vestigial faculty? — Our 
 ignorance stands in the way of a conclusive answer — Im- 
 perative need for more facts. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 THE following pages aim at presenting in brief 
 compass a selection of the evidence upon which 
 the hypothesis of thought-transference, or telepathy, 
 is based. It is now more than twelve years since 
 the Society for Psychical Research was founded, and 
 nearly eight since the publication of Phantasms of the 
 Living. Both in the periodical Proceedings of the 
 Society and in the pages of Edmund Gurney's book, 1 a 
 large mass of evidence has been laid before the public. 
 But the papers included in the Proceedings are inter- 
 spersed with other matter, some of it too technical for 
 the taste of the general reader; whilst the two volumes 
 of Phantasms of the Living, which have for some time 
 
 1 The book actually bore on the title-page the names of Edmund 
 Gurney, F. W. H. Myers, and the present writer. But the division of 
 authorship, as explained in the Preface, was as follows : — " As regards 
 the writing and the views expressed, Mr. Myers is solely responsible 
 for the Introduction, and for the * Note on a Suggested Mode of 
 Psychical Interaction ; ' and Mr. Gurney is solely responsible for the 
 remainder of the book. . . . But the collection, examination, and 
 appraisal of evidence has been a joint labour." 
 
xii 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 been out of print, were too costly for the purse of 
 some, and too bulky for the patience of others. The 
 attention which, notwithstanding these drawbacks, 
 that work excited on its first appearance, the friendly 
 reception which it met with in many quarters, and the 
 fact that a considerable edition has been disposed of, 
 encouraged the hope that a book on somewhat similar 
 lines, but on a smaller scale, might be of service to 
 those — and their number has probably increased 
 within the last few years — who take a genuine interest 
 in this inquiry. Accordingly in the autumn of 1892 
 I obtained permission from the Council of the Society 
 for Psychical Research to make full use, in the com- 
 pilation of the present work, not merely of the 
 evidence already published by us, but of the not incon- 
 siderable mass of unpublished records in the posses- 
 sion of the Society. 
 
 It will be seen that the present book has little claim 
 to novelty of design ; but it is not merely an abridged 
 edition of the larger work referred to. On the one 
 hand it has a somewhat wider scope, and includes 
 accounts of telepathic clairvoyance and other pheno- 
 mena which did not enter into the scheme of Mr. 
 Gurney's book. On the other hand, the bulk of the 
 illustrative cases here quoted have been taken from 
 more recent records ; and, in particular, certain branches 
 of the experimental work have assumed a quite new 
 importance within the last few years. Thus the 
 experiments conducted by Mrs. Henry Sidgwick at 
 Brighton have strengthened the demonstration of 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 xiii 
 
 thought-transference, and have gone far to solve one 
 or two of the problems connected with the subject; 
 and the evidence for the experimental production of 
 telepathic effects at a distance has been greatly 
 enlarged by the work of MM. Janet and Gibcrt, 1 
 Richet, Gibotteau, Schrenck-Notzing, and in this 
 country by Mr. Kirk and others. 2 It may be added 
 that some of the criticisms called forth by Phantasms 
 of the Living, and our own further researches, have led 
 us to modify our estimate of the evidence in some 
 directions, and to strengthen generally the pre- 
 cautions taken against the unconscious warping of 
 testimony. 
 
 To say, however, that the following pages owe 
 much to Edmund Gurney is but to acknowledge 
 the obligation which all students of the subject 
 must recognise to his keen and vigorous intellect and 
 his colossal industry. My own debt is a more personal 
 one. To have worked under his guidance, and to 
 have been stimulated by his example, was an invalu- 
 able schooling in the qualities demanded by an 
 inquiry of this nature. Of the living, I owe grateful 
 thanks, in the first instance, to Professor and Mrs. 
 Henry Sidgwick, who have read through the whole 
 of the book in typescript, and have given help and 
 counsel throughout. Miss Alice Johnson, Mr. F. 
 W. H. Myers, the late Dr. A. T. Myers, Miss Porter, 
 
 1 Some account of the earlier experiments by MM. Janet and Gibert 
 was included in the supplementary chapter at the end of the second 
 volume of Phantasms. 
 
 2 See Chapters V. and X. of the present book. 
 
xiv 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 and others have also given me welcome help in 
 various directions. In acknowledging this assistance, 
 however, it is right to add that, though I trust in my 
 estimate of the evidence presented, and in the general 
 tenour of the conclusions suggested, to find myself, 
 with few exceptions, in substantial agreement with 
 my colleagues, yet I have no claim to represent the 
 Society for Psychical Research, nor right to cloak 
 my own shortcomings with the authority of others. 
 
 One word more needs to be said. The evidence, of 
 which samples are presented in the following pages, 
 is as yet hardly adequate for the establishment of 
 telepathy as a fact in nature, and leaves much to be 
 desired for the elucidation of the laws under which 
 it operates. Any contributions to the problem, in 
 the shape either of accounts of experiments, or of 
 recent records of telepathic visions and similar 
 experiences, will be gladly received by me on behalf 
 of the Society for Psychical Research, at 19 Bucking- 
 ham Street, Adelphi, W.C. 
 
 FRANK PODMORE. 
 
 August 1894. 
 
LIBRARY ) 
 
 APPARITIONS AND 
 THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 INTRODUCTORY — SPECIAL GROUNDS OF CAUTION. 
 
 It is salutary sometimes to reflect how recent is the 
 growth of our scientific cosmos, and how brief an 
 interval separates it from the chaos which went before. 
 This may be seen even in Sciences which deal with 
 matters of common observation. Amongst material 
 phenomena the facts of Geology are assuredly not 
 least calculated to excite the curiosity or impress the 
 imagination of men. Yet until the middle of the last 
 century no serious attempt was made to solve the 
 physical problems they presented. The origin of the 
 organic remains embedded in the rocks had indeed 
 formed the subject of speculation ever since the 
 days of Aristotle. Theophrastus had suggested that 
 they were formed by the plastic forces of Nature. 
 Mediaeval astrologers ascribed their formation to 
 planetary influences. And these hypotheses, with the 
 alternative view of the Church, that fossil bones and 
 shells were relics of the Mosaic Deluge, appear to 
 have satisfied the learned of Europe until the time of 
 Voltaire, who reinforced the rationalistic position, as 
 he conceived it, by the suggestion that the shells, at 
 
 I 
 
2 APPARITIONS AND THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 
 
 any rate, had been dropped from the hats of pilgrims 
 returning from the Holy Land. Yet Werner and 
 Hutton were even then preparing to elucidate the 
 causes of stratification and the genesis of the igneous 
 rocks. Cuvier in the next generation was to demon- 
 strate the essential analogies of the fossils found in 
 the Paris basin with living species ; Agassiz was to 
 investigate the relation of fossil fishes and to show 
 the true nature of their embedded remains. Nay, 
 even in the middle of the present century, so slow is 
 the growth and spread of organised knowledge, it was 
 possible for a pious Scotchman to ascribe the origin 
 of mountain chains to a cataclysm which, after the 
 fall of Man, had broken up and distorted the once 
 symmetrical surface of the earth; 1 for a Dean of 
 York to essay to bring the Mediaeval theory up to 
 date and prove that the whole series of geological 
 strata, with their varied organic remains, were formed 
 by volcanic eruptions acting in concert with the 
 Mosaic Deluge ; 2 and for another English divine to 
 warn his readers against any sacrilegious meddling 
 with the arcana of the rocks, because they represented 
 the tentative essays of the Creator at organic forms — 
 a concealed storehouse of celestial misfits ! 3 
 
 The subject-matter of the present inquiry has 
 passed, or is now passing, through stages closely 
 similar to those above described. " Ghosts " and 
 warning dreams have been matters of popular belief 
 and interest since the earliest ages known to history, 
 and are prevalent amongst even the least advanced 
 races at the present time. The Specularii and Dr. 
 Dee have familiarised us with clairvoyance and 
 crystal vision. Many of the alleged marvels of 
 
 1 Primary and Present State of the Solar System, by P. McFarlane. 
 Edinburgh, Thomas Grant, circa 1845. 
 
 2 At the meeting of the British Association in 1844; quoted by 
 Hugh Miller, Testimony of the Rocks, pp. 358, 359. 
 
 3 A Brief and Complete Refutation of the AntiscripHiral Theory of 
 the Geologists, by a Clergyman of the Church of England. London, 
 1853 ; quoted by Hugh Miller, loc. cit. 
 
SPECIAL GROUNDS OF CAUTION. 
 
 3 
 
 witchcraft were probably due to the agency of 
 hypnotism, which in later times, under the various 
 names of mesmerism, electrobiology, animal mag- 
 netism, has attracted the curiosity of the unlettered, 
 and from time to time the serious interest of the 
 learned. These phenomena indeed were made the 
 subject of scientific inquiry, first in France and later 
 in England, during the first half of the present 
 century ; have now again, after a brief period of 
 eclipse, been investigated for the last two decades by 
 competent observers on the Continent, and are at 
 length winning a recognised footing in scientific 
 circles in this country. Yet within the last two or 
 three years we have witnessed the spectacle of more 
 than one medical man, of some repute in this island, 
 laughing to scorn all the researches of Charcot and 
 Bernheim, just as their prototypes a generation or two 
 ago ignored the results of Cuvier and Agassiz, and 
 held it an insult to the Creator to accept the scientific 
 explanation of coprolites. 
 
 And as regards the other subjects, to which must 
 be added the alleged marvels of the Spiritualists, 
 there have indeed been one or two isolated series 
 of observations by competent inquirers, but for the 
 most part the learned have held themselves free to 
 ascribe the phenomena without investigation to fraud 
 and hysteria, and the unlearned to " magnetism/' 
 "psychic force," or the Devil. For whilst men of 
 science, preoccupied for the most part with other 
 lines of inquiry, have kept themselves aloof, the 
 vacant ground was naturally occupied by the ignor- 
 ant and credulous, and by those who looked to win a 
 harvest from ignorance and credulity. It is not of 
 course implied that all persons who interested them- 
 selves in such matters came under one or other of 
 these categories. There were many sensible men 
 and women amongst them, but they lacked for the 
 most part the special training necessary for such 
 inquiries, or they failed through want of co-operation 
 
4 APPARITIONS AND THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 
 
 and support. No serious and organised attempt at 
 investigation was made until, in 1882, the Society for 
 Psychical Research was founded in London, under 
 the presidency of Professor Henry Sidgwick. He 
 and his colleagues were the pioneers in the research, 
 and their example has been widely followed. Two 
 years later an American society under the same title 
 (now a flourishing branch of the English society) was 
 founded in Boston ; and there are at the present time 
 societies with similar objects at Berlin, Munich, 
 Stockholm, and elsewhere. vMoreover, the Societe de 
 Psychologie Physiologique, which was founded in 
 Paris, under the presidency of M. Charcot, in 1885, has 
 devoted much attention to some forms of telepathy.^ 
 But the forces of superstition and charlatanry, to 
 which this vast territory has been ceded for so long, 
 have bequeathed an unfortunate legacy to those who 
 would now colonise it in the name of Science ; and 
 the preliminary difficulties of the undertaking can 
 perhaps most effectually be met by a frank recognition 
 of that fact. On the one hand, a large number of 
 thinking men have been repelled, and still feel repul- 
 sion, from a subject whose record is so unsavoury. 
 On the other hand, the appetite for the marvellous 
 which has been so long unchecked is not easily re- 
 strained. The old habits of inaccuracy, of magnifying 
 the proportions of things, of confusing surmises with 
 facts, cannot be eradicated without long and careful 
 discipline. To one writer, indeed, those dangers 
 seemed so serious that he solemnly warned the Society 
 for Psychical Research, at the outset of its career, 
 against the risk of stimulating into disastrous activity 
 inborn tendencies to superstition, by even the sem- 
 blance of an inquiry into these matters. Without 
 going to such lengths, it may be conceded to the critic 
 that even with those who endeavour to apply scientific 
 methods to the investigation the mental attitude is 
 liable to be warped by the environment, and that 
 here, as elsewhere, evil communications may corrupt. 
 
SPECIAL GROUNDS OF CAUTION. 5 
 
 As regards the actual investigators this difficulty is 
 growing less serious, as more men who have received 
 their training in other branches of science are attracted 
 to the inquiry, and as the affinities of the subject to 
 long-recognised departments of knowledge become 
 daily more apparent. In another direction, however, 
 this mental attitude presents still a more or less for- 
 midable obstacle. Many of the observations on which 
 students of the subject are compelled to rely are 
 derived from persons who have had no training in 
 such habits of accuracy as are required in scientific 
 research. When accounts of the ornithorhynchus 
 first reached this country naturalists laughed at the 
 traveller's tale of a beast with the tail of a beaver and 
 the bill and webbed feet of a duck. In the same way 
 scientific men for long refused to admit the existence of 
 aerolites, as they now decline to credit the reports of. 
 a Sea Serpent of colossal proportions. In all these y 
 cases, so long as the alleged facts rest solely on the 
 testimony of men untrained in habits of close observ- 
 ation and accurate reporting, a suspension of judg- 
 ment seems to be justified. And if these considerations 
 are valid in ordinary cases, a much higher degree of 
 caution may be reasonably demanded of investigators 
 who leave the neutral ground of the physical sciences 
 to enter upon a field in which the emotions and 
 sympathies are most keenly engaged, and in which 
 the incidents narrated may have served to afford 
 support to the dearest hopes and sanction to the 
 deepest convictions of the narrator. So insidious, in 
 such a case, is the work of the imagination, so 
 untrustworthy is the memory, so various are the 
 sources of error in human testimony, that it may be 
 doubted whether we should be justified in attaching 
 weight to the phenomena of telepathic hallucination 
 and clairvoyance, to which a large part of this book is 
 devoted, if the alleged observations were incapable of 
 experimental verification. Certainly in such a case, 
 though the recipient of an experience of this kind 
 
6 APPARITIONS AND THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 
 
 might cherish a private conviction of its significance, 
 it would hardly be possible for such a view to win 
 general assent. 
 
 In fact, however, the clue to the interpretation of 
 the more striking phenomena, in the case of which, 
 since they occur for the most part spontaneously, 
 direct experiment or even methodical and continuous 
 observation are rarely possible, is furnished by actual 
 experiment on a smaller scale and with mental affec- 
 tions of a less unusual kind. The thesis which these 
 pages are designed to illustrate and support is briefly: 
 that communication is possible between mind and mind 
 , otherwise than through the known channels of the senses. 
 i Proof of the existence of such communication, pro- 
 | visionally called Thought Transference or Telepathy 
 (from tele^zX a distance, and pathos = feeling), will 
 be found in a considerable mass of experiments 
 conducted during the last twelve years by various 
 observers in different European countries and in 
 America. Before proceeding, in the course of the 
 next four chapters, to examine this part of the evidence 
 in detail, it will be well to consider its various defects 
 and sources of error — defects common in some degree 
 to all experiments of which living beings are the sub- 
 ject, and sources of error for the most part peculiar to 
 this and kindred inquiries. The word experiment in 
 this connection usually, and rightly, suggests the most 
 perfect form of experiment, that in which all the 
 conditions are known, and in which -the results can 
 be predicted both quantitatively and qualitatively. 
 If, for instance, we add a certain quantity of nitric 
 acid under given conditions to a certain quantity of 
 benzine, we know that there will result a certain 
 quantity of a third substance which is unlike either of 
 its constituents in taste, smell, and physical properties. 
 Or if we burn a given quantity of coal in a particular 
 engine, we can predict, within narrow limits of error, 
 the total amount of energy which will be evolved. 
 That we cannot in the second instance predict with 
 
SPECIAL GROUNDS OF CAUTION. 
 
 7 
 
 absolute accuracy the amount of energy produced is 
 simply due to the difficulty of measuring with pre- 
 cision all the factors in the case. But when we leave 
 the problems of chemistry and physics and approach 
 the problems of biology, the difficulties increase a 
 hundredfold. Here not only are we unable to measure 
 the various factors, we cannot even name them. No 
 skill or forethought would have enabled an observer, 
 from however patient a study of parentage and en- 
 vironment, to have predicted the appearance, say, of 
 Emanuel Swedenborg or Michael Faraday. Of the 
 seven children of John Lamb and his wife it might 
 have seemed easier to conjecture that the majority 
 would not survive childhood, and that one would 
 become insane, than that another should take his 
 place amongst those whose writings the world would 
 not willingly let die. And even where, as in most 
 biological researches, the results drawn from observ- 
 ation can be to some extent checked and controlled 
 by direct experiment, generations may elapse 
 before the balance of probabilities on one side 
 or the other becomes so great as to lead to unanimity 
 amongst the inquirers. One of the most interest- 
 ing, and certainly not the least important, of the 
 questions now occupying biologists, is that of the 
 transmission to the offspring of characters acquired in 
 the lifetime of the individual. Observations have been 
 accumulated on the subject since before the days of 
 Lamarck ; and these observations, interpreted and 
 confirmed by experiment, have been adduced and are 
 still held by many as evidence that such transmission 
 occurs. On the other hand, Weismann and his 
 followers contend that no such inference can legiti- 
 mately be drawn from the observations and experi- 
 ments quoted, and that the occurrence of such 
 transmission is irreconcilable with what is known of 
 the growth and development of the germ. And for 
 all that has been said and written the opinion of com- 
 petent biologists is still divided upon the question. 
 
8 APPARITIONS AND THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 
 
 But in many biological problems the conditions 
 are much simpler, and the questions at issue can 
 more readily be brought to the test of experiment. 
 Yet even so various unknown factors are included, 
 and the results obtained are correspondingly difficult 
 of interpretation. No question affects us more nearly 
 than the part played by the several kinds of food in 
 repairing the daily waste of the human body. Sta- 
 tistics and analyses have been collected of workhouse, 
 prison, and military dietaries ; innumerable experi- 
 ments have been conducted on fasting men and hyper- 
 trophied dogs and rabbits ; and yet the precise function 
 of nitrogenous substances in nutrition is still un- 
 determined. Again, the import of the experiments 
 made during the last few decades by Goltz, Hitzig, 
 Ferrier, Horsley, and others on the functions of various 
 areas of the brain substance, and the exact nature 
 and degree of localisation which those experiments 
 imply, are still matter of debate amongst the physi- 
 ologists concerned. 
 
 To take yet another instance, and one which has a 
 more intimate bearing upon the experiments to be 
 discussed. Some years ago Dr. Charlton Bastian 
 claimed to have proved experimentally the fact of 
 abiogenesis, or the generation of living organisms 
 from non-living matter. He had placed various 
 organic infusions in glass tubes, which were heated 
 to the boiling point and then hermetically sealed. 
 When the tubes were, after a certain interval, unsealed, 
 the contained liquid was found in some cases to be 
 swarming with bacteria. Believing that these micro- 
 organisms and their germs were invariably destroyed 
 by the heat of boiling water, Dr. Bastian saw no other 
 conclusion than that the bacteria were formed directly 
 from the infusion. His conclusions were not accepted 
 by the scientific world. But they were rejected, not 
 because the fact of abiogenesis was regarded as in 
 itself improbable, nor yet because Dr. Bastian was 
 unable to indicate by what steps or processes the 
 
SPECIAL GROUNDS OF CAUTION. 
 
 9 
 
 transformation of an infusion of hay into living 
 organisms of definite and relatively complex structure 
 could be conceived to take place, but because 
 Pasteur, Tyndall, and others showed that the germs 
 of some of these micro-organisms are capable of 
 sustaining for some minutes the heat of boiling 
 water ; and further, that when elaborate precautions 
 were taken, by filtering arid otherwise purifying the 
 air, tubes containing similar infusions would remain 
 sterile for an indefinite period. 
 
 The conclusion that under certain conditions 
 thought-transference may occur rests upon reason- 
 ing similar to that by which Dr. Bastian sought to 
 establish a theory of abiogenesis. Neither the organs 
 by which nor the medium through which the com- 
 munication is made can be indicated ; nor can we 
 even, with a few trifling exceptions, point to the 
 conditions which favour such communication. But 
 ignorance on these points, though a defect, is not a 
 defect which in the present state of experimental 
 psychology can be held seriously to weaken the 
 evidence, much less to invalidate the conclusion. 
 That conclusion rests on the elimination of all other 
 possible causes for the effect produced. But at this 
 point the analogy between the two researches fails. 
 Dr. Bastian's conjecture was based on a short series 
 of experiments conducted by a single experimenter 
 under one uniform set of conditions. At the first 
 breath of criticism the whole fabric collapsed. The 
 experiments here recorded represent the work of 
 many observers in many countries, carried on with 
 different subjects under a great variety of conditions. 
 The results have been before the world for about 
 twelve years, and during that period have been 
 subjected to much adverse and some instructive 
 criticism. But no alternative explanation which has 
 yet been suggested has attained even a momentary 
 plausibility. 
 
 Whether the elimination of all other possible causes 
 
IO APPARITIONS AND THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 
 
 is indeed complete, or whether, as in Dr. Bastian's 
 case, there may yet lurk in these experiments some 
 hitherto unsuspected source of error, the reader will 
 have the opportunity of judging for himself. To 
 assist him in forming a judgment some of the main 
 disturbing causes will be briefly indicated. 
 
 (i) Fraud, — In nearly all the experiments referred 
 to in this book the agent was himself concerned in 
 the inquiry as a matter of scientific interest. But it 
 necessarily happens on occasion that neither agent nor 
 percipient are by education and position absolutely 
 removed from suspicion of trickery in a matter 
 where trickery might to imperfectly educated persons 
 appear almost venial. If any such cases have been 
 admitted, it is because the precautions taken appear 
 to us to have been adequate. At the same time, the 
 investigators of the Society for Psychical Research 
 have come across some instances of fraud in cases 
 where they had grounds for assuming good faith, and 
 it may be useful, therefore, to illustrate some of the 
 less obvious methods of acquiring intelligence fraudu- 
 lently. The conditions of the experiment should of 
 course, as far as possible, preclude, even where there 
 is no ground for suspecting fraud, communication 
 between the percipient and the agent, or any one else 
 knowing the idea which it is sought to transfer. 
 
 In the autumn of 1888 some experiments were 
 conducted with a person named D., whose antecedents 
 afforded, it was thought, justification for the belief that 
 the claims which he put forward were genuine. D. 
 acted as agent, the percipient being a subject of his 
 own, a young woman called Miss N., who was appar- 
 ently in a light hypnotic sleep during the experiment. 
 It was soon discovered that the results were obtained 
 by means of a code formed from a combination of 
 Miss N.'s breathing with slight noises — a cough or the 
 creak of a boot — made by D. himself. I have seen a 
 somewhat similar code employed in Prince's Hall, 
 Piccadilly, where the conjurer stood in the middle of 
 
SPECIAL GROUNDS OF CAUTION. 
 
 II 
 
 the hall with a coin or other object in his hand, 
 a description of which he communicated to his 
 confederate on the platform by means of a series of 
 breathings, deep enough visibly to move his dress- 
 coat up and down on the surface of his white collar, 
 punctuated by slight movements of head or hand. 
 The novel feature in the first case, however, was that 
 the percipient herself furnished the groundwork of 
 the code, the punctuation alone being given by the 
 conjurer. A still more elaborate form of collusion is 
 described at length by Bonjean. 1 In this case the 
 subject, a young woman named Lully, appears to have 
 read the words to be conveyed after the fashion of a 
 deaf mute, by the motion of the lips of the showman. 
 Lully was apparently in a hypnotic trance, with the 
 eyes fast closed. Another form of fraud, since it does 
 not require the aid of a confederate, is perhaps worthy 
 of note. Some years ago a young Australian came 
 to this country with a reputation for "genuine thought- 
 reading," based on the successful mystification of some 
 members of a certain Colonial Legislature. The 
 writer had a few experiments with this person, in 
 which several small objects — a knife, a glass bottle, 
 etc. — placed in the full light of a shaded lamp, were 
 correctly named. The object was in each case placed 
 behind the back of the " Thought-reader/' who looked 
 intently at the writer's eyes, which were in turn fixed 
 upon the brightly illuminated object. Experiments 
 made under more usual conditions, not dictated by 
 the "Thought-reader," completely failed; and there 
 can be little doubt that the initial successes were due 
 to the "Thought-reader" seeing the image of the 
 object reflected in the agent's cornea. 
 
 (2) Hyperesthesia. — But, after all, it is rarely neces- 
 sary to take special precautions against fraud, for 
 there are dangers to be guarded against of a more 
 subtle kind. There are various, and as yet imperfectly 
 
 1 D Hypnotisme et la suggestion mentale. Germer Bailliere et Cie. 
 Paris, pp. 261-316. 
 
12 APPARITIONS AND THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 
 
 known methods of communication by which indica- 
 tions may be unconsciously given and as uncon- 
 sciously received. Thus, to take the last instance, it 
 is pretty certain that cornea-reading does not always 
 imply fraud, and that hints may be gained in all good 
 faith from any reflecting surface in the neighbour- 
 hood of the experimenter ; or the movements of 
 lips, larynx, and even hands and limbs may betray 
 the secret to eye or ear. We know little of the limits 
 of our sensory powers even in normal life ; and we 
 do know that in certain subconscious states — auto- 
 matic, hypnotic, somnambulic — these limits may be 
 greatly exceeded, and that indications so subtle as 
 frequently to escape the vigilance of trained observers 
 may be seized and interpreted by the hypnotic or 
 automatic subject. It is clear, therefore, that results 
 which it is possible to attribute to deliberate fraud 
 stand almost necessarily self-condemned. For if the 
 precautions taken by the investigators left such an 
 explanation open, much more were those precautions 
 insufficient to guard against the subtler modes of 
 communication referred to. It is not the friend whom 
 we know whose eyes must be closed and his ears 
 muffled, but the " Mr. Hyde," whose lurking presence 
 in each of us we are only now beginning to suspect. 
 
 There is a case recorded by M. Bergson, 1 in which 
 a hypnotised boy is said to have been able to state 
 correctly the number of the page in a book held by 
 the observer, by reading the corneal image of the 
 figures. The actual figures were three millimetres 
 high, and their corneal image is calculated by M. 
 Bergson to have been o.i mm., or about of an inch 
 in height ! In some other experiments conducted by 
 M. Bergson with the same subject the acuteness of 
 vision is said to have exceeded even this limit. In 
 another case, recorded by Dr. Sauvaire, 2 a hypnotised 
 
 1 Revue Philosophique, Nov. 1 887, quoted in Proceedings of the 
 Soc. Psych. Research, vol. iv. p. 532. 
 
 2 Revue Philosophique, March 1887. 
 
SPECIAL GROUNDS OF CAUTION. 1 3 
 
 subject was able to recognise the King of Clubs, face 
 downwards, in two different packs of cards. In the 
 first of these cases the results, which could not have 
 been attained by the senses under normal conditions, 
 must apparently be attributed to hyperaesthesia. 
 Instances, especially of auditory hyperaesthesia, are of 
 course quite familiar to those who have studied the 
 phenomena of hypnotism. In Dr. Sauvaire's case, 
 however, the power of distinguishing the cards by 
 touch may have been the result of practice. Mrs. 
 Verrall records {Proceedings Soc. Psych. Research, 
 vol. viii. p. 480) that she acquired such a power by 
 means of " a longish series of experiments and Mr. 
 Hudson, in Idle Days in Patagonia, tells of a gambler 
 who by careful training had developed the same 
 faculty in a very high degree. 
 
 It seems probable in the cases described by M. 
 Bergson and Dr. Sauvaire, and possible also in the 
 case of Mr. D.'s subject, that there was no intentional 
 deception, and that the hypnotised person was not 
 himself aware of the means by which his knowledge 
 was attained. 1 The same remark probably applies to 
 the following case, in which, though the conditions of 
 vision were certainly unusual, it seems not clear 
 whether the degree of success attained should be 
 attributed to abnormal sensibility of the eyes, or to 
 the facility acquired by long practice. In a series of 
 experiments at which the writer assisted, in 1884, an 
 illiterate youth named Dick was hypnotised, a penny 
 was placed over each eye, and the eyes and surround- 
 ing features were elaborately bandaged with strips of 
 sticking-plaster ; a handkerchief being bound over all. 
 Under these conditions Dick named correctly objects 
 held in front of him, even at a considerable distance, 
 a little above the level of his eyes. Normal vision 
 appeared to be impossible. Mr. R. Hodgson, how- 
 
 1 Mrs. Verrall states that after long practice she " lost all conscious- 
 ness of the means which enabled her to guess, and saw pictures of the 
 cards." 
 
14 APPARITIONS AND THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 
 
 ever, repeated the experiment upon himself, and 
 found after several trials that he also could see 
 objects, though fitfully and imperfectly, under the 
 same conditions, the channel of vision being a small 
 chink in the sticking-plaster on the line where it was 
 fastened to the brow. 
 
 (3) Muscle-reading. — From this last case we may 
 pass to the illustrations of " thought-reading " given 
 by professional conjurers and others, where it seems 
 clear that the skill exhibited in the interpretation of 
 unconscious movements and gestures is due rather 
 to long practice and careful observation than to any 
 abnormal extension of faculty. It hardly needs 
 saying that experiments in which contact is per- 
 mitted between the agent and percipient can rarely 
 be regarded as having evidential value. It has been 
 demonstrated again and again that with the fullest 
 intention of keeping the secret to themselves, most 
 " agents " in such circumstances are practically certain 
 to betray it to the professional thought-reader by 
 unconscious movements of some kind. Indeed, it is 
 difficult to place any limit to the degree of sus- 
 ceptibility to slight muscular impressions which may 
 be attained. A careful experimenter has assured the 
 writer that when acting as percipient in some experi- 
 ments with diagrams the slight movements of the 
 agent's hand resting upon her head gave her in one 
 case a clue to the figure thought of. And Mr. Stuart 
 Cumberland has exhibited feats still more marvellous 
 before kings and commoners. Nor is it necessary, 
 as already said, for successful muscle-reading that 
 there should be actual contact in all cases. The eye 
 or the ear can sometimes follow movements of the 
 lips or other parts of the body. But though we can 
 look for little evidence from experiments conducted 
 with contact, or under conditions which allow of 
 interpretation by gesture, etc., and their repetition in 
 this connection can rarely be expected to serve any 
 useful purpose, it seems worth pointing out that, if 
 
SPECIAL GROUNDS OF CAUTION. 
 
 15 
 
 telepathy is a fact, we should expect to find it oper- 
 ating not merely where, from the conditions of the 
 experiment, it must be presumed to be the sole source 
 of communication, but also as an auxiliary to other 
 more familiar modes of expression. It seems not 
 improbable, therefore, that some of the more startling 
 successes of the professional " thought-reader " and 
 some of the results obtained in the "willing game" 
 may be due to this cause. 
 
 (4) Thought -forms. — There remains one other 
 source of error to be guarded against. An image — 
 whether of an object, diagram, or name — which is 
 chosen by the agent may be correctly described by 
 the percipient simply because their minds are set 
 to move in the same direction. It must be remem- 
 bered that, however unexpected and spontaneous 
 they may appear, ideas do not come by chance, but 
 have their origin mostly in the previous experience of 
 the thinker. Persons living constantly in the same 
 physical and intellectual environment are apt to 
 present a close similarity in their ideas. It would not 
 even be prima facie evidence of thought-transference, 
 for instance, if husband and wife, asked to think of a 
 town or of an acquaintance, should select the same 
 name. And investigation has shown that our 
 thoughts move in grooves which are determined 
 for us by causes more deep-seated and more general 
 than the accident of particular circumstances. Thus 
 it is found that individuals will show a preference for 
 certain figures or certain numbers over others ; and 
 that the preference for some geometrical figures tends 
 to be tolerably constant. The American Society for 
 Psychical Research 1 made some interesting observa- 
 tions on this point in 1888. Blank cards were 
 issued to a large number of persons, with the request 
 that the recipients would draw on the card " ten 
 diagrams." 501 cards were returned, and the diagrams 
 inscribed on them were carefully tabulated. It was 
 1 Proceedings of the American Soc. Psych. Research, pp. 302 et sea. 
 
l6 APPARITIONS AND THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 
 
 found that of the 501 persons no less than 209 drew 
 circles, 174 squares, 160 equilateral triangles and 
 crosses, while three only drew wheels, two candle- 
 sticks, and one each a corkscrew, a ball, and a knife. 
 It was found that the simpler geometrical figures 1 
 occurred not only most frequently but as a general 
 rule early in each series of ten. It follows, therefore, 
 that in an experiment the success of the percipient 
 in reproducing a circle, a square, or a triangle raises 
 a much fainter presumption of thought-transference 
 than if the object reproduced had been a corkscrew 
 or a pine-apple. But so much was perhaps obvious 
 even without a detailed investigation. From a 
 similar analysis of the guesses made, it can be 
 shown that some percipients have decided preferences 
 amongst the simple numerals. And in the same way 
 it seems probable that others have a preference for 
 particular cards. An important illustration of the 
 working of the "number-habit" has been brought 
 forward by Professor E. C. Pickering of the Harvard 
 College Observatory, U.S.A. 2 A revision of part of 
 the Argelander Star-Chart had been undertaken 
 by several observatories, of which the Harvard Obser- 
 vatory was one. For the purposes of the revision the 
 assistant had the Argelander chart before him, whilst 
 the observer, who was in ignorance of the magnitude 
 assigned in the chart, made an independent estimate 
 of the magnitude of each star. If no thought-trans- 
 ference or other disturbing cause affected the result, 
 the amount of deviation of the later observations 
 from the earlier in each tenth of a degree of magni- 
 tude would be represented by a smooth curve. As a 
 matter of fact, it was found that the number of cases 
 
 1 No doubt the great preponderance of geometrical figures is in some 
 measure due to the use of the word " diagram," which in English 
 would probably suggest to most persons a geometrical diagram. But 
 possibly the word has a different shade of meaning in American. It is 
 certain too that a considerable proportion of the persons who filled in 
 the cards were acquainted with the object of the inquiry. 
 
 2 Proc. American Soc. Psych, Research, pp. 35 -43. 
 
SPECIAL GROUNDS OF CAUTION. 
 
 17 
 
 of complete agreement were much greater, with some 
 observers more than 50 per cent greater, than they 
 should have been on an estimate of the probabilities. 
 At first sight this excess of the actual over the 
 theoretical numbers suggested the action of thought- 
 transference between the assistant and the observer. 
 But Professor Pickering shows, on a further analysis 
 of the figures, that almost the whole of the excess was 
 due to the preference of both the earlier and the 
 later observers for 5 and 10 over all other fractions of 
 a degree. 
 
 The practical deduction from this investigation is 
 that in any experiment care should be taken to 
 exclude, as regards the agent at any rate, the opera- 
 tion of any diagram or number-habit. 1 If an object 
 is thought of, it should if possible be chosen by lot, 
 and should not be an object actually present in the 
 room. If a card, it should be drawn from the pack 
 at random ; if a number, from a receptacle containing 
 a definite series of numbers; if a diagram, it is pre- 
 ferable that it should be taken at random from a set 
 of previously-prepared drawings. It will be seen that 
 in the majority of the cases quoted in the four 
 succeeding chapters these precautions have been 
 observed. 
 
 1 It is not possible to eliminate the operation of such preferences in 
 the percipient. But if care be taken that the series of things to be 
 guessed is chosen arbitrarily, the only effect of even a decided prefer- 
 ence for particular cards, numbers, etc., on the part of the percipient 
 will be to lessen the number of coincidences due to thought-transference. 
 
 2 
 
18 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 EXPERIMENTAL TRANSFERENCE OF SIMPLE SEN- 
 SATIONS IN THE NORMAL STATE. 
 
 It is somewhat remarkable that the facts of thought- 
 transference should only have attracted serious atten- 
 tion within the last two decades. With waking 
 percipients, indeed, such phenomena do not seem to 
 occur unsought with sufficient frequency, or — if we 
 leave on one side for the moment telepathic hallu- 
 cinations — on a sufficiently striking scale to afford 
 evidence of any transmission of thought or sensation 
 otherwise than through the familiar channels. But 
 the hypnotic state appears to offer peculiar facilities 
 for such transmission, and hypnotism, under the name 
 of mesmerism, has now been closely studied by 
 numerous observers for upwards of a century. The 
 earlier French observers, 1 indeed, occasionally recorded 
 instances of what appears to have been thought- 
 transference between the mesmerist and his subject. 
 But these facts were observed by the way, in the 
 search for phenomena of another kind ; and no 
 attempt appears to have been made to follow up the 
 clue by means of direct experiment. Even the 
 English observers of 1840 and onwards, though 
 familiar with what they termed "community of 
 sensation " between the operator and his subject, 
 
 1 See, for instance, Puysegur, Memoires pour servir a PStablisse- 
 ment du magnetisme, pp. 22, 29 et seq., and Petetin, Electricite 
 Animate) p. 127, etc. (quoted by Dr. Ochorowicz, De la Suggestion 
 mentale). 
 
TRANSFERENCE IN NORMAL STATE. 19 
 
 appear never to have realised its possible significance. 
 Dr. Elliotson, for instance, describes in the Zoist (vol. 
 v. pp. 242-245) some experiments in which a lady, 
 mesmerised by himself, was able to indicate correctly 
 the taste of salt, cinnamon, sugar, ginger, water, and 
 pepper, as Dr. Elliotson placed successively these 
 various substances in his mouth. But he seems to have 
 recorded the results chiefly from curiosity, and to have 
 regarded them as of little scientific interest compared 
 with the stiffening of a limb, or the painless perform- 
 ance of an operation under mesmeric anaesthesia. 
 Dr. Esdaile {Practical Mesmerism, p. 125), Mr. C. 
 H. Townshend {Facts in Mesmerism, pp. 68, 72, 76, 
 etc., etc.), Professor Gregory {Animal Magnetism, p. 
 231), and other writers of that time, record similar 
 observations. But the subject seems to have been 
 crowded out, on the one hand, with the more cautious 
 observers, by the growing importance of hypnotism 
 as an anaesthetic and a curative agency, on the other 
 by the greater marvels of " clairvoyance " and " spirit" 
 communications. 
 
 It was Professor Barrett, of the Royal College of 
 Science, Dublin, who, in a paper read before the 
 British Association at Glasgow in 1 876, first isolated 
 the phenomenon from its somewhat dubious surround- 
 ings, and drew public attention to its importance. Up 
 to that time "community of sensation " or thought- 
 transference seems to have been known only as a rare 
 and fitful accompaniment of the hypnotic trance. But 
 in the course of the correspondence arising out of his 
 paper Professor Barrett learnt of several instances 
 where similar phenomena had been observed in the 
 waking state. The Willing game was just then 
 coming into fashion, and cases had been observed in 
 which the thing willed had been performed without 
 contact between the performer and the person willing, 
 and apparently without the possibility of any normal 
 means of communication between them. Later, in 
 the years 1881-82, a long series of experiments, in 
 
pO APPARITIONS AND THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 
 
 which Professor Sidgwick, the late Professor Balfour 
 Stewart, the late Edmund Gurney, Mr. F. W. H. 
 Myers and others joined with Professor Barrett, 
 seemed to establish the possibility of a new mode of 
 communication. And these earlier results have been 
 confirmed by further experiments continued down to 
 the present time by many observers both in this 
 country and abroad. In the present chapter some 
 account will be given of experiments in the transfer- 
 ence of simple ideas and sensations performed with 
 percipients in the ordinary waking state. The next 
 chapter will deal with similar results obtained with 
 hypnotised persons. In Chapters IV. and V. results 
 of a more complicated or unusual character will be 
 described and discussed. 
 
 Transference of Tastes. 
 
 ( The particular form of telepathy which first attracted 
 attention to the whole subject, the transmission to the 
 percipient of impressions x of taste and pain experienced 
 by the agent, appears to have been observed in the 
 normal state very rarely. One such case may be 
 here quoted. In the years 1883-85 Mr. Malcolm 
 Guthrie, J.P., of Liverpool, the then head of a large 
 drapery business in that city, conducted a long series 
 of experiments with two of his employees, Miss E. 
 and Miss R. In September 1883 Mr. Guthrie, Mr. 
 Edmund Gurney, and Mr. Myers, indicated respec- 
 tively by the initials M. G., E. G., and M., had a series 
 of trials with these percipients in the transference of 
 tastes. The percipients, who were fully awake, were 
 blindfolded ; the packets or bottles containing the 
 substances experimented upon were placed beyond 
 the range of possible vision ; and in the case of 
 strongly smelling substances, either at a distance or 
 outside the room ; and other precautions were taken 
 by the agents, by keeping the mouth closed and 
 turning the head away, etc., in order that the per- 
 
TRANSFERENCE IN NORMAL STATE. 
 
 21 
 
 cipients should not become aware by the sense of 
 smell of the nature of the substance experimented 
 with. Strict silence was of course observed. It may- 
 be conceded that when all possible precautions are 
 taken, experiments with sapid substances must be 
 inconclusive when the agent is in the same room with 
 the percipient ; since nearly all such substances have 
 an odour, however faint. In view, however, of the ex- 
 treme sensibility already demonstrated (see below, pp. 
 23, etc.) of these particular percipients to transferred 
 impressions of other kinds, it seems probable that the 
 results in this case also were actually due to telepathy. 
 The alternative explanation is to attribute to persons 
 in the normal waking state a degree of hyperaesthesia 
 for which we have no exact parallel even in the records 
 of hypnotism. For to persons of normal susceptibility 
 the odour of a small quantity, e.g. of salt or alum, in 
 the mouth of another person at a distance of two or 
 three feet would certainly be quite inappreciable. 
 
 No. 1. — By Mr. Guthrie and others. 
 
 September 3, 1883. 
 
 EXPT. TASTER. PERCIPIENT. SUBSTANCE. ANSWERS GIVEN. 
 
 1 .. M E Vinegar " A sharp and nasty taste." 
 
 2 .. M E Mustard "Mustard." 
 
 3 .. M It Do "Ammonia." 
 
 4 .. M E Sugar "I still taste the hot taste of 
 
 the mustard." 
 
 September i. 
 
 5 .. E. G. &M. .. E Worcestershire sauce " Worcestershire sauce." 
 
 6 .. M. G R Do. "Vinegar." 
 
 7 .. E. G. &M... E Port wine "Between eau de Cologne and 
 
 beer." 
 
 8 .. M. G R Do " Raspberry vinegar." 
 
 9 .. E. G. & M. .. E Bitter aloes " Horrible and bitter." 
 
 10 .. M. G R Alum "A taste of ink— of iron- of 
 
 vinegar. I feel it on my 
 lips— it is as if I had been 
 eating alum." 
 
 11 . . M. G E Alum (E. perceived that M. G. was 
 
 not tasting bitter aloes, as 
 E. G. and M. supposed, 
 but something different. 
 No distinct perception on 
 account of the persistence 
 of the bitter taste.) 
 
22 APPARITIONS AND THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 
 
 EXPT. TASTER. PERCIPIENT. SUBSTANCE. ANSWERS GIVEN. 
 
 12 .. E. G. & M... E Nutmeg " Peppermint— no— what you 
 
 put in puddings — nut- 
 meg." 
 
 13 .. M. G R Do "Nutmeg." 
 
 14 .. E. G. & M. . . E Sugar Nothing perceived. 
 
 15 . . M. G R Do Nothing perceived. 
 
 (Sugar should be tried at an 
 earlier stage in the series, 
 as, after the aloes, we 
 could scarcely taste it 
 ourselves.) 
 
 16 . . E. G. & M. . . E Cayenne pepper " Mustard." 
 
 17 .. M. G R Do. " Cayenne pepper." 
 
 (After the cayenne we were 
 unable to taste anything 
 further that evening.) 
 
 Throughout the next series of experiments the sub- 
 stances were kept outside the room in which the 
 percipients were seated. 
 
 September 5. 
 
 Carbonate of Soda. . . Nothing perceived. 
 
 Caraway seeds "It feels like meal— like a 
 
 seed loaf— caraway seeds." 
 (The substance of the seeds 
 seems to be perceived be- 
 fore their taste.) 
 
 Cloves "Cloves." 
 
 Citric acid Nothing felt. 
 
 Do "Salt." 
 
 18 . 
 
 . E. G. & M. . 
 
 . E 
 
 19 . 
 
 . M. G 
 
 , R 
 
 20 . 
 
 . E. G. & M. . 
 
 . E 
 
 21 . 
 
 
 E 
 
 22 . 
 
 . M. G 
 
 . R 
 
 23 . 
 
 . E. G. & M. . . 
 
 E 
 
 24 . 
 
 . M. G 
 
 . R 
 
 25 . 
 
 . E. G. & M. . 
 
 . E 
 
 26 . 
 
 . M. G 
 
 R 
 
 27 . 
 
 . E. G. & M. . 
 
 . E 
 
 28 . 
 
 . M. G 
 
 . R 
 
 29 . 
 
 . E. G. &M.. 
 
 . E 
 
 30 . 
 
 . M. G 
 
 . R 
 
 Cloves "Cinnamon." 
 
 Acid jujube " Pear drop." 
 
 Do "Something hard, which is 
 
 giving way— acid jujube." 
 
 Candied ginger " Something sweet and hot." 
 
 Do. " Almond toff y." 
 
 (M. G. took this ginger in the 
 dark, and was some time 
 before he realised that it 
 was ginger.) 
 Home-made Noyau.. "Salt." 
 
 Do. ,. "Port wine." 
 
 (This was by far the most 
 strongly smelling of the 
 substances tried; the scent 
 of kernels being hard to 
 conceal. Yet it was named 
 by E. as salt.) 
 
 31 .. E. G. &M... E Bitter aloes "Bitter." 
 
 32 . . M. G R Do Nothing felt. 
 
 (Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Eesearch t vol. ii. pp. 3, 4.) 
 
 Further experiments in this direction are much to 
 be desired. But apart from the difficulty above re- 
 ferred to, experiments of the kind are liable to be 
 
TRANSFERENCE IN NORMAL STATE. 23 
 
 tedious and inconclusive because of the inability oi r 
 most persons to discriminate accurately between* one 
 taste and another, when the guidance of all other 
 senses is lacking. To conduct such experiments to a 
 successful issue, it would probably be necessary that 
 the percipients should have some preliminary training 
 to enable them to distinguish by taste alone betwcc/i 
 various salts and pharmaceutical preparations. 
 
 Transference of Pains, 
 
 Experiments in the transference of pains are not at- 
 tended with the same difficulties, nor open to the same 
 evidential objections ; and some interesting trials of 
 this kind with one of the same percipients, Miss R., 
 met with a fair amount of success. The experiments 
 were carried on at intervals, interspersed with experi- 
 ments of other kinds, by Mr. Guthrie at Liverpool 
 during nine months in 1884 and 1885. The per- 
 cipient on each occasion was blindfolded and seated 
 with her back towards the rest of the party, who each 
 pinched or otherwise injured themselves in the same 
 part of the body at the same time. The agents in 
 these experiments — the whole series of which is here 
 recorded — were three or more of the following : — Mr. 
 Guthrie, Professor Herdman, Dr. Hicks, Dr. Hyla 
 Greves, Mr. R. C. Johnson, F.R.A.S., Mr. Birchall, 
 Miss Redmond, and on one occasion another lady. 
 The results are given in the following table : — 
 
 No. 2. — By Mr. Guthrie and others. 
 
 1. — Back of left hand pricked. Rightly localised. 
 
 2. — Lobe of left ear pricked. Rightly localised. 
 
 3. — Left wrist pricked. "Is it in the left hand?" pointing to 
 
 the back near the little finger. 
 
 4. — Third finger of left hand tightly bound round with wire. 
 
 A lower joint of that finger was guessed. 
 
 5. —Left wrist scratched with pins. " Is it in the left wrist, like 
 
 being scratched?" 
 
 6. — Left ankle pricked. Rightly localised 
 
24 APPARITIONS AND THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 
 
 7. — Spot behind left ear pricked. No result. 
 
 8. — Right knee pricked. Rightly localised. 
 
 9. — Right shoulder pricked. Rightly localised. 
 
 10. — Hands burned over gas. " Like a pulling pain . . . then 
 
 tingling, like cold and hot alternately," localised by 
 gesture only. 
 
 1 1. — End of tongue bitten. " Is it the lip or the tongue ?" 
 
 12. — Palm of left hand pricked. " Is it a tingling pain in the 
 
 left hand here ? " placing her finger on the palm of 
 the left hand. 
 
 13. — Back of neck pricked. " Is it a pricking of the neck?" 
 
 14. — Front of left arm above elbow pricked. Rightly localised. 
 
 15. — Spot just above left ankle pricked. Rightly localised. 
 
 16. — Spot just above right wrist pricked. "I am not quite sure, 
 
 but I feel a pain in the right arm, from the thumb up- 
 wards to above the wrist." 
 
 17. — Inside of left ankle pricked. Outside of left ankle guessed. 
 
 18. — Spot beneath right collar-bone pricked. The exactly cor- 
 
 responding spot on the left side guessed. 
 
 19. — Back hair pulled. No result. 
 
 20. — Inside of right wrist pricked. Right foot guessed. 
 
 (Proc, S.P.R., vol. iii. pp. 424-452.) 
 
 Transference of Sounds. 
 
 It is noteworthy that there is little experimental 
 evidence for the transmission of an auditory impres- 
 sion. Occasionally, in trials with names and cards 
 the nature of the mistakes made has seemed to in- 
 dicate audition, as when, e.g., three is given for Queen 
 or ace for eight. But obviously a long series of ex- 
 periments and a long series of mistakes would be 
 necessary to afford material for any conclusion. 
 Sometimes a percipient has stated that he heard 
 the name of the thing thought of ; as, for instance, in 
 a case recorded in Chapter V., where the percipient 
 " heard " the word gloves before " seeing " a vision of 
 them. But such cases appear to be rare. Experi- 
 ments with a view to test the transmission of actual 
 sounds could of course only be carried out under 
 special conditions, of which one would be the separa- 
 tion of the agent from the percipient by a considerable 
 
TRANSFERENCE IN NORMAL STATE. 
 
 intervening space — and this condition is, of itself, 
 found to interfere with success. Some evidence, 
 indeed, of a quasi-experimental character for the 
 transference of musical sounds at a distance will be 
 given in a later chapter (Chapter V., No. 33 ). Ex- 
 periments with imagined sounds appear to have been 
 rarely tried, or at least, successful results have rarely 
 been recorded. 1 Occasionally indeed experimenters 
 have put on record that in thinking of an object they 
 have mentally repeated the name of the object as well 
 as pictured the object itself, and there are a few cases 
 where the general idea of the object thought of 
 appears to have reached the percipient before the 
 outlines of the form, which may possibly be ex- 
 plained as due to the reception of an auditory before 
 a visual impression. 2 
 
 This lack of evidence for auditory transmission is 
 no doubt largely due to a desire on the part of 
 experimenters in the first instance to make the proof 
 of actual thought-transference as complete as possible. 
 Experiments with sounds would impose a greater 
 strain upon the agents, since in most cases they must 
 be imagined sounds. Moreover, in such experiments 
 it would be at once more difficult to estimate with 
 precision degrees of success, and to preserve a per- 
 manent record of the result ; and finally, the subject 
 thought of would be more easily communicated either 
 fraudulently, by a code, or by unconscious indications 
 on the part of the agent. In this connection it is 
 possibly significant that whilst in morbid conditions 
 auditory hallucinations are much commoner than 
 visual, the proportion appears to be reversed with 
 
 1 Some trials were made by Mr. Guthrie with imagined tunes. But 
 they were in no instance successful without contact ; and as obviously 
 the chances of unconscious indications being given, in any case con- 
 siderable where tunes are in question, are much increased by contact, 
 we should not be justified in regarding successful results, under such 
 conditions, as even prima facie due to Thought-transference. (See 
 Proc. S.P.R.) vol. iii. pp. 426, 447, 448.) 
 
 2 See below, Chapter III. — Mrs. Sidgwick's experiments. 
 
26 APPARITIONS AND THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 
 
 telepathic hallucinations. It seems probable that the 
 apparent infrequency of auditory transmission may 
 be in part due to the fact that in the modern world 
 the sense of vision is for educated persons the habitual 
 channel for precise or important information. To the 
 Greek in the time of Socrates no doubt the ear was 
 the main avenue for all knowledge; it was the ear that 
 received not merely the current talk of the market- 
 place and the gymnasium, but the oratory of the 
 law-court, the literature of the stage, and the philo- 
 sophy of the Schools. But for modern civilised 
 societies the newspaper and the libraries have placed 
 the eye in a position of unquestioned pre-eminence. 
 It seems likely therefore, apart from all defects in 
 such evidence, that the agent would find a greater 
 difficulty, as a rule, in calling up a vivid representation 
 of a sound than of a vision ; and that the percipient 
 would experience a corresponding difference in the 
 reception and discrimination of the two classes of 
 impressions. 
 
 Transference of Ideas not definitely classed. 
 Experiments by PROFESSOR RlCHET and others. 
 
 In the following cases,\where the exact nature of 
 the impression received was not apparently consciously 
 classified by the percipient, it may be presumed to 
 have been either of a visual or an auditory nature?!) 
 M. Charles Richet {Revue Philosophique, Dec. 1884, 
 "La suggestion mentale et le calcul des probabilites ") 
 conducted a series of experiments in guessing the 
 suits of cards drawn at random from a pack. 2927 
 trials were made : ten persons besides M. Richet 
 himself — who acted sometimes as agent and some- 
 times as percipient — taking part in the experiments. 
 In the 2927 trials the suit was correctly named 789 
 times, the most probable number of correct guesses 
 being 732. \ A similar series of trials was conducted, 
 
TRANSFERENCE IN NORMAL STATE. 2j7 
 
 on Edmund Gurney's initiative, by some members 
 of the S.P.R. and others. There were 17 series, 
 containing 17,653 trials, and 4760 successes; the 
 theoretically probable number, on the assumption 
 that the results were due to chance, being 4413. 
 The probability for some cause other than chance de- 
 duced from this result is .999,999,98, which represents 
 perhaps a higher degree of probability than the in- 
 habitants of this hemisphere are justified in attaching 
 to the belief that the ensuing night will be followed 
 by another day. 1 In a similar series of experiments 
 carried out under the direction of the American S.P.R. 
 the proportion of successes was little higher than the 
 theoretically probable number. 2 But in the absence 
 of details as to the conditions under which the ex- 
 periments were made, no unfavourable inference can 
 fairly be drawn from these results. At any rate some 
 very remarkable results were obtained later, in a 
 series of trials made on the lines laid down by the 
 committee of the American Society. The agent in 
 this case was Mrs. J F. Brown, the percipient Nellie 
 Gallagher, " a domestic lately come from the county 
 of Northumberland, in New Brunswick." The ex- 
 periments appear to have been carried out with great 
 care, and the results are recorded and analysed at 
 length (Proc. Am. S.P.R., pp. 322-349). 3000 trials 
 were made in guessing the numbers from o to 9 or 
 from 1 to 10 inclusive. The order of the digits in 
 each set of 100 trials was determined by drawing lots. 
 The agent sat at one side of a table, the percipient at 
 the other side. At first the percipient sat facing the 
 
 1 The calculation is by Professor F. Y. Edgeworth. (See Proc. 
 S.P.R., vol. iii. p. 190.) Of course the statement in the text must not 
 be taken as indicating the belief of Mr. Edgeworth or the writer or any 
 one else that the above figures demonstrate Thought-transference as the 
 cause of the results attained. The results may conceivably have been 
 due to some error of observation or of reporting. But the figures are 
 sufficient to prove, what is here claimed for them, that some cause 
 must be sought for the results other than chance. 
 
 2 Proc. American S.P.R., pp. 17 et seq. 
 
28 APPARITIONS AND THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 
 
 agent, but after about tooo trials had been made her 
 back was turned to the table — and this position was 
 continued to the end. The paper containing the 
 numbers to be guessed was placed in the agent's lap, 
 out of sight of the percipient. There was no mirror 
 in the room. In the result the digits were correctly- 
 named 584 times, or nearly twice the probable num- 
 ber, 300. The proportion of the successes steadily 
 increased, from 175 in the first batch of IOOO trials, to 
 190 in the second, and 219 in the third batch. 
 
 No. 3. — By Dr. Ochorowicz. 
 
 In the following set of experiments, made by Dr. 
 Ochorowicz, ex-Professor of Psychology and Natural 
 Philosophy at the University of Lemberg, described 
 in his book La Suggestion mentale (pp. 69, 75, 76), 
 there are not sufficient indications in most cases to 
 enable a judgment to be formed as to the special 
 form of sense-impression made on the percipient's 
 mind. The percipient was a Madame D., 70 years 
 of age. She had been shown to be amenable to 
 hypnotism, but during these experiments she was in 
 a normal condition. She is described as being of 
 strong constitution and in good health ; intelligent 
 above the average, well read, and accustomed to 
 literary work. The first experiments with Madame 
 D. are not quoted here, not having been conducted, 
 as Dr. Ochorowicz explains, under strict conditions. 
 The objects thought of had been selected by the 
 agent, instead of being taken haphazard, and the 
 choice had frequently been directly suggested by his 
 surroundings. It seemed possible, therefore, to ex- 
 plain the results as due to an unconscious association 
 of ideas common to agent and percipient. Dr. 
 Ochorowicz, however, has shown by his careful 
 analysis of the experiments recorded in the earlier 
 chapters of his book that he is fully aware of the 
 risk of error from this and other causes, and in the 
 
TRANSFERENCE IN NORMAL STATE. 29 
 
 series of the 2nd May and the following days he tells 
 us that adequate precautions were taken. 
 
 An Object. 
 
 36. A bust of M. N. 
 
 37. A fan. 
 
 38. A key. 
 
 39. A hand holding a ring. 
 
 Portrait ... of a man ... a 
 
 bust. 
 Something round. 
 Something made of lead . . . 
 
 of bronze ... it is iron. 
 Something shining, a diamond 
 
 40. Acid. 
 
 41. A square. 
 
 42. A circle. 
 
 43- M. 
 44. D. 
 45- J- 
 
 46. B. 
 
 47. O. 
 
 48. Jan. 
 
 A Taste. 
 I Sweet. 
 
 A Diagram. 
 
 I Something irregular. 
 I A triangle ... a circle. 
 
 A Letter. 
 
 M. 
 D. 
 J. 
 
 A, X, R, B. 
 W, A ; no, it is an O. 
 J ... (go on !) Jan. 
 
 Third Series, May 6th, 1885. — Twenty-five experiments were 
 made, of which, unfortunately, I have kept no record, except of 
 the three following, which impressed me most. (The subject 
 had her back to us, held the pencil and wrote whatever came 
 into her head. We touched her back lightly, keeping our eyes 
 fixed on the letters we had written.) 
 
 49. Brabant. 
 
 50. Paris. 
 
 51. Telephone. 
 
 Bra ... (I made a mental 
 effort to help the subject, 
 without speaking.) 
 
 Brabant. 
 
 P . . . aris. 
 
 T . . . elephone. 
 
 Fourth Series, May 8th. — Same conditions. 
 
 52. Z. 
 
 53. B. 
 
 54- T. 
 
 55- N. 
 
 56. P. 
 
 57. Y. 
 
 L, P, K, J. 
 B. 
 
 S, T, F. 
 M, N. 
 R, Z, A. 
 V, Y. 
 
30 APPARITIONS AND THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 
 
 Fourth Series — continued, 
 
 58. E. 
 
 59. Gustave. 
 
 60. Duch. 
 
 61. Ba. 
 
 62. No. 
 
 E. 
 
 F, J, Gabriel. 
 
 E, O. 
 B, A. 
 
 F, K, O. 
 
 A Number, 
 
 63. 44. I 6,8, 12. 
 
 64. 2. I 7, 5, 9. 
 
 (I told my assistant to imagine the look of the number when 
 written, and not its sound.) 
 
 65. 3. 8, 3. 
 
 66. 7. 7. 
 
 67. 8. 8 ; no, o, 6, 9. 
 
 Then followed thirteen trials with fantastic figures, 
 details of which Dr. Ochorowicz does not record. 
 He tells us, however, that only five of the representa- 
 tions presented even a general resemblance to the 
 originals. 
 
 It is to be observed that in this series of experi- 
 ments contact was not completely excluded in all the 
 trials. But if Dr. Ochorowicz's memory may be 
 relied upon for the statement that the agent looked 
 at the original letters and diagrams, and not at the 
 percipient's attempts at reproducing them, the hypo- 
 thesis of involuntary muscular guidance must be 
 severely strained to account for the results. At any 
 rate, in the three remaining trials in this series it 
 seems clear that muscle-reading is inadequate as an 
 explanation. 
 
 A person thought of. 
 
 Subject. 
 
 68. The percipient. 
 
 69. M. D . 
 
 Answer. 
 
 M. O ; no, it's myself. 
 
 M. D . 
 
 An Ima^e. 
 
 70. We pictured to ourselves 
 a crescent moon. M. 
 
 P on a background 
 
 of clouds, I in a clear 
 dark blue sky. 
 
 I see passing clouds ... a 
 light ... (in a satisfied 
 tone) — it is the moon. 
 
TRANSFERENCE IN NORMAL STATE. 3 1 
 
 Transference of Visual Images. 
 No. 4.— By Dr. Blair Thaw. 
 
 The experiments which follow were made by Dr. 
 Blair Thaw, M.D., of New York. The series quoted, 
 which took place on the 28th of April 1892, com- 
 prises all the trials in which Dr. Thaw was himself 
 the percipient. Dr. Thaw had his eyes blindfolded 
 and his ears muffled, and the agent, Mrs. Thaw, and 
 Mr. M. H. Wyatt, who was present but took no part 
 in the agency, kept silent, except when it was neces- 
 sary to state whether an object, card, number, or 
 colour was to be guessed. The objects were in all 
 cases actually looked at by the agent, the "colour" 
 being a coloured disc, and the numbers being printed 
 on separate cards. 1 
 
 1st Object. Silk Pincushion, in form of Orange-Red Apple, 
 quite round. — Percipient : A Disc. When asked what colour, 
 said, Red or Ora?tge. When asked what object, named 
 Pi?icushion. 
 
 2nd Object. A Short Lead Pencil, nearly covered by the 
 nickel cover. Never seen by percipient. Percipient : Some- 
 thing white or light. A card. I thought of Mr. Wy at? s silver 
 pencil. 
 
 $rd Object. A DARK VIOLET in Mr. Wyatt's button-hole, 
 but not known to be in the house by percipient. Percipient : 
 Something dark. Not very big. Longish. Narrow. Soft. 
 It can't be a cigarette because it is dark brown. A dirty colour. 
 Asked about smell, said : Not strongs but what you might call 
 pungent; a clean smell. 
 
 Percipient had not noticed smell before, though sitting by 
 Mr. Wyatt some time, but when afterwards told of the violet 
 knew that this was the odour noticed in experiment. 
 
 Asked to spell name, percipient said : Phrygian, Phrigid, or 
 first letter V if not Ph. 
 
 4th Object. Watch, dull silver with filigree. Percipient: 
 Yellow or dirty ivory. Not very big. Like carving on it. 
 Watch is opened by agent, and percipient is asked what was 
 done. Percipient says: You opened it It is shaped like a 
 
 1 See Dr. Thaw's paper, Proc. Soc. Psych. Research, vol. viii. pp. 
 422 et seq. 
 
32 APPARITIONS AND THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 
 
 butterfly. Percipient held finger and thumb of each hand 
 making figure much like that of opened watch. Percipient 
 asked to spell it, said : I get r-i-n-g zvith a W at first. 
 
 King Spades. — Spades. Spot in middle a?id spots outside. 
 7 Spades, g Spades. 
 
 4 Clubs.— 4 Clubs. 
 
 5 Spades. — j Diamonds. 
 
 Numbers out of Nine Digits. 
 
 4. — Percipient said : // stands up straight. 4. 
 6. — Percipient said: Those two are too much alike, o?ily a 
 little gap in one of them. It is either 5 or 6. 
 
 1. — Percipient said : Cover tip that upper part if it is the 1. 
 It is either 7 or 1. 
 
 2. —p, 8. 
 
 [From acting so much as agent in previous trials, I knew the 
 shapes of these numbers printed on cardboard, and as agent 
 found the 5 and 6 too much alike. After looking hard at one of 
 them I can hardly tell the difference, and always cover the 
 upper projection of the 1 because it is so much like a 7. 
 
 The numbers were printed on separate pieces of cardboard, 
 and there were about a hundred in the box, being made for 
 some game.] 
 
 Colours, chosen at Random. 
 
 Chosen. 1st Guess. 2nd Guess. 
 
 Bright Red ... Bright Red. 
 
 Light Green ... Light Green. 
 
 Yellow Dark Blue Yellow. 
 
 Bright Yellow ... Bright Yellow. 
 
 Dark Red ... Blue Dark Red. 
 
 Dark Blue ... Orange Dark Blue. 
 
 Orange Green Heliotrope. 
 
 The percipient himself told the agents to change character of 
 object after each actual failure, thus getting new sensations. 
 
 Percipient was told to go into next room and get something. 
 
 1st Object. Silver Inkstand chosen. — Percipient says . 
 / think of something, but it is too bright and easy. It is the 
 silver inksta?td. 
 
 Percipient told to get something in next room. 
 
 2nd Object. A Glass Candlestick. — Percipient went to 
 right corner of the room and to the cabinet with the object on 
 it, but could not distinguish which object. 
 
TRANSFERENCE IN NORMAL STATE. 
 
 33 
 
 Percipient had handkerchief off to be able to walk, but was 
 not followed by agents, and did not see them. Agents found 
 percipient standing with hands over candlestick undecided. 
 
 From the percipient's descriptions it would seem 
 that the impression here was of a visual nature, 
 though Dr. Thaw himself says, " I cannot describe 
 my sensation as a visualisation of any kind. It 
 seemed rather to be by some wholly subjective pro- 
 cess that I knew what the agents were looking at." 
 It is not always, however, an easy task to analyse 
 one's own sensations ; and, on the whole, it seems 
 more probable that there was visualisation, but of a 
 very faint and ideal kind. 
 
 No. 5. — By Mr. Malcolm Guthrie. 
 
 Reference has already been made to the long series 
 of experiments carried on during the years 1883-85 
 by Mr. Malcolm Guthrie of Liverpool. During a 
 great part of the series he was assisted by Mr. James 
 Birchall, Hon. Sec. of the Liverpool Literary and 
 Philosophical Society. Professor Oliver Lodge, 
 Edmund Gurney, Professor Herdman, and others 
 co-operated from time to time. Throughout there 
 were two percipients only, Miss R. and Miss E. The 
 experiments were conducted and the results recorded 
 with great care and thoroughness ; and the whole 
 series, in its length, its variety, and its completeness, 
 forms perhaps the most important single contribution 
 to the records of experimental thought-transference 
 in the normal state. 1 Summing up, in July 1885, the 
 results attained, Mr. Guthrie writes : — 
 
 "We have now a record of 713 experiments, and I recently set 
 myself the task of classifying them into the 4 classes of success- 
 ful, partially successful, misdescriptions, and failures. I en- 
 
 1 Records of these experiments will be found in the Proc. of the Soc. 
 Psych. Research, vol. i. pp. 263-283 ; vol. ii. pp. 1-5, 24-42, 189-200; 
 vol. iii. pp. 424-452. 
 
 3 
 
34 APPARITIONS AND THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 
 
 deavoured to work it out in what I thought a reasonable way, 
 but I experienced much difficulty in assigning to its proper 
 column each experiment we made. This, however, is a task 
 which each student of the subject will be able to undertake for 
 himself according to his own judgment. I do not submit my 
 summary as a basis for calculation of probability. A few 
 successful experiments of a certain kind carry greater weight 
 with them than a large number of another kind ; for some 
 experiments are practically beyond the region of guesses. . . . 
 
 " The following is a summary of the work done, classified to 
 the best of my judgment : — 
 
 First Series. 
 
 Experiments and Conditions. 
 
 Total. 
 
 Nothing 
 perceived. 
 
 Complete. 
 
 Partial. 
 
 Misdescrip- 
 tions. 
 
 Visual — Letters, figures, and cards — 
 Contact 
 
 Visual — Letters, figures, and cards — 
 Non-contact - 
 
 Visual — Objects, colours, etc. — Contact- 
 Do. do. Non-contact- 
 
 Imagined visual — Non-contact 
 
 Imagined numbers and names — Contact 
 and Non-contact - 
 
 Pains — Contact 
 
 Tastes and smells — Contact - 
 
 26 
 
 16 
 19 
 
 38 
 18 
 
 39 
 52 
 
 94 
 
 2 
 O 
 
 6 
 4 
 5 
 
 11 
 10 
 19 
 
 17 
 
 9 
 7 
 
 28 
 8 
 
 12 
 
 30 
 42 
 
 4 
 
 2 
 
 4 
 6 
 2 
 
 6 
 
 9 
 20 
 
 3 
 
 5 
 2 
 0 
 3 
 
 10 
 
 3 
 
 13 
 
 Diagrams — Contact - 
 Do. Non-contact 
 
 302 
 
 37 
 118 
 
 57 
 7 
 6 
 
 153 
 18 
 
 66 
 
 53 
 6 
 
 23 
 
 39 
 6 
 
 23 
 
 
 457 
 
 70 
 
 237 
 
 82 
 
 68 
 
 "There were also 40 diagrams for experimental evenings with 
 strangers, in series of sixes and sevens, all misdrawn, and not 
 fairly to be reckoned in the above. 
 
 457 experiments under proper conditions. 
 70 nothing perceived. 
 
 337 
 
 319 wholly or partially correct ; 68 misdescriptions = 18 per 
 cent." 
 
TRANSFERENCE IN NORMAL STATE. 35 
 
 In the second series there were 123 trials; in 15 
 cases no impression was received, and in 35 cases, or 
 32 per cent, of the remainder, an incorrect description 
 was given. In the third series, of 133 trials there 
 were 24 in which no impression was received and 40 
 failures: proportion of failures = 37 per cent. Mr. 
 Guthrie attributes this gradual decline in the propor- 
 tion of successes to the difficulty experienced by both 
 agents and percipients in maintaining the original 
 lively interest in the proceedings. 
 
 No. 6. — By Professor Lodge, F.R.S. 
 
 Subjoined is a detailed description of experiments 
 made on two evenings in 1884, recorded by Professor 
 Lodge, 1 which leaves no room for doubt that the 
 impressions received in this instance by the percipient 
 were of a visual nature. The agent on the first 
 evening was Mr. James Birchall, who held the hand 
 of the percipient, Miss R. The only other person 
 present was Professor Lodge. The object was placed 
 sometimes on a wooden screen between the per- 
 cipient and the agent, at other times behind the 
 percipient, whose eyes were bandaged. The bandage, 
 it should be observed, was a sufficient precaution 
 against cornea-reading ; but for other purposes no 
 reliance was placed upon it. It is believed that the 
 precautions taken were in all cases adequate to con- 
 ceal the object from the percipient if her eyes had 
 been uncovered. In the account quoted any remarks 
 made by the agent or Professor Lodge are entered 
 between brackets. 
 
 Object — a blue square of si He. — (Now, it's going to be a 
 colour; ready.) "Is it green?" (No.) "It's something be- 
 tween green and blue. . . . Peacock." (What shape?) She 
 drew a rhombus. 
 
 [N.B. — It is not intended to imply that this was a success by 
 
 1 Proc. Soc, Psych. Resea?-ch> vol. ii. pp. 194-196. 
 
36 APPARITIONS AND THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 
 
 any means, and it is to be understood that it was only to make 
 a start on the first experiment that so much help was given as 
 is involved in saying "it's a colour." When they are simply 
 told " it's an object," or, what is much the same, when nothing 
 is said at all, the field for guessing is practically infinite. When 
 no remark at starting is recorded none was made, except such 
 an one as " Now we are ready," by myself.] 
 
 Next object — a key on a black ground. — (It's an object.) In 
 a few seconds she said, " It's bright. ... It looks like a key." 
 Told to draw it, she drew it just inverted. 
 
 Next object — three gold studs in morocco case, — " Is it yellow ? 
 . . . Something gold. . . . Something round. ... A locket or 
 a watch perhaps." (Do you see more than one round ?) " Yes, 
 there seem to be more than one. ♦ . . Are there three rounds ? 
 . . . Three rings?" (What do they seem to be set in ?) "Some- 
 thing bright like beads." [Evidently not understanding or 
 attending to the question.] Told to unblindfold herself and 
 draw, she drew the three rounds in a row quite correctly, and 
 then sketched round them absently the outline of the case, 
 which seemed therefore to have been apparent to her though 
 she had not consciously attended to it. It was an interesting 
 and striking experiment. 
 
 Next object — a pair of scissors standing partly open with their 
 points down. — " Is it a bright object ? . . . Something long- 
 ways [indicating vertically]. ... A pair of scissors standing up. 
 ... A little bit open." Time, about a minute altogether. She 
 then drew her impression, and it was correct in every particular. 
 The object in this experiment was on a settee behind her, but 
 its position had to be pointed out to her when, after the experi- 
 ment, she wanted to see it. 
 
 Next object — a drawing of a right-angled triangle o?z its side. 
 — (It's a drawing.) She drew an isosceles triangle on its side. 
 
 Next — a circle with a cord across it — She drew two detached 
 ovals, one with a cutting line across it. 
 
 Next — a drawing of a Union Jack pattern. — As usual in 
 drawing experiments, Miss R. remained silent for perhaps a 
 minute; then she said, "Now I am ready." I hid 
 the object ; she took off the handkerchief, and 
 proceeded to draw on paper placed ready in front 
 of her. She this time drew all the lines of the 
 original, figure except the horizontal middle one. She was 
 
 obviously much tempted to draw this, and, indeed, 
 began it two or three times faintly, but ultimately 
 said, " No, I'm not sure," and stopped. 
 
 reproduction. [N.B. — The actual drawings made in all the 
 experiments are preserved intact by Mr. Guthrie.] 
 
 [end of sitting.] 
 
TRANSFERENCE IN NORMAL STATE. 37 
 
 Experiments with Miss R. — Continued. 
 
 I will now describe an experiment indicating that one agent 
 may be better than another. 
 
 Object — the Three of Hearts. — Miss E. and Mr. Birchall both 
 present as agents, but Mr. Birchall holding percipient's hands 
 at first. " Is it a black cross . , . a white ground with a black 
 cross on it ? " Mr. Birchall now let Miss E. hold hands instead 
 of himself, and Miss R. very soon said, "Is it a card ?" (Right.) 
 " Are there three spots on it ? . . . Don't know what they are. 
 ... I don't think I can get the colour, . . . They are one above 
 the other, but they seem three round spots. ... I think they're 
 red, but am not clear." 
 
 Next object — a playing card with a blue anchor painted on it 
 slantwise instead of pips. — No contact at all this time, but 
 
 another lady, Miss R d, who had entered the room, assisted 
 
 Mr. B. and Miss E. as agents. "Is it an anchor? . , . a little 
 on the slant." (Do you see any colour?) "Colour is black. 
 . . . It's, a nicely drawn anchor." When asked to draw she 
 sketched part of it, but had evidently half forgotten it, and not 
 knowing the use of the cross arm, she could only indicate that 
 there was something more there but she couldn't remember 
 what. Her drawing had the right slant exactly. 
 
 Another object — two pairs of coarse lines crossing; drawn in 
 red chalk, and set up at some distance from agents. No con- 
 tact. " I only see lines crossing." She saw no colour. She 
 afterwards drew them quite correctly, but very small. 
 
 Double object. — It was now that I arranged the double object 
 
 between Miss R d and Miss E., who happened to be sitting 
 
 nearly facing one another. [See Nature, June 12th, 1884.] 
 The drawing was a square on one side of the paper, a cross on 
 the other. Miss R d looked at the side with 
 
 □ \/ the square on it. Miss E. looked at the side 
 /\ with the cross. Neither knew what the other 
 was looking at — nor did the percipient know 
 originals. that anything unusual was being tried. Mr. 
 
 Birchall was silently asked to take off his atten- 
 tion and he got up and looked out of window 
 <rS\ before the drawings were brought in, and 
 during the experiment. There was no con- 
 reproduction. tact. Very soon Miss R. said, " I see things 
 moving about ... I seem to see two things ... I see first one 
 up there, and then one down there ... I don't know which to 
 draw. , t . I can't see either distinctly." (Well, anyhow, draw 
 what you have seen.) She took off the bandage and drew first 
 a square, and then said, " Then there was the other thing 
 as well . . . afterwards they seemed to go into one," and she 
 
38 APPARITIONS AND THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE, 
 
 drew a cross inside the square from corner to corner, adding 
 afterwards, " I don't know what made me put it inside." 
 
 No. 7. — By Herr Max Dessoir. 
 
 In June 1885 some successful experiments in 
 thought-transference were made by Herr Dessoir, of 
 Berlin, author of A Bibliography of Modern Hypnotism , 
 and other works, with the co-operation of some friends, 
 Herren Weiss, Biltz, and Sachse. There were in all 
 eighteen trials with diagrams in which Herr Dessoir 
 was the percipient. The diagrams which follow — 
 reproduced from the original drawings — were the 
 result of six consecutive trials. They are, as will be 
 seen, not completely successful , but they convey a 
 fair idea of the amount of success attained in the whole 
 series. It should be noted that the impression re- 
 ceived by the percipient appears to have been per- 
 sistent; and that the second attempt at reproduction, 
 in five out of the six cases, was more successful than 
 the first. Herr Dessoir states that he was generally 
 out of the room whilst the figure was being drawn ; 
 he returned at the given signal, with eyes closely 
 bandaged ; " I set myself at the table, and in many 
 instances placed my hands on the table, and the agent 
 placed his hands on mine; the hands lay quite still on 
 one another. When an image presented itself to my 
 mind, the hands were removed . . . and I took off 
 the bandage and drew my figure.' , 
 
 A full account of these experiments, and of others 
 conducted by Herr Dessoir, will be found in Proc. 
 S.P.R., vol. iv. pp. 1 1 1- 1 26; vol. v. pp. 355-357. 
 
TRANSFERENCE IN NORMAL STATE. 39 
 I. 
 
 Orig. 
 
 Agent : W. S. 
 
 Rep. 1. 
 
 ■J 
 
 Rep. 2. 
 
 While the second reproduction was pro- 
 ceeding, an interruption occurred which 
 prevented its completion. 
 
 II. 
 
 Orig. 
 
 Agent : H. B. 
 
 Rep. i. Rep. 2. Rep. 3. Rep. 4. 
 
 Icq 
 
4-0 APPARITIONS AND THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 
 
TRANSFERENCE IN NORMAL STATE. 41 
 Rep. 3. 
 
 V. 
 
 Orig. 
 
42 APPARITIONS AND THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 
 
 VI. 
 
 Orig. Rep. r. Rep. 2. 
 
 Agent: E. W. The percipient said, " It looks like a window." 
 
 No. 8. — By HERR SCHMOLL and M. MABIRE. 
 
 Of more recent experiments with diagrams, those 
 recorded by Herr Anton Schmoll and M. Etienne 
 Mabire are perhaps the most important. 1 The ex- 
 periments took place at Herr Schmoll's house, 111 
 Avenue de Villiers, Paris. In addition to Herr 
 Schmoll and M. Mabire, Frau Schmoll and four or 
 five other persons assisted at one time or another. 
 Mr. F. W. H. Myers was also present on three 
 occasions. In all about 100 trials were made with 
 diagrams and real objects (the actual number of 
 experiments of all kinds was 148), full details of which 
 will be found in the original papers. The experi- 
 ments were made in the evenings, in a room lighted 
 by a hanging lamp. The agents, usually three or 
 four in number, sat at a round table immediately 
 under the lamp, and fixed their eyes on the diagram 
 or object, which was placed on the table before them. 
 The percipient, with his eyes bandaged, sat in full 
 view of the agents with his back to them in a corner 
 of the room at a distance of about ten feet from the 
 object. Silence was maintained during the experi- 
 ments, except where otherwise expressly stated. 
 The object or diagram was carefully hidden before 
 the handkerchief was removed from the eyes of the 
 
 1 Proc. Soc. Psych. Pesearc/i, vol. iv. pp. 324 et seq.\ vol. v. pp. 
 169 et seq. 
 
TRANSFERENCE IN NORMAL STATE. 43 
 
 percipient to enable him to draw his impression. In 
 the first nineteen experiments the figure was drawn 
 with the end of a match dipped in ink, whilst the per- 
 cipient was in the room. It was not likely, under 
 the circumstances, as the match moved almost noise- 
 lessly over the paper, that any indication of the 
 figure drawn could by this means have been given to 
 the percipient. Nevertheless, in the later experiments 
 quoted the precaution was taken to draw the figure 
 whilst the percipient was in another room, and a soft 
 brush was substituted for the match. The following 
 is a record, by Herr Schmoll, of the last two evenings 
 of the first series : — 
 
 18. — August 24M, 1886. 
 
 Agents — Mdlle. Louise, Frau Schmoll, Schmoll. 
 Percipient — M. Mabire. 
 
 Result — M. Mabire saw " a sort of semicircle like the tail of a 
 comet, but of spiral construction, like some of the nebulae." 
 What he saw he reproduced in the following manner : — 
 
 19. — The same evening. 
 
 Agents — Mdlle. Louise, M. Mabire, Frau Schmoll. 
 Percipient — Schmoll. 
 Object (drawn) — 
 
 Result — " I see two double lines, that cross each other at about 
 right angles." (Pause.) " The two double lines now appear 
 
44 APPARITIONS AND THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 
 
 single, but like rays of light, and in the form of an X." 
 (Another pause.) "Now I see the upper part of the X 
 separated from the lower by a vertical line." I draw : — 
 
 20. — The same evening. 
 
 Agents— -Mdlle. Louise, M. Mabire, Schmoll. 
 Percipient — Frau Schmoll. 
 
 Object — A brass weight of 500 grms. was placed on the table. 
 
 Result — " What I see looks like a short piece of candle, without 
 a candlestick. It must be burning, for at the upper end I 
 see it glitter." 
 
 Remark — At the upper part of the object, indicated by the 
 arrow, bright reflections, caused by the oblique lighting, 
 were seen by all the agents (the weight was rubbed bright). 
 The form seen decidedly resembles the original, especially 
 the outline. 
 
 21. — The same evening. 
 
 Agents — M. Mabire, Frau Schmoll, Schmoll. 
 Percipient — Mdlle. Louise. 
 
 Object — My gold watch (without the chain) was noiselessly 
 placed before us, the back turned towards us ; on the face 
 are Roman numbers. 
 
 Result — After five minutes : " I see a round object, but I cannot 
 describe it more particularly." (During the pause that 
 followed, without causing the slightest noise, I turned the 
 watch round, so that we saw the face.) Soon Mdlle. Louise 
 called out : " You are certainly looking at the clock over 
 the piano, for now I quite clearly see a clock face with 
 Roman numbers." 
 
 [The watch, as was ascertained after the experiment, was not 
 going at the time.] 
 
TRANSFERENCE IN NORMAL STATE. 45 
 
 22. — September loth, 1886. 
 
 Agents — Mdlle. Louise, M. Mabire, Frau Schmoll. 
 Percipient — S chmoll. 
 
 Object — A pamphlet (in 8vo) was slantingly placed on the table. 
 
 Result — Completely failed. I saw nothing whatever. 
 
 Remark — At the beginning of our trials to-day we had neg- 
 lected to clear the table. The book was surrounded by 
 other objects, and also badly lighted. 
 
 23. — The same evening. 
 
 Agents — Mdlle. Louise, M. Mabire, Schmoll. 
 Percipient — Frau Schmoll. 
 
 Object — A piece of candle, 20 centimetres long, was placed on 
 the table. 
 
 Result — After eight minutes : " I see it well, but not clearly 
 
 enough to say what it is. It is a thin, long object." 
 " How long ? " asked M. Mabire. 
 
 Frau Schmoll tried by separating her hands to give a measure- 
 ment, but could not do it with certainty, and said, " A full 
 hand's length, about 20 centimetres." Begged for a further 
 description, she said, " I see something like a walking-stick, 
 but at one end there must be gold, for something shines 
 there." (The candle was not burning.) 
 
 24. — The same evening. 
 
 Agents — M. Mabire, Frau Schmoll, Schmoll. 
 Percipient — Mdlle. Louise. 
 
 Object — A Faience tea-pot was placed on the table : — 
 
 Result — After five minutes : " It is not a drawing, but a real 
 object. I see very clearly a little vase, a little pot or pan." 
 
 25. — The same evening. 
 
 Agents — Mdlle. Louise, Frau Schmoll, Schmoll. 
 Percipient — M. Mabire. 
 
 Object — The stamp of the firm was placed on the table : — 
 
46 APPARITIONS AND THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 
 
 Result — After twenty minutes : " The picture appears to be 
 rather confused. But I believe that I see the lower part of a 
 drinking glass." (Pause.) " Now it has gone again." (A 
 pause of five minutes.) " Now I see another form, like 
 two symmetrical S-shaped double curves, placed side by 
 side." Then M. Mabire drew : — 
 
 Remark — Apparently the lower part was seen first, and then 
 the upper. 
 
 Agents — M. Mabire, Frau Schmoll, Schmoll. 
 Percipient — Mdlle. Louise. 
 
 Object — The double eye-glasses (pince-nez) belonging to M. 
 Mabire were laid on the table. 
 
 Result — After five minutes : " I see two curves, open above, 
 that do not touch each other." Then Mdlle. Louise 
 drew : — ■ 
 
 Unfortunately, the original drawings and reproduc- 
 tions in this series were not preserved. The figures 
 given are facsimile reproductions of those in Herr 
 SchmoH's MS. record, which were copied at the time 
 on a reduced scale from the actual drawings made by 
 the agent and the percipient respectively. In the 
 second series the actual drawings have been pre- 
 served. In the experiments quoted below, as already 
 stated, the figure was drawn whilst the percipient was 
 out of the room, and (with the exceotion of No. 58) 
 
 26. — The same eve?ting. 
 
TRANSFERENCE IN NORMAL STATE. 47 
 
 several copies were made of the drawing, " in order 
 that each agent might be able to' see the drawing in 
 an upright position, and that he might be able to 
 place it at the most favourable point of view." The 
 percipient when ready withdrew the bandage from 
 his eyes and, still seated in the chair with his back to 
 the agents, executed the reproduction. 
 
 April $th, 1887. 
 
 No. of 
 Trial. 
 
 Percipient. 
 
 Agents. 
 
 Original 
 Drawing. 
 
 Result. 
 
 51 
 
 Mdlle. Louise 
 M. 
 
 4. 
 
 IVIme. D. 
 Mdlle. Jane. 
 Mme. Schmoll 
 M. Schmoll. 
 
 ? 
 
 Each agent 
 had a copy 
 of the ori- 
 ginal. 
 
 Before drawing the 
 above figure, Mdlle. 
 Louise said, "a ter- 
 restrial globe on a 
 support." 
 
 10 minutes. 
 
 52 
 
 Mdlle. Jane. 
 
 4. 
 
 Mdlle. Louise 
 in place of 
 Mdlle. Jane. 
 
 L 
 
 Four copies of 
 the original 
 were used by 
 the agents. 
 
 / 
 
 10 minutes. 
 
 53 
 
 Mme. Schmoll 
 
 3. 
 
 Three copies 
 used. 
 
 A 
 
 During the experiment 
 Mme. Schmoll said 
 that she saw 1 ' a little 
 roof." 
 
 10 minutes. 
 
 54 
 
 Mdlle. Jane. 
 
 3. 
 
 Mme. Schmoll 
 in place of 
 Mdlle. Jane. 
 
 Three copies 
 used. 
 
 15 minutes. 
 
 Mdlle. Jane, after havi?tg seen the original, said that her first 
 idea had been that of a glass. 
 
48 APPARITIONS AND THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 
 
 April $th, 1887 {continued). 
 
 No. of 
 Trial. 
 
 Percipient. 
 
 Agents. 
 
 Original 
 Drawing. 
 
 Result. 
 
 55 
 
 Mme. D. 
 
 4. 
 
 
 'Z 
 
 56 
 
 M. Schmoll. 
 
 4. 
 
 Mme. D. in 
 place of M. 
 fechmoll. 
 
 Four copies 
 used. 
 
 Four copies 
 used. 
 
 10 minutes. 
 10 minutes. 
 
 57 
 
 A Failure. 
 
 
 
 
 58 
 
 Mdlle. Jane. 
 
 6. 
 
 This was the 
 first time 
 that an ani- 
 mal had 
 been drawn. 
 
 After five minutes 
 Mdlle. Jane said, 
 " I see a cat's head." 
 
 On being asked to 
 draw what she saw, 
 she produced the 
 following figure :— 
 
 59 
 
 Mdlle. Jane. 
 
 C. 
 
 This was the 
 first time 
 that a head 
 had been 
 drawn. 
 
 At the end of five 
 minutes, Mdlle. Jane 
 having said, "it is 
 a head in profile" a 
 cry of joy unfortu- 
 nately escaped one 
 of those present. 
 This cry having be- 
 trayed to Mdlle. 
 Jane that she had 
 guessed rightly, no 
 drawing was made. 
 In order to repair 
 the wrong as much 
 as possible, Mdlle. 
 Jane was asked 
 which way the head 
 was turned. " To 
 the left," she re- 
 plied. 
 
 Experiments 60, 61, 62, 63, 64 were failures. No. 65 was not 
 an experiment with a diagram. 
 
TRANSFERENCE IN NORMAL STATE. 
 
 49 
 
 April Uh, 1887. 
 
 No. of 
 Trial. 
 
 07 
 
 69 
 
 Percipient. 
 
 Mdlle. Louise. 
 
 Failure. 
 
 Failure. 
 
 Mdlle. Louise. 
 
 Agents. 
 
 5. 
 
 (plus Mr. Myers) 
 
 5. 
 
 (plus Mr. Myers) 
 
 Original 
 Drawing. 
 
 This figure was 
 drawn by 
 Mr. Myers. 
 
 f 
 
 Result. 
 
 At the end of a few 
 minutes, Mdlle. 
 Louise said, "I see 
 three fish on a 
 skewer." Not being 
 well understood, she 
 explained, " Three 
 fish held by a skewer, 
 that is as they are 
 sold in the fish 
 markets ; but every- 
 body knows that ! " 
 Then she took off 
 her bandage and 
 drew — 
 
 iff? 
 
 Appended is a statement from Mdlle. Jane D., a 
 young lady of 20, who appears to have been one of 
 the most successful percipients in this series : — 
 
 " Whenever I have taken part in the experiments as per- 
 cipient, I have endeavoured to expel from my mind all thoughts 
 and images, and have remained inactive, with my hands over 
 my eyes, waiting for the production of an impression ; some- 
 times I have tied up my eyes, but this plan has not always been 
 
 4 
 
50 APPARITIONS AND THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 
 
 successful. At other times the idea of an object has presented 
 itself to me before I have seized its form, but most frequently I 
 seemed to see the picture either black on a white ground, or 
 white on a black ground. In general, the objects present them- 
 selves in an undecided manner, and pass away very rapidly ; 
 usually I only grasp a portion of them. 
 
 " Whenever I have been most successful, I have remarked 
 that the picture has presented itself to my imagination almost 
 instantaneously. Sometimes also I have been led to draw an 
 object of which the name was forced on me, as if by some 
 external influence. 
 
 " Jane D. 
 
 "Paris, February vjth, 1888." 
 
 Appended are a few facsimiles of the most success- 
 ful of the above results, reproduced in the original 
 size. 
 
 No. 51.— Original. No. 51. - Reproduction. 
 
TRANSFERENCE IN NORMAL STATE. 
 
 No. 53.— Original. 
 
 No. 53.— Reproduction, 
 
APPARITIONS AND THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 
 
 No 56.— Original. 
 
TRANSFERENCE IN NORMAL STATE. 
 
 No. 66.— Original. 
 
§4 APPARITIONS AND THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 
 
 No. 66. — Reproduction. 
 
 No. 9. — By Dr. von Schrenk-Notzing. 
 
 Baron von Schrenk-Notzing, M.D., of Munich, 
 whose work in hypnotism is well known, carried on a 
 series of experiments with diagrams and numbers, etc., 
 in the course of the year 1890. 1 Space will not permit 
 of our quoting these results in full. The following 
 experiments are selected as being the only three in 
 which the agent and percipient were in different 
 rooms. The percipient, Fraulein A., was a patient 
 of Dr. von Schrenk-Notzing's, of rather hysterical 
 temperament ; throughout the experiments she was 
 in a normal condition and fully awake. In these 
 three trials, which took place between 10.12 P.M. and 
 10.23 P.M. on the 15th October 1890, Fraulein A. 
 sat on a chair in the agent's study about a yard from 
 the door leading into the adjoining room, and with 
 her back towards it ; paper and pencil were on the 
 table before her. In the adjoining room, about 12 
 
 1 Proc. S.P.R., vol. vii. pp. 3-22. 
 
TRANSFERENCE IN NORMAL STATE. 55 
 
 feet in a direct line from the percipient, with the door 
 of communication closed, Dr. von Schrenk-Notzing 
 stood, beside a small table, and drew a rough diagram 
 representing the staff of ^Esculapius and the Serpent. 
 When the drawing was complete, to quote Dr. 
 Schrenk-Notzing, 
 
 " I call 1 Ready ? 5 The percipient says, 1 Yes.' We have 
 been drawing at the same time in different rooms. On return- 
 ing to the study I compare the drawings and see with astonish- 
 ment that Fraulein A. has drawn a serpent. Even the open 
 mouth and the thickened end of the tail in the reproduction 
 agree with the original. The experiment has succeeded in its 
 essential part, and as regards strictness of conditions I think it 
 quite unassailable. Unconscious suggestion is absolutely ex- 
 cluded, when agent and percipient are in different rooms. 
 Any corresponding association of ideas seems to me also impos- 
 sible, for the idea of the staff of ^Esculapius first occurred to me 
 in the other room. In the study there is no object which could 
 have led up to the idea — no indication which could have pointed 
 out the way." 
 
 The percipient had, in fact, drawn a spiral figure 
 apparently intended to represent a serpent. 
 
 The two other experiments here referred to were 
 performed in immediate succession, and under pre- 
 cisely similar conditions, the time allowed in each 
 case being about two minutes. 
 
 In the second experiment the agent drew an arrow; 
 the percipient drew another spiral, with intersecting 
 loops. In this case, as the agent points out, the 
 original idea of the serpent appears to have per- 
 sisted in the percipient's mind. 
 
 In the third experiment the agent drew a triangle 
 inscribed in a circle; also two diameters to the circle, 
 crossing each other at right angles, the vertical 
 diameter bisecting the upper angle of the triangle. 
 The agent writes : — 
 
 "The drawing was done in the following way. I began 
 with the triangle, and then drew the perpendicular on the 
 base. The idea that thereupon occurred to me, that the 
 figure was too simple, induced me to add a circle and 
 to prolong the perpendicular to the circumference; finally I 
 
56 APPARITIONS AND THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 
 
 added the horizontal diameter. The percipient was drawing at 
 the same time at table b, sitting on chair 5, with her back to the 
 closed door of communication. Question from the next room, 
 4 Are you ready ? ' Answer, ' Stop, 5 as I am about to open 
 the door. Then, 6 Now. 3 I open the door and enter the room. 
 The two drawings agree except that the circle and the hori- 
 zontal diameter are wanting. Even the perpendicular of the 
 triangle, which has become obtuse angled, is prolonged beyond 
 the base, just as in the original. This prolongation and addition 
 of the perpendicular cannot be explained by any tendency of 
 ideas to recur (diagram-habit). Only the fact that a triangle 
 was drawn might, taken alone, be explained in some such way." 
 
 Figures of the original diagrams in this case are 
 given in the Proceedings of the S.P.R. 
 
 Some experiments with diagrams, conducted in 
 July 1890 by Drs. Grimaldi and Fronda, have been 
 published by Lombroso. 1 The subject was a young 
 man of twenty, subject to hysterical attacks and spon- 
 taneous somnambulism. The first experiments were 
 made in the hypnotic state, with numbers, and met 
 with only moderate success. Later, however, the 
 trials were made in the normal state. At the first 
 sitting diagrams were tried. The subject had his 
 eyes firmly bandaged and his ears plugged with 
 cotton wool. The diagrams were drawn at a certain 
 distance (ad una certa distanzd) from the subject, and 
 behind him. Under these conditions the first five 
 experiments were completely successful ; the subject 
 reproduced in turn a rhomb, a circle, a triangle, an 
 irregular pentagon, shaped something like the pro- 
 file of a barn, and a cone. The next experiment 
 failed, only a formless scribble being obtained. The 
 subject was much exhausted, and fell into a semi- 
 cataleptic state as soon as the bandage was removed. 
 
 Some success was obtained in later sittings, in the 
 guessing of names and in the execution of mental 
 commands. But the experiments had soon to be 
 abandoned, on account of the health of the percipient. 
 
 Other experiments with diagrams, in addition to 
 
 1 Trasmissione del Pensiero % etc., Naples, 1 89 1. 
 
TRANSFERENCE IN NORMAL STATE. 57 
 
 those above referred to, will be found in the Proceed- 
 ings of the S.P.R., vol. i. pp. 161-215, by Mr. Gurney, 
 the writer, and others; vol. ii. pp. 207-216, by Mr. 
 W. J. Smith. The paper on Thought-transference, 
 etc., by Professor C. Richet, Proceedings^ vol. v. pp. 
 18-168, should also be consulted in this connection. 
 
58 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 EXPERIMENTAL TRANSFERENCE OF SIMPLE SENSA- 
 TIONS WITH HYPNOTISED PERCIPIENTS. 
 
 As already stated, the hypnotic state offers peculiar 
 facilities for observing the transmission of thought 
 and sensation. It is possible that the superior suscept- 
 ibility of the hypnotised percipient is in some measure 
 due simply to the quiescence and freedom from 
 spontaneous mental activity very generally induced 
 by the state of sleep-waking. There are indications, 
 moreover, that the hypnotic state itself may present 
 in many cases a specialised manifestation of that 
 rapport which would appear to exist generally be- 
 tween Agent and Percipient in thought-transference. 
 But the close association of the telepathic activities 
 with the consciousness which emerges in hypnotism 
 and allied states suggests an explanation of a more 
 general kind, and may possibly throw light on the 
 evolution of the faculty itself. 1 However this may be, 
 there can be no question that the most remarkable 
 results in experimental telepathy so far recorded are 
 those given in this and the following chapters with 
 hypnotised percipients. 
 
 Transference of Tastes. 
 
 The fact that notwithstanding this recognised 
 facility comparatively few observers have experimented 
 with hypnotised subjects, except in one or two direc- 
 
 1 See the discussion on this question in Chapter XVI- 
 
TRANSFERENCE IN HYPNOTIC STATE. 59 
 
 tions, calls for some explanation. There are, indeed, 
 innumerable records of the transmission of sensations 
 of taste and pain in the hypnotic state. The uncer- 
 tainty attending any experiment in the first direction 
 with subjects in whom special exaltation of any 
 particular sense is not merely possible, but even under 
 the conditions of the experiments probable, has been 
 already pointed out. Such trials, conducted with a 
 variety of substances nearly all of which are in some 
 degree odorous, must necessarily lie under suspicion. 
 To the references quoted in the preceding chapter (p. 21) 
 and to the experiments of this nature recorded in the 
 Proceedings of the S.P.P. 1 it will suffice here to add one 
 further instance, in which the hypothesis of hyper- 
 esthesia seems hardly an adequate explanation of the 
 result. In a communication to the Revue Philosophique 
 in February 1889, Dr. Dufay quotes the following 
 passage from a letter received by him from Dr. Azam, 
 the veteran historian of Felida X.: — 
 
 No. 10. — By Dr. Azam. 
 
 " I myself, and I believe many other medical men, have 
 observed cases of this or of a similar nature. I will quote two, 
 in which I think I took all necessary precautions before being 
 convinced of their truth. 
 
 " 1st. About 1853 or 1854, I had under my care a young woman 
 with confirmed hysteria : nothing was easier than to put her to 
 sleep by various means. I consider myself entitled to state 
 that, while holding her hand, my unspoken thoughts were trans- 
 ferred to her, but upon this I do not insist, error and fraud 
 being possible. 
 
 " But the transmission of a definite sensation seemed to me to 
 be absolutely certain. This is how I proceeded : Having put 
 the patient to sleep, and seated myself by her side, I leaned 
 towards her and dropped my handkerchief behind her chair ; 
 then, while stooping to lift it up, I quickly put into my mouth a 
 pinch of common salt, which, unknown to her, I had beforehand 
 put into the right-hand pocket of my waistcoat. The salt being 
 absolutely without smell, it was impossible that the patient 
 should have known that I had some in my mouth ; but as soon 
 
 1 Vol. i. pp. 226, 241 ; vol. ii. pp. 17-19. 
 
6o APPARITIONS AND THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 
 
 as I raised myself again I saw her face express disgust, and she 
 moved her lips about. ' That is very nasty, 5 she said ; ' why 
 did you put salt into my mouth ? ' 
 
 " I have repeated this experiment several times with other 
 inodorous substances, and it has always succeeded. I report 
 this fact alone because it seems to me to be certain." 
 
 Transference of Pain. 
 
 Experiments with sensations of pain, as has been 
 pointed out, stand on a different footing. There is no 
 special source of error to be guarded against. The 
 following trials, conducted by Mr. Edmund Gurney, 
 with the assistance of the present writer and others, 
 on two evenings in the early part of 1883, will perhaps 
 suffice to indicate the possibility of such transmission. 
 The percipient was a youth named Wells, at the time 
 of the experiments a baker's apprentice. He was 
 hypnotised by Mr. G. A. Smith. During the trials 
 Wells was blindfolded, and Mr. Smith stood behind 
 his chair. On the first evening Mr. Smith held one 
 of the percipient's hands ; and throughout the series 
 it was necessary for Mr. Smith to hold communication 
 with Wells ; the only words used, however, being 
 the simple uniform question, "Do you feel any- 
 thing?" 1 
 
 No. 11. — By Edmund Gurney. 
 
 First Series. fa?iuary 4f/i, 1883. 
 
 1. The upper part of Mr. Smith's right arm was pinched con- 
 
 tinuously. Wells, after an interval of about two minutes, 
 began to rub the corresponding part on his own body. 
 
 2. Back of the neck pinched. Same result. 
 
 3. Calf of left leg slapped. Same result. 
 
 1 It is a frequent experience that hypnotised subjects are incapable of 
 responding to any voice other than that of the person who has hypnotised 
 them. The difficulty can, indeed, generally be removed by asking the 
 hypnotiser to place some other person in rapport with the subject — i.e., 
 to give the subject the suggestion that he should also be able to 
 hear the person indicated. At this early stage of our experiments it 
 would appear, however, that this device had for some reason not been 
 adopted. 
 
TRANSFERENCE IN HYPNOTIC STATE. 6l 
 
 4. Lobe of left ear pinched. Same result. 
 
 5. Outside of left wrist pinched. Same result. 
 
 6. Upper part of back slapped. Same result. 
 
 7. Hair pulled. Wells localised the pain on his left arm. 
 
 8. Right shoulder slapped. The corresponding part was cor- 
 
 rectly indicated. 
 
 9. Outside of left wrist pricked. Same result. 
 
 10. Back of neck pricked. Same result. 
 
 11. Left toe trodden on. No indication given. 
 
 12. Left ear pricked. The corresponding part was correctly 
 
 indicated. 
 
 13. Back of left shoulder slapped. Same result. 
 
 14. Calf of right leg pinched. Wells touched his arm. 
 
 15. Inside of left wrist pricked. The corresponding part was 
 
 correctly indicated. 
 
 16. Neck below right ear pricked. Same result. 
 
 In the next series of these experiments Wells was blindfolded, 
 as before ; but in this case a screen was interposed between 
 Mr. Smith and Wells ; and there was no contact between 
 them. During two or three of the trials Mr. Smith was in an 
 adjoining room, separated from Wells by thick curtains. 
 
 Second Series. April 10th, 1883. 
 
 17. Upper part of Mr. Smith's left ear pinched. After a lapse 
 
 of about two minutes, Wells cried out, " Who's pinching 
 me ? " and began to rub the corresponding part. 
 
 18. Upper part of Mr. Smith's left arm pinched. Wells indi- 
 
 cated the corresponding part almost at once. 
 
 19. Mr. Smith's right ear pinched. Wells struck his own right 
 
 ear, after the lapse of about a minute, as if catching a 
 troublesome fly, crying out, " Settled him that time." 
 
 20. Mr. Smith's chin was pinched. Wells indicated the right 
 
 part almost immediately. 
 
 21. The hair at the back of Mr. Smith's head was pulled. No 
 
 indication. 
 
 22. Back of Mr. Smith's neck pinched. Wells pointed, after a 
 
 short interval, to the corresponding part. 
 
 23. Mr. Smith's left ear pinched. Same result. 
 
 After this, Mr. Smith being now in an adjoining room, Wells 
 began, as he said, "to go to sleep ;" and said that he "didn't 
 want to be bothered." He was partially waked up, and the 
 experiments were resumed. 
 
 [Four experiments with tastes are here omitted.] 
 
 28. Mr. Smith's right calf pinched. Wells was very sulky, and 
 for a long time refused to speak. At last he violently 
 drew up his right leg, and began rubbing the calf. 
 
62 APPARITIONS AND THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 
 
 After this Wells became still more sulky, and refused in the 
 next experiment to give any indication whatever. With con- 
 siderable acuteness he explained the reasons for his contumacy. 
 " I ain't going to tell you, for if I don't tell you, you won't go 
 on pinching me. You only do it to make me tell." Then he 
 added, in reply to a remonstrance from Mr. Smith, " What do 
 you want me to tell for? they ain't hurting you, and / can stand 
 their pinching." All this time Mr. Smith's left calf was being 
 very severely pinched. 
 
 To the onlooker the situation was rendered addi- 
 tionally piquant by the fact that the boy, at the very 
 time when he was apparently acutely sensitive to pain 
 inflicted upon Mr. Smith, showed no sign of suscept- 
 ibility when any part of his own person was pretty 
 severely maltreated. The only point in the trials 
 which seems to call for special notice is the failure on 
 two occasions to indicate the seat of pain when the 
 agent's hair was pulled (7 and 21). Numerous trials 
 with the same and other percipients have shown that 
 this particular experiment rarely succeeds, possibly 
 because the pain so caused is with many people not 
 of an acute kind. 1 
 
 Transference of Visual Images. 
 
 But when we leave these experiments in the 
 transfer of the less specialised forms of sensation we 
 find that but few observers have paid attention to 
 the phenomena of telepathy in the hypnotic state. 
 Probably this is in some measure due to one or two 
 initial difficulties in conducting experiments on such 
 subjects. Opening the eyes to permit the subject to 
 reproduce a diagram will in many cases have the effect 
 of wakening him. Again, with some persons it is a 
 matter of difficulty to maintain the exact stage of the 
 hypnotic trance when they are quiescent enough for 
 the alien impression to meet with little risk of disturb- 
 ance from the subject's own mental activities, and yet 
 
 1 Cf. No. 19 in the series of similar trials conducted with Miss Relph, 
 p. 24. 
 
TRANSFERENCE IN HYPNOTIC STATE. 63 
 
 sufficiently alert to prevent them from relapsing, as 
 was frequently the case with Wells, the percipient 
 just referred to, into a torpid sleep from which no 
 further response could be elicited. But, after all, these 
 difficulties when they occur can readily be overcome 
 by the exercise of a little patience. If the study of 
 thought-transference in the hypnotic state has been 
 comparatively neglected, it is mainly because, as 
 already suggested, with most persons the more salient 
 phenomena of the trance — hallucination, anaesthesia, 
 rigidity, etc. — have distracted attention from what may 
 ultimately prove to be a more fruitful line of inquiry. 
 
 For the following record we are indebted to Dr. 
 Liebeault, of Nancy, who sent us the account in 1886. 
 
 No. 12. — By Dr. Liebeault. 
 
 [The first series of experiments were made on the afternoon of 
 the 10th December 1885, in Dr. Liebeault 5 s house at Nancy. 
 There were present, in addition, Madame S., Dr. Brullard, and 
 Professor Lidgeois, who acted as agent, and Mademoiselle M., 
 the subject. The subject was hypnotised by Professor Liegeois, 
 and experiments were made with diagrams, and in two cases the 
 design — a water-bottle {carafe) and a table with a drawer and 
 drawer-knob — was reproduced with exactness. Precautions 
 had, of course, been taken to conceal the original design from 
 the percipient. The account of the seventh and last experiment 
 is quoted in full.] 
 
 "7. M. Liegeois wrote the word mariage^ Mdlle. M. then 
 wrote 4 Monsieur. 5 Then she said ' Decanter,— no — picture — 
 no. 5 [What is the letter?] ' It is an /—no, it is an Then 
 after thinking for some minutes, 6 There is an i in the word, an a 
 after the m — a g — another a — an e — there are six letters — no 
 — seven. 5 When she had found all the letters and their places, 
 ma iage, she could not find the letter r. After a few minutes it 
 was suggested to her that she should try combinations with the 
 different consonants, and finally she wrote mariage." 
 
 [Further experiments were made by Dr. Lie'beault, in con- 
 junction with M. Stanislas de Guaita, on the 9th January 1886. 
 The subject in this case was Mademoiselle Louise L., who 
 was hypnotised by Dr. Liebeault. The first two experiments, 
 which are not quoted here, suggest lip-reading or unconscious 
 audition as a possible explanation ; but the third experiment 
 of this series and the two subsequent trials with Mdlle. Camille 
 
64 APPARITIONS AND THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 
 
 Simon present interesting illustrations of a telepathic hallucin- 
 ation superimposed upon a basis of reality.] 
 
 " 3. Dr. Liebeault, in order that no hint should be given even 
 in a whisper, wrote on a piece of paper, 'Mademoiselle, on 
 waking, will see her black hat transformed into a red one.' The 
 paper was first passed round to all the witnesses, then MM. 
 Liebeault and De Guaita placed their hands silently on the 
 subject's forehead, mentally formulating the sentence agreed 
 upon. After being told she would see something unusual in the 
 room, the young woman was awakened. Without a moment's 
 hesitation she fixed her eyes upon the hat, and with a burst of 
 laughter exclaimed that it was not her hat, she would have none 
 of it. It was the same shape certainly, but this farce had lasted 
 long enough — we must really give her back her own. [' Come 
 now, what difference do you see?'] 4 You know quite well. 
 You have eyes like me.' [' Well what ? '] We had to press her 
 for some time before she would say what change had come over 
 her hat ; surely we were making fun of her. At last she said, 
 ' You can see for yourselves that it is red.' As she refused to 
 take it we were forced to put an end to her hallucination by 
 telling her that her hat would presently resume its usual colour. 
 The doctor breathed on it, and when it became, in her eyes, her 
 own again, she consented to take it back. Directly afterwards 
 she remembered nothing of her hallucination. . . . 
 
 "Nancy, 9th January 1886. 
 
 " Signed, A. A. LIEBEAULT. 
 
 Stanislas de Guaita." 1 
 
 " We had one very successful experiment with a young girl of 
 about fifteen, Mdlle. Camille Simon, in the presence of M. Brullard 
 and several other persons. I gave her a mental suggestion 
 that on waking she should see her hat, which was brown, 
 changed to yellow. I then put her en rapport with all the 
 others, and I passed round a slip of paper indicating my sug- 
 gestion, and asking them to think of the same thing. But, by 
 a lapse of memory not unusual to me, I did not think after all 
 of the colour which I had written down ; I had a distinct im- 
 pression that she would see her hat red. On awaking her I 
 told her she would see something representing our common 
 thought. When she was wakened she wondered at the colour 
 of her hat. ' It was brown,' she said. After having thought 
 for a long time, she assured us that really it did not look at all 
 the same, that she could not quite define the colour, but that it 
 seemed to her a sort of yellow-red. Then I remembered my 
 
 1 Quoted in Le Sommeil Provoqui, etc,, by Dr. Liebeault, Paris, 
 1889, pp. 295, 296. 
 
TRANSFERENCE IN HYPNOTIC STAT& 6$ 
 
 aberration. In the present case the others thought of yellow, 
 I of red : thus the object appeared yellow and red to the 
 awakened somnambule ; which proves that the mental sug- 
 gestion may be the echo of the thought of many minds." 
 
 [The following experiment, made with the same " subject," and 
 sent to us by Dr. Liebeault on June 3, 1886, is an interesting 
 example of temporary latency of the telepathic impression : — ] 
 
 " In another experiment with the same young girl it was 
 suggested to her, mentally, by several persons that on awaking 
 she would see a black cock walking about the room. For a 
 considerable time after waking, nearly half-an-hour, she said 
 nothing, although I told her she would see something. It was 
 about half-an-hour afterwards that, having gone into the garden 
 and looked by chance into my little courtyard, she came 
 running back to us to say, 1 Ah, I know what I was to see : it 
 was a black cock. This came into my head when I was looking 
 at your cock.' My cock is greenish-black on the wings, tail 
 and breast ; everywhere else he is yellowish-white. Here we 
 have an idea caused by the sight of a real object associated 
 with a fictitious idea mentally transmitted by the persons 
 present." 
 
 Between the beginning of July and the end of 
 October 1889 a series of trials in the transference 
 of numbers was conducted by Mrs. H. Sidgwick, with 
 the assistance of Professor Sidgwick and Mr. G. A. 
 Smith. The conditions were as follows: — Some small 
 wooden counters, belonging to a game called Loto, 
 and having the numbers from 10 to 90 stamped on 
 them in raised figures, were placed in a bag. From 
 this bag, which it will be seen contained 81 numbers 
 in all, Mr. G. A. Smith drew a counter, placing it in a 
 little wooden box, the edges of which effectually 
 concealed it from the view of the percipient. The 
 percipient, who had been previously placed in the 
 hypnotic state by Mr. Smith, sat with his eyes closed 
 and guessed the number drawn. The remarks, if 
 any, made during the experiments, and the results, 
 were recorded by Mrs. Sidgwick. After the first few 
 days it was arranged, in order to avoid all possibility 
 of bias in recording the numbers, that Professor 
 Sidgwick should draw the counter from the bag and 
 hand it to Mr. Smith, and that Mrs. Sidgwick should 
 
 5 
 
66 APPARITIONS AND THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 
 
 be herself ignorant of the number drawn. Through- 
 out the experiments, although eight or more other 
 persons tried to act as agent, Mr. Smith alone was 
 successful. Mr. Smith himself failed to produce any 
 result when the percipients were not hypnotised. 
 The following detailed account of part of the experi- 
 ments on one day, July 6th, 1889, will give a fair idea 
 of the whole ; but it should be added that in later 
 experiments Mr. Smith kept complete silence, and 
 that on several occasions a newspaper was placed 
 over P.'s head. These precautions do not appear to 
 have affected the success of the experiment. 
 
 The percipient was Mr. P., a clerk in a wholesale 
 business, aged about nineteen, who had been fre- 
 quently hypnotised by Mr. Smith, and now passes 
 into the hypnotic state very quickly, his eyes turn- 
 ing upwards as he goes off, before the eyelids close. 
 He is a lively young man, with a good deal of 
 humour, and preserves the same character in the 
 sleep-waking state. 
 
 No 13. — By Professor and Mrs. Sidgwick. 
 
 MBER NUMBER GUESSED, AND REMARKS. 
 
 87 ... S. : "Now, P., you're going to see numbers. I shall 
 look at them, and you will see them." P. (almost 
 immediately): "87. You asked me if I saw a 
 number. I see an 8 and a 7." (Number put 
 away.) P. : " I see nothing now." 
 
 19 ... P. : " 18. What are those numbers on? I see only the 
 
 letters like brass numbers on a door; nothing 
 behind them." 
 
 24 ... P. (after a pause) : " I keep on looking. ... I see it ! 
 an 8 and a 4 — 84." 
 
 35 ... P. : "A3 and a 5—35." S.: "How did that look?" 
 P.: "I saw a 3 and a 5, then 35." 
 
 28 ... P.: "88. One behind the other, then one popped for- 
 ward, and I could see two eights." (Illustrated 
 it with his fingers. ) 
 
 20 ... P.: " I can't see anything yet." S. : " You will directly. " 
 
 P.: "23." S. : "Saw that clearly?" P.: 
 " Not so plain as the other." S. : " Which did 
 you see best? " P. : "The 2." 
 
TRANSFERENCE IN HYPNOTIC STATE. 67 
 
 twwV^t NUMBER GUESSED, AND REMARKS. 
 
 DRAWN. 
 
 27 ... P. : " I can see 7, and I think a 3 in front of it. I can 
 see the 7." S. : " Make sure of the first figure." 
 P. : "The 7's gone now." 
 
 48 ... S. : ' ' Here's another one, P." (This remark, though not 
 always recorded, almost always began each ex- 
 periment, until July 27th, when, to avoid the 
 possibility of unconscious indications, Mr. Smith 
 adopted the plan of not speaking at all.) P. : 
 " Another two, you mean. You say another 
 one, but there are always two." S. : "Yes, 
 two." P.: "Here it is. You said there were 
 two ! There's only one, an 8." Some remarks 
 here not recorded. We think that Mr. Smith 
 said there were two, and told him to look again. 
 P. said he saw a 4. Mrs. Sidgwick : "Which 
 came first?" P. : " The 8 first, then the 4 to 
 the left, so that it would have been 48. I should 
 like to know how you do that trick." 
 
 20 ... P. : " A 2 and an 0 ; went away very quickly that time." 
 
 71 ... P. : "71." 
 
 36 ... P. : "3 . . . 36." 
 
 75 ... P. : "I might turn round. Should I see them just the 
 
 same over there? " (Changed his position so as 
 to sit sideways in the chair, and looking away 
 from Mr. Smith.) S. : " Well, you might try." 
 P. : "I don't think I see so well this way." 
 (He did not move, however.) " I see a 7 and a 
 5 — 75. Why don't you let them both come at 
 once ? I believe I should see them better if you 
 let me open my eyes." (No notice was taken of 
 this.) 
 
 17 ... S.: "Nowthen, P., here's another." P. :" Put it there at 
 once." (Then, after some time :) " You've only 
 put a 4 up. I see 7." S. : " What's the other 
 figure?" P. : "4 ... the 4's gone." S. : 
 "Have a look again." P.: "I see 1 now." 
 S. : "Which way are they arranged?" P. : 
 " The 1 first and the 7 second." 
 
 52 ... S. : "Here's another." P. : "52. I saw that at once. 
 
 I'm sure there's some game about it." (He had 
 said something about this before, when the 
 number was slow in coming. He said Mr. 
 Smith was making game of him, and pretending 
 to look when he was not looking.) 
 
 76 ... P. : "76." 
 
 It will be observed that P. always speaks of "see- 
 ing" the figures, but as a matter of fact his eyes were 
 closed, or appeared to be closed, throughout the experi- 
 
68 APPARITIONS AND THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 
 
 ments, and the pupils, as already stated, were intro- 
 verted, at least at the commencement of the trance. 
 That the impression was of a visual nature there can 
 be no reasonable doubt. This may have been due 
 to Mrs. Sidgwick's suggestion to the percipient that he 
 would see the figures : though it seems equally probable 
 that it was owing to the fact that Mr. Smith's impres- 
 sion was a visual one. That the vision in most cases 
 was perfectly distinct seems equally clear. It is diffi- 
 cult to decide whether impressions received under such 
 circumstances, with the eyes closed, are properly 
 to be classed as hallucinations. 1 That under appro- 
 priate conditions the percept was capable of rising 
 to the level of an externalised sensory hallucination, 
 the following experiments, which took place later 
 on the same day, July 6th, seem to show : — A blank 
 sheet of paper was spread out on the table. P. was 
 told that he would see numbers on it, and was then 
 partially awakened and his eyes opened. He was at 
 once told to look at the paper and see what came, 
 but saw nothing for some time. Different stages of 
 the hypnotic trance frequently exhibit different and 
 mutually exclusive memories, and P. now had 
 evidently forgotten all about the previous state in 
 which he had been guessing numbers, and appeared 
 so wide awake that it was hard to believe that he 
 was not in a completely normal condition. Mr. 
 Smith stood behind him. 
 
 NUMBER 
 DRAWN. 
 
 
 NUMBER SEEN ON THE PAPER, AND REMARKS. 
 
 18 ... 
 
 P. : 
 
 "23." S. : ' 'Is that what you can see?" P. : 
 " Yes" (but he added later that he did not see 
 
 
 
 87 ... 
 
 
 it properly). 
 
 P. : 
 
 " A 7, 0. Oh, no, 8, 78. Funny ! I saw a 7 and 
 a little 0, and then another came on the top of 
 it, and made an 8." 
 
 37 ... 
 
 P. : 
 
 " There's a 4, 7." Asked where, he offered to trace 
 it, 2 and drew 47 in figures 1 J inches long. 
 
 
 
 1 For such impressions seen with closed eyes Kandinsky has pro- 
 posed the name pseudo-hallucinations. 
 
 2 He had been, on previous occasions, asked to trace hallucinations. 
 
TRANSFERENCE IN HYPNOTIC STATE. 69 
 
 NUMBER SEEN ON THE PAPER, AND REMARKS. 
 
 P.: "No. I see 5, 4; it's gone again." S. : "All 
 right, look at it." P. : "45." S. : "Sure?" 
 P. : " There's a 4 ; — the other's not so clear." 
 (Then quickly:) " Two fours ; 44." 
 
 As he looked one of them disappeared, and he turned the 
 paper over to look for it on the other side ; then looked back at 
 the place where he saw it before and said, " That's funny ! 
 while I was looking for that the other one's gone." When looking 
 under the paper he noticed some scribbling on the sheet below 
 and said, "Has that writing anything to do with it?" He 
 seemed puzzled by the figures, which were apparently genuine 
 externalised hallucinations. He could not make out why they 
 came, nor why they disappeared. 
 
 37 ... P. (after long gazing): "37." S. : "Is that what you 
 see?" P. : " It's gone. I'm pretty sure I saw 
 37." 
 
 Mr. Smith then looked at the 37 again, and we told P. to 
 watch whether it came back, but after a little while he said he 
 thought he saw 29. 
 
 Similar trials were made with three other subjects, 
 Miss B., T., and W. In all 644 trials were made with the 
 agent in the same room with the percipient, of which 
 131 were successful, that is, both digits were given 
 correctly, though in 14 out of the 131 cases in reverse 
 order. The chance of success was of course 1 in 81, 
 and the most probable number of complete successes 
 was therefore 8. 218 trials were also made with Mr. 
 Smith in a different room from the percipient, but of 
 these only 9 succeeded, one having its digits reversed; 
 8 of these successes, however, occurred in the course 
 of 139 trials with P., whilst 79 trials with T. yielded 
 only one success. {Proc. S.P.R., vol. vi. pp. 123-170.) 
 
 As regards the possibility of unconscious indica- 
 tions of the number thought of being given by the 
 agent, it seems certain that no such clue could have 
 been perceived through the sense of sight or touch, 
 contact between agent and percipient having been 
 absolutely excluded throughout the experiments. 
 It remains to consider whether any indication could 
 have been given by means of sounds. In the pres- 
 
 NUMBER 
 DRAWN. 
 
 44 .. 
 
70 APPARITIONS AND THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 
 
 ence of two or more attentive and vigilant witnesses 
 any indications by sounds — eg., an unconscious 
 whispering of the number by Mr. Smith — could only 
 have been perceived by persons of abnormal suscepti- 
 bility. We know, indeed, of no precise limit which 
 can be set to the hyperesthesia of hypnotised 
 subjects. But, on the other hand, hyperaesthesia 
 of any sense in such subjects is generally the result 
 of suggestion, direct or indirect, on the part of the 
 operator; and in these experiments the only sugges- 
 tion given — a suggestion apparently acted on through- 
 out — was that they should see the result. Since, 
 indeed, hypnotised persons are apparently not neces- 
 sarily aware of the channel by which information 
 reaches them, this circumstance is not in itself con- 
 clusive ; but taken with the fact that no direct sug- 
 gestion to hear was given, it tends to make auditory 
 hyperesthesia less probable. It is perhaps more 
 important to note that the experimenters, including 
 Mr. Smith himself, were fully aware of this source 
 of error, and on their guard against it; that no move- 
 ments of Mr. Smith's lips, such as must have occurred 
 if he had whispered the number, were observed ; and 
 that a careful analysis of the failures shows no 
 tendency to mistake one number for another similar 
 in sound — e.g., four for five, six for seven, or five for 
 nine. 
 
 Experiments with Agent and Percipient in different 
 Rooms. 
 
 However, the later experiments by the same ob- 
 servers, recorded below, in which a marked degree of 
 success was obtained with agent and percipient in 
 different rooms, will no doubt be considered to render 
 untenable any explanation of the kind above indicated. 
 This further series was carried on through the years 
 1890-1-2. Mrs. Sidgwick, aided by Miss Johnson, 
 conducted the experiments throughout, with the 
 
TRANSFERENCE IN HYPNOTIC STATE. 7 1 
 
 occasional assistance of Professor Sidgwick, Dr. A. T. 
 Myers, and others. The percipients were P., T., Miss 
 B., and three others, and Mr. G. A. Smith was- in 
 nearly all cases the agent. Some of these experi- 
 ments, as in the last series, were with numbers of 
 two digits ; but the percipient was now in a different 
 room from the agent. At first the trials were 
 carried on in an arch, fitted up with two floors, under 
 the Parade at Brighton. On the ground-floor was 
 a little lobby, kitchen, etc. ; on the upper floor a sitting- 
 room about 1 5 feet square. The staircase, which, as 
 shown in the plan subjoined, led directly out of the 
 upper room, was not enclosed above, but had a door 
 
 Upstairs 
 Room 
 
 Window |- 
 
 Back Room 
 
 Kitchen 
 
 Lobby 
 — I Door 
 
 -I I- 
 
 below, which was kept shut during the experiments. 
 The floor of the room above was covered with a thick 
 Axminster carpet. Even so the sound-insulation was 
 not perfect; but it was found that words spoken in 
 ordinary conversation on one floor were indistinguish- 
 able on the other unless the ear was pressed against 
 the door or wall of the staircase. In the experiments 
 carried on at Mrs. Sidgwick's lodgings in Brighton 
 the percipient sat in the room at a distance from the 
 door, which was closed, varying from 9 to 13 feet, and 
 Mr. Smith was in the passage outside, Miss Johnson 
 sitting between him and the door. Of course strict 
 silence was observed by the agent. One of the ex- 
 
72 APPARITIONS AND THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 
 
 perimenters, in most cases Miss Johnson, accompanied 
 the agent, drew the number from the bag, and noted 
 each as it was drawn. Mrs. Sidgwick, of course in 
 ignorance of the number drawn, sat by the percipient 
 and took notes of his remarks. As in the previous 
 series, the impressions received by the percipient, 
 who in the first experiments was Miss B., appear 
 generally to have been of a visual nature. Details 
 of all the trials with Miss B. as percipient and Mr. 
 Smith as sole agent are given in the following 
 table :— 
 
 No. 14.— By Mrs. Sidgwick and others. 
 
 (1) Place, the Arch. Percipient upstairs; Agent 
 downstairs. 
 
 Date 1890. 
 
 ite right. 
 
 s reversed. 
 
 Digit only 
 right. 
 
 ond Digit 
 ly right. 
 
 Vrong. 
 
 rotals. 
 
 Notes. 
 
 
 s 
 
 Digit 
 
 First 
 
 a> 0 
 CO 
 
 
 
 
 Jan. 6 . . 
 
 „ 7.. 
 
 „ 8 .. 
 
 „ 11.. 
 
 ,, 12.. 
 Mar. 17 . . 
 
 „ 18.. 
 
 „ 22.. 
 
 ' 23.. 
 July 8 
 
 i 
 
 'i 
 
 9 
 3 
 1 
 1 
 
 2 
 
 1 
 
 It 
 It 
 1 
 
 i 
 
 6* 
 10 
 
 2 
 
 8 
 13 
 
 2 
 
 1 
 
 5 
 
 6 
 
 i 
 
 '2 
 1 
 1 
 1 
 
 i 
 
 2 
 4 
 3 
 10 
 8 
 6 
 4 
 4 
 
 10 
 
 2 
 
 8 
 
 17 
 
 G 
 
 20 
 33 
 12 
 8 
 11 
 
 18 
 
 3 
 
 / Professor Barrett present in addition to 
 \ the usual party. 
 
 This set was done under very unfavour- 
 able conditions, as there were three 
 other percipients in the room guessing 
 at the same time, which was very con- 
 fusing. 
 
 Drs. Myers, Penrose, and Lancaster pre- 
 sent in addition to the usual party. 
 
 Drs. Myers and Rolleston present in addi- 
 tion to the usual party. 
 
 . „ 9 
 
 
 
 1 
 
 3 
 
 2 
 
 6 
 
 Nov. 6 . . 
 „ 10.. 
 
 1 
 1 
 
 
 1 
 
 1 
 
 *2 
 
 3 
 3 
 
 Dr. Myers present. 
 
 Totals 
 
 20 
 
 5 
 
 55 
 
 11 
 
 57 
 
 148 
 
 
 (2) Place, 
 
 the Arch. 
 
 Percipient downstairs ; Agent 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 upstairs. 
 
 Mar. 17 . , 
 
 
 
 4 
 
 1 
 
 13 
 
 18 
 
 
 „ 23 , . 
 
 
 
 2 
 
 3 
 
 7 
 
 12 
 
 
 
 
 
 1 
 
 
 2 
 
 3 
 
 Miss McKerlie present. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Totals 
 
 
 
 7 
 
 4 
 
 22 
 
 33 
 
 
 * Two of these were given completely right first and then changed, 
 t The first digit of the number drawn was guessed first. 
 
TRANSFERENCE IN HYPNOTIC STATE. 73 
 
 (3) Place, Mrs. Sidgwick's lodgings. Percipient in 
 room, and Agent in passage. 
 
 Date 1890. 
 
 Quite right. 
 
 Digits reversed. 
 
 First Digit only 
 right. 
 
 Second Digit 
 only right. 
 
 Wrong. 
 
 Totals. 
 
 Notes. 
 
 Mar. 19 
 
 
 
 1 
 
 
 2 
 
 3 
 
 
 Dec. 17 . . 
 
 „ 19 .. 
 „ 19 
 
 2 
 2 
 
 1 
 
 11 
 
 3 
 
 '2 
 
 1 
 1 
 
 12 
 *4 
 
 27 
 
 7 
 
 5 
 
 These guesses were made by table-tilting, 
 Miss B. normal, having her hands on 
 the table. Miss Robertson present on 
 December 17, 19, and 20. § 
 
 Agent in room across passage, but only one 
 
 of the two intervening doors closed. 
 fGuesses made verbally by Miss B. 
 hypnotised, having her hands on the 
 
 -I table. 
 
 Guesses tilted by the table, at the same 
 V. time as the above. § 
 Miss B. hypnotised, guessing in the usual 
 way. 
 
 Guesses made by table-tilting, MissB. nor- 
 mal, having her hands on the table. § 
 
 [ 
 
 „ 20 1 
 „ 20 
 
 1 
 1 
 
 1 
 
 2 
 
 1 
 1 
 
 1 
 
 . 1 
 
 2 
 4 
 
 4 
 
 4 
 7 
 
 
 1 
 
 It 
 
 4 
 
 2 
 
 6 
 
 14 
 
 Totals 
 
 7 
 
 3 
 
 23 
 
 8 
 
 30 
 
 71 
 
 
 Totals of 
 (1)(2)&(3) 
 together 
 
 27 
 
 8 
 
 85 
 
 23 
 
 109 
 
 252 
 
 
 X This was given completely right first and then changed. 
 § See Chapter iv., pp. 96-100. 
 
 It will be seen that in 252 trials the number was 
 guessed quite correctly 27 times, and with digits in 
 reverse order 8 times — the most probable number of 
 complete successes by chance being 3. Further, in 
 the unsuccessful trials the first digit was correctly 
 guessed no fewer than 85 times. The proportion of 
 successes in a series of trials carried on during the 
 same period with Mr. Smith in the same room with 
 Miss B. was, however, much higher — viz., 29 (three 
 with digits reversed) out of 146 trials. It is .notice- 
 able that in the short series of trials with Miss B. in 
 the lobby downstairs a very much smaller degree of 
 success was obtained, a result attributed by Mrs. 
 Sidgwick to the percipient's feeling ill at ease in her 
 surroundings. 
 
 Another noteworthy point is the large proportion 
 
74 APPARITIONS AND THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 
 
 of cases in which the first digit was correctly named. 1 
 This disproportion is not found in the trials made 
 with the agent and the percipient irl the same room, 
 and is possibly due, as suggested by Mrs. Sidgwick, 
 to Mr. Smith in all cases concentrating his attention 
 originally on the first digit. When in the same room 
 with the percipient he would hear when the first digit 
 had been named, and would then turn his attention to 
 the other; but when out of the room he could not, 
 of course, follow the process of guessing. 
 
 A further series of trials was conducted with the 
 percipient under the same conditions, except that 
 either P. or T. acted as agents jointly with Mr. 
 Smith. In all 53 trials were made, resulting in 9 
 complete successes and two with the digits reversed. 
 The proportion of successes, it will be seen, is much 
 higher than in the experiments first described; but 
 the series is too short to allow of a safe conclusion 
 being drawn as to the superior efficacy of collective 
 agency. 
 
 Experiments conducted under similar conditions 
 with four other percipients yielded a slight but 
 appreciable measure of success. A large number 
 of trials — nearly 400 in all — were made with Miss 
 B. as percipient, the agent or agents being at a 
 still greater distance — viz., being either in a separate 
 building, or with two closed doors and a passage 
 intervening; but practically no success was obtained. 
 Miss B. complained of the numbers being so far off. 
 " They are all muddled up," she said on one occasion ; 
 "they seem miles off.'' It is not easy to account 
 satisfactorily for this failure, but it may probably 
 be attributed partly to a prejudicial effect exercised 
 by the novel conditions on the agent's or percipient's 
 anticipation of success, and partly to the tedious 
 
 1 As all numbers above 90 were excluded, and as o cannot come first, 
 the first digit should, by pure chance, have been correctly named more 
 often than the second ; but the disproportion, it will be seen, is far 
 greater than could be thus accounted for. 
 
TRANSFERENCE IN HYPNOTIC STATE. 75 
 
 waiting inseparable from experiments of this kind, 
 where there is no ready means of communication 
 at the end of each trial. {Proc. S.P.R., vol. viii. pp. 
 S36-S52.) 
 
 Transference of Mental Pictures. 
 By Mrs. Sidgwick and Miss Johnson. 
 
 Later on, after various trials had been made with 
 little success with letters, playing cards, and diagrams, 
 a series of experiments was made in the transference 
 of mental pictures. There were in all 108 trials, with 
 5 percipients — Miss B., P., and T., and two men, 
 Whybrew and Major, who had been subjects of an 
 itinerant lecturer on Hypnotism. The method of 
 experiment was as follows : — A subject for a picture 
 was written down by Mrs. Sidgwick or Miss Johnson 
 and handed to Mr. Smith, who then summoned up a 
 mental representation of the subject suggested, which 
 he tried to transfer to the percipient. Occasionally, 
 to aid his imagination, he drew on paper a rough 
 sketch of the subject. During the experiment Mr. 
 Smith was sometimes close to the percipient, some- 
 times behind a screen, sometimes in another room. 
 
 When in the same room it was occasionally neces- 
 sary for Mr. Smith, in order to keep alive the per- 
 cipient's interest and attention, to say a few words to 
 him from time to time. These remarks were always 
 recorded. In the earlier experiments the percipient's 
 eyes were open, and he was given a white card or a 
 •crystal to look at ; and he appears to have seen the 
 pictures as if projected on these objects. In the later 
 trials the percipient's eyes were closed, but this change 
 in the conditions does not appear in any way to have 
 affected the vividness of the impressions. 
 
 Successful experiments were made with all five 
 percipients, full details of which will be found in 
 the paper referred to. 1 It will suffice here to quote 
 
 1 Proc. S.P.R., vol. viii. pp. 554-577. 
 
?6 APPARITIONS AND THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 
 
 a few illustrative cases of success, complete or 
 partial. 
 
 The first experiments were made on July 9th, 1890. 
 Miss B. was the percipient. I quote the account of 
 the first two trials : — 
 
 No. 15. 
 
 The percipient, being in a hypnotic trance, had her eyes 
 opened and was given a card and told to look out for a picture 
 which would come on it. 
 
 The subject, chosen by Mrs. Sidgwick, was a little boy 
 with a ball. Mr. Smith sat close to Miss B., but neither 
 spoke to her nor touched her. Miss B. presently said: "A 
 figure is coming — a little boy." Mrs. Sidgwick asked what he 
 had in his hand, and Miss B. replied : "A round thing; a ball, I 
 suppose." 
 
 For the next experiment Mr. Smith got behind a screen. 
 The subject, a kitten in a jar, was again set by Mrs. Sidgwick. 
 Miss B. said : " Something like an old cat — a cat — I think it's a 
 cat." Mrs. Sidgwick: "What is the cat doing?" Miss B. 
 (doubtfully) : " Sitting down." Mrs. Sidgwick : " Is there any- 
 thing else but a cat?" Miss B. : " No; only scratches about." 
 
 In all 21 experiments of the kind were tried with 
 Miss B., of which 8, including the two above recorded, 
 may be classed as more or less successful. 
 
 The following experiments were made with P. on 
 November 5th, 1890. The notes of these cases were 
 taken by Miss Johnson, who was herself ignorant of 
 the subject, which was chosen by Mrs. Sidgwick. 
 
 The first experiment on this day was a failure. 
 
 No. 16. 
 
 Subject : A black kitten playing with a cork. P. : " Some- 
 thing like a cat ; it's a cat." Mrs. Sidgwick : " What is it 
 doing ?" P. : " Something it's been feeding out of— some milk, 
 is it a saucer ? Can't see where its other paw is — only see three 
 paws." 
 
 Subject : A sandwich 7nan with advertisement of a play. P. 
 said : " Something like letter A — stroke there, then there." 
 Mrs. Sidgwick: "Well, perhaps it will become clearer." P.: 
 " Something like a head on the top of it ; a V upside down — 
 two legs and then a head. — A man with two boards — looks like 
 a man that goes about the streets with two boards. I can see 
 
TRANSFERENCE IN HYPNOTIC STATE. 77 
 
 a head at the top and the body and legs between the boards. 
 I couldn't see what was written on the boards, because the 
 edges were turned towards me." Mr. Smith told us afterwards 
 that he had pictured to himself the man and one board facing 
 him, thus not corresponding to the impression which P. had. 
 
 Subject : A choir-boy. 1 P. said : " Edge of card's going a dark 
 colour. Somebody dressed up in white, eh? Can see some- 
 thing all white ; edge all black, and like a figure in the middle. 
 There's his hands up" (making a gesture to show the attitude) 
 " like a ghost or something — you couldn't mistake it for any- 
 thing but a ghost. It's not getting any better, it's fading — no, 
 it's still there. It might frighten any one." He also made 
 remarks about the difficulty of seeing a white figure on a white 
 card (the blank card he was looking at was white), which Mr. 
 Smith afterwards said corresponded with his own ideas. 
 
 Subject : A vase with flowers. (Mr. Smith, still behind P., 
 was looking at a blue flower-pot in the window containing an 
 indiarubber plant.) P. said : " I see something round, like a 
 round ring. I can see some straight things from the round 
 thing. I think it's a glass — it goes up. I'll tell you what it is ; it 
 must be a pot — a flower-pot, you know, with things growing in 
 it. I only guessed that, because you don't see things growing 
 out of a glass. — It's not clear at the top yet. You see something 
 going up and you can't see the top, because of the edge of the 
 paper — it's cut off. I don't wonder, because it's no good wonder- 
 ing what Mr. Smith does, he does such funny things. I should 
 fancy it might be a geranium, but there's only sticks, so you 
 can't tell." Mrs. Sidgwick : " What colour is the pot ? " P. : 
 " Dark colour, between terra-cotta and red — dark red you'd 
 call it." flere the somewhat confused impression, apparently, 
 corresponding to the struggle of ideas in Mr. Smith's mind 
 between what he was seeing and what he was trying to think of, 
 is an interesting point. 2 
 
 In all 50 trials were made with P., 26 with agent 
 and percipient in the same room, 24 with agent and 
 percipient in different rooms. Of the former 14 were 
 successful, of the latter only one. In the 35 unsuccess- 
 ful experiments no impression at all was received in 
 14 cases, 7 of which occurred while agent and per- 
 cipient were in the same room. 
 
 Two trials with Whybrew are worth quoting as 
 illustrating the gradual development of the impression. 
 
 1 This was an idea extremely familiar to P., who had been a 
 chorister and was still connected with the choir of his church. 
 
 2 Proceedings Soc. Psych. Research^ vol. viii. pp. 565, 566. 
 
78 APPARITIONS AND THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 
 
 The percipient's eyes were closed during these 
 experiments. The first was made on July nth. 
 
 No. 17. 
 
 Subject : A man riding. Mr. Smith downstairs with Miss 
 Johnson ; Whybrew, upstairs with Mrs. Sidgwick, said, after 
 some remarks on the former pictures : " There's another one 
 — I think it's like the other two — a puzzle [to see]— if I can 
 find the picture. I hope I'll be able to see it properly. A kind 
 of a square — square shadow — blowed if I can understand what 
 it's meant for — I don't know what to make out of that. I don't 
 know if that's meant to be the lower part of a pair of legs. Do 
 you see a picture? " Mrs. Sidgwick : " I see something." Why- 
 brew • " I see them two spots, but I don't know what to make 
 of them. If they're legs, the body ought to come. — Don't seem 
 to come any brighter, but there's those two things there, that 
 look like a pair of legs." Here Mr. Smith was asked to come 
 upstairs and talk to him. He told him the picture was coming 
 up closer and that he had turned the gas on to make it brighter. 
 Whybrew : " There's them pair of legs there." Mr. Smith : 
 "Yes" (doubtfully). Whybrew: "Why, there's another. I 
 never see that other pair before. Why, it's a horse. I expect 
 it's like them penny pictures that you fold over. That horse — 
 that's plain enough ; but what's that other thing ?" Mr. Smith : 
 " Yes, I told you there was something else." Whybrew ; " Why, 
 I see what it is now — it's supposed to be a man there, I expect." 
 Mr. Smith : " Yes." Whybrew : " Riding him. But that ain't so 
 good as the boy and the ball." Mrs. Sidgwick . " How is the 
 man dressed ? " Whybrew : " Ordinary." 
 
 The second took place on July 16th, 1891. 
 
 Mr. Smith having hypnotised Whybrew, sat by him, but 
 did not speak to him at all after he knew the subject — a man 
 with a barrow of fish — given him by Mrs. Sidgwick. Miss 
 Johnson, not knowing what the subject was, carried on the 
 conversation with Whybrew. He said: "It's the shape of a 
 man. Yes, there's a man there. Don't know him. He looks like 
 a bloke that sells strawberries." Miss Johnson asked : "Are there 
 strawberries there ? " Whybrew . " That looks like his barrow 
 there. What's he selling of? I believe he's sold out. I can't 
 see anything on his barrow — perhaps he's sold out. There 
 ain't many — a few round things. I expect they're fruit. Are 
 they cherries ? They look a bit red. Aren't they fish ? It don't 
 look very much like fish. If they're fish, some of them hasn't 
 got any heads on. Barrow is a bit fishified — it has a tray on. 
 What colour are those things on the barrow? They looked red, 
 
TRANSFERENCE IN HYPNOTIC STATE. 79 
 
 but now they look silvery." He was rather pleased with this 
 picture and asked afterwards if it was for sale. 
 
 Of 1 8 experiments with Whybrew 6 were successful. 
 Of the 12 failures, 8 occurred when agent and per- 
 cipient were in separate rooms. There were only two 
 cases in which no impression was received — one with 
 the agent in the same room. 
 
 Seven trials were made with Major, of which I was 
 completely and 2 partially successful. Subjoined is 
 the record of the only complete success, which occurred 
 on July 8th, 1891. The percipient was hypnotised 
 and his eyes were closed ; Mr. Smith sat by him, talk- 
 ing to him and telling him that he was to see a 
 picture. 
 
 No. 18. 
 
 The subject given was a mouse in a mouse-trap. Regard- 
 ing himself as a man of culture and being generally anxious to 
 exhibit this, Major asked if it was to be an old master or a 
 modern "pot-boiler." He was told the latter, and he then dis- 
 coursed on "pot-boilers" and how he knew all the subjects of 
 them — mentioning two or three — in a very contemptuous manner. 
 He did not seem to see anything, however, and appeared to be 
 expecting to see an artist producing a rapid sketch. Then, when 
 told that the picture was actually there, he suddenly exclaimed : 
 "Do you mean that deuced old trap with a mouse? He must 
 have been drawing for the rat vermin people." 
 
 Thirty-two trials were made with T., of which only 
 four were successful — two completely, one partially, 
 one completely, but deferred — i.e., the subject of the 
 preceding experiment, a black dog, came before his 
 vision after the agent had already passed to another sub- 
 ject, the Eiffel Tower. T. had, of course, not been told 
 the subject of the previous experiment. Instances of 
 deferred impressions of this kind occurred also with 
 Miss B. A few experiments were tried with another 
 percipient, a man named Adams, but without success ; 
 his own imagination appeared to be so fertile that any 
 telepathic impression must have been crowded out. 
 
 An analysis of the impressions showed that most of 
 
80 APPARITIONS AND THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 
 
 them were reproductions of objects familiar to the 
 percipient, in certain cases of hallucinations previously 
 imposed upon them in the course of these or other 
 experiments. With some of the successful percipients 
 these spontaneous impressions showed a marked tend- 
 ency to recur. Thus P, had a wrong impression — 
 of an elephant — no less than four times in the course 
 of the experiments ; and T, of a woman and a peram- 
 bulator three times. One of these coincided with the 
 subject actually set, and the coincidence may perhaps 
 therefore be attributed to chance. Speaking gener- 
 ally, however, this tendency to repetition amongst 
 the percipient's native impressions constitutes an addi- 
 tional argument, if any such is needed, for attributing 
 the frequent coincidences of the impression with the 
 subject set to some other cause than the automatic 
 association of ideas. 
 
 An instance of a quasi-experimental character, 
 which closely resembles the cases above described, 
 is recorded by Dr. A. Gibotteau : — 1 
 
 No. 19.— By Dr. Gibotteau. 
 
 " Madame P. complained of headache. I placed my hand 
 upon her forehead, and in a few minutes she was in a light 
 hypnotic sleep. Without deepening the trance I endeavoured 
 to give her a sensation of calm and well-being, and to procure 
 this sensation for myself in the first place, I called up a picture 
 of the sea, in which air and water were full of sunlight. 1 I 
 feel a little better, 5 she said; ' how fresh the air is !' I then 
 proceeded to imagine myself walking along the Boulevard Saint 
 Michel, in a slight rain. I saw the hurrying people and the 
 umbrellas. 1 How strange it is ! ' said Madame P. ; 'I seem 
 to be at the corner of the Boulevard Saint Michel and the 
 Rue des £coles, in front of the CafS Vachette* (the exact spot I 
 pictured) ; 4 it is raining, there are a great many people, a 
 hurrying crowd. They are all going up the street, and I with 
 them. The air is very fresh. It gives me a pleasant, restful 
 feeling.' With these words she opened her eyes and gave me 
 further confirmation of her impressions. 
 
 " I should add that this scene took place in the provinces ; I 
 
 1 Annates des Sciences Psychiques, vol. ii. pp. 334, 335. 
 
Transference in hypnotic state. 8i 
 
 had not been in Paris for some months, nor Madame P. for 
 several years. 
 
 "There had been no mention of the subject in the course 
 our conversation that day." 
 
 It will be seen that Dr. Gibotteau attempted to 
 transfer to the percipient only the general sensation 
 of calm and rest induced in himself by the imagined 
 scene, and that the success obtained was therefore of 
 a kind by no means anticipated. 
 
 Another experiment of the same nature is recorded 
 by Dr. Blair Thaw in the article already referred to 
 (p. 31). The percipient was Mrs. Thaw, Dr. Thaw 
 and Mr. Wyatt were the agents. We are not told 
 whether in this instance, as on some other occasions, 
 the percipient was actually hypnotised, but judging 
 from previous experiments it may perhaps be inferred 
 that she was at least in a condition called by Dr. 
 Thaw "a passive state," not easy to distinguish from 
 the lighter stages of sleep-waking. The experiment 
 took place on the 28th April 1892. 
 
 No. 20. — By Dr. Blair Thaw. 
 
 1st Scene. Locomotive running away without engineer tears 
 up station. — Missed. 
 
 2nd Scene. The first real Flying Machine going over 
 Madison Square Tower, and the people watching. — Percipient : 
 I see lots of people. Crowds are going to war. They are so 
 excited. Are they throwing water? (Percipient said after- 
 wards she thought it was a fire and that was the reason of the 
 crowd.) Or sailors pulling at ropes. Agent said, "What are 
 they doing ? " Percipient : They are all looking up. It is a 
 balloo7i or some one in trouble up there. Agent said, " Why 
 balloon ? " Percipient : They are all looking up. Agent said, 
 " I thought of a possible scene in the future." Percipient : Oh, 
 iVs the first man flying. ThaVs what he's doing up there. 
 Agent : " Where is it ? M Percipient : In the city. 
 
 An account of a similar instance of the transfer to 
 a hypnotised percipient of an imagined scene has 
 been recorded by Mr. E. M. Clissold and Mr. Auberon 
 Herbert. 1 
 
 1 See Phantasms of the Living, vol. ii. pp. 677, 678. 
 
 6 
 
82 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 EXPERIMENTAL PRODUCTION OF MOVEMENTS AND 
 OTHER EFFECTS. 
 
 In the two preceding chapters we have discussed 
 experiments where the impression received by the 
 percipient may be interpreted as having been a more 
 or less accurate reproduction of the sensation ex- 
 perienced by the agent, or at most a translation of it 
 into some other simple sensation. There have now 
 to be considered various cases in which the trans- 
 mission of thought is productive of other results in 
 the percipient than the simple duplication or trans- 
 lation of a sensation. (The most usual case is where 
 the telepathic impulse leads to some action on the 
 part of the percipient- It was frequently stated by 
 the older mesmerists 1 that the operator, by a silent 
 act of will, could induce a good subject to do or 
 refrain from doing some prescribed or customary 
 action. Isolated observations on such a point are 
 little likely to compel belief ; the vanity or the 
 credulity of the recorder may be supposed to have 
 led to his overlooking the negative instances, and 
 attributing to his own peculiar gifts a result in reality 
 due to chance. But, following on the clue thus 
 
 1 Cases are recorded in the Zoist and other publications of the period. 
 See the instances, quoted in Phantasms of the Living, vol. i. pp. 89- 
 91, of the Rev. J. Lawson Sisson, Mr. Barth, Mr. N. Dunscombe, and 
 Mr. H. S. Thompson. Traditions of the marvels wrought by the last- 
 named gentleman still linger in Yorkshire society, and will no doubt 
 demand the serious attention of future students of folk-lore. 
 
PRODUCTION OF MOVEMENTS. 83 
 
 obtained, the Committee on Mesmerism appointed 
 by the S.P.R. in 1882, to some of whose work 
 reference has already been made (Chapter II L, p. 6o), 
 succeeded in obtaining results less open to question. 
 
 Inhibition of Action by Silent Willing. 
 
 The first experiments of the kind were conducted 
 on our friend Mr. Sidney Beard, who was for some 
 time an Associate of the Society and took an active 
 interest in its work. Mr. Beard, who was easily 
 hypnotised, would be entranced by Mr. Smith, and 
 sit in a chair with closed eyes. Then, to quote the 
 account of a single experiment, a list of twelve 
 Yeses and Noes in arbitrary order was written by 
 one of ourselves and put into Mr, Smith's hand, with 
 directions that he should successively will the subject 
 to respond or not to respond, in accordance with the 
 list. A tuning-fork was then struck and held at 
 Mr. Beard's ear, and the question, "Do you hear?" 
 was asked by one of ourselves. This was done 
 twelve times in succession, Mr. Beard answering or 
 failing to answer on each occasion in accordance with 
 the " yes " or " no 0 of the written list — that is to say, 
 with the silent will of the agent. Similar trials on 
 other occasions with Mr. Beard were equally success- 
 ful. The percipient's own account of the matter is 
 as follows: "During the experiments of January 1st 
 [1883], when Mr. Smith mesmerised me, I did not lose 
 consciousness at any time, but only experienced a 
 sensation of total numbness in my limbs. When the 
 trial as to whether I could hear sounds was made 
 I heard the sounds distinctly each time, but in a 
 large number of instances I felt totally unable to 
 acknowledge that I heard them. I seemed to know 
 each time whether Mr. Smith wished me to say that 
 I heard them; and as I had surrendered my will to his 
 at the commencement of the experiment, I was unable 
 to reassert my power of volition whilst under his 
 
84 APPARITIONS AND THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 
 
 influence." {Proceedings of the Soc. Psych. Research, 
 vol. i. p. 256.) 
 
 No. 21.— By Professor Barrett. 
 
 Further trials of the same kind were carried on 
 in November 1883 by Professor Barrett, at his own 
 house in Dublin. The hypnotist and agent was 
 again Mr. G. A. Smith, the percipient a youth 
 named Fearnley, a stranger to Mr. Smith. In the 
 first series of trials Professor Barrett asked Fearnley, 
 " Now will you open your hand ? w at the same time 
 pointing to " Yes " or " No," written on a card, and 
 held in sight of Mr. Smith, but out of view from 
 the percipient. Mr. Smith, who was not in contact 
 with the subject, directed his silent will in accord- 
 ance with the written indication. In twenty experi- 
 ments conducted under these conditions there were 
 only three failures Later, to quote Professor Barrett, 
 
 " The experiment was varied as follows : — The word * Yes ' 
 was written on one, and the word t No ' on the other, of two 
 precisely similar pieces of card. One or other of these cards 
 was handed to Mr. Smith at my arbitrary pleasure, care of 
 course being taken that the 'subject' had no opportunity of 
 seeing the card, even had he been awake. When 6 Yes ' was 
 handed Mr. Smith was silently to will the i subject ' to answer 
 aloud in response to the question asked by me, ' Do you hear 
 me?' When ' No' was handed Mr. Smith was to will that no 
 response should be made in reply to the same question. The 
 object of this series of experiments was to note the effect of 
 increasing the distance between the wilier and the willed, — the 
 agent and the percipient. In the first instance Mr. Smith was 
 placed three feet from the ' subject, 3 who remained throughout 
 apparently asleep in an arm-chair in one corner of my study. 
 
 "At three feet apart, 25 trials were successively made, and in 
 every case the 4 subject' responded or did not respond in exact 
 accordance with the silent will of Mr. Smith, as directed by me. 
 
 " At 6 feet apart six similar trials were made without a single 
 failure. 
 
 "At 12 feet apart six more trials were made without a single 
 
 failure. 
 
 "At 17 feet apart six more trials were made without a single 
 failure. 
 
PRODUCTION OF MOVEMENTS. 
 
 85 
 
 " In this last case Mr. Smith had to be placed outside the 
 study door, which was then closed with the exception of a 
 narrow chink just wide enough to admit of passing a card in 
 or out, whilst I remained in the study observing the ( subject.' 
 To avoid any possible indication from the tone in which I asked 
 the question, in all cases except the first dozen experiments, I 
 shuffled the cards face downwards, and then handed the un- 
 known 4 Yes' or 'No' to Mr. Smith, who looked at the card 
 and willed accordingly. I noted down the result, and then, and 
 not till then, looked at the card. 
 
 "A final experiment was made when Mr. Smith was taken 
 across the hall and placed in the dining-room, at a distance 
 of about 30 feet from the 'subject, 5 two doors, both quite 
 closed, intervening. Under these conditions, three trials were 
 made with success, the 'Yes' response being, however, very 
 faint and hardly audible to me, who returned to the study to 
 ask the usual question after handing the card to the distant 
 operator. At this point, the 'subject' fell into a deep sleep, 
 and made no further replies to the questions addressed to him." 
 
 Further trials were made under different condi- 
 tions, the results being almost uniformly successful. 
 
 In interpreting these results there is no justifica- 
 tion for assuming direct control by the agent over 
 the organism of the percipient. Nor does the current 
 phrase, endorsed as it is in the first case by the per- 
 cipient himself, that the operators will dominated the 
 will of the subject, give an adequate account of the 
 matter. When, as in the case of experiments pre- 
 viously described, the percipient's impression repro- 
 duces the sensation of the agent, there is nothing to 
 indicate that the impulse transferred directly affects 
 the external organs, or even the intermediate sensory 
 centres. In the absence of any direct evidence it is 
 at least equally probable that the higher brain centres 
 only are concerned in the transmission in the first 
 instance, and that the transmitted idea is reflected 
 downwards, until it actually assumes, as in some of 
 the experiments recorded with P. and Miss B., the 
 form of a sensory hallucination. Upon this view no 
 fundamental distinction need be drawn between the 
 results before described and those now under discus- 
 sion. In the latter case the question is not one of 
 
86 APPARITIONS AND THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 
 
 transference of will or of a motor or inhibitory 
 impulse. What is actually transferred from the 
 agent is probably only a simple idea. Its subse- 
 quent translation into action, or the inhibition of 
 action, is as much the work of the percipient's mind 
 as, in the other case, the transformation of the idea of 
 a number into a visual hallucination. As regards the 
 particular effect produced, it must be remembered 
 that the prime characteristic of the hypnotic state 
 is its openness to suggestion, and especially to 
 suggestion coming through a particular channel. It 
 is the establishment of this suggestible state, which 
 consists essentially in the suppression of the control- 
 ling faculties which normally pass judgment on the 
 suggestions received from without, and select those 
 which are to find response in action, that Mr. Beard 
 describes as the surrender of his will. So that when 
 Mr. Beard answered our questions he did what his 
 natural courtesy led him to do ; when he maintained 
 silence his tendency to respond to the stimulus of 
 our questions was momentarily overcome by the 
 stronger stimulus of the idea received from the 
 agent. But the superior efficacy of the idea so 
 transferred resulted not from any impulsive quality 
 in the idea itself, but from the previously established 
 relations between agent and percipient. The fact that 
 experiments of this kind have rarely succeeded in the 
 waking state is no doubt due to the inferior suggesti- 
 bility of that state. 
 
 Actions originated by Silent Willing. 
 
 In the paper already referred to {supra, p. 31) Dr. 
 Blair Thaw records some experiments which present 
 us with a modification of the Willing Game, but with- 
 out contact. In most of the experiments the person 
 who was willed to perform a certain action — the 
 nature of which had been previously communicated 
 to the other experimenters in writing — was in the 
 
PRODUCTION OF MOVEMENTS. 
 
 87 
 
 same room as the agents. But the agents did not 
 follow the percipient about the room, nor did the 
 percipient look at the agents for guidance. The 
 percipient appears to have been awake throughout 
 the experiments, but it seems probable that her 
 condition was not that of complete normal wake- 
 fulness. 
 
 Of 26 experiments conducted under such con- 
 ditions, 10 were completely and 12 partially success- 
 ful. When, however, as in this case, there are 
 several agents, all of whom are actually watching the 
 movements of the percipient, it is impossible to feel 
 convinced that no indication by the movements of the 
 eyes or by breathing was given to the percipient to 
 show her whether or not she was moving in the right 
 direction. In the last four trials of the series, how- 
 ever, the percipient was willed to fetch an object from 
 another room which was out of sight from the agents, 
 and it is difficult to conceive that any indication could 
 have been given to her of the object selected. 
 
 No. 22. — By Dr. Blair Thaw. 
 
 April yth y 1892. 
 
 Mrs. Thaw, Percipient. Mr. M. H. Wyatt and Dr. Thaw, 
 Agents. In the next four experiments an object was selected 
 in another room, and then the percipient sent in for it. No 
 clue was given as to what part of the room. 
 
 1st Object Selected. A WOODEN Cupid, from a corner-piece 
 in room with eight other objects on it. — Percipient first brought 
 a photo from the lower shelf of corner-piece, then said : " It's the 
 wooden Cupid." 
 
 2nd Object. Match-box on mantel. — Percipient seemed 
 confused at first and brought two photos, then said: " It's the 
 brass match-box on mantel." 
 
 3rd Object. A Vellum Book on table, among twenty other 
 books, chosen ; but a bag under one window was thought of 
 first. — Percipient went to table, put her hand on the book, then 
 went to the bag and took it up, then back to the table and took 
 the vellum book and then the bag, and appeared with both. 
 Percipient was in sight of agents during this time, but did not 
 see them. 
 
88 APPARITIONS AND THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 
 
 4I/1 Object. Book on small table, among ten others. — 
 Missed. 
 
 In commenting on these experiments, Dr. Thaw is 
 himself inclined to attribute some of the results to 
 " an indistinct motor impulse of some kind, leading 
 the percipient near the object." But in the experi- 
 ments above recorded, at any rate, it is sufficient, 
 probably, to suppose the transference of the idea of 
 the object. 
 
 Experiments of a somewhat similar nature are 
 recorded by Dr. Ochorowicz (La Suggestion mentale, 
 pp. 84-1 17). The subject in this case, Madame M., was 
 sunk in the deep hypnotic state (I'etat aidtique), a 
 condition in which she would usually remain motion- 
 less until aroused by the doctor. Under these cir- 
 cumstances Dr. Ochorowicz conducted upwards of 
 forty experiments in conveying mental commands, 
 a large proportion of which were executed by the 
 subject with more or less exactness. These trials 
 have the drawback above indicated, common to all 
 experiments of the kind with the agent in the same 
 room; moreover, each experiment appears to have 
 extended over a considerable period, and the com- 
 mand — eg., to rise from the chair and hand a cake 
 from the table to Dr. Ochorowicz — was frequently 
 executed in stages. In judging of the results, how- 
 ever, it should be remembered that Dr. Ochorowicz 
 has elsewhere shown himself to be acute in criticism 
 and accurate in observation. 
 
 Some experiments made by Dr. Gibert on Madame 
 B., and recorded by Professor Pierre Janet, 1 seem 
 open to a similar objection. Dr. Gibert communicated 
 the mental command by touching Madame B.'s fore- 
 head with his own whilst concentrating his thoughts 
 on the ideas to be conveyed. It is difficult to feel 
 sure that the success of the experiment under such 
 conditions was not due to the command having been 
 
 1 Bulletin de la Soc. de Psychologie Physiologique, 1885. 
 
PRODUCTION OF MOVEMENTS. 
 
 8 9 
 
 unconsciously muttered by Dr. Gibert within the 
 hearing of the percipient. In the following account, 
 however, thought-transference would seem to be the 
 simplest explanation of the results. The narrator, 
 unfortunately, remains anonymous ; he is, however, 
 personally known to Dr. Dariex, the editor of the 
 periodical from which the account is extracted, and 
 the experiments were obviously conducted with care. 1 
 In this case it seems clear, since the command, though 
 understood, was on more than one occasion disobeyed, 
 that the idea telepathically intruded into the per- 
 cipient's mind was not necessarily associated with an 
 impulse to action. 
 
 No. 23.— By J. H, P. 
 
 [On the 6th December 1887], having placed M. in a deep 
 trance, I turned my back upon her, and, without any gesture or 
 sound whatever, gave her the following mental order : — 
 
 " When you wake up you are to go and fetch a glass, put a 
 few drops of Eau de Cologne into it, and bring it to me." 
 
 On waking up, M. was visibly preoccupied; she could not 
 keep still, and at last came and placed herself in front of me, 
 exclaiming — 
 
 " What an idea to put in my head ! " 
 
 " Why do you speak so to me ? " 
 
 " Because the idea that I have got can only come from you, 
 and I don't wish to obey." 
 
 "Don't obey unless you like; but I wish you to tell me at 
 once what you are thinking of." 
 
 " Well, then, I was to go and look for a glass, put some water 
 in it, with some drops of Eau de Cologne, and take it to you ; 
 it is really ridiculous." 
 
 My order had then been perfectly understood for the first 
 time. From that moment, December 6th, 1887, till to-day, 
 with only two or three exceptions, the mental transmission, 
 whether in the waking or sleeping state, has been most vivid. 
 It is only disturbed at certain times, or when M. is feeling very 
 anxious. 
 
 On the 10th of December 1887, unknown to M., I hid a watch, 
 that was not going, behind some books in my bookcase. When 
 she arrived I put her to sleep, and gave her the following mental 
 command : — 
 
 Annales des Sciences Psychiques, vol. iii. pp. 130-133. 
 
90 APPARITIONS AND THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 
 
 "Go and fetch me the watch that is hidden behind some 
 books in the bookcase." 
 
 I sat in my armchair with M. behind me, and was careful not 
 to look in the direction where the object was hidden. 
 
 M. suddenly got up from her armchair and went straight to 
 the bookcase, but could not open it ; making energetic move- 
 ments the while, whenever she touched the door, and especially 
 the glass. 
 
 " It is there ! it is there ! I am certain ; but this glass burns 
 me!" 
 
 I decided to open it myself ; she rushed at my books, took 
 them out, and seized the watch, delighted to have found it. 
 
 Similar trials have been made with commands that one of 
 my friends passed to me, written beforehand, and not in the 
 presence of the subject, and the success has been complete ; 
 but if the person who passes me the order is unknown to her, 
 she refuses to obey, saying that the command is not mine. 
 
 M. N., who was convinced that mental transmission is a 
 fraud, assured me that I should never be able to transmit an 
 order from him to M. 
 
 I invited him to come to my house, at five o'clock in the 
 evening, with a command written, which he was to give me 
 only when M. was asleep, and outside my study. 
 
 At 5.10 N. arrived and we went out, leaving M. in a trance ; 
 when we were separated from my study by the two intervening 
 rooms, with all the doors shut, N. pulled out a small paper and 
 said — 
 
 "You will read this command, we will both come back to M., 
 and without any gestures, you will communicate it to her." 
 " Certainly." 
 
 In the note was written, " Give the mental command to M. 
 to count out loud from 5 to 1 ; 5, 4, 3, 2, I." 
 
 We came back to my study ; I sat at . my desk as usual — I 
 am in the habit of making notes during the progress of the 
 experiments, so as to report them with scrupulous accuracy — 
 and I sent N.'s mental command, while pretending to write. 
 M. suddenly exclaimed — 
 
 " Doubtless, you imagine that I cannot count ! I can count 
 from 1 to 50,000, if I wish." 
 
 Mental command — "Count from 5 to 1." 
 
 " No, I will not obey a strange command ; it is not a com- 
 mand of yours." 
 
 All my efforts were useless ; we had to abandon the experi- 
 ment. The command was certainly understood ; but M. N. 
 retired, convinced that it had not been understood, and that 
 even the trance was a sham ! 
 
PRODUCTION OF MOVEMENTS. 91 
 
 Automatic Writing. 
 
 Sometimes the working of the telepathic impulse is 
 of a more apparently mysterious kind. We have seen 
 that Mr. Beard was fully conscious of the action of a 
 restraining force; and Mrs. Thaw, who was in a con- 
 dition little if at all removed from the normal, appears 
 also to have been aware of what she was doing, if 
 perhaps without explicit recognition of her motives at 
 the time of performing the prescribed actions. But in 
 the various cases now to be described the telepathic 
 impulse seems never to have affected the normal 
 consciousness of the percipient at all ; and the results 
 produced through the agency of his organism were 
 due to no recognised volition on his part. The intel- 
 ligence directing his hand was an intelligence working 
 below and apart from his ordinary life. 
 
 Now this subterranean intelligence presents many 
 points of analogy with the secondary consciousness of 
 the hypnotic subject ; in both states we find indica- 
 tions of thought and will distinct from those of 
 waking life, and of a memory not shared with that 
 life. Moreover, it has been shown experimentally, 
 by Mr. Edmund Gurney, 1 Professor Pierre Janet, 2 and 
 others, that the consciousness which njakes itself 
 known through planchette is, in certain persons at 
 any rate, identical with the consciousness found in 
 the hypnotic trance, so far as the test of a common 
 memory can be relied upon to prove identity. The 
 superior susceptibility to telepathic influences, already 
 referred to, of the hypnotic subject, may perhaps, 
 therefore, in the light of these later experiments, be 
 found to indicate a superior susceptibility of those 
 parts of the brain whose workings lie below the 
 ordinary consciousness, and reveal themselves only in 
 the activities of trance and automatism. 
 
 1 See the account of his experiments on " Peculiarities of certain 
 Post-hypnotic States," Proc. S.P.P., vol. iv. pp. 268-323. 
 a " L'Automatisme Psychologique. " 
 
92 APPARITIONS AND THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 
 
 The following is an illustrative case. The account 
 is derived from contemporary notes, made by the late 
 Mr. P. H. Newnham, Vicar of Maker, Devonport, of 
 a series of experiments conducted by himself and his 
 wife during eight months in 1871. 1 Mr. Newnham 
 would write, in a book kept for the purpose, a question 
 of the purport of which Mrs. Newnham was in ignor- 
 ance; and Mrs. Newnham, holding her hand on a 
 planchette, would write an answer to the question. 
 The conditions of the experiments are described by 
 Mr. Newnham, in an account written in 1884, as 
 follows : — 
 
 No. 24. 
 
 " My wife always sat at a small low table, in a low chair, 
 leaning backwards. I sat about eight feet distant, at a 
 rather higher table, and with my back towards her while writ- 
 ing down the questions. It was absolutely impossible that any 
 gesture, or play of features, on my part, could have been visible 
 or intelligible to her. As a rule she kept her eyes shut; but 
 never became in the slightest degree hypnotic, or even naturally 
 drowsy." 
 
 In all 309 questions with their answers were recorded 
 under these conditions, before the experiments were 
 finally abandoned on account of their prejudicial 
 effect on Mrs. Newnham's health. The extracts from 
 Mr. Newnham's note-book given below show that 
 Mrs. Newnham throughout had some kind of know- 
 ledge, not always apparently complete, of the terms of 
 the question. 2 But she was not herself consciously 
 aware of the purport either of the question or of the 
 answer written through her hand. 
 
 January 29//1. 
 
 13. Is it the operator's brain, or some external force, that 
 moves the Planchette ? Answer "brain " or "force." 
 A. Will. 
 
 1 Proc, Soc. Psych. Research, vol. iii. pp. 6-23. 
 
 2 Mr. Newnham explains that "five or six questions were often 
 asked consecutively without her being told of the subject that was being 
 pursued." 
 
PRODUCTION OF MOVEMENTS. 93 
 
 14. Is it the will of a living person, or of an immaterial spirit, 
 
 distinct from that person ? Answer " person " or 
 " spirit." 
 A. Wife. 
 
 15. Give first the wife's Christian name; then, my favourite 
 
 name for her. (This was accurately done.) 
 
 27. What is your own name ? 
 A. Only you. 
 
 28. We are not quite sure of the meaning of the answer. 
 
 Explain. 
 A. Wife. 
 
 Failing to get more than this at the outset, we returned to 
 the same thought after question 114; when, having been closely 
 pressed on another subject, we received the curt reply — " Told 
 all I know." 
 
 February \Zih. 
 
 1 17. Who are you that writes, and has told all you know ? 
 A. Wife. 
 
 118. But does no one tell wife what to write? If so, who? 
 A. Spirit. 
 
 119. Whose spirit ? 
 A. Wife's brain. 
 
 120. But how does wife's brain know (certain) secrets ? 
 A. Wife's spirit unconsciously guides. 
 
 121. But how does wife's spirit know things it has never been 
 
 told? 
 
 A. No external influence. 
 
 122. But by what internal influence does it know (these) 
 
 secrets ? 
 A. You cannot know. 
 
 Mr. Newnham, who was a Mason, took the oppor- 
 tunity on several occasions of questioning the 
 planchette on details of the Masonic ritual and 
 archaeology — of which Mrs. Newnham was of course 
 ignorant — with very surprising results. It will be 
 seen from the extracts which follow that Mrs. 
 Newnham's answers showed not only an acquaint- 
 ance with the terms of the question, but even a 
 fragmentary knowledge of the correct answer — know- 
 ledge which under the circumstances could hardly 
 have been derived elsewhere than from the questioner's 
 brain. 
 
APPARITIONS AND THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 
 
 March 26th. 
 
 166. Of what language is the first syllable of the Great Triple 
 
 R. A. Word ? 1 
 A. Don't know. 
 
 167. Yes, you do. What are the three languages of which 
 
 the word is composed ? 
 A. Greek, Egyptian, Syriac first syllable (correctly givcn\ 
 rest unknown. 
 
 168. Write the syllable which is Syriac. 
 A. (First syllable correctly written.) 
 
 169. Write the syllable which is Egyptian. 
 A. Second. 
 
 170. Can you not write the syllable itself? 
 A. Third Greek. 
 
 174. Write down the word itself. 
 
 A. First three and last two letters were written correctly, 
 but four incorrect letters, partly borrowed from a?iother 
 word of the same degree, came in the middle. 
 
 176. Why do you write a word of which I know nothing? 
 
 A. Wife tried hard to tell the word, but could not quite 
 catch it. 
 
 177. Catch it from whom ? 
 A. Not quite sure. 
 
 178. Not quite sure of what ? 
 
 A. I know nothing. Wife doesn't quite know. 
 182. Write out the prayer used at the advancement of a 
 Mark Master Mason. 
 
 A. Almighty Ruler of the Universe and Architect of all 
 worlds, we beseech Thee to accept this, our brother, 
 whom we have this day received into our most honour- 
 able Company of Mark Master Masons. Grant him to 
 be a worthy member of our brotherhood ; and may he 
 be in his own person a perfect mirror of all Masonic 
 virtues. Grant that all our doings may be to Thy 
 honour and glory, and to the welfare of all mankind. 
 
 This prayer was written off instantaneously and very rapidly. 
 It is a very remarkable production indeed. For the benefit of 
 those who are not members of the craft, I may say that no 
 prayer in the slightest degree resembling it is made use of in the 
 Ritual of any Masonic degree ; and yet it contains more than 
 one strictly accurate technicality connected with the degree of 
 Mark Mason. My wife has never seen any Masonic prayers, 
 
 1 Previous questions had been asked on the same subject, and the 
 first syllable had already been correctly written. On a subsequent 
 occasion the same question was repeated and a wholly incorrect answer 
 was given. 
 
PRODUCTION OF MOVEMENTS. 
 
 95 
 
 whether in " Carlile," or any other real or spurious Ritual of 
 the Masonic Order. 
 
 183. I do not know this prayer. Where is it to be found ? 
 A. Old American Ritual. 
 
 184. Where can I get one? 
 
 A. Most likely none in England. 
 
 185. Can you not write the prayer that I make use of in my 
 
 own Lodge? 
 A. No, I don't know it. 
 
 We have to remark here not merely the exhibition 
 of a will and an intelligence differing from the writer's 
 normal self, but the display of a yet more alien dis- 
 ingenuousness. Similar evasions and inventions occur 
 more than once in the course of these experiments. 
 Indeed, a certain degree of moral perversity is a 
 frequent and notorious characteristic of automatic 
 expression. 
 
 Some interesting experiments of the same kind were 
 conducted, in the winter of 1892-93, by Mr. R. H. 
 Buttemer, of Emanuel College, Cambridge, and Mr. 
 H. T, Green. Throughout the series the questions 
 were, as in the preceding case, written down, so that 
 the percipient was completely ignorant of their 
 purport. The following is the record of the last 
 experiments of the series. 
 
 No. 25. — By Mr. R. H. Buttemer. 
 
 February 18th, 1893, 8 P.M. Mrs. H., Miss B., Mr. and Miss 
 M. present, in addition to Mr. Green, and Messrs. S., W., and 
 Buttemer. 
 
 Mr. Green, as usual, operated Planchette, and on this occasion 
 sat with his back to all the other persons present. 
 
 Q. (from Mr. M.) : What was I doing this afternoon ? 
 
 A. i. the sun (all else illegible), ii, Enjoying the 
 
 fresh air of heaven. 
 
 Q. What was Mr. Rogers doing in Cambridge ? 
 
 A. i. (Irrelevant, or possibly connected vaguely with the 
 question.) ii. Ask another, but Mr. Rogers came up on im- 
 portant business connected with the Lodge. (Correct.) 
 
g6 APPARITIONS AND THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 
 
 Q. Where has Mrs. M. gone ? 
 
 A. i. (Irrelevant.) ii. Far, far away, but more next time. 
 
 iii. Her mother has gone to — oh, what a happy place is London ! 
 
 iv. All change here for Bletchley. (Mrs. M. had possibly 
 passed this station on her journey.) 
 
 Q. Who has won the Association Match to-day? * 
 
 A. i. (Illegible.) ii. O ye simple ones, how long will ye love 
 simplicity? Why, Oxford, of course. [This fact was known to 
 some persons in the room, but not to Mr. Green.] 
 
 One of the company then suggested the attempt to get the 
 name on a visiting card transmitted, and the question was 
 written, "Write name on card." Mr. Green did not know that this 
 experiment was about to be tried, and the card was picked from 
 a pile at random. The name was John B. Bourne. A sentence 
 was written by Mr. Green, which proved to be, " Think of one 
 letter at a time and then see what will happen." We did so. 
 
 A. i. J for Jerusalem, O for Omri, H for Honey, and N for 
 Nothing, ii. B for Benjamin, O for Olive, U for Unicorn. 
 (The remaining letters were given incorrectly.) 
 
 Q. How many of the Society's books are here? (There were 
 two volumes of Proceedings on the table.) 
 
 A. i. (Irrelevant.) ii. The answer is 100-98. 
 
 Q. What is 2 x 3 ? 
 
 Two irrelevant answers were given, possibly owing to a 
 slight disturbance in the room. The third answer was — 
 "When that noise has ceased and S. has finished knocking 
 the lamp over, I say 6." 
 
 A trial shortly after this, February 19th, gave no results, 
 and the power of automatic writing appears to have entirely 
 left Mr. Green for the present. {Proc. Soc, Psych. Research^ vol. 
 ix. pp. 61-64.) 
 
 In this, as in Mr. Newnham's case, the mode of 
 expression is again characteristic of the automatic 
 consciousness. It is explained by Mr. Buttemer that 
 when two or more answers are given, the operator 
 had been simply told to write again, after the first 
 irrelevant answer, without being shown the question. 
 
 Table Tilting. 
 
 No. 26. — By the AUTHOR. 
 
 We pass on to experiments in which the ideas trans- 
 mitted from the agent find other subterranean channels 
 
PRODUCTION OF MOVEMENTS. 97 
 
 in the percipient's organism for their expression. Of 
 all forms of intelligent automatism writing, next to 
 speaking, is probably in an educated percipient the 
 easiest, because in normal life the commonest. In 
 the cases, therefore, recorded below the actual move- 
 ments involved, though of a relatively simple kind, as 
 being unaccustomed called possibly for the exercise 
 of a degree of mental activity as high as would have 
 been the case had writing been the vehicle of expres- 
 sion. In the preceding chapter it was recorded, in 
 the experiments with numbers, that some of the 
 answers were given through the movements of a 
 table on which the percipient's hands rested (p. 73). 
 A series of experiments of this nature was made by 
 the writer in November and December 1873, with 
 the assistance of a few friends, amongst whom were 
 Mr. F. H. Colson, now Head Master of Plymouth 
 College, and the Rev, W. E. Smith, of Corton, near 
 Lowestoft. The following is a description of the 
 methods adopted. Three or four of us would sit 
 round a small centre-legged table, cane-bottomed 
 chair, waste-paper basket, or metal tripod, with our 
 hands resting on it. We found that in a few minutes 
 the table (or other instrument) would tilt on one side, 
 or move round and round, with considerable freedom. 
 When these motions had once been fairly established, 
 one or two of those present in the room would retire 
 to a distance, keeping their backs to the table, and 
 think of a letter of the alphabet. The table would 
 move freely up and down, under the varying pressure 
 of the hands laid on it, in a succession of small tilts. 
 Those sitting at the table would count the tilts — one 
 tilt standing for A, two for B, three for C, and so on. 
 Excluding second trials, there were 70 experiments 
 conducted under these conditions. The right letter 
 was tilted in 27 cases, and in two others the next 
 succeeding letter was given. On some occasions the 
 proportion of successes was much higher ; thus, on 
 the 28th November, out of a total of 16 trials, 10 
 
 7 
 
98 APPARITIONS AND THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 
 
 were correct. On the ist December, on the other 
 hand, 10 trials were made without any success. It 
 was the rule throughout that the agents should stand 
 with their backs to the table at some distance from it, 
 and after the first few experiments we found, or 
 thought we found, that the thought-transference suc- 
 ceeded best with a single agent. In order that the 
 letter might not be guessed from the context, we 
 generally took the initial or initial and final letters 
 only of a word ; in four cases only did the agent 
 select as many as three consecutive letters of a word. 
 If the letters had been arbitrarily chosen, the chances 
 against the right letters being indicated would be 
 25 to l. But as the letters actually selected were in 
 most cases constituent parts of a word, generally the 
 initial letter, and as in some cases two or three 
 consecutive letters were selected, the adverse chances 
 would be reduced, roughly speaking, to something 
 like 15 to 1. But even so the results attained are 
 sufficiently striking. 1 
 
 In these experiments the percipient or percipients 
 themselves counted the tilts ; and it is probable that 
 occasionally one or other of those seated at the table 
 half-consciously guided its movements in conformity 
 with his own ideas of what the letter would be. 
 But in a modified form of the experiment, introduced 
 by Professor Richet, the percipients, two or three in 
 number, were seated at one table and a printed 
 alphabet was placed on another table behind the 
 percipients and out of their range of vision. When 
 
 1 There were nine sittings in all, but the records of one were im- 
 perfectly kept, and have not been preserved. In two cases the details 
 given are insufficient ; in the notes of the first evening it is stated that 
 the person seated at the table " failed three or four times, succeeded 
 once in giving word of [ue. s selected from) newspaper (which agent) 
 held in his hand." These trials have been omitted altogether from the 
 results given in the text. On the third evening there is a record, 
 "gave S H but got wrong afterwards." The word thought of was 
 Sherry. I have counted this trial as two successes and two failures, 
 judging from the other experiments recorded that not more than four 
 consecutive letters at most would have been attempted. 
 
PRODUCTION OF MOVEMENTS. 
 
 99 
 
 the first table tilted, 1 under the automatic movements 
 of the hands resting on it, it caused a bell to ring. 
 M. Richet or some other experimenter sat at the 
 second table and drew a pen slowly backwards and 
 forwards over the printed alphabet. The letters to 
 which the pen was pointing when the bell rang were 
 noted, and it was found that they made up intelligible 
 words and sentences, provided that in some cases the 
 next letter or the next but one were substituted for 
 that actually given. 2 All necessary precautions were 
 taken that the alphabet should be out of sight of the 
 " mediums," who were in most cases personal friends 
 of M. Richet, and whose good faith was, he believes, 
 in all cases unimpeachable. Subjoined is an account 
 of the results obtained on one evening. M. Richet 
 appears from the account to have been one of those 
 seated at the tilting table. 
 
 No. 27. — By Professor Richet. 
 
 " On the 9th of November we took the same precautions, but 
 used an ordinary alphabet, not the circular one. 3 The name of 
 the * spirit ' who came to the table was given as V I L L O N. 
 
 1 In this case it will be observed the table tilted only once for each 
 letter. The method adopted (after trial of the alternative) in my own 
 experiments, though slower and more cumbrous, was apparently pro- 
 ductive of more accurate results. It will be readily understood that it 
 might be easier for the transmitted impulse to check a movement, at 
 once uncertain and spasmodic, which had been already initiated, than 
 to overcome, in a short space of time, the resistance of inertia and 
 generate a new movement. The distinction may perhaps be illustrated 
 by the difference between the amount of force required to start a 
 railway truck at rest on the level, and that which would suffice to arrest 
 one actually in gentle motion. 
 
 2 Of course substitutions of this kind considerably reduce the value 
 of the results obtained, but it will be found that when full deduction 
 has been made on this score, the coincidences remain overwhelmingly 
 in excess of anything which could have been produced by chance. 
 
 3 In some previous experiments a circular alphabet had been used, 
 with a view of preventing any of those seated at the first table from 
 learning by the movements of the operator's hand what point of the 
 alphabet he had reached. The other precautions described seemed, 
 however, as M. Richet points out, sufficient to exclude all considerations 
 of this kind. 
 
100 APPARITIONS AND THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 
 
 Then we made a great noise, we repeated poetry, sang, and 
 counted to such good purpose that P., who was at the alphabet, 
 could hardly follow the ringing of the bell. We asked for some 
 French poetry. The reply was — 
 
 QUSNNTKFSNEIGDRDAMSAM 
 O U,SONT,LES,NEIGES,DANTAN 
 
 That is, *'0u sont les neiges d'Antan?" — a verse of Villon's, 
 obviously known to us all. 
 
 We then asked, what were the relations of Villon with the 
 kings of France ? 
 
 KOUHTLECRUEL 
 L 0 \U I S 9 L E,C R U E L 
 
 Louis le cruel. 
 
 What book ought we to read ? 
 
 ESSAYSURDADMONINMANHP 
 ESS A Y,SUR,D A EMONIOMANIE 
 
 The reader will understand that if I mention these experi- 
 ments, it is not because the answers are interesting in them- 
 selves, but because the precautions taken seemed sufficient to 
 prevent the medium from gaining any knowledge of the move- 
 ments of the operator at the alphabet. ... I add a few more 
 replies; but the number and intrinsic significance of these 
 replies is a matter of but little importance. 
 
 FEST INALENTE 
 LOFAMDTMREIINAJUBR 
 I N F A N D U M,RE JINAJ U B E S 
 RENOVAREDOLOREM 
 RENO V A R E,D O L O R E M 
 
 The old spelling of the word "Rejina" should be noticed. 
 {Proc. Soc. Psych. Research, vol. v. pp. 142, 143.) 
 
 In this case it will be observed that P. alone was in 
 possession of the knowledge, without which all the 
 efforts of those at the table could have produced only 
 a meaningless sequence of letters. In some other 
 experiments of the series the procedure was more 
 complicated. M. Richet, standing apart from both 
 tables, asked a question, the answer to which was 
 given by the percipients with a certain approximation 
 to correctness. The results, though less striking than 
 
PRODUCTION OF MOVEMENTS. 
 
 IOI 
 
 those already quoted, are yet such as to suggest that 
 they were not due to chance. 1 
 
 Production of Local Anesthesia. 
 
 We now pass to experiments of another kind, 
 resembling those last quoted, inasmuch as the effects 
 were produced without the consciousness of the per- 
 cipient, but differing in the important particular that 
 no deliberate and conscious effort on his part could 
 have enabled him to produce them. In experiments 
 carried on with various subjects at intervals through 
 the years 1883-87, at some of which the present writer 
 assisted, Mr. Edmund Gurney had shown that it was 
 possible by means of the unexpressed will of the 
 agent to produce local anaesthesia in certain persons. 
 (S.P.R. y vol. i. pp. 257-260; ii. 201-205; iii. 453-459; v. 
 14-17.) In these experiments the subject was placed 
 at a table, and his hands were passed through holes in 
 a large brown paper screen, so that they were com- 
 pletely concealed from his view. Mr. G. A. Smith 
 then held his hand at a distance of two or three 
 inches from the finger indicated by Mr. Gurney, at 
 the same time willing that it should become rigid and 
 insensible. On subsequently applying appropriate 
 tests it was found, as a rule, that the finger selected 
 had actually become rigid and was insensible to pain. 
 In the last series of 160 experiments Mr. Gurney, as 
 well as Mr. Smith, held his hand over a particular 
 finger. In 124 cases the finger over which Mr. 
 Smith's hand had been held was alone affected; in 16 
 cases Mr. Gurney and Mr. Smith were both success- 
 ful; in 13 cases Mr. Gurney was successful and Mr. 
 Smith failed. In the remaining 7 cases no effect at all 
 was produced. It is noteworthy that in a series of 41 
 similar trials, in which Mr. Smith, while holding his 
 hand in the same position, willed that no effect 
 
 1 Rev. Phil., Dec. 1884; see also S.P.R., vol. ii. pp. 247 et seq. 
 
102 APPARITIONS AND THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 
 
 should be produced, there was actually no effect 
 in 36 cases; in 4 cases the ringer over which his 
 hand was held, and in the remaining case another 
 finger, were affected. The rigidity was tested by ask- 
 ing the subject, at the end of the experiment, to close 
 his hands. When he complied with the request the 
 finger operated on— if the experiment had succeeded 
 — would remain rigid. The insensibility was proved 
 by pricking, burning, or by a current from an induc- 
 tion coil. In the majority of the successful trials 
 the insensibility was shown to be proof against all 
 assaults, however severe. 
 
 In these earlier experiments it seemed essential to 
 success that Mr. Smith's hand should be in close 
 proximity to that of the subject, without any interven- 
 ing barrier. These conditions made it difficult to 
 exclude the possibility of the subject learning by 
 variations in temperature, or by air currents, which 
 finger was actually being operated on; though it is 
 hard to conceive that the percipient could by any 
 such means have discriminated between Mr. Gurney's 
 hand and Mr. Smith's. On the other hand, even 
 if this source of error was held to be excluded, 
 the interpretation of the results remained ambiguous. 
 As a matter of fact, Mr. Gurney himself was inclined 
 to attribute the effects produced, not to telepathy, as 
 ordinarily understood, but to a specific vital effluence, 
 or, as he phrased it, a kind of nervous induction, 
 operating directly on the affected part of the per- 
 cipient's organism. (Proc. S.P.R., vol. v. pp. 254-259.) 
 
 With a view to test this hypothesis further experi- 
 ments of the same kind were made by Mrs. Sidgwick 
 during the years 1890 and 1892, the subjects being 
 P. and Miss B. already mentioned. The percipient 
 was throughout in a normal condition. As before, 
 he sat at a table with his hands passed through holes 
 in a large screen, which extended sufficiently far in 
 all directions to prevent him from seeing either the 
 operator or his own hands. Mr. Smith, as before, 
 
PRODUCTION OF MOVEMENTS. 103 
 
 willed to produce the desired effect in the finger 
 which had been intimated to him, either by signs 
 or writing, by one of the experimenters. Passing 
 over the trials, very generally successful, made under 
 the same conditions as Mr. Gurney's experiments — 
 i.e., with the agent's hand held at a short distance 
 without any intervening screen from the finger 
 selected — we will quote Mrs. Sidgwick's account of 
 the later series performed under varied conditions. 
 (Proc. S.P.R.y vol. viii. pp. 577-596.) 
 
 No. 28.— By Mrs. H. Sidgwick. 
 
 In the second division, (b\ of our experiments come those in 
 which a glass screen was placed over the subject's hands. For 
 the first four of these we used a framed window pane which 
 happened to be handy. Then we obtained and used a sheet 
 of 32 oz. glass, measuring 22 by 10 inches and l /e inch in thick- 
 ness. This was supported on two large books placed beyond 
 the subject's hands on each side, and in this position the upper 
 surface of the glass was 1% inches above the surface of the 
 table, so that there was ample room for the hands to rest under- 
 neath without touching the glass. Mr. Smith held his hand in 
 the usual position over the selected finger, above the glass and 
 not touching it. Under these conditions we tried 21 experi- 
 ments with P., of which 18 were successful, and 6 with Miss 
 B., all successful. In the case of the 3 failures with P., no 
 effect was produced on any finger. In one successful case, the 
 time taken was long, and we interrupted the experiment by 
 premature testing in the way explained above. 
 
 Division (c) includes those experiments in which Mr. Smith 
 did not approximate his hand to that of the subject at all, but 
 merely looked at the selected finger from some place in the 
 same room as the subject, but out of his sight. The distances 
 between him and the subject varied from about 2^ to about 12 
 feet. Under these conditions we tried 37 experiments with P., 18 
 in 1890, of which 6 were failures, and 2 only partially successful, 
 and 19 in 1892, of which 10 were failures. The proportion of 
 success was, it thus appears, much less than under the pre- 
 viously described conditions, but still much beyond what 
 chance would produce. Of the 6 failures in 1890, one was a 
 case in which Mr. Smith made a mistake as to which finger we 
 had selected, but succeeded with the one he thought of. In 
 another case the left thumb instead of the right thumb became 
 insensitive. In the other 4 cases no finger at all was affected. 
 
104 APPARITIONS AND THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 
 
 Of the 10 failures in 1892, no effect was produced in 4 
 cases ; in another the right (viz., the little) finger of the wrong 
 hand became insensitive in 4 cases an adjoining finger was 
 affected — once only slightly — instead of that selected, and in 
 the remaining case a finger distant from the selected one was 
 slightly affected. 
 
 Six experiments were made with Mr. Smith look- 
 ing at the finger through the opera-glass at a distance 
 of from 22 to 25 feet; in three cases the experiment 
 succeeded, in three another finger was affected instead 
 of that selected. Fourteen experiments were made 
 with a closed door intervening between percipient 
 and agent ; 2 only succeeded, and in 8 a wrong 
 finger was affected, no effect at all being produced 
 in the remaining 4 cases. In a further series of 
 4 trials Mr. Smith held his hand near the per- 
 cipient, and willed to produce no effect. The trials 
 were successful. In all these experiments P. was 
 the percipient. 
 
 The rigidity was tested, as before, by asking the 
 subject to close his hands ; the anaesthesia, as a rule, 
 by touches or the induction coil. Tested by the 
 latter means it was found, as the current was gradu- 
 ally increased to the maximum, that the insensibility 
 was not always complete. Flexibility and sensation 
 were usually restored, for economy of time, by means 
 of upward passes ; but a few trials made later in the 
 series served to show that the finger could be restored 
 to its normal condition by a mere effort of will on the 
 part of the agent. In some cases when their attention 
 was specially directed to their sensations the subjects 
 were able to indicate beforehand the finger operated 
 on, by reason of the feeling of cold in it. But as a 
 rule they appeared to be unaware which finger was 
 affected. It is perhaps needless to point out that no 
 conscious effort on their part could have produced 
 the results described. 
 
 . 1 It happened on another occasion under these conditions that the 
 right little ringer was slightly affected when the left little finger, which 
 had been selected, was so in a more decided manner. 
 
ios 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 EXPERIMENTAL PRODUCTION OF TELEPATHIC 
 EFFECTS AT A DISTANCE. 
 
 /In the cases so far described, where success has been 
 I attained, the agent and percipient, if not actually in 
 the same room, have been separated by a distance 
 not exceeding at the most 25 or 30 feet. The 
 analogy of the physical forces would, of course, have 
 prepared us to find that the effect of telepathy 
 diminishes in proportion to the distance through 
 which it has to act. And in fact we have but few 
 records of successful experiments at a distance. Yet, 
 on the other hand, we are confronted by a large body 
 of evidence for the spontaneous affection of one mind 
 by another, and that at a distance frequently of 
 hundreds of miles. It is difficult to resist the con- 
 clusion, in view of the close similarity, in many cases, 
 of the effects produced, that the force operating in 
 these spontaneous phenomena is identical with, or at 
 least closely allied to, that which causes the transfer 
 of sensations or images from agent to percipient 
 within the compass of a London drawing-room. It 
 is probable, indeed, that the non-experimental evi- 
 dence, for reasons already alluded to, and discussed 
 at length in the succeeding chapter, should be 
 generously discounted. But it is not easy for an 
 impartial inquirer to reject it altogether. Nor indeed 
 is any such summary solution required by the results 
 
106 APPARITIONS AND THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 
 
 of experimental telepathy. It is true that experi- 
 ments at a distance have seldom succeeded, and that 
 we have no record of any long-continued series of 
 such experiments at all comparable to those con- 
 ducted, e.g.> by Mr. Guthrie or Mrs. Henry Sidgwick 
 at close quarters. But it is also probably true that 
 such experiments have been comparatively seldom 
 attempted. And if account be taken of the various 
 drawbacks incident to experiments at a distance, the 
 amount of success already achieved, though no doubt 
 less in proportion to the number of serious and well- 
 conceived attempts than is the case with experiments 
 conducted under the more usual conditions, is yet 
 far from discouraging. For trials at a distance are 
 tedious ; they consume much time, and call for long 
 preparation and careful pre-arrangement. The diffi- 
 culties of securing the necessary freedom from dis- 
 turbance are probably increased when agent and 
 percipient are separated. The interest in such experi- 
 ments is difficult to maintain apart from the stimulus 
 of a rapid succession of trials with an immediate re- 
 cord of the results. Lastly, such experiments would 
 generally be undertaken only after a series of trials 
 at close quarters ; after, that is, some portion at least 
 of the original stock of energy and enthusiasm has 
 been exhausted. And even when such considerations 
 have no effect upon the experimenter, it is likely, as 
 has been already pointed out, that the novel condi- 
 tions would of themselves affect unfavourably the 
 imagination of the percipient, and thus prejudice the 
 results. That, notwithstanding these various draw- 
 backs, there have been several successful series of 
 experiments at a distance is a matter of good augury 
 for the future. 
 
 It is much to be desired that investigators should 
 give attention to obtaining more results in this branch 
 of the inquiry. For independently of the fact that 
 results of the kind form an indispensable link between 
 instances of thought-transference at close quarters 
 
EXPERIMENTS AT A DISTANCE. 
 
 10J 
 
 and the more striking spontaneous cases at a distance, 
 it is important to observe that in experiments of the 
 kind described in the present chapter the gravest 
 objection which is at present urged, and may fairly 
 continue to be urged, against most experiments at 
 close quarters — viz., the risk of unconscious appre- 
 hension through normal channels — is no longer applic- 
 able. Moreover, the results can only be attributed 
 to fraud on the extreme assumption that both parties 
 to the experiment are implicated in deliberate and 
 systematic collusion. 
 
 Induction of Sleep at a distance. 
 
 Some of the most striking experimental cases, 
 which are concerned with the production of hallu- 
 cinations, are reserved for later discussion. (See 
 Chapter X.) 
 
 But perhaps the most valuable body of testimony 
 for the agency of thought-transference at a distance 
 is to be found in the experiments recorded by French 
 observers in the induction of sleep. It is not a little 
 remarkable that this, one of its rarest and most 
 striking manifestations, should have been among 
 the first and, until recently, almost the only form of 
 telepathy which attracted attention amongst French 
 investigators. Moreover, of late years at any 
 rate, this particular form of experiment has rarely 
 succeeded except in France, and with hypnotic sub- 
 jects. But as the number of physicians who practise 
 hypnotism increases in other countries, we may no 
 doubt hope to see the observations already made 
 confirmed and enlarged. The analogy of the experi- 
 ments in the induction of anaesthesia by thought-trans- 
 ference, recorded in the last chapter, would perhaps 
 have prepared us to accept the induction of sleep as 
 a not improbable effect of telepathy. But we are 
 not without more direct testimony. The opening 
 
IOS APPARITIONS AND THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 
 
 sentences of Professor Janet's account of the experi- 
 ment with Madame B. show us that, in this case at all 
 events, the conscious will of the operator was necessary 
 to produce the hypnotic trance, even at close quarters. 
 When, therefore, we find that the same cause, operat- 
 ing at a distance, is constantly followed by a like 
 effect, there can be no reasonable ground for refusing 
 to recognise the operator's will as in this case also 
 the cause of the sleep; unless, indeed, we are prepared 
 to attribute all the results to chance. 
 
 No. 29. — Experiments by MM. GlBERT and JANET. 
 
 In the autumn of 1885 Professor Pierre Janet of 
 Havre witnessed some trials made by Dr. Gibert 
 of the same town on Madame B., a patient of his own. 
 Madame B., whose fame has now reached beyond her 
 native land, is described by Professor Janet as an 
 honest peasant woman, in good health, with no 
 indications of hysteria. She has been hypnotised 
 since childhood by various persons, and is occasionally 
 liable to spontaneous attacks of somnambulism. One 
 of the most remarkable features presented by Madame 
 B.'s induced trances is that she can be awakened by 
 the person who hypnotised her and by no one 
 else; and that his hand alone can produce partial 
 or general contractures, and subsequently restore her 
 limbs to their normal condition. 
 
 " One day," to quote Professor Janet (" Note sur quelques 
 Phenomenes de Somnambulisme," Revue Philosophique, Feb. 
 1886), " M. Gibert was holding Madame B.'s hand to hypnotise 
 her {pour P endor?nir), but he was visibly preoccupied and 
 thinking of other matters, and the trance did not supervene. 
 This experiment, repeated by me in various forms, proved to 
 us that in order to entrance Madame B. it was necessary to 
 concentrate one's thought intensely on the suggestion to sleep 
 which was given to her, and the more the operator's thought 
 wandered the more difficult it became to induce the trance. 
 
EXPERIMENTS AT A DISTANCE. 109 
 
 This influence of the operator's thought, however extraordinary 
 it may seem, predominates in this case to such an extent that 
 it replaces all other causes. If one presses Madame B.'s hand 
 without the thought of hypnotising her, the trance is not 
 induced ; but, on the other hand, one can succeed in sending 
 her to sleep by thinking of it without pressing her hand." 
 
 Of course in experiments of this kind no pre- 
 cautions could exclude the chance that some 
 suggestion of what was expected might reach the 
 percipient's mind through the gestures, the attitude, 
 or even the silence of the experimenter. But, acting 
 on the clue thus given, MM. Gibert and Janet 
 succeeded in impressing mentally on Madame B. 
 commands which were punctually executed on the 
 following day. During the same period Dr. Gibert 
 made three attempts, all of which met with partial 
 success, in inducing the hypnotic trance by mental 
 suggestion given at a distance. Subsequently, during 
 February and March 1886, and again during April 
 and May of the same year, these trials were repeated 
 with striking results. During one of the trials which 
 took place in April Mr. F. W. H. Myers and Dr. A 
 T. Myers were present, and from their contemporary 
 record the following account is taken. Throughout 
 these trials, it should be stated, Madame B. was in 
 the Pavilion, a house occupied by Dr. Gibert's sister, 
 and distant about two-thirds of a mile from Dr. 
 Gibert's own house. The distance intervening 
 between agent and percipient in this series of 
 experiments was in no case less than a quarter of 
 a mile or more than one mile. In the first trial 
 described by Mr. Myers (18 in the subjoined table) 
 Madame B. actually went to sleep about twenty 
 minutes after the effort at willing had been made; 
 but as some of the party had in the interval entered 
 the house where she was and found her awake, it 
 seems possible that their coming had suggested the 
 idea of sleep. In the second case (No. 19) an attempt 
 to will Madame B. to leave her bed at 11.35 P.M. 
 
110 APPARITIONS AND THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 
 
 and come to Dr. Gibert's house had failed — the 
 only result, possibly due to other causes, being 
 an unusually prolonged sleep and a headache 
 on waking. Subsequently, to quote Mr. Myers' 
 account, 
 
 " (20) On the morning of the 22nd we again selected by lot 
 an hour (11 A.M.) at which M. Gibert should will, from his 
 dispensary (which is close to his house), that Madame B. 
 should go to sleep in the Pavilion. It was agreed that a rather 
 longer time should be allowed for the process to take effect ; 
 as it had been observed (see M. Janet's previous communi- 
 cation) that she sometimes struggled against the influence, 
 and averted the effect for a time by putting her hands in cold 
 water, etc. At 11.25 we entered the Pavilion quietly, and 
 almost at once she descended from her room to the salon, 
 profoundly asleep. Here, however, suggestion might again 
 have been at work. We did not, of course, mention M. Gibert's 
 attempt of the previous night. But she told us in her sleep 
 that she had been very ill in the night, and repeatedly ex- 
 claimed : ' Pourquoi M. Gibert m'a-t-il fait souffrir ? Mais j'ai 
 lave les mains continuellement. , This is what she does when 
 she wishes to avoid being influenced. 
 
 "(21) In the evening (22nd) we all dined at M. Gibert's, and 
 in the evening M. Gibert made another attempt to put her to 
 sleep at a distance from his house in the Rue Sery, — she being 
 at the Pavilion, Rue de la Ferme, — and to bring her to his 
 house by an effort of will. At 8.55 he retired to his study; 
 and MM. Ochorowicz, Marillier, Janet, and A. T. Myers went 
 to the Pavilion, and waited outside in the street, out of sight of 
 the house. At 9.22 Dr. Myers observed Madame B. coining 
 half-way out of the garden-gate, and again retreating. Those 
 who saw her more closely observed that she was plainly in the 
 somnambulic state, and was wandering about and muttering. 
 At 9.25 she came out (with eyes persistently closed, so far as 
 could be seen), walked quickly past MM. Janet and Marillier 
 without noticing them, and made for M. Gibert's house, though 
 not by the usual or shortest route. (It appeared afterwards 
 that the bo?ine had seen her go into the salon at 8.45, and issue 
 thence asleep at 9. 15 : had not looked in between those times.) 
 She avoided lamp-posts, vehicles, etc., but crossed and re- 
 crossed the street repeatedly. No one went in front of her or 
 spoke to her. After eight or ten minutes she grew much more 
 uncertain in gait, and paused as though she would fall. Dr. 
 Myers noted the moment in the Rue Faure ; it was 9.35. 
 At about 9.40 she grew bolder, and at 9.45 reached the street 
 
EXPERIMENTS AT A DISTANCE. 
 
 Ill 
 
 in front of M. Gibert's house. There she met him, but did not 
 notice him, and walked into his house, where she rushed 
 hurriedly from room to room on the ground-floor. M. Gibert 
 had to take her hand before she recognised him. She then 
 grew calm. 
 
 "M. Gibert said that from 8.55 to 9.20 he thought intently 
 about her; from 9.20 to 9.35 he thought more feebly; at 9.35 
 he gave the experiment up, and began to play billiards ; but in 
 a few minutes began to will her again. It appeared that his 
 visit to the billiard-room had coincided with her hesitation and 
 stumbling in the street. But this coincidence may of course 
 have been accidental. . . . 
 
 " (22) On the 23rd, M. Janet, who had woke her up and left 
 her awake, 1 lunched in our company, and retired to his own 
 house at 4.30 ( a time chosen by lot) to try to put her to sleep 
 from thence. At 5.5 we all entered the salon of the Pavilion, and 
 found her asleep with shut eyes, but sewing vigorously (being 
 in that stage in which movements once suggested are automati- 
 cally continued). Passing into the talkative state, she said to 
 M. Janet, 'C'est vous qui m'avez fait dormir a quatre heures 
 et demi.' The impression as to the hour may have been a 
 suggestion received from M. Janet's mind. We tried to make 
 her believe that it was M. Gibert who had sent her to sleep, but 
 she maintained that she had felt that it was M. Janet. 
 
 " (23) On April 24th the whole party chanced to meet at M. 
 Janet's house at 3 P.M., and he then, at my suggestion, entered 
 his study to will that Madame B. should sleep. We waited in 
 his garden, and at 3.20 proceeded together to the Pavilion, 
 which I entered first at 3.30, and found Madame B. profoundly 
 sleeping over her sewing, having ceased to sew. Becoming 
 talkative, she said to M. Janet, 6 C'est vous qui m'avez com- 
 manded She said that she fell asleep at 3.5 P.M." (Proc. S.P.R., 
 vol. iv. pp. 1 33-1 36.) 
 
 The subjoined table, taken, with a few verbal 
 alterations, from Mr. Myers' article, gives a complete 
 list of the experiments in the induction of trance at 
 a distance (sommeil a distance) made by MM. Janet 
 and Gibert up to the end of May 1886: — 
 
 1 An experiment of another kind, the description of which is here 
 omitted, had been made on the morning of this day. 
 
112 APPARITIONS AND THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 
 
 No. of 
 Experi- 
 ments. 
 
 Date. 
 
 Operator. 
 
 Hour when 
 given. 
 
 Remarks. 
 
 Success 
 
 or 
 failure. 
 
 
 1885. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 1 
 
 October 3 
 
 Gibert 
 
 11.30 A.M. 
 
 She washes hands and 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 wards off trance. 
 
 ? 
 
 2 
 
 
 9 
 
 do. 
 
 11.40 A.M. 
 
 Found entranced 11.45. 
 
 1 
 
 3 
 
 
 14 
 
 do. 
 
 4.15 P.M. 
 
 Found entranced 4.30: 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 had been asleep about 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 15 minutes. 
 
 1 
 
 4 
 
 1886. 
 Feb. 
 
 22 
 
 Janet 
 
 
 She washes hands and 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 wards off trance. 
 
 ? 
 
 5 
 
 if 
 
 25 
 
 do. 
 
 5 P.M. 
 
 Asleep at once. 
 
 1 
 
 6 
 
 
 20 
 
 do. 
 
 
 Mere discomfort ob- 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 served. 
 
 0 
 
 7 
 
 March 
 
 1 
 
 do. 
 
 
 do. do. 
 
 0 
 
 8 
 
 IS 
 
 2 
 
 do. 
 
 3 P.M. 
 
 Found asleep at 4 : has 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 slept about an hour. 
 
 1 
 
 9 
 
 
 4 
 
 do. 
 
 
 Will interrupted : trance 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 coincident but incom- 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 plete. 
 
 1 
 
 10 
 
 tf 
 
 5 
 
 do. 
 
 5-5.10 P.M. 
 
 Found asleep a few min- 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 1 
 
 11 
 
 
 6 
 
 Gibert 
 
 8 P.M. 
 
 Found asleep 8.3. 
 
 1 
 
 12 
 
 
 10 
 
 do. 
 
 
 Success — no details. 
 
 1 
 
 13 
 
 
 14 
 
 Janet 
 
 3 P.M. 
 
 Success— no details. 
 
 1 
 
 14 
 
 
 16 
 
 Gibert 
 
 9 P.M. 
 
 Brings her to his house : 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 she leaves her house a 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 few minutes after 9. 
 
 1 
 
 15 
 
 April 
 
 18 
 
 Janet 
 
 .. 
 
 Found asleep in 10 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 minutes. 
 
 1 
 
 16 
 
 »> 
 
 19 
 
 Gibert 
 
 4 P.M. 
 
 Found asleep 4.15. 
 
 1 
 
 17 
 
 
 20 
 
 do. 
 
 8 P.M. 
 
 Made to come to his 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 house. 
 
 1 
 
 18 
 
 ii 
 
 21 
 
 do. 
 
 5.50 P.M. 
 
 Asleep about 6.10: trance 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 too tardy. 
 
 ? 
 
 19 
 
 
 21 
 
 do. 
 
 11.35 P.M. 
 
 Attempt at trance dur- 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 ing sleep. 
 
 0 
 
 20 
 
 >i 
 
 22 
 
 do. 
 
 11 A.M. 
 
 Asleep 11.25 : trance too 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 tardy. 
 
 ? 
 
 21 
 
 >i 
 
 22 
 
 do. 
 
 9 P.M. 
 
 Comes to his house : 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 leaves her house 9.15. 
 
 1 
 
 22 
 
 ii 
 
 23 
 
 ti anet 
 
 4.30 P.M. 
 
 Found asleep 5. 5, says 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 she has slept since 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 4.30. 
 
 1 
 
 23 
 
 ii 
 
 24 
 
 do. 
 
 3 P.M. 
 
 Found asleep 3.30, says 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 she has slept since 3.5. 
 
 1 
 
 21 
 
 May 
 
 5 
 
 do. 
 
 
 Success — no details. 
 
 1 
 
 25 
 
 6 
 
 do. 
 
 
 Success— no details. 
 
 1 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 18 
 
 We have then in 25 trials 18 complete and 
 4 partial or doubtful successes. In two of the 
 latter Madame B. was found washing her hands to 
 ward off the trance, and in two others the trance 
 supervened only after an interval of twenty minutes 
 or more, and under circumstances which rendered it 
 
EXPERIMENTS AT A DISTANCE. 
 
 113 
 
 doubtful whether telepathy were the cause. It is 
 important to note that during these earlier visits of 
 Madame B. to Havre, about two months in all, she 
 only once fell into ordinary sleep during the daytime, 
 and twice became spontaneously entranced; and 
 that she never left the house in the evenings except 
 on the three occasions (14, 17, 21), on which she 
 did so in apparent response to a mental suggestion. 
 There is little ground, therefore, for attributing the 
 results above given to chance. 
 
 A further series of trials with the same percipient 
 was conducted by Professor Janet during the autumn 
 of 1886. The results, communicated by him to 
 Professor Richet, were published by the latter in the 
 Proceedings of the S.P.R., vol. v. pp. 43-45. 1 In 
 order to facilitate comparison I have thrown these 
 later results also into tabular form. In the later trials 
 it will be observed that there is a tolerably constant 
 retardation of the effect. The exact degree of the 
 retardation it was t not always possible to ascertain, as 
 it was not practicable to keep Madame B. continually 
 under observation, and to have let those at the 
 Pavilion into the secret, and to have asked them to 
 exercise special vigilance at the time of the experi- 
 ments would have entailed the risk of vitiating the 
 results. Moreover, in order to avoid giving any 
 suggestion by the hour of his arrival, M. Janet made 
 it a rule during a great part of this period to come to 
 the house at the same hour — 4 P.M. in most cases — 
 for several days consecutively. When an early hour, 
 therefore, had been chosen for the experiments, the 
 exact degree of success could only be determined if 
 Madame B.'s movements had chanced at the right 
 time to come under the observation of those in the 
 house. During the period of the trials Madame B. 
 fell asleep in the daytime spontaneously only four 
 times. 
 
 1 An account of these experiments is also contained in an article by 
 M. Richet in the Revue de V Hypnotisme for February 1888. 
 
 8 
 
1 14 APPARITIONS AND THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 
 
 No. of 
 Experi- 
 ments. 
 
 Date. 
 
 Hour when 
 given. 
 
 Remarks. 
 
 Success 
 
 or 
 Failure. 
 
 I 
 
 I ooO. 
 
 8th Sept. 
 
 3 p> M * 
 
 r ound asleep at 4 P. M. JVt. J . 
 entered unseen and without 
 knocking 
 
 ? 
 
 2 
 
 9th Sept. 
 
 3 p.m. 
 
 Madame B. complained of 
 
 
 
 
 headache ... 
 
 r . 
 
 3 
 
 I itn oept. 
 
 9 (? A. M. ) 
 
 Found at 10, <c troublee et 
 
 
 
 
 etourdie "... 
 
 TT" 
 
 r. 
 
 4 
 
 14111 oepi. 
 
 4 P. M. 
 
 TVT T ptiIpvc of A t f A/To A n rv\ o 
 
 ivj.. j. en icib cii 4» *■ S» iviauaiiic 
 B. says she was asleep, hut 
 wakened by ringing of 
 door-bell ... ... ... 
 
 ? 
 
 5 1 
 
 loin oepi. 
 
 3.3O P.M. 
 
 Found asleep at 4 P« M. 5 states 
 she was put to sleep at 3*3^ 
 
 S. 
 
 6 l 
 
 19th Sept. 
 
 3PM 
 
 Went to sleep at about 3* ^5 
 
 s. 
 
 7 
 
 23rd Sept. 
 
 2 P.M. 
 
 She was out walking 
 
 F. 
 
 o 
 O 
 
 24th Sept. 
 
 3.15 P.M. 
 
 Found asleep at 4. Had 
 
 
 
 
 been seen awake at 3. 15 ... 
 
 ? 
 
 9 
 
 26th Sept. 
 
 3 P.M. 
 
 Walking in garden ... 
 
 x? 
 r. 
 
 10 
 
 27th Sept. 
 
 8.3O P.M. 
 
 Commanded by M. Gibert to 
 
 
 
 
 come to his house. Left 
 the Pavilion, entranced, at 
 9.5 P» M. [in the account in 
 the Rcvuc ds I JFIyp7iotzsiH6 
 the latter hour is given at 
 9-i5\ 
 
 s. 
 
 1 1 
 
 29th Sept. 
 
 3.50 P.M. 
 
 Found asleep at 4.5 [given in 
 Kcvub as 
 
 s. 
 
 12 
 
 30tn oept. 
 
 3.3O P.M. 
 
 
 F. 
 
 13 
 
 1SL VJCl. 
 
 2. 40 P. M. 
 
 one was out walking ... 
 
 F. 
 
 14 
 
 
 4 P« M. 
 
 Fell asleep suddenly at 4'5» 
 whilst talking with nurse in 
 garden 
 
 S. 
 
 15 
 
 6th Oct. 
 
 3 P.M. 
 
 
 F. 
 
 IO 
 
 9th Oct. 
 
 3.15 P.M. 
 
 
 IT 
 
 17 
 
 10th Oct. 
 
 3. 20 P. M. 
 
 Found asleep at 4-5 
 
 ? 
 
 18 
 
 I2LU UCl. 
 
 3 P.M. 
 
 
 F. 
 
 19 
 
 13th Oct. 
 
 5 p.m. 
 
 Found asleep. Executed a 
 mental command given at 
 a distance — viz., to rise at 
 M. J.'s entrance ... 
 
 S. 
 
 20 
 
 14th Oct. 
 
 2.3O P.M. 
 
 Found asleep at 3.20 
 
 ? 
 
 21 
 
 16th Oct. 
 
 3 P.M. 
 
 Found asleep at 3. 30 
 
 s. 
 
 M. Richet also took part in these two experiments. 
 
EXPERIMENTS AT A DISTANCE. 115 
 
 No. of 
 Experi- 
 ments. 
 
 Date. 
 
 Hour when 
 given. 
 
 Remarks. 
 
 Success 
 
 or 
 Failure. 
 
 22 
 
 24th Nov. 
 
 2.30 P.M. 
 
 
 r . 
 
 2 3 
 
 3rd Dec. 
 
 4. IO P. M. 
 
 
 r . 
 
 24 
 
 5th Dec. 
 
 4. IO P. M. 
 
 
 r . 
 
 2 5 
 
 6th Dec. 
 
 4. IO P.M. 
 
 Found awake, washing her 
 
 
 
 
 hands 
 
 :> 
 r 
 
 26 
 
 7th Dec. 
 
 2. 30 P. M. 
 
 Found asleep at 3.5 
 
 r 
 
 
 10th Dec. 
 
 4.20 P. M. 
 
 She was out walking 
 
 Y 
 
 28 
 
 nth Dec. 
 
 
 i 
 
 29 
 
 13th Dec. 
 
 A. $ P. M. 
 
 Found asleep at 4.25. Had 
 been seen awake a few 
 
 
 
 
 
 minutes after 4 P.M. 
 
 s. 
 
 3° 
 
 14th Dec. 
 
 II.30 A.M. 
 
 F. 
 
 3i 
 
 18th Dec. 
 
 
 
 F. 
 
 32 
 
 2 1 st Dec. 
 
 
 
 F. 
 
 33 
 
 22nd Dec. 
 
 
 
 F. 
 
 34 
 
 
 3 P. M. 
 
 Hon n H nclppn of i a c\ 
 
 ? 
 
 35 
 
 25th Dec. 
 
 3.15 P.M. 
 
 She was out walking. Bad 
 headache came on at 3.20. 
 Returned hurriedly, and at 
 once fell asleep in the salon. 
 
 S. 
 
 Throughout the series, except in case 10, M. Janet 
 was the operator. It will be seen that in the 35 
 trials there were nine cases in which Madame B. 
 was found asleep within half-an-hour of the attempt 
 being made to entrance her. In six other cases she 
 was found asleep after a longer interval, but there is 
 nothing to indicate that the sleep did not actually 
 supervene at the right time. In one case she was 
 found awake within fifteen minutes of the trial, but 
 stated that she had been awakened by the ringing of 
 the bell which announced M. Janet's arrival. In one 
 other case she was found washing her hands to ward 
 off the trance. Of the 17 failures Madame B. was 
 out walking in four cases at the time of the trial, a 
 circumstance which no doubt diminished the chances 
 of success. In two cases headache or disturbance 
 were produced ; of the remaining 1 1 trials no de- 
 tails are given, and it is presumed that no unusual 
 
Il6 APPARITIONS AND THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 
 
 effect was observed, and that there was no apparent 
 cause for the failure. Of course, experiments carried 
 on under these conditions, the trials being confined 
 for the most part within a narrow range of hours, and 
 the subject liable to spontaneous trance, offer some 
 scope for chance coincidence. But as Madame B. 
 actually fell asleep spontaneously on only four 
 occasions during the period over which the trials 
 extended, it will probably be considered that the 
 number of coincidences, imperfect as they were, was 
 considerably more than could plausibly be attributed 
 to accident or self-suggestion. 1 
 
 In January 1887 M. Richet made some experi- 
 ments of the same kind on Madame B. Of 9 trials, 
 however, two only could be described as completely 
 successful, and three more as doubtful. A few further 
 trials, in December 1887 and January 1888, were even 
 less successful. M. Richet has attempted on several 
 occasions to influence other subjects at a distance, 
 but no series of successful results was attained ; and 
 isolated coincidences of the kind have, of course, little 
 evidential value {loc. cit., pp. 47-5 1). 2 
 
 No. 30. — Experiments by Dr. Dufay. 
 
 In a paper published in the Revue Philosophique of 
 September 1888, M. Dufay, a physician formerly in 
 practice at Blois, and now a Senator of France, 
 records several instances in which he has himself 
 succeeded in producing sleep at a distance. In one 
 case he hypnotised from his box in the theatre, as he 
 believes without her knowledge, a young actress who 
 had been a patient of his, and caused her, whilst in 
 the state of lucid somnambulism, to play a new and 
 
 1 It is not stated whether the hour of the experiment was chosen by 
 lot, but this precaution was^Pcen in many of the earlier experiments. 
 
 2 An account of these experiments was also contributed by M. Richet 
 to the Revue de t Hypnotisme } Feb. j88& 
 
EXPERIMENTS AT A DISTANCE. 
 
 117 
 
 difficult part with more success than she would have 
 been likely to achieve in the normal state. In this 
 particular case, however, it seems possible that the 
 subject may have received some intimation of Dr. 
 Dufay's presence in the house, and that the hypnotic 
 state may have been due to expectation. Another 
 case was that of Madame C, who had been for some 
 time treated hypnotically by Dr. Dufay for periodical 
 attacks of sickness and headache. So sensitive did 
 this patient become to his suggestions that she would 
 fall into the hypnotic sleep as soon as the bell rang 
 to announce his coming, and before he had actually 
 entered the house. The circumstances under which 
 Dr. Dufay first made a deliberate attempt to influence 
 Madame C. at a distance were as follows : — He was 
 in attendance on a patient whom he was unable to 
 leave, when he was unexpectedly summoned by 
 Monsieur C. to hypnotise Madame C., who was in the 
 height of an attack. He assured Monsieur C. that on 
 his return home he w T ould find Madame C. asleep and 
 cured, as proved actually to be the case. However, 
 here also, as Dr. Dufay points out, self-suggestion 
 is a possible explanation. The following case seems 
 less open to suspicion on this ground : — 
 
 " On another occasion," Dr. Dufay writes, " Madame C. was 
 in perfect health, but her name happening to be mentioned in 
 my hearing, the idea struck me that I would mentally order her 
 to sleep, without her wishing it this time, and also without her 
 suspecting it. Then, an hour later, I went to her house and 
 asked the servant who opened the door whether an instrument, 
 which I had mislaid out of my case, had been found in Madame 
 C.'s room. 
 
 " * Is not that the doctor's voice that I hear?' asked Monsieur 
 C. from the top of the staircase ; 4 beg him to come up. Just 
 imagine,' he said to me, 6 1 was going to send for you. Nearly 
 an hour ago my wife lost consciousness, and her mother and I 
 have not been able to bring her to her senses. Her mother, 
 who wished to take her into the country, is distracted. . .' 
 
 " I did not dare to confess myseli^uilty of this catastrophe, 
 but was betrayed by Madame C, who gave me her hand, saying, 
 ' You did well to put me to sleep, Doctor, because I was going to 
 
1 1 8 APPARITIONS AND THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 
 
 allow myself to be taken away, and then I should not have been 
 able to finish my embroidery. 5 
 
 " ' You have another piece of embroidery in hand ? ' 
 
 " ' Yes ; a mantle-border ... for your birthday. You must 
 not look as though you knew about it, when I am awake, be- 
 cause I want to give you a surprise.' 
 
 " I repeated the experiment many times with Madame C, 
 and always with success, which was a great help to me when 
 unable to go to her at once when sent for. I even completed 
 the experiment by also waking her from a distance, solely by 
 an act of volition, which formerly I should not have believed 
 possible. The agreement in time was so perfect that no doubt 
 could be entertained. 
 
 " To conclude, I was about to take a holiday of six weeks, 
 and should thus be absent when one of the attacks was due. 
 So it was settled between Monsieur C. and myself that, as soon 
 as the headache began, he should let me know by telegraph ; 
 that I should then do from afar off what succeeded so well 
 near at hand ; that after five or six hours I should endeavour to 
 awaken the patient ; and that Monsieur C. should let me know 
 by means of a second telegram whether the result had been 
 satisfactory. He had no doubt about it ; I was less certain. 
 Madame C. did not know that I was going away. 
 
 " The sound of moanings one morning announced to Monsieur 
 C. that the moment had come ; without entering his wife's 
 room he ran to the telegraph office, and I received his message 
 at ten o'clock. He returned home again at that same hour, and 
 found his wife asleep and not suffering any more. At four o'clock 
 I willed that she should wake, and at eight o'clock in the evening 
 I received a second telegram: 'Satisfactory result, woke at four 
 o'clock. Thanks.' 
 
 " And I was then in the neighbourhood of Sully-sur- Loire, 28 
 leagues — 112 kilometres — from Blois." 
 
 Similar experiments have been recorded by, amongst 
 others, Dr. J. Hericourt, 1 a colleague of M. Richet in 
 the editing of the Revue Scientifique, Dr. Dusart, 1 and 
 Dr. Dariex. 2 In the last case there were only five 
 trials, the experiments being then discontinued at 
 the request of the patient. The first three trials were 
 completely successful, the sleep supervening within, 
 
 1 Revue Philosophique, February and April 1886. A translation of 
 these accounts is given in the Proc. S.P.P., vol. v. pp. 222, 223. 
 
 2 Annales des Sciences Psychiques> vol. iii. pp. 257-267. 
 
EXPERIMENTS At A DISTANCE. IKj 
 
 at most, a few minutes of the time chosen by the 
 agent. 
 
 The following narrative resembles those cited above 
 in its general features. But in view of the nature of 
 the effect produced — a painful hysterical attack — it is 
 perhaps hardly a matter for regret that the case is 
 without any exact parallel. 
 
 No. 31.— By Dr. Tolosa-Latour. 
 
 In this account, taken from a letter written to M. 
 Richet by Dr. Tolosa-Latour on the 5th March 1891 
 {Annales des Sciences Psychiques, Sept.-Oct. 1893), 
 Dr. Latour explains that he had repeatedly hypnotised 
 a lady who was seized in September 1886 with 
 hysterical paralysis, and had ultimately succeeded in 
 effecting by this means a complete cure. Prior to his 
 treatment, in 1885, she had suffered for some time 
 from daily hysterical attacks, and when she came 
 under Dr. Latour she was still occasionally subject to 
 them, and found relief in the hypnotic sleep. Both 
 symptoms had at the time which he writes almost 
 completely disappeared. 
 
 " I had made some very curious experiments, but I had never 
 thought about either action at a distance or clairvoyance. It 
 was while leaving Paris and reading your [M. Richet's] 
 pamphlet in the carriage that the idea occurred to me of 
 sending Mdlle. R. to sleep. It was Sunday, October the 26th, 
 the very day of my departure. I remember the hour too ; it 
 was just before reaching Poitiers, where some relations of my 
 grandmother were expecting me. I told my wife that I was 
 going to try the experiment, and begged her to say nothing 
 about it to any one. I began to fix my thoughts about six 
 o'clock, and during the journey from Poitiers to Mignie (where 
 we stayed several days) I again and again thought of this 
 question, especially during the intervals of silence which always 
 occur during a journey. 
 
 " I wished to cause a violent hysteric attack, as I knew that 
 she had not been dangerously ill for a long time. So on 
 Sunday, October the 26th, from six till nine o'clock in the 
 evening, I fixed my thoughts intently on the experiment. 
 
t20 APPARITIONS AND THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 
 
 "Then, on my return, I asked my brother if Mdlle. R. had 
 called him in, as she always did when she was ill. Among the 
 patients' names I did not find hers. It seemed almost certain 
 that my experiment had failed. A week afterwards I called on 
 her, and was agreeably surprised to learn that, on the contrary, 
 it was a success, as you will judge by her letter. She does not 
 fix the day, but her sister and the nurse have told me that it 
 was the second Sunday after the festival of St. Theresa — that is 
 to say, after Wednesday the 15th; the first Sunday being the 
 19th, the second is of course the 26th. 
 
 " This is the letter :— 
 
 "From Mdlle. R. to M. Tolosa-Latour. 
 
 "March 23rd, 189 1. 
 
 "My excellent Friend and dear Doctor,— I wanted 
 to write to ycu yesterday to give you the particulars of the 
 attack I had about the middle of last October, but I was not 
 able to do so till to-day. 
 
 "As I told you, it was about the middle of October ; I do not 
 remember the date, but I recollect very well that it was a 
 festival day, and at half-past six in the evening. 
 
 " We had just been to see my sister and brother ; we had had 
 luncheon with them. I was perfectly well, without any excite- 
 ment ; it was five o'clock, and I reached home all right, but 
 when I was sitting down, in the act of eating, I found myself 
 unable to speak or open my eyes, and, at the same moment, I 
 had a very severe, long, and violent attack, such as I do not 
 remember to have had for a long time. 
 
 " I was so ill that I thought of sending for Raphael, 1 and my 
 sister proposed it, but I thought that I ought not to disturb 
 him, for, knowing that you were away, nobody could stop the 
 convulsions and the excitement. 
 
 " I suffered horribly, for it was an attack in which I experi- 
 enced, so to say, all my previous sufferings combined. I was 
 completely broken down, but I have had no other attacks since, 
 not even a spasm." 
 
 No. 32.— By J. H. P. 2 
 
 The next case records the execution by the subject 
 of a simple command to approach the operator, as in 
 some of M. Gibert's experiments already described, 
 and the partial execution of an order of a more 
 
 1 Dr. Latour's brother, house-surgeon at the hospital. 
 
 2 See No. 23, chap. iv. 
 
EXPERIMENTS AT A DISTANCE, 121 
 
 complicated kind, given from a distance of more 
 than twenty-five miles : — 
 
 It is possible to give M. a command in the waking state, but 
 she must be quiet at the moment when she receives it. 
 
 We had never made experiments of this kind until R. one 
 day proposed that we should try to make M. come to the room 
 where we were. M. was in a neighbouring house, and could 
 not know that we were actually in a kiosk at the end of the 
 garden. 
 
 For three minutes I gave her the mental command to come. 
 I began to think that I had failed, and continued energetically 
 for three minutes more ; she did not come, however. 
 
 We were just thinking that the experiment had failed when 
 the door opened suddenly and M. appeared. 
 
 " Well, do you think I have nothing else to do ! Why do 
 you call me ? I have had to leave everything." 
 
 " We wanted to say i good morning ' to you." 
 
 " Very well ! I am going away now." 
 
 She shook hands with us and went away quickly; where- 
 upon it occurred to me to make her stop just at the gate. 
 
 (Mental command) — " I forbid you to go out. You cannot 
 open the gate ; come back." And back she came, furious, 
 asking if we were laughing at her. 
 
 Now, to send this last command I had not moved at all from 
 my place, and M. was completely invisible behind the garden 
 wall ; moreover, I was a long way from the window. I told her 
 that this time she could open it, and let her go. 
 
 I will finish with another experiment of the same kind, which 
 only partly succeeded, but which will serve to show the intensity 
 of the mental transmission between M. and me. I went away, 
 one morning, without thinking of M. I had to be away all day, 
 38 kilometres from her. At 2.30 it occurred to me to send her 
 a mental command, and I repeated it for ten minutes. 
 
 "Go at once to the dining-room ; you will take a book there 
 that is on the mantelpiece ; you will take it up to my study, and 
 you will sit in my armchair before my writing-table." I reached 
 home at night. The next day, as soon as I saw M., and even 
 before saying good morning to me, she cried : " I did a clever thing 
 yesterday. I must be losing my wits, I suppose ! Just imagine ! 
 I came down without knowing why, opened the dining-room 
 door, then went up to your study, and sat in your armchair. I 
 moved your papers about, then I went back to my work." 
 
 The command had then been understood ; but she did not go 
 into the dining-room, and she did not take the book from there. 
 
 J. H. P 
 
 [Annates des Sci. Psych. , May -June 1893.) 
 
122 APPARITIONS AND THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 
 
 Transference of Simple Sensations. 
 
 We may now pass to experiments in the transfer- 
 ence of simple impressions of the same kind as those 
 dealt with in Chapters II. and III. The following is 
 a record of a series of trials in the transference of 
 auditory impressions : — 
 
 No - 33.— From Miss X. 
 
 Miss X. is a lady resident in London, who is known 
 personally to the present writer and other members 
 of the S.P.R. She has experienced all her life 
 frequent interchange of telepathic impressions with 
 some of her friends. At the request of Mr. F. W. 
 H. Myers, Miss X. and a friend D., also living in 
 London, throughout the year 1 888, with the exception 
 of three months during which they were living in the 
 same house, kept diaries in which any incident or feel- 
 ing which might seem to be telepathically connected 
 with the other was recorded. The ladies during a great 
 part of the time saw each other constantly, and com- 
 pared notes of their experience. In D.'s diary for the 
 year there are thirty-five entries of the kind, of which 
 twenty are believed to have been recorded before it 
 was known whether or not there was any actual event 
 to correspond with the impression. Of the twenty 
 entries fourteen refer to hearing music played by 
 Miss X., and two to reading books at, as D. believed, 
 her telepathic instigation. 
 
 The entries in D.'s diary are given in italics. The 
 degree of correspondence with the entries in Miss 
 X.'s diary is indicated in the words included between 
 brackets. 1 
 
 (1) Jan. 6th. Tried several books . . . finally took to 
 "VMette." 
 
 1 Miss X.'s notes have been in some cases slightly abbreviated, in 
 order to save space. Full details of the experiments will be found in 
 Proc. S.P.R., vol. vi. pp. 377-397. 
 
EXPERIMENTS AT A DISTANCE. 
 
 123 
 
 (From Miss X.'s diary it appears that she willed D. to read 
 The Professor, also by Charlotte Bronte.) 
 
 (2) Jan. 13rd. Sonnets, E.B.B. 10.30 P.M. 
 
 (In Miss X.'s diary, written at about 10 P.M., appears the 
 entry, " Sonnets viii.-ix., E.B.B.") 
 
 (3) March 6th. Hellers, 7.30. {i.e., D. had an impression of 
 hearing Miss X. playing. Miss X. states that she was actually 
 playing Hellers at the time, but there is no note in her diary of 
 the fact.) 
 
 (4) March Jth. Beethoven waltzes, 10. (Correct — recorded 
 in X.'s diary after seeing D.'s entry.) 
 
 (5) March 8th. No practice, {i.e., X., contrary to her custom, 
 was not playing at this hour : correct.) 
 
 (6) March gth. Music 7.30-8. (Correct.) 
 
 (7) March 10th. ? Music 9.30-10 A.M. (Correct. Miss X. 
 had told D. that she would be out at that hour, and had sub- 
 sequently changed her plans, so that the music was unexpected 
 to D., hence the note of interrogation.) 
 
 (8) March 13th. 7.40. Music. (Correct.) 
 
 (9) March 14th. 9.30 A.M. [Music] Evening" of same day. 
 Nothing but organs and bands, popular airs and Mikado. 
 ? Flash of Henselt 9 (P.M.) 
 
 (10) March 15th. 9-10. ? Faint Henselt. 
 
 (Miss X. writes : — " I remember that when D. showed me 
 these entries I was specially interested. I was practising at 
 the time some music of Henselt's she had never heard, and 
 was playing this on all five occasions. D. notes it on the 
 first three vaguely as i Music,' something which she did not 
 recognise. On the 14th I played it over to her, and afterwards 
 she recognised it imperfectly. I was practising it for her, know- 
 ing she would like it, so that she was much in my mind at the 
 time.") 
 
 The following entries were made whilst D. and X. 
 were in different and distant counties : — 
 
 {\\) August \^th. Hellers, 9.10-25. (Correct.) 
 
 (12) August 17th. Slumber Song, 7.35-50. (Correct. D. wrote 
 of her two experiences, and X. read the letter aloud to her 
 hostess, who remembered that X. had actually played the music 
 named above at the time referred to.) 
 
 (13) September 14th. Halle, 9 A.M. (Incorrect. X. was not 
 playing.) 
 
 (14) November iSth. Chopin Dead March, War March 
 Athalie, 7.15-8 P.M. 
 
 (15) November i^th. Lieder, 7.30. 
 
 (16) November 26th. Lied, never gets finished. 5.15-20. 
 (Miss X. writes : — " On each of the above three occasions D. 
 
124 APPARITIONS AND THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 
 
 asked me next day what I had played and found she was right. 
 My playing of the Lied on November 26th was interrupted 
 by the arrival of visitors, and the unfinished air naturally 
 haunted me. D. writes : — On the day in question H. and I 
 were together. I said to her that I could hear you [Miss X.] 
 playing — a Lied we both associated with you — but that you 
 never got beyond a certain part, which seemed to be repeated. 
 H. replied, 1 It is strange you should say that. I can't hear 
 her, but I have been seeing her at the piano for some minutes.' 
 H. corroborates this.") 
 
 It will thus be seen that in these 16 cases there 
 were only two instances (1 and 13) in which D.'s 
 impression failed to correspond with the facts. The 
 remaining four entries (out of 20 recorded before- 
 hand) relate to impressions which also appear to 
 have corresponded with the event, but the degree of 
 correspondence is more difficult to estimate. 
 
 In Miss X.'s own diary there are 55 entries during 
 this period, of which 27 were made before the event 
 was known. Of these 3 are failures, and in two other 
 cases it is doubtful whether the impression was 
 actually telepathic, or whether the coincidence should 
 not be attributed to accident. In the other 22 cases 
 of correspondence, presumably telepathic, Miss X. 
 was sometimes the agent, sometimes the percipient. 
 The impressions relate to events of various kinds, 
 such as meeting particular persons, receiving letters, 
 and playing music. Of the veridical impressions four 
 were visual and one was a dream. 1 
 
 No, 34.— From M. J. Ch. Roux. 
 
 The following record is taken from a paper by M. 
 Jean Charles Roux, medical student, published in the 
 Annales des Sciences Psychiques (vol. iii. pp. 202, 203). 
 These experiments in thought-transference at a dis- 
 tance were preceded by a series of fairly successful 
 trials with playing-cards at close quarters, and by 
 some other experiments designed to test clairvoyance. 
 
 1 Miss X. kindly submitted her diaries for inspection to Mrs. 
 Sidgwick, who has carefully examined them. 
 
EXPERIMENTS AT A DISTANCE. 125 
 
 Third Series : Experiments at a distance. 
 
 Lemaire is in his room, I in mine, with two rooms inter- 
 vening. At an hour previously fixed on, I suggest a card to 
 him. 
 
 Date. Card thought of. Card guessed. 
 
 ( 1 ) Mar. 15,1 892 ... 4 hearts . . . red, hearts ; low number, five 
 
 (2) „ 1 8, „ ... 10 hearts... 3 diamonds 
 
 (3) „ 27, „ ... 6 spades... 6 clubs 
 
 (4) „ „ „ ... Kg. diamonds... Knave diamonds 
 
 (5) „ „ „ ...ace diamonds... 5 clubs 
 
 (Agent had failed to concentrate his attention.) 
 
 (6) „ „ „ ...Queen spades... King spades 
 
 (7) „ „ „ 4 clubs... 6 clubs 
 
 (8) Apr. 6, „ ... 3 clubs... 5 clubs 
 
 (9) „ „ ... 2 spades... 2 spades 
 
 Fourth Series. 
 
 The account of the following six trials at a distance 
 in space and time, which are imperfectly recorded in 
 the Annates ', is taken from a letter received from M. 
 Roux, dated the 19th December 1893 : — 
 
 (10) Paris, 2nd April. — Lemaire having gone out I drew a card 
 from the pack, the 9 Hearts, and tried to transfer it to him. 
 Then I wrote a note to the following effect : " Guess the card 
 that I am thinking of as I write these words," and left it on 
 the table. A few minutes after Lemaire entered and guessed the 
 7 Hearts. 
 
 (11) 3rd April. — Lemaire was out. I drew a card from the 
 pack, the ace Hearts, and tried to transfer it to him. As on the 
 previous day, I left a note on the table and went out immediately. 
 When I came back at midnight I found a line from Lemaire 
 saying he had guessed the ace Hearts. 
 
 The four other experiments took place in a country town, at 
 Chateauroux. We lived about 500 or 6co yards apart. 
 
 (12) 13th April. — In the morning I saw Lemaire and said to 
 him, " At 2 o'clock you must guess a card that I shall suggest 
 to you." I went home, and at a quarter to twelve I drew from 
 the pack the 5 Hearts. I saw Lemaire again in the evening. 
 He had guessed the 6 Hearts. He was walking in the street 
 with a friend. At about two minutes to 2 p.m. he looked at his 
 watch, remembered the experiment, and immediately the idea 
 of Hearts came to him. A few minutes later, when alone, he 
 tried to guess the exact card, and decided on the 6 Hearts. 
 
126 APPARITIONS AND THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 
 
 (13) 13th April. — I said to Lemaire that on the 14th April, at 
 9 a.m., he was to guess a card. After going home on the 13th 
 April, at 10 P.M. I drew a card from the pack — 4 Clubs. Next 
 day, at 9 A.M., Lemaire guessed 2 Clubs. 
 
 (14) July 17th. — Lemaire was to guess a card at 9 o'clock. 
 At 10 minutes to 9, from my house, I tried to transfer the 4 
 Spades. (I have forgotten to make a note of whether I merely 
 thought of this card or whether I drew it from a pack.) At 9 
 o'clock Lemaire guessed 5 Spades. 
 
 (15) 30th July. — This experiment is more complicated but 
 none the less interesting. On the 30th July, at 11 a.m., 
 Lemaire was to guess a card which I had tried to suggest to 
 him on the 26th July. This card was the Knave Diamo7tds. 
 But he forgot to do it, and did not remember to guess the card 
 till 7 P.M. on the 30th July. Now on this same day, the 30th 
 July, from 6 to 6.30 p.m. I was myself engaged in guessing a 
 card by clairvoyance, and after many attempts I decided on 7 or 
 8 Clubs, and Lemaire, guessing the card at 7 P.M., also decided 
 upon 7 Clubs. So that I had suggested the card to him un- 
 consciously. 
 
 Thus, omitting the last trial as of doubtful interpre- 
 tation, we find that in 14 trials the card was guessed 
 correctly twice, the number alone once, and the suit 
 alone nine times, or three times the probable number. 
 
 Transference of Visual Impressions. 
 
 In the four cases which follow the impression was 
 of a well-marked visual character; reaching, indeed, in 
 the two last to the level of actual hallucination. It 
 should be observed that in none of these four cases is 
 the possibility of chance coincidence so entirely pre- 
 cluded as in many of the experiments at close quarters 
 already cited. In the first of the cases recorded by 
 Dr. Gibotteau (No. 40), and in some of Mr. Kirk's 
 experiments (No. 37), the luminous patches seen by 
 the percipients are not unlike rudimentary hallucina- 
 tions of a sufficiently common type, and their resem- 
 blance in these instances to the objects actually 
 looked at or thought of by the agents should not 
 therefore be pressed very far. In the other cases, 
 however, the percipient received a well-marked im- 
 
EXPERIMENTS AT A DISTANCE. 
 
 127 
 
 pression of a definite object. But here there is a 
 flaw of another kind. The coincidences may have 
 been due, as indeed Miss Campbell (No. 35) is careful 
 to suggest, to a lucky shot on the part of the per- 
 cipient at the object the agent would be likely to 
 choose. The very distinct nature of the impression 
 produced in each case upon the percipient, as con- 
 trasted with the vague images called up, e.gi in Miss 
 Campbell's case, by more or less conscious conjecture, 
 is, however, against this interpretation ; and the fact 
 that in the first narrative the experiments quoted 
 were the culmination of a successful series of experi- 
 ments at close quarters tells in favour of a telepathic 
 explanation for these also. 
 
 No. 35. — By Miss Campbell and Miss Despard. 
 
 A series of experiments in thought-transference at 
 close quarters had been carried on by the narrators 
 at intervals from November 1891 to October 1892. 
 In sending the account of these experiments at a 
 distance, Miss Campbell explains that in the trial on 
 October 25th, "there was first an auditory impression, 
 as if some one had said the word ' gloves/ and then 
 the gloves themselves were visualised." 
 
 (No. 1.) "June 2ind^ 1892. 
 
 "Arranged that R. C. Despard should, when at the School of 
 Medicine in Handel Street, W.C., between 11.50 and 11.55, fix 
 her attention upon some object which C. M. Campbell, at 77 
 Chesterton Road, W., is by thought-transference to discover." 
 
 Percipient's Account. 
 
 "Owing to an unexpected delay, instead of being quietly at 
 home at 11.50 A.M., I was waiting for my train at Baker Street, 
 and as just at that time trains were moving away from both 
 platforms, and there was the usual bustle going on, I thought it 
 hopeless to try on my part ; but just while I was thinking this I 
 felt a sort of mental pull-up, which made me feel sure that Miss 
 Despard was fixing her attention, and directly after I felt 'my 
 — compasses — no, scalpel/ seemed to see a flash of light as if 
 on bright steel, and I thought of two scalpels, first with their 
 
128 APPARITIONS AND THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 
 
 points together, and then folding together into one ; just then 
 my train came up. 
 
 " I write this down before having seen Miss Despard, so am 
 still in ignorance whether I am correct in my surmise, but as I 
 know what Miss Despard would probably be doing at ten 
 minutes to twelve, I feel that that knowledge may have 
 suggested the thought to me — though this idea did not occur 
 to me until just this minute, as I have written it down. 
 
 "C. M. Campbell. 
 
 " 77 Chesterton Road, W." 
 
 Agent's Account. 
 
 "At ten minutes to twelve I concentrated my mind on an 
 object that happened to be in front of me at the time — two 
 scalpels, crossed with their points together — but in about five 
 minutes, as it occurred to me that the knowledge that I was 
 then at the School of Medicine might suggest a similar idea to 
 Miss Campbell, I tried to bring up a country scene, of a brook 
 running through a field, with a patch of yellow marsh marigolds 
 in the foreground. This second idea made no impression on 
 Miss Campbell — perhaps owing to the bustle around her at the 
 time. 
 
 " R. C Despard." 
 
 (No. 2.) te October i^th^ 1892. 
 
 "At 3.30 p.m. R. C. Despard is to fix her attention on some 
 object, and C. M. Campbell, being in a different part of London, 
 is by thought-transference to find out what that object is." 
 
 Percipient's Account. 
 
 "At 3.30 I was at home at 77 Chesterton Road, North Ken- 
 sington, alone in the room. 
 
 " First my attention seemed to flit from one object to another 
 while nothing definite stood out, but soon I saw a pair of gloves, 
 which became more distinct till they appeared as a pair of 
 baggy tan-coloured kid gloves, certainly a size larger than worn 
 by either R. C. D. or myself, and not quite like any of ours in 
 colour. After this I saw a train going out of a station (I had 
 just returned from seeing some one off at Victoria), almost 
 immediately obliterated by a picture of a bridge over a small 
 river, but I felt that I was consciously thinking and left off the 
 experiment, being unable to clear my mind sufficiently of out- 
 side things." 
 
 Agent's Account. 
 
 "At 3.30 on October 25th I was at 30 Handel Street, Bruns- 
 wick Square, W.C. C. M. C. and myself had arranged before- 
 hand to make an experiment in thought-transference at that 
 
EXPERIMENTS AT A DISTANCE. 129 
 
 hour, I to try to transfer some object to her mind, the nature of 
 which was entirely unspecified. I picked up a pair of rather old 
 tan-coloured gloves — purposely not taking a pair of my own — 
 and tried for about five minutes to concentrate my attention on 
 them and the wish to transfer an impression of them to C. M. C.'s 
 mind. After this I fixed my attention on a window^ but felt my 
 mind getting tired and therefore rather disturbed by the con- 
 stant sound of omnibuses and waggons passing the open 
 window. 
 
 "R. C. Despard. 
 
 " October 25th, 1892." 
 
 Miss Campbell writes later : — 
 
 " 77 Chesterton Road, North Kensington, W., 
 November 24/^, 1892. 
 " With regard to the distant experiments, the notes sent to 
 you were the only ones made. In the first experiment (scalpels) 
 I wrote my account before Miss Despard's return, and when 
 Miss Despard returned, before seeing what I had written [she] 
 told me what she had thought of, and almost directly wrote it 
 down. 
 
 " In the second experiment '(gloves), I was just going to 
 write my account when Miss Despard returned home, and she 
 asked me at once, 'Well, what did I think of?' and I told 
 her a pair of tan gloves — then sat down and wrote my account, 
 and, when she read it through, she said, 'Yes, you have 
 exactly described Miss M.'s gloves, which I was holding while 
 I fixed my attention on them,' and then she wrote her account." 
 
 The next account is taken from the Annates des 
 Sciences Psychiques, vol. iii. pp. 1 1 4-1 16. M. Hennique, 
 the agent, had acted as agent in four experiments at 
 a distance with another percipient in the previous 
 year {Annates, vol. i. pp. 262-265). I n the fi rst the perci- 
 pient saw vague lights, and finally a vase of flowers 
 (very clear) ; the agent was looking at a lamp covered 
 by a transparent shade, with a vase of flowers 
 painted on it. In the second the percipient again 
 saw vague lights, and then a luminous sphere ; the 
 agent was looking at the lamp globe placed on the 
 table in full light. In the third, the percipient only 
 saw brilliant lights, like stars or jewels ; the agent 
 was looking at the word Dieu, in big letters. In the 
 fourth the percipient, to his astonishment, saw nothing; 
 
 9 
 
1 30 APPARITIONS AND THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 
 
 the agent had willed him to see nothing. In each 
 case the percipient's impression was recorded in 
 writing before any communication was received from 
 the agent. In the present case, it will be seen, the 
 percipient received, not the impression which the 
 agent wished to transfer, but the image of another 
 object within the agent's field of vision, and which 
 had entered his thoughts in connection with this very 
 experiment. 
 
 No. 36. — From M. Leon Hennique and M. D. 
 
 " On Friday, the 8th of July last, my friend Hennique and I 
 made a further experiment in telepathy. Hennique was away 
 from Paris, and separated from me by a distance of 171 kilo- 
 metres. At midnight I wrote to Hennique the following 
 letter :— 
 
 i( i Paris, July 8tk, 1892, midnight. 
 
 " ' My dear Hennique, — A friend came unexpectedly to 
 dinner. At 10.30, looking through the open window at the blue 
 sky under the full moon, I thought all of a sudden of the experi- 
 ment planned by us, of the telepathic meeting that we had fixed 
 for eleven o'clock this evening, and my brain received at the 
 same time the impression of a puppet. It seemed to me that 
 you were trying to show me a little cardboard man fitted with 
 strings to make his arms and legs move. 
 
 " ' Reminded by this impression of my telepathic duty, I said 
 good-night to my friend, and at eleven o'clock I waited, with 
 my eyes closed, in the darkness of the dining-room. Nothing 
 happened till twelve or fifteen minutes past eleven, when there 
 appeared to me for an instant a small black silhouette, a 
 Chinese shadow, as if you had cut out a little black figure and 
 placed it in front of a light ; for the round part, which seemed 
 to be its head, was surrounded by a bluish halo. It was mostly 
 this little black sphere — which I thought was a head — that I 
 saw ; the body I rather deduced than saw. ' D.' 
 
 " M. Hennique replied to me as follows': — 
 
 " ' Ribemont (AlSNE), Sunday, 10th July 1892. 
 
 "'My dear Friend, — It was a bottle full of water, sur- 
 mounted by its cut-glass stopper, a large stopper, very bright, 
 that served for our experiment. But the most curious part of 
 the affair is that about four inches from the bottle there was 
 actually hanging on the wall a nigger-doll, of the kind which 
 you describe, belonging to my daughter. Was it reflected on 
 the crystal ? A mystery ! For one second, but scarcely for a 
 
EXPERIMENTS AT A DISTANCE. 131 
 
 second, I had intended to telepathise the jumping-jack to you 
 before choosing the water-bottle. It is certainly very odd ! 
 
 " ' Leon Hennique.' 
 
 " M. Hennique added to this letter a water-colour drawing of 
 the above-mentioned ' nigger-doll.' The head is a black circle, 
 in which only the lips are red ; the arms and legs are black ; 
 the chest is white, crossed with red ; arms, thighs, and legs are 
 jointed, and can be worked by a string. 
 
 " I wrote to my friend to ask him if, at 10.30— that is to say, at 
 the moment when I had conceived of a jumping-jack, he had 
 not, on his part, thought at the same moment, of the same 
 object. He answered me : — 
 
 "'Ribemont, 14th July 1892. 
 " ' No ; at 10.30 I was not thinking in the least of the jumping- 
 jack; but, if I remember rightly, once or twice last year I 
 wished to make use of it. It was only at the moment of 
 choosing a simple object for the experiment that for an instant 
 the idea of that little man came into my head ; it was, you see, 
 before beginning our experiment. This puppet was not four 
 inches, but only two inches away from the water-bottle. There 
 is something very curious in it, a physical or psychical effect, 
 which I can't account for. The more so that this doll, in card- 
 board mounted 071 strings, is always fixed to the wall, above the 
 table from which I am sending you my good wishes. It must 
 have been about 9 o'clock, while tidying the before-mentioned 
 table, that I had the idea of transmitting to you the image of 
 the jumping-jack. 
 
 "'Leon Hennique.'" 
 
 No. 37. — By Mr. Joseph Kirk and Miss G. 
 
 During the year 1890 and onwards, Mr. Joseph 
 .Kirk, of 2 Ripon Villas, Plumstead, has carried on 
 with a friend, Miss G., a series of experiments in 
 thought-transference at a distance varying from 400 
 yards to about 200 miles. Some account of these 
 experiments will be found in the Journal of the S.P.R. 
 for February and July 1 891 and January 1892. 
 There are 22 1 trials in the transference of diagrams, 
 etc., there recorded. The object looked at by Mr. Kirk 
 was generally a square or oblong card, or a white disc 
 with or without a picture, diagram, or letter on it. 
 The object was always illuminated by a strong light. 
 
 1 Excluding two in which the distance was only a few yards. 
 
132 APPARITIONS AND THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 
 
 Notes of the experiments were in every case made 
 independently in writing by agent and percipient. 
 In each case, with the exception of two occasions (on 
 which Mr. Kirk's notes record his anticipation of 
 failure), the percipient saw luminous appearances, 
 often taking the form of round or square patches of 
 light, in correspondence with the shape of the surface 
 looked at by the agent. When Miss G. was at 
 Pembroke or Ilfracombe (Mr. Kirk remaining at 
 Plumstead) the correspondence did not go beyond 
 this; but in two or three cases, when Miss G. was 
 also at Plumstead, at a distance of only 400 yards, 
 the percipient appears to have seen some details of 
 the diagram on the card, and in one instance a fairly 
 accurate reproduction of the diagram was given. Mr. 
 Kirk on this occasion, 5th June 1891, was trying to 
 impress three percipients — of whom Miss G. was one 
 — and used three diagrams, viz., a Maltese cross, a 
 white oval plate with the figure 3 on it, and a full- 
 sized drawing of a man's hand in black on white. 
 Miss G.'s report is as follows : — 
 
 "5/6/91. Sat last night from II. 15 to 11.45. After a few 
 minutes wavy clouds appeared [these are drawn as a group of 
 roundish objects], followed by a pale bluish light very bright in 
 centre. [This is drawn of an indefinite oval shape with roundish 
 white spot in centre.] Near the end of experiment saw a 
 larger luminous form, lasting only a moment but reappearing 
 three or four times ; it had lines or spikes about half an inch 
 wide darting from it in varied positions." 
 
 Appended are reproductions of Miss G.'s original 
 drawings of her impression, which bear, it will be 
 seen, a marked likeness to a man's hand. 
 
EXPERIMENTS AT A DISTANCE. 
 
 133 
 
 It should be added that Miss G. has not had any 
 hallucinations of the kind except at times when Mr. 
 Kirk was experimenting ; and the amount of corre- 
 spondence between her visions and the images which 
 Mr. Kirk endeavoured to transfer would certainly 
 seem beyond what chance could produce. 
 
 No. 38.— By Mr. Kirk and Miss G. 
 
 A further series of seven trials with the same perci- 
 pient in April-June 1892 produced some interesting 
 results. Full notes of the experiments were, as in the 
 previous cases, made by Mr. Kirk and Miss G. inde- 
 pendently. Mr. Kirk wrote his notes immediately 
 after the conclusion of the experiments, which were 
 made late in the evening, at a time previously agreed 
 upon. Miss G., who was in the dark, and as a rule in 
 bed, wrote her notes on the following morning before 
 hearing from Mr. Kirk. No diagrams were used in 
 this series, "the object being, 5 ' in Mr. Kirk's words, 
 " to test the possibility of influencing the imagination, 
 and inducing the percipient to visualise hallucinatory 
 figures of persons or animals thought of by the 
 agent." Miss G. knew only that diagrams would not 
 be used. The distance between agent and percipient 
 was about 400 yards. 
 
 In the first three trials (April 10th, 17th, and 24th, 
 1892) Mr. Kirk pictured to himself some ducks in a 
 room, a witch, and other figures. On the 17th Miss G. 
 saw at one time a small sunlike light, but with this 
 exception she had no impression at all on any of the 
 three occasions. 
 
 At the fourth trial (1st May) Miss G. records the 
 same night that she saw "a broken circle U, then 
 only patches of faint !light, not cloudlike, but flat, 
 which alternated with vertical streaks of pale light." 
 Afterwards, however, she had another vision, which 
 she thus records on the following morning before 
 meeting Mr. Kirk : — 
 
134 APPARITIONS AND THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 
 
 " Soon after lying down last night, I had a rapid but most 
 realistic glimpse of Mr. Kirk leaning against his dining-room 
 mantelpiece ; the room seemed brightly lighted, and he looked 
 rather bothered, and just as I saw him he appeared to say, 
 ' Doctor, 1 I haven't got my pipe.' This seems very absurd, 
 the more so as I do not know whether Mr. Kirk ever smokes 
 a pipe. I see him occasionally with a cigar or cigarette, but 
 cannot remember ever seeing him with a pipe ; if I have, it 
 must have been years ago. I do not know whether my eyes 
 were open or closed, but the vividness of the impression quite 
 startled me. This occurred just after the expiration of time 
 appointed for experiment (iQ.45-11.15)." 
 
 Mr. Kirk reports in his account of the trial, written 
 on the 1st May, that he tried to transfer an image of 
 himself, sitting on a low chair, and also the part of 
 the room facing him in the light of the lamp. But 
 after seeing Miss G.'s report, he adds — 
 
 " The fact that I had another experiment to make [i.e., after 
 the trial with Miss G.] enables me to trace minutely my actions 
 before beginning it. Immediately the time had expired with 
 Miss G., I got up and rapidly lit the gas and three pieces of 
 candle, which I had ready in the cardboard box-cover, to illumi- 
 nate the diagram. The room was therefore brilliantly lighted. 
 I now rested with my right shoulder against the mantelpiece, with 
 my face towards Miss G., but with my eyes bent on the carpet. 
 In this position I thought intensely of myself and the whole 
 room, and feeling really anxious to make a success, for at least 
 six minutes. By this time my shoulder was aching very much 
 with the constrained attitude and the pressure on the mantel- 
 piece, and I broke off, using words (talking to myself) very similar 
 to those given by Miss G. What I muttered, as nearly as I can 
 remember, was, 1 Now, Doctor, I'll get my pipe.' . . . Until 
 within the last few weeks I have not smoked a pipe for many 
 years, and I do not think it probable that Miss G. has ever seen 
 me use one ; but it is an absolute certainty that she was not 
 aware I had taken to smoke one recently." 
 
 In the fifth experiment of the series, made on 
 the 9th May, the impression which appears to have 
 been transferred was fortunately recorded beforehand. 
 Mr. Kirk's report of that date, after describing an 
 attempt to transfer an image of the room, and of 
 an imaginary witch, runs as follows : — 
 
 1 A familiar name given to Miss G. by Mr. and Mrs. Kirk. 
 
EXPERIMENTS AT A DISTANCE. 
 
 135 
 
 " Continued to influence her some minutes after limit of 
 time for experiment (11.30 p.m.). During this time I was 
 much bothered by a subcurrent of thought, which I in vain 
 strove to cast off. In the morning, just before time to get up, 
 I had a vivid dream of my lost dog (' Laddie 5 ). 1 I dreamt he 
 had returned, and that my wife, Miss G., and myself, made 
 much of him. I thought of him all day, and tried to suppress 
 the thought, fearing it would interfere with the success of 
 experiment ; feel worried and irritated at this, being really 
 anxious to make an impression. Do not expect favourable 
 result. Written same night. " J. K." 
 
 Miss G.'s report is as follows : — 
 
 " Experiment last night (9-5-92) most unsatisfactory. Saw 
 only a glow of light and once for a few seconds a figure [of a 
 vase]. Some minutes after 11.30 (time for conclusion of experi- 
 ment) it seemed as if the door of my room were open, and on 
 the landing I saw a very large dog, moving as though it had 
 just come upstairs. I cannot conceive what suggested this, nor 
 can I understand why I thought of Laddie during time of 
 experiment. I do not think we have mentioned him recently. 
 My door was locked as usual. " L. G." 
 
 The sixth experiment (15th May 1892) was, in 
 the words of Mr. Kirk's contemporary report, " devoted 
 to making hypnotic passes, done with great energy 
 and concentration of mind. The passes were made, 
 not only over Miss G.'s [imagined] face and arms, 
 but specially over her hands/' with the view of 
 inducing hypnotic sleep. 
 
 Miss G. reports that she " fell asleep before the 
 time arranged had expired. But it was only to awake 
 again very soon, through dreaming I was in a base- 
 ment room . . . making frantic efforts to strike a 
 match, prevented doing so by some one behind clasp- 
 ing my wrists. The sensation was so unpleasantly 
 real that it awoke me." The time fixed for the 
 experiment had then passed. This was the only 
 occasion in this series on which Miss G. went to sleep 
 during an experiment. 
 
 1 Mr. Kirk explains later that this dog had been lost six years before. 
 They had all been much attached to him, and his loss was still an 
 occasional topic of conversation and of dreams by Mr. Kirk. 
 
I36 APPARITIONS AND THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 
 
 In the seventh experiment (5th June 1892) Mr. Kirk 
 again made passes to send Miss G. to sleep. Miss 
 G., on her side, saw only something " like the varied 
 but regular movements one sees in turning a kaleido- 
 scope, only without the colouring ; it was simply 
 luminous, and lasted more or less distinctly from 
 15 to 20 minutes." This impression may conceivably 
 have been due, as Mr. Kirk suggests, to the regular 
 movements of his hands in making the hypnotic passes. 
 
 In estimating the value of the coincidences between 
 Mr. Kirk's thought and Miss G.'s impressions in the 
 fourth and fifth trials, it should not be overlooked that 
 the percipient's impressions were not vague images, 
 such as are wont to crowd through our minds on 
 the near approach of sleep, but clear-cut visions, 
 approximating to visual hallucinations. 
 
 No. 39. — By Mr. Kirk and Miss Prickett. 
 
 Mr. Kirk conducted another short series of experi- 
 ments in March 1892, with Miss L. M. Prickett, 
 the distance between agent and percipient being 
 about twelve miles. The results are given below. 
 It is to be noted that the percipient's impressions in 
 this series seem generally to have been deferred. But 
 in weighing the amount of correspondence between 
 the diagrams and the percipient's reproductions, it 
 should be observed that of the four diagrams 
 employed, three were reproduced with substantial 
 accuracy, and in their chronological order ; and 
 that even on the second and third evenings the per- 
 cipient's impressions — rectilinear figures inscribed in 
 a circle — bore a general resemblance to the diagram 
 actually selected. It is perhaps unfortunate that 
 three out of the four diagrams included circles or 
 figures akin to circles, but as the percipient had not 
 seen any of the diagrams beforehand, this circumstance 
 does not in any way invalidate the results, though it 
 weakens the argument against chance-coincidence. 
 
EXPERIMENTS 
 
 AT A DISTANCE. 
 
 137 
 
 Percipient's Remarks. 
 
 ' 1 No result whatever. " 
 
 Percipient wrote, "Saw particularly one 
 clear circle, at first all light, but 
 after a little a dark centre, with a V, 
 or triangle on it ; * * * one or two 
 flakes in the shape of bright cres- 
 cents." Drew rough diagrams ac- 
 cordingly. 
 
 Drew a figure like a capital E inscribed 
 in a circle ; also one other form with 
 circular lines, "all very indistinct." 
 
 Impression received by 
 Percipient. 
 
 
 
 
 Diagram looked at by 
 Agent. 
 
 0 
 
 Agent did not experiment. 
 Percipient sat, in ignor- 
 ance of agent's inten- 
 tions. 
 
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 Tuesday, 
 1st March, 1892. 
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 border, about 7 in. 
 diam. — cross in cen- 
 tre blue. 
 
 1 
 
 Friday, 
 4th March, 1892. 
 10.30 to 11.0 p.m. 
 
 2i 
 
 Tuesday, 
 8th March, 1892. 
 10.30 to 11.0 p.m. 
 
138 APPARITIONS AND THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 
 
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EXPERIMENTS AT A DISTANCE. 1 39 
 
 Mr. Kirk has conducted several other series of 
 experiments in the transfer of diagrams and ideas 
 and in the induction of hypnotic sleep at a distance, 
 with Miss G., Miss Porter, of 16 Russell Square, 
 Mr. F. W. Hayes, and others. In one case the 
 percipient was at Cambridge, a distance of more 
 than fifty miles from Plumstead. The results in 
 nearly all these cases raise a certain presumption of 
 thought-transference, though the presumption is in 
 most cases — owing partly to the conditions of the 
 experiments — not so strong as in the two series last 
 quoted. It is to be remarked that the series of ex- 
 periments between Plumstead and Cambridge were 
 perhaps the least successful of any, a result which 
 may perhaps be attributed partly to the distance, 
 partly to the fact that the agent and percipient were 
 not personally acquainted. 
 
 It should be recorded that Mr. Kirk is strongly 
 of opinion, as the result of a careful analysis of the 
 experiments conducted by him, that telepathy, in these 
 cases at any rate, operates as a rule subconsciously, 
 and that we ought to be prepared to find the most 
 striking proofs of its action in such undesigned 
 coincidences as are quoted in Nos. 4 and 5 of the 
 second series with Miss G. 
 
 No. 40 —From Dr. Gibotteau. 
 
 Dr. Gibotteau, in the year 1888, made the acquaint 
 ance, at a creche in connection with a Paris hospital, 
 of a peasant woman named Bertha J. Bertha was a 
 good hypnotic, and Dr. Gibotteau succeeded on many 
 occasions in inducing sleep at a distance. But Bertha 
 claimed also to have the power of influencing others 
 telepathically — a power which in her case seems to 
 have been hereditary, as her mother had a reputa- 
 tion for sorcery. Bertha professed to be able, by the 
 exercise of her will, to cause persons to stumble, or to 
 lose their way, or to prevent them from proceeding 
 
140 APPARITIONS AND THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 
 
 in any given direction. She gave Dr. Gibotteau 
 several illustrations of these powers, and he believes 
 her pretensions to be well founded (Annales des 
 Sciences Psychiques, vol. ii. pp. 253-267, and pp. 317- 
 337). The following instances of hallucinatory effects 
 of a more ordinary kind are taken from the same 
 paper. In the last case, it will be observed, the 
 experience was collective. In none of the three cases 
 were the percipients aware of Bertha's intention to 
 experiment. It will be seen that in the second case 
 she succeeded in producing the emotional effect 
 desired, though the imaginary object by which she 
 intended to inspire terror was hardly of a kind 
 calculated to frighten a hospital surgeon. Dr. 
 Gibotteau writes : — 
 
 " I am a good sleeper, and I do not remember ever waking of 
 my own accord in the middle of my sleep. One night, about 2 
 or 3 o'clock, I was abruptly awoke. With my eyes still shut I 
 thought, c This is one of B.'s tricks. What is she going to make 
 me see?' I then looked at the opposite wall; I saw a circular 
 luminous spot, and in the centre a brilliant object, about the 
 size of a melon, that I stared at for several seconds, being wide 
 awake, before it disappeared. I could not distinguish any form 
 clearly, nor any detail, but the object was round, and parts of it 
 appeared to be less luminous. I imagined that she had wished 
 to show me a skull, but I could not recognise it ; the wall was 
 lighted up in that place as if by a strong lamp; the room was 
 not completely dark, because the window had outside blinds, 
 and the curtains were drawn back ; but this brilliant object did 
 not seem to give out any light beyond the area of which it 
 occupied the centre on the wall. That was all. I waited a 
 moment without seeing anything else, then I went fast asleep 
 again. The next day I found Bertha-, who had come to visit 
 the hospital, and I questioned her cautiously. She had tried to 
 show me first of all some dogs round my bed, then some men 
 quarrelling, and finally a lantern. That was all. It will be seen 
 that though the first two attempts failed, the third succeeded 
 perfectly. 
 
 " After that, Bertha very often tried to hallucinate me ; but I 
 have never either seen or heard anything. 
 
 " I was more sensible to transmissions of a vague and general 
 character. I have written elsewhere of illusions of the sense of 
 space : I had a complete illusion of this kind, and P. a very 
 
EXPERIMENTS AT A DISTANCE. 
 
 curious commencement of an hallucination. I have also de- 
 scribed the causeless terror that Bertha could inspire. 
 
 " Here is another account of a fright. One evening I was 
 entering my house, at midnight. On the landing, as I was put- 
 ting my hand on the door-handle, I said to myself, 4 What a 
 nuisance ! here is another of B.'s tricks ! She is going to make me 
 see something terrifying in the passage ; it is very disagreeable.' 
 I was really a bit nervous. I opened the door suddenly, with 
 my eyes shut, and seized a match ; in a few minutes I was in 
 bed, and, blowing out my candle, I put my head under the 
 bed-clothes, like a child. The next day Bertha asked me if I 
 had not seen a skeleton in the passage or in my room, and been 
 very much frightened. It need hardly be said that a skeleton 
 was the last thing in the world that could frighten me ; and 
 frankly, I think that I am not more of a coward than the common 
 run of men." 
 
 On another occasion Dr. Gibotteau was in the 
 company of a friend, M. P. They had just parted 
 from Bertha. 
 
 "After having deposited B. near her home, we went back to 
 the Latin Quarter with the carriage. On reaching the Rue de 
 Vaugirard, before the gate of the Luxembourg, I felt myself 
 seized by a terror intense as it was absurd. The street was 
 admirably lighted, there was not a single passer-by, and the 
 Quarter at that hour (just about midnight) is perfectly safe. 
 Moreover, this fright did not seem to depend on any cause. It 
 was fear just for fear. 4 It is absurd, 5 said I, 4 1 am frightened, 
 very much frightened ; it is certainly a trick of B.'s. 5 My 
 friend laughed at me, and almost immediately, 4 Why, it is 
 taking hold of me also. I am trembling with fear. It is very 
 disagreeable. 5 The impression lasted until we were in front of 
 the gate of the Luxembourg Palace ; we got out of the carriage 
 at the corner of the Rue Soufflot and the Boulevard Saint- 
 Michel. As soon as we set foot on the ground : 4 Look, 5 said 
 P., 4 don't you see something white floating in the air, there, 
 just in front of our eyes ; it has gone. 5 I saw nothing, but I 
 felt very strongly the influence of B. 
 
 "The next day I met her at the hospital. 'Well ! you saw 
 nothing ? 5 I begged her to tell me what we ought to have 
 seen. This was her answer : 4 First, your driver lost his way — 
 oh ! not you, you felt nothing ; he took you by all sorts of 
 queer ways. 5 It is a fact that our carriage, from the Rue de 
 Babylone, had gone by a very complicated way, and one which, 
 at the time, did not seem to me the right one, but I should not 
 like to say anything definite about it. 4 After that you were 
 frightened. 5 (Which of us ?) 4 You at first, M. P. afterwards, 
 
142 APPARITIONS AND THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 
 
 Oh, yes ! afraid of nothing at all, without any reason, but you 
 were very frightened. Then you saw some white pigeons flying 
 round you, quite near.' I had never heard her speak of this 
 hallucination. As to the fright, that subject was familiar to her, 
 and she has frightened me several times, deliberately, as I have 
 related." 
 
H3 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 GENERAL CRITICISM OF THE EVIDENCE FOR SPON- 
 TANEOUS THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 
 
 If the reader has been able to accept my estimate 
 of the evidence brought forward in the preceding 
 chapters, the possibility of the transmission of ideas 
 and sensations, otherwise than through the known 
 channels of the senses, must be held to be proved by 
 the experiments there recorded. That proof can be 
 impugned only on the ground that the precautions 
 taken against communication between agent and per- 
 cipient by normal means were insufficient. For if 
 the precautions are admitted to have been sufficient, 
 there can be no question that the results were not 
 due to chance. It is not necessary here to enter into 
 nice calculations of the probabilities. If, for instance, 
 the odds in favour of some other cause than chance 
 for the results recorded on pp. 66-69 were to be ex- 
 pressed in figures, the total sum would compete with 
 or outstrip the stupendous ciphers employed by the 
 astronomer to denote the distance of Sirius, or the 
 weight of the Sun. But the kind of evidence now to 
 be considered — the coincidence of some spontaneous 
 affection of the percipient with some event in the life- 
 history of the person presumed to be the agent, as 
 when one sees the apparition of a friend at the time 
 of his death — is of inferior cogency in two ways. 
 The coincidences are neither so numerous nor so 
 exact ; and the risk of error in the .record is far 
 greater. On the one hand, therefore, there is a 
 greater probability that the percipient's affection, 
 
144 APPARITIONS AND THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 
 
 even if correctly described, was unconnected with 
 the state of the person supposed to be the agent ; on 
 the other hand we have, in most cases, less assurance 
 that the description given of his experience is in its 
 essential features accurate. The part played by 
 coincident hallucination in the question of telepathy 
 may be illustrated from another branch of scientific 
 inquiry. For some years the " Germ Theory " rested 
 mainly on observations of the distribution of certain 
 diseases, their periodic character and their mode 
 of propagation and development ; phenomena which, 
 though sufficiently striking, are not in themselves 
 susceptible of exact interpretation. It was not until 
 the minute organisms, whose existence had been so 
 long suspected, had been actually isolated in the 
 laboratory, and had been proved capable of repro- 
 ducing the disease, that the connection of certain 
 maladies with the presence of certain microbes in the 
 body became, from a plausible hypothesis, an accepted 
 conclusion of Science. So here it is important to 
 bear in mind that dreams, visions, and apparitions, 
 however captivating to the imagination, do not form 
 the main argument for believing in some new mode 
 of communication between human minds. If all the 
 cases of the kind hitherto recorded could be shown 
 one by one to be explicable by more familiar causes, — 
 though the result would indeed be to add a remark- 
 able chapter to the history of human error ; though 
 it would be a singular paradox that so many intelli- 
 gent witnesses should have been so mistaken, and 
 with such undesigned unanimity ; and that a whole 
 class of alleged phenomena should have sprung up 
 without any substantial basis, — the grounds for the 
 belief in telepathy would not be seriously affected ; 
 we should merely have to modify our conceptions of 
 its nature, and restrict its boundaries. But in fact 
 there is no reason to anticipate so lame a conclusion. 
 The incidents, of which examples will be adduced in 
 the succeeding chapters, though their value will be 
 
SPONTANEOUS THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 145 
 
 differently estimated by different minds, are yet in 
 their aggregate not such as can plausibly be attri- 
 buted to misrepresentation or chance coincidence. 
 And, first, it is important to note that the cases must 
 be considered in the aggregate. Separately, no doubt, 
 each particular case is susceptible of more or less 
 adequate explanation by some well-known cause ; 
 and in the last resort it would be unreasonable to 
 stake the credit of any single witness, however 
 eminent, against what Hume would call the uniform 
 experience of mankind. But as a matter of fact the 
 experience of mankind is not uniform in this matter ; 
 and when we are forced by the mere accumulation 
 /Of testimony to go on adding one strained and im- 
 probable explanation to another, and to assume at 
 last an epidemic of misrepresentation, perhaps even 
 an organised conspiracy of falsehood, a point is at 
 length reached in which the sum of improbabilities 
 involved in the negation of thought-transference 
 must outweigh the single improbability of a new 
 mode of mental affection. If to any reader that 
 point should seem not yet to have been reached — 
 and the position could scarcely be held an unreason- 
 able one — I would remind him that the cases quoted 
 in this book form but a small part of the evidence 
 so far accumulated ; and I would ask that he should 
 reserve his judgment until he has studied the whole of 
 the evidence recorded in Phantasms of the Living, in 
 the Proceedings of the American Society for Psychical 
 Research, the scattered cases appearing from time to 
 time in the pages of various English and Continental 
 periodicals dealing with this subject, and the ever- 
 growing mass of testimony printed in the Proceedings 
 and Journal of the Society for Psychical Research in 
 this country. 1 He will then perhaps be prepared to 
 
 1 Of the Proceedings of the S.P.R., published by Kegan Paul, 
 Trench, Triibner, & Co., three or four parts are published yearly. 
 The Journal, which appears monthly, contains a record of recent cases 
 of interest, unaccompanied, for the most part, by any critical com- 
 
I46 APPARITIONS AND THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 
 
 endorse the verdict of a shrewd and genial critic on 
 the evidence presented in Phantasms of the Living, 
 viz., that it " can only be rejected as a whole by one 
 who is prepared to repeat at his leisure what David 
 is reported to have said in his haste." 1 
 
 It is of course not possible with our present know- 
 ledge to estimate with any precision the probabilities 
 for the coincidence by chance of such a vision as that 
 recorded by Dr. Dupre (No. 47), or such. a dream as 
 Mr. Hamilton's (No. 58), with the event represented. 
 Neither the nature of the percipient's impression in 
 these and similar cases, nor the event to which the 
 impression corresponds, are sufficiently well defined to 
 admit of any numerical argument being based upon^ 
 them. We can only recognise that whilst dreams< 
 and mind's-eye pictures are not very uncommon) 
 experiences, dreams and visions which faithfully 
 reflect external events of an unlikely kind occur, if 
 rarely, with sufficient frequency to give us pause. 
 The common sense which in such cases leads us 
 to infer a connection between the event and the 
 corresponding mental experience is our only guide. 
 But one large class of our spontaneous evidences 
 is susceptible of more exact treatment. Sensory 
 hallucinations are affections at once well marked and 
 unusual. If we can ascertain their relative frequency 
 it is possible to calculate with more or less exactness 
 the probabilities of the coincidence by chance with 
 some definite event. Such a calculation has been 
 attempted in Chapter IX. with regard to hallucina- 
 
 mentary, and is privately printed for circulation amongst members and 
 associates of the Society. Any reader, however, desirous of studying 
 the subject may procure any number of the Journal referred to in this 
 book on application at the Rooms of the S.P.R., 19 Buckingham St., 
 Adelphi, W.C. Of the foreign periodicals referred to in the text, per- 
 haps the most important is the Annales des Sciences Psychiques, edited 
 by Dr. Dariex, and published by Germer Bailliere et Cie., Paris. 
 Cases of interest are also to be found in Sphinx, a German periodical, 
 to be obtained through Kegan Paul & Co.; in the Revue Spirite (Paris: 
 24 Rue des Petits-Champs) ; and elsewhere. 
 
 1 Professor C. Lloyd Morgan in Mind, 1887, p. 282. 
 
SPONTANEOUS THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. I47 
 
 tions of a certain well-defined type coinciding with 
 the death of the person represented. The conclusion 
 there reached is that such coincidences are far too 
 numerous to be ascribed to chance. This part of the 
 evidence cannot therefore be summarily dismissed, 
 as suggested by more than one recent critic, on the 
 plea that hallucinations which coincide with a death 
 may be set off against hallucinations which occur 
 without any coincidence, and both alike be regarded 
 as purely subjective and without significance. Our 
 own estimate of the probabilities is, of course, pro- 
 visional, and may ultimately prove to be wide of the 
 mark. But, meanwhile, it is at least proof against 
 assault by conjectural statistics or the obiter dicta of 
 amateur psychologists. 
 
 But in fact the criticism commonly made is not 
 that, happening as described, visions and halluci- 
 nations happened by chance ; but that they did not 
 happen as described. This objection deserves careful 
 consideration. It must, I think, be admitted that a 
 proportion, perhaps a large proportion, even of the 
 cases obtained at first-hand are so far inaccurate as to 
 have comparatively small value for scientific purposes ; 
 and of the residue, in which the central fact of an 
 unusual subjective experience on the part of the 
 percipient and its coincidence with some external 
 event is fairly well established, it is possible that the 
 details are frequently — and where the record is not 
 made until some years after the event, generally — 
 untrustworthy. In order to estimate the nature and 
 probable extent of these defects, it is proposed briefly 
 to pass in review the various kinds of error to which 
 testimony is liable, and to note their bearings on the 
 question at issue. 
 
 Errors of Observation. 
 
 Errors of observation are here of very little import- 
 ance. The thing to be observed is, of course, the 
 
I48 APPARITIONS AND THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 
 
 percipient's own sensations. In subsequent con- 
 versation he may exaggerate the exceptional nature 
 of the impression ; but he can hardly make a mistake 
 at the time in observing what is purely subjective. 
 If a man calls green what we call red, we may 
 conclude that he is colour-blind ; and if he asserts 
 that he sees a human figure where we see none, that 
 he is hallucinated ; but in neither case have we 
 warrant for saying that he is making an erroneous 
 statement about his own sensations. 
 
 Errors of Inference. . » ' 
 
 But his interpretation of what he sees is a differ- 
 ent matter. Not indeed that the mistake commonly 
 made of taking a hallucination at the time for a figure 
 of flesh and blood, and subsequently for a hypothetical 
 entity of another kind, directly affects the percipient's 
 testimony. So long as the witness accurately de- 
 scribes what he saw, it matters little whether he 
 believes in telepathic hallucinations, or in black magic, 
 ghosts, or the Himalayan Brothers. But there are 
 one or two errors of inference of sufficient import- 
 ance to deserve notice. 
 
 A real figure seen under exceptional circumstances 
 may at the time or in the light of subsequent events 
 be regarded as a hallucination. Such a mistake is, as 
 a rule, possible only out of doors; and the commonest 
 form of it is when a figure is seen by the percipient 
 resembling some friend believed to be at a distance, 
 or in circumstances which make it difficult to suppose 
 that the figure was of flesh and blood. A curious 
 instance came under my notice recently. It was 
 reported to me that a lady had seen in a certain pro- 
 vincial town the ghost of a friend at about the time 
 of her death. The figure, accompanied by another 
 figure, was seen in broad daylight at a distance of 
 a few feet only; it was clearly recognised, and the 
 proof of its non-reality lay in the complete absence of 
 
SPONTANEOUS THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 149 
 
 recognition in return. It was subsequently ascertained 
 that the friend in question had actually been present 
 in the flesh, with a companion, at the spot where the 
 figures were seen, but that for sufficient reasons she 
 desired to avoid recognition. Her death within a few 
 days of the encounter was merely an odd coincidence. 
 
 Another kind of erroneous inference is worth not- 
 ing. Cases are not infrequently quoted, as presumably 
 telepathic, of a dream or vision embodying informa- 
 tion demonstrably not within the conscious knowledge 
 of the percipient. The inference that he cannot have 
 obtained the information by normal means is clearly 
 unsound, unless it can be shown that it was impossible 
 for the information to have been received uncon- 
 sciously. For it is well established that intelligence, 
 even of events closely affecting the percipient, may 
 enter through the external organs of sense and lie 
 latent for days before emerging into consciousness. 
 It is obvious that, for instance, many of the cases 
 quoted in which an invalid became aware of news 
 {e.g., of the death of a relative) which had been 
 studiously withheld from him by those around may 
 be thus explained. Whispers heard in sleep, or hints 
 unconsciously received, may have betrayed the secret. 1 
 
 Errors of Narration. 
 
 Of much greater importance than errors of observa- 
 tion or inference are those due to defects either in 
 narration or memory. Deliberate deception amongst 
 educated persons is no doubt comparatively rare, 
 though it would perhaps be unwise to hold out any 
 
 1 See the case recorded by Miss X. (Proc. S.P.R. , vol. v. pp, 507, 508). 
 In this instance Miss X. saw in the crystal a notice of a friend's death 
 in the form of an extract from the obituary column of the Times, in 
 which journal she had almost certainly seen the news, without perceiv- 
 ing it, the day before. There is a dream recorded in Phantasms of the 
 Living, vol. ii. pp. 687, 688, which may probably be explained as the 
 emergence in dream of intelligence unconsciously received a few hours 
 before. 
 
1 50 APPARITIONS AND THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 
 
 pecuniary inducement for the production of evidence. 
 But there are those, like Colonel Capadose in Mr. 
 Henry James' story The Liar, who tell ghost stories 
 for art's sake, and on a slender basis of fact build up 
 a large superstructure of fiction. And there are many 
 more who, with a natural and almost pardonable 
 desire to appear as the hero, or at least the raconteur, 
 of a good story, or from the mere love of the marvel- 
 lous, allow themselves to exaggerate the coincidences, 
 adjust the dates, elaborate the details, or otherwise 
 improve the too bare facts of an actual experience. 
 This kind of embellishment, however, is probably 
 more frequent in second-hand accounts, where the 
 narrator speaks with less sense of responsibility, and, 
 it may be added, of reality. 
 
 Again, a common form of inaccuracy is to quote as 
 the experience of a friend one of those weird stories 
 which are passed on from mouth to mouth in ordinary 
 society — the inconvertible currency of psychical re- 
 search. We all know these old friends — at a distance, 
 for no one has ever succeeded in making their nearer 
 
 acquaintance. There is the ghost at No. 50 B 
 
 Square ; the driver of the dream-hearse, recognised a 
 year later in a lift, which fell straightway, with all its 
 passengers, to the bottom of the hotel ; the Form 
 which accompanies the priest, or Quaker, or godly 
 merchant to save him from robbery on his lonely 
 nocturnal journeyings; the young lady who took part 
 in some tableaux vivants whilst her body was lying 
 cold in death — and all the rest of the phantom throng. 
 Only a few months ago I heard one of them — it was 
 the ghost of the lift — from the son of a doctor, who 
 assured me that the incident occurred to one of his 
 father's patients, and gave me the name of the foreign 
 hotel which had been the scene of the disaster. 1 
 
 1 I have before me as I write one case of the kind which will serve as 
 a sample. A told us the story, and induced B to write to us about it. 
 B informed us that he heard it from his brother C, a F. R. S., who had 
 received it from D, to whom it was told by E, who had it from the lips 
 
SPONTANEOUS THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. IS I 
 
 Sometimes a story is improved by the narrator that 
 it may the better serve for instruction and edification. 
 This tendency is especially liable to distort the evi- 
 dence in cases connected with death. It must be 
 remembered that though we may view a coincident 
 hallucination, for instance, as merely an instance of 
 an idea transferred from a living mind, to the per- 
 cipient it frequently represents the spirit of the dead. 
 From a certain class of witnesses the account of such 
 an incident is as little to be trusted as the text of an 
 apocryphal gospel. It inevitably becomes a Tendenz- 
 schrift, which reflects not the facts as they occurred, 
 but the narrator's conception of what the facts ought 
 to have been. 
 
 It is not necessary to dwell on these sources of 
 error, for they are probably apparent to all ; and to 
 give illustrative cases would be superfluous, and per- 
 haps invidious. But it is important to observe that 
 stories so improved, whether from a desire to reinforce 
 some theological tenet, or from the mere love of 
 sensation, are apt to betray their origin in many 
 different ways. Narrators of this kind rarely con- 
 tent themselves with the finer touches ; the added 
 ornaments are apt to be gross and palpable; 
 the "spirit" will be made to speak words of warning 
 or comfort; to intimate his testamentary disposi- 
 tions; or even — in somewhat bolder flight of fancy 
 — to leave a solid memento behind him. Now the 
 authentic phantom is seldom either dramatic or 
 edifying. 
 
 of F, " who was a visitor at the house where the occurrence took place." 
 We wrote to D, who referred us to two sources of information, G and 
 H. G wrote in reply to our letter that he heard the story from a 
 stranger at a dinner-party ' 'about three years ago," and promised 
 further inquiries. H referred us to J and K. Our letter to K was 
 answered by his cousin L, who wrote that she had heard it from M, 
 " who got it from some one who was present," and further inquiries 
 were again promised. It is needless to add that in cases of this kind 
 the story, like a will-o'-the-wisp, ever recedes as we advance, until it 
 ends with the nameless stranger at some dinner long since gone "away 
 in the Ewigkeit." 
 
152 APPARITIONS AND THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 
 
 Errors of Memory. 
 
 More insidious and more difficult to guard against 
 are errors of memory. There is a natural and almost 
 inevitable tendency to dramatic unity and complete- 
 ness which leads to the unconscious suppression of 
 some details, and the insertion of others. Probably 
 of all errors due to this cause a nice adjustment of the 
 dates is the commonest. In perhaps the majority of 
 second-hand cases, and in some of the more remote 
 first-hand narratives, the coincidence is said to be 
 exact to the minute. "At that very moment my friend 
 passed away" is* a common phrase. As a matter of 
 fact, in the best attested recent cases it can rarely be 
 shown that the coincidence is precise, and the impres- 
 sion frequently follows the death by some hours. But 
 there is risk also of the actual transformation of the 
 experience itself. A dream after the lapse of years 
 will be recalled as a hallucination, 1 a vague feeling 
 of discomfort as a vivid emotion, or even a mental 
 vision; a hallucination not recognised at the moment 
 will in the retrospect seem to have been identified 
 with some person who died at about that time; and 
 details, such as clothes worn or words spoken by the 
 phantom, will be borrowed from later knowledge and 
 read back into the image preserved in the memory. 
 There will further be a gradual simplifying and 
 rounding off of the incident, a deepening of the main 
 lines, and a suppression of what is not obviously 
 relevant or coherent. With many persons there can 
 be no doubt that this process is almost, if not wholly, 
 unconscious; and it need hardly be said that in that 
 very fact lies the special danger against which we 
 have to guard. 2 
 
 1 There is, as Mr. Gurney has pointed out, a converse error to be 
 guarded against — viz., the gradual effacement of the lines of an impres- 
 sion, so that an actual waking hallucination has in some instances come 
 to be regarded, after a long interval, as only a dream. 
 
 2 A good illustration of this kind of embellishment, in a case recorded 
 at second-hand, will be found in the footnote on a case in Chapter XII. 
 
SPONTANEOUS THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 1 53 
 
 As an instance of the gradual approximation of 
 dates, I may cite a case recorded in the Proceedings 
 of the American S.P.R. (pp. 401, 527). The narrator 
 wrote to Dr. Hodgson : — " I once dreamed that W. T. 
 H. was dead ; and the same night he was thrown 
 down several feet on to an engine, . . . when he was 
 taken up it was thought he was dead." From later 
 inquiries it was ascertained that the accident did 
 indeed occur as alleged — but a week or ten days after 
 the dream! 1 As an illustration of a different kind of 
 metamorphosis, a case may be given which I recently 
 received from a lady and her daughter — an account 
 of a " ghost " seen twenty-five years ago by the latter 
 and her nurse. The younger lady described to me the 
 figure seen ; the mother told me that she had received 
 a similar description from both nurse and daughter 
 at the time of the incident. Both ladies were clear- 
 headed and sensible witnesses, and it was impossible 
 to doubt that they believed what they said. But in 
 her childish diary, which the younger lady kindly 
 unearthed for my inspection, the only entry referring 
 to the matter — an entry written in pencil and ob- 
 viously as an afterthought — ran : " Ellen saw a ghost." 
 If the diarist had herself shared the experience, it is 
 difficult to believe that even the modesty natural to 
 her age and sex would have withheld her from record- 
 ing the fact for her private glorification. 
 
 It would be easy to multiply cases of this kind. 
 But those who demand most proof of the action of 
 telepathy will probably be least exacting of evidence 
 for the untrustworthiness of ancient memories. As a 
 matter of fact, we have the evidence of statistics to 
 
 1 So in a case given in the Annales des Sciences Psy cinques, vol. ii. 
 pp. 5-10, we have an extract from the log-book of the Jacques-Gabriel, 
 which records that the captain, mate, and another man when at 
 sea heard, on the 17th July 1852, the sound of a woman's voice crying. 
 In a marginal note on the log-book the captain adds that on reaching 
 port they learnt of the death of the mate's wife, " on the same day and 
 at the same hour" But the official register shows that the 4eath took 
 place on the 16th June 1852. 
 
154 APPARITIONS AND THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 
 
 show that the imagination does tend after a certain 
 lapse of time to magnify coincidences in matters of 
 this kind, and even to invent coincidences where none 
 existed. It will be shown in Chapter IX., in the dis- 
 cussion on the results obtained from an inquiry into 
 the distribution of sensory hallucinations, that whereas 
 non-coincidental hallucinations tend to be forgotten 
 after the passing of a few years, the records of coinci- 
 dental hallucinations — or at least of those which are 
 alleged to have coincided with the death of the person 
 seen — are proportionately more frequent ten years 
 ago than at the present time, the inference being that 
 a certain number of coincidences have been uncon- 
 sciously improved or invented in the interval. 
 
 Pseudo-presentiment. 
 
 In a letter published in Mind (April 1888) Pro- 
 fessor Royce, of Harvard, U.S.A., hazarded a hypo- 
 thesis that there may occur " instantaneous and irre- 
 sistible hallucinations of memory which make it seem 
 to one that something which now excites or astonishes 
 him has been prefigured in a recent dream, or in the 
 form of some other warning." In support of that 
 hypothesis Professor Royce appeals to the analogy 
 of the well-known cases of double memory, — the 
 impression of having at some previous time looked 
 on a scene now present, or heard a conversation now 
 taking place ; and to two or three instances of un- 
 doubted hallucination of memory amongst the insane, 
 recorded by Krafft-Ebing and Kraepelin. As re- 
 gards the latter, it is sufficient to remark that the 
 hallucinations occurred to persons whose minds were 
 admittedly diseased ; that the hallucinations them- 
 selves were apparently slow of growth, whereas the 
 hypothesis requires that they should be more or less 
 instantaneous ; and that in other respects they do not 
 present by any means a perfect parallel to the pre- 
 sumably telepathic cases with which he compares 
 
SPONTANEOUS THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 155 
 
 them. In default, therefore, of more precise analogies, 
 the hypothesis of pseudo-presentiment must be re- 
 garded as, at best, a plausible guess. And even if 
 it were fully substantiated it would only, as pointed 
 out by Mr. Gurney {Mind, July 1888), apply to 
 certain classes of telepathic cases, and those the 
 weakest from the evidential standpoint. At most 
 the theory would account for dreams and indefinite 
 impressions of various kinds not mentioned before- 
 hand. In some cases of this kind, and in a large 
 class of so-called " prophetic " dreams, I am inclined 
 to regard Mr. Royce's explanation as possibly true, 
 in the modified form suggested by Dr. Hodgson {Proc. 
 American S.P.R., pp. 540 et sea.) — i.e., if it is restricted 
 to cases where there is a vague memory of some actual 
 dream or other impression, bearing a more or less re- 
 mote resemblance to the event ; in other words, if 
 we assume an illusion rather than a hallucination of 
 memory. But it need hardly be said that no serious 
 investigator would treat the uncorroborated accounts 
 of dreams and vague feelings of this kind as evidence 
 for anything whatever. To extend the hypothesis, 
 as Professor Royce suggests, to cases where there is 
 evidence that the percipient's experience was men- 
 tioned beforehand, is to suppose not one kind of 
 pseudo-memory, but two, — a pseudo-memory on the 
 part of the percipient that he has had a certain 
 subjective experience, and a pseudo-memory on the 
 part of some other person that this experience was 
 mentioned to him before the news of the event to 
 which it related. In recent cases, at any rate, the 
 assumption of a double mistake of this kind seems 
 unwarranted. 1 And to apply this explanation to 
 
 1 That such a pseudo-memory on the part of a person not professing 
 to be the actual percipient is possible after a long interval appears to be 
 shown by the account just cited of the " ghost " seen by the nurse in a 
 foreign hotel. But we have no evidence that a memory hallucination of 
 this kind could be, as demanded by the theory, of instantaneous or very 
 rapid growth ; or that any verbal suggestion could intercalate a false 
 picture into a series of still recent and unimpaired memories. 
 
1 56 APPARITIONS AND THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 
 
 cases of actual sense-hallucination involves even 
 more violent improbabilities. It would require far 
 more evidence than Professor Royce can offer to 
 make it credible that a man on hearing of the 
 death of a friend should straightway be capable of 
 imagining that at a definite hour and in a particular 
 place he had seen an apparition of that friend, when 
 in fact he had had no experience of the kind. It is 
 remarkable that Mr. Royce does not himself appear 
 to have realised the distinction between the two kinds 
 of impressions. 
 
 Precautions against Error. 
 
 We have now to consider by what methods the 
 various defects incident to testimony on these matters 
 may be best eliminated. As the evidence upon which 
 reliance is placed will be illustrated by the examples 
 quoted hereafter, it will not be necessary to dwell at 
 length here upon the precautions taken. The testi- 
 mony at first-hand of the actual witnesses, it need 
 hardly be said, is to be desired in any investigation; 
 but in the case of phenomena which are at once 
 stimulating to the imagination, and, as being novel, 
 have no recognised standard of probability by which 
 narrator or auditor can check deviations from the 
 truth, no other evidence is worthy of consideration. 1 
 It will be seen that in all the cases here quoted the 
 witness, or one of the witnesses, has furnished an 
 account of his experience written by himself ; 2 and it 
 
 1 Second-hand narratives have, however, a value of their own, as 
 shown later ; for by taking note of the features which occur commonly 
 in such cases, but are absent from the best attested first-hand narratives, 
 we obtain a valuable standard of comparison by which to check aber- 
 rations of memory. 
 
 2 An apparent exception to this statement will be found in Nos. 45 
 and 46, Chapter VII., and elsewhere, where the account is furnished 
 not by the actual percipient, but by a person to whom the percipient 
 related his experience before he knew of its correspondence with fact. 
 The evidence in such cases, it should be pointed out, is as good as 
 first-hand ; indeed, where, as in Nos. 45 and 46, the actual per- 
 cipient was illiterate and the narrator educated, it may be regarded as 
 better than first-hand. 
 
SPONTANEOUS THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 157 
 
 is worth noting that the very act of writing such an 
 account to serve the purpose of a systematic inquiry 
 is calculated to inspire the percipient with a sense of 
 responsibility, and to lead him to weigh his words 
 with precision. I may add that by the courtesy of 
 our informants we have in most cases been enabled 
 to question them orally on the details of their 
 experience. 1 
 
 But, for reasons already given, no case should be 
 suffered to rest upon a single memory. It is of the 
 highest importance, therefore, to obtain the corro- 
 borative testimony of persons who were cognisant of 
 the occurrence of the impression before the news of 
 the corresponding event When this is not to be 
 obtained, evidence of some unusual action on the 
 part of the percipient, such as the taking of a journey, 
 or the putting on of mourning, may be accepted as 
 collateral proof of the reality of his impression. But, 
 as we have already seen, the evidence of the attesting 
 witnesses is liable to the same errors which affect the 
 testimony of the percipient; and the evidence most 
 to be desired is of a kind exempt from these weak- 
 nesses — that of a letter or memorandum written 
 before the news. In a large proportion of the narra- 
 tives dealt with, it is asserted that such a letter was 
 written, or such a memorandum made. Unfortunately, 
 this alleged documentary evidence is rarely forth- 
 coming. It is possible that in some cases this state- 
 ment is merely a conventional dramatic tag, — an 
 addition made unconsciously and in perfect good 
 faith to round off the story. 2 It cannot, however, I 
 
 1 This part of the work has been undertaken in this country by 
 Professor and Mrs. Sidgwick, Mr. E. Gurney, Mr. F. W. H. Myers, 
 myself, and others; in America, chiefly by Professor Royce and Dr. 
 Hodgson. 
 
 2 In the Times of the 6th January 1893 there appeared a letter from 
 a well-known writer, narrating how in 185 1 he had received a descrip- 
 tion of the sea-serpent from a lady who had watched its movements for 
 some half-hour in a small bay on the coast of Sutherlandshire. So far 
 the story is on a par with any of our own second-hand ghost stories. But 
 
158 APPARITIONS AND THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 
 
 think, be regarded as surprising either that a letter or 
 note was not written at the time, or that, if written, it 
 should not have been preserved. Sensory halluci- 
 nations — to take the most striking instance — though 
 unusual are not extremely rare experiences ; most 
 educated persons are perfectly familiar with the fact of 
 their occurrence and regard them (in most cases rightly) 
 as purely subjective, the products of some transient 
 cerebral disturbance, as little worthy of record as a 
 headache or a bilious attack. Often, probably, the 
 telepathic hallucination is indistinguishable from the 
 mass of purely subjective experiences of the same kind; 
 and even should it be recognised at the time as excep- 
 tional, the want of leisure, the fear of ridicule, even 
 the dislike of seeming to admit to himself the possi- 
 bility of his experience having a sinister significance, 
 would probably deter the percipient from writing about 
 it. 1 It is much more likely that he would speak of 
 it to an intimate friend, should opportunity occur. 
 And when in the rare conjunction of an exceptional 
 experience, adequate leisure, and a sympathetic corre- 
 spondent, or the habit of writing a diary, the letter is 
 actually written or the note made, the chances which 
 militate against its preservation are many. Few 
 persons will take a general and impersonal (in other 
 words, a scientific) interest in occurrences of this kind. 
 Their own isolated experience may possess a deep 
 and abiding interest for themselves, and, less certainly, 
 for their friends ; an interest, however, which is quite 
 compatible with the treatment of the attesting record 
 as waste paper. But unless it can be used to illustrate 
 or support a theory of a future life, they seldom regard 
 
 the writer goes on to say that the serpent had rubbed off" some of its 
 scales on the rocks ; that a few of these scales, of the size and shape of 
 scallop-shells, were for some years in his own possession, but that 
 when he searched amongst his curios, in order to show these scales to 
 Professor Owen, they were not to be found. The humble investigators 
 of the S. P. R. have occasionally found themselves in the same position 
 as the illustrious anatomist. 
 
 1 See, for example, the case quoted in Chapter X., No. 63. 
 
SPONTANEOUS THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 1 59 
 
 a " ghost story " as having any value other than that 
 derived from the personal environment. It appears, 
 indeed, to possess for most little more significance 
 than the recital of an extraordinary run of luck at 
 cards, or a fortunate escape from a railway accident, 
 between which it is commonly sandwiched. Again, 
 few persons realise the high value of contemporary 
 documentary evidence in matters of the kind ; there 
 are many who would probably share the views of 
 a courteous correspondent, who, after sending me 
 condensed copies of some contemporary memoranda, 
 wrote in answer to my inquiries : — " I have not got 
 the originals'; I destroyed them immediately I sent 
 them (i.e., the copies) to you, because I knew they 
 would be more permanently preserved and re- 
 corded ; being authenticated to Professor Barrett and 
 you, there was no further need of them." And 
 even when they escape immediate destruction the 
 letters may, as in cases reported to us, be "washed out" 
 or burnt; or may survive the perils of flood and fire 
 only to be mislaid, so that they cannot be found without 
 a more thorough search than the courtesy of our corre- 
 spondents can induce them to make. Notwithstanding 
 these various adverse chances, it will be found that 
 many of the narratives which follow are actually 
 attested by contemporary documentary evidence. 
 
 When the great mass of narratives has been care- 
 fully examined and tested in the light of the con- 
 siderations above set forth, and when all those which 
 are remote in date, or for some other reason suspect, 
 have been eliminated, there will be found to remain 
 an important body of testimony. And of this sifted 
 residue, though we cannot predicate of any single 
 narrative that it accurately represents the facts, or 
 that the coincidence with which it deals was not 
 purely casual, yet looking at the cases as a whole, we 
 may feel a reasonable assurance that in their essential 
 features the facts are correctly reported, and that the 
 coincidences are not due to chance. 
 
l6o APPARITIONS AND THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 
 
 I may conclude this chapter by calling attention to 
 an argument of a different kind, on which Mr. Gurney, 1 
 in reviewing the material- amassed chiefly in this 
 country, laid considerable stress, and in which he has 
 been followed by an independent observer, Professor 
 Royce, dealing with narratives received from corre- 
 spondents in America. 2 Both these investigators have 
 pointed out, and probably all who make an equally 
 careful and dispassionate study of the evidence will 
 agree with them, that the phenomena vouched for in 
 the best-attested narratives form a true natural group. 
 They are manifestly not the products of folk-lore, 
 nor of popular superstition, nor of the mere love of the 
 marvellous. They are singularly free from the more 
 sensational and bizarre features — dramatic gestures 
 or speech on the part of the phantasms, prophetic 
 warnings, movement of objects, etc. — which are con- 
 spicuous in second-hand narratives. If these accounts 
 were purely fictitious, it would be difficult to conceive 
 by what process, coming from persons of widely 
 separated social grades, of various degrees of educa- 
 tion, and of different nationalities, they could have 
 been moulded to present such strong internal re- 
 semblances; resemblances consisting not merely in 
 the possession of many common features, but in the 
 absence of others which, by their frequent occurrence 
 in admittedly fictitious accounts, are proved to be the 
 natural fruits of the unrestrained imagination. This 
 undesigned unanimity is strong evidence that the 
 restraint operating throughout has been the restraint 
 of fidelity to fact, and that the narratives themselves 
 owe little to the imagination, and much to their 
 reflection of genuine experience. 
 
 1 Phantasms of the Living, vol. i. pp. 164-166. 
 
 2 Proceedings American S.P.P., pp. 350, 351. 
 
i6i 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 TRANSFERENCE OF IDEAS AND EMOTIONS. 
 
 BEFORE proceeding to give examples of the evidence 
 for spontaneous thought-transference, it may be well 
 to repeat something of what has been said in the 
 preceding chapter. In the first place, the narratives 
 quoted in this book are offered as samples only of 
 the evidence of this kind actually accumulated. No 
 single narrative can afford to stand alone. Each 
 contains one or more elements of weakness ; and in 
 the last resort chance coincidence, memory-hallucina- 
 tion, or even deliberate deception would be in any 
 single case a more probable explanation than a new 
 mode of mental affection. It is only, to borrow Mr. 
 Gurney's metaphor, as a faggot, and not as a bundle 
 of separate sticks, that the evidence can finally be 
 judged. But, in the second place, it is not claimed 
 that the evidence reviewed even in its entirety is by 
 itself sufficient to demonstrate the possibility of the 
 affection of one mind by another at a distance. The 
 main proof of such affection is based on the experi- 
 ments already described, to which the spontaneous 
 evidence so far adduced must be regarded as illus- 
 trative and in some degree auxiliary. 
 
 It will be more convenient, as a matter of arrange- 
 ment, that the spontaneous experiences first con- 
 sidered should be those which resemble most closely 
 the results of direct experiment, though this classifi- » 
 cation has the disadvantage of placing in the forefront 
 
 II 
 
l62 APPARITIONS AND THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 
 
 cases of the least definite and striking kind ; cases, 
 that is, which are most readily explicable as due to 
 chance coincidence. It is on all grounds, therefore, 
 expedient that the reader should reserve his final 
 verdict until he has the whole case before him. 
 
 In the present chapter there will be adduced 
 instances of the spontaneous transference of (i) 
 simple sensations ; (2) ideas and mental pictures ; 
 (3) emotional states ; (4) impulses tending to action. 
 The first two classes, and in some measure the last, 
 resemble the results described in the first five 
 chapters of this book ; for the third probably no 
 direct experimental parallel can be offered, for the 
 sufficient reason that vivid and intense emotion 
 cannot be evoked at will. 
 
 Transference of Simple Sensations. 
 
 We will begin by quoting two instances of the 
 transference of simple sensation. The first we owe 
 to the kindness of Mr. Ruskin. The percipient was 
 Mrs. Severn, wife of the well-known landscape 
 painter. 
 
 No. 41. — From Mrs. Arthur Severn. 
 
 " Brantwood, Coniston, 
 
 October 2jth, 1883. 
 " I woke up with a start, feeling I had had a hard blow on 
 my mouth, and with a distinct sense that I had been cut and 
 was bleeding under my upper lip, and seized my pocket- 
 handkerchief, and held it (in a little pushed lump) to the part, 
 as I sat up in bed, and after a few seconds, when I removed it, 
 I was astonished not to see any blood, and only then realised 
 it was impossible anything could have struck me there, as I lay 
 fast asleep in bed, and so I thought it was only a dream ! — but 
 I looked at my watch, and saw it was seven, and finding Arthur 
 (my husband) was not in the room, I concluded (rightly) that 
 he must have gone out on the lake for an early sail, as it was so 
 fine. 
 
 " I then fell asleep. At breakfast (half-past nine), Arthur 
 came in rather late, and I noticed he rather purposely sat 
 
IDEAS AND EMOTIONS. 
 
 I6 3 
 
 farther away from me than usual, and every now and then put 
 his pocket-handkerchief furtively up to his lip, in the very way 
 , I had done. I said, 6 Arthur, why are you doing that ? - and 
 added a little anxiously, 4 1 know you've hurt yourself ! but I'll 
 tell you why afterwards.' He said, ' Well, when I was sailing, a 
 sudden squall came, throwing the tiller suddenly round, and it 
 struck me a bad blow in the mouth, under the upper lip, and it 
 has been bleeding a good deal and won't stop.' I then said, 
 ' Have you any idea what o'clock it was when it happened?' 
 and he answered, 1 It must have been about seven.' 
 
 " I then told what had happened to me, much to his surprise, 
 and all who were with us at breakfast. 
 
 " It happened here about three years ago at Brantwood, 
 to me. 
 
 "Joan R. Severn." 
 
 Mr. Severn wrote to us on the 15th November 
 1883, giving an account of the trivial accident de- 
 scribed by the percipient, and adding that after leaving 
 the boat he 
 
 " walked up to the house, anxious of course to hide as much as 
 possible what had happened to my mouth, and getting another 
 handkerchief walked into the breakfast-room, and managed to 
 say something about having been out early. In an instant my 
 wife said, 1 You don't mean to say you have hurt your mouth ? ' 
 or words to that effect. I then explained what had happened, 
 and was surprised to see some extra interest on her face, and 
 still more surprised when she told me she had started out of 
 her sleep thinking she had received a blow on the mouth ! and 
 that it was a few minutes past seven o'clock, and wondered if 
 my accident had happened at the same time ; but as I had no 
 watch with me I couldn't tell, though, on comparing notes, it 
 certainly looked as if it had been about the same time. 
 
 "Arthur Severn." 
 
 (Phantasms of the Living, vol. i. pp. 188, 189.) 
 
 So far as I know, this is a unique instance, if we 
 limit ourselves to first-hand evidence, of the spon- 
 taneous transference of a sensation of pain to a 
 waking percipient. 1 Impressions of the kind, indeed, 
 unless more definite and intense than the analogy of 
 experiment gives us warrant for anticipating, would 
 
 1 Two other examples are referred to in Phantasms, vol. i. p. 189, 
 but in neither case is the evidence obtainable at first-hand, 
 
164 APPARITIONS AND THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 
 
 as a rule be quickly forgotten, or would be naturally 
 ascribed to some other source than telepathy. We 
 owe the record of the present instance to the fortunate 
 chance that the agent and percipient met within an 
 hour of the occurrence, and that the pain of the 
 percipient, though slight, was not such as could be 
 readily attributed to ordinary causes. In the next 
 instance, also, where the impression belonged to a 
 different sense, the agent and percipient were in the 
 habit of meeting almost daily, otherwise it seems 
 possible that the coincidence would have escaped 
 notice. 
 
 No. 42. — From Miss X. 
 
 The percipient was Miss X.; the agent was her 
 friend D., already referred to, who writes : — 
 
 "April 13th, 1888. 
 "In the spring of 1881, in the evening after dinner, I acci- 
 dentally set fire to the curtains of a sitting-room, and put myself 
 and several others into some danger. The next morning, on 
 visiting X., I heard from her that she had been disturbed over- 
 night by an unaccountable smell of fire, which she could not 
 trace, but which seemed to follow her wherever she went. I 
 was led to discover the fire, and so probably to save the house, 
 by what seemed a chance thought of X. I had left the room, 
 unconscious of anything wrong, and had settled to my work else- 
 where, when I suddenly remembered I had not put away some 
 papers I had been looking at, and which I had thought might wait 
 for daylight, but a strong feeling that X. would insist upon 
 order, had she been there, induced me to go back, when I found 
 the whole place in flames." 
 
 Miss X., in describing the case, adds : " I took con- 
 siderable trouble to ascertain the cause (of the smell 
 of fire), and was quieted only by the assurance that 
 it was imperceptible to the rest of the household." 
 {Proc. S.P.R., vol. vi. p. 367.) 
 
 When we leave these simple modes of feeling, and 
 consider the affections of the higher senses of hearing 
 and sight, we are confronted with q. new problem. 
 
IDEAS AND EMOTIONS. 
 
 I6 5 
 
 Sensations of the first class are almost purely homo- 
 geneous, they owe little or nothing to memory and 
 imagination. Moreover, though generally due to an 
 external cause, they are in the case of smell or taste 
 occasionally, and in that of pain frequently, excited 
 by causes within the organism. It is not, therefore, a 
 matter calling for comment that in such cases the 
 transferred idea should assume a definitely sensory 
 form. But when the organs of sight or hearing are 
 sensibly affected, past experience has taught us to 
 look for an external cause; the line between idea and 
 sensation is here sharply drawn and clearly under- 
 stood. 1 The line, indeed, as drawn by common use 
 may not correspond to any real distinction in the 
 nature of the experience itself. Ideas may be only 
 paler sensations, and a train of thought nothing else 
 than a series of suppressed hallucinations. But at 
 any rate the distinction, whether fundamental or not, 
 serves a useful purpose as a rough-and-ready means 
 of classing our mental experiences. A visual or 
 auditory image either is on the same level of intensity 
 as the series of impressions which represent for us 
 the external world, or it falls below that level. In 
 the former case we call it a sensation or percept, in 
 the latter, an idea. Sensations and percepts may be 
 again subdivided, as objective or hallucinatory, accord- 
 ing as they do or do not correspond to a supposed 
 material cause. In the experiments described in the 
 first five chapters, it will have been observed that 
 when the transferred impression was of a visual 
 nature it generally remained ideal, rising occasionally, 
 however, as in some of the experiments with hypno- 
 tised percipients, and in Mr. Kirk's cases, to the level 
 of a complete sensory hallucination or quasi-percept 
 In the present chapter it is proposed to deal with 
 auditory and visual phantasms which, so far as can 
 
 1 Except, of course, in cases of rudimentary hallucinations, such as 
 after-images and bright spots in the eyes and singing in the ears, which 
 are caused by the physical condition of the external organ. 
 
1 66 APPARITIONS AND THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 
 
 be judged, were of an ideal kind, though one or two 
 of the cases cited may seem to approximate to sensory 
 embodiment. The more striking hallucinatory effects 
 will be reserved for later chapters. 
 
 Transference of Ideas. 
 
 There is one kind of coincidence, so common as to 
 have passed into a proverb, which is often referred to 
 as illustrating the action of telepathy ; that is, the 
 idea of a person coming into the mind shortly before 
 the person himself actually approaches. In most of 
 the cases cited the coincidence is too indefinite to 
 call for attention, as it is obvious that the narrator 
 has not taken the elementary precaution of noting 
 the " misses " as well as the " hits." But if telepathy 
 acts at all, there is no a priori unlikelihood of its 
 acting in this direction as well as in others, and it is 
 to be desired that persons who believe themselves 
 susceptible to impressions of the kind would keep a 
 full record of their occurrence. Two instances which 
 happened in his own recent experience are recorded 
 by Professor Richet {Proceedings S.P.R., vol. v. p. 52). 
 Leaving such cases, however, as too indefinite to have 
 much evidential value, we may quote the following 
 as an example of an impression of a more detailed 
 kind, 
 
 No. 43 —From Miss X. 
 
 On the 1 2th October 1891, Miss X. wrote to Mr. 
 Myers as follows: — 
 
 "... I was much upset yesterday by the consciousness that 
 a Master B. (son of A. B.) had arrived unexpectedly upon the 
 scene ... no nurse — doctor three miles off— husband away. 
 Being Sunday, I could not telegraph, but the news as to hour 
 and sex arrived this morning. My impression was at 2.30 
 onwards. He arrived at 3.30, and in the interval I heard her 
 voice over and over again calling my name. All is well now, 
 but these impressions are not always comfortable." 
 
IDEAS AND EMOTIONS. 
 
 167 
 
 In a later letter Miss X. writes: — - 
 
 " A.'s own account is that (about two, I think), when she was 
 made aware of her danger, the thought passed through her 
 mind how fortunate it was that the impossibility of telegraphing 
 would prevent anxiety at home, and then — that any way / 
 should know. No one expected to have any cause for anxiety 
 for at least a week. Yes ; I ought to have sent to Mrs. 
 Sidgwick, but I was so wretchedly ill that — don't shudder — I 
 never at the time even thought of the S.P.R. I had been 
 dreadfully worried all that week, and was utterly worn out." 
 
 The coincidence is, no doubt, not of the strongest 
 kind. But in estimating its value it should not be 
 overlooked that the impression was sufficiently intense 
 to produce a decided feeling of discomfort. And 
 though Miss X. unfortunately omitted to send an 
 account of her experience until after she had learnt 
 of its partial correspondence with the event, she did 
 not know at the time when the first letter was written 
 that her impression was correct as regards the details 
 of the absence of husband and nurse. Whatever the 
 value of the coincidence, therefore, it seems clear that 
 the account owes nothing to exaggeration or uncon- 
 scious reading back of details. With this may be 
 compared a narrative sent to me in December 1891, 
 by the Rev. A. Sloman, Master of Birkenhead School. 
 On the 1 2th of the month, whilst Mrs. Sloman was 
 absent at a concert, a chimney in the school-house 
 had caught fire, and Mr. Sloman had been summoned 
 from his work to give directions for dealing with the 
 mischief. On the matter being mentioned to Mrs. 
 Sloman on her return, she at once explained that 
 during the concert, just about the actual time of the 
 fire, " I suddenly began to think what you would do if 
 the house took fire, and I distinctly pictured you going 
 into the kitchen and speaking about a wet blanket. ,, 
 The account was written down and signed by both 
 Mr. and Mrs. Sloman on the day of the occurrence, 
 and the coincidence in time between event and 
 impression seems to be well established. It must 
 
168 APPARITIONS AND THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 
 
 be admitted that the apprehension of fire may not 
 improbably have a more or less permanent place 
 in the background of a housewife's consciousness; 
 still, even a slight outbreak of fire is not in an 
 ordinary household a matter of common occurrence. 
 
 The next case is interesting as presenting evidence 
 of the transference of an auditory impression. The 
 account was originally published in the Spectator of 
 June 24th, 1882: — 
 
 No. 44. — From Mrs. Barber. 
 
 " Ferndene, Abbeydale, near Sheffield, 
 June 22nd, 1882. 
 " I had one day been spending the morning in shopping, and 
 returned by train just in time to sit down with my children to 
 our early family dinner. My youngest child — a sensitive, quick- 
 witted little maiden of two years and six weeks old — was one of 
 the circle. Dinner had just commenced, when I suddenly recol- 
 lected an incident in my morning's experience which I had 
 intended to tell her, and I looked at the child with the full 
 intention of saying, ' Mother saw a big black dog in a shop, 
 with curly hair,' catching her eyes in mine, as I paused an 
 instant before speaking. Just then something called off my 
 attention, and the sentence was not uttered. What was my 
 amazement, about two minutes afterwards, to hear my little 
 lady announce, ' Mother saw a big dog in a shop.' I gasped. 
 'Yes, I did ! ' I answered; 'but how did you know?' 'With 
 funny hair/ she added, quite calmly, and ignoring my question. 
 'What colour was it, Evelyn?' said one of her elder brothers; 
 1 was it black ? ' She said, ' Yes.' " 
 
 I called on Mrs. Barber in the spring of 1886, and 
 heard full details of the incident from herself and Mr. 
 Barber, who, though not himself present at the time, 
 was conversant with the facts. The incident took 
 place on January 6th, 1882, and Mrs. Barber allowed 
 me to see the note-book in which the account (sub- 
 stantially reproduced in the Spectator) was written 
 down on January nth. Of course there is always 
 the possibility in a case of this kind that the lips may 
 have unconsciously begun to form the words, but in 
 the present instance it seems unlikely that any indica- 
 tion of the kind would have escaped the notice of the 
 
IDEAS AND EMOTIONS. 
 
 169 
 
 others present at the table. Mrs. Barber has given us 
 other accounts, extracted from her journal, of thought- 
 transference, in which the same percipient was con- 
 cerned. She writes on December 26th, 1886: — 
 
 "On Wednesday J. went to London, and on getting his 
 
 "breakfast at a little inn in C , he found a 'blackclock' (i.e., 
 
 cockroach) floating in his coffee. He fished it out and supposed 
 it was all right, but on pursuing the coffee he got one in his 
 mouth ! Next day, at breakfast, he said, * What's the most 
 horrible thing that could happen to any one at breakfast? I 
 don't mean getting killed, or anything of that sort.' E. looked 
 at him for a moment and said, ' To have a blackclock in your 
 coffee ! ' 
 
 " She was asleep in bed when her father returned the night 
 before, and they met at the breakfast-table for the first time the 
 next morning, when the question was asked quite suddenly. 
 When asked how she came to think of it, she said, 4 1 looked at 
 the bacon-dish, and thought a blackclock in the bacon, — no, he 
 would see that — it must have been in the coffee.' 
 
 " She has a special horror of 'blackcocks,' so the incident may 
 merely have been one of the numerous instances of her unusually 
 quick wit. 
 
 "Caroline Barber." 
 
 Transference of Mental Pictures. 
 
 The next three narratives are interesting as illus- 
 trating three different stages in the externalisation 
 of visual impressions. In the first case, which is 
 quoted from the Proceedings of the American S.P.R. 
 (pp. 444, 445), the impression seems to have been 
 almost of the nature of an illusion — i.e., the idea 
 emerged into consciousness only when a somewhat 
 similar image was presented to the external organ 
 of vision. 1 
 
 1 See case No. 51, later; and compare Mr. Galton's observations 
 in his lecture at the Royal Institution on " The Just Perceptible Differ- 
 ence " (reported in the Times, January 30th, 1893). Mr - Galton 
 found that the ideal auditory impressions called up by reading the 
 printed substance of a lecture enabled him to hear the lecturer's voice 
 at a greater distance than when he had not the printed text before 
 him; the ideal appears to have supplemented the real impression, as, 
 in the Case given in the text, the real reinforced the ideal* 
 
1 70 APPARITIONS AND THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 
 
 No. 45. — From Mr. Haynes. 
 In a letter to Mr. Hodgson, Mr. Haynes writes : — 
 
 "Boston, June 25, 1887. 
 
 " The name of the prisoner alluded to has passed from my 
 recollection. He belonged in East Boston, and was sentenced 
 for life for an assault upon a woman. I think he was pardoned 
 some years ago, but am not certain about it. He had but one 
 child, a boy about five years old, who always came with his wife 
 to visit him. He seemed very fond of the child, always held him 
 in his arms during the visit, and showed a good deal of feeling 
 at parting. 
 
 "The following is an account of the affair made at the 
 time : — 
 
 " ' The following very singular incident I can vouch for as 
 having actually occurred. I refer to it, not to illustrate a super- 
 natural or any other unusual agency, as I am a sceptic in such 
 matters, but as a remarkable instance of hallucination or pre- 
 sentiment. 
 
 " ' I received a message from the wife of one of our convicts, in 
 prison for life, that their only child, a bright little boy five years 
 old, was dead, he having accidentally fallen into the water and 
 been drowned. I was requested to communicate to the father 
 the death of the child, but not the cause, as the wife preferred 
 to tell him herself when she should visit him a week or two 
 later. 
 
 " ' I sent for him to the guard-room, and after a few questions 
 in regard to himself, I said I had some sad news for him. He 
 quickly replied, " I know what it is, Mr. Warden ; my boy is 
 dead ! " " How did you hear of it ? " I asked. " Oh, I knew 
 it was so ; he was drowned, was he not, Mr. Warden ? " 
 " But who informed you of it ? " I again asked. " No one,' 3 
 he replied. " How, then, did you know he was dead, and 
 what makes you think he was drowned?" "Last Sunday," 
 he said, "your little boy was in the chapel; he fell asleep, 
 and you took him up and held him. As I looked up and 
 caught sight of him lying in your arms, instantly the thought 
 occurred to me that my boy was dead — drowned. In vain I 
 tried to banish it from my mind, to think of something else, 
 but could not ; the tears came into my eyes, and it has been 
 ringing in my ears ever since ; and when you sent for me, my 
 heart sunk within me, for I felt sure my fears were to be con- 
 firmed." 
 
 " 1 What made it more remarkable was the fact that the child 
 was missed during the forenoon of that Sunday, but the body 
 was not found for some days after.' 
 
IDEAS AND EMOTIONS. 
 
 171 
 
 "The foregoing is copied from my journal, the entry made on 
 the day of the interview, and I can assure you is strictly correct 
 in every particular. 
 
 " Gideon Haynes." 
 
 In answer to inquiries as to the name and address 
 of the percipient, Mr. Haynes writes : — 
 
 " His name was Timothy Cronan. He was pardoned in 1873 
 or 1874. Mr. Darling, the officer in the guard-room to-day, 
 occupied the same position when I had the interview with 
 Cronan. He was present, and remembers distinctly all the 
 circumstances of the case, which were discussed by us at the 
 time. Cronan served some ten or twelve years. . . . He has 
 not been heard from at the prison since his discharge." 
 
 In this case it may perhaps be inferred, from the 
 circumstances of its occurrence, that the impression 
 was of a rudimentary visual character. 
 
 In the next case it seems clear that the percipient 
 saw what she described, but the impression appears 
 to have been of a purely inward nature. 
 
 No. 46. — From Professor Richet. 
 
 " On Monday, July 2nd, 1888, after having passed all the day 
 in my laboratory, I hypnotised Leonie at 8 P.M., and while she 
 tried to make out a diagram concealed in an envelope I said to 
 her quite suddenly : 4 What has happened to M. Langlois ? ' 
 Leonie knows M. Langlois from having seen him two or three 
 times some time ago in my physiological laboratory, where he 
 acts as my assistant. i He has burnt himself,' Leonie replied. 
 ' Good,' I said, 'and where has he burnt himself? ' 6 On the 
 
 left hand. It is not fire: it is I don't know its name. Why 
 
 does he not take care when he pours it out?' 4 Of what 
 colour/ I asked, * is the stuff which he pours out?' c It is 
 not red, it is brown ; he has hurt himself very much — the skin 
 puffed up directly. 5 
 
 " Now, this description is admirably exact. At 4 P.M. that day 
 M. Langlois had wished to pour some bromine into a bottle. 
 He had done this clumsily, so that some of the bromine flowed 
 on to his left hand, which held the funnel, and at once burnt 
 him severely. Although he at once put his hand into water, 
 wherever the bromine had touched it a blister was formed in a 
 few seconds — a blister which one could not better describe than 
 by saying, ' the skin puffed up.' I need not say that Leonie 
 had not left my house, nor seen any one from my laboratory* 
 
172 APPARITIONS AND THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 
 
 Of this I am absolutely certain, and I am certain that I had not 
 mentioned the incident of the burn to any one. Moreover, this 
 was the first time for nearly a year that M. Langlois had 
 handled bromine, and when Leonie saw him six months before 
 at the laboratory he was engaged in experiments of quite 
 another kind." (Proc. S.P.R., vol. vi. pp. 69, 70.) 
 
 In the next case the mental picture seems to have 
 been much more vivid than the visions of distant 
 familiar scenes, or faces, which most of us can sum- 
 mon up by an effort of will ; in fact, the impression 
 probably approached very nearly to a hallucination. 
 It is noteworthy, however, that it did not apparently 
 form part of the external order, but replaced it. We 
 have no means therefore of measuring the degree of 
 vividness. 
 
 No. 47.— From Dr. G. Dupre. 
 
 " Reims, July 6th, 1891. 
 
 "One day in May 1890, I had just been visiting a patient, 
 and was coming downstairs, when suddenly I had the impres- 
 sion that my little girl of four years old had fallen down the 
 stone stairs of my house, and hurt herself. 
 
 " Then gradually after the first impression, as though a curtain 
 which hid the sight from me were slowly drawn back, I saw my 
 child lying at the foot of the stairs, with her chin bleeding, but 
 I had no impression of hearing her cries. 
 
 " The vision was blotted out suddenly, but the memory of it 
 remained with me. I took note of the hour — 10.30 A.M. — and 
 continued my professional rounds. 
 
 " When I got home I much astonished my family by giving 
 a description of the accident, and naming the hour when it 
 occurred. 
 
 " The circumstance made a great impression on me, and my 
 memory of it is quite clear. 
 
 " Dr. G. Dupre." 
 
 In a further letter Dr. Dupr6 adds : — 
 
 " Reims, August 2nd, 1891. 
 
 "The account which I have given you is exact in every point. 
 Madame Dupre remembers it perfectly. As I had a great 
 many visits to pay that day I did not return home at once, but 
 continued my rounds. I took particular note of the time, how- 
 ever, and it was found to be exact. 
 
IDEAS AND EMOTIONS. 
 
 173 
 
 " This phenomenon of perception seemed to me so curious 
 that I noted all the particulars, in order to analyse them at my 
 leisure. 
 
 " When I got home my first words were these, addressed to 
 my wife, 4 Loulou is hurt. Is it serious?' Madame Dupre 
 exclaimed, 4 Who told you ? ' 1 No one,' I replied ; ' 1 saw her 
 fall,' and then while examining my little girl I told my wife 
 about the vision. 
 
 " I did not relate the circumstance to any one else but my 
 father-in-law, Dr. Bracon, and he did not take it very seriously. 
 Indeed, I was not inclined to lay much stress upon the matter 
 either, as I did not wish to be considered visionary or credulous." 
 
 Madame Dupre writes: — 
 
 "25/^ September 1891. 
 " My husband's account of his telepathic experience is per- 
 fectly correct For my own part I was extremely surprised at 
 the circumstances, for till then my attitude towards all questions 
 of clairvoyance had been one of almost complete incredulity. 
 Let me add, however, that my husband is of an excessively 
 nervous temperament, and was liable to somnambulism in his 
 youth. It is seldom that a night passes in which he does not 
 talk in his sleep. It would be quite possible to hold a conversa- 
 tion with him for a few minutes whilst he is in this condition." 
 (Annates des Sciences Psychiques^ vol. i. pp. 324, 325.) 
 
 It seems permissible to conjecture that in this case 
 Madame Dupre, as in the previous case Professor 
 Richet, was the agent. 
 
 Transference of Emotion. 
 
 Sometimes the telepathic impulse appears to ex- 
 press itself in a vague feeling of alarm or distress. Of 
 course, impressions of this sort, with no definite con- 
 tent, and not recognised at the time as having 
 reference to any particular person, can do little to 
 strengthen the proof of telepathy. But when it has 
 been shown, by the mention of the experience before- 
 hand, or by any unusual action consequent on its 
 occurrence, that the emotion was unique in the history 
 of the percipient, and when the coincidence with a 
 serious crisis is clearly established, the telepathic 
 
174 APPARITIONS AND THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 
 
 explanation may be admitted as at least plausible. 
 These conditions appeared to be fulfilled in the follow- 
 ing case, which is quoted from the Proceedings of 
 the American S.P.R. (pp. 474, 475). 
 
 No. 48.— From Mr. F. H. Krebs. 
 
 The percipient in this case described his experience 
 to Professor William James, of Harvard, who writes 
 as follows : — 
 
 " Mr. Krebs (special student) stopped after the logic lesson of 
 Friday, November 26, and told me the facts related in his 
 narrative. 
 
 " I advised him to put them on paper, which he has thus 
 done. 
 
 " His father is said by him to be too much injured to do any 
 writing at present. 
 
 "Wm. James. 
 
 "December 1, 1886." 
 
 From Mr. F. H. Krebs. 
 
 "On the afternoon of Wednesday, November 24, I was 
 very uneasy, could not sit still, and wandered about the whole 
 afternoon with little purpose. This uneasiness was unaccount- 
 able ; but instead of wearing away it increased, and after return- 
 ing to my room at about 6.45 it turned into positive fear. I 
 fancied that there was some one continually behind me, and, 
 although I turned my chair around several times, this feeling 
 remained. At last I got up and went into my bedroom, looked 
 under the bed and into the closet; finding nothing, I came back 
 into the room and looked behind the curtains. Satisfied that 
 there was nothing present to account for my fancy, I sat down 
 again, when instantly the peculiar sensation recurred ; and at 
 last, finding it unbearable, I went down to a friend's room, where 
 I remained the rest of the evening. To him I expressed my 
 belief that this sensation was a warning sent to show me that 
 some one of my family had been injured or killed. 
 
 " While \m his room the peculiar sensation ceased, and, 
 despite my nervousness, I was in no unusual state of mind ; 
 but on returning to my room to go to bed it returned with 
 renewed force. On the next day (the 25th), on coming to my 
 grandfather's, I found out that the day before (the 24th), at a 
 little past 12, my father had jumped from a moving train 
 and been severely injured. While I do not think that this warn- 
 ing was direct enough to convince sceptics that I was warned 
 
IDEAS AND EMOTIONS. 
 
 175 
 
 of my father's mishap, I certainly consider that it is curious 
 enough to demand attention. I have never before had the 
 same peculiar sensation that there was some being besides 
 myself in an apparently empty room, nor have I ever before 
 been so frightened and startled at absolutely nothing. 
 
 " On questioning my father, he said that before the accident 
 he was not thinking of me, but that at the very moment that it 
 happened his whole family seemed to be before him, and he 
 saw them as distinctly as if there. 
 
 " F. H. Krebs, Jun. 
 
 "November?.^ 1886." 
 
 From Mr. Chauncey Smith, Jun. 
 
 " I, the undersigned, distinctly remember that F. H. Krebs, 
 Jun., came into my room November 24 and complained of being 
 very nervous. I cannot remember exactly what he said, as I 
 was studying at the time, and did not pay much attention to his 
 talk. 
 
 " On the 25th he came into my room in the evening, and 
 made a statement that his state the evening before was the con- 
 sequence of an accident that happened to his father, and that 
 he had the night before told me that he had received a warning 
 of some accident to some one dear to him. This I did not 
 contradict, because I consider that it is extremely probable that 
 he said it, and that I did not, through inattention, notice it. 
 
 "Chauncey Smith, Jun. 55 
 
 The present case well illustrates the difficulties 
 attendant on any efforts to procure reliable con- 
 temporary evidence for psychical events. Even when, 
 as here, the percipient himself took the right course, 
 from the standpoint of psychical research, his fore- 
 thought was to a great extent frustrated by the short- 
 comings of his friend. 
 
 With this narrative may be compared three cases 
 given in Phantasms of the Living (vol. i. pp. 280 et 
 sea.) of the occurrence of exceptional distress to one 
 twin at the time of the death of the other. Mr. 
 Leveson Gower has sent us an account of a similar 
 marked fit of depression, accompanied by " a vivid 
 sense of the presence of death," which coincided with 
 the quite sudden and unlooked-for death of a near rela- 
 tion, the late Lady Marion Alford. {Journal S.P.R. y 
 May 1 888.) Professor Tamburini records an analogous 
 
176 APPARITIONS AND THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 
 
 case. A lunatic died in the asylum at Reggio on the 
 2 1st May 1892. A letter of inquiry, dated the 22nd 
 May, was received at the asylum from the husband, 
 who had not previously written for more than a year ; 
 and it was ascertained that he was prompted to write 
 the letter by a feeling of " great discomfort, as though 
 some misfortune were about to befall him," experi- 
 enced on the previous day, the day of the death. 
 
 No. 49. — From Dr N., of New York State. 
 
 The next case is specially interesting, because the 
 emotion which was felt in the first instance was suc- 
 ceeded by a visual impression of a detailed kind. 
 This case again comes to us from America (Proc. Am. 
 S.P.R., pp. 397-400). Dr. N. 5 the percipient, writes 
 to Professor Royce as follows: — 
 
 [Postmarked Aug. 16, 1886.] 
 "In the convalescence from a malarial fever during which 
 great hyperesthesia of brain had obtained, but no hallu- 
 cinations or false perceptions, I was sitting alone in my 
 room looking out of the window. My thoughts were of in- 
 different trivialities ; after a time my mind seemed to become 
 absolutely vacant ; my eyes felt fixed, the air seemed to 
 grow white. I could see objects about me, but it was a 
 terrible effort of will to perceive anything. I then felt great 
 and painful sense as of sympathy with some one suffering, who 
 or where I did not know. After a little time I knew with whom, 
 but how I knew I cannot tell ; for it seemed some time after 
 this knowledge of personality that I saw distinctly, in my brain, 
 not before my eyes, a large, square room, evidently in a hotel, 
 and saw the person of whom I had been conscious, lying face 
 downward on the bed in the throes of mental and physical 
 anguish. I felt rather than heard sobs and grieving, and felt 
 conscious of the nature of the grief subjectively; its objective 
 cause was not transmitted to me. Extreme exhaustion followed 
 the experience, which lasted forty minutes intensely, and then 
 very slowly wore away. Let me note : — 
 
 "1st. I had not thought of the person for some time and there 
 was no reminder in the room. 
 
 " 2nd. The experience was remembered with more vividness 
 than that seen in the normal way, while the contrary is true of 
 dreams. 
 
IDEAS AND EMOTIONS. 
 
 177 
 
 "3rd. The natural order of perception was reversed, i.e., the 
 emotion came first, the sense of a personality second, the vision 
 or perception of the person third. 
 
 " I should be glad to have a theory given of this reverse in the 
 natural order of perception." 
 
 The agent, M., is well known to both Professor 
 Royce and Dr. Hodgson. In the report it is stated 
 that " there can be no doubt of his high character and 
 general good judgment. 5 ' He writes as follows : — 
 
 "Boston, Nov. 16th, 1886. 
 
 " Some years ago, perhaps eight or nine, while in a city of 
 Rhode Island on business, my house being then, as now, in 
 Boston, I received news which was most unexpected and dis- 
 tressing to me, affecting me so seriously that I retired to my 
 room at the hotel, a large square room, and threw myself upon 
 my bed, face downward, remaining there a long time in great 
 mental distress. The acuteness of the feeling after a time 
 abating, I left the room. I returned next day to Boston, and 
 the day after that received a short letter from the person whose 
 statement I enclose herewith, and dated at the town in Western 
 New York, from which her enclosed letter comes. The note 
 begged me to tell her without delay what was the matter with 
 me 'on Friday, at 2 o'clock/ — the very day and hour when I 
 was affected as I have described. 
 
 "This lady was a somewhat familiar acquaintance and friend, 
 but I had not heard from her for many months previous to this 
 note, and I do not know that any thought of her had come into 
 my mind for a long time. I should still further add that the 
 news which had so distressed me had not the slightest con- 
 nection with her. 
 
 " I wrote at once, stating that she was right as to her im- 
 pression (she said in her letter that she was sure I was in very 
 great trouble at the time mentioned), and expressed my surprise 
 at the whole affair. 
 
 " Twice since that time she has written to me, giving me 
 some impression in regard to my condition or situation, both 
 referring to cases of illness or suffering of some kind, and both 
 times her impressions have proved correct enough to be con- 
 sidered remarkable, yet not so exact in detail or distinctness as 
 the first time. I feel confident that I have her original letter, 
 but have not been able to command the time necessary to find it. 
 
 " (Signed) M. 
 
 "P.S. — The three occurrences above detailed comprise all the 
 experiences of this sort which I have had in my life." 
 
 12 
 
178 APPARITIONS AND THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 
 
 Mr. M. has searched in vain for the original letter 
 of Dr. N. referring to the incident. Two letters, 
 however, referring to one of the later experiences 
 mentioned by him have been found, and copies of 
 them, made by Dr. Hodgson on June 6th, 1887, are 
 given below. 
 
 (1.) 
 
 Dr. N. to Mr. M. 
 
 " Doctor's Office, July 24th, 
 (Year not given). 
 " If I don't hear from you to-morrow, I shall write you a 
 letter ! I am anxious about you. 
 
 u N." 
 
 (2.) 
 
 Mr. M. to Dr. N. 
 
 " Boston,/^ 26, 1883. 
 
 " What clairvoyant vision again told you of me Monday and 
 Tuesday and Wednesday ? Was it as vivid and real as the 
 other time ? It had, at least, a very closely related cause. 
 
 " It is past 1 A.M., but I will not go to bed till I have sent you 
 a word. A letter will follow very soon. For two days I have 
 been thinking of the way you wrote to me that time, and I 
 should have written to you within twenty-four hours if I had not 
 received the note from you. Please write to me as you proposed. 
 This is only to tell you that I am alive and not ill, but tired, 
 tired ! Tell me of yourself. I have had a hard three months 
 in the West, eighteen to twenty hours a day, scarce a respite — 
 I am not ill ; I am sure I am not, but I am worked out. I 
 couldn't get to or write. 
 
 " I used the telegraph even with my sisters. 
 
 " I hope for a letter, and will surely send you one. 
 
 " Yours, 
 
 " M." 
 
 These letters, which apparently relate to the second 
 of the three experiences mentioned by M., afford 
 incidentally strong corroboration of the accuracy of 
 the statements made as to the first and most remark- 
 able experience. 
 
 Several instances have been already published 
 
IDEAS AND EMOTIONS. 
 
 179 
 
 {Phantasms of the Living, vol. ii. pp. 365-370) of 
 what appears to be telepathic affection, in which there 
 was no apparent link to connect the agent and per- 
 cipient. Thus intimation of the deaths of three dukes 
 — Cambridge, Portland, and Wellington — was con- 
 veyed to complete strangers. A similar impression 
 is recorded (Journal S. P. R. y Nov. 1892) as affecting 
 a stranger at the death of Lord Tennyson, and a 
 somewhat similar instance is recorded (Journal, May 
 1892) in connection with the death of General the 
 Hon. Sir Leicester Smyth. The Head-master of a 
 Grammar School in Leicester saw in a vision the irrup- 
 tion of water into the Thames Tunnel (Phantasms, loc. 
 cit\ In all these cases, if we accept the incidents as 
 telepathic, they recall, as Mr. Gurney remarks, "the 
 Greek notion of <t>r)M> the Rumour which spreads from 
 some unknown source, and far outstrips all known 
 means of transport." The evidence so far adduced, 
 however, is by no means sufficient to establish any 
 such conclusion. But the following narrative, which 
 comes from a lady well known to me, is worth con- 
 sidering in this connection. 
 
 No. 50. — From MlSS Y. 
 
 "Perth, igt/i January 1890. 
 
 " One Sunday evening I was writing to my sister, in my own 
 room, and a wild storm was raging round the house (in Perth). 
 Suddenly an eerie feeling came over me, I could not keep my 
 thoughts on my letter, ideas of death and disaster haunted me 
 so persistently. It was a vague but intense feeling; a sudden 
 ghastly realisation of human tragedy, with no 4 where/ ' how,' 
 or ' when ' about it. 
 
 " I remember flying upstairs to seek refuge with my mother, 
 and I remember her soothing voice saying, ' Nonsense, child,' 
 when I insisted that I was sure 1 lots of people were dying.' 
 
 " We both thought it was a little nervous attack, and thought 
 no more about it. But when we heard the news of the Tay 
 Bridge disaster next day, we both noticed (we received the 
 news separately from the maid when she came to wake us) that 
 the time of the accident coincided with my strange experience 
 of the evening before, 
 
1 80 APPARITIONS AND THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 
 
 "We spoke of the 'coincidence' together, but did not attach 
 much importance to it. 
 
 " I have never had any experience like it, before or since." 
 
 Mrs. Y., in a letter of the same date, corroborates 
 her daughter's statement. Mrs. Y.'s account, it should 
 be added, was written without previous consultation 
 with Miss Y., and embodies her independent recollec- 
 tion of the incident. 
 
 " On the night of the Tay Bridge disaster A. was sitting alone 
 in her room, when she suddenly came running upstairs to me, 
 saying that she had heard shrieks in the air ; that something 
 dreadful must have happened, for the air seemed full of shrieks. 
 She thought a great many people must be dying. Next morn- 
 ing the milk-boy told the servant that the Tay Bridge was 
 down." 
 
 In a later letter, Miss Y. adds : — 
 
 " My mother says she cannot remember my having any other 
 experience of the kind. It happened before 9 P.M., we think." 
 
 From the Times of December 29th, 1879 (Monday), it 
 appears that the accident took place on the previous evening 
 (28th). The Edinburgh train, due at Dundee at 7.15 p.m., crossed 
 the bridge during a violent gale. It was duly signalled from the 
 Fife side as having entered on the bridge for Dundee at 7.14. 
 It was seen running along the rails, and then suddenly there was 
 observed a flash of fire. The opinion was the train then left the 
 rails and went over the bridge. 
 
 Motor Impulses. 
 
 Occasionally the telepathic impression manifests 
 itself to consciousness as a monition or impulse to 
 perform a certain action. There is no ground for 
 thinking in such a case that the idea transferred from 
 the agent has in itself any special impulsive quality. 
 The impulse towards action is no doubt the result of 
 the percipient's unconscious reasoning on the infor- 
 mation supplied to him. 
 
 Sometimes the impulse to action, though strong, is 
 vague and inarticulate. Thus Mrs. Hadselle, of Pitts- 
 field, Mass., U.S.A., narrates (Journal S.P.R., May 
 
IDEAS AND EMOTIONS. 
 
 1 891) that some years ago she experienced, when 
 spending the evening with some friends, "a sudden 
 and unaccountable desire to go home, accompanied 
 by a dread and fear of something, I knew not what." 
 She eventually yielded to her impulse, and at some 
 inconvenience returned home, just in time to rescue 
 her son, who was insensible through the smoke from 
 a fire of wet sticks in his room. Professor Venturi 
 (Annales des Set. Psj/., vol. iii. pp. 331-333) relates 
 that in July 1885, in obedience to an irresistible 
 impulse, he made a sudden and quite unpremeditated 
 journey from Pozzuoli to his home at Nocera, to find 
 his child in serious danger from a sudden attack of 
 croup. A case is recorded in the Proc. Am. S.P.R. 
 (pp. 227, 228), in which a lady living in a Western 
 State awoke in the night of January 30th~3ist, 1886, 
 with a strong feeling that her daughter in Washington 
 was ill and needed her, and in the morning tele- 
 graphed to her son-in-law, offering to come at once. 
 There had been no previous cause of anxiety on the 
 mother's part, but as a matter of fact the daughter 
 had been taken suddenly and seriously ill on that 
 night. A letter and the telegram relating to the 
 event have been preserved. In another case Lady de 
 Vesci, in 1872, telegraphed on a sudden impulse from 
 Ireland to a friend in Hong Kong. The telegram 
 arrived less than twenty-four hours before the re- 
 cipient's death, an event which Lady de Vesci had 
 no reason to anticipate for some months {Journal 
 S.P.R., October 1891). 
 
 In another case, also recorded by Mrs. Hadselle 
 (Joe. eit.), the impulse took the form of a voice bidding 
 her go to a certain town, where, as it appeared, an 
 intimate friend stood in urgent need of her. The 
 effect produced in this case was so strong that the 
 percipient actually bought a fresh railway ticket and 
 changed her route. In the following case the impulse 
 found a more unusual mode of expression — viz., utter- 
 ance on the part of the percipient. 
 
1 32 APPARITIONS AND THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 
 
 No. 51.— From Archdeacon Bruce. 
 
 " St. Woolos' Vicarage, Newport, 
 
 Monmouthshire, July 6th, 1892. 
 
 " On April 19th, Easter Tuesday, I went to Ebbw Vale to 
 preach at the opening of a new iron church in Beaufort parish. 
 
 " I had arranged that Mrs. Bruce and my daughter should 
 drive in the afternoon. 
 
 " The morning service and public luncheon over, I walked up 
 to the Vicarage at Ebbw Vale to call on the Vicar. As I went 
 there I heard the bell of the new church at Beaufort ringing 
 for afternoon service at three. It had stopped some little time 
 before I reached the Vicarage (of Ebbw Vale). The Vicar was 
 out, and it struck me that I might get back to the Beaufort new 
 church in time to hear some of the sermon before my train left 
 (at 4.35). On my way back through Ebbw Vale, and not far 
 from the bottom of the hill on which the Ebbw Vale Vicarage 
 is placed, I saw over a provision shop one of those huge, staring 
 Bovril advertisements — the familiar large ox-head. I had seen 
 fifty of them before, but something fascinated me in connection 
 with this particular one. I turned to it, and was moved to 
 address it in these, my ipsissima verba : i You ugly brute, don't 
 stare at me like that : has some accident happened to the 
 wife ? 9 Just the faintest tinge of uneasiness passed through me 
 as I spoke, but it vanished at once. This must have been as 
 nearly as possible 3.20. I reached home at six to find the 
 vet. in my stable-yard tending my poor horse, and Mrs. Bruce 
 and my daughter in a condition of collapse in the house. The 
 accident had happened — so Mrs. Bruce thinks — precisely at 
 3.30, but she is not confident of the moment. My own times I 
 can fix precisely. 
 
 " I had no reason to fear any accident, as my coachman had 
 driven them with the same horse frequently, and save a little 
 freshness at starting, the horse was always quiet on the road, 
 even to sluggishness. A most unusual occurrence set it off. A 
 telegraph operator, at the top of a telegraph post, hauled up a 
 long flashing coil of wire under the horse's nose. Any horse in 
 the world, except the Troy horse, would have bolted under the 
 circumstances. 
 
 " My wife's estimate of the precise time can only be taken as 
 approximate. She saw the time when she got home, and took 
 that as her zero, but the confusion and excitement of the walk 
 home from the scene of the accident leaves room for doubt as 
 to her power of settling the time accurately. The accident 
 happened about 2% miles from home, and she was home by 
 4.10 ; but she was some time on the ground waiting until the 
 horse was disengaged, etc. "W. Conybeare Bruce." 
 
IDEAS AND EMOTIONS. 
 
 183 
 
 Archdeacon Bruce adds later : — 
 
 "May 20th, 1893. 
 " I think I stated the fact that the impression of danger to 
 Mrs. Bruce was only momentary — it passed at once — and it was 
 only when I heard of the accident that I recalled the impression. 
 I did not therefore go home expecting to find that anything had 
 happened. "W. Conybeare Bruce." 
 
 Mrs. Bruce writes : — 
 
 "The first thought that flashed across me as the accident 
 happened was, 4 What will W. say? 5 My ruling idea then was 
 to get home before my husband, so as to save him alarm." 
 
 The Rev. A. T. Fryer, to whom the incident was 
 originally communicated by the percipient, ascertained 
 independently from the Vicar of Ebbw Vale that the 
 date of Archdeacon Bruce's visit to him was April 19th, 
 1892. It is worth noting that here, as in case 45, an 
 external object appears to have acted as a point de 
 repere, and to have thus aided in the development of the 
 transferred idea. Another instance of a telepathic im- 
 pulse leading to speech is to be found in the Annales 
 des Sciences Psychiques (vol. i. p. 36). The Lady 
 Superior of a convent was moved during the cele- 
 bration of a service to pray for the safety of the 
 children of a neighbour — a visitor to the convent — 
 who was somewhat startled by the Superior's abrupt 
 action. It subsequently appeared that at about the 
 time of this prayer the two boys were involved in 3 
 carriage accident. 
 
 The most striking evidence, however, of telepatli- 
 ically induced action is to be found in automatic 
 writing. Some experimental cases of the kind have 
 been quoted in Chapter IV. The spontaneous cases 
 are more numerous. Mr. Myers has recorded several 
 instances in his article on Motor Automatism (Prdc. 
 S.P.R., vol. ix. pp. 26 et seq.\ and Mr. W. T. Stead 
 has published, in the Review of Reviews and else- 
 where, accounts of messages and conversations with 
 friends at a distance written through his hand. 
 
1 84 APPARITIONS AND THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 
 
 Generally speaking, however, where living persons 
 are concerned, it is difficult, without full knowledge 
 of all the circumstances, to feel assured that the facts 
 recorded by this means are not such as might 
 conceivably have been within the knowledge of the 
 writer, or at least within his powers of conjecture. 
 The best evidence, therefore, for spontaneous tele- 
 pathic automatism is no doubt afforded by those 
 cases in which some altogether unforeseen event, 
 such as the death of the presumed agent, is communi- 
 cated. Such is the case recorded by M. Aksakof 
 (Psychische Studien, February 1889, quoted in Proc. 
 S.P.R., vol. v. pp. 434, etc.), in which Mademoiselle 
 Emma Stramm, a Swiss governess at Wilna, on the 
 1 5th January 1887 wrote particulars of the death on the 
 same day of a former acquaintance of hers, August 
 Duvanel, in Canton Zurich. A similar instance is 
 recorded by Dr. Li6beault {Annales des Sciences 
 PsychiqueS) vol. i. pp. 25, 26). The automatic writer 
 was in this case at Nancy, and the person whose 
 death was announced was a young English lady resi- 
 dent at Coblentz. Dr. Liebeault was shown the written 
 message within an hour or two of the stance, and 
 some days before news of the death was received. 
 Other cases of the kind are recorded by M. Aksakof 
 and others {Revue Spirit e> August 1891, April 1892, 
 etc.). 
 
185 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 COINCIDENT DREAMS. 
 
 Seeing that so large a part of our lives is spent in 
 sleep, we should perhaps be warranted in looking 
 amongst dreams for evidence of the transference of 
 thought from one mind to another ; especially as the 
 quiescence and the absence of outward impressions 
 characteristic of sleep are precisely the conditions 
 indicated by our researches as favourable to such 
 transmission. Nor do the actual results in this 
 direction at all fall short of any reasonable ex- 
 pectation. Long before scientific attention was 
 directed to the subject the coincidences reported 
 between dreams and external events had won the 
 special consideration of the superstitious, and had 
 given to the dreamer of dreams high rank in the 
 company of the prophets and soothsayers. And 
 such coincidences appear to be not less frequent at 
 the present time. My chief difficulty in writing this 
 chapter has been the task of selection from the super- 
 abundant material at hand, much of it accumulated 
 within the last five or six years ; and this material 
 is itself the carefully-sifted residuum of a much larger 
 mass of testimony, inferior, if at all, by slight and 
 various degrees. But notwithstanding this great ac- 
 cumulation, it cannot be contended that the proof of 
 telepathy derived from a consideration of dream coin- 
 cidences is at all comparable in cogency with that 
 furnished by impressions received during waking life. 
 
1 86 APPARITIONS AND THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 
 
 That some at least of the dreams quoted below owed 
 their origin to ideas transmitted to the sleeper from 
 another mind will no doubt be admitted as probable, 
 but the probability depends perhaps not more on their 
 intrinsic value than on the analogy of similar testimony 
 from waking percipients. When (as in some of the 
 cases to be given later, in Chapters X.-XIII.) a witness 
 of integrity asserts that he saw in broad daylight a 
 figure where no such figure was, resembling a friend, 
 and coincident with that friend's death, we are justi- 
 fied in attaching great weight to the coincidence. 
 But if the same witness had dreamt of the figure, 
 instead of seeing it, the coincidence would deserve 
 far less consideration. And yet the cerebral mechan- 
 ism involved in both processes is no doubt very 
 similar. A dream is a hallucination in sleep, and 
 a hallucination is only a waking dream ; though it 
 is probable that the waking impression, seeing that 
 it can contend on equal terms with the impressions 
 derived from external objects, is more vivid than the 
 common run of dreams. But the evidence of dream 
 coincidence is defective, primarily, from the frequency 
 of dreams ; it is only a small proportion of educated 
 persons, at any rate, who ever experience a hallucina- 
 tion, but everybody dreams occasionally, and some 
 persons dream every night. Clearly there must be 
 here a wide scope for coincidence. Secondly, whilst 
 dream impressions are probably less vivid at the 
 time, they are certainly more elusive in the memory. 
 There is a serious risk, therefore, that after the event 
 is known detailed correspondences may be read back 
 into the indistinct picture preserved in the memory; 
 or that a dream which at the time made but a slight 
 impression may be charged retrospectively with emo- 
 tional significance. Finally, as the dream does not 
 enter into any organic series of impressions, and has 
 no landmarks of its own, either in space or time, it 
 becomes after the lapse of a few days, or even hours, 
 a matter of difficulty to determine its date. Against 
 
COINCIDENT DREAMS. 
 
 i8 7 
 
 the last two sources of error it is indeed possible 
 to guard. Under ordinary circumstances no dream 
 should be regarded as having evidential value which 
 has not been either recorded in writing or mentioned 
 to some other person before the coincidence is known. 
 Mention of the dream immediately after the receipt 
 of the news, even with persons of proved accuracy, can 
 by no means be regarded as equivalent to mention 
 of it beforehand. For it is possible, as already 
 pointed out (p. 155), that some alleged coincident 
 and prophetic dreams may be due to hallucination 
 of memory, or still more probably to the embel- 
 lishment and amplification of vague pre-existent 
 memories. 
 
 But however carefully dreams are noted and 
 described, the objection still holds good that with 
 impressions of such frequent occurrence chance alone 
 will account for a considerable number of coinci- 
 dences. It is easy, however, on a superficial view 
 to exaggerate the probabilities of chance coincidence. 
 The great majority of dreams, vague at the time and 
 fugitive in the retrospect, are like footsteps in the 
 sand. Yet as, here and there, one set of footprints out 
 of the millions impressed upon the shore of a long- 
 forgotten sea has been preserved for us in sand now 
 turned to stone, so now and then one dream stands 
 out from all the rest, and leaves on the memory an 
 imprint which the daily reflux of the tide of con- 
 sciousness cannot efface. If we strike out of the 
 account all the dreams which are too vague to leave 
 any permanent impress on waking, all those which 
 are purely inconsequent and fantastic, and all which 
 can be readily traced to some physical cause, we shall 
 find that the number which we have to deal with, — 
 the number, that is, of vivid and passably realistic 
 dreams, — though no doubt large, is perhaps not 
 beyond the range of definite calculation. It could 
 not, for instance, be plausibly contended that the 
 correspondence of a dream such as that of Captain 
 
1 88 APPARITIONS AND THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 
 
 Campbell's, recorded below, with the death of the 
 person portrayed, is on the same level as the pro- 
 phetic vision of the City clerk, who, dreaming every 
 other night of the success of some horse which he has 
 backed, happens on some one occasion to dream of 
 the future winner. 
 
 It will be observed that of the nine dreams which 
 are given in full in this chapter, no less than four are 
 concerned with death. Of the much larger number — 
 149 — of coincident dreams published in Phantasms of 
 the Living, no less than 79 relate to a death. Now, as 
 dreams of death or suggesting death do not form a 
 large proportion of dreams in general, their startling 
 preponderance amongst coincident dreams constitutes 
 in itself an argument for ascribing such dreams to tele- 
 pathy; for if any power exists whereby one mind can 
 affect another, it would appear a priori probable that 
 such a power would be exercised most frequently and 
 effectually at times of exceptional crisis. As has 
 been pointed out by Mr. Gurney (Phantasms of the 
 Living, vol. i. p. 303), the preponderance amongst 
 "true" dreams of dreams relating to death may in- 
 deed be explained on the assumption that such 
 dreams are more frequently remembered than other 
 "true" dreams. This assumption is no doubt in a 
 measure justified, but the consequences of admitting 
 its truth must not be overlooked ; for it of course 
 follows that a large number of coincident dreams 
 are forgotten, i.e., that the grounds furnished by 
 dreams for believing in telepathy are much stronger 
 than would at first sight appear. 
 
 Again, the frequency of coincident dreams of 
 death offers a favourable opportunity for estimating 
 the probabilities of their occurrence by chance. Tho 
 problem is simplified in one direction by the con- 
 sideration that death is at all events a unique event 
 in the history of the agent. If we can ascertain the 
 proportion which " true " bear to " not-true " dreams 
 of death, we can calculate by means of the tables of 
 
COINCIDENT DREAMS. 
 
 mortality the probabilities for some other cause than 
 chance. The problem was actually attempted by Mr. 
 Gurney, who found that coincident dreams of death 
 in the collection published in Phantasms of the Living 
 were twenty-four times as numerous as chance would 
 allow. 1 
 
 Theoretically, dreams are of considerable interest 
 as throwing light upon the nature of waking impres- 
 sions ; for it should be observed that dreams are of 
 many kinds and of many degrees of vividness. Some 
 in the vagueness and ideality of the impressions re- 
 semble closely the waking experiences recorded in 
 the preceding chapter. Others in their extreme clear- 
 ness and semi-externalisation approach nearly to the 
 level of hallucinations. But whilst few persons above 
 the level of the savage believe that their dream per- 
 cepts correspond to actual external objects visibly 
 present, there are some who think that the hallucina- 
 tory image of a dying friend which they see with their 
 eyes open, and taking a place in the external order of 
 things, must, just because they see it with open eyes, 
 form a part of that external order. And if the per- 
 cipient himself is not under any such misconception, 
 the journalist who sneers at him for believing in 
 
 1 Phantasms, vol. i. pp. 303-310. The statement in the text must 
 not be regarded as having more weight than its author himself would 
 have assigned to it. Mr. Gurney certainly regarded his estimate as 
 little more than a guess— a guess indeed made by one who had care- 
 fully studied and weighed the facts, so far as they could be known, 
 but because of our inevitable ignorance a guess still, rather than an 
 estimate on the approximate accuracy of which it would be safe to rely. 
 The calculation depends on several assumptions, one or two of which, 
 at least, are highly controvertible; for instance, the accuracy of the 
 5187 persons who asserted that they had not within a given period of 
 twelve years had an exceptionally vivid and distressing dream relating 
 to the death of a friend; and the accuracy of the twenty-four persons 
 who described themselves as having had within the same period a 
 similar dream actually occurring within twelve hours of the death of 
 the person represented. Probably the estimate given requires modifi- 
 cation by large allowances being made in both directions for defects of 
 memory. But even when thus discounted the coincidences will, it is 
 thought, by any one who carefully studies the subject be found to be 
 more numerous than can plausibly be attributed to chance. 
 
190 APPARITIONS AND THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 
 
 "ghosts" is so, by his own confession. If once it 
 is recognised that between dreams and hallucinations 
 there is no essential difference, the chief obstacle to 
 the acceptance, by two different classes of minds, of 
 telepathy as the explanation of coincident hallucina- 
 tions will have disappeared. It will become clear, on 
 the one hand, that a belief in the significance of such 
 hallucinations does not necessarily carry with it a 
 belief in " ghosts " ; and on the other, that the fact 
 of an apparition taking its place as a fully external- 
 ised percept does not imply any substantial basis for 
 the percept. 
 
 In dealing with dreams we will discuss first those 
 which resemble most closely the experimental results 
 and the cases considered in the last chapter, and 
 proceed from these to dreams which include a definite 
 representation of the agent. Finally, cases of some- 
 what aberrant type and clairvoyant dreams will be 
 considered. 
 
 Simultaneous Dreams. 
 
 No. 52.— From Miss Ina Bidder. 
 
 "Ravensbury Park, Mitcham, 
 June loth, 1890. 
 " The night before last a curious case of what I cannot but 
 call telepathy occurred between myself and my sister. (We 
 sleep in the same room.) For the last two years the whole 
 family have been very much interested in some skeletons and 
 flint instruments found in a gravel pit in one of the fields. They 
 have never been properly excavated, and about ten days ago my 
 sister and I had been amusing ourselves pulling out, bone by 
 bone, one of these 6 palaeolithic men, 5 as we pleased to call 
 them. He was a particularly interesting one, as we found a 
 flint arrow-head in his hip-bone, but we only got to his ribs. 
 On the night in question I dreamt that my father was excavating 
 in a more approved method, taking off the top mould and leav- 
 ing the bones in their original position in the brown earth, so 
 that you could see the form of the man to whom they had 
 belonged. In this way we lifted out the rest of the skeleton at 
 which my sister and I had been working, and behold ! when we 
 got to the skull it had a snout. We were delighted to be able to 
 prove this extraordinary fact respecting palaeolithic man, and the 
 
COINCIDENT DREAMS. 
 
 191 
 
 doctors crowded down from town to see the creature ; but my 
 sister was nowhere about, and in my anxiety to tell her of our 
 discovery I woke myself and nearly woke her. I stopped myself 
 just in time, thinking what a shame it was to spoil her night's 
 rest for a dream. Still wishing she were awake to hear, and 
 thinking again of the curious effect of the black, earth-filled 
 skull, with its projecting snout, and dreaming of my dream, I 
 turned over and dropped into another. Before I had got well 
 started in this, however, I was awakened by my sister trying to 
 light the candle. ' What is it ? ' I said, * what's the matter ? ' 
 ' I've just had such a horrid dream,' she answered ; ' it haunts 
 me still.' But I do not think I need repeat her dream, which I 
 believe she has written." 
 
 Miss M. Bidder writes as follows : — 
 
 "June 9th, 1890. 
 " I was sleeping last night with my sister, with whom I have 
 shared a room all my life. I was sleeping soundly, and my 
 dreams, of which I now retain only the vaguest recollection, 
 took their most usual form of a confused repetition of all the 
 events of the past day jumbled together without meaning or 
 sequence, and without even much distinctness. The whole 
 scene of the dream was hazy and confused, until I became 
 suddenly conscious of the figure of a skeleton in the foreground, 
 as it were, which disturbed me in my dream with a sense of 
 incongruity. I first made a half-conscious effort to banish the 
 figure — which struck me with great horror — from my dream, 
 but instead of disappearing it grew more and more prominent 
 and distinct, while all the rest of the scene and the people in it 
 seemed fading away. The figure of the skeleton, which I can 
 perfectly recall, presented one of the most vivid impressions I 
 ever remember to have received in a dream. It appeared to 
 stand upright before me, with what seemed to be a dark cloak 
 hanging about its limbs and forming a kind of background as of 
 a black hood behind the skull, which showed against it with 
 extreme distinctness. It was on the skull, which was facing me 
 full, that my attention was chiefly concentrated, and as I stared 
 at it it slowly turned sideways, showing, to my horror, the profile 
 of a very long, sharp nose in place of the hollow socket. The feel- 
 ing of terror with which I perceived this (for the first time) was 
 so intense as to awaken me, nor could I even then entirely banish 
 it. So unpleasantly strong, indeed, was the impression of some 
 horrible presence which still remained, that it was with difficulty 
 that I resisted the desire to rouse my sister that she might help 
 me to shake it off. Some movement of mine did in fact pre- 
 sently awake her, and I at once began to tell her of my horrible 
 dream. Before, however, I had described it to her, she inter- 
 rupted me to tell me of a dream which she had had." 
 
192 APPARITIONS AND THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 
 
 Here it is perhaps permissible to conjecture that 
 some common experience of their waking life might 
 have suggested to both sisters the idea of a primeval 
 skeleton with a snout. But it is remarkable, if such 
 is the true explanation, that the common idea was 
 elaborated into a dream by the two percipients almost 
 simultaneously. It must be admitted, however, that 
 such dreams, which have hitherto been reported only 
 as occurring between persons whose lives are spent 
 for the most part in the same surroundings, have 
 little value as evidence. It is only those who believe, 
 on evidence derived from other sources, in the reality 
 of telepathy, who will be inclined to regard such cases 
 as possibly due to its action, rather than to the spon- 
 taneous association of ideas in minds sharing the 
 same experiences and moving to some extent in 
 similar grooves. 
 
 Dreams coinciding with external events. 
 
 In the cases which follow the coincidence is of a 
 more definite kind, and the question is now no longer 
 of the correspondence of thought in closely associated 
 minds, but of the correspondence of thought with an 
 outward event — with something done or suffered by 
 the person whose mind apparently affects that of the 
 dreamer. 
 
 Transference of Sensation in Dreams. 
 
 The following case, quoted from the Proc. of the 
 Am. S.P.R. (pp. 226, 227), offers a curious parallel to 
 some of the cases recorded at the beginning of Chapter 
 II. The narrator is a lady of Boston, whose good 
 faith is vouched for by Professor Royce. She wrote 
 from Hamburg on the 23rd of June 1887 to her 
 sister, who was at that time in Boston, U.S.A. The 
 following is an extract from this letter : — 
 
COINCIDENT DREAMS. 
 
 193 
 
 No. 53. 
 
 " I very nearly wrote from the Hague to say that I should be 
 very thankful when we had a letter from you of the 18th of 
 June saying that you were well and happy. ... In the night of 
 the 17th I had what I suppose to be a nightmare, but it all 
 seemed to belong to you . . . and to be a horrid pain in your 
 head, as if it were being forcibly jammed into an iron casque, or 
 some such pleasant instrument of torture. The queer part of 
 it was my own dissociation from the pain, and conviction that 
 it was yours. I suppose it was some slight painful sensation 
 magnified into something quite severe by a half-asleep con- 
 dition. It will be a fine example of w&at the Society for 
 Psychical Research ought to be well supplied with — an Ahnung 
 which came to nothing." 
 
 As a matter of fact the lady in Boston to whom 
 this letter was addressed is shown, on the evidence of 
 a dentist's bill, to have spent on the 17th June an 
 hour and three-quarters in the operating chair, while 
 a painful tooth was being stopped. The discomfort 
 consequent on the operation, as was learnt from the 
 patient herself, " continued as a dull pain for some 
 hours, in such wise that during the afternoon of the 
 17th June the patient could not forget the difficulty 
 at all. She slept, however, as usual at night. The 
 nightmare in Europe followed the operation in Boston 
 by a good many hours, but the pain of the tooth 
 returned daily for some three weeks." As the letter 
 was written from Europe six days after the night- 
 mare there was of course no possibility of any 
 communication having passed in the interval except 
 by telegram. 
 
 In the next case also the coincidence was of a 
 trivial nature, but appears to have been exact in point 
 of time. The narrative is quoted here because the 
 impression, though not described beforehand, was of 
 a quite unusual kind, being in part, if not altogether, 
 a waking experience. It is doubtful, indeed, whether 
 it should be classed as a dream, and not rather as a 
 " borderland " hallucination. 
 
 13 
 
194 APPARITIONS AND THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 
 
 No. 54. — From Mrs. Harrison. 
 
 "February 7th, 1891. 
 
 " I reside with my husband at 15 Lupton Street, N.W. This 
 afternoon I was lying on the sofa, sound asleep, when I suddenly 
 awoke, thinking I heard my husband sigh as if in pain. I 
 arose immediately, expecting to find him in the room. He was 
 not there, and looking at my watch I found it was half-past 
 three. At six o'clock my husband came in. He called my 
 attention to a bruise on his forehead, which was caused by his 
 having knocked it against the stone steps in a Turkish bath. I 
 said to him, 6 1 know when it happened — it was at half-past three, 
 for I heard you sigh as if in pain at that time.' He replied, 
 6 Yes, that was the exact time, for I remember noticing the clock 
 directly after.' 
 
 " The gentleman who appends his name as witness was 
 present when this conversation took place. 
 
 " Louisa E. Harrison. 
 "Witness : Henry Hooton, 23 Bunhill Row, E.G." 
 
 This account was sent to the S.P.R. by Mr. 
 Harrison on the day of the occurrence described. In 
 an accompanying letter he writes : " Everything 
 happened exactly as stated." 
 
 In the cases which follow, with one exception, the 
 dream impression was of a well-marked visual nature. 
 In the first three narratives the dream had reference 
 to the death of the person represented. The mode 
 of representation, however, it will be seen, differed in 
 each case. In the first, the associated imagery was in 
 part of a fantastic nature, and the dream, though 
 sufficiently exceptional to leave a feeling of fatigue on 
 the following morning, and to induce the percipient 
 to write an account of it to his friends, resembled in 
 other respects the motley crowd which throng through 
 the gate of ivory. In the second case the surround- 
 ings of the central figure were such as the waking 
 imagination of the dreamer would naturally have con- 
 jured up in picturing the deathbed of his friend. 
 
COINCIDENT DREAMS. 
 
 195 
 
 No. 55.— From Mr. J. T. 
 
 This case is recorded at some length in the Proceedings of 
 the Am. S.P.R. (pp. 394-397) by Professor Royce. Professor 
 Royce explains that Mr. E., the agent, died after a short illness 
 in New York City, on Tuesday, February 23rd, 1886. Mr. 
 J. T., who, though an acquaintance of Mr. E., had heard nothing 
 of him for some time, and, as indeed appears from the letters 
 quoted, knew of no special cause for anxiety, was on the day of 
 the death, and for some time afterwards, in St. John, New 
 Brunswick. In consequence of severe snowstorms, no mails had 
 been received in St. John from the South for some days, and at 
 the time when the letter, an extract from which we give below, 
 was written, it was not possible for the writer to have known of 
 Mr. E.'s death. The original letter, written by Mr. J. T. to his 
 wife, and dated Wednesday, March 3rd, 1886, on paper headed 
 Hotel DufTerin, St. John, N.B., has been seen by Professor 
 Royce : — 
 
 " I have not heard of you for an age. The train that should 
 have been here on Friday last has not arrived yet. I had 
 a very strange dream on Tuesday night. I have never been in 
 Ottawa in my life, and yet I was there, in Mr. E.'s house. Mrs. 
 E., Miss E., and the little girls were in great trouble because 
 Mr. E. was ill. I had to go and tell my brother [Mr. E.'s son- 
 in-law], and, strange to say, he was down a coal-mine. 
 
 "When I got down to him I told him that Mr. E. was 
 dead. But in trying to get out we could not do it. We climbed 
 and climbed, but always fell back. I felt tired out when I awoke 
 next morning, and I cannot account for the dream in any way." 
 
 Though the letter leaves it doubtful whether the 
 dream actually occurred on the night of the death, 
 or a week later, it appears from further correspond- 
 ence that the percipient believes the dream to have 
 taken place on the night of the 23rd February, the 
 night of the death, and this is the most natural inter- 
 pretation of the letter. 1 In any case, the dream pre- 
 ceded the news of the death. 
 
 In the next case, again, the dream is of a not 
 uncommon type, but the impression made, it will be 
 seen, was such as to wake the dreamer at the time, 
 
 1 A man writing on Wednesday would almost certainly say 'Mast 
 night " if he meant to indicate the preceding night, whereas, having 
 just before written of " Friday last," it was natural to describe the 
 Tuesday in the previous week as simply " Tuesday." 
 
196 APPARITIONS AND THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 
 
 and to induce him in the morning to take the unusual 
 course of noting the dream in his diary. 
 
 No. 56.— From Mr. R. V. Boyle. 
 
 " 3 Stanhope Terrace, W., 
 July yoth, 1884. 
 "In India, early on the morning of November 2nd, 1868 
 (which would be about 10 to 11 P.M. of November 1st in 
 England), I had so clear and striking a dream or vision 
 (repeated a second time after a short waking interval) 
 that, on rising as usual between 6 and 7 o'clock, I felt im- 
 pelled at once to write an entry in my diary, which is now 
 before me. 
 
 "At the time referred to my wife and I were in Simla, in the 
 Himalayas, the summer seat of the Governor-General, and my 
 father-in-law and mother-in-law were living in Brighton. We 
 had not heard of or from either of them for weeks, nor had I 
 been recently speaking or thinking of them, for there was no 
 reason for anxiety regarding them. It is right, however, to say 
 that my wife's father had gone to Brighton some months before 
 on account of his health, though he was not more delicate than 
 his elder brother, who is (1884) still living. 
 
 " It seemed in my dream that I stood at the open door of a 
 bedroom in a house in Brighton, and that before me, by candle- 
 light, I saw my father-in-law lying pale upon his bed, while my 
 mother-in-law passed silently across the room in attendance on 
 him. The vision soon passed away, and I slept on for some 
 time. On waking, however, the nature of the impression left 
 upon me unmistakably was that my father-in-law was dead. I 
 at once noted down the dream, after which I broke the news of 
 what I felt to be a revelation to my wife, when we thought over 
 again and again all that could bear upon the matter, without 
 being able to assign any reason for my being so strongly and 
 thoroughly impressed. The telegraph from England to Simla 
 had been open for some time, but now there was an interruption, 
 which lasted for about a fortnight longer, and on the 17th (fifteen 
 days after my dream) I was neither unprepared nor surprised to 
 receive a telegram from England, saying that my father-in-law 
 had died in Brighton on November 1st. Subsequent letters 
 showed that the death occurred on the night of the 1st. 
 
 " Dreams, as a rule, leave little impression on me, and the one 
 above referred to is the only one I ever thought of making a 
 note of, or of looking expectantly for its fulfilment. 
 
 "R. Vicary Boyle." 
 
COINCIDENT DREAMS. 
 
 197 
 
 Mrs. Boyle writes as follows: — 
 
 "6th August 1887. 
 " I well remember my husband telling me one morning, early 
 in November 1868, when at Simla, in India, that he had had a 
 striking dream (repeated) in which my father, then at Brighton, 
 seemed to be dying. We were both deeply impressed, and then 
 anxiously awaited news from home. A telegram first reached 
 us, in about a fortnight, which was afterwards confirmed by 
 letters telling of my father's death having occurred on the same 
 night when my husband had the dream. 
 
 "El£onore A. Boyle. 
 
 Mr. Gurney adds the following notes on the 
 case : — 
 
 " The following entries were copied by me from Mr. Boyle's 
 diary : — 
 
 " 4 Nov. 2. Dreamed of E.'s F[ather] early this morning. 
 " ' Written before dressing. 
 
 " ' Nov. 17. Got telegram from L[ouis] H[ack] this morning of 
 his father's death on 1st Nov. inst.' 
 
 "The following notice of the decease of Mr. Boyle's father- 
 in-law occurred in the Times for 4th November 1868: — 
 
 "'On 1st Nov., at Brighton, William Hack, late of Dieppe, 
 aged 72.' 
 
 "Mr. Boyle informed me that he is a ' particularly sound 
 sleeper, and very rarely dreams.' This dream was a very 
 unique and impressive experience, apart from the coincidence. 
 
 "There was a regular correspondence between Mrs. Boyle 
 and her mother, but for several mails the letters had contained 
 no mention of her father, on whose account absolutely no 
 anxiety was felt. " E. G." 
 
 It appears that the death actually occurred at about 
 2 P.M. in England, which was, allowing for the differ- 
 ence in longitude, about nine hours before the dream. 
 
 In the next case the dream is of a more unusual 
 character. The figure of the agent appears to have 
 stood alone, whilst the impression made was such 
 that the percipient is uncertain whether to class his 
 experience as a dream or a vision. Indeed, in the 
 absence of dream-background, and in the lifelike 
 appearance of the figure, the dream bears a striking 
 resemblance to a waking hallucination. 
 
I98 APPARITIONS AND THOUGHT -TRANSFERENCE. 
 
 No. 57. — From Captain R. E. W. Campbell 
 (2nd Royal Irish Fusiliers). 
 
 "Army and Navy Club, Pall Mall, S.W., 
 February 21s/, 1888. 
 " I have much pleasure in enclosing you an account of a 
 remarkable dream which occurred to me in the year 1886, 
 together with three other accounts of the same, written by 
 officers to whom the facts of the case are known. You are at 
 liberty, in the interests of science, to make such use of them as 
 you please. 
 
 " I was stationed at the Depot Barracks, Armagh, Ireland, 
 on the 30th November 1886, and on the night of the same date, 
 or early in the morning of the 1st December (I cannot tell 
 which, as I did not refer to my watch), I was in bed in my 
 room, when I was awakened by a most vivid and remarkable 
 dream or vision, in which I seemed to see a certain Major 
 Hubbersty, late of my regiment, the 2nd Battalion Royal Irish 
 Fusiliers, looking ghastly pale, and falling forward as if dying. 
 He seemed to be saying something to me, but the words I 
 could not make out, although I tried hard to understand him. 
 The clothes he had on at the time appeared to me to have a 
 thin red thread running through the pattern. I was very deeply 
 impressed by my dream, and so much did I feel that there was 
 something significant in it that on the 1st December, when at 
 luncheon in the mess, I related it to three brother-officers, tell- 
 ing them at the same time that I felt sure we should soon hear 
 something bad about Major Hubbersty. I had almost forgotten 
 all about it when, on taking up the Times newspaper of the 
 following Saturday on the Sunday morning following, the first 
 thing that caught my eyes was the announcement of Major 
 Hubbersty's death at Penzance, in Cornwall, on the 30th 
 November, the very date on which I had the remarkable dream 
 concerning him. 
 
 " My feelings on seeing such a remarkable fulfilment of my 
 dream can be better imagined than described. Suffice it to say 
 that on the return from church of Messrs. Kaye and Scott I 
 asked them to try and recollect anything peculiar which had 
 happened at luncheon on the 1st December, when, after a few 
 moments' deliberation, they at once recounted to me the whole 
 circumstances of my dream, as they had heard them from my 
 lips on the 1st December 1886. On seeing Mr. Leeper a few 
 days afterwards at his father's house, Loughgall, Co. Armagh, 
 he at once remembered all I had told him about the dream 
 on the 1st December, on my questioning him about it. I, of 
 course, can assign no possible cause for the remarkable facts 
 related, as apart from the difference of our standing in the 
 
COINCIDENT DREAMS. 
 
 service, the late Major Hubbersty and I were in no wise 
 particularly friendly to one other, nor had we seen very much 
 of each other. I had not seen him for eighteen months pre- 
 viously. A very curious fact in connection with the dream is 
 that it occurred to me in the very same room in the barracks as 
 Major Hubbersty used to occupy when stationed at Armagh, 
 several years previously." 
 
 In answer to an inquiry, Captain Campbell writes, 
 on February 29th, 1888 : — 
 
 " I do not dream much, as a rule, and cannot recall to my 
 mind ever before having had a dream of a similar nature to that 
 dreamt by me about the late Major Hubbersty." 
 
 Mr. A. R R. Kaye, Lieutenant Third Royal Irish 
 Fusiliers, writes on August 20th, 1887, from 62 Fitz- 
 william Square, Dublin : — 
 
 " I was stationed in the barracks, Armagh Depot, Royal Irish 
 Fusiliers, in November and December 1886. On the 1st of 
 December at lunch there were present Lieutenant R. E. W. 
 Campbell (2nd R.I.F.), Lieutenant R. W. Leeper (2nd R.I.F.), 
 Lieutenant T. E. Scott (4th R.I.F.), and myself. During our 
 conversation Major Hubbersty's name was mentioned, and 
 Campbell told us that he had a dream about him the night 
 before, how he had seen a vision of Major Hubbersty looking 
 very pale and seeming to be falling forward, and saying some- 
 thing to him which he could not hear ; also, he (Campbell) told 
 us he was sure we would hear something about Major Hubbersty 
 very soon. 
 
 " On the following Sunday, when Scott and I returned from 
 church and went into the ante-room, Campbell, who was there, 
 asked us both to try and remember anything peculiar that he 
 had told us on the 1st. After a little time, we remembered 
 about the dream, and he (Campbell) then showed us the Times 
 newspaper of the day before, containing the notice of Major 
 Hubbersty's death, at Penzance, on November 30th, 1886, the 
 same date as that on which he had the dream ; also, I re- 
 member, he (Campbell) told us that in his vision he seemed to 
 see the clothes which Major Hubbersty had on, and that there 
 was a red thread running through the pattern of the trousers." 
 
 The two other friends mentioned by Captain 
 Campbell, Messrs. Leeper and Scott, have written 
 letters to the same effect. 1 
 
 1 These letters are omitted for want of space. They are given in full 
 in the Journal of the S.P.R. for April 1888, pp. 255, 256. 
 
200 APPARITIONS AND THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 
 
 From these letters there can be no doubt that the 
 
 coincidence made a marked impression on each of 
 those to whom the dream was related, and this fact, 
 perhaps even more than Captain Campbell's own 
 narrative, is a striking proof of the exceptional nature 
 of the experience. 
 
 There is no reason in this case for supposing that 
 the dream conveyed any other information than the 
 fact of the agent's death. There is no evidence that 
 the manner of death or the clothes w r orn by Major 
 Hubbersty resembled what was seen in the dream. 
 The clothes in which the figure appeared may have 
 been a reminiscence of clothes which the percipient 
 had actually seen worn on some occasion by the 
 agent. But this explanation will hardly apply to the 
 following case, where the dream included a represent- 
 ation, accurate in more than one particular, of the 
 agent as he actually appeared at the time. It is true 
 that we have to rely upon the percipient's memory 
 after the interval of a fortnight for the details of the 
 dream, but since the dream was sufficiently impressive 
 to cause a note to be taken of it by a person not in 
 the habit of making such notes, it seems not unreason- 
 able to trust the memory to that extent. 
 
 No, s 8.— From Mr. E. W. Hamilton, C.B. 
 
 "Park Lane Chambers, Park Lane, W., 
 April 6th, 1888. 
 
 "On Wednesday morning, March 2ist, 1888, I woke up with 
 the impression of a very vivid dream. I had dreamt that my 
 brother, who had long been in Australia, and of whom I had heard 
 nothing for several months, had come home ; that after an absence 
 of twelve years and a half he was very little altered in appearance, 
 but that he had something wrong with one of his arms ; it looked 
 horribly red near the wrist, his hand being bent back. 
 
 u When I got up that morning the dream recurred constantly 
 to my thoughts, and I at last determined to take a note of it, 
 notwithstanding my natural prejudices against attaching any 
 importance to dreams, to which, indeed, I am not much subject. 
 Accordingly, in the course of the day, I made in my little Letts' 
 diary a mark thus : X, with my brother's name after it. 
 
COINCIDENT DREAMS. 
 
 201 
 
 "On the following Monday morning, the 26th March, I 
 received a letter from my brother, which bore the date of the 
 2 1 st March, and which had been posted at Naples (where the 
 Orient steamers touch), informing me that he was on his way 
 home, and that he hoped to reach London on or about the 30th 
 March, and adding that he was suffering from a very severe 
 attack of gout in the left arm. 
 
 " The next day I related to some one this curious incident, and 
 I commented on the extraordinary coincidence of facts with the 
 dream except in one detail, and that was, that the arm which 
 I had seen in my dream did not look as if it were merely affected 
 with gout: the appearance it had presented to me was more 
 like extremely bad eczema. 
 
 " My brother duly reached England on the 29th, having dis- 
 embarked at Plymouth owing to the painful condition of his arm. 
 It turned out that the doctor on board ship had mistaken the 
 case ; it was not gout, but a case of blood poisoning, resulting 
 in a very bad carbuncle or abscess over the wrist joint. 
 
 " Since my brother's return, I have endeavoured to ascertain 
 from him the exact hour at which he wrote to me on March 21st. 
 He is not certain whether the letter to me was written before 
 noon or after noon of that day. He remembers writing four 
 short letters in the course of that day — two before luncheon and 
 two after luncheon. Had the note addressed to me been written 
 in the forenoon, it might nearly have coincided in time with my 
 dream, if allowance be made for the difference of time between 
 Greenwich and Naples ; for, having no recollection of the dream 
 when I woke, according to custom, at an early hour on the 
 morning of the 21st, I presume I must have dreamt it very 
 little before eight o'clock, the hour at which I was called, 
 
 " I may add that, notwithstanding an absence of twelve years 
 and a half, my brother has altered very little in appearance ; 
 and that I have not to my knowledge ever noted a dream before 
 in my life." 
 
 On April 12th, 1888, Mr. Gurney inspected the 
 diary with the entry (X, Clem) under Tuesday, March 
 20th, 1888, though, as Mr. Hamilton explained, "it 
 was early the next morning that I had the dream, for 
 I generally consider all that appertains to bed relates 
 to the day on which one gets into it" 
 
 Mr. Gurney also saw the letter signed Clement E. 
 Hamilton, and dated Naples, March 21st, 1888, which 
 says " am suffering from very severe attack of gout in 
 left arm." 
 
202 APPARITIONS AND THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 
 
 The next case presents several points of interest. 
 In part, at least, it seems to have been a waking 
 experience, possibly the prolongation of a dream. In 
 this respect it resembles Mrs. Harrison's case, already 
 cited (No. 54), and if correctly described, the incident 
 possesses therefore a higher evidential value than a 
 mere dream, however vivid. I have here classed it 
 as a dream, however, because the percipient himself so 
 describes it in his letter written a few days after the 
 experience. The utterance of words by the percipient 
 finds a parallel in the case of Archdeacon Bruce 
 (Chapter VII., No. 51). But in the present case 
 there is the additional feature that the percipient is 
 conscious not only of the sound of his own voice, but 
 of another voice in reply. The incident, it will be 
 seen, though remote, is attested by letters written 
 immediately after the event, and by the percipient's 
 recollection of action taken in consequence of the 
 dream-warning. 
 
 No. 59. — From Mr. Edward A. Goodall, of the 
 Royal Society of Painters in Water-Colours. 
 
 "May, 1888. 
 
 "At Midsummer, 1869, I left London for Naples, The heat 
 being excessive, people were leaving for Ischia, and I thought 
 it best to go there myself. 
 
 " Crossing by steamer, I slept one night at Casamicciola, on 
 the coast, and walked next morning into the town of Ischia 
 [Mr. Goodall then describes an accident to his hand, which 
 prevented him from sketching.] 
 
 "It must have been on my third or fourth night, and about 
 the middle of it, when I awoke, as it seemed, at the sound of my 
 own voice, saying : ' I know I have lost my dearest little May.' 
 Another voice, which I in no way recognised, answered : 4 Ao, 
 not May, but your youngest boy? 
 
 " The distinctness and solemnity of the voice made such 
 a distressing impression upon me that I slept no more. I got 
 up at daybreak, and went out, noticing for the first time 
 telegraph-poles and wires. 
 
 " Without delay I communicated with the postmaster at 
 Naples, and by next boat received two letters from home. I 
 opened them according to dates outside. The first told me that 
 
COINCIDENT DREAMS. 
 
 203 
 
 my youngest boy was taken suddenly ill ; the second, that he 
 was dead. 
 
 " Neither on his account nor on that of any of my family had 
 I any cause for uneasiness. All were quite well on my taking- 
 leave of them so lately. My impression ever since has been 
 that the time of the death coincided as nearly as we could judge 
 with the time of my accident. 
 
 " In writing to Mrs. Goodall, I called the incident of the voice 
 a dream, as less likely perhaps to disturb her than the details 
 which I gave on reaching home, and which I have now repeated. 
 
 " My letters happen to have been preserved. 
 
 " I have never had any hallucination of any kind, nor am 
 I in the habit of talking in my sleep. I do remember once 
 waking with some words of mere nonsense upon my lips, but 
 the experience of the voice speaking to me was absolutely 
 unique. 
 
 "Edward A. Goodall." 
 
 Extracts from letters to Mrs. E. A. Goodall from 
 Ischia: — 
 
 " Wednesday, August nth, 1869. 
 " The postman brought me two letters containing sad news 
 indeed. Poor little Percy ! I dreamt some nights since the 
 poor little fellow was taken from us. . . ." 
 
 "August I4tk. 
 
 " I did not tell you, dear, the particulars of my dream about 
 poor little Percy. 
 
 " I had been for several days very fidgety and wretched at 
 getting no letters from home, and had gone to bed in worse 
 spirits than usual, and in my dream I fancied I said : ' 1 have 
 lost my dearest little May.' A strange voice seemed to say : 
 'No, not May, but your youngest boy/ not mentioning his 
 name." 
 
 Mr. Myers adds : — 
 
 " Mr. Goodall has given me verbally a concordant account of 
 the affair, and several members of his family, who were present 
 at our interview, recollected the strong impression made on him 
 and them at the time." 1 
 
 In the case which follows the agency is difficult 
 to elucidate. The persons who were spectators of 
 the scene represented in the dream can hardly be 
 supposed to have been acquainted with the dreamer, 
 
 1 Pioc. S.P.R., vol. v. pp. 453-455- 
 
204 APPARITIONS AND THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 
 
 and assuredly would not willingly have revealed the 
 secret. The dream appears to have been of a clair- 
 voyant character. The account is taken from the 
 Proceedings of the Am. S.P.R., pp. 454 et seq. 
 
 No. 60.— From Mrs. E. J. 
 
 "Cambridge (U.S.A.), Nov. 30, 1886. 
 
 "The dream I will endeavour to relate as clearly as possible. 
 
 "It occurred during the month of August, last summer, while 
 we were boarding with Mrs. H., in Lunenburg, where I first met 
 the Misses W. I am a perfectly healthy woman, and have 
 always been sceptical as to hallucinations in any one, always 
 before having felt the cause of the experience might be 
 traced. 
 
 " In my dream I arrived unexpectedly at the house of the 
 Misses W., in Cambridge, where I found everything in confusion, 
 drawers emptied and their contents scattered about the floor, 
 bundles unrolled, and dresses taken down from the closets. 
 Then, as I stepped into one room, I saw some boys in bed, — 
 three or four, I cannot distinctly remember. I saw their faces 
 distinctly, as they sat up in bed at my approach, but the recollec- 
 tion of their faces has faded from me now. I could not reach 
 the boys, for they disappeared suddenly, and I could not find 
 them ; but I thought, These cannot be the people whom the 
 Misses W. trusted to care for their house in their absence ; and I 
 was troubled to know whether it was best to tell them when I 
 should return to Lunenburg. This is all there was in the 
 dream. 
 
 " Thinking only to amuse them, I related my dream at the 
 breakfast-table the following morning, and I regretted doing so 
 immediately, for anxiety showed itself in their faces, and the 
 elder Miss W. remarked that she hoped my dream was not a 
 forerunner of bad tidings from home. I laughed at the idea, 
 but that morning the mail brought a letter telling them that 
 their house had been entered, and when they went down they 
 found almost the same confusion of which I had been a witness 
 the night before — with everything strewn about the floor. It 
 was a singular coincidence, surely." 
 
 Miss W. writes : — 
 
 " 7 Street, Dec. 4. 
 
 " I am not quite sure whether the incident to which you 
 allude in your note is worthy your attention or not, but I will 
 give you the facts, that you may judge for yourself of its value. 
 
COINCIDENT DREAMS. 
 
 205 
 
 " The burglary, we suppose, took place on the night of the 
 17th or 1 8th of August, I being at the time, for the summer, in 
 the town of Lunenburg, Mass. 
 
 "Coming down to breakfast on the morning of the 17th, a 
 lady said to me that she had had a strange dream. She thought 
 she went to our house, finding it in the greatest confusion, 
 everything turned upside-down. As she entered one of the 
 sleeping-rooms she saw two boys lying in the bed ; but she 
 could not see their faces, for as soon as they saw her they 
 jumped up and ran off. I said, ' I hope that does not mean that 
 we have been visited by burglars. 5 
 
 " I thought no more about it, till the eleven o'clock mail 
 brought a note from the woman in charge of the house saying 
 that it had been entered, — that everything was in great con- 
 fusion, many things carried off, and she wished we would come 
 home at once. The policeman who went over the house with 
 her said he had never seen a house more thoroughly ransacked. 
 
 "We found that in the upper attic room the bed had evidently 
 been used, and there was, perhaps, more confusion in this room 
 than in any other. 
 
 " The lady who had the dream was Mrs. E. J., of Cambridge- 
 port. I was told that she had been suffering for about a year 
 from nervous prostration, and she was evidently in a condition 
 of great nervous excitement. 
 
 " I forbore to speak to her of the occurrence, as one of the 
 ladies in the house told me that it had made an unpleasant im- 
 pression on her mind. 
 
 " The whole thing seems rather curious to me, but I do not 
 know that you will find it of any value in your investigations." 
 
 A dream presenting similar features is recorded in 
 the Journal of the S.P.R. for June 1890. Mr. William 
 Bass, farm bailiff to Mrs. Palmer, of Tumours Hall, 
 Chigwell, on Good Friday, 1884, "awoke in violent 
 agitation and profuse perspiration " from a dream 
 that something was wrong at the stables. He was at 
 first dissuaded by his wife from paying any attention 
 to the dream, but subsequently, at about 2 A.M., dressed 
 and proceeded to the stables (a third of a mile off) to 
 find that a mare had been stolen. The case has been 
 investigated by Mr. T. Barkworth, of West Hatch, 
 Chigwell, and by Mr. J. B. Surgey, of 22 Holland 
 Street, Kensington. In a dream recorded in Phan- 
 tasms of the Living (vol. i, p. 369), Miss Busk, of 16 
 
206 APPARITIONS AND THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 
 
 Montagu Street, W., dreamt that in a spot in Kent 
 well known to her she stumbled over "the heads, 
 left protruding, of some ducks buried in the sand, 
 under some firs." The dream was mentioned at 
 breakfast to Miss Busk's sister, Mrs. Pitt Byrne, and 
 an hour later the ladies learnt from their bailiff that 
 some stolen ducks had accidentally been found buried 
 on the spot and in the manner described. 
 
207 I 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 ON HALLUCINATION IN GENERAL. 
 
 BEFORE proceeding, in the chapters which follow, to 
 cite instances of hallucinations which purport to have 
 been telepathically originated, it seems needful to 
 glance briefly at sensory hallucination in general. To 
 most persons, no doubt, the word connotes disease. 
 Their ideas of hallucination are probably derived 
 from vague reports of asylum experience and delirium 
 tremens; or at least from the cases of Goethe's butt, 
 Nicolai, the Berlin bookseller, and the Mrs. A. whose 
 experiences are described in Brewster's Letters on 
 Natural Magic, both of whom are known to have 
 been under medical treatment for illness of which 
 the hallucinations were regarded as a symptom. 
 Indeed, until recent years the tendency of even well- 
 instructed opinion has been to regard a sensory 
 hallucination as necessarily implying some physical 
 or mental disorder. This misconception — for it is a 
 misconception — has had some curious consequences. 
 Since it does occasionally happen that a person 
 admittedly sane and healthy reports to have seen the 
 likeness of a human figure in what was apparently 
 empty space, such reports have been by some perforce 
 scouted as unw r orthy of credence, and by others 
 regarded as necessarily indicating some occult cause 
 — as testifying, in short, to the agency of " ghosts." 
 There was indeed the analogy of dreams to guide us. 
 Few educated persons would regard dreams, on the 
 
208 APPARITIONS AND THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 
 
 one hand, as a symptom of ill-health, or on the other 
 as counterparts or revelations of any super-terrestrial 
 world ; or, indeed, as anything else than purely sub- 
 jective mental images. Yet dreams belong to the 
 same order of mental phenomena as hallucinations, 
 and are commonly so classed — such differences as 
 exist being mainly due to the conditions under which 
 the two sets of phenomena respectively occur. In 
 fact, a hallucination is simply a hypertrophied thought 
 — the last member of a series, whose intermediate 
 terms are to be found in the mind's-eye pictures of 
 ordinary life, in the vivid images which some artists 
 can summon at will, and in the Faces in the Dark 
 which many persons see before passing into sleep, 
 with its more familiar and abundant imagery. 
 
 Of recent years, however, our knowledge of hallu- 
 cinations has been largely augmented from two dis- 
 tinct sources. On the one hand, a systematic attempt 
 has been made to study the spontaneous non-recurrent 
 hallucinations occurring amongst normal persons ; on 
 the other hand, wider knowledge of hypnotism and the 
 discovery of various processes for inducing hallucina- 
 tions has afforded facilities for the experimental in- 
 vestigation of their nature, mechanism, and genesis, 
 both in the trance and in waking life. The hallucina- 
 tions, indeed, of the ordinary hypnotic subject, with 
 which the public has been familiarised by platform 
 demonstrations, are possibly not sensory at all. When 
 a hypnotised lad eats tallow-candle for sponge-cake, 
 drinks ink for champagne, or professes to see a 
 lighted candle at the end of the operator's finger, we 
 may conclude, if the performance is a genuine one, 
 that a false belief has been engendered in his mind ; 
 but we have, in most cases, no evidence that this 
 belief includes any sensory element. In many labor- 
 atory experiments, however, there can be little ques- 
 tion that a complete sensory hallucination is induced, 
 and that what the subject professes to see and hear is 
 as real to him as the furniture or the person of the 
 
ON HALLUCINATION IN GENERAL* 20$ 
 
 operator. One or two such cases have been quoted 
 in a previous chapter (Chap. III., p. 68). The nature 
 and reaction of these hypnotic hallucinations have 
 been investigated with much ingenuity by various 
 Continental observers. 1 MM. Binet and Fere, to 
 quote the best-known series of experiments, have 
 found, speaking generally, that the hallucinatory per- 
 cept behaves under various conditions precisely as if 
 it were a real percept. Thus, if the subject is told to 
 see a picture on a blank card, he will not only see the 
 picture at the time, but he will be able subsequently 
 to pick out the card, recognising it by means of the 
 hallucinatory picture impressed on it, from a number 
 of similar cards. If the card is inverted, he will see 
 the picture upside-down ; if a magnifying glass is 
 interposed, he will see the picture enlarged ; viewed 
 through a prism, it will appear doubled ; it will be 
 reflected in a mirror ; and if the hallucinatory image 
 consists of written or printed words, he will see the 
 writing in the mirror inverted. Hallucinatory colours 
 will develop after-images of the complementary colour, 
 precisely as if coloured surfaces were actually present 
 to the eyes of the hallucine ; and a mixture of these 
 hallucinatory colours will produce the appropriate 
 third colour. If other proof were needed of the 
 sensory nature of the induced affection, MM. Binet 
 and Fere find it in the observation that with cataleptic 
 subjects who have lost the sensitiveness of the cornea 
 and conjunctiva, this sensitiveness is restored when a 
 visual hallucination is enjoined upon them. M. Pierre 
 Janet, in L Automatisme Psychologique, has recorded 
 a similar restoration of sensitiveness in a subject's 
 arm by the imposition of a tactile hallucination. 
 
 It is right to point out that these experiments, 
 by the authors' admission, succeed only occasionally, 
 and that many of them have not yet been confirmed 
 by other observers. In fact, according to the evidence 
 
 1 See Animal Magnetism, by Binet and Fere, in the International 
 Science Series, and the references there given. 
 
 14 
 
210 APPARITIONS AND THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 
 
 collected by the S.P.R., the results of applying such 
 optical tests differ with each individual. Thus Mr. 
 Myers succeeded by post-hypnotic suggestion in in- 
 ducing two young men to see hallucinatory images 
 in the crystal enlarged by the application of a magni- 
 fying glass (S.P.R., viii. 462, 463), and Miss X. (id., pp. 
 485, 486) reports that she sees hallucinatory pictures 
 distorted in a spoon, reversed in a mirror, enlarged 
 by a magnifying glass, and doubly refracted by Ice- 
 land spar. She believes herself also to have experi- 
 enced complementary colours as the result of pro- 
 longed looking at a hallucinatory picture. But Mrs. 
 Verrall (id., p, 474) finds the crystal pictures vanish 
 when the magnifying glass is applied ; and Miss A. 
 (id., p. 500) finds that the superimposition of a magni- 
 fying glass does not affect the picture. In all these 
 cases, it should be noted, the percipients were in their 
 normal condition, and were more or less familiar 
 with the nature of the optical effects following under 
 similar circumstances with real percepts. 
 
 MM. Binet and Fer6 suppose that the appropriate 
 reaction of the hallucinatory picture to the various 
 tests described is due to the hallucination being built 
 up round a fragment of actual percept, such as a mark 
 on a card, which would conform to ordinary optical 
 laws. This imaginary nucleus they name the point 
 de repere. It is not improbable that in some cases 
 this may be the true explanation. But experience 
 leads us to infer that suggestion would be competent 
 to produce all the observed effects in cases where the 
 subject, either from previous knowledge of the instru- 
 ment or process, from the behaviour of the investi- 
 gators, or from his own observations at the time, was 
 aware of the nature of the effect to be expected. And 
 it is not clear that MM. Binet and F£r£, and other in- 
 vestigators of this school, have been sufficiently on their 
 guard against the abnormal receptivity of the hypno- 
 tised subjects with whom they have for the most part 
 experimented. Miss X., it may be remarked, pro- 
 
ON HALLUCINATION IN GENERAL. 211 
 
 fesses herself uncertain whether or not to ascribe 
 the results which she has recorded to self-suggestion. 
 But to choose between these alternative explanations 
 is not important for our present purpose. To what- 
 ever cause we may attribute the results observed, 
 there can be no doubt either of the sense of reality 
 conveyed by the false percept, or of its appropriate 
 behaviour under favourable conditions. 
 
 An instance may be quoted in detail which 
 illustrates at once the apparent attachment of the 
 hallucination to an external object, and its successful 
 competition with the impressions of waking life. A 
 lady of my acquaintance, Sister L., was put into the 
 hypnotic state by Mr. G. A. Smith in the spring of 
 1892. Whilst she was entranced, Mr. Smith, at my 
 request, handed to her several blank cards, and told 
 her that one of them (which had been privately 
 marked on the back) bore a portrait of himself, and 
 that she was to look at it ten minutes after waking. 
 A few minutes later, when engaged in conversation 
 and apparently completely awake, Sister L. picked 
 out the card in question from the little heap of similar 
 cards and showed it to me, remarking that it was an 
 excellent likeness. Some half-hour later, when Sister 
 L. was about to take her departure, I handed her the 
 card and said that Mr. Smith would be glad if she 
 would accept the photograph. She looked at the 
 card, expressed her thanks for the gift, and placed it 
 in her pocket. When I met her a few days later I 
 learnt that on her arrival at home she had searched 
 in her pocket for the photograph, and had been much 
 surprised to find there only a blank card. In this 
 instance there can be little doubt that a complete 
 sensory hallucination was induced, and that it per- 
 sisted, or was capable of being revived, for some 30 
 minutes or more after the original impression had 
 been established. 
 
 This last example, it will be seen, belongs to the 
 important class of post-hypnotic hallucinations — z.e. } 
 
212 APPARITIONS AND THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 
 
 hallucinations enjoined on the subject in the hypnotic 
 state, but realised only after waking. Special interest 
 attaches to hallucinations of this kind, because the 
 subject is in a condition which, if not fully normal, 
 at least approaches in some cases very nearly to the 
 normal, and is thus able to observe and describe his 
 own sensations with care. 1 
 
 A more striking form of the same experiment, the 
 post-hypnotic production of a completely developed 
 hallucination of the human figure, has been practised 
 by Bernheim, 2 Beaunis, 3 Liegeois, 4 and others. Thus 
 M. Liegeois, on the 12th October 1885, told a hypno- 
 tised subject that on the 12th October of the year 
 following he would go to Dr. Liebeault's house, where 
 he would also see M. Liegeois, and would thank them 
 both for the good done to his eyes. He would then 
 see a performing dog and monkey enter the consult- 
 ing room, where they would perform many amusing 
 tricks; ultimately he would see a gipsy enter with a 
 
 1 In many cases the post-hypnotic performance of an enjoined action, 
 or the experience of a post-hypnotic hallucination, is associated with the 
 partial recurrence of the hypnotic trance, or of some condition closely 
 allied to it. Mr. Edmund Gurney has carefully investigated the ques- 
 tion (Proc. S.P.R., iv. pp. 268-323. See also Delbceuf's article there 
 quoted, "De la pretendue Veille Somnambulique," Rev. Phil., Feb. 
 1887), and has shown that, with some subjects, during the performance 
 of the enjoined action a further command can be given, or a further 
 hallucination imposed, and that the whole incident will have passed 
 from memory a few seconds later. In the case of some persons hypno- 
 tised by Dr. Bramwell, and bidden to see after waking an imaginary 
 scene in a crystal, I have myself observed that they retained no recol- 
 lection a few minutes later of the scene which they had been describ- 
 ing; and in at least one case the subject at the time of the hallucin- 
 ation was apparently insensible to pain. On the other hand, as Mr. 
 Gurney has pointed out {loc. cit., p. 270), "there are some cases in 
 which no reason whatever appears for regarding the state in which 
 the action is performed as other than normal," and the same remark 
 apparently holds good of post-hypnotic hallucinations. And there are 
 many persons who can see hallucinatory pictures in a crystal, a glass 
 of water, etc., when in full health and in a perfectly normal condition. 
 See Mr. Myers' article already referred to (S.P.R., vol. viii.). 
 
 2 De la Suggestion, p. 29. 
 
 3 La Somuambulisme provoque, p. 233. 
 
 4 Rev. de P Hypnolisme, November 1886, p. 148. 
 
ON HALLUCINATION IN GENERAL. 213 
 
 bear, to reclaim the dog and monkey, and would 
 borrow two sous from M. Liegeois to give to the 
 gipsy. On the 12th October 1886 the subject 
 entered Dr. Liebeault's consulting room and thanked 
 him and M. Liegeois as arranged. He then saw a 
 dog and monkey enter the room, and ultimately a 
 gipsy. The bear he did not see, and the two sous, 
 which were duly borrowed, he handed to the imagin- 
 ary dog. With these exceptions the hallucinations 
 enjoined a year before were exactly realised. Some 
 experiments of a similar nature are recorded by Mr. 
 Gurney (Proc. S.P.R., vol. v. pp. 1 1 - 1 3 ). The subject 
 was a servant named Zillah, in the service of Mrs. 
 Ellis, of 40 Keppel Street, Russell Square. In the 
 first two experiments Zillah was told in the trance 
 that at a certain hour on the following day she would 
 see Mr. G. A. Smith. In each case the experiment 
 succeeded. 
 
 The third and last experiment with this u subject " was made 
 on Wednesday evening, July 13th, 1887. On this occasion S. 
 told her, when hypnotised, that the next afternoon at three 
 o'clock she would see me come into the room to her. She was 
 further told that I would keep my hat on, and would say, " Good 
 afternoon ; " that I would further remark, "It is very warm ; " 
 and would then turn round and walk out. These hallucinations 
 were suggested in another room, where Zillah was taken for the 
 purpose, and neither Mrs. Ellis nor any other person, except S. 
 and myself, knew their nature. Zillah, as usual, knew nothing 
 about them on waking. On the second day after, the following 
 letter was received from Mrs. Ellis : — 
 
 "40 Keppel Street, Russell Square, W.C., 
 July 14H1. 
 
 " Dear Mr. Smith, — Mr. Gurney did not ask me to write 
 in case there was anything to communicate with respect to 
 Zillah, but as I suppose you gave her a post-hypnotic hallucina- 
 tion, probably you will wish to hear of it. I will give you the 
 story in her own words, as I jotted them down immediately 
 afterwards — saying nothing to her, of course, of my doing so. 
 She said : 1 1 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 
 
214 APPARITIONS AND THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 
 
 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 manuscript, in his 
 hand, and he said, ' Oh, good afternoon. 7 And then he glanced 
 all round the kitchen, and he glared at me with an awful look, 
 as if he was going to murder me, and said, 4 Warm afternoon, 
 isn't it? 7 and then, 6 Good afternoon' or 4 Good day,' I'm not 
 sure which, and turned and went up the stairs again, and after 
 standing thunderstruck a minute, I ran to the foot of the stairs, 
 and saw like a boot just disappearing on the top step.' She 
 said, 4 1 think I must be going crazy. Why should I always see 
 something at three o'clock each day after the seance ? But I 
 am not nearly so frightened as I was at seeing Mr. Smith.' 
 She seemed particularly impressed by the ' awful look' Mr. 
 Gurney gave her. I presume this was the hallucination you 
 gave her. 
 
 "Amelia A. Ellis." 
 
 It is important to note that in cases of this kind 
 there is no discoverable point de repere^ at least in the 
 sense in which the phrase is understood by its authors; 
 and the nature of the effect produced — a moving 
 figure, apparently occupying a position in solid space 
 — makes it very difficult to suppose that the hallu- 
 cination is attached to any external object, which 
 must necessarily be fixed. But the whole discussion 
 about the necessity of external excitation or of points 
 de repere seems beside the mark in such cases as 
 these. For there can be no question that what in the 
 first instance excites the hallucination is not a present 
 sensation, but a memory. Whether for the full de- 
 velopment of a sensory hallucination some external 
 stimulus to the sense-organ is necessary is here a 
 question of quite minor importance. The really 
 interesting fact in its bearing on the question of 
 telepathic hallucination is that some hallucinations 
 are shown to be centrally, not peripherally, initiated. 
 It should be further remarked that Zillah's astonish- 
 ment at seeing the figure is typical, since in the case 
 
ON HALLUCINATION IN GENERAL. 21 5 
 
 of post-hypnotic hallucinations in general neither the 
 injunction to see the figure, nor indeed any other 
 incident of his trance life, is remembered by the per- 
 cipient in the normal state ; and he is therefore 
 entirely ignorant of the chain of events which led up 
 to the hallucination, and can only by inquiry and 
 reflection ascertain that the apparition which he has 
 seen is of his own manufacture. 
 
 From these experimental cases we may pass to 
 the consideration of spontaneous hallucinations, and 
 amongst them to that class with which we are more 
 directly concerned, the occasional hallucinations of 
 sane and healthy persons. Owing, amongst other 
 causes, to their comparative infrequency, and to the 
 difficulty of obtaining accurate contemporary records 
 (since their occurrence cannot, as in the hallucinations 
 of disease, be foreseen), phenomena of this class have 
 hitherto attracted little attention amongst psycholo- 
 gists. 1 Mr. Edmund Gurney, however, in 1884 and 
 onwards conducted an inquiry, by means of a printed 
 schedule of questions, amongst a circle of some 6000 
 persons ; and during the last four years, at the request 
 of the Congress of Experimental Psychology which 
 met at Paris in 1889, Professor Henry Sidgwick, with 
 the aid of a Committee of members of the S.P.R., has 
 carried on a similar investigation on a larger scale. 
 17,000 adult persons, for the most part resident in the 
 United Kingdom, have been questioned as to their 
 experience of sensory hallucinations. 2 In the result it 
 
 1 Professor Sully, to quote a recent instance, in his work on 
 Illusions in the International Scientific Series (ed. 1887), devotes less 
 than a page and a half to the discussion of the sensory hallucinations of 
 normal life, and sums up the subject by saying that " when not brought 
 on by exhaustion or artificial means, the hallucinations of the sane have 
 their origin in a preternatural power of imagination " (p. 117). 
 
 2 The question, which was worded as follows: — Have you ever, 
 zvhen believing yourself to be completely awake , had a vivid i?}ipression 
 of seeing, or being touched by a living being or inanimate object, or of 
 hearing a voice, which i??ipression, so far as you could discover, was not 
 due to any external physical cause ? — was printed at the top of a 
 schedule containing twenty-five spaces for the names and other par- 
 
2l6 APPARITIONS AND THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 
 
 appeared that 1684 out of 17,000, or 9.9 per cent. — to 
 wit, 65 5 out of 8372 men, and 1029 out of 8628 women 
 — had experienced a sensory hallucination at some 
 time in their lives. In about one-third of the cases the 
 percipient had more than one experience of the kind. 
 The phenomenon, therefore, though not so common 
 as dreaming, is less rare than is generally supposed, 
 seeing that about one in every ten educated persons 
 has such an experience in the course of his life. The 
 inquiries of the Committee have revealed no general 
 cause for the greater number of these isolated hallu- 
 cinations. In a small proportion of the cases there 
 was a slight degree of ill-health, and in a rather 
 greater number there was a certain amount of anxiety 
 or other emotional excitement, to which the hallu- 
 cinatory experience might with some plausibility be 
 attributed. 1 But in the great majority of the cases 
 there was no obvious antecedent to be discovered 
 either in the condition of the percipient or in the 
 surrounding circumstances, and we are led to the 
 conclusion that an isolated hallucination of this kind 
 is as little incompatible with ordinary health as a 
 blush or a hiccough. At the same time we are 
 entitled to infer, from the relatively large proportion 
 of cases occurring when the percipient is in bed, or 
 alone, that quiescence and freedom from external 
 stimuli are favourable conditions for the genesis of 
 
 ticulars of those answering. Collectors were instructed not to select 
 those of whom the question was asked ; and to record alike negative 
 and affirmative answers. In the case of an affirmative answer being 
 received, further particulars were sought. For a full discussion of the 
 various sources of error incident to an inquiry of this nature, and the 
 precautions taken to avoid them, and for details of the results 
 obtained, the reader is referred to the Report of the Committee, pre- 
 sented in a condensed form to the Congress of Experimental Psychology 
 which met in London in 1892, and to be published in full in the 
 Proc. S.P.R., vol. x., part 26 (forthcoming). 
 
 1 There was ill-health alone in about 5 per cent., anxiety alone in 
 about 11 per cent., and both ill-health and anxiety in about 1.7 per 
 cent, of first-hand cases. 
 
ON HALLUCINATION IN GENERAL. 217 
 
 hallucinations. 1 They may, in short, be regarded as 
 unusually vivid dreams, and have for the most part 
 just so much interest and significance. The nature 
 and variety of these casual hallucinations may be 
 gathered from the table on the following page. 
 
 If we turn to the mechanism of hallucinations, we 
 shall find that — like dreams — some are apparently 
 originated by the condition of the bodily organs ; 
 others again appear to be mere automatic reverbera- 
 tions of recent sensation ; whilst yet others cannot 
 be referred to any immediate external stimulus, and 
 suggest the " spontaneous " activity of the higher 
 cerebral centres. With the rudimentary hallucina- 
 tions — singing in the ears, sparks and flashes of 
 light, etc. — which are caused by transient condi- 
 tions of the external organs of sense, we are prob- 
 ably all familiar. But experience shows that a small 
 nucleus of actual sensation may enter into more fully 
 developed hallucinations. Thus, to take the simplest 
 case, it is known that " sparks " may develop into 
 " Faces in the Dark," which are themselves on the 
 border-line between mind's-eye pictures and halluci- 
 nations. (See St. James's Gazette, "Faces in the Dark," 
 Feb. 10, 1882, and Proc. S.P.R., vol. iii. p. 171.) And 
 in another recorded case {Proc. S.P.R., vol. i. pp. 102, 
 103) an artist was accustomed to see constantly at 
 his studio the figure of a man, under circumstances 
 which strongly suggest that a point de repere was 
 furnished by those floating motes in the eyeballs 
 which are liable momentarily to cloud the vision 
 when the position is abruptly changed after a period 
 of immobility. And we find cases where the con- 
 structive impulse has so amplified and misinter- 
 
 1 Hallucinations occurring in the ambiguous state between waking 
 and sleeping are called by some writers hypnagogic. For the purposes 
 of our investigation, coincident hallucinations occurring at times when 
 it is doubtful whether the percipient is fully awake, e.g., when he is in 
 bed, are termed "borderland." Their evidential value is, of course, 
 somewhat less than that of hallucinations occurring when the percipient 
 is unquestionably awake. (See cases 57, 59, 65, 66, etc.) 
 
218 APPARITIONS AND THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 
 
 
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ON HALLUCINATION IN GENERAL. 2ig 
 
 preted the data of normal sensation that we hardly 
 know whether to class the result as hallucination 
 or illusion. Thus, in a case given in Phantasms (vol. 
 ii. p. 28), a young girl sees the face of a friend grow- 
 ing out of a yellow pansy ; and an account of a 
 similar incident has recently been furnished to me 
 by Mr. H. Smith, of the Central Telegraph Office. 
 The reference in the first line of the following narra- 
 tive is to a rumour of the house being haunted, the 
 remembrance of which possibly gave a definite form 
 to the apparition : — 
 
 " Post Office, yd Dec. 1892. 
 " I had a turn last night, and for the moment thought I had 
 caught the spook of my predecessor, but, alas ! it all ended 
 in smoke instead of spook. It gave me a turn, though, and 
 made cold water run rippling down my back. It happened 
 thus: — I had paid a good-night visit to the room of a dear 
 little friend, a Callithrix monkey, whose lodgings are in a 
 side building which has a door opening into the entrance hall. 
 There was no light in the room of my friend, but a side light 
 shone in through the door from the hall. (I was smoking.) 
 On going out I looked back before shutting the door, and was 
 startled to see just behind me, in the dark shade, the face of a 
 human being — apparently an old man with grey hair. The face 
 was perfectly distinct in every detail for an appreciable interval, 
 and the eyes seemed to look sadly at me, and I looked sadly at 
 him. The face moved, and the appearance, though a bit out of 
 shape, still remained. I, however, saw what it was, and gave a 
 gasp of relief which blew the old man's countenance into the 
 shapelessness of the last remains of an extra strong puff of 
 tobacco smoke I had left behind me." 
 
 Hallucinations of this kind, whose origin we can 
 trace with more or less probability to some external 
 sensation, may be in some respects compared with 
 the visions seen on blank cards by the subjects of 
 MM. Binet and Fere. But there are other hallucina- 
 tions which cannot with any plausibility be referred 
 to peripheral excitation. Such, as already said, are 
 many hypnotic hallucinations, and the majority of 
 the fully-developed hallucinations of normal life 
 would appear to fall under the same category. 
 Hallucinations of this class, like what may be 
 
220 APPARITIONS AND THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 
 
 called hallucinatory 1 dreams, are no doubt due to 
 the spontaneous activity of the higher cerebral 
 centres ; they are simply ideas which take on sen- 
 sory colouring. And just as the hallucinations of 
 hypnotism, for the most part, are due to external 
 suggestion, so it would seem that amongst the cen- 
 trally initiated hallucinations of normal life there are 
 some which owe their origin not to the spontaneous 
 activity of the percipient's brain, but to an idea intruded 
 from without — a suggestion not verbal but telepathic. 
 
 The proof of this proposition — the proof, that is, 
 of the operation in certain cases of some distant 
 cause external to the percipient's organism — lies in 
 a numerical comparison of those hallucinations which 
 coincide with an external event — e.g., the death of 
 the person seen — and those which do not. For when 
 the relative frequency of hallucinations has been 
 ascertained the probability of chance coincidence in 
 such cases can be exactly calculated. And should 
 it appear that coincidental hallucinations are more 
 frequent than chance would allow, it is certain that 
 some other cause has to be sought for. And here we 
 are met at the outset by a serious difficulty. It 
 would appear from the results of the census just 
 described that hallucinations even of a vivid and 
 interesting character tend very quickly to be for- 
 gotten. Thus, to take only the cases of realistic 
 apparitions resembling a living person, we find 157 
 cases recorded as occurring during the last ten years, 
 and only 166 as occurring more than ten years ago; 
 although, as the average age of our informants is 
 about 40, we might have anticipated that the latter 
 number would be about three times as great as the 
 former. 2 But the discrepancy becomes still more 
 
 1 As opposed to " dream-illusions," which depend on various organic 
 sensations, or on the stimulation of the external organs of sense. The 
 distinction is made by Professor Sully, loc. cit. t p. 139. 
 
 2 These figures do not include second-hand cases. There are be- 
 sides 29 undated cases, most of which probably belong to the 
 remote period. See column 1 of table on p. 218 (visual cases). 
 
ON HALLUCINATION IN GENERAL. 221 
 
 striking if the figures are examined in detail. 
 The subjoined table gives the number of appari- 
 tions resembling the human form recorded for each 
 of the last ten years : — 
 
 No. of Years Ago- 
 
 1 and 
 under 
 
 b'tw'n — 
 1 and 2 
 
 2-3 
 
 3-4 
 
 1 
 
 4-55-6 
 
 e. 
 
 7-8 
 
 8-9 
 
 0-10 
 
 Total. 
 
 Realistic ^ Living . . . 
 Human VDead . . . 
 Apparitions J Unrecognised 
 
 35 
 12 
 17 
 
 19 
 10 
 16 
 
 15 
 7 
 12 
 
 13 
 1 
 17 
 
 15 
 7 
 
 17 
 
 13 
 6 
 13 
 
 17 
 6 
 11 
 
 12 
 2 
 10 
 
 8 
 8 
 5 
 
 10 
 
 3 
 8 
 
 157 
 62 
 126 
 
 
 64 
 
 45 
 
 34 
 
 31 
 
 39 
 
 32 
 
 34 
 
 24 
 
 21 
 
 21 
 
 345 
 
 It will be seen that the number of hallucinations 
 recorded as occurring between nine and ten years ago 
 is less than one-third of the number recorded for the 
 last twelve months. Nay, if the analysis is carried 
 still further, it is found that within the last year the 
 number of hallucinations remembered decreases month 
 by month as we recede further from the present. The 
 inference is irresistible, that the great majority even 
 of interesting hallucinations do not sufficiently impress 
 the memory to be preserved for a few years. After a 
 careful analysis of the figures the Committee are of 
 opinion that the number of visual hallucinations 
 actually experienced by their informants since the 
 age of tea would be approximately secured by multi- 
 plying the recorded number by four} 
 
 But if hallucinations in general are not remembered 
 enough, coincidental hallucinations, at least those 
 which coincide with the death of the person seen, 2 
 would appear to be remembered too well, as will 
 appear from the following figures. There are 
 13 such cases recorded during the last ten years. 
 Now if we assume that this figure accurately re- 
 
 1 The calculation is based upon an analysis of the whole number of 
 visual cases reported during the most recent month, which would 
 indicate an annual rate of about 140. The figures for the most recent 
 quarter indicate an annual rate of about 120. 
 
 2 A hallucination which coincides with a death is defined, for the 
 purposes of this inquiry, as a hallucination which occurs within twelve 
 hours of the death. 
 
222 APPARITIONS AND THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 
 
 presents the number of such coincidences that have 
 occurred in the experience of our informants during 
 the last ten years, then, since the average age 
 of our informants in this particular case is 46, we 
 should expect to find for the whole period since the 
 age of ten years 47 such coincidences reported ; that is 
 on the assumption that no death-coincidence is ever 
 forgotten, and that the liability to such hallucination 
 is practically uniform during the entire period. We 
 do actually find 65 cases; from which it should, 
 the Committee think, be inferred, not only that few or 
 no death-coincidences are forgotten, — a result which 
 is probably not surprising, — but also that a certain 
 number of cases which are not death-coincidences 
 have by the lapse of time grown to appear so. 1 Nor 
 is it difficult to conjecture the particular form of error. 
 It is probable that in most of the 18 — more or less 
 — spurious death-coincidences, there was an actual 
 phantasm and an actual death, but that the two events 
 did not stand in close relation to each other. We 
 have already (see Chap. VI.) seen reason to suspect 
 a constant tendency to magnify the closeness of a 
 coincidence of this kind. Seen from a distance the 
 two events — like a binary star-system — are apt to 
 coalesce into one; and a new spectral analysis is 
 required to dissociate them. 
 
 Nor would it be safe to assume that the tendencies 
 which have demonstrably operated to falsify the 
 more remote records have been altogether inactive 
 during the last ten years. The causes which tend to 
 sophisticate narratives of this kind, as already shown, 
 are many and difficult to detect; the kind of evidence 
 required to place the alleged death-coincidence beyond 
 
 1 There is another possible explanation — viz., that some of the 
 recent death-coincidences have been withheld from us, on account of 
 the painful associations connected with them. That some cases — and 
 recent would be more affected than remote examples — have been with- 
 held on this account seems certain ; but the explanation given in the 
 text must, it is thought, be held primarily responsible for the dis- 
 crepancy in the figures. 
 
ON HALLUCINATION IN GENERAL. 223 
 
 reasonable doubt has in some cases never existed ; 
 in others, through the destruction of documents, the 
 death of friends, or the mere lapse of time, it is 
 now unattainable. Of the 65 reported coincidences 
 perhaps not more than one-fifth reach the evidential 
 standard of the cases included in this volume. And 
 whilst there is a strong presumption that some pro- 
 portion of those, which from one or other of the 
 causes suggested inevitably fall below the standard, 
 yet represent facts with substantial accuracy, we have 
 no test which will enable us to determine with 
 precision what narratives and to what extent are 
 worthy of credence. Many of the best-attested cases 
 are printed in full in the Report already referred to, 
 and any reader who is interested in the matter will 
 be able to form an estimate for himself. Meanwhile, 
 an attempt has been made, by means of a careful 
 examination of each narrative in detail, to estimate 
 its evidential value. In the result it would appear 
 that about 44 narratives rest on evidence that may be 
 regarded as fairly good. Of these 44 cases, however, 
 12 must be struck out, 3 as having been imported 
 into the census, 1 and 9 because a certain amount of 
 anxiety may be presumed to have existed, and may 
 be supposed — though the evidence for such action 
 is very slight — to have caused the hallucination. 
 We thus have 32 cases remaining, in which we 
 have evidence of the occurrence of a hallucination, 
 without apparent cause, within twelve hours of the 
 death of the person seen. 
 
 The total number of recognised apparitions of 
 living persons recorded at first-hand as occurring in 
 the circle of 17,000 persons from which these death- 
 coincidences were drawn, is 322. 2 But if, in, order 
 
 1 Cases, that is, in which the collector is known or suspected to have 
 asked the question of the narrator, because he knew that he was to 
 receive an affirmative answer. 
 
 2 The gross total of visual phantasms recorded at first-hand as 
 representing a living human being, or part of a human being (e.g., a 
 hand or a face), is 381. This total includes cases given in columns 1, 4, 
 
224 APPARITIONS AND THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 
 
 to allow for forgetfulness, as already indicated (p. 221), 
 we multiply the number recorded by 4, we shall 
 arrive at a total of 1288, as representing the 
 probable number actually experienced by our in- 
 formants since the age of ten. We have, there- 
 fore, 32 cases of hallucinations coinciding with the 
 death of the person seen, in an estimated total 
 of nearly 1300 recognised apparitions of living 
 persons — or about 1 in 40. But the death-rate for 
 England and Wales in the last completed decade 
 being 19.15 per 1000 per annum, the average prob- 
 ability that any particular person will die on any 
 
 particular day is IQQQ = about 1 in 19,000. That 
 
 is, there is one chance in 19,000 that a man will die 
 on the day on which his apparition is seen and 
 recognised, supposing there to be no causal connec- 
 tion between the two events. Or in other words, for 
 every hallucination which coincides with the death 
 of the person seen, we should have to find about 
 18,999 similar hallucinations (i.e., recognised appari- 
 tions of living persons) which do not so coincide. 
 But after making due allowance for forgetful- 
 
 and 5 of the table on p. 218. From this total we have deducted 31 
 cases where the percipient has had other experiences but has not 
 enumerated them, and 28 cases which are estimated to have occurred 
 before the age of ten, leaving the total given in the text, 322. 
 
 Of the gross total of 381, 80 are alleged to have coincided with the 
 death of the person represented. Deducting in like manner 7 cases 
 where the percipient has had other unspecified experiences, and 8 where 
 the experience is believed to have occurred before the age of ten, we 
 reach the total of 65 given above. 
 
 As, however, more care was no doubt taken to procure first-hand 
 evidence in the case of apparitions coinciding with a death than in 
 other cases, it would perhaps lead to more accurate results if in the 
 larger total were included the second-hand non-coincidental cases, 38 in 
 number. The reader can, if he prefer, work out the result for himself 
 on this basis. But it will, of course, be understood that it is not 
 practicable to sum up in a few pages the results of a long investigation ; 
 and those readers who are interested in the nature and distribution of 
 casual hallucinations, and their relations to telepathic apparitions, arc 
 referred to the forthcoming Report, from which the figures in the text 
 are quoted. 
 
ON HALLUCINATION IN GENERAL. 225 
 
 ness on the one hand, and for the creative activity 
 of the imagination on the other, we find the actual 
 proportion to be I to 40. In the face of these figures 
 it would be preposterous to ascribe the reported cases 
 of hallucinations at the time of death to chance. And 
 the argument for some causal connection between 
 hallucinations and external events is of course 
 considerably strengthened if, in addition to (a) the 
 coincidences of visual hallucinations with death, we 
 take account of (b) the coincidences of auditory 
 hallucinations with death, and (c) the coincidences of 
 both visual and auditory hallucinations with other 
 events than death, and (d) the cases in which the 
 coincidence of the apparition with the death is nearer 
 than twelve hours, the limit assumed in the above 
 calculations. 
 
 It may not be superfluous to repeat (see ante, p. 
 27, footnote) that the calculation above given does 
 not purport to establish thought-transference as the 
 cause of these coincidences. The cause may be a 
 greater prevalence of exaggeration and memory- 
 illusion than the Committee have allowed for. What 
 the calculation does is to bring us face to face with 
 the problem : Here are certain phenomena, demon- 
 strably not due to chance: do they reveal a new 
 mode of communication between human minds, or 
 merely a new source of fallacy in human testimony? 
 It will hardly be disputed that, in either event, to find 
 an answer to the question will justify much labour 
 spent upon the search. 
 
226 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 INDUCED TELEPATHIC HALLUCINATIONS. 
 
 In the present chapter we revert once more to 
 experimental evidence. The cases now to be dis- 
 cussed should, in the logical order, have been included 
 in Chapter V., and for a proper appreciation of their 
 theoretic bearings and evidential value they ought to 
 be considered in connection with the instances of 
 thought-transference at a distance there recorded. 
 It seemed best, however, to separate these instances 
 of the experimental production of hallucinations at 
 a distance, and reserve them for subsequent treat- 
 ment, with the view of anticipating as far as possible 
 the misconceptions to which this class of evidence 
 is peculiarly open. In brief, until some attempt had 
 been made to elucidate the nature of sensory hallu- 
 cination in general, it seemed unwise to introduce 
 matter so controvertible as apparitions of the human 
 figure. For we are here assailing the last fortress of 
 superstition ; in discussing such matters even edu- 
 cated persons find it difficult to free themselves 
 from the fetters of traditional modes of thought 
 and speech. Men who would be ashamed to think 
 of earth, air, fire, and water as elements, because 
 they were so held a century ago and are now so 
 styled in the language of the market-place, will 
 often see no middle course between rejecting alto- 
 gether evidence of the kind here dealt with, and 
 accepting the existence of " ghosts." But those 
 
INDUCED TELEPATHIC HALLUCINATIONS. 227 
 
 who have followed the argument of the preceding 
 chapters will see, if the possibility of thought-trans- 
 ference is granted, that the narratives now to be 
 presented fall naturally into place as illustrating 
 one of its modes of manifestation. That A. by 
 taking thought should cause an image of himself 
 to appear to B. need provoke no more surprise 
 than that by the same means he should cause B. 
 to see No. 27, or the Queen of Hearts. No one 
 demands a spiritual entity corresponding to the 
 Queen of Hearts, why then should any one believe 
 in the other case that A/s spirit had left its fleshly 
 tabernacle to interview B. ? The hallucinatory figure 
 induced post-hypnotically in certain subjects presents 
 an even closer parallel. It is recognised by all in 
 such a case that the figure seen is a thought fashioned 
 by the subject's mind, with no more substance than 
 any other thought. It is only the influence of an 
 unrecognised animism which leads us to demand 
 such a substantial basis when the figure seen repre- 
 sents a dying man. The impulse which led to the 
 projection of the hallucination was in the one case 
 conveyed by word of mouth, in the other by some 
 process as yet not understood. But the mystery lies 
 in the process rather than in the result. 
 
 The present chapter, then, will contain instances 
 of the action of thought-transference in which the 
 transmitted idea was translated in the percipient's 
 mind, not, as in most of the cases described in pre- 
 vious chapters, into a simple feeling, or sensation, 
 or dream, but into a hallucination representing the 
 human figure. Readers of Phantasms of the Living 
 will remember the accounts there given (vol. i. pp. 
 104-109) of some experiments made by a friend 
 of ours, Mr. S. H. B. On several occasions Mr. B. 
 succeeded by an effort of will in causing a phantom 
 of himself to appear to acquaintances who were not 
 aware of his intention to try the experiment. On 
 one occasion the figure was seen by two persons 
 
228 APPARITIONS AND THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 
 
 simultaneously. As at that time results of the 
 kind were almost unprecedented, we felt, notwith- 
 standing our full confidence in Mr. B., some reluct- 
 ance in publishing an account of his experiments, 
 lest isolated marvels of the kind might prejudice 
 our whole case. But fortunately, while Phantasms 
 of the Living was actually passing through the press, 
 we received from an independent source an account 
 of successful experiments of the same kind (see 
 below, case 63), and within a few weeks of its 
 publication a friend of the present writer was 
 induced by a perusal of Mr. B.'s narrative to make 
 on his own account a similar trial, which com- 
 pletely succeeded. This gentleman wrote to me 
 on 1 6th November 1886 as follows: — 
 
 No. 61. — From the Rev. Clarence Godfrey. 
 
 " I was so impressed by the account on p 105 that I de- 
 termined to put the matter to an experiment. 
 
 " Retiring at 10.45 [ on the 15th November 1886] I determined 
 to appear, if possible, to a friend, and accordingly I set myself 
 to work with all the volitional and determinative energy which 
 I possess, to stand at the foot of her bed. I need not say that 
 I never dropped the slightest hint beforehand as to my intention, 
 such as could mar the experiment, nor had I mentioned the 
 subject to her. As the i agent' I may describe my own 
 experiences. 
 
 " Undoubtedly the imaginative faculty was brought exten- 
 sively into play, as well as the volitional, for I endeavoured to 
 translate myself, spiritually, into her room, and to attract her 
 attention, as it were, while standing there. My effort was 
 sustained for perhaps eight minutes, after which I felt tired, 
 and was soon asleep. 
 
 " The next thing I was conscious of was meeting the lady 
 next morning (i.e., in a dream, I suppose ?) and asking her at 
 once if she had seen me last night. The reply came, 4 Yes.' 
 'How?' I inquired. Then in words strangely clear and low, 
 like a well audible whisper, came the answer, 4 1 was sitting 
 beside you.' These words, so clear, awoke me instantly, and I 
 felt I must have been dreaming ; but on reflection I remem- 
 bered what I had been * willing' before I fell asleep, and it 
 struck me, ' This must be a reflex action from the percipient.' 
 My watch showed 3.40 a.m. The following is what I wrote 
 
INDUCED TELEPATHIC HALLUCINATIONS. 12$ 
 
 immediately in pencil, standing in my night-dress : — 'As I 
 reflected upon those clear words, they struck me as being quite 
 intuitive^ I mean subjective, and to have proceeded from within, 
 as my own conviction, rather than a communication from any 
 one else. And yet I can't remember her face at all, as one can 
 after a vivid dream ! ; 
 
 " But the words were uttered in a clear, quick tone, which 
 was most remarkable, and awoke me at once. 
 
 " My friend in the note with which she sent me the enclosed 
 account of her own experience, says : — * I remember the man 
 put all the lamps out soon after I came upstairs, and that is 
 only done about a quarter to four." 5 
 
 Mr. Godfrey received from the percipient on the 
 1 6th November an account of her side of the ex- 
 perience, and at his request she wrote it down as 
 follows : — 
 
 "Yesterday — viz., the morning of November 16th, 1886 — 
 about half-past three o'clock, I woke up with a start and an idea 
 that some one had come into the room. I heard a curious sound, 
 but fancied it might be the birds in the ivy outside. Next I 
 experienced a strange restless longing to leave the room and go 
 downstairs. This feeling became so overpowering that at last 
 I* rose and lit a candle, and went down, thinking if I could get 
 some soda water it might have a quieting effect. On returning 
 to my room I saw Mr. Godfrey standing under the large window 
 on the staircase. He was dressed in his usual style, and with 
 an expression on his face that I have noticed when he has been 
 looking very earnestly at anything. He stood there, and I held 
 up the candle and gazed at him for three or four seconds in 
 utter amazement, and then, as I passed up the staircase, he dis- 
 appeared. The impression left on my mind was so vivid that I 
 fully intended waking a friend who occupied the same room as 
 myself, but remembering that I should only be laughed at as 
 romantic and imaginative, refrained from doing so. 
 
 " I was not frightened at the appearance of Mr. Godfrey, but 
 felt much excited, and could not sleep afterwards." 
 
 On the 2 1st of the same month I heard a full 
 account of the incident given above from Mr. Godfrey, 
 
 and on the day following from Mrs. . Mrs. 
 
 told me that the figure appeared quite distinct and 
 life-like at first, though she could not remember to 
 have noticed more than the upper part of the body. 
 As she looked it grew more and more shadowy, and 
 
23O APPARITIONS AND THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 
 
 finally faded away. Mrs. , it should be added, 
 
 told me that she had previously seen two phantasmal 
 figures, representing a parent whom she had recently 
 lost. 1 
 
 Mr. Godfrey at our request made two other trials, 
 without, of course, letting Mrs. know his inten- 
 
 tion. The first of these attempts was without result, 
 owing perhaps to the date chosen, as he was aware 
 at the time, being unsuitable. But a trial made 
 on the 7th December 1886 succeeded completely. 
 
 Mrs. , writing on December 8th, states that she 
 
 was awakened by hearing a voice cry, " Wake," and 
 by feeling a hand rest on the left side of her head. 
 She then saw stooping over her a figure which she 
 recognised as Mr. Godfrey's. 
 
 In this last case the dress of the figure does not 
 seem to have been seen distinctly. But in the 
 apparition of the 16th November, it will be observed 
 that the dress was that ordinarily worn in the day- 
 time by Mr. Godfrey, and that in which the percipient 
 would be accustomed to see him, not the dress which 
 he was actually wearing at the time. If the appari- 
 tion is in truth nothing more than an expression of the 
 percipient's thought this is what we should expect to 
 find, and as a matter of fact in the majority of well 
 evidenced narratives of telepathic hallucination this 
 is what we actually do find. The dress and surround- 
 ings of the phantasm represent, not the dress and 
 surroundings of the agent at the moment, but those 
 with which the percipient is familiar. If other proof 
 were wanting, this fact would in itself seem a suffi- 
 cient argument that we have to deal, not with ghosts 
 but with hallucinations. It is to be regretted, how- 
 ever, that most recent experimenters in this direction 
 have succeeded only in producing apparitions of 
 themselves. But a crucial experiment of the kind 
 desired is to be found in an account published in 
 
 1 These details are taken from notes made by the writer immediately 
 after the interview. 
 
INDUCED TELEPATHIC HALLUCINATIONS. 23 1 
 
 1822 by H. M. Wesermann, Government Assessor and 
 Chief Inspector of Roads at Diisseldorf. He records 
 five successful trials with different percipients, of 
 which the fifth seems worth quoting in full. 1 
 
 No. 62. — From H. M. WESERMANN. 
 
 " A lady, who had been dead five years, was to appear to Lieu- 
 tenant n in a dream at 10.30 P.M. and incite him to good 
 
 deeds. At half-past ten, contrary to expectation, Herr n had 
 
 not gone to bed, but was discussing the French campaign with 
 
 his friend Lieutenant S in the ante-room. Suddenly the 
 
 door of the room opened, the lady entered dressed in white, with 
 
 a black kerchief and uncovered head, greeted S with her 
 
 hand three times in a friendly manner; then turned to n, 
 
 nodded to him, and returned again through the doorway. 
 
 " As this story, related to me by Lieutenant n, seemed to 
 
 be too remarkable from a psychological point of view for the 
 truth of it not to be duly established, I wrote to Lieutenant 
 
 S who was living six 2 miles away, and asked him to give 
 
 me his account of it. He sent me the following reply : — 
 
 . . On the 13th of March, 18 17, Herr n came to 
 
 pay me a visit at my lodgings about a league from A . He 
 
 stayed the night with me. After supper, and when we were 
 
 both undressed, I was sitting on my bed and Herr n was 
 
 standing by the door of the next room on the point also of 
 going to bed. This was about half-past ten. We were speaking 
 partly about indifferent subjects and partly about the events of 
 the French campaign. Suddenly the door out of the kitchen 
 opened without a sound, and a lady entered, very pale, taller 
 
 than Herr n, about five feet four inches in height, strong and 
 
 broad of figure, dressed in white, but with a large black kerchief 
 which reached to below the waist. She entered with bare head, 
 greeted me with the hand three times in complimentary fashion, 
 
 turned round to the left towards Herr n, and waved her 
 
 hand to him three times; after which the figure quietly, and 
 again without any creaking of the door, went out. We followed 
 at once in order to discover whether there were any deception, 
 
 1 Der Magnetismus und die allgemeine Weltsprache. A brief account 
 of the five trials, quoted from the Archiv fur den thierischen Mag- 
 netismus, vol. vi. pp. 136-139, will be found in Phantasms of the 
 Living, vol. i. pp. 101, 102. In the other cases the impression was 
 produced in a dream. The distance varied from yi of a mile to 9 
 miles in the case quoted in the text. 
 
 2 In Wesermann's book, as also in the account given in the Archiv, 
 the account is headed 11 Fifth experiment at a distance of nine miles*" 
 
232 APPARITIONS AND THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 
 
 but found nothing. The strangest thing was this, that our night- 
 watch of two men whom I had shortly before found on the watch 
 were now asleep, though at my first call they were on the alert, 
 and that the door of the room, which always opens with a good 
 deal of noise, did not make the slightest sound when opened by 
 the figure. " £ S. 
 
 "'D n, January nth, 1818.' 
 
 " From this story (Wesermann continues) the following con- 
 clusions may be drawn :— 
 
 "(1) That waking persons, as well as sleeping, are capable of 
 perceiving the ideas \Gedankenbilder\ of distant friends through 
 the inner sense as dream images. For not only the opening 
 and shutting of the door, but the figure itself — which, moreover, 
 exactly resembled that of the dead lady — was incontestably only 
 a dream in the waking state, since the door would have creaked 
 as usual had the figure really opened and shut it. 
 
 " (2) That many apparitions and supposed effects of witchcraft 
 were very probably produced in the same way. 
 
 " (3) That clairvoyants are not mistaken when they state that 
 a stream of light proceeds from the magnetiser to the distant 
 friend, which visibly presents the scene thought of, if the mag- 
 netiser thinks of it strongly and without distraction." 
 
 More philosophic or more successful than recent 
 investigators, Wesermann, it will be seen, varied the 
 form of his experiment. In the first he caused his 
 own figure to appear, but in each of the subsequent 
 trials he chose a fresh image, meeting on each occasion 
 with equal success. It should be observed, however, 
 that though Wesermann seems to have been a careful 
 as well as a philosophic investigator, he has omitted 
 to record how often he made trials of this kind with- 
 out producing any result, and it cannot fairly be 
 assumed that there were no failures. But in compar- 
 ing such cases as those here recorded with the experi- 
 ments at close quarters described in Chapters II., III., 
 and IV., it should be remembered that a failure which 
 consists merely, as in Mr. Godfrey's second trial, in 
 the absence of any unusual impression on the part of 
 the percipient, detracts far less from the value of 
 occasional success than failures attested by the produc- 
 tion of wrong impressions ; and further, that a sensory 
 
INDUCED TELEPATHIC HALLUCINATIONS. 233 
 
 hallucination being a much rarer phenomenon than 
 an idea, the improbability of chance-coincidence be- 
 tween a hallucination and the attempt (unknown to 
 the percipient) to produce it is greater in the same 
 proportion. 
 
 Later experience has not confirmed Wesermann's 
 third inference, as to the stream of light proceeding 
 from the agent; there are no grounds for regarding 
 such an appearance as other than subjective, due to 
 the percipient's preconceived ideas of what he ought 
 to see. But another feature in the narrative is more 
 significant. One is led to infer both from Herr S.'s 
 description and from Wesermann's remarks in (1) that 
 the figure seen resembled a deceased lady who was 
 not known to either of the percipients. If this inter- 
 pretation is correct, the figure seen cannot have been 
 subjective in the same sense as the hallucinations 
 described in Chapter IX. and Mr. Godfrey's appari- 
 tion may be supposed to have been. The latter were, 
 ex hypothesi, autoplastic — z>., they were hallucinations 
 built up in the percipient's own mind on a nucleus sup- 
 plied from without. But what Herren S. and n 
 
 saw was a heteroplastic image, a picture like that of a 
 diagram or a card transferred ready-made from the 
 agent's mind. We should not of course be justified, 
 on the evidence of a single narrative of somewhat 
 doubtful import, in concluding that such an origin 
 for a hallucination is possible. But there are a few 
 narratives to be cited later (Chapter XIII.) which also 
 suggest such an interpretation. 
 
 In Mr. Godfrey's trials, as also in those made by 
 Mr. S. H. B., the agent was asleep at the time of 
 the experiment. 1 In the two cases which follow the 
 agent was in a hypnotic trance. In the first instance, 
 it will be seen, there appears to have been a reciprocal 
 effect, the agent himself becoming aware at the time 
 of the percipient's surroundings, and of the effect pro- 
 
 1 Wesermann unfortunately does not record his own state at the time 
 of the experiments. 
 
234 APPARITIONS AND THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 
 
 duced on her by his influence. The account was sent 
 to us in January 1886. 
 
 No. 63.— From Mr. H. P. Sparks. 
 
 After describing various hypnotic experiments on 
 a fellow-student, Mr. A. H. W. Cleave, Mr. Sparks 
 continues: — 
 
 "Last Friday evening (January 15th, 1886) he expressed his 
 wish to see a young lady living in Wandsworth, and he also 
 said he would try to make himself seen by her I accordingly 
 mesmerised him, and continued the long passes for about 20 
 minutes, concentrating my will on his idea. When he came 
 round (I brought him round by just touching his hand and 
 willing him, after 1 hour and 20 minutes' trance) he said he had 
 seen her in the dining-room, and that after a time she grew 
 restless, and then suddenly looked straight at him and then 
 covered her eyes with her hands. Just after this he came 
 round. Last Monday evening (January 18th, 1886) we did the 
 same thing, and this time he said he thought he had frightened 
 her, as after she had looked at him for a few minutes she fell 
 back in her chair in a sort of faint. Her little brother was in the 
 room at the time. Of course, after this we expected a letter if 
 the vision was real; and on Wednesday morning he received 
 a letter from this young lady asking whether anything had 
 happened to him, as on Friday evening she was startled by 
 seeing him standing at the door of the room. After a minute 
 he disappeared, and she thought that it might have been fancy ; 
 but on the Monday evening she was still more startled by seeing 
 him again, and this time much clearer, and it so frightened her 
 that she nearly fainted. 
 
 " This account I send you is perfectly true, I will vouch, for 
 I have two independent witnesses who were in the dormitory at 
 the time when he was mesmerised, and when he came round. 
 My patient's name is Arthur H. W. Cleave, and his age is 
 18 years. A. C. Darley and A. S. Thurgood, fellow-students, 
 are the two witnesses I mentioned. " H. Percy Sparks." 
 
 Mr. Cleave writes, on March 15th, 1886: — 
 
 "H.M.S. Marlborough, PORTSMOUTH. 
 " Sparks and myself have, for the past eighteen months, been 
 in the habit of holding mesmeric stances in our dormitories. 
 For the first month or two we got no very satisfactory results, 
 but after that we succeeded in sending one another to sleep. 
 I could never get Sparks further than the sleeping state, but he 
 
INDUCED TELEPATHIC HALLUCINATIONS. 235 
 
 could make me do anything he liked whilst I was under the 
 influence ; so I gave up trying to send him off, and all our 
 efforts were made towards my being mesmerised. After a short 
 time we got on so well that Sparks had three or four other 
 fellows in the dormitory to witness what I did. I was quite 
 insensible to all pain, as the fellows have repeatedly pinched 
 my hands and legs without my feeling it. About six months 
 ago I tried my power of will, in order, while under the influence, 
 to see persons to whom I was strongly attached. For some 
 time I was entirely unsuccessful, although I once thought that I 
 saw my brother (who is in Australia), but had no opportunity of 
 verifying the vision. 
 
 " A short time ago I tried to see a young lady whom I know 
 very well, and was perfectly surprised at my success. I could 
 see her as plainly as I can see now, but I could not make myself 
 seen by her, although I had often tried to. After I had done 
 this several times I determined to try and make myself seen by 
 her, and told Sparks of my idea, which he approved. Well, we 
 tried this for five nights running without any more success. We 
 then suspended our endeavours for a night or two, as I was 
 rather over-exerted by the continued efforts and got severe 
 headaches. We then tried again (on, I think it was, a Friday, 
 but am not certain), and were, I thought, successful ; but as the 
 young lady did not write to me about it, I thought I must have 
 been mistaken, so I told Sparks that we had better give up 
 trying. But he begged me to try once more, which we did on 
 the following Monday, when we were successful to such an 
 extent that I felt rather alarmed. (I must tell you that I am in 
 the habit of writing to the young lady every Sunday, but I did 
 not write that week, it order to make her think about me.) 
 This took place between 9.30 p.m. and 10 P.M. Monday night, 
 and on the following Wednesday morning I got the letter which 
 I have enclosed. I, of course, then knew I had been successful. 
 I went home about a fortnight after this, when I saw the young 
 lady, who seemed very frightened in spite of my explanations, 
 and begged me never to try it again, and I promised her that I 
 would not." 
 
 The two witnesses of the experiment last described 
 write as follows: — 
 
 " I have seen Mr. Cleave's account of his mesmeric experi- 
 ment, and can fully vouch for the truth thereof. 
 
 "A. C. Darley." 
 
 " I have read Mr. Cleave's statement, and can vouch for the 
 truth of it, as I was present when he was mesmerised and heard 
 his statement after he revived. "A. E. S. Thurgood." 
 
236 APPARITIONS AND THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 
 
 The following is a copy, made by Mr. Gurney, of 
 
 the letter in which the young lady, Miss A , 
 
 described her side of the affair. The envelope bore 
 the postmarks, " Wandsworth, Jan. 19, 1886," "Ports- 
 mouth, Jan. 20, 1886," and the address, "Mr. A. H. 
 W. Cleave, H.M.S. Marlborough, Portsmouth." 
 
 " Wandsworth, Tuesday morning. 
 
 " Dear Arthur, — Has anything happened to you ? Please 
 write and let me know at once, for I have been so frightened. 
 
 " Last Tuesday evening I was sitting in the dining [room] 
 reading, when I happened to look up, and could have declared 
 I saw you standing at the door looking at me. I put my hand- 
 kerchief to my eyes, and when I looked again you were gone. 
 I thought it must have been only my fancy, but last night 
 (Monday), while I was at supper, I saw you again, just as 
 before, and was so frightened that I nearly fainted. Luckily 
 only my brother was there, or it would have attracted attention. 
 Now do write at once and tell me how you are. I really cannot 
 write any more now." 
 
 It will be seen that Miss A fixes the date 
 
 of her first hallucination on Tuesday, whereas Mr. 
 Sparks and Mr. Cleave speak of it as Friday. Mr. 
 Gurney, in conversation with the experimenters, was 
 unable to fix the actual date with any certainty, but 
 there can be little doubt that if Tuesday was the day, 
 it fell within the five days on which Mr. Cleave 
 attempted to see Miss A . Of the second coin- 
 cidence there can be no doubt. 
 
 The next case is recorded by Mr. F. W. H. Myers 
 {Journal S.P.R., March 1891), who writes: — 
 
 No. 64. 
 
 "In 1888 a gentleman, whom I will call Mr. A., who has 
 occupied a high public position in India, and whom I have 
 known a long time, informed me verbally that he had had a 
 remarkable experience. He awoke one morning, in India, very 
 early, and in the dawning light saw a lady, whom I will call 
 Mrs. B., standing at the foot of his bed. At the same time he 
 received an impression that she needed him. This was his sole 
 experience of a hallucination; and it so much impressed him 
 that he wrote to the lady, who was in England at the time, and 
 
INDUCED TELEPATHIC HALLUCINATIONS. 237 
 
 mentioned the circumstance. He afterwards heard from her 
 that she had been in a trance-condition at the time, and had 
 endeavoured to appear to him by way of an experiment. 
 
 " Mr. A. did not give me the lady's name, supposing that she 
 did not desire the incident to be spoken of ; nor did he find an 
 opportunity of himself inquiring as to her willingness to mention 
 the matter." 
 
 Subsequently, on July 13th, 1890, the agent, Mrs. 
 B., wrote of her own accord to Mr. Myers. Mrs. B. 
 began by stating that she had submitted herself to be 
 experimented upon by a lady friend, with the view of 
 acquiring clairvoyant faculties. She then described 
 how in the course of one experiment in 1886 she lost 
 consciousness of outward things, and saw the figure 
 of a tall woman, whom she recognised as a friend of 
 her mother's, standing by her. Then she goes on : — 
 
 " I find myself seriously debating within myself what I should 
 do to prove to myself, and for my own satisfaction, if I am 
 indeed the victim of hallucination or not. I decided in a flash 
 on a man whom I knew to be possessed of the most work-a-day 
 world common-sense ; his views and mine regarding most 
 things were at the antipodes, very unreceptive, who would be 
 entirely out of sympathy with me in my present experiment and 
 experiences, at which I knew he would only laugh, while regard- 
 ing me as a simple tool in tricky hands. Such a man was, I 
 decided, the most satisfactory for my trial. The grey lady here 
 impressed me with a desire to will ; in her anxiety she appeared 
 to move towards me. I felt her will one with mine, and I willed 
 with a concentrated strength of mind and body, which finally 
 prostrated me, thus : I will that [Mr. A.] may feel I am near 
 him and want his help ; and that, without any suggestion from 
 me, he write to tell me I have influenced him to-night. 
 
 " The grey lady disappeared. I was seated in the chair, 
 weary, but feeling naturally, and back in common-place life. 
 We put down the date and the appearance of the grey lady, and 
 I spoke to none of what had happened. Some weeks passed, 
 when I received a letter from [Mr. A.], asking how had I been 
 employed on a certain July evening at such and such an hour, 
 mentioning to what hour it would answer in London — day, date, 
 and hour were those on which I had made my proof trial — 
 saying that he was asleep, and had dreamed something he 
 would tell me, but that he awoke from the dream feeling I 
 wanted something of him, and asking me to let him know if at 
 the time he so carefully mentioned I had been doing anything 
 
238 APPARITIONS AND THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 
 
 which had any reference to him. I then, and then only, told 
 him what I have here related." 
 
 Unfortunately Mr. A., on being again appealed to, 
 refused to write an account of his own experience, on 
 the ground that his memory for details might by 
 lapse of time have become untrustworthy. The case 
 is therefore defective, not merely by the length of 
 time which passed between the incident and the 
 agent's record of it, but by the absence of any direct 
 testimony from the percipient. It will be seen that 
 Mrs. B. writes of Mr. A.'s impression as a dream. It 
 seems clear, however, that Mr. A. did not himself 
 regard his experience as a dream. 
 
 An interesting account is given by Miss Edith 
 Maughan {Journal S.P.R.) of a similar experiment 
 made by her in the summer of 1888. She was 
 reading in bed when the idea occurred to her of 
 "willing" to appear to her friend, Miss Ethel 
 Thompson, who occupied the adjoining room. After 
 concentrating her attention strongly for a few minutes 
 she "felt dizzy and only half-conscious." On re- 
 covering full consciousness she heard Miss Thomp- 
 son's voice speaking in the next room. The time was 
 about 2 A.M. As a matter of fact, Miss Thompson, 
 who was fully awake, was disturbed between 2 and 
 3 A.M. by seeing at the bedside the figure of Miss 
 Maughan, which disappeared instantly on a light 
 being struck. It is not perhaps possible under the 
 circumstances, in view of Miss Maughan's own state- 
 ment that she was only semi-conscious during part of 
 the experiment, absolutely to exclude the hypothesis 
 that the figure seen was that of Miss Maughan in 
 some state analogous to somnambulism, and the case 
 is not therefore given in full; but it is important to 
 note that both ladies — and we have reason to know 
 that they are good observers — are convinced that the 
 figure seen was not that of Miss Maughan in the 
 flesh, and the rapidity of the disappearance is a 
 further argument against such a supposition. 
 
INDUCED TELEPATHIC HALLUCINATIONS. 239 
 
 In the cases so far dealt with the agent, when 
 his state is recorded, was asleep or entranced at 
 the time of the experiment, whilst the percipient 
 appears as a rule to have been awake. In the 
 cases which follow the agent was awake, but the 
 percipient, in two of the cases — if not also in the 
 third — seems to have seen the hallucinatory figure 
 in the borderland state on awaking from sleep. In 
 two of the cases the agent, no doubt intentionally, 
 chose a time when he had reason to believe that 
 the percipient would be asleep ; in the third case, 
 whilst the experiments at night failed, success was 
 obtained when the percipient had fallen asleep un- 
 expectedly in the day-time. In view of the absence 
 of any well-attested cases in which both agent and 
 percipient are shown to have been fully awake imme- 
 diately before and at the time of the experiment, — 
 in case 62 (Wesermann) the state of the agent, and 
 in case 66 ( Wiltse) that of the percipient, is not clearly 
 shown, — it is difficult to resist the conclusion that 
 the condition of sleep or trance in one or both parties 
 to the experiment is favourable to transference of this 
 kind. That sleep, or rather the borderland which lies 
 on either side of sleep, is peculiarly favourable to the 
 production in the percipient, not only of hallucinations 
 in general, but of telepathic hallucinations in particular, 
 has already been shown. But the instances cited in 
 the present chapter would seem to indicate that in the 
 agent also sleep and trance (or possibly a trance self- 
 induced in sleep or in waking) may facilitate such 
 transmissions. 
 
 No. 65.— From DR. VON SCHRENCK-NOTZING. 
 
 We received the following case from Baron von 
 Schrenck-Notzing, some of whose experiments have 
 been already quoted (No. 9, p. 54). Dr. von Schrenck- 
 Notzing first gave an account of the incident verbally 
 to Professor Sidgwick at Munich, and subsequently, 
 
240 APPARITIONS AND THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 
 
 at his request, sent in June 1888 the following written 
 narrative : — 
 
 "In the winter of 1886-87, I think it was in the month of 
 February, as I was going along the Barerstrasse one even- 
 ing at half-past 11, it occurred to me to make an attempt 
 at influencing at a distance, through mental concentration. 
 As I had had, for some time, the honour of being acquainted 
 with the family of Herr , and thus had had the oppor- 
 tunity of learning that his daughter, Fraulein , was sen- 
 sitive to psychical influences, I decided to try to influence 
 her, especially as the family lived at the corner of the 
 Barerstrasse and Karlstrasse. The windows of the dwell- 
 ing were dark as I passed by, from which I concluded that 
 the ladies had already gone to rest. I then stationed myself 
 by the wall of the houses on the opposite side of the road, 
 and for about five minutes firmly concentrated my thoughts on 
 
 the following desire: — Fraulein shall wake and think of 
 
 me. Then I went home. The next day when I met Fraulein 
 's friend on the ice, I learned from her (they shared a bed- 
 room between them) that something strange had happened 
 to the ladies during the preceding night. I remarked there- 
 upon to Fraulein Prieger (such was the friend's name) that 
 the time when the occurrence took place was between half- 
 past 11 and 12; whereat she was greatly astonished. Then I 
 obtained from the lady an account of the circumstance, as she 
 herself has written it out on the accompanying sheet of paper. 
 For me the success of this experiment was a proof that under 
 certain circumstances one person can influence another at a 
 distance. 
 
 " Albert Freiherr von Schrenck-Notzing." 
 
 The percipient, Miss , writes on May nth, 
 
 1888 :— 
 
 " There is not much to tell concerning the incident of which 
 you ask me to give an account. It happened thus: — Baron 
 Schrenck was returning home one night in March 1887 (or 
 April, I am not sure as to the date), about n.3°> an d stood 
 for some time outside my bedroom window, which looked on- 
 to the street. I was in bed at the time, lying with closed eyes, 
 nearly asleep. It seemed to me as if the part of the room 
 where my bed was had become suddenly light, and I felt com- 
 pelled to open my eyes, seeing at the same time, as it appeared 
 to me, the face of Baron Schrenck. It was gone again as quick 
 as lightning. The next day I told my friend Fraulein Prieger 
 of this occurrence ; she went skating that same day, and met 
 Baron Schrenck on the ice. They had scarcely conversed 
 
INDUCED TELEPATHIC HALLUCINATIONS. 241 
 
 together five minutes before he asked Fraulein Prieger if I 
 had seen 1 anything last night. Fraulein Prieger repeated what 
 I had told her, whereupon Baron Schrenck said that, at the 
 time of my seeing him, he was standing outside my window, 
 trying hard to impress his presence upon me. This never 
 occurred again, and I believe Baron Schrenck did not have 
 occasion to repeat the experiment." 
 
 In a further letter Miss adds (1) that the 
 
 blinds of her room were drawn down, (2) that she 
 has experienced no other hallucination of any kind. 
 
 Fraulein Prieger, whose account was enclosed in 
 Dr. von Schrenck-Notzing's letter of June 1888, 
 writes : — 
 
 " The winter before last, shortly after Christmas, I was suddenly 
 awakened in the night, between 11 and 12 o'clock, by my friend 
 
 , who asked me in an excited manner if I also saw Baron 
 
 von Schrenck, who was close by her bed. On my objecting 
 that she had been dreaming, and should now quietly go to sleep 
 again, she repeated that she had been completely awake, and 
 had seen Baron von Schrenck so close to her that she could have 
 caught hold of his beard. By degrees she quieted herself, and 
 we both went to sleep. 
 
 " The following day, on my way home from the ice, I told 
 Baron von Schrenck of this exciting nocturnal scene, and 
 noticed to my not slight astonishment that he seemed greatly 
 rejoiced, as though over a successful experiment which had 
 received its completion in what I communicated to him. 
 
 "Lina Prieger. 
 
 " Gubelsbergerstrasse, 15 I." 
 
 It is much to be regretted that none of the persons 
 concerned thought it worth while to write down an 
 account of the incident at the time. It will be 
 observed that even in the comparatively short interval 
 — little more than a year — which elapsed before this 
 was done, one slight discrepancy, as to the time at 
 which Fraulein Prieger was told of the impression, 
 has crept into the narrative. But it seems clear that 
 
 Miss told her experience before Fraulein Prieger 
 
 met Baron von Schrenck-Notzing. 
 
 In the next two cases also the result here recorded 
 
 16 
 
242 APPARITIONS AND THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 
 
 is one of many successful experiments in thought- 
 transference made by the agent (see Chapter XV.). 
 
 No. 66.— From Dr. WlLTSE, Skiddy, Kansas, U.S.A. 
 
 " March 16th, 1891. 
 " Some weeks ago several persons were passing the evening 
 at my house, and two children, a little girl of eight years and 
 a boy of six years, whose mother is stopping with us, had been 
 put to bed in an adjoining room, the door between the rooms 
 being closed. The company were engaged in games that did 
 not interest me, and I took a seat some five feet from the bed- 
 room door and began trying to make the boy see my form in 
 the room at his bedside, he being on the front side of the bed. 
 I knew the children were awake, as I could hear them laughing. 
 After some ten or fifteen minutes, the boy suddenly screamed as 
 if frightened, and, hurrying in there, I found the little fellow 
 buried up in the bedclothes and badly frightened, but he seemed 
 ashamed of his fright and would not tell me what was the 
 matter. 
 
 " I kept the matter of my having tried an experiment a 
 thorough secret, and after some two weeks it came out through 
 the little girl that Charlie thought he saw a " great big tiger 
 standing by his bed looking at him, and he could see Uncle 
 Hime (myself) in the tiger's eyes." What was the tiger? I had 
 not thought of any form but my own. The child lives in 
 Cleveland, Ohio, and has seen the collections in Zoological 
 Gardens, but has not been taught the different colours. I have 
 just now shown him the plates in Wood's Natural History, and 
 he pointed out a lion as the animal he saw, but as the plates are 
 not coloured, they are little good for the purpose ; but as I began 
 at the back of the book and took through all sorts first, and the 
 lion was the first and only animal designated by him as the one 
 he had seen in the room, I conclude he was near enough to the 
 classification for our purpose. No one but myself knew of my 
 experiment until the children had told their story. 
 
 "A. S. WlLTSE." 
 
 Dr. Wiltse writes later: — 
 
 " Skiddy, Morris Co., Kansas, 
 March 29th, 1891. 
 " I tried one more experiment of the same kind with the little 
 boy, but failed, but I was conscious of wavering in mind during 
 the whole course of the experiment, and besides this there were 
 other unfavourable conditions. The child's mother was absent 
 for the evening and the children with my own boy (aged fifteen) 
 were making Rome howl in the way of untrammelled fun." 
 
INDUCED TELEPATHIC HALLUCINATIONS. 243 
 
 Mrs. Wiltse and Dr. Wiltse's son write as follows: — 
 
 " Skiddy, Kansas, 
 
 March 28M, 1891. 
 " I was present when Josie Skene told papa what her brother 
 Charlie was scared about. 
 
 " She said that Charlie throwed the cover over his head and 
 told her that he saw a tiger, and Uncle Hime, as he called papa, 
 was in the tiger's eyes. 
 
 " Jason Wiltse." 
 
 " I certify that the above statement is substantially correct, 
 as I also heard the little girl relate it. 
 
 " Mrs. Haidee Wiltse." 
 
 Mrs. Charles Skene, the mother of the little boy, 
 writes : — 
 
 " 153 Platt Street [Cleveland, Ohio], 
 April 9t/i, 1 89 1. 
 " Your letter dated the 6th came to hand to-day. I was on 
 a visit to the Dr. and his family, and one evening he said he 
 would try an experiment on my little boy ; it was about seven 
 o'clock and they had just been put to bed. The Dr. wanted to 
 make him see him by his bedside, and him in the other room, 
 and he did ; he saw him in the form of a tiger and he also had 
 tigers in his eyes. He commenced to shout, and said he was 
 frightened, but did not say any more, he was so frightened. This 
 is my daughter's statement as far as she can recollect. 
 
 " If there are anymore questions you would like me to answer 
 I will gladly do so. I was not at home the night this happened. 
 
 " Mrs. Chas. Skene." 
 
 Later she adds : — 
 
 " April vjth, 1891. 
 " Your letter of the 17th came to hand. I do not know the 
 date, but it was about the middle of February, on a Wednesday 
 evening. My little boy is six years old ; he remembers it well, 
 and often talks of it." 
 
 Mrs. Skene added, in answer to a question, that the 
 boy did not know that the experiment was being 
 tried on him. It should be added that Mr. Rasero, 
 who was present, wrote, on the 30th October 1891, to 
 confirm Dr. Wiltse's statement that nothing was said 
 beforehand about trying an experiment of any kind. 
 
 The tiger in this experiment appears to have been 
 
244 APPARITIONS AND THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 
 
 a confused nightmare effect produced by the tele- 
 pathic impression on the mind of the child percipient. 
 In the next case, it will be seen, the percept appears 
 to have been unusually clear and distinct. 
 
 No. 67. — From Joseph Kirk. 1 
 
 Mr. Kirk has made several attempts to produce a 
 hallucination of himself. Writing to us on the 7th July 
 1890, he stated that without the knowledge of his friend 
 and neighbour, Miss G., he tried each night, from the 
 10th to the 20th of June, and once on the nth in the 
 afternoon, to induce her to see a hallucination of him- 
 self. From casual conversation, however, with Miss 
 G. he gathered that no effect had been produced. 
 But on June 23rd Mr. Kirk learned that the trial 
 made on June nth, the day and hour of which had 
 been noted at the time, had completely succeeded. 
 He thus describes the occasion : — 
 
 " 2 Ripon Villas, Plumstead. 
 
 "... I had been rather closely engaged on some auditing 
 work, which had tired me, and as near as I can remember the 
 time was between 3.30 and 4 P.M. that I laid down my pencil, 
 stretched myself, and in the act of doing the latter I was seized 
 with the impulse to make a trial on Miss G. I did not, of 
 course, know where she was at the moment, but, with a flash, 
 as it were, I transferred myself to her bedroom. I cannot say 
 why I thought of that spot, unless it was that I did so because 
 my first experiment had been made there — i.e., on the previous 
 night, the 10th June. As it happened, it was what I must call 
 a 4 lucky shot,' for I caught her at the moment she was lightly 
 sleeping in her chair — a condition which seems to be peculiarly 
 favourable to receiving and externalising telepathic messages. 
 
 " The figure seen by Miss G. was clothed in a suit I was at 
 the moment wearing, and was bareheaded, the latter as would 
 be the case, of course, in an office. This suit is of a dark 
 reddish-brown check stuff, and it was an unusual circumstance 
 for me to have had on the coat at the time, as I wear, as a rule, 
 an office coat of light material. But this office coat I had, a 
 day or so before, sent to a tailor to be repaired, and I had, 
 therefore, to keep on that belonging to the dark suit. 
 
 " I tested the reality of the vision by this dark suit. I asked, 
 
 * See Nos. 37, 38, 39, Chapter V. 
 
INDUCED TELEPATHIC HALLUCINATIONS. 245 
 
 4 How was I dressed?' (not at all a leading question). The 
 reply of Miss G. was, touching the sleeve of the coat I was then 
 wearing (of a light suit), * Not this coat, but that dark suit you 
 wear sometimes. I even saw clearly the small check pattern of 
 it ; and I saw your features as plainly as though you had been 
 bodily present. I could not have seen you more distinctly.' " 
 
 Miss G.'s account is: — 
 
 "June 28th, 1890. 
 "A peculiar occurrence happened to me on the Wednesday 
 of the week before last. In the afternoon (being tired by a 
 morning walk), while sitting in an easy-chair near the window 
 of my own room, I fell asleep. At any time I happen to sleep 
 during the day (which is but seldom) I invariably awake with 
 tired, uncomfortable sensations, which take some little time to 
 pass off; but that afternoon, on the contrary, I was suddenly 
 quite wide awake, seeing Mr. Kirk standing near my chair, 
 dressed in a dark brown coat, which I had frequently seen him 
 wear. His back was towards the window, his right hand 
 towards me ; he passed across the room towards the door, 
 which is opposite the window, the space between being 15 feet, 
 the furniture so arranged as to leave just that centre clear ; but 
 when he got about 4 feet from the door, which was closed, he 
 disappeared. 
 
 " I feel sure I had not been dreaming of him, and cannot 
 remember that anything had happened to cause me even to 
 think of him that afternoon before falling asleep." 
 
 Mr. Kirk writes later: — 
 
 " I have only succeeded once in making myself visible to 
 Miss G. since the occasion I have already reported, and that 
 had the singularity of being only my features — my face in 
 miniature, that is, about three inches in diameter." 
 
 In a letter dated January 19th, 1891, Mr. Kirk 
 says as to this last appearance: — 
 
 " Miss G. did not record this at the time, as she attached no 
 importance to it, but I noted the date (July 23rd) on my office 
 blotting-pad, as it was at the office I was thinking of her. I say 
 ' thinking,' because I was doing so in connection with another 
 subject, and with no purpose of making an experiment. I had 
 a headache, and was resting my head on my left hand. 
 Suddenly it occurred to me that my thinking about her might 
 probably influence her in some way, and I made the note I 
 have mentioned." 
 
246 APPARITIONS AND THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 
 
 Mr. Kirk enclosed in his statement to us the piece 
 of blotting-paper on which the note of the second 
 successful experiment had been made. The fact 
 that the hallucination in the first case included a 
 representation of the clothes actually worn by the 
 agent at the time may have been a mere coincidence. 
 But the case should be borne in mind in considering 
 the possibility of heteroplastic hallucination. 
 
247 
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 
 SPONTANEOUS TELEPATHIC HALLUCINATIONS. 
 
 In the last chapter we gave illustrations of telepathic 
 hallucinations induced by an act of voluntary concen- 
 tration on the part of the agent. The hallucinatory 
 effects now to be described were produced without 
 design, and in some cases, it would appear, without 
 the conscious direction of the agent's thoughts to the 
 person affected. They purport, in fact, to have been 
 the spontaneous outcome of some emotional stress 
 on the part of the person whom the hallucination 
 represented. 
 
 Auditory Hallucinations. 
 
 We will begin by quoting two examples of auditory 
 hallucination. 
 
 No. 68.— From MlSS C. CLARK. 
 
 " 1889. 
 
 " I heard some one sobbing one evening last August (1888) 
 about 10 P.M. It was in the house in Dunbar, Scotland, as I 
 was preparing to go to bed. Feeling convinced that it was my 
 youngest sister, I advised another sister not to go into the next 
 room, whence the sounds seemed to proceed. After waiting 
 with me a few minutes this sister went into the dining-room, 
 and returned to me saying that our youngest sister was in the 
 dining-room, and not crying at all. Then I at once thought 
 there must be something the matter with my greatest friend, a 
 girl of twenty-four, then in Lincolnshire. I wrote to her next 
 day, asking her if, and at what hour on the previous night, she 
 had been crying. In her next letter she said, ' Yes, she was 
 
248 APPARITIONS AND THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 
 
 suffering great pain with toothache just at the time, and was 
 unable to restrain a few sobs.' . . . This has been the only 
 similar experience I have had." 
 
 I have seen the letter referred to, together with 
 three others, extracts from which are given below. 
 It will be seen that Miss Clark was mistaken in 
 supposing that she wrote next day. The letter was 
 actually begun three days after — on the Wednes- 
 day — and completed on the subsequent day, after 
 the receipt of Miss Maughan's letter written on the 
 Tuesday evening. In view, however, of the fact 
 that Miss Clark wrote of her impression before the 
 receipt of her friend's letter, the mistake seems not 
 material. 
 
 From Miss Clark. 
 
 " Dunbar, 
 "Wednesday, August 22nd, 1888, 9 P.M. 
 "Were you crying on Sunday night near eleven o'clock? 
 Because I distinctly heard some one crying, and supposed it 
 was H. in the next room, but she was not there at all. 
 
 "Then I thought it must be something 'occult,' and that it 
 might be you, and I felt so horrid." 
 
 " Thursday, August 23rd, 1888, 4.45 P.M. 
 " Thank you very much for your letter just come. I am so 
 sorry your face was sore. Did it make you cry on Sunday 
 night?" 
 
 From Miss Maughan. 
 
 (The cover of this letter has been preserved, and 
 bears the postmark, " Spilsby, Aug. 22nd, 1888.") 
 
 "Tuesday Evening, Aug. 21st, 1888. 
 " On Sunday we went to see Wroxham Broad. We had an 
 immense amount of walking to do altogether, and I think I got 
 a little cold in my face in the morning, and all night I suffered 
 with it, and my face is swelled still." 
 
 In a second letter Miss Maughan writes : — 
 
 "Thursday, August 23rd, 11 P.M. 
 " I am putting poultices on my gums. I have never had such 
 a huge swelling before, and it wortt go down. It is so horribly 
 uncomfortable." 
 
SPONTANEOUS HALLUCINATIONS. 249 
 
 " Saturday Afternoon. 
 " Thanks for letter. Yes, I was crying on Sunday night ; 
 only on account of the pain. It was awful, but I only cried 
 quietly, as Edith was asleep. . . 
 
 From Miss Clark. 
 
 "Monday, August 27th, 1888, 10.30 A.M. 
 " Thanks for your letter. I am sorry it was you crying. You 
 don't seem at all struck. I was very much so. It was a sub- 
 dued sort {sic) I heard, and thought H. was trying not to let it 
 be heard. I shall always be afraid now of hearing things." 
 
 The sound here was of an inarticulate kind, nor was 
 it immediately referred to the actual agent, and both 
 these facts must be held to detract from the evidential 
 value of the coincidence. In the next case, however, 
 the voice, it will be seen, was at once recognised. 
 The voice in this case awoke the percipient, and the 
 impression should therefore be classed as a hallucina- 
 tion rather than as a dream, but it was of the " border- 
 land " type. The uneasiness caused to the percipient, 
 as attested by the letter and telegram sent, is sufficient 
 proof that the impression was of a kind unusual in his 
 experience. 
 
 No. 69. — From Mr. William Tudor. 
 
 "Auburndale, Mass., July nth, 1890. 
 
 "Your favour 1 of the 30th ult., addressed to Mrs. Tudor, I 
 will answer, as the incident more directly concerned me. 
 
 u Late in the evening of Monday, March 17th, near midnight, 
 my nephew, Frederic Tudor, Jun., fell in front of an electric car 
 going to Cambridge, was dragged some distance and so badly 
 injured that for a time his life was in doubt, though he recovered 
 with the loss of a foot. My wife heard of the accident on 
 Tuesday afternoon and was much distressed all the night of 
 Tuesday, and quite restless and wakeful. 
 
 "At this time I was in Gainesville, Florida, having im- 
 portant business there in connection with land purchases. 
 On the night of Tuesday I went to bed rather early in a calm 
 
 1 Mr. Tudor wrote to Dr. Hodgson in answer to a letter received 
 from him. 
 
2$0 APPARITIONS AND THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 
 
 state of mind. I slept soundly, as I usually do. About mid- 
 night, as I should judge, I heard my wife call my name quite 
 distinctly and waked instantly broad awake. I sat up in bed, 
 but soon remembering where I was, fell asleep again and waked 
 no more until morning. The next day the incident of the night 
 made me quite uneasy, also during the following day, and as I 
 was obliged to leave on the afternoon of Friday for a rough 
 journey in the country I telegraphed to my wife to know what 
 was the matter. I usually receive a letter from home every day, 
 and on these days no letter arrived, which added to my un- 
 easiness. No answer was received to my first telegram, for the 
 very good reason that it was never delivered. I was obliged to 
 start, however, in the afternoon of this day, Friday the 21st, 
 and in the morning of the 22nd, from a small town called New 
 Branford, sent another telegram, of which the following is the 
 substance:— ' Shall be gone three days; what has happened? 
 Answer Branford. 5 I had a strong impression that something 
 serious had occurred, that my wife was possibly ill, or some of 
 the children were ill, or that some accident or death had 
 occurred to a near relation, not however involving my immediate 
 family. The following extracts from my letters will illustrate 
 this feeling : — 
 
 " Letter of March 19th : 
 
 " ' I thought you called me last night. I waked up and was 
 much worried ; I hope you are not ill.' 
 
 " Letter of March 22nd, from New Branford : 
 
 " ' No answer comes to my telegram, although I left word to 
 have it forwarded here. Surely some one would telegraph if 
 you were ill. Surely you would let me know if anything had 
 happened. I do not feel that anything serious has happened, 
 and yet I cannot understand such a combination of circum- 
 stances. I have no confidence in these telegraph people, and 
 daresay you never received my message.' 
 
 " Letter of March 24th, from Gainesville, after telegram giving 
 account of accident was finally received : 
 
 " ' I had a feeling that something was wrong but that you were 
 all right.' 
 
 " Such I give as the substance of the facts in this case, which 
 I trust may be interesting to the Society. 
 
 "William Tudor." 
 
 Mrs. W. Tudor writes : — 
 
 " AUBURNDALE,/z^/ 2()th, 1890. 
 " My nephew's accident occurred on Monday night. Being 
 out of town I heard of it on Tuesday afternoon. I immediately 
 went to Boston and returned the same evening about nine 
 o'clock, feeling greatly distressed. I wrote a letter to my 
 
SPONTANEOUS HALLUCINATIONS. 2$ I 
 
 husband after my return describing the accident and retired to 
 bed rather late and passed a restless night. The telegram 
 received from my husband rather surprised me, as he is not 
 usually anxious when away from home. I believe this is all I 
 know connected with this incident. Elizabeth Tudor." 
 
 An account of a similar experience was sent to us 
 in 1889 by the late Sir John Drummond Hay, K.C.B. 
 He wrote that about I A.M. on some day in February 
 1879 he heard distinctly the voice of his daughter-in- 
 law saying, " Oh, I wish papa only knew that Robert 
 was ill." Sir John awoke Lady Drummond Hay to 
 tell her what he had heard, and made a note of the 
 incident in his diary. It was shortly ascertained that 
 Mr. R. D. Hay had been taken seriously ill on that 
 night, and that Mrs. Hay had used the words heard. 
 Sir John's account is confirmed by Lady Hay and 
 Mrs. R. D. Hay. 
 
 Visual Hallucinations. 
 
 The comparative frequency of auditory hallucin- 
 ations, and especially the ease with which auditory 
 illusions can be built up on a basis of real sound, 
 render coincidences of the kind, even the best 
 attested, of less service to support, however valu- 
 able as illustrating, the theory of telepathy. Visual 
 hallucinations, however, present us with a much rarer 
 type of impression, and one in which explanation by 
 illusion is comparatively seldom possible. Telepathic 
 hallucinations, like ordinary non-coincidental hallucin- 
 ations, may assume various forms, and instances of 
 grotesque and partially developed visual impressions 
 are not wanting. Thus we have a case in which 
 the face of a dying relative was recognised in the 
 middle of a large ball of light like a firework (Journal, 
 October 1891); and Mr. Sherer, of Amble, North- 
 umberland, tells us that he saw reflected in a ship's 
 compass the face of a young lady to whom he was 
 engaged, at about the time of her death. In the 
 
2$2 APPARITIONS AND THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 
 
 following case the hallucination, though still far from 
 complete, appears to have been more realistic and 
 more fully developed. 
 
 No. 70.— From Countess Eugenie Kapnist. 
 
 [Writing on June 24th, 1891, the percipient explains that in Feb- 
 ruary 1889 she and her sister made the acquaintance at Talta of a 
 Mr. P., who was at that time in an advanced stage of consumption. 
 On one occasion, in the course of conversation, Mr. P. promised 
 Countess Ina Kapnist, in the presence of the narrator, that 
 should he die before her he would endeavour to appear to her. 
 The Countess and her sister met Mr. P. occasionally after this 
 conversation, and frequently saw him walking about in a nut- 
 brown overcoat, which caused them some amusement. They 
 left Talta, however, in May 1889, and in the course of a few 
 months had completely forgotten Mr. P. and his wife, whom 
 they regarded merely in the light of ordinary acquaintances. 
 On the 1 2th March 1890 the two ladies, on their way home 
 from the theatre, drove to the railway station with a friend who 
 was to return at 1 A.M. to Tsarskoe\] 
 
 " On leaving the station," the Countess writes, " our servant 
 went on before to find the carriage, so that on reaching the steps 
 we found it had driven up and was waiting for us. My sister 
 was the first to take her seat ; I kept her waiting, as I descended 
 the steps more slowly ; the servant held the door of the landau 
 open. With one foot on the step I suddenly stood still, arrested 
 in the act of entering the carriage, and stunned with surprise. 
 It was dark inside the carriage, and nevertheless, facing my 
 sister and looking at her, I saw in a faint grey light which 
 seemed unnatural, and which was clearest at the point on which 
 my eyes were fixed, a face in profile, not so much vague as soft 
 and transparent. This vision only lasted an instant, during 
 which, however, my eyes noted the smallest details of the face, 
 which seemed familiar to me; the rather sharp features, the 
 hair parted a little on one side, the prominent nose, the sharp 
 chin with its sparse, light brown beard. What strikes me 
 when I think of it now is the fact that I could distinguish the 
 different colours, though the greyish light which scarcely 
 revealed the stranger would have been insufficient to enable 
 me to distinguish them in ordinary circumstances. He had no 
 hat, but wore a top-coat, such as is worn in the South, in colour 
 a rather light nut-brown. His whole person had an air of great 
 weariness and emaciation. The servant, much surprised that 
 I did not enter the carriage but remained petrified on the step, 
 thought I had trodden on my gown, and helped me to seat 
 
SPONTANEOUS HALLUCINATIONS. 253 
 
 myself, while I asked my sister, as I took my place beside her, if 
 it was really our carriage, so much was I confused and stupefied 
 by seeing a stranger seated opposite her. It had not occurred 
 to me that if a real person had been sitting there, neither my 
 sister nor the footman would have remained so quietly face to 
 face with him. When I was seated I no longer saw anything, 
 and I asked my sister, 'Did you see nothing opposite you?' 
 ' Nothing whatever, and what possessed you to ask as you got 
 in if it was really our carriage ? 1 she answered laughing. Then 
 I told her what I have related above, describing my vision 
 minutely. * That familiar face,' said she, ' the hair parted at 
 the side, the nut-brown coat, where have we seen it ? Certainly 
 nothing here answers to your description,' and we racked our 
 brains without finding any clue. After we got home we related 
 the incident to our mother ; my description made her also re- 
 member vaguely a similar face. The next evening (March 12th) 
 a young man of our acquaintance, Mr. Solovovo, came to see us. 
 I told him also what had just occurred. We discussed it at 
 some length, but fruitlessly. I still could not find the right 
 name for the man of my vision, though I remembered quite 
 well having seen a face exactly similar among my numerous 
 acquaintances, but when and where ? I could remember 
 nothing, with my bad memory, which often fails me in this 
 fashion. Some days later we were calling on Mr. Solovovo's 
 grandmother. 'Do you know, 7 she said, 'what sad news I 
 have just received from Talta? Mr. P. has just died, but I 
 have heard no details.' My sister and I looked at each other. 
 At the mention of this name the pointed face and the nut-brown 
 top-coat found their possessor. My sister recognised him at 
 the same time as myself, thanks to my minute description. 
 When Mr. Solovovo entered I begged him to find the exact 
 date of the death in the newspapers. The date of the death 
 was given as the 14th of March, that is to say two days after 
 my vision. I wrote to Talta for information, and learned that 
 Mr. P. was confined to bed from the 24th November, and that 
 from that time he was in a very feeble state, but sleep never left 
 him. He slept so long and so profoundly, even during the last 
 night of his life, that hopes were entertained of his improve- 
 ment. 
 
 "We were much astonished that it was I who saw Mr. P., 
 although he had promised to appear to my sister ; but here I 
 ought to add that before the occurrence mentioned above I 
 had been clairvoyante a certain number of times ; but this 
 vision is certainly the one in which I distinguished details 
 most clearly, even down to the colours of the face and 
 dress. 
 
 " Comtesse Eugenie Kapnist. 
 
 COMTESSE INA KAPNIST." 
 
254 APPARITIONS AND THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 
 
 The second signature is that of the sister who was 
 present at the time. The account above given, it 
 should be explained, is a translation from the original 
 French. 
 
 Our friend, Mr. Petrovo-Solovovo, through whom 
 we obtained the account, writes : — 
 
 " I have much pleasure in certifying that the fact of Countess 
 Kapnist's vision was mentioned, among others, to myself before 
 the news of Mr. P.'s death came to St. Petersburg. I well 
 remember seeing an announcement of his demise in the 
 papers." 
 
 The narrative presents several points of interest. 
 The deferred recognition is by no means without 
 parallel (see case 68 and cases 26, 191, etc., in 
 Phantasms), but in this case the interval which elapsed 
 before the identification of the phantasm was unusu- 
 ally prolonged. Of course the fact that the vision 
 was not identified beforehand is an element of weak- 
 ness in the case, but as the deep impression left on 
 the percipient by her vision seems well established, 
 we have some warrant for assuming that the details 
 have been accurately remembered. And if we may 
 accept these details the case throws light upon the 
 genesis of such hallucinations. That a dying man, 
 whilst failing to impress the idea of his own person- 
 ality upon the mind of a distant acquaintance, should 
 succeed in calling up the image — to himself of quite 
 secondary importance — of the clothes which he 
 habitually wore, would seem at first sight a paradox. 
 But the difficulty disappears if we recognise that 
 the telepathic impression in such cases is probably 
 received and the hallucination elaborated by a sub- 
 conscious stratum of the intelligence, and that the 
 picture is in due time flashed up thence fully formed 
 to the ordinary consciousness. The image of the 
 clothes worn by the agent, trivial and unessential to 
 himself, would not improbably bulk more largely in 
 the conception formed of him by an acquaintance, 
 
SPONTANEOUS HALLUCINATIONS. 255 
 
 and might even find an echo in the percipient's 
 consciousness when the image of the man himself 
 had been obliterated by more recent memories. It 
 is possible that the arrested development of the 
 hallucination may have some connection with the 
 imperfect recognition. 
 
 In the following case also the hallucination, though 
 recognised, appears to have fallen short of complete 
 embodiment. 
 
 No. 71.— From Miss L. Caldecott. 
 
 "February nth, 1890. 
 
 " A sensation of faint glowing light in the darkest corner of 
 the room made me first look in that direction (which happened 
 to be next the door), and I then became aware of some one 
 standing there, holding her hands outstretched as if in appeal. 
 My first impression was that it was my sister, and I said, 
 4 What's the matter?-' but instantly saw who it was — a friend, 
 who was at that time in Scotland. I felt completely riveted, 
 but though my heart and pulses were beating unnaturally fast, 
 neither much frightened nor surprised, only with a sort of 
 impulse to get up and go after the figure, which I could not 
 move to do. The form seemed to melt away into the soft glow, 
 which then also died out It was about half-past ten at night. 
 
 I was at my home in . The date I am unable to fix nearer 
 
 than that it was either August or September 1887. 
 
 " I was perfectly well. I was reading Carlyle's Sartor 
 Resartus at the time. I was in no trouble or anxiety of any 
 kind. Age about twenty-six. 
 
 " I had not seen my friend for about a year. I wrote to her 
 the day after this happened, but, before my letter reached her, 
 received one in which she told me of a great family trouble that 
 was causing her much suffering, and saying that she had been 
 longing for me to help her. Another letter in answer to mine 
 then told me that her previous letter was written about 10.30 
 on the night I saw her, and that she had been wishing for my 
 presence then most intensely. My friend died very shortly 
 afterwards. 
 
 " No other persons were present at the time." 
 
 One of the agent's letters, written in reply to a 
 letter from Miss Caldecott describing the apparition, 
 has fortunately been preserved. The letter is dated 
 
256 APPARITIONS AND THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 
 
 August 16th, 1888. The following extracts were 
 written down by Mrs. Sidgwick from Miss Caldecott's 
 dictation : — 
 
 " 1 Your account is very strange, and I cannot quite make up 
 my mind what to think of it. If it had not been that on that 
 very Tuesday night I really was thinking of you very much, and 
 wishing from the bottom of my heart that I could get at you, I 
 should be inclined to say that your apparition was entirely 
 subjective, and that you imagined you saw me. But if there is 
 any connection between mind and mind, why should it not be 
 so, and that it really was because I was wishing so hard I could 
 be with you. You know that was the night I got back. I 
 unpacked some of my things, and then began to write to you. 
 It was then somewhere between eleven and twelve. At all 
 events, I remember it struck twelve some time after I got into 
 bed. . . . Tell me anything you can of my general appearance, 
 and so forth. If you saw me as I was at the time it seems 
 fairly conclusive it was my thinking of you caused you to see 
 me, and not indigestion on your part, and entirely independent 
 of me."' 
 
 In conversation Mrs. Sidgwick learnt that the face 
 and hands of the figure were seen most clearly. The 
 hands appeared as if held out, palms upward. The 
 dress was " rather indefinite. She looked as Miss 
 Caldecott was accustomed to see her, but Miss 
 Caldecott did not notice the dress particularly, and 
 did not see the figure clearly at all below the knees." 
 Miss Caldecott has had a visual hallucination on two 
 other occasions, when she was in bed recovering from 
 an illness. At the time of the vision above described 
 she was in perfect health. It will be observed that 
 the phantasm developed gradually, the percipient's 
 attention having been first arrested by noticing the 
 glow in the corner of the room. (Compare No. 84, 
 Chapter XI L, and the cases given in Phantasms of 
 the Livings vol. i., chap, xii.) It will be seen that the 
 percipient's recollection was at fault, both as to the 
 date and the hour of the incident. But a discrepancy 
 of this kind cannot be regarded as serious. Persons 
 whose lives are not marked off — e.g., by changes of resi- 
 dence or occupation — into distinct periods, frequently 
 
SPONTANEOUS HALLUCINATIONS. 257 
 
 experience a difficulty in assigning to the right year 
 even an event of importance. But in this case the 
 incident in itself was trivial, and there was no land- 
 mark by which to determine its relation, in point of 
 time, to external events. A mistake in the date 
 under such circumstances can scarcely be held to 
 reflect upon the narrator's general accuracy. 
 
 In the next case also the apparition was pre- 
 ceded and accompanied by a luminous effect. In 
 this instance, however, the percipient appears to 
 have been in bed, and the hallucination should 
 be classed as a "borderland" case. It will be seen 
 that the apparition preceded the actual death by 
 several hours, but apparently coincided with a period 
 of severe illness, 
 
 No. 72. — From Dr. Carat. 1 
 
 "25 bis Rue Victor-Hugo, Malakoff, 
 Paris, July 20IA, 1891. 
 " My mother, from the time she was twenty-five years old, 
 had suffered from an affection of the lungs, but she had kept her 
 health, although she had gone through many troubles. There 
 was nothing to indicate what happened on the nth June 1877 
 — she succumbed in a few hours to an attack of inflammation 
 of the lungs ; indeed, I had two days before that date received 
 a letter from her in which she showed no anxiety about her 
 health. 
 
 "On the night of the 10th June 1877 I had what might be 
 called a telepathic hallucination. I cannot state the hour with 
 absolute precision, but it was between ten o'clock and mid- 
 night. About that time, c between sleeping and waking, 5 I saw 
 the end of my room lighted up, the darkness was illuminated by 
 a silvery light (it is the only word I can think of), and I saw my 
 mother gazing fixedly at me, with a sort of troubled expression. 
 After a few seconds it all disappeared. 
 
 " Next day one of my friends — M. Laroche, now sub-director 
 of the Conservateur Co., 18 Rue Lafayette — was breakfasting 
 with me. I told him about my experience, and he too regarded 
 it as a hallucination. At parting I said to him, 4 Remember, 
 Laroche, if anything happens, that I have told you this to-day.' 
 
 1 Annates des Sciences Psychiques, July- August 1893, pp. 196, 197. 
 
 17 
 
258 APPARITIONS AND THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 
 
 " Next day I received news of my mother's death. 
 ^ " I have never on any other occasion experienced a hallucina- " 
 tion, or anything approaching to it.' 5 
 
 From M. Laroche. 
 
 [To Professor Richet.] 
 
 " Sir, — After an absence from home I have just returned and 
 found awaiting me the letter which you did me the honour to 
 write on the 7th inst., on the subject of a vision which my friend 
 Dr. Carat had on the eve of his mother's death, at a time when 
 he believed her to be in good health at Dunkirk. The circum- 
 stance was told me by Dr. Carat immediately after it occurred. ' 
 You can make any use of my testimony you think fit. 
 
 " Laroche." 
 
 From the last case we pass, by an easy transition, 
 to those completely externalised apparitions which 
 cheat the senses by the life-like presentment of a 
 human figure. 
 
 No. 73. — From Miss Berta Hurly, Waterbeach 
 Vicarage, Cambridge. 
 
 " February 1890. 
 " In the spring and summer of 1886 I often visited a poor 
 woman called Evans, who lived in our parish, Caynham. She 
 was very ill with a painful disease, and it was, as she said, a 
 great pleasure when I went to see her; and I frequently sat 
 with her and read to her. Towards the middle of October she 
 was evidently growing weaker, but there seemed no immediate 
 danger. I had not called on her for several days, and one even- 
 ing I was standing in the dining-room after dinner with the rest 
 of the family, when I saw the figure of a woman dressed like 
 Mrs. Evans, in large apron and muslin cap, pass across the 
 room from one door to the other, where she disappeared. I 
 said, 'Who is that?' My mother said, 6 What do you mean?' 
 and I said, 'That woman who has just come in and walked 
 over to the other door.' They all laughed at me, and said I 
 was dreaming, but I felt sure it was Mrs. Evans, and next 
 morning we heard she was dead. 
 
 " Berta Hurly." 
 
 Miss Hurly's mother writes : — 
 
 "On referring to my diary for the month of October 1886, 
 I find the following entry : — 1 19th. Berta startled us all after 
 
SPONTANEOUS HALLUCINATIONS. 259 
 
 dinner, about 8.30 last evening, by saying she saw the figure of 
 a woman pass across the dining-room, and that it was Mrs. 
 Evans. This morning we hear the poor woman is dead.' On 
 inquiring at the cottage we found she had become wandering 
 in her mind, and at times unconscious, about the time she 
 appeared to Berta, and died towards the morning. 
 
 "Annie Ross. 
 
 " February 2$/h, 1890." 
 
 In this case the apparition, it will have been 
 observed, was mistaken for a real person. We 
 should not be justified, however, in concluding that 
 the sensory effect produced was comparable in 
 intensity to that which would have been caused 
 had a real figure walked across the room. Percep- 
 tion is so largely a psychical process that it is difficult 
 in any particular case to assign a definite value to the 
 sensory element. And in a case of this kind, where, 
 as appears to be generally the case with telepathic 
 hallucinations, the vision is of brief duration, the 
 difficulty is, of course, increased. 
 
 The hallucination in this, as in the previous case, 
 occurred some hours before the death, and the 
 evidential value of the coincidence is so far lessened. 
 But it is perhaps worth while pointing out that we 
 have no warrant in theory for concluding that in 
 a case of death after prolonged illness the actual 
 moment of dissolution is more favourable for the 
 initiation of a telepathic impulse than any moment 
 in the hours or days of illness preceding death ; nor, 
 if due allowance be made for the tendency to exag- 
 gerate the closeness of coincidence, is it clear that 
 there is sufficient evidence at present to support any 
 such conclusion. On the other hand, in cases of 
 accident or momentary illness, we have more than 
 one case where the impression is shown, on good 
 evidence, to have occurred within, at most, an hour 
 of death. 1 In the narrative which follows, the vision, 
 it will be seen, took place some days before the actual 
 
 1 See, for instance, Phantasms of the Livings cases 28, 79, etc. 
 
260 APPARITIONS AND THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 
 
 death, during the crisis of a serious illness, of which 
 the percipient was not at the time aware. 
 
 No. 74. — From Mrs. McAlpine, Garscadden, 
 Bearsden, Glasgow. 
 
 The following account was enclosed in a letter, 
 dated April 12th, 1892. We had previously received 
 a somewhat briefer account, dated May 7th, 1891, 
 which agrees in all essential particulars with the one 
 printed below: — 
 
 "On the 25th March 1891 my husband and I were staying at 
 Furness Abbey Hotel, Barrow-in-Furness, with a friend of ours, 
 the late Mr. A. D. Bryce Douglas, of Seafield Tower, Ardrossan. 
 He was managing director of the ' Naval Construction Arma- 
 ment Company, 5 and had resided at Furness Abbey Hotel for 
 some eighteen months or more. He had invited us, along with 
 a number of other friends, to the launch of the Empress of 
 China. We breakfasted with Mr. Bryce Douglas on the day 
 of the launch, the 25th, and afterwards saw the launch, had 
 luncheon at the shipyard, and returned to the hotel. He 
 appeared to be in his usual health and spirits (he was a power- 
 fully-built man, and justly proud of his fine constitution). The 
 following day (Thursday) he left with a party of gentlemen, to 
 sail from Liverpool to Ardrossan, on the trial trip of the Empress 
 of Japan (another large steamer which had been built at his 
 yard). 
 
 " We remained on at the hotel for some days with our son 
 Bob, aged twenty-three, who was staying there, superintending 
 work which Mr. McAlpine was carrying on at Barrow. 
 
 " On the Monday night, the 30th, I went upstairs after dinner. 
 On my way down again I saw Mr. Bryce Douglas standing in 
 the doorway of his sitting-room. I saw him quite distinctly. 
 He looked at me with a sad expression. He was wearing a cap 
 which I had never seen him wear. I walked on and left him 
 standing there. It was then about ten minutes to eight. I told 
 my husband and Bob. We all felt alarmed, and we immediately 
 sent the following telegram, ' How is Mr. Bryce Douglas?' to 
 Miss Caldwell, his sister-in-law, who kept house for him at 
 Seafield. It was too late for a reply that night. On Tuesday 
 morning we received a wire from her; it ran thus: 4 Mr. Bryce 
 Douglas dangerously ill.' That telegram was the first intimation 
 of his illness which reached Barrow. As will be seen in the 
 account of his illness and death in the Barrow News, he died 
 
SPONTANEOUS HALLUCINATIONS. 26l 
 
 on the following Sunday, and we afterwards ascertained from 
 Miss Caldwell that he was unconscious on Monday evening, at 
 the time I saw him. 
 
 " My husband and son can corroborate this, and I have also 
 letters which bear out my statements." 
 
 Mrs. McAlpine enclosed a copy of the Barrow 
 News for April nth, 1891, containing a memoir of 
 Mr. Bryce Douglas, and a full account of his last 
 illness and death. It appears from this account that 
 he left Barrow on Thursday, March 26th, to join the 
 steamer Empress of Japan. He was noticed by his 
 friends to be far from well on Wednesday, the previous 
 day, on the occasion of the launch of the Empress of 
 China, and was advised to go home. He did not do 
 so, however, until the Sunday, when he was put ashore 
 at Ardrossan, and walked home to Seafield — a distance 
 of nearly two miles. His medical man was sent for 
 the same day, and the case was considered serious 
 from the first, and on the following Thursday the 
 doctors pronounced it hopeless. He died on April 
 5th, at about 5 A.M. 
 
 From the evidence which follows it seems clear that 
 if any anxiety as to his health was felt before he left 
 Barrow, as suggested in the newspaper report, Mrs. 
 McAlpine knew nothing of it. 
 
 Mr. Myers writes: — 
 
 " I discussed the incident connected with the death of Mr. 
 Bryce Douglas with Mr. and Mrs. McAlpine and Mr. McAlpine, 
 Jun., on February 24th, 1892. I believe that their evidence has 
 been very carefully given. Mr. McAlpine knew Mr. Bryce 
 Douglas intimately. Mr. Bryce Douglas was a robust and 
 vigorous man, and disliked ever to be supposed to be ill. Mr. 
 McAlpine therefore felt great unwillingness to telegraph to him 
 about his health, but from his previous knowledge of phenomena 
 occurring to Mrs. McAlpine, he felt sure that her vision must be 
 in some sense veridical." 
 
 Mrs. McAlpine's husband and his son corroborate 
 as follows: — 
 
262 APPARITIONS AND THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 
 
 "April 1892. 
 
 "I was at Barrow on the 25th of March of last year (1891), 
 and distinctly remember the incident of the following Monday 
 night. I can bear testimony to the statements made by my 
 wife and son. 
 
 "Robert McAlpine." 
 
 "Garscadden House, April ^th, 1892. 
 " I was living for several months in the Furness Abbey Hotel, 
 at Barrow-in-Furness, and I remember father and mother coming 
 for a few days in order to see the launch of the Empress of 
 China on the 25th of March 1891, and on the following day 
 (Thursday) Mr. Bryce Douglas (who was then in his usual 
 health) left with a party of friends on the trial trip of the 
 Empress of Japan. I also distinctly remember that the follow- 
 ing Monday night (30th) my father and I were sitting at the 
 drawing-room fire after dinner, and mother came in looking 
 very pale and startled, and said she had been upstairs and had 
 seen Mr. Bryce Douglas standing at the door of his sitting-room 
 (he had used this sitting-room for nearly two years). Both my 
 father and I felt anxious, and after some discussion we sent a 
 telegram to Mr. Bryce Douglas's residence at Ardrossan asking 
 how he was, and the following morning had the reply, c Keeping 
 better, but not out of danger,' or words to that effect. I can 
 assert positively that no one in Barrow knew of his illness until 
 after the receipt of that telegram. 
 
 "Robert McAlpine, Jun." 
 
 Letters corroborating the above account have also 
 been received from Miss Caldwell, sister-in-law to 
 Mr. Bryce Douglas, to whom the telegram was sent, 
 and who writes : " I was very much surprised at 
 receiving it ; " from Mrs. Scarlett, the wife of the 
 proprietor of the Furness Abbey Hotel, and from 
 Miss Charlton, of Barrow-in-Furness, both of whom 
 were cognisant of the circumstances at the time. 1 
 
 Mrs. McAlpine has had several other apparently 
 telepathic experiences, one of them a vision coinciding 
 with the death of the infant child of her brother. 
 
 In the next case the vision occurred about two 
 hours after the actual death. 
 
 1 These letters will be found in full in the account of the case pub- 
 lished in Proc. S.P.R., vol. x., part xxvi. 
 
SPONTANEOUS HALLUCINATIONS. 263 
 
 No. 75.— From Miss Mabel Gore Booth. 
 
 "Lissadell, Sligo, February 1891. 
 "On the 10th of April 1889, at about half-past nine o'clock 
 A.M., my youngest brother and I were going down a short flight 
 of stairs leading to the kitchen, to fetch food for my chickens, 
 as usual. We were about half-way down, my brother a few 
 steps in advance of me, when he suddenly said, ' Why, there's 
 John Blaney ; I didn't know he was in the house ! 1 John 
 Blaney was a boy who lived not far from us, and he had been 
 employed in the house as hall-boy not long before. I said that 
 I was sure it was not he (for I knew he had left some months 
 previously on account of ill-health), and looked down into the 
 passage, but saw no one. The passage was a long one, with a 
 rather sharp turn in it, so we ran quickly down the last few 
 steps and looked round the corner, but nobody was there, and 
 the only door he could have gone through was shut. As we 
 went upstairs my brother said, ' How pale and ill John looked, 
 and why did he stare so?' I asked what he was doing. My 
 brother answered that he had his sleeves turned up, and was 
 wearing a large green apron, such as the footmen always wear 
 at their work. An hour or two afterwards I asked my maid 
 how long John Blaney had been back in the house? She 
 seemed much surprised, and said, 4 Didn't you hear, miss, that 
 he died this morning ?' On inquiry we found he had died 
 about two hours before my brother saw him. My mother did 
 not wish that my brother should be told this, but he heard of it 
 somehow, and at once declared that he must have seen his 
 ghost. 
 
 "Mabel Olive Gore Booth." 
 
 The percipient's independent account is as 
 follows : — 
 
 "March 1891. 
 
 " We were going downstairs to get food for Mabel's fowl, 
 when I saw John Blaney walking round the corner. I said to 
 Mabel, ' That's John Blaney ! ' but she could not see him. 
 When we came up afterwards we found he was dead. He 
 seemed to me to look rather ill. He looked yellow ; his eyes 
 looked hollow, and he had a green apron on. 
 
 "Mordaunt Gore Booth." 
 
 We have received the following confirmation of the 
 date of death : — 
 
 " I certify from the parish register of deaths that John Blaney 
 
264 APPARITIONS AND THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 
 
 (Dunfore) was interred on the 12th day of April 1889, having 
 died on the loth day of April 1889. 
 
 "P. J. Shemaghs, C.C. 
 
 " The Presbytery, Ballingal, Sligo, 
 " 10th February 1891." 
 
 Mr. Myers originally received an account of the 
 incident viva voce from Lady Gore Booth, and sub- 
 sequently at his request the percipient and his sister, 
 aged at the time ten and fifteen respectively, wrote 
 the accounts given above. 
 
 Lady Gore Booth writes : — 
 
 "May 31J/, 1890. 
 " When my little boy came upstairs and told us he had seen 
 John Blaney, we thought nothing of it till some hours after, 
 when we heard that he was dead. Then, for fear of frightening 
 the children, I avoided any allusion to what he^had told us, and 
 asked every one else to do the same. Probably by now he has 
 forgotten all about it, but it certainly was very remarkable, 
 especially as only one child saw him, and they were standing 
 together. The place where he seems to have appeared was in 
 the passage outside the pantry door, where John Blaney's work 
 always took him. My boy is a very matter-of-fact sort of boy, 
 and I never heard of his having any other hallucination." 
 
 The interval in this case between the death and the 
 vision may probably be explained as due to the 
 telepathic influence received from the dying boy 
 having remained latent in the percipient's mind, 
 awaiting a favourable opportunity for emerging to 
 consciousness. But it seems possible that the mes- 
 sage may have come, not from the dying boy, but 
 from some member of the household who was aware 
 of the death. It is to be noted that Miss Gore Booth 
 did not share her brother's experience. 
 
 Hallucinations Affecting Two Senses. 
 
 So far we have dealt with hallucinations of one 
 sense only. In the next two cases, it will be seen, 
 both sight and hearing appear to have been affected. 
 
SPONTANEOUS HALLUCINATIONS. 265 
 
 No. 76. — From the Rev. Matthew Frost. 
 
 " Bowers Gifford, Essex, January 30^/1, 1891. 
 "The first Thursday in April 1881, while sitting at tea with 
 my back to the window and talking with my wife in the usual 
 way, I plainly heard a rap at the window, and looking round I 
 said to my wife, ' Why, there's my grandmother,' and went to 
 the door, but could not see any one ; and still feeling sure it was 
 my grandmother, and knowing, though eighty-three years of age, 
 she was very active and fond of a joke, I went round the house, 
 but could not see any one. My wife did not hear it. On the 
 following Saturday I had news my grandmother died in York- 
 shire about half-an-hour before the time I heard the rapping. 
 The last time I saw her alive I promised, if well, I would 
 attend her funeral ; that [was] some two years before. I was in 
 good health [and] had no trouble, [age] twenty-six years. I 
 did not know that my grandmother was ill." 
 
 Mrs. Frost writes : — 
 
 "January 30//^, 1891. 
 " I beg to certify that I perfectly remember all the circum- 
 stances my husband has named, but I heard and saw nothing 
 myself." 
 
 The house (seen by Mrs. Sidgwick) in which Mr. 
 Frost was living when the event occurred stands some 
 way back from the road in a garden, and the door 
 into the garden opens out of the sitting-room, so that 
 he must have got to the door much too quickly, if he 
 went at once, for any one to have got away unseen by 
 him. 
 
 Professor Sidgwick called on Mr. Frost in June 
 1892, and learned from him that he had last seen 
 his grandmother in 1878, on which occasion she had 
 promised, if possible, to appear to him at her death. 
 On first seeing the figure Mr. Frost thought that his 
 grandmother had actually come in the flesh to surprise 
 him. It was full daylight, and had there been a real 
 knock and a real presence Mrs. Frost must have both 
 heard and seen. Mr. Frost had no cause for anxiety 
 about his grandmother, and has had no other experi- 
 ence of this kind. News of the death came by letter, 
 
266 APPARITIONS AND THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 
 
 and Mrs. Frost remembers the letter, and that she 
 noticed the coincidence at the time. 
 
 In the next case the order of perception is 
 reversed ; the visual preceded the auditory image. 
 The narrative was procured for us by M. Aksakof, 
 of 6 Nevsky Prospect, St. Petersburg, who also 
 translated the original Russian into French, from 
 which we have translated it into English. 
 
 No. 77.— From M. A . 
 
 "It was at Milan, on the 10th (22nd) of October 1888. I 
 was staying at the Hotel Ancora. After dinner, at about seven 
 o'clock, I was seated on the sofa, reading a newspaper. My 
 wife was resting in the same room on a couch, behind a curtain. 
 The room was lighted by a lamp upon the table near which I 
 was sitting reading. Suddenly I saw against the back-ground 
 of the door, which was opposite me, my father's face. He wore 
 as usual a black surtout, and was deadly pale. At that moment 
 I heard quite close to my ear a voice which said to me, 6 A 
 telegram is coming to say your father is dead.' All this only 
 took a few seconds. I started up and rushed towards my wife, 
 but not to startle her I said nothing to her about it. To explain 
 my sudden movement I exclaimed * Look, do you not see that 
 the kettle is boiling over ! ? . . . On the evening of the same 
 day, about eleven o'clock, we were taking tea in the company 
 of several other people, among whom were Madame Y., her 
 daughter E. Y., formerly an actress at the Court Theatre, and 
 Mademoiselle M., who is now living in Florence. All at once 
 there was a knock at the door, and the concierge presented a 
 telegram. Pale with emotion I immediately exclaimed, ' 1 know 
 my father is dead ; I have seen. . . The telegram contained 
 these words, ' Papa dead suddenly. — Olga.' It was a telegram 
 from my sister living at St. Petersburg. I learned later that my 
 father had committed suicide on the morning of the same day. 
 
 "(Signed) E. A." 
 
 Madame A. writes: — 
 
 " I was present at the time, and I testify to the accuracy of 
 the account." 
 
 M. Aksakof wrote to us that he had seen the 
 original telegram, which ran — 
 
SPONTANEOUS HALLUCINATIONS. 267 
 
 " Ricevuto il 22, 1 1888. Milano, Petersbourg, data 22, 1 ore e 
 minute, 8.40. ' Papa mort subitement. — Olga.' " 
 
 Another case, in which the senses affected were 
 those of touch and hearing, has been given to us 
 by Mr. Malleson. In 1874 or 1875 he went for a 
 short sea voyage, taking with him his young son. 
 On the night of his departure, while in a dreamy, 
 half-conscious state, he imagined that his son had 
 fallen overboard, and that he himself was bringing 
 the sad news to his wife. On his return home he 
 learned that on that night Mrs. Malleson had been 
 awakened by feeling some one leaning over her. 
 She put out her arm and, as she thought, touched 
 her husband's coat. She had no doubt that it was 
 her husband's bodily presence, spoke to him, and 
 heard him answer, " Yes, I have come back." But 
 on her continuing, " Where is Eddy ? " she received 
 no reply, and felt much alarmed. There are several 
 instances recorded of tactile hallucinations accom- 
 panying visual and auditory phantasms. 2 
 
 1 M. Aksakof explains that the name of the month (October) was 
 omitted, through a mistake on the part of the telegraph clerk. 
 
 2 Phantasms of the Living, vol. i. pp. 434-445; vol. ii. p. 134, etc.; 
 and Proc. S.P.P., etc. 
 
268 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 COLLECTIVE HALLUCINATIONS. 
 
 We have now to discuss that numerous class of cases 
 in which the phantasm was perceived by two or more 
 persons. The difficulties of interpretation which such 
 cases present are enhanced for us by the various defects 
 to which the evidence is here peculiarly liable. Many 
 so-called cases of collective apparition, especially 
 when the figure is seen out-of-doors, were probably 
 real men and women. 1 In others we have to deal 
 with a collective illusion, a quasi-hallucinatory super- 
 structure built up by each witness, aided by hints from 
 the others, on a common sensory basis. Such, for 
 instance, appears to us the most probable interpreta- 
 tion of the following singular case. 
 
 From Mrs. Alderson. 
 
 " My son and I were staying in the town of Bonchurch (Isle of 
 Wight) last Easter vacation (1886). Our lodgings were close 
 to the sea, and the garden of our house abutted on the beach, 
 and there were no trees or bushes in it high enough to intercept 
 
 1 Thus we have a case, regarded by the narrator as hallucinatory, in 
 which three persons saw a figure ascending the staircase of a country 
 rectory. The occurrence took place shortly after the return of the 
 family from church, and the figure was supposed to be that of the 
 rector, until it was ascertained that he was at the time in another part 
 of the house. As, however, it was dark and the head of the figure 
 could not be seen, the identification could hardly have been complete, 
 and as no search was made in the upper part of the house, it seems 
 possible that the figure was that of some person who had gained 
 entrance to the house during the absence of the family at church. 
 
COLLECTIVE HALLUCINATIONS. 269 
 
 our view. The evening of Easter Sunday was so fine that when 
 Miss Jowett (the landlady's daughter) brought in the lamp, I 
 begged her not to pull down the blinds, and lay on the sofa 
 looking out at the sea, while my son was reading at the table. 
 Owing to a letter I had just received from my sister at home, 
 stating that one of the servants had again seen 4 the old lady,' 
 my thoughts had been directed towards ghosts and such things. 
 But I was not a little astonished when, on presently looking out 
 of the window, I saw the figure of a woman standing at the 
 edge of the verandah. She appeared to be a broad woman, and 
 not tall (Mrs. A. is tall), and to wear an old-fashioned bonnet, 
 and white gloves on her closed hands. As it was dark the 
 figure was only outlined against the sky, and I could not distin- 
 guish any other details. It was, however, opaque, and not 
 in any way transparent, just as if it had been a real person. 
 I looked at it for some time, and then looked away. When, 
 after a time, I looked again, the woman's hands had dis- 
 appeared behind what appeared to be a white marble cross, 
 with a little bit of the top broken off, and with a railing on one 
 side of the woman and the cross, such as one sometimes sees 
 in graveyards. 
 
 "After looking at this apparition, which remained motionless, 
 for some time, about twenty minutes, perhaps, I asked my son 
 [then an undergraduate at B.N.C.] to come and to look out of the 
 window, and tell me what he saw. He exclaimed, 4 What an 
 uncanny sight ! ' and described the woman and the cross exactly 
 as I saw it. I then rang the bell, and when Miss J. answered 
 it, I asked her also to look out of the window and tell me what 
 she saw, and she also described the woman and the cross, just 
 as they appeared to my son and myself. Some one suggested 
 that it might be a reflection of some sort, and we all looked 
 about the room to see whether there was anything in it that 
 could cause such a reflection, but came to the conclusion that 
 there was nothing to account for it." 
 
 Mr. Alderson writes: — 
 
 " Staying at B. (Isle of Wight) during the Easter vacation of 
 1886, I remember distinctly seeing an apparition in the form of 
 a woman with her hands clasped on the top of a cross. The 
 cross looked old and worn, as one sees in churchyards. My 
 mother drew my attention to the figure, and after we had 
 watched it for some time we rang the bell and asked the 
 servant if she saw the figure. She said she did. I then 
 went out to the verandah (where the figure was), and imme- 
 diately it vanished. 
 
 " E. H. Alderson." 
 
270 APPARITIONS AND THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 
 
 A corresponding account of the incident has been 
 received from Miss Jowett, the landlady's daughter. 
 We owe the accounts of the incident to Mr. F. Schiller, 
 who investigated the matter for the Oxford Phasma- 
 tological Society. 
 
 The persistency of the vision in this case is a 
 feature very rarely found in cases of undoubted 
 hallucination, and the fact that it was only seen 
 through glass suggests that the whole appearance was 
 due to a reflection of some kind, although it must be 
 admitted that this explanation, which was considered 
 and rejected by the percipients at the time, cannot be 
 accommodated to the facts without difficulty. 
 
 In the epidemics of religious hallucination so 
 common in the Middle Ages, and still occurring from 
 time to time in Catholic countries, it would appear 
 that as a rule there is no objective basis for the 
 perception. When, as at Knock, in Ireland, a few 
 years ago, the figure of the Virgin or a Saint is said 
 to have been seen by a large number of persons 
 simultaneously, it seems probable that in those who 
 really saw the figure the hallucination was due to 
 repeated verbal suggestions acting on minds which, 
 under the influence of strong emotion, were tem- 
 porarily in a state analogous to that of trance. 
 The nearest analogy to such cases is no doubt to be 
 found in hypnotism. A collective hallucination can 
 be imposed upon a whole roomful of hypnotised 
 persons by the mere command of the operator. But 
 not the most explicit verbal suggestion — si vera est 
 fabula — could make the courtiers in the fairy tale see 
 the king's clothes ; and there is no evidence that with 
 normal persons in full possession of their ordinary 
 faculties any hints derivable from look, word, or 
 gesture could suffice to originate an instantaneous 
 hallucination. Still, the possibility of such an ex- 
 planation under certain conditions should perhaps be 
 kept in view. (See later, Chapter XVI.) 
 
 A possible explanation of a different kind has 
 
COLLECTIVE HALLUCINATIONS. 2*J I 
 
 been already illustrated by the story quoted on page 
 153, where it was shown that a solitary hallucination 
 had grown in the course of five-and-twenty years into 
 a collective vision. The narrator in this case was a 
 child at the time of the alleged experience. Children 
 and uneducated persons generally, who are not prone 
 to analyse their own sensations, seem liable after a 
 certain interval to mistake the image called up by 
 another's recital for an actual experience of their own ; 
 and this is especially likely to occur when the auditor 
 was present at the time of the experience or familiar 
 with the scene of the occurrence. Indeed, most per- 
 sons who visualise with moderate facility are probably 
 liable to this form of mistake on a small scale. I had 
 about five years since an example of this in my own 
 case. A friend had described to me minutely some 
 simple apparatus of his own invention. About a year 
 later he brought the apparatus to London and offered 
 to show it to me. I replied that I had already seen 
 it ; but on being confronted with it I found the pro- 
 portions and general appearance of the actual object 
 quite unlike my mental image of it. I had in fact 
 never seen the object, but the image which I had 
 mentally constructed to enable me to follow my 
 friend's description a year before remained so vivid 
 as to lead me to believe that it was founded on actual 
 sensation. But a sensory hallucination is too strik- 
 ing and unusual an experience to be readily feigned, 
 and it is very improbable that the memory of educated 
 persons, at any rate, would be untrustworthy as 
 regards their recent experiences of the kind. As 
 already explained, the accounts of this and other 
 forms of telepathic affection included in this book 
 have in almost all cases been written down within 
 ten years of the event. 
 
 When the fullest allowance has been made for all 
 possible explanations we find a considerable number 
 of cases remaining of which no other account can be 
 given than that they are apparitions, due to no ascer- 
 
272 APPARITIONS AND THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 
 
 tained cause, which are perceived by two or more 
 persons simultaneously. That the collective percep- 
 tion proves the objective, or — to use a less ambi- 
 guous word — the material existence of the thing per- 
 ceived, is probably held now by few persons outside 
 the ranks of professed mystics. Apart from the 
 theoretical difficulties of such a hypothesis — difficulties 
 which have by no means been surmounted by the 
 invocation of fixed ether, intercalary vortex rings, 
 space of four dimensions, and other subtler forms of 
 the theory evolved in recent times, — it is to be noted 
 that no facts of any significance have been adduced 
 to support it. There is at present no trustworthy 
 evidence that an apparition has ever been weighed 
 or photographed, 1 or submitted to spectroscopic or 
 chemical analysis. But, indeed, the theory betrays 
 its own origin in a prescientific age; and without 
 formal destruction by argument it has shared in the 
 euthanasia which has overtaken many other pious 
 opinions found inadequate to the facts. The pheno- 
 mena which it professes to explain are paralleled in 
 all their essential features by other phenomena, for 
 which even its supporters would hardly be rash enough 
 to claim substantial reality; and as the phantasms 
 now to be discussed bear In all points a close 
 resemblance to those already described as occurring 
 to solitary percipients, probably no one who accepts 
 the one class of appearances as hallucinatory will 
 hesitate to accept the other. 
 
 But when the hallucinatory character of collec- 
 tively-perceived, or, as they may be styled for brevity, 
 " collective " phantasms is recognised, there are diffi- 
 culties of interpretation to be dealt with. On the 
 telepathic hypothesis there are two modes in which a 
 collective hallucination may be conceived to originate: 
 {a) it may be communicated direct from a third person 
 to each of the percipients; or (J?) it may be communi- 
 
 1 See the article on Spirit Photographs by Mrs. Henry Sidgwick, 
 Proc. S.P.J?., vol. vii. pp. 268-289. 
 
COLLECTIVE HALLUCINATIONS. 27$ 
 
 cated by telepathic infection from one percipient to 
 another. The first explanation involves in most cases, 
 as Mr. Gurney has pointed out {Phantasms of the 
 Living, vol. ii. pp. 171, 172), serious theoretical 
 difficulties. For on the view to which we are led by 
 a review of all the evidence, a telepathic hallucination, 
 like any other, is, as a rule, the work of the percipient's 
 mind, and is not transferred ready made from the 
 agent. As such it is frequently of slow growth, and 
 there are grounds for believing that it is sometimes 
 not externalised for the percipient's senses until some 
 hours after the receipt of the original telepathic im- 
 pulse. We should hardly expect, therefore, to find 
 two percipients independently developing similar 
 hallucinations, and at the same moment. But in most 
 of the cases of collective hallucination hitherto re- 
 ported, the hallucinations have been, so far as could 
 be ascertained, similar and simultaneous, so as indeed 
 to suggest a real figure rather than a hallucination. 
 Moreover, in well-attested recent narratives it rarely 
 happens that a connection between the hallucination 
 and any unusual state of the person represented is 
 clearly established ; whilst in many, perhaps most 
 cases, the hallucination has not been recognised as 
 resembling any person known to either percipient, and 
 has in some instances been purely grotesque. In 
 most cases, therefore, it seems easier to believe that 
 we have to deal with a contagious hallucination, which, 
 whether initiated by a telepathic impulse, or purely 
 subjective in its origin, has been transferred tele- 
 pathically from the original percipient to others in his 
 company at the time. In some cases, indeed, it is no 
 doubt permissible, as suggested by Mr. Gurney, to 
 conjecture that the minds of all the percipients may 
 have been directly influenced by the agent, and 
 that subsequently an overflow from the mind of one 
 of the percipients may have served to reinforce the 
 original impulse, and determine the exact moment of 
 the explosion in his co-percipients, just as the current 
 
 18 
 
274 APPARITIONS AND THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 
 
 regulates the exact hour of striking in electrically 
 synchronised clocks. Or again, the mind of each 
 percipient may react upon the others. There are, 
 however, a few cases where the percipients appear to 
 have had experiences relating to the same event 
 neither precisely similar nor simultaneous, which 
 seem to require the hypothesis of an impulse in each 
 case directly derived from the person represented. 
 Some cases of the kind are given in Phantasms of the 
 Living (vol. i. p. 362 ; vol. ii. 173-183), and others will 
 be cited in the latter part of this chapter. It will be 
 more convenient, however, to begin by giving ex- 
 amples of the ordinary type of collective hallucina- 
 tion. 
 
 Collective Auditory Hallucinations. 
 No. 78.— From Mr. C. H. Cary. 
 
 "Secretary's Office, General Post Office, 
 29th March 1892. 
 " At Bow, London, on the 8th March 1875, at about 8.30 P.M., 
 I heard a voice say, ' Joseph, Joseph.' I was talking with my 
 father and cousin (Joseph Cary) about the battle of Balaclava. 
 I was in good health, etc. My age was nearly thirteen. All 
 three of us heard the voice, which we suppose to have been 
 that of Joseph's grandmother." 1 
 
 In conversation, Mr. Cary explained to me that the 
 voice was not recognised by any of those who heard 
 it. It was indeed at first mistaken for the voice of 
 Mrs. Cary (Mr. C. H. Cary's mother), who was at the 
 time in an adjoining room, but who had not spoken. 
 A telegram announcing the grandmother's death was 
 received on the day following, and Mr. Joseph Cary 
 then said that the voice must have been that of his 
 grandmother. Mr. C. H. Cary had never seen this 
 lady. 
 
 1 This account was originally written in answer to a series of 
 questions on a " census" form. A few connecting words have been 
 inserted in order to make it read consecutively. 
 
COLLECTIVE HALLUCINATIONS. 275 
 
 Mr. R. H. Cary writes from 49 Gladsmuir Road, 
 London, N. : — 
 
 "March 31^/, 1892. 
 " With reference to your inquiry concerning the voice which 
 was heard at the time of the late Mrs. Victor's death, I am 
 able to state that my son, my nephew, and myself were sitting 
 together, and we all heard it distinctly. This occurred about 
 fourteen years ago. The account given by my son exactly 
 coincides with my own recollection. " R. H. Cary." 
 
 We have ascertained from the Registrar-General 
 that Mary Victor, widow of Thomas Victor, farmer, 
 died at Linwood, Paul, Penzance, on March 8th, 
 1875, from bronchitis. 
 
 Mr. C. H. Cary adds that though Mrs. Victor was 
 known to be ill, her death was not thought to be 
 imminent. He has himself had other auditory hallu- 
 cinations — viz., the hearing of footsteps on two or 
 three occasions at about the time of the death of a 
 relation. 
 
 In the next case the voice heard did not corre- 
 spond with any external event. It was, as it were, 
 "the after-image" of a voice once familiar in the 
 house. 
 
 No. 79. — From Miss Annie Newbold. 
 
 "May 7th, 1892. 
 " Florence N., a little child of under four years old, to whom 
 I was very much attached, died on May 23rd, 1889. She lived 
 in the house where I have my studio, and during the daytime 
 was invariably with me. There were no other children in the 
 house, and she was a general pet. I was ill for some time after 
 her death, and one morning in July 1889 I went to see Mrs. N. 
 We were sitting talking in her room on the ground-floor when 
 I suddenly heard the child's voice distinctly call c Miss Boo' (her 
 name for me). I was about to answer, when I remembered that it 
 could be no living voice and so continued my sentence, thinking 
 that I would say nothing about the occurrence to her mother. At 
 that moment Mrs. N. turned to me and said, ' Miss Newbold, 
 did you hear that ? ' 6 Yes/ I replied, * what was it ? ' And she 
 said, ' My little child, and she called "Miss Boo."' We both 
 noticed that the sound came from below, as if she were standing 
 
276 APPARITIONS AND THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 
 
 in the kitchen doorway underneath the room in which we were 
 sitting. There was no possibility of its being another child, as 
 there was not one in the house. The upper floors were empty, 
 too, at the time. I can vouch for the accuracy of this account. 
 
 "Annie Newbold." 
 
 Mrs. N. writes: — 
 
 "Miss Newbold came to see me one morning in July 1889, 
 about two months after my only child's death. We were in my 
 room talking when I distinctly heard my little girl's voice call 
 ' Miss Boo.' I asked Miss Newbold if she had heard anything 
 and she said * Yes. What was it ? ' I replied, 4 My little child, 
 and she said " Miss Boo." 1 " Lizzie N." 
 
 In answer to questions, Miss Newbold writes: — 
 
 " 1. Mrs. N. never heard her little girl's voice on any other 
 occasion. 
 
 " 2. We were not talking about the little girl at the time, nor 
 upon any subject connected with her. I, however, had a box of 
 roses on my knee, which I was mechanically sorting, and putting 
 all the white ones on one side to send to the little child's grave. 
 
 " 3. Mrs. N. has never heard any other voices, either before 
 or since. Neither have I ; but I have three or four times in my 
 life been conscious of a presence without being able to explain 
 definitely what it was I felt. I have never seen anything. 
 
 1 With this may be compared an incident recorded by William Bell 
 Scott {Autobiographical Notes, vol. ii. pp. 117, 1 18). The account is 
 perhaps worth quoting, though the length of time which has elapsed, 
 and the fact that it rests upon a single memory, leave to the narrative 
 little value other than that derived from its literary associations. It 
 should be added, however, that Mr. Scott's claim to a rational scep- 
 ticism in these matters appears to be borne out by other passages in the 
 book. 
 
 " I have so repeatedly expressed my unbelief in all the vulgar or 
 popular forms of supernaturalism (says Mr. Scott), that I feel a little 
 hesitation in recording a circumstance resembling that class of things 
 which began the very evening after his [i.e., Rossetti's] departure. I 
 could now get a little peace to revise my D'urer Journal, and my 
 German friend Mr. Reid, who had given me an hour, stayed to dinner. 
 Rossetti's habit, when composing or even correcting for the press, was to 
 retire after dinner to the room above, the drawing-room of the old 
 house, to read aloud to himself, when by himself. This he did in a 
 voice so loud that we in the dining-room beneath could almost hear his 
 words. Well, as we were sitting after dinner, when he must have been 
 approaching London in the train, what could it be we heard? The 
 usual voice reading to itself in the usual place over our heads ! I 
 looked at A. B. ; she was listening intently till she could bear it no 
 
COLLECTIVE HALLUCINATIONS. 277 
 
 Collective Visual Hallucinations. 
 
 Passing to visual phantasms, we will begin by 
 citing a case in which there can be little doubt 
 that the hallucination was purely subjective ; a 
 better case for illlustrating the hypothesis of the 
 infectious character of casual hallucination could 
 hardly be found. It is to be noted indeed that 
 the second percipient saw the apparition on the first 
 occasion only after a distinct verbal suggestion, but, 
 as already stated, there is no evidence that a single 
 verbal suggestion can produce a hallucination in a 
 healthy person in full possession of his normal 
 faculties. 
 
 No. 80. — From Mrs. Greiffenberg and Mrs. 
 Erni-Greiffenberg. 
 
 Mr. F. C. S. Schiller, through whom the account 
 was obtained, tells us that he heard the story in 
 October 1890 from the two percipients. The follow- 
 ing account was put together by him from an account 
 (which he also sent us) written by Mrs. Erni-Greiffen- 
 berg, and various conversations which he had with 
 both ladies on the subject. He afterwards obtained 
 their signatures to it. Neither of them has had any 
 other hallucinatory experience. 
 
 longer, and left the room. Our learned priest found me, I fancy, to be 
 rather distrait^ so he rose, saying it was about his time, and besides, he 
 continued, ' 1 hear Miss Boyd has some friend in the drawing-room, so 
 I won't go up. Give her my good-bye and respects.' I joined her at 
 once, but of course we heard nothing in the room itself. Such is the 
 circumstance as it took place. Mr. Reid, who knew nothing of the 
 habit of D. G. R., hearing the voice as well as we did, although it 
 sounded to him like talking rather than reading, was a sure evidence 
 we were not deceiving ourselves. Next night it was the same, and 
 so it went on till I left. When we tried to approach it was not audible, 
 or when the doors of the drawing-room and its small ante-room com- 
 municating with the staircase were left open, we could make nothing 
 of it. It gradually tapered off when Miss Boyd was left by herself; by- 
 and-by the whole establishment was bolted and barred for the winter. 
 Next season it had entirely ceased." 
 
278 APPARITIONS AND THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 
 
 "December i^th, 1890. 
 
 " In the beginning of the summer of 1884 we were sitting at 
 dinner at home as usual, in the middle of the day. In the midst 
 of the conversation I noticed my mother suddenly looking down 
 at something beneath the table. I inquired whether she had 
 dropped anything, and received the answer, ' No, but I wonder 
 how that cat can have got into the room ? ' Looking underneath 
 the table, I was surprised to see a large white Angora cat beside 
 my mother's chair. We both got up, and I opened the door to 
 let the cat out. She marched round the table, went noiselessly 
 out of the door, and when about half-way down the passage 
 turned round and faced us. For a short time she regularly 
 stared at us with her green eyes, then she dissolved away, like a 
 mist, under our eyes. 
 
 " Even apart from the mode of her disappearance, we felt con- 
 vinced that the cat could not have been a real one, as we neither 
 had one of our own, nor knew of any that would answer to the 
 description in the place, and so this appearance made an un- 
 pleasant impression upon us. 
 
 "This impression was, however, greatly enhanced by what 
 happened in the following year, 1885, when we were staying in 
 Leipzig with my married sister (the daughter of Mrs. Greiffen- 
 berg). We had come home one afternoon from a walk, when, 
 on opening the door of the flat, we were met in the hall by the 
 same white cat. It proceeded down the passage in front of us, 
 and looked at us with the same melancholy gaze. When it got 
 to the door of the cellar (which was locked), it again dissolved 
 into nothing. 
 
 " On this occasion also it was first seen by my mother, and we 
 were both impressed by the uncanny and gruesome character of 
 the appearance. In this case, also, the cat could not have been 
 a real one, as there was no such cat in the neighbourhood." 
 
 A very striking example of a collective hallucination, 
 apparently of the same type, was given to us by Mrs. 
 Ward. She and her husband, the late E. M. Ward, 
 R.A., in 1 85 1 saw in their bedroom two small pear- 
 shaped lights which, when touched, broke into small 
 luminous fragments. {Phantasms of the Living, vol. 
 ii. p. 193.) We have also a case in which our inform- 
 ant, when a girl of fifteen, with another girl, saw in 
 the middle of the room, at a dancing class, a hallu- 
 cinatory chair. Yet another case is recorded by 
 Miss Foy, a careful observer, who had been troubled 
 for some time with a hallucinatory skeleton, the 
 
COLLECTIVE HALLUCINATIONS. 279 
 
 subjective character of which she fully recognised. 
 On one occasion when in hospital the hallucination 
 recurred, and appears to have been seen also by the 
 patient in the adjoining bed, to whom no hint of any 
 kind had been given. In both these cases, how- 
 ever, the evidence depends upon a single memory. 
 We have another case in which a singular luminous 
 body — apparently a hallucination of a rudimentary 
 kind — was perceived by two witnesses coincidently 
 with the death of a near relative of one of them. 
 The Rev. A. T. S. Goodrick, from whom I originally 
 received the account viva voce y was walking with a 
 friend across a moor in Sutherlandshire 
 
 "when there suddenly arose, to all appearance out of the 
 road between our feet as we walked, a ball of fire, about the size 
 of an 1 81b. cannon ball. It was of an orange-red colour, and 
 there seemed to be a kind of rotatory motion in it, not un- 
 like a firework of some description. ... It seemed to move 
 forward with us, at a distance of not more than 6 inches in front, 
 and at the same time rose pretty swiftly breast high . . . and 
 then disappeared and left no trace." 
 
 Mr. Goodrick adds that a light rain was falling; 
 but there was no thunderstorm. 
 
 From uneducated witnesses such an account no 
 doubt would have but little value. A will-o'-the-wisp 
 in an adjoining marsh, or even a flash of lightning, 
 might in such a case form a sufficient basis for the 
 story. And even assuming that the account here 
 given accurately describes what was seen, it is 
 difficult to feel certain that the appearance was 
 hallucinatory. But if it were of a physical nature, it 
 is certainly not easy to conjecture what it could have 
 been, and the coincidence with the death is an ad- 
 ditional argument for regarding the phenomenon as 
 hallucinatory. 
 
 In the next case the phantasm seems to belong to 
 a not unusual type of subjective hallucinations, the 
 " after-image " of a familiar figure. There are no 
 grounds for ascribing the apparition to any " agency " 
 
280 APPARITIONS AND THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 
 
 on the part of the person whose image was seen. If 
 the incident is correctly described, the prima facie 
 explanation is that a casual hallucination was com- 
 municated by telepathic suggestion to a second 
 person in the company of the original percipient. At 
 our request the two accounts which follow were written 
 independently. 
 
 No. 8 1. — From Mrs. Milman. 
 
 " 17 Southwell Gardens, S.W., 
 March 20th, 1888. 
 
 " About three years ago I was coming out of the dining-room 
 one day, after lunch, with my sister. My mother had, as I 
 supposed, preceded us upstairs, as usual. The library door, 
 which faces the dining-room, stood wide open, and looking 
 through it as I crossed the hall, I saw my mother in the library, 
 seated at the writing-table, and apparently writing. Instead, 
 therefore, of going upstairs, as I had intended, I went to the 
 library door, wishing to speak to her, but when I looked in the 
 room was empty. 
 
 u At the same moment, my sister, who had also been going 
 towards the stairs in the first instance, changed her direction, 
 and, crossing the hall, came up to the library door behind me. 
 She then exclaimed, * Why, I thought I saw mamma in the 
 library, at the writing-table.' On comparing notes, we found 
 that we had both seen her seated at the writing-table, and 
 bending over it as if writing. My mother was never in the 
 habit of writing in the library. 
 
 " I recollect her dress perfectly, as the impression was quite 
 distinct and vivid. She had on a black cloak, and bonnet with 
 a yellow bird in it, which she generally wore. 
 
 " It is the only time anything of the kind has happened to 
 me. " M. J. Milman." 
 
 From Miss Campbell. 
 
 " 17 Southwell Gardens, S.W., 
 March 21 st 9 1888. 
 " My sister and mother and myself, after returning from our 
 morning drive, came into the dining-room without removing 
 our things, and had luncheon as usual, during which my sister 
 and I laughed and cracked jokes in the gayest of spirits. After 
 a time my mother rose and left the room, but we remained on 
 for a few minutes. Finally we both got up and went into the 
 passage, and I was about to go upstairs and take off my things 
 
COLLECTIVE HALLUCINATIONS. 28 1 
 
 when I saw my sister turn into my father's study (which was 
 directly opposite the dining-room), with the evident intention, 
 as I supposed, of speaking to my mother, whom I distinctly 
 noticed seated at my father's desk in her cloak and bonnet, 
 busily absorbed in writing. The door of the study was wide 
 open at the time. I turned round and followed her to the door, 
 when, to my surprise, my mother had completely disappeared, 
 and I noticed my sister turned away too, and left the room as if 
 puzzled. I asked her, with some curiosity, what she went into 
 the room for ? She replied that she fancied she saw my mother 
 bending over the desk writing, and went in to speak to her. 
 Feeling very much startled and alarmed, we went upstairs to 
 see after her, and found her in her bedroom, where she went 
 immediately on leaving the dining-room, and had been all the 
 time. "E. J. Campbell." 
 
 In the next case the apparition was recognised by 
 one of the percipients only, as resembling a relative 
 who had been dead some years. Neither percipient 
 appears to have seen the face. 
 
 No. 82.— From Mrs. J. C. 
 
 " August 20th, 1893. 
 
 " Seven years ago my husband and I had the following 
 curious experience : — 
 
 " In the middle of the night I awoke with the feeling that 
 some one was near me, and at once saw a figure moving from the 
 side of my bed towards the wardrobe where I kept jewellery. 
 My supposition was that it was a burglar, and I refrained from 
 waking my husband (whose bed was two feet from mine), as I 
 thought the burglar would be armed, and I knew my husband 
 would certainly attack him and be at his mercy. I therefore lay 
 perfectly still. 
 
 "The apparition having passed the foot of my bed, then 
 came opposite my husband's, when, to my astonishment, I saw 
 my husband sit up in bed gazing at the figure. In a moment or 
 two he lay down again, and the figure apparently passed to the 
 door. 
 
 " We neither of us spoke one word that night. 
 
 " In the morning I asked my husband to look if the doors were 
 locked (of which there are three in the room). They were all 
 secure. I also examined the beds to see if they by any possi- 
 bility could have touched, and so I unconsciously have 
 awakened him, but they were quite separate. I then asked 
 if he remembered anything happening in the night 3 and he 
 
282 APPARITIONS AND THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 
 
 replied, * Yes, a strange thing : I thought I saw my father go 
 out of that door.' Not till then did I tell him that I thought 
 the figure was a burglar, and how frightened I had been at the 
 thought of his struggling with an armed man, and had therefore 
 remained silent. 
 
 "The gas was burning, and I could see quite across the 
 room." 
 
 I received a full account of the incident orally 
 from Mrs. C. on the 20th August 1893. She told 
 me that she never saw the face of the figure, and 
 could not see, or cannot now recollect, the dress. 
 She had no doubt at the time that it was a burglar. 
 Mrs. C. has had no other hallucination of any kind. 
 
 Mr. C. writes on the 21st August 1893: — 
 
 " I have read my wife's account, and endorse it. 
 
 " To my recollection I was not dreaming previously to sitting 
 up in bed, when I believed I saw my father going towards the 
 door. My mind had not been specially active about his affairs 
 at that time, although I was rather anxious about some matters 
 of business. 
 
 " The figure I supposed to be my father (and I had no 
 thought it was any one else) moved noiselessly across the room 
 and disappeared through the doorway. I should have treated 
 it as a dream only, if my wife had not recalled my attention 
 to it in the morning by asking me if I remembered sitting up 
 in bed. 
 
 " Although I am certain my eyes were open at the time of 
 the apparition, I did not see the face, but recognised the figure 
 as that of my father by the general appearance as I remembered 
 him. 
 
 " I have had no other similar waking experience, but have 
 previously seen my father distinctly in a dream after his decease." 
 
 Mr. C. told me that he was positive the figure 
 could not have been that of a real man : the doors 
 were found locked on the inside in the morning. 
 Moreover, his recognition of the figure, though he 
 could not see the face, was unmistakable. 
 
 We have many similar accounts of collective 
 phantasms which appear to have differed from 
 subjective hallucinations of the ordinary type in 
 
COLLECTIVE HALLUCINATIONS. 283 
 
 no other particular than the fact of their occur- 
 rence to two persons simultaneously. Thus, to 
 quote a few instances, Mrs. Willett, of Bedales, 
 Lindfield, Sussex, sent us an extract from her 
 diary describing a figure seen by her daughter and 
 a visitor, — a fair-haired child running along a gallery. 
 The account is confirmed by the visitor, Miss S. 
 From Mrs. and Miss Goodhall we have an account 
 of a tall figure seen by them when driving in a 
 
 country lane. Miss C and two of her sisters 
 
 saw in a bedroom in a London house the figure of 
 a young man of middle height wearing a peaked 
 cap and dark clothes. Mrs. Y. and her niece saw 
 the figure of a child in a long grey dressing-gown 
 running down a lighted staircase. In this last case 
 the figure was mistaken for Mrs. Y.'s daughter, but 
 in the other cases the phantasm bore no resemblance 
 to any one with whom the percipients were acquainted. 
 In no instance does it seem possible except by vio- 
 lently straining the probabilities to suppose the figure 
 seen to have been that of a human being. 
 
 In the pext case the phantasm, which was recog- 
 nised, occurred within a short time of the death of 
 the person represented. The narrator is a decorator 
 and house-painter, of Uniontown, Kentucky, U.S.A. 
 
 No. 83. — From Mr. S. S. Falkinburg. 
 
 a September \ith^ 1884. 
 u The following circumstance is impressed upon my mind in 
 a manner which will preclude its ever being forgotten by me or 
 the members of my family interested. My little son Arthur, 
 who was then five years old, and the pet of his grandpapa, was 
 playing on the floor, when I entered the house a quarter to 
 seven o'clock, Friday evening, July nth, 1879. I was ver Y 
 tired, having been receiving and paying for staves all day, and 
 it being an exceedingly sultry evening, I lay down by Artie on 
 the carpet, and entered into conversation with my wife — not, 
 however, in regard to my parents. Artie, as usually was the 
 case, came and lay down with his little head upon my left arm, 
 when all at once he exclaimed, 4 Papa ! papa ! Grandpa ! ' I 
 cast my eyes towards the ceiling, or opened my eyes, I am not 
 
284 APPARITIONS AND THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 
 
 sure which, when, between me and the joists (it was an old- 
 fashioned log-cabin), I saw the face of my father as plainly as 
 ever I saw him in my life. He appeared to me to be very pale, 
 and looked sad, as I had seen him upon my last visit to him 
 three months previous. I immediately spoke to my wife, who 
 was sitting within a few feet of me, and said, ' Clara, there 
 is something wrong at home ; father is either dead or very 
 sick.' She tried to persuade me that it was my imagination, 
 but I could not help feeling that something was wrong. Being 
 very tired, we soon after retired, and about ten o'clock Artie 
 woke me up repeating, ' Papa, grandpa is here.' I looked, and 
 believe, if I remember right, got up, at any rate to get the child 
 warm, as he complained of coldness, and it was very sultry 
 weather. Next morning I expressed my determination to go 
 at once to Indianapolis. My wife made light of it and over- 
 persuaded me, and I did not go until Monday morning, and 
 upon arriving at home (my father's), I found that he had been 
 buried the day before, Sunday, July 13th. 
 
 " Now comes the mysterious part to me. After I had told my 
 mother and brother of my vision, or whatever it may have been, 
 they told me the following : — 
 
 " On the morning of the nth July, the day of his death, he 
 arose early and expressed himself as feeling unusually well, and 
 ate a hearty breakfast. He took the Bible (he was a Methodist 
 minister), and went and remained until near noon. He ate a 
 hearty dinner, and went to the front gate, and, looking up and 
 down the street, remarked that he could not, or at least would 
 not be disappointed, some one was surely coming. During the 
 afternoon and evening he seemed restless, and went to the gate, 
 looking down street, frequently. At last, about time for supper, 
 he mentioned my name, and expressed his conviction that God, 
 in His own good time, would answer his prayers in my behalf, 
 I being at that time very wild. Mother going into the kitchen 
 to prepare supper, he followed her and continued talking to 
 her about myself and family, and especially Arthur, my son. 
 Supper being over, he moved his chair near the door, and was 
 conversing about me at the time he died. The last words 
 were about me, and were spoken, by mother's clock, 14 
 minutes of 7. He did not fall, but just quit talking and was dead. 
 
 " In answer to my inquiries, my son Arthur says he remem- 
 bers the circumstances, and the impression he received upon 
 that occasion is ineffaceable. 
 
 "Samuel S. Falkinburg." 
 
 We have procured a certificate of death from the 
 Indianapolis Board of Health, which confirms the 
 date given. 
 
COLLECTIVE HALLUCINATIONS. 285 
 
 Mrs. Falkinburg writes to us, on September 12, 
 1884:— 
 
 " In answer to your request, I will say that I cheerfully give 
 my recollection of the circumstance to which you refer. 
 
 " We were living in Brown County, Indiana, fifty miles south 
 of Indianapolis, in the summer of 1879. My husband (Mr. S. 
 S. Falkinburg) was in the employ of one John Ayers, buying 
 staves. 
 
 "On the evening of July nth, about 6.30 o'clock, he came 
 into the room where I was sitting, and lay down on the carpet 
 with my little boy Arthur, complaining of being very tired and 
 warm. Entering into conversation on some unimportant matter, 
 Arthur went to him and lay down by his side. In a few moments 
 my notice was attracted by hearing Arthur exclaim : 1 Oh, papa, 
 grandpa, grandpa, papa, 5 at the same time pointing with his 
 little hand toward the ceiling. I looked in the direction he was 
 pointing, but saw nothing. My husband, however, said : i Clara, 
 there is something wrong at home ; father is either dead or very 
 sick.' I tried to laugh him out of what I thought an idle fancy ; 
 but he insisted that he saw the face of his father looking at him 
 from near the ceiling, and Arthur said, ' Grandpa was come, for 
 he saw him.' That night we were awakened by Artie again call- 
 ing his papa to see ' grandpa.' 
 
 "A short time after my husband started (Monday) to go to 
 Indianapolis, I received a letter calling him to the burial of his 
 father ; and some time after, in conversation with his mother, it 
 transpired that the time he and Artie saw the vision was within 
 two or three minutes of the time his father died. 
 
 " Clara T. Falkinburg." 
 
 Asked whether this was his sole experience of a 
 visual hallucination, Mr. Falkinburg replied that it 
 was. Occasionally, however, since that time, he has 
 had auditory impressions suggestive of his fathers 
 presence. 
 
 Here again, in the absence of evidence to the 
 contrary, it seems more probable that Mr. Falkin- 
 burg's hallucination was telepathically originated, than 
 that the casual remark of a child of five could produce 
 an effect hitherto observed only as the result of hyp- 
 notic influence or some other equally potent disturb- 
 ing cause. 
 
 In the following case, which again comes to us from 
 
286 APPARITIONS AND THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 
 
 the United States, the vision was of a more complicated 
 kind, and part only of the original percipient's experi- 
 ence was shared. The occurrence of the apparition 
 within a few hours df the death of a person to whom 
 it bore some resemblance seems to be established ; 
 but in estimating the value of the coincidence, it 
 should be borne in mind that the phantasm was 
 not at the time referred to the deceased, and that 
 there are numerous chances of the coincidence of an 
 unrecognised hallucination with a death amongst a 
 doctor's circle of acquaintance. 
 
 No. 84.— From Dr. W. O. S., 
 
 who wrote to Dr. Hodgson from Albany, New York, 
 on the 10th September 1888, enclosing the following 
 account : — 
 
 " I am a physician, have been in practice about eleven years ; 
 am in excellent health, do not use intoxicants, tobacco, drugs, 
 or strong tea or coffee. Am not subject (in the least) to dreams, 
 and have never been a believer in apparitions, etc. 
 
 " On Monday last, September 3rd, 1888, I went to bed about 
 11 P.M., after my day's work. Had supper, a light one, about 
 7 P.M. ; made calls after supper. 
 
 " My bedroom is on the second floor of a city block house, 
 and I kept all my doors locked except the one leading to my 
 wife's room, next to mine, opening into mine by a wide sliding 
 door, always left wide open at night. The diagram opposite 
 will illustrate the relation of the rooms. 
 
 " I occupy room 1 and my wife room 2. Her room has 
 but one window, and a door opening only into my room. My 
 room has three doors (all bolted at night) and one window. 
 Both windows in our rooms have heavy green shades, which are 
 drawn nearly to the bottom of the window at night, shutting out 
 early daylight. No artificial lights command the windows, and 
 the moonlight very seldom. 
 
 "I undressed and went to bed about II, and soon was 
 asleep. In the neighbourhood of 4 A.M. I was awakened by a 
 strong light in my face. I awoke and thought I saw my wife 
 standing at Fig. 3, as she was to rise at 5.30 to take an early 
 train. The light was so bright and pervading that I spoke, but 
 got no answer. As I spoke, the figure retreated to Fig. 4, and 
 as gradually faded to a spot at Fig. 5. The noiseless shifting of 
 
COLLECTIVE HALLUCINATIONS. 287 
 
 the light made me think it was a servant in the hall and the light 
 was thrown through the keyhole as she moved. That could not 
 be, as some clothing covered the keyhole. I then thought a 
 burglar must be in the room, as the light settled near a large 
 safe in my room. Thereupon I called loudly to my wife, and 
 sprang to light a light. As I called her name she suddenly 
 awoke, and called out, ' What is that bright light in your 
 room ? ' I lit the gas and searched (there had been no light in 
 either room). Everything was undisturbed. 
 
 " My wife left on the early train. I attended to my work as 
 usual. At noon, when I reached home, the servant who 
 answers the door informed me that a man had been to my 
 office to see about a certificate for a young lady who had died 
 suddenly early that morning from a hemorrhage from the lungs. 
 She died about one o'clock — the figure I saw about four o'clock. 
 
 There was but little resemblance between the two, as far as I 
 noticed, except height and figure. The faces were not unlike, 
 except that the apparition seemed considerably older. I had 
 seen the young lady the evening before, but, although much 
 interested in the case, did not consider it immediately serious. 
 She had been in excellent health up to within two days of her 
 death. At first she spit a little blood, from a strain. When 
 she was taken with the severe hemorrhage, and choked to 
 death, she called for help and for me. 
 
 " This is the first experience of the kind I have ever had, or 
 personally have known about. It was very clear — the figure or 
 apparition — at first, but rapidly faded. My wife remarked the 
 light before I had spoken anything except her name. When I 
 awake I am wide awake in an instant, as I am accustomed to 
 answer a telephone in the hall and my office-bell at night." 
 
288 APPARITIONS AND THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 
 
 From Mrs. W. O. S. 
 
 "Albany, September 27th, 1888. 
 " On the morning of September 4 I was suddenly awakened 
 out of a sound sleep by my husband's calling to me from an 
 adjoining room. Before I answered him I was struck with the 
 fact that although the green shade to his window was drawn 
 down, his room seemed flooded by a soft yellow light, while my 
 chamber, with the window on same side as his, and with the 
 shade drawn up, was dark. The first thing I said was, * What 
 is that light ?' He replied he didn't know. I then got up and 
 went into his room, which was still quite light. The light faded 
 away in a moment or two. The shade was down all the time. 
 When I went back to my room I saw that it was a few moments 
 after four." 
 
 In answer to further questions, Mrs. W. O. S. 
 adds : — 
 
 "October 16///, 1888. 
 li In regard to the light in my husband's room, it seemed to 
 me to be perhaps more in the corner between his window and my 
 door, although it was faintly distributed through the room. 
 When I first saw the light (lying in bed) it was brilliant, but I 
 only commanded a view of the corner of his room, between his 
 window and my door. When I reached the door the light had 
 begun to fade, though it seemed brighter in the doorway where 
 I stood than elsewhere. My husband seemed greatly perplexed, 
 and said, 1 How strange ! I thought surely there was a woman 
 in my room.' I said, ' Did you think it was I ? 5 He said, ' At 
 first, of course, I thought so, but when I rubbed my eyes I 
 
 saw it was not. It looked some like Mrs. B ' (another 
 
 patient of his, — not the girl who died that night). He, more- 
 over, said that the figure never seemed to look directly at him, 
 but towards the wall beyond his bed; and that the figure 
 seemed clothed in white, or something very light. That was 
 all he said, except that later, when he knew the girl was 
 dead, and I asked him if the figure at all resembled her, he 
 said, i Yes, it did look like her, only older." 1 
 
 1 Proc. American S.P.R., pp. 405-408. The reader may be 
 interested in comparing the ragged and possibly commonplace 
 account given in the text with the following spirited version of 
 the same incident quoted from the Arena, March 1892. The writer 
 of the account states that " the story, as I tell it, was given me by 
 the wife." But he does not, it will be observed, quote it as in Mrs. 
 W. O. S.'s words. After describing how the doctor was awakened by 
 a strong light in the room and saw the figure of a woman, whom 
 
COLLECTIVE HALLUCINATIONS. 289 
 
 So far the instances quoted belong to what may 
 be called the normal type of collective hallucination. 
 In the last case, indeed, one percipient saw less than 
 the other, but that may have been due merely to the 
 fact that she awoke later. In the three cases which 
 follow the impressions produced upon the percipients 
 were diverse, and there is no evidence that they were 
 simultaneous. In the first of the three cases, indeed, 
 the circumstances strongly suggest that the mind of 
 one percipient was influenced by the other. But in 
 the last case, where the percipients were far apart, and 
 their impressions markedly different, it seems reason- 
 able to conjecture — their interest in the agent being 
 equal — that the results produced were in each case 
 directly referable to the dying man. 
 
 he at first mistook for his wife, the writer in the Arena proceeds as 
 follows : — 
 
 " By this time he was broad awake, and sat upright in bed staring 
 at the figure. He noticed that it was a woman in a white garment ; 
 and looking sharply, he recognised it, as he thought, as one of his 
 patients who was very ill. Then he realised that this could not be so, 
 and that if any one was in the room, it must be an intruder who had 
 no right to be there. With the vague thought of a possible burglar 
 thus disguised, he sprang out of bed and grasped his revolver, 
 which he was accustomed to have near at hand. This brought him 
 face to face with the figure, not three feet away. He now saw 
 every detail of dress, complexion, and feature, and for the first time 
 recognised the fact that it was not a being of flesh and blood. Then it 
 was that, in quite an excited manner, he called his wife, hoping that 
 she would get there to see it also. But the moment he called her 
 name, the figure disappeared, leaving, however, the intense yellow 
 light behind, and which they both observed for five minutes by the 
 watch before it faded out. 
 
 "The next day it was found that one of his patients, closely resem- 
 bling the figure he had seen, had died a few minutes before he saw his 
 vision, — had died calling for him. 
 
 "It will be seen that this story, like the first one in this article, is 
 perfectly authentic in every particular. There is no question as to the 
 facts." 
 
 That, no doubt, is how the thing ought to have happened. A 
 revolver and a watch are essential to a properly upholstered ghost- 
 story. There ought to have been the dramatic confrontation of the 
 living man with his spectral visitant; there ought to have been the 
 instant recognition and as instant disappearance. Above all, there 
 ought to have been the exquisite adjustment in the times of vision and 
 death. 
 
 19 
 
290 APPARITIONS AND THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 
 
 The narrative which follows was originally printed 
 in July 1883, in an account written by the Warden, 
 entitled " The Orphanage and Home, Aberlour, 
 Craigellachie." It will be observed that the account, 
 though written in the third person, is actually first 
 hand. 
 
 No. 85.— From the Rev. C. H. Jupp, Warden. 
 
 "In 1875 a man died leaving a widow and six orphan 
 children. The three eldest were admitted into the Orphanage. 
 Three years afterwards the widow died, and friends succeeded 
 in getting funds to send the rest here, the youngest being about 
 four years of age. [Late one evening, about six months after 
 the admission of the younger children, some visitors arrived 
 unexpectedly; and] the Warden agreed to take a bed in the 
 little ones' dormitory, which contained ten beds, nine occupied. 
 
 " In the morning, at breakfast, the Warden made the follow- 
 ing statement : — ' As near as I can tell I fell asleep about eleven 
 o'clock, and slept very soundly for some time. I suddenly woke 
 without any apparent reason, and felt an impulse to turn round, 
 my face being towards the wall, from the children. Before 
 turning, I looked up and saw a soft light in the room. The gas 
 was burning low in the hall, and the dormitory door being open, 
 I thought it probable that the light came from that source. It 
 was soon evident, however, that such was not the case. I 
 turned round, and then a wonderful vision met my gaze. Over 
 the second bed from mine, and on the same side of the room, 
 there was floating a small cloud of light, forming a halo of the 
 brightness of the moon on an ordinary moonlight night. 
 
 " ' 1 sat upright in bed, looking at this strange appearance, 
 took up my watch and found the hands pointing to five minutes 
 to one. Everything was quiet, and all the children sleeping 
 soundly. In the bed, over which the light seemed to float, 
 slept the youngest of the six children mentioned above. 
 
 " 1 1 asked myself, " Am I dreaming ? " No ! I was wide 
 awake. I was seized with a strong impulse to rise and touch 
 the substance, or whatever it might be (for it was about five 
 feet high), and was getting up when something seemed to hold 
 me back. I am certain I heard nothing, yet I felt and perfectly 
 understood the words — " No, lie down, it won't hurt you." I at 
 once did what I felt I was told to do. I fell asleep shortly after- 
 wards and rose at half-past five, that being my usual time. 
 
 " ' At six o'clock I began dressing the children, beginning at 
 the bed furthest from the one in which I slept. Presently I 
 came to the bed over which I had seen the light hovering. I 
 
COLLECTIVE HALLUCINATIONS. 29I 
 
 took the little boy out, placed him on my knee, and put on some 
 of his clothes. The child had been talking with the others; 
 suddenly he was silent. And then, looking me hard in the face 
 with an extraordinary expression, he said, " Oh, Mr. Jupp, my 
 mother came to me last night. Did you see her ? " For a 
 moment I could not answer the child. I then thought it better 
 to pass it off, and said, " Come, we must make haste, or we shall 
 be late for breakfast." ' 
 
 " The child never afterwards referred to the matter, we are 
 told, nor has it since ever been mentioned to him. The Warden 
 says it is a mystery to him ; he simply states the fact and there 
 leaves the matter, being perfectly satisfied that he was mistaken 
 in no one particular." 
 
 In answer to inquiries, the Rev. C. Jupp writes 
 to us : — 
 
 "The Orphanage and Convalescent Home, 
 Aberlour, Craigellachie, 
 
 Nove?nber 13M, 1883. 
 
 " I fear anything the little boy might now say would be un- 
 reliable, or I would at once question him. Although the matter 
 was fully discussed at the time, it was never mentioned in the 
 hearing of the child ; and yet when, at the request of friends, 
 the account was published in our little magazine, and the child 
 read it, his countenance changed, and looking up, he said, 4 Mr. 
 Jupp, that is me.' I said, 4 Yes, that is what we saw.' He said, 
 4 Yes,' and then seemed to fall into deep thought, evidently with 
 pleasant remembrances, for he smiled so sweetly to himself, and 
 seemed to forget I was present. 
 
 " I much regret now that I did not learn something from the 
 child at the time. 
 
 "Chas. Jupp." 
 
 In answer to inquiries, Mr. Jupp says that he has 
 never had any other hallucination of the senses ; and 
 adds : — 
 
 " My wife was the only person of adult age to whom I 
 mentioned the circumstance at the time. Shortly after, I 
 mentioned it to our Bishop and Primus." 
 
 Mrs. Jupp writes, from the Orphanage, on June 23, 
 1886 :— 
 
 " This is to certify that the account of the light seen by the 
 Warden of this establishment is correct, and was mentioned to 
 me at the time " — t.e., next morning. 
 
292 APPARITIONS AND THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 
 
 It is to be regretted that it is not now possible 
 to ascertain whether the child's experience were 
 of the nature of a dream or a borderland hallucina- 
 tion. But the ambiguity does not affect either the 
 interpretation or the significance of the incident. 
 
 In the next case the two apparitions were not only 
 different, but were seen in different rooms. The time 
 in each case appears to have been within an hour of 
 midnight. It will be noticed that each percipient 
 is doubtful whether to class her experience as a 
 dream or a waking vision. If dreams, they were 
 certainly of an unusual type, since they included 
 in each case an impression of the room in which 
 they occurred. 
 
 No. 86.— From Sister Martha. 
 
 Account, signed by herself, which Sister Martha 
 (Sister of the Order of Saint Charles) gave to M. 
 Ch. Richet at Mirecourt — 
 
 "On Friday, 6th March 1891, I was called to nurse M. 
 Bastien. At night, when I had been dozing for about five 
 minutes, I had the following dream — if I may call it a dream ; 
 I think I was sleeping. A light, a sound came from the fire- 
 place, and a woman stepped out whose appearance I did not 
 recognise, but who had a voice like Madame Bastien's. I saw 
 her as distinctly as I see you. She approached the bed where 
 Cecile was sleeping, and taking her hand, said, ' How sweet 
 Cdcile is ! ' I followed her — in my dream, crossing myself as 
 I went. She opened the door and vanished. 
 
 " I cannot say the exact hour, but it was early in the night, 
 between 11 P.M. and 1 A.M. — I do not know exactly, for I had 
 not a watch. I awoke immediately after this dream. I did not 
 waken Cecile, for I did not want to say anything to her about 
 it, but as the dream impressed me very much, I told it to her the 
 following morning when I awoke. I can give no further details 
 about the dream except that the lady carried a candle and had 
 coloured spots on her garments. 
 
 " I have never had a similar dream except once, when I 
 thought I saw my dead mother and heard her say, f You do not 
 remember me in your prayers.' " 
 
COLLECTIVE HALLUCINATIONS. 293 
 
 Madame Houdaille writes : — 
 
 " Mirecourt, 20th March, 1891. 
 
 " During my father's illness the Sister kept watch on the first 
 floor, and my brother and I passed the evening on the ground 
 floor. About ten o'clock I left my brother and went upstairs to 
 bed. Between eleven o'clock and midnight (I do not know 
 whether I was waking or sleeping, probably between the two) 
 I perceived, near my bed, a white shadow like a phantom, which 
 I had not time to recognise. I gave a loud cry of terror which 
 startled my brother, who was just going up to bed. He hastened 
 to my room, and found me gazing wildly around. The rest of 
 the night passed quietly. 
 
 " Next morning Cdcile told me about the Sister's dream. 
 
 " She, Cecile, had seen or heard nothing. I was almost 
 angry with her and her tale, and treated it as a silly dream, 
 so terrified was I at the occurrence of the two apparitions the 
 same night, and probably at the same hour. Cecile and the 
 Sister knew nothing of my dream. I did not tell it to the 
 Sister till two days after M. Richet and Octave 1 had visited the 
 hospital." 2 
 
 In the next case, as already said, the two percipients 
 were many miles apart. The impression in the first 
 narrative should probably be classed as a dream ; in 
 the second as an auditory hallucination. 
 
 No. 87. — From Sir Lawrence Jones. 
 
 "Cranmer Hall, Fakenham, Norfolk, 
 April 26i/i, 1893. 
 
 "On August 20th, 1884, I was staying at my father-in-law's 
 house at Bury St. Edmunds. I had left my father in perfectly 
 good health about a fortnight before. He was at home at this 
 address. About August 18th I had had a letter from my mother 
 saying that my father was not quite well, and that the doctor 
 had seen him and made very light of the matter, attributing his 
 indisposition to the extreme heat of the weather. 
 
 " I was not in any way anxious on my father's account, as he 
 was rather subject to slight bilious attacks. 
 
 " I should add, though, that I had been spending that day, 
 August 20th, at Cambridge, and should have stayed the night 
 there had not a sort of vague presentiment haunted me that 
 possibly there would be a letter from home the next morning. 
 
 1 M. Octave Houdaille. 
 
 2 Annates des Sciences Psychiques, vol. i. pp. 98, 99. 
 
294 APPARITIONS AND THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 
 
 My wife, too, had a similar feeling that if I stayed the night at 
 Cambridge I might regret it. In consequence of this feeling 
 I returned to Bury, and that night woke up suddenly to find 
 myself streaming with perspiration and calling out : ' Something 
 dreadful is happening ; I don't know what.' The impression of 
 horror remained some time, but at last I fell asleep till the 
 morning. 
 
 " My father, Sir Willoughby Jones, died very suddenly of 
 heart disease about i a.m. on August 21st. He was not in his 
 room at the moment, but was carried back to his room and 
 restoratives applied, but in vain. 
 
 " My brother Herbert and I were the only two of the family 
 absent from home at the time. The thoughts of those present 
 (my mother, brother, and three sisters) no doubt turned most 
 anxiously towards us, and it is to a telepathic impression from 
 them in their anxiety and sorrow that I attribute the intimations 
 we received. 
 
 "Lawrence J. Jones." 
 
 Lady Jones writes : — 
 
 " I have a vivid remembrance of the occurrence related 
 above by my husband. I was sound asleep when he awoke, 
 and seizing me by [the] wrist, exclaimed : ' Such a dreadful thing 
 is happening,' and I had much difficulty in persuading him that 
 there was nothing wrong. 
 
 " He went to sleep again, but was much relieved in the morn- 
 ing by finding a long letter from Sir Willoughby, posted the day 
 before, and written in good spirits. Having read this and gone 
 to his dressing-room, however, he soon returned with the tele- 
 gram summoning him home at once, and said as he came in : 
 ' My impression in the night was only too true.' 
 
 "Evelyn M. Jones." 
 
 Mr. Herbert Jones, the other percipient, describes 
 his experience as follows : — 
 
 " Knebworth Rectory, Stevenage. 
 "Recollections of August 20tk> 1884. 
 
 " I had spent the day at Harpenden, and returned home 
 about 8 P.M., and went to bed about 10.30. 
 
 " I woke at 12 o'clock, hearing my name called twice, as I 
 fancied. I lit my candle, and, seeing nothing, concluded it was 
 a dream — looked at my watch, and went to sleep again. 
 
 " I woke again and heard people carrying something down- 
 stairs from the upper storey, just outside my room. I lit my 
 candle, got out of bed, and waited till the men were outside 
 
COLLECTIVE HALLUCINATIONS. 
 
 295 
 
 my door. They seemed to be carrying something heavy, and 
 came down step by step. 
 
 " I opened my door, and it was pitch dark. I was puzzled 
 and dumbfounded. I went into my sitting-room and into the 
 hall, but everything was dark and quiet. I went back to bed 
 convinced I had been the sport of another nightmare. It was 
 about 2 A.M. by my watch. At breakfast next morning on my 
 plate was a telegram telling me to come home. 
 
 " This whole story may be nothing, but it was odd that I 
 should have twice got up in one night, and that during that 
 night and those hours my father was dying. 
 
 " H. E. Jones. 
 
 " April 4//*, 1893." 
 Sir Lawrence Jones adds : — 
 
 " My brother was then a curate in London, living at 32 Palace 
 Street, Westminster, where the above experience took place. 
 
 "L.J. V 
 
 A case somewhat resembling this last is recorded by 
 Professor Richet {Proc. S.P.R. y vol. v. pp. 163, 164). 
 On the night of the I4-I5th November 1887, when his 
 physiological laboratory in Paris was burnt, two of his 
 intimate friends, M. Ferrari and M. Hericourt, dreamt 
 of fire; and on the evening of the 15th Madame B. 
 (the hypnotic subject referred to in Chapter V.) was 
 hypnotised by M. Gibert at Havre and "sent on a 
 journey" [&e. 9 in imagination] to Paris to visit, amongst 
 others, M. Richet. Shortly afterwards she awoke 
 herself by crying out in great distress, " It is burning." 
 Unfortunately, those present contented themselves 
 with calming her excitement, and did not at the time 
 inquire into the nature of her impression. But the 
 triple coincidence is certainly remarkable. 
 
 A case which may perhaps be referred to the 
 same category is recorded by the Rev. A. T. Fryer in 
 the Journal of the S.P.R. for June 1890. Mr. C. 
 Williams died at Plaxtol, Sevenoaks, on Sunday, April 
 28th, 1889, having been confined to his bed with 
 pleuro-pneumonia since the preceding Tuesday. On 
 Friday the 26th his figure was seen in the street by 
 
296 APPARITIONS AND THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 
 
 Mr. Hind at about 10.40 A.M., and on the day follow- 
 ing at about 1 P.M. by two ladies, Miss Dalison and 
 Miss Sinclair, simultaneously. None of the per- 
 cipients were aware of Mr. Williams* illness. It was 
 impossible that the figure seen could have been the 
 real man, and, as Mr. Fryer shows that a mistake 
 of identity was under the circumstances extremely 
 improbable, it seems not unlikely that we have here 
 to deal with a case of two telepathic hallucinations 
 originated independently and at a considerable interval 
 by the same agent. 
 
297 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 SOME LESS COMMON TYPES OF TELEPATHIC 
 HALLUCINATION. 
 
 THE hallucinations so far dealt with belong to classes 
 numerically strong, and the narratives quoted could 
 be paralleled over and over again from our records by 
 other narratives equally well attested. And this fact 
 furnishes in itself a strong presumption of the sub- 
 stantial accuracy of the accounts given. For as there 
 is little in the kind of incident described — the bare 
 occurrence of a hallucination coincidently with an 
 external event or with another hallucination — to 
 suggest the work of the imagination, there is little 
 warrant for ascribing this consensus of testimony 
 among the narratives to any other cause than a 
 common foundation in fact. The episodes consist, 
 indeed, of such simple elements as to leave small room 
 for embellishment. Moreover, by those who accept 
 the theory of telepathy an additional argument for 
 the authenticity of these narratives may be found in 
 the consideration that in that theory they receive a 
 simple and sufficient explanation. But we meet 
 occasionally with accounts of hallucinatory experi- 
 ences which do not fall readily under any of the 
 comparatively simple categories already discussed. 
 The mere difficulty of explaining the genesis of 
 hallucinations of such aberrant types would not, in 
 the present stage of our knowledge, be an argument 
 against their authenticity. But it serves to rob them 
 of the support which they might otherwise have 
 
298 APPARITIONS AND THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 
 
 received from their affiliation with better known forms 
 of hallucination ; whilst the recent first-hand evidence 
 actually available is not sufficient in itself to sub- 
 stantiate them. Whilst, therefore, such cases should 
 be duly recorded and may legitimately be discussed, 
 it seems best to await the receipt of further evidence 
 before a final judgment is passed upon them. But in 
 some instances there is a further reason why the 
 question should at most be held unproven. Some of 
 the features which distinguish these cases from 
 ordinary telepathic hallucinations, whilst occurring 
 rarely in well-attested recent narratives, are to be 
 found more commonly in remote, uncorroborated, and 
 traditional stories. This circumstance is, of course, a 
 strong argument against their genuineness, since it 
 proves that the imagination tends to create such 
 features. But it is not a conclusive argument. The 
 imagination may itself have been inspired in the first 
 instance by fact; it may have copied, not bettered, 
 nature. That the legendary epics of the older world 
 have invented winged dragons is clearly not an argu- 
 ment that can weigh against positive evidence for the 
 existence in a still more remote past of pterodactyls. 
 
 Reciprocal Cases. 
 
 These considerations apply with full force to the 
 first of the dubious types here to be considered. In 
 publishing seven first-hand "reciprocal" cases in 1886 
 \Phantasms y vol. ii. p. 167) Mr. Gurney pointed out 
 that the evidence then available was " so small that 
 the genuineness of the type might fairly be called in 
 question." Still, regarding it as probably genuine, he 
 anticipated that we should ultimately obtain more 
 well-attested specimens of it. In the eight years 
 which have elapsed since Mr. Gurney wrote this 
 anticipation has met with only partial fulfilment. We 
 have met with but two recent well-attested cases which 
 clearly fall under the same category as those already 
 
LESS COMMON TYPES OF HALLUCINATION. 299 
 
 given. One of these cases has already been quoted 
 (No. 63), and was indeed included in the supplemen- 
 tary chapter of Phantasms of the Living; the other is 
 as follows : — 
 
 No. 88.— From the Rev. C L. Evans. 
 
 "FORTON, GARSTANG. 
 {Received on the iSt/i of September 1889.) 
 
 "Two years ago I had occasion to undergo a course of 
 
 magnetism, under the treatment of Miss . I was under her 
 
 treatment for six weeks, and derived considerable benefit from 
 her treatment. A warm friendship sprang up between us, as 
 she had wonderfully improved my sight. I went up to St. 
 Edmund Hall, Oxford, at the commencement of the October 
 term, as my eyes were so much stronger. One afternoon, as I 
 had just come in from the river, being rather tired, I sat down 
 for a minute before I changed, when, to my great surprise, the 
 door opened, and Miss appeared to walk in. 
 
 " She was looking rather pale at the time, and looked intently 
 at me for about a minute, then left the room as slowly as she had 
 walked in. I was much alarmed, as I fancied that something 
 must have happened to her, and I immediately sat down and 
 
 wrote off two letters, one to Miss , asking if she was well, 
 
 and another to my mother, telling her of the strange occurrence. 
 The next day I had back the two replies. My mother said 
 
 that on that very afternoon she had called on Miss , and 
 
 naturally they had been discussing my case. She said that my 
 
 description of Miss J s dress, etc., was perfectly accurate. I 
 
 then read Miss 's note. She stated that my mother had called, 
 
 and had left at about half-past four, she then had lain down for a 
 few minutes, and was thinking and wishing to see me. She had a 
 distinct impression that she saw me during this sleep, or trance, 
 but when she awoke the impression was not very vivid. The 
 time exactly coincided, and she said that my description of her 
 was very accurate. At the time that she appeared to me I was 
 not thinking in the least of her. 
 
 "Charles Lloyd Evans." 
 
 I called on Mr. Evans on the 20th April 1892, and 
 had a long conversation with him. The following 
 notes of my interview were made at the time and 
 written out a few days later : — 
 
 "The occurrence took place in November 1887. It would 
 be about 4.15 P.M. He was resting in his chair — in boating 
 
300 APPARITIONS AND THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 
 
 clothes — with the door ajar. Heard a knock or sound as 
 
 of some one entering ; turned round and saw Miss come 
 
 into the room and walk towards him. She was dressed in red 
 bodice and dark silk skirt (a not unfamiliar dress), but with a 
 silver filigree cross hanging from a chain round her neck which 
 he had never seen before. Learnt afterwards that the cross had 
 been given by General only a few days before the incident. 
 
 " The figure looked him straight in the face, then seemed to 
 fade away bit by bit. 
 
 " He was himself perfectly well and not a bit sleepy. 
 
 " He has had no other hallucinations. His age at the time 
 was twenty." 
 
 Mr. Evans's mother writes : — 
 
 * April 17th) 1892. 
 " In reply to the questions you asked me about the apparition 
 
 of Miss to my son, when at Oxford, I can fully verify his 
 
 statement. He wrote to me the same afternoon, begging me to 
 
 call upon Miss and see if she was ill, detailing me the account 
 
 of what he had seen, and also describing her dress minutely and 
 
 the cross she was wearing. I called upon Miss the following 
 
 day, and read her my son's letter, giving the hour at which she 
 had appeared to him. She told me that she had not been feel- 
 ing well, and was lying down on the couch thinking, too, of my 
 son, and that she went off into a sort of trance, and she saw 
 him distinctly looking at her and he was very pale. This made 
 a deep impression upon me, for I must own myself that I hardly 
 
 believed it to be possible. However, Miss told me that my 
 
 son had at once written to her, fearing that she must be ill, and 
 told her the circumstances under which she appeared to him. 
 
 When I saw Miss she was then wearing the same dress and 
 
 filigree cross which Charlie had described to me in his letter, 
 and which he had never seen her wearing before. I fear that I 
 cannot now find my son's letter, but should I come across it I 
 
 will forward it to you. Miss , however, can corroborate all 
 
 that I have said. 
 
 "Mary E. Evans." 
 
 Afterwards I saw Miss . . The following notes 
 
 of the interview were made the same day : — 
 
 "July 171/1, 1892. 
 <c Her account of the matter is that Mrs. Evans (percipient's 
 mother) called on her on the afternoon of the vision and talked 
 much about her son. After Mrs. Evans left— probably about 
 
 5.30 P.M. — Miss , as usual, lay down to sleep for a few 
 
 minutes ; woke about 6 P.M. with the recollection of having seen 
 
LESS COMMON TYPES OF HALLUCINATION. 301 
 
 Mr. C. L. Evans. Can recall no details of appearance — merely 
 the recollection of having been in the same room with him. 
 
 " The next day she received a letter from Mr. C. L. Evans 
 telling of his vision, and on the same day another visit from his 
 mother. 
 
 " Miss was wearing the dress and filigree cross de- 
 
 scribed. The cross, as stated, had been given to her only a few 
 days before. 
 
 "Miss has kept Mr, Evans's letter. 1 She has had many 
 
 visions and dreams in her life, but she cannot recall another 
 relating to Mr. Evans. 
 
 " She is not sure of the time at which her vision or dream 
 occurred. It may have been earlier than 6 p.m., her hours 
 being very irregular. 
 
 " She had compared notes with Mr. Evans, and was under the 
 impression that their experiences coincided. But I think that 
 her first statement — 6 P.M. — is probably correct. If so, her 
 dream would have come one and a half to two hours after Mr. 
 Evans's vision." 
 
 If the above account correctly describes what took 
 place — and I know of no ground for doubting either 
 the accuracy or the good faith of the narrators — it 
 
 seems clear either that Mr. Evans and Miss ■ 
 
 reciprocally affected each other, or that Mr. Evans, 
 
 whilst impressing Miss with the idea of his 
 
 presence, was able himself to attain to a supernormal 
 perception of her surroundings. For the latter ex- 
 planation, however, we have no support in analogy, 
 and it seems less unwarrantable provisionally to re- 
 gard this case and others like it as being reciprocally 
 telepathic. It should, perhaps, be pointed out, as 
 bearing upon the extreme rarity of cases of the kind, 
 that there may be instances of reciprocal affection of 
 which, from the very nature of the case, we could not 
 hope to obtain evidence. It is conceivable, for in- 
 stance, that in the ordinary case of an apparition at 
 death, the dying man may himself have been a per- 
 cipient as well as an agent, since circumstances rarely 
 permit of his side of the experience being recorded. 
 It is conceivable also that in cases of collective 
 
 1 She was, however, unable to find it. 
 
302 APPARITIONS AND THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 
 
 hallucination the effect may really be a reciprocal one, 
 the two persons concerned simultaneously affecting 
 and being affected by each other, until the force so 
 generated explodes into hallucination. But in the 
 present state of our knowledge it would be premature 
 to speculate further. 
 
 A Misinterpreted Message. 
 
 The next case also seems susceptible of more than 
 one explanation. The account which follows was 
 written in 1890. 
 
 No. 89. — From Miss C. L. Hawkins-Dempster, 24 
 Portman Square, W. 
 
 " I ran downstairs and entered the drawing-room at 7.30 p.m., 
 believing I had kept my two sisters waiting for dinner. They 
 had gone to dinner, the room was empty. Behind a long sofa 
 I saw Mr. H. standing. He moved three steps nearer. I heard 
 nothing. I was not at all afraid or surprised, only felt concern 
 as [to] what he wanted, as he was in South America. I learnt 
 next morning that at that moment his mother was breathing her 
 last. I went and arranged her for burial, my picture still hang- 
 ing above the bed, between the portraits of her two absent sons. 
 
 " I was in the habit of hearing often from [Mr. H.], and was 
 not at that moment anxious about Mrs. H.'s health, though she 
 was aged. I had had twenty-five days before the grief of 
 losing an only brother. No other persons were present at the 
 time." 1 
 
 In answer to further inquiries, we learnt from Miss 
 Hawkins-Dempster that the above incident occurred 
 on New Year's Eve, 1876-77; the room was lighted by 
 " one bright lamp and a fire," and the figure did not 
 seem to go away, she merely "ceased to see it." She 
 used to see Mrs. H. often, and was in no anxiety as to 
 her health at the time. Mrs. H. was very old, but not 
 definitely ill. Miss Hawkins-Dempster corrected her 
 first statement as to the exactness of the coincidence 
 
 1 It should be explained that this account was written on a "census" 
 form, in the limited space provided for answers to our printed questions. 
 
LESS COMMON TYPES OF HALLUCINATION. 303 
 
 by informing us that Mrs. H. died in the morning of 
 the same day on which the apparition was seen. 
 
 Miss Hawkins-Dempster mentioned what she had 
 seen to her sister, who thus corroborates : — 
 
 "July 15th, 1892. 
 " I heard of my sister Miss C. L. Hawkins-Dempster's vision 
 of Mr. H. in the drawing-room at 7.30 p.m. on New Year's Eve, 
 1876-77, immediately after it happened, and before hearing that 
 Mrs. H. died the same day, the news of which reached us later 
 that evening. 
 
 " H. H. Dempster." 
 
 We have verified the date of death at Somerset 
 House. 
 
 Miss Hawkins-Dempster has had one other experi- 
 ence — an apparition seen also by her sister and their 
 governess. They were children at the time, aged 
 about fourteen and twelve respectively. 
 
 Mr. Myers had an interview with the Misses 
 Hawkins-Dempster on July 16th, 1892, and writes as 
 follows the next day: — 
 
 " Miss C. Hawkins-Dempster's veridical experience is well 
 remembered by both sisters. The decedent was a very old 
 lady, who was on very intimate terms with them, and had special 
 reasons for thinking of Miss C. Hawkins-Dempster in con- 
 nection with the son whose figure appeared. He was at the 
 other side of the world, and most certainly had not heard of 
 his mother's death at the time. 
 
 "The figure was absolutely life-like. Miss Hawkins-Dempster 
 noticed the slight cast of the eye and the delicate hands. The 
 figure rested one hand on the back of a chair and held the other 
 out. Miss Hawkins-Dempster called out, * What can I do for 
 you?' forgetting for the moment the impossibility that it could 
 be the real man. Then she simply ceased to see the figure. 
 
 " She was in good health at the time, and her thoughts were 
 occupied with business matters." 
 
 We have a parallel case amongst our records. 
 Miss V. saw in church the hallucinatory figure of an 
 acquaintance looking at her, and subsequently learned 
 that he was at the time at the deathbed of his mother. 
 A few other cases are given in Phantasms oj the 
 
304 APPARITIONS AND THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 
 
 Living. I should be disposed to explain these narra- 
 tives as instances of the misinterpretation of a tele- 
 pathic message. I should conjecture, that is, that the 
 impulse received from the dying woman, instead of 
 giving rise, as in an ordinary case, to a hallucination of 
 herself, called up in the percipient's mind, whether 
 through the operation of associated ideas or from 
 some other cause, the image of a near relative. 
 Indeed, seeing how potent is the influence of associated 
 ideas, it is perhaps a matter for wonder that such mis- 
 carriages do not more often occur. It should be stated 
 that, beyond their rarity, there is no special reason to 
 mistrust stories of this type. Their distinguishing 
 feature is not apparently of a kind which appeals 
 readily to the imagination. Indeed, by most persons 
 the want of precise correspondence would probably be 
 regarded as a serious blemish in the story. Certainly 
 cases of the kind occur rarely, if at all, among second- 
 hand and traditional narratives. 
 
 Heteroplastic Hallucinations. 
 
 But another possible explanation of the incident 
 suggests itself. It has already been conjectured that 
 in some cases of hallucination or other impression, 
 the percipient's vision may have originated not in the 
 mind of the person primarily concerned, but in that 
 of some bystander. 1 Conversely, the image seen in 
 the narrative just cited may have been flashed directly 
 from the dying woman's mind. In the case which 
 follows a picture of the past preserved in the memory 
 of one of two friends appears to have been spontane- 
 ously transferred to the mind of the other. 
 
 The case was sent to Dr. Hodgson on the 18th 
 May 1888, and was published in the Arena for 
 February 1889. 
 
 1 See, for instance, Nos. 47, 75, 87, etc. 
 
LESS COMMON TYPES OF HALLUCINATION. 305 
 
 No. 90. — From Mrs. G . 
 
 . . For nearly two weeks I have had a lady friend visiting 
 us from Chicago, and last Sunday we tried the cards and in 
 every instance I told the colour and kind ; but only two or three 
 times was enabled to give the exact number. . . . 
 
 " I must write you of something that occurred last night. After 
 this lady, whom I have mentioned above, had retired, and 
 almost immediately after we had extinguished the light, there 
 suddenly appeared before me a beautiful lawn and coming 
 toward me a chubby, yellow-haired little boy, and by his side a 
 brown dog which closely resembled a fox. The dog had on a 
 brass collar and the child's hand was under the collar just as if 
 he was leading or pulling the dog. The vision was like a flash, 
 came and went in an instant. I immediately told my friend, and 
 she said, 'Do you know where there are any matches?' and 
 began to hurriedly clamber out of bed. I struck a light, she 
 plunged into her trunk, brought out a book, and pasted in the 
 front was a picture of her little boy and his dog. They were 
 not in the same position that I saw them, but the dog looked 
 exceedingly familiar. Her little boy passed into the beyond 
 about four years ago. ..." 
 
 Mrs. F. corroborates as follows : — 
 
 "May iStk, 1888. 
 " I wish to corroborate the statements of Mrs. N. G. relative 
 to . . . and her wonderful vision of my little boy, and my old 
 home. Mrs. G. never saw the place, or the little child, and 
 never even heard of the peculiar-looking dog, which was my 
 little son's constant companion out of doors. She never saw 
 the photograph, which was pasted in the back of my Bible and 
 packed away. 
 
 "(Signed) I. F." 
 
 In this case, it will be noted, the vision was the 
 direct sequel of some partially successful experiments 
 in thought-transference ; and the transferred impres- 
 sion fell short of actual hallucination. In the 
 following case there is no evidence of any special 
 rapport between the percipient and the person who, 
 on this hypothesis, acted as the agent ; and the per- 
 cipient's impression took the form of a completely 
 externalised hallucination. 
 
 20 
 
306 APPARITIONS AND THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 
 
 No. 91.— From Frances Reddell. 
 
 "Antony, Torpoint, 
 
 December 14th, 1882. 
 " Helen Alexander (maid to Lady Waldegrave) was lying 
 here very ill with typhoid fever, and was attended by me. I 
 was standing at the table by her bedside, pouring out her 
 medicine, at about four o'clock in the morning of the 4th 
 October 1880. I heard the call-bell ring (this had been heard 
 twice before during the night in that same week), and was 
 attracted by the door of the room opening, and by seeing a 
 person entering the room whom I instantly felt to be the mother 
 of the sick woman. She had a brass candlestick in her hand, a 
 red shawl over her shoulders, and a flannel petticoat on which 
 had a hole in the front. I looked at her as much as to say, ' I 
 am glad you have come,' but the woman looked at me sternly, 
 as much as to say, 'Why wasn't I sent for before? ' I gave the 
 medicine to Helen Alexander, and then turned round to speak 
 to the vision, but no one was there. She had gone. She was a 
 short, dark person, and very stout. At about six o'clock that 
 morning Helen Alexander died. Two days after, her parents 
 and a sister came to Antony, and arrived between one and two 
 o'clock in the morning ; I and another maid let them in, and it 
 gave me a great turn when I saw the living likeness of the 
 vision I had seen two nights before. I told the sister about the 
 vision, and she said that the description of the dress exactly 
 answered to her mother's, and that they had brass candlesticks 
 at home exactly like the one described. There was not the 
 slightest resemblance between the mother and daughter. 
 
 " Frances Reddell." 
 
 Frances Reddell fortunately described her vision to 
 her mistress, Mrs. Pole-Carew, of Antony, Torpoint, 
 Devonport, within a few hours of its occurrence, and 
 before her encounter with the original. Mrs. Pole- 
 Carew writes as follows : — 
 
 " 31st December 1883. 
 "In October 1880, Lord and Lady Waldegrave came with 
 their Scotch maid, Helen Alexander, to stay with us. [The 
 account then describes how Helen was discovered to have caught 
 typhoid fever, and pending the arrival of a regular nurse, was 
 nursed for several days by Frances Reddell. On the Sunday 
 week, Mrs. Pole-Carew continues], I allowed Reddell to sit up 
 with Helen again that night, to give her the medicine and food, 
 which were to be taken constantly. At about 4.30 that night, or 
 rather Monday morning, Reddell looked at her watch, poured 
 
LESS COMMON TYPES OF HALLUCINATION. 307 
 
 out the medicine, and was bending over the bed to give it to 
 Helen when the call-bell in the passage rang. She said to herself, 
 ' There's that tiresome bell with the wire caught again.' (It 
 seems it did occasionally ring of itself in this manner.) At that 
 moment, however, she heard the door open, and looking round, 
 saw a very stout old woman walk in. She was dressed in a 
 nightgown and red flannel petticoat, and carried an old-fashioned 
 brass candlestick in her hand. The petticoat had a hole rubbed 
 in it. She walked into the room and appeared to be going 
 towards the dressing-table to put her candle down. She was 
 a perfect stranger to Reddell, who, however, merely thought, 
 ' This is her mother come to see after her,' and she felt quite 
 glad it was so, accepting the idea without reasoning upon it, as 
 one would in a dream. She thought the mother looked annoyed, 
 possibly at not having been sent for before. She then gave 
 Helen the medicine, and turning round, found that the appari- 
 tion had disappeared, and that the door was shut. A great 
 change, meanwhile, had taken place in Helen, and Reddell 
 fetched me, who sent off for the doctor, and meanwhile applied 
 hot poultices, etc., but Helen died a little before the doctor 
 came. She was quite conscious up to about half-an-hour before 
 she died, when she seemed to be going to sleep. 
 
 " During the early days of her illness Helen had written to a 
 sister, mentioning her being unwell, but making nothing of it, 
 and as she never mentioned any one but this sister, it was 
 supposed by the household, to whom she was a perfect stranger, 
 that she had no other relation alive. Reddell was always 
 offering to write for her, but she always declined, saying there 
 was no need, she would write herself in a day or two. No one 
 at home, therefore, knew anything of her being so ill, and it is, 
 therefore, remarkable that her mother, a far from nervous 
 person, should have said that evening going up to bed, ' I am 
 sure Helen is very ill.' 
 
 " Reddell told me and my daughter of the apparition, about 
 an hour after Helen's death, prefacing with, ' 1 am not super- 
 stitious or nervous, and I wasn't the least frightened, but her 
 mother came last night,' and she then told the story, giving a 
 careful description of the figure she had seen. The relations 
 were asked to come to the funeral, and the father, mother, and 
 sister came, and in the mother Reddell recognised the apparition, 
 as I did also, for Reddell's description had been most accurate, 
 even to the expression, which she had ascribed to annoyance, but 
 which was due to deafness. It was judged best not to speak 
 about it to the mother, but Reddell told the sister, who said the 
 description of the figure corresponded exactly with the probable 
 appearance of her mother if roused in the night ; that they had 
 exactly such a candlestick at home, and that there was a hole 
 in her mother's petticoat produced by the way she always 
 
308 APPARITIONS AND THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 
 
 wore it. It seems curious that neither Helen nor her mother 
 appeared to be aware of the visit. Neither of them, at any rate, 
 ever spoke of having seen the other, nor even of having dreamt 
 of having done so. 
 
 "F. A. Pole-Carew." 
 
 [Frances Reddell states that she has never had any hallucin- 
 ation, or any odd experience of any kind, except on this one 
 occasion. The Hon. Mrs. Lyttelton, of Selwyn College, 
 Cambridge, who knows her, tells us that " she appears to be a 
 most matter-of-fact person, and was apparently most impressed 
 by the fact that she saw a hole in the mother's flannel petticoat, 
 made by the busk of her stays, reproduced in the apparition."] 
 
 The simplest explanation of this incident, and that 
 which involves the least departure from known forms 
 of telepathy, is that the figure seen by Frances Reddell 
 was due to thought-transference from the mind of the 
 dying girl. And this explanation has some direct 
 evidence in its favour. There is, of course, abundant 
 proof of the transference from agent to percipient of 
 a real or imaginary scene. (See the cases described 
 in Chapters II., III., XIV., and XV.) But in these 
 cases the percipient's impressions appear rarely ' to 
 have risen to the level of hallucination, and in the 
 absence of direct evidence it would not perhaps have 
 been safe to assume that a detailed impression, such 
 as a scene or a human figure, transferred from 
 another mind, would be capable of taking complete 
 sensory embodiment in the mind of the percipient. 
 The frequency, however, of collective hallucinations 
 of an apparently casual character seems to require 
 such an assumption (see ante> p. 273). Moreover, 
 a case has been recorded (Proc. S.P.R.^ vol. 
 vi. pp. 434, 435) in which a hypnotically induced 
 hallucination appears to have been reproduced in 
 another hypnotised subject by telepathic suggestion 
 from the original percipient. In the experiments 
 recorded by Dr. Gibotteau (pp. 368, 369) the ideas 
 mentally suggested by him appear in some cases to 
 have assumed a hallucinatory form in the subject ; 
 and, finally, Wescrmann (Chapter X.,p. 233),in his fifth 
 
LESS COMMON TYPES OF HALLUCINATION. 309 
 
 experiment succeeded in calling up a recognisable 
 hallucination of a lady personally unknown to the 
 percipients. We have, therefore, experimental parallels 
 for our suggested interpretation of Frances Reddell's 
 experience ; and when once the possibility of thought- 
 transference in this form is recognised, many so-called 
 "ghosts" or phantasms of the dead find a simple and 
 satisfactory explanation. The following case may be 
 instanced : — 
 
 No. 92. — From Mr. John E. Husbands, Melbourne 
 House, Town Hall Square, Grimsby. 
 
 " September i$th, 1886. 
 " The facts are simply these. I was sleeping in a hotel in 
 Madeira in January 1885. It was a bright moonlight night. 
 The windows were open and the blinds up. I felt some one was 
 in my room. On opening my eyes, I saw a young fellow about 
 twenty-five, dressed in flannels, standing at the side of my bed 
 and pointing with the first finger of his right hand to the place I 
 was lying in. I lay for some seconds to convince myself of some 
 one being really there. I then sat up and looked at him. I 
 saw his features so plainly that I recognised them in a photo- 
 graph which was shown me some days after. I asked him what 
 he wanted ; he did not speak, but his eyes and hand seemed to 
 tell me I was in his place. As he did not answer, I struck out 
 at him with my fist as I sat up, but did not reach him, and as 
 I was going to spring out of bed he slowly vanished through 
 the door, which was shut, keeping his eyes upon me all the 
 time. 
 
 " Upon inquiry I found that the young fellow who appeared 
 to me died in that room I was occupying. 
 
 " If I can tell you anything more I shall be glad to, if it 
 interests you. 
 
 "John E. Husbands." 
 
 The following letters are from Miss Falkner, of 
 Church Terrace, Wisbech, who was resident at the 
 hotel when the above incident happened : — 
 
 " October Zth, 1 886. 
 " The figure that Mr. Husbands saw while in Madeira was 
 that of a young fellow who died unexpectedly months previously, 
 in the room which Mr. Husbands was occupying. Curiously 
 enough, Mr. H. had never heard of him or his death. He told 
 
310 APPARITIONS AND THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 
 
 me the story the morning after he had seen the figure, and 
 I recognised the young fellow from the description. It 
 impressed me very much, but I did not mention it to him or 
 any one. I loitered about until I heard Mr. Husbands tell the 
 same tale to my brother ; we left Mr. H. and said simul- 
 taneously, i He has seen Mr. D.' 
 
 " No more was said on the subject for days; then I abruptly 
 showed the photograph. 
 
 " Mr. Husbands said at once, ' This is the young fellow who 
 appeared to me the other night, but he was dressed differently 5 
 — describing a dress he often wore— * cricket suit (or tennis) 
 fastened at the neck with sailor knot.' I must say that Mr. 
 Husbands is a most practical man, and the very last one would 
 expect ' a spirit ' to visit. 
 
 "K. Falkner." 
 
 "October loth, 1886. 
 " I enclose you photograph and an extract from my sister-in- 
 law's letter, which I received this morning, as it will verify my 
 statement. Mr. Husbands saw the figure either the 3rd or 4th 
 of February 1885. 
 
 " The people who had occupied the rooms had never told us 
 if they had seen anything, so we may conclude they had not. 
 
 "K. Falkner." 
 
 The following is Miss Falkner's copy of the passage 
 in the letter: — 
 
 " You will see at back of Mr. du F 's photo the date of 
 
 his decease [January 29th, 1884]; and if you recollect 4 the 
 Motta Marques 5 had his rooms from the February till the May 
 or June of 1884, then Major Money at the commencement of 
 1885 season. Mr. Husbands had to take the room on February 
 2nd, 1885, as his was wanted. 
 
 " I am clear on all this, and remember his telling me the 
 incident when he came to see my baby." 
 
 At a personal interview Mr. Gurney learnt that Mr. 
 Husbands had never had any other hallucination of 
 the senses. (Proc. S.P.R. y vo\. v. p. 416.) 
 
 It is, of course, conceivable that before his experi- 
 ence Mr. Husbands may have heard of the death of 
 Mr. D. and have forgotten the circumstance. But 
 this supposition will hardly account for the recogni- 
 tion of the photograph. In any case, however, there 
 
LESS COMMON TYPES OF HALLUCINATION. 3 1 1 
 
 can be no justification for invoking other than 
 terrestrial agencies to explain the vision. Until such 
 agencies are proved inadequate to account for the 
 facts a narrative of this kind can scarcely be held to 
 raise a presumption, much less to afford a proof, of 
 the action of the dead. Miss Falkner and her brother 
 had known the dead man; no fact about him was 
 communicated which was not within their knowledge; 
 and there is nothing to negative the supposition that 
 some echo of their thoughts or dreams may have 
 given rise to the vision. A very similar case is 
 quoted in the same volume (Proc, vol. v. p. 418). 
 Mr. D. M. Tyre, of St. Andrews Road, Pollokshields, 
 Glasgow, stayed for some time in a lonely house in 
 Dumbartonshire. On several occasions during their 
 occupancy of the house Miss L. Tyre saw the figure 
 of an old woman lying on the bed in the kitchen. 
 The figure lay with the face turned to the wall, and 
 the legs drawn up as if from cold. On her head 
 was a " sow-backed mutch," i.e. 9 a white frilled cap 
 of a peculiar shape common in the Highlands. The 
 others who were present did not see the figure. It 
 was subsequently ascertained from a neighbour that 
 the description given correctly represented the dress 
 and attitude of a former occupant of the house, who 
 had died there some years before under painful cir- 
 cumstances. M. Richet (Proc, vol. v. p. 148) gives an 
 account of some spiritualist seances at which the 
 promise was given that his grandfather, M. Charles 
 Renouard, would appear. A figure resembling M. 
 Charles Renouard was actually seen some days later, 
 not by any of those present at the seance, but by an 
 English lady staying in the house, who was believed 
 to know nothing of the expected apparition. 
 
 A similar explanation may perhaps apply to the 
 following account, which was communicated verbally 
 to Mr. Myers on the 12th October 1888 by the 
 percipient, Mr. J., a gentleman well known in the 
 scientific world. Mr. Myers explains that the account 
 
312 APPARITIONS AND THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 
 
 which follows was written out by him from his notes 
 of the conversation, and was subsequently revised and 
 corrected by Mr. J. himself. 
 
 No. 93. — From Mr. J. 
 
 " In 1880 I succeeded a Mr. Q. as librarian of the X. Library. 
 I had never seen Mr. Q., nor any photograph or likeness of 
 him, when the following incidents occurred. I may, of course, 
 have heard the library assistants describe his appearance, 
 though I have no recollection of this. I was sitting alone in 
 the library one evening late in March 1884, finishing some 
 work after hours, when it suddenly occurred to me that I should 
 miss the last train to H., where I was then living, if I did not 
 make haste. It was then 10.55, an( l the last train left X. at 
 II. 5. I gathered up some books in one hand, took the lamp in 
 the other, and prepared to leave the librarian's room, which 
 communicated by a passage with the main room of the library. 
 As my lamp illumined this passage, I saw apparently at the 
 further end of it a man's face. I instantly thought a thief had 
 got into the library. This was by no means impossible, and 
 the probability of it had occurred to me before. I turned back 
 into my room, put down the books, and took a revolver from 
 the safe, and, holding the lamp cautiously behind me, I made 
 my way along the passage — which had a corner, behind which 
 I thought my thief might be lying in wait — into the main room. 
 Here I saw no one, but the room was large and encumbered 
 with bookcases. I called out loudly to the intruder to show 
 himself several times, more with the hope of attracting a passing 
 policeman than of drawing the intruder. Then I saw a face 
 looking round one of the bookcases. I say looking rou?id, but 
 it had an odd appearance as if the body were in the bookcase, 
 as the face came so closely to the edge and I could see no body. 
 The face was pallid and hairless, and the orbits of the eyes 
 were very deep. I advanced towards it, and as I did so I saw 
 an old man with high shoulders seem to rotate out of the end of 
 the bookcase, and with his back towards me and with a shuffling 
 gait walk rather quickly from the bookcase to the door of a 
 small lavatory, which opened from the library and had no other 
 access. I heard no noise. I followed the man at once into the 
 lavatory ; and to my extreme surprise found no one there. I 
 examined the window (about 14 in. x 12 in.), and found it closed 
 and fastened. I opened it and looked out. It opened into a 
 well, the bottom of which, 10 feet below, was a sky-light, and the 
 top open to the sky some 20 feet above. It was in the middle 
 of the building, and no one could have dropped into it without 
 smashing the glass nor climbed out of it without a ladder — but 
 
LESS COMMON TYPES OF HALLUCINATION. 313 
 
 no one was there. Nor had there been anything like time for 
 a man to get out of the window, as I followed the intruder 
 instantly. Completely mystified, I even looked into the little 
 cupboard under the fixed basin. There was nowhere hiding for 
 a child, and I confess I began to experience for the first time 
 what novelists describe as an 4 eerie' feeling. 
 
 " I left the library, and found I had missed my train. 
 
 "Next morning I mentioned what I had seen to a local 
 clergyman, who, on hearing my description, said, ' Why, that's 
 old Q. ! ' Soon after I saw a photograph (from a drawing) of 
 Q., and the resemblance was certainly striking. Q. had lost all 
 his hair, eyebrows and all, from (I believe) a gunpowder acci- 
 dent. His walk was a peculiar, rapid, high-shouldered shuffle. 
 
 " Later inquiry proved he had died at about the time of year 
 at which I saw the figure." {Proc, S.P.R., vol. vi. p. 57.) 
 
 Mr. J. states that he has seen but one other 
 hallucination, a figure representing his mother, which 
 appeared to him at the time of the birth of one of his 
 sisters. 
 
 A hallucination of another kind was seen independ- 
 ently in the same library by Mr. R., the principal 
 assistant, and a clerk, Mr. P. Mr. R. writes in 
 1889 :— 
 
 "A few years ago I was engaged in a large building in 
 
 the , and during the busy times was often there till late in 
 
 the evening. On one particular night I was at work along with 
 a junior clerk till about 1 1 P.M., in the room marked A on the 
 annexed sketch. All the lights in the place had been out for 
 hours except those in the room which we occupied. Before 
 leaving, we turned out the gas. We then looked into the fire- 
 place, but not a spark was to be seen. The night was very 
 dark, but being thoroughly accustomed to the place we carried 
 no light. On reaching the bottom of the staircase (B), I 
 happened to look up ; when, to my surprise, the room which we 
 had just left appeared to be lighted. I turned to my companion 
 and pointed out the light, and sent him back to see what was 
 wrong. He went at once and I stood looking through the open 
 door, but I was not a little astonished to see that as soon as he 
 got within a few yards of the room the light went out quite 
 suddenly. My companion, from the position he was in at the 
 moment, could not see the light go out, but on his reaching the 
 door everything was in total darkness. He entered, however, 
 and when he returned, reported that both gas and fire were 
 completely out. The light in the daytime was got by means of 
 a glass roof, there being no windows on the sides of the room, 
 
314 APPARITIONS AND THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 
 
 and the night in question was so dark that the moon shining 
 through the roof was out of the question. Although I have 
 often been in the same room till long after dark, both before 
 and since, I have never seen anything unusual at any other 
 time. 55 
 
 Mr. P. endorses this : — 
 " I confirm the foregoing statement." 
 
 In subsequent letters Mr. R. says : — 
 
 "The bare facts are as stated, being neither more nor less 
 than what took place. I have never on any other occasion had 
 any hallucination of the senses, and I think you will find the 
 same to be the case with Mr. P." 
 
 This incident took place after Mr. J.'s vision, but Mr. 
 J. had mentioned his own experience only to his wife 
 and one other friend, and no hint of it appears to have 
 reached the assistants in the library, so that the two 
 visions would appear to have been independent. 
 
 To extend the theory of thought-transference from 
 living minds to cover a case such as that just quoted 
 may seem to some extravagant. But if there is any- 
 thing beyond chance in the occurrence — and it would 
 be a very remarkable coincidence that three persons 
 should independently be the subject of hallucination 
 in the same house, and that one of the hallucinations 
 should resemble a former occupant of the house, 
 unknown to the percipient — some explanation is re- 
 quired, and an explanation which involves no novel 
 or unproved agency is, ceteris paribus, to be preferred. 
 As regards the apparently local character of the 
 visitation, Mr. Gurney has suggested, with regard to 
 some cases quoted in Phantasms of the Living '(vol. ii. 
 pp. 267-269), where the link between agent and per- 
 cipient appears to have been of a local and not of 
 a personal character, that a similarity of immediate 
 mental content between the percipient and agent 
 may have been the condition of the telepathic action. 
 In the ordinary case of an apparition, e.g., of a dying 
 mother to her son, the condition of the appearance to 
 
LESS COMMON TYPES OF HALLUCINATION. 315 
 
 that particular percipient rather than to the man in 
 the street should on this hypothesis be sought in the 
 community of intellectual and emotional experiences 
 which may be presumed to exist between near 
 relatives who have passed a large part of their lives 
 in the same environment. In the cases now under 
 consideration the substitute for such far-reaching 
 community is to be found in the transitory occupa- 
 tion of both percipient and agent — the one in present 
 sensation, the other in memory — with the same scene. 
 Such partial community of perception, by a kind 
 of extended association of ideas, tends under the 
 hypothesis towards more complete community, and 
 the agent thus imports into the sensorium of the 
 percipient the image of his own or some other's 
 presence in the scene which forms part of the present 
 content of both minds. On this view Mr. J. saw the 
 figure of Mr. Q. in the library, because some friend 
 of Mr. Q.'s was at that moment vividly picturing to 
 himself the late librarian in his old haunts. 
 
 Cases, such as the three last quoted, of the solitary 
 appearance of a phantasmal figure, subsequently 
 identified by description, photograph, or — as in 
 Frances Reddell's case — actual encounter with the 
 original, are rare ; and experience shows how easy it 
 may be for the somewhat vague image preserved 
 in the memory to take on definite form and colour 
 during the process, occasionally prolonged, of 
 " recognition." The type cannot, therefore, be 
 regarded as well established. As, however, such 
 narratives have in some instances been regarded as 
 affording evidence of the action of disembodied 
 spirits, it seemed well to suggest that, if the facts are 
 accepted, they are susceptible of another interpreta- 
 tion. 
 
 Haunted Houses. 
 
 But there are numerous cases to which the hypo- 
 thesis of telepathic infection may be applied with 
 
3 16 APPARITIONS AND THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 
 
 perhaps less hesitation. The form which so-called 
 " ghost stories " most commonly assume is the 
 appearance of an unrecognised phantasmal figure. 
 When the appearance is to one person only, or when, 
 in the intervals of its appearance to others, the matter 
 has been freely discussed amongst the members of 
 the household, and the details of the figure described, 
 we should probably be justified, on the analogy of 
 hypnotic and epidemic religious hallucinations, in re- 
 garding the original appearance as purely subjective 
 and the later ones as due to verbal suggestion and 
 expectancy. But there are cases where, from the 
 definite statements of the witnesses and the surround- 
 ing circumstances, it appears at all events extremely 
 improbable that any mention was made of the 
 original hallucination. In such cases it seems per- 
 missible to conjecture that the later apparitions, or 
 some of them, may have been due to telepathic 
 suggestion from the original percipient, to whom his 
 solitary experience would naturally be a subject of 
 frequent and vivid reflection. 
 
 I received the following account from the ladies 
 concerned after a personal interview with one of 
 them on February 27th; 1889, in the course of 
 which I examined the scene of the apparition, the 
 landing of a moderate-sized London house. The 
 landing, though narrow, is well lighted, and it seems 
 impossible that the appearance could have been a 
 real person. The first experience, it will be seen, 
 is a collective hallucination, of a type discussed in 
 the preceding chapter. 
 
 No. 94. — From Mrs. Knott. 
 
 " London, S.W., 
 
 March 5t/i, 1889. 
 " The incident I relate occurred at this address early in Febru- 
 ary 1889. I have lived in this house four years, and constantly 
 felt another presence was in the drawing-room besides myself, 
 
LESS COMMON TYPES OF HALLUCINATION. 317 
 
 but never saw any form until last month. My cousin Mrs. R. 
 and myself returned from a walk at 1.30 P.M. The front door 
 was opened for us by my housekeeper, Mrs. E. I passed up- 
 stairs before my cousin, and on turning to my bedroom, the door 
 of which is beside the drawing-room door [i.e., at right angles to 
 it], I saw, as I thought, Mrs. E. go into the drawing-room. I 
 put a parcel into my room and then followed her to give some 
 order, and found the room empty ! My cousin was going up 
 the second flight of stairs to her room, and I called out, ' Did 
 you open the drawing-room door as you passed? 5 1 No/ she 
 replied, ' Mrs. E. has gone in.' Mrs. R. had seen the figure more 
 distinctly than I ; it seemed to pass her at the top of the stairs, 
 and she thought, ' How quietly Mrs. E. moves ! ' 1 inquired of 
 Mrs. E. what she did after opening the door for us, and she 
 said, 4 Went to the kitchen to hasten luncheon, as you were in a 
 hurry for it.' The day was bright, and there is nothing on the 
 stairs that could cast a shadow. I quite hope some day I may 
 see the face of the figure." 
 
 From MRS. R., Malpas, Cheshire. 
 
 " March 1st, 1889. 
 
 " In answer to your letter on the subject of the figure seen 
 at C. Terrace, Mrs. K. and I had just come in at about half-past 
 one o'clock. Mrs. E. (the housekeeper) had opened the door. 
 We went upstairs, and on the first landing are two rooms, one 
 the drawing-room, the other Mrs. K.'s bedroom. She went into 
 her room while I stood a minute or two talking to her. Just as 
 I turned to go up the next flight of stairs I thought I saw Mrs. 
 E. pass me quickly and go into the drawing-room. Beyond 
 seeing a slight figure in a dark dress I saw nothing more, for 
 I did not look at it, but just saw it pass me. Before I 
 got upstairs Mrs. K. called out, 1 Did you leave the drawing- 
 room door open ? ' I answered, 1 1 did not go in ; I saw Mrs. 
 E. go in.' Mrs. K. answered, ' There is nobody there.' We 
 asked Mrs. E. if she had been up ; she, on the contrary, had 
 gone straight down. Also, as she said, she would not have 
 passed me on the landing, but have waited until I had gone 
 upstairs ; and as it struck me afterwards, she could not have 
 passed me on such a small landing without touching me, but 
 I never noticed that at the time. I do not know if a thought 
 ever embodies itself, but my idea was, and is, that as Mrs. E. 
 ran downstairs her thought went up, wondering if the drawing- 
 room fire was burning brightly. The figure I saw went into the 
 room as if it had a purpose of some sort. I have never seen 
 anything of the sort before." 
 
3 1 8 APPARITIONS AND THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 
 
 In a later letter Mrs. R. adds: — 
 
 "March loth, 1889. 
 " I am afraid I cannot give any very definite reply to your 
 questions. 
 
 "(1) ' Had I any idea of the house being haunted?' No; and 
 I do not think it is supposed to be haunted. Mrs. K. has said 
 that at times it has seemed to her as if there was some one else 
 in the room beside herself, but I think that is a feeling that has 
 come to most people some time or other. 
 
 "(2) 'Did we see it simultaneously?' That I cannot exactly 
 say, but I should think yes, for we neither of us said anything 
 until Mrs. K. called out to me to know if I had been in the 
 drawing-room." 
 
 In commenting on the story in November 1889 
 {Proc. S.P.R., vol. vi. p. 250), I wrote, " Here we may 
 almost see the story of a haunted house in the mak- 
 ing. The essential elements are there. We have the 
 visionary figure seen by two persons at once, and the 
 mysterious feeling , of an alien presence in the room. 
 It is quite possible that the latter circumstance would 
 have passed unrecorded, and even unnoticed, but for 
 the subsequent phantasm, through which it gained a 
 retrospective importance." My comments have met 
 with unexpected justification. On April 7th, 1893, 
 Mrs. Knott again wrote to me as follows : — 
 
 "On Saturday, the 18th March, at 1.50 P.M., Mrs. H. and I 
 were going upstairs to the drawing-room, she first, I following 
 with some flowers, not looking tip. I heard her say, ' Mrs. E., 
 don't go down until you have seen my screen.' (Mrs. H. had 
 just finished painting one.) I said, ' Mrs. E. isn't here.' Mrs. 
 H. replied, 6 Yes, she is in the drawing-room.' Then I heard 
 her say, ' Where has the woman gone ? ' for no one was visible 
 in the room, and Mrs. H. said she distinctly saw a figure go in, 
 and felt sure it was Mrs. E. This is exactly the same impres- 
 sion that Mrs. R. and I had when we each saw the figure go 
 into the drawing-room four years ago, in February, and it was 
 about the same hour of the day." 
 
 In a later letter Mrs. Knott explains that Mrs. H. 
 had heard of the earlier apparition on the same spot, 
 but adds that the story " most certainly did not stay 
 
LESS COMMON TYPES OF HALLUCINATION. 319 
 
 in her mind." We shall probably be justified in 
 assuming, however, that Mrs. H.'s hallucinatory ex- 
 perience was due to a subconscious reminiscence of 
 her friend's ghost-story. 
 
 In the case which follows, however, there is strong 
 evidence that the phantasms were seen independently 
 by each percipient. The narrators are unwilling that 
 their names or that of the house should appear. Mr. 
 Gurney, however, fully discussed the circumstances 
 with them at a personal interview. 
 
 No. 95.— From Mrs. W. 
 
 "February 19/^, 1885. 
 1 we went to live in a detached villa just out of 
 
 . Our household consisted of my husband 
 
 and myself, my step-daughter, and two little boys, aged nine 
 and six, and two female servants. The house was between ten 
 and twenty years old. We had been there about three weeks, 
 
 "In June 18 
 the town of C 
 
 Sketch Plan of the Ground-Floor of the House. 
 
 Dining-room 
 
 Kitchen 
 
 [Front 
 C Drawing-room 
 
 i 
 
 I 
 
 A 
 
 Back 
 Drawing-room 
 
 L 
 
 A Piano. B First position of figure. C Second position of figure. 
 D Garden door. E Baize door. F Front door and porch. 
 G Front gate. 
 
 when, about 1 1 o'clock one morning, as I was playing the piano 
 in the drawing-room, I had the following experience : — I was 
 
320 APPARITIONS AND THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 
 
 suddenly aware of a figure peeping round the corner of the 
 folding-doors to my left; thinking it must be a visitor, I jumped 
 up and went into the passage, but no one was there, and the 
 hall door, which was half glass, was shut. I only saw the 
 upper half of the figure, which was that of a tall man, with 
 a very pale face and dark hair and moustache. The impression 
 lasted only a second or two, but I saw the face so distinctly that 
 to this day I should recognise it if I met it in a crowd. It had 
 a sorrowful expression. It was impossible for any one to come 
 into the house without being seen or heard. I was startled, 
 but not the least frightened. I had heard no report what- 
 ever as to the house being haunted; and am certainly not 
 given to superstitious fancies. I did not mention my ex- 
 perience to any one at the time, and formed no theory about 
 it. In the following August, one evening about 8.30, I had 
 occasion to go into the drawing-room to get something out 
 of the cupboard, when, on turning round, I saw the same face 
 in the bay-window, in front of the shutters, which were closed. 
 I again saw only the upper part of the figure, which seemed to 
 be in a somewhat crouching posture. The light on this occasion 
 came from the hall and the dining-room, and did not shine 
 directly on the window; but I was able perfectly to distinguish 
 the face and the expression of the eyes. This time I was 
 frightened, and mentioned the matter to my husband the same 
 evening. I then also told him of my first experience. On each 
 of these occasions I was from 8 to 10 feet distant from the 
 figure. 
 
 " Later in the same month I was playing cricket in the garden 
 with my little boys. From my position at the wickets I could 
 see right into the house through an open door, down a passage, 
 and through the hall as far as the front door. The kitchen 
 door opened into the passage. I distinctly saw the same face 
 peeping round at me out of the kitchen door. I again only saw 
 the upper half of the figure. I threw down the bat and ran in. 
 No one was in the kitchen. One servant was out, and I found 
 that the other was up in her bedroom. I mentioned this 
 incident at once to my husband, who also examined the kitchen 
 without any result. 
 
 " A little later in the year, about 8 o'clock one evening, I was 
 coming downstairs alone, when I heard a voice from the 
 direction, apparently, of my little boys' bedroom, the door of 
 which was open. It distinctly said, in a deep sorrowful tone, 
 ' I can't find it' I called out to my little boys, but they did 
 not reply, and I have not the slightest doubt that they were 
 asleep ; they always called out if they heard me upstairs. My 
 step-daughter, who was downstairs in the dining-room with the 
 door open, also heard the voice, and thinking it was me calling, 
 cried out, ' What are you looking for?' We were extremely 
 
LESS COMMON TYPES OF HALLUCINATION. 32I 
 
 puzzled. The voice could not by any possibility have belonged 
 to any member of the household. The servants were in the 
 kitchen, and my husband was out. 
 
 "A short time after I was again coming downstairs after 
 dark in the evening when I felt a sharp slap on the back. It 
 startled but did not hurt me. There was no one near me, 
 and I ran downstairs and told my husband and my step- 
 daughter. 
 
 " I have never in my life, on any other occasion, had any 
 hallucination of sight, hearing, or touch." 
 
 The following is Miss W.'s account : — 
 
 "February igtk, 1885. 
 
 " In July, 1881, I was sitting playing the piano in our house 
 
 in C , about 11.30 in the morning, when I saw the head and 
 
 shoulders of a man peeping round the folding-doors, in just 
 the same way as they had appeared to my mother, but I had 
 not at that time heard of her experience. I jumped up, and 
 advanced, thinking it was an acquaintance from a few yards off. 
 This impression, however, only lasted for a second ; the face 
 disappeared, but recalling it, I perceived at once that it was 
 certainly not that of the gentleman whom I had for a second 
 thought of. The resemblance was only that they were both 
 dark. The face was pale and melancholy, and the hair very 
 dark. I at once went to Mrs. W. in the dining-room, and asked 
 if anyone had called. She said, 'No'; and I then told her 
 what I had seen. I then for the first time heard from her what 
 she had seen, and our descriptions completely agreed. We had 
 even both noticed that the hair was parted in the middle, and 
 that a good deal of shirt-front showed. 
 
 " A few weeks later, about 11 P.M., Mrs. W. and I were play- 
 ing bezique in the dining-room. Mr. W. was out, and the 
 servants had gone to bed. The door of the room was open, and 
 I was facing it. I suddenly had an impression that some one 
 was looking at me, and I looked up. There was the same face, 
 and the upper half of the figure, peeping round into the room 
 from the hall. I said, ' There's the man again ! } Mrs. W. 
 rushed to the door, but there was no one in the hall or passage ; 
 the front door was locked, and the green baize door which com- 
 municated with the back part of the house was shut. The 
 figure had been on the side of the dining-room door nearest to 
 the front door, and could not have got to the green baize door 
 without passing well in our sight. We were a good deal 
 frightened, and we mentioned the occurrence to Mr. W. on 
 his return. He went all over the house as usual before going 
 
 21 
 
322 APPARITIONS AND THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 
 
 to bed, and all windows were fastened, and everything in 
 order. 
 
 "A few weeks after this, about 11.30 a.m., I was upstairs play- 
 ing battledore and shuttlecock with my eldest brother in his bed- 
 room. The door was open. Stepping back in the course of the 
 game, I got out on to the landing ; I looked sideways over my 
 shoulder, in order to strike the shuttlecock, and suddenly saw 
 the same face as before, and my brother called out at the same 
 moment, ' There's a man on the landing.' I was startled myself, 
 but to reassure the child I said there was no one — that he had 
 made a mistake — and shut the door and went on with the game. 
 I told my father and Mrs. W. of this as soon as I saw them. 
 
 " Later in the autumn I was sitting alone in the dining-room 
 one evening, with the door open. Mrs. W. had been upstairs, 
 and I heard her coming down. Suddenly I heard a deep, 
 melancholy voice say, * I can't find it.' I called out, 4 What are 
 you looking for?' . At the same time the voice was not the least 
 like Mrs. W.'s. She then came in and told me she had heard 
 exactly the same thing. My father was out at the time, but we 
 told him of the circumstance on his return. 
 
 " In September of 1882 I was for a week in the house with 
 only the two children and the servants. It was about 7.30 on 
 Sunday evening, and nearly dark. The others were all out in 
 the garden. I was standing at the dining-room window, when 
 I caught a glimpse of a tall man's figure slipping into the porch. 
 I must have seen if anybody had approached the porch by the 
 path from the front gate, and I should certainly have heard the 
 latch of the gate, which used to make a considerable noise, and 
 I should also have heard footsteps on the gravel-path. The 
 figure appeared quite suddenly ; it had on a tall hat. I was very 
 much astonished, but ran to the door, thinking it might possibly 
 be my father. No one was there; I went to the gate, and 
 looked up and down the road. No one was in sight, and there 
 was no possibility that anybody could have got so suddenly out 
 of view. 
 
 " I have never at any other time in my life had any hallucina- 
 tion whatever, either of sight or hearing. 
 
 " I remember Mrs. W. telling me of her experience of the 
 slap as soon as she came downstairs. 
 
 " I ought to add that at the time when we were negotiating 
 about the house, the landlady of the lodgings where my father 
 and I were staying told me that all the villas of the row in 
 which our house was situated, ten in number, were haunted. I 
 was with my father when I heard this. Mrs. W. was not with 
 us. I am certain that the remark made no impression what- 
 ever on me, and that it did not even recur to my mind till I saw 
 what I have described. I did not even mention the remark to 
 Mrs. W." 
 
LESS COMMON TYPES OF HALLUCINATION. 323 
 
 Mrs. W. adds — 
 
 " I distinctly remember my step-daughter coming to me 
 immediately after her first sight of the figure, and telling me 
 about it. I then told her for the first time of my own experi- 
 ence (I had then only had one), and our descriptions completely 
 tallied. I distinctly remember our agreeing about the parting 
 of the hair in the middle, and about the amount of white shirt- 
 front. We could neither of us remember whether his tie was 
 white or black. We agreed that we should know the face if we 
 ever met it. And subsequently, at an evening party, we both 
 pitched on the same individual as more like our strange visitor 
 than any one else we knew. The resemblance, however, was 
 not extremely close. 
 
 " I distinctly remember, also, my step-daughter exclaiming, 
 4 There's that man again ! ' when we were playing bezique. I 
 rushed at once into the hall and found the door closed as 
 she has described. 
 
 " I also remember her telling me at once about what she had 
 seen, and what her brother had exclaimed when they were 
 playing at battledore and shuttlecock. 
 
 " She told me about what she had seen in the porch when 
 Mr. W. and I returned from town on the next (Monday) 
 morning." 
 
 The following is Surgeon-Major WVs confirma- 
 tion : — 
 
 " I was told of these various occurrences by my wife and 
 daughter at the times which they have specified. I only heard 
 from my wife of her first experience after she had told me of 
 her second. After she had seen the figure during the game of 
 cricket, I went into the kitchen, but found everything as usual. 
 On my return home, after my daughter's seeing the figure 
 peeping round the dining-room door, I went all over the 
 premises as my custom was, and found windows secured and 
 everything in order. 
 
 " My wife and daughter are as unlikely as any one I know to 
 suffer from causeless frights. They are completely free from 
 nervousness, and though these experiences were startling and 
 bewildering to them, they did not in the least worry themselves 
 in consequence. 
 
 " It seems possible that the voice may have been that of one 
 of the children talking in sleep, and the slap some effect of 
 imagination, but it is not easy to account for the apparitions by 
 any such known causes." 
 
324 APPARITIONS AND THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 
 
 In this case it seems unlikely that Mrs. W., the 
 original percipient, was mistaken in supposing that 
 she had not mentioned her first experience, and that 
 Miss W. was also mistaken in her statement that she 
 had not heard of what Mrs. W. had seen until after 
 the apparition to herself. And it is still more unlikely 
 that either lady would have allowed any hint of the 
 matter to reach the ears of the children. Whilst, 
 therefore, in the absence of contemporary notes, or of 
 any identification of the figure, the degree of resem- 
 blance between the apparitions seen by the two ladies 
 may have been exaggerated, we are still confronted 
 with the problem that three persons living in the same 
 house are credibly reported to have seen independ- 
 ently the hallucinatory figure of a man, and that in 
 the two instances in which the apparitions were com- 
 pared they were found to exhibit certain resemblances. 
 That the first figure was a subjective hallucination, 
 and that the later apparitions were reproductions of 
 that hallucination by means of telepathic suggestion, 
 is a solution which is, at any rate, worthy of considera- 
 tion. We have in our records many cases of the kind, 
 in which hallucinatory figures, in some cases pre- 
 senting strong resemblances, are alleged to have been 
 seen by two or more independent witnesses in the 
 same house or locality. Thus we have accounts from 
 Miss Kathleen Leigh Hunt, Miss Laurence, and Mr. 
 Paul Bird, of a woman's figure seen independently by 
 each of them in 1881 {Proc. S.P.R., vol. iii. pp. 106 et 
 seq.). In another case {Proc. S.P.R., vol. vi. pp. 270 et 
 seq.) a doctor in a provincial town, his two daughters, 
 and a young lady visitor saw the figure of a young 
 child. In other cases different hallucinatory figures 
 have been seen independently by successive occupants 
 of the same house, the later percipients appearing not 
 to have heard of the earlier apparitions. Thus we 
 have accounts of figures seen during the period from 
 1861 to 1875 by three different families in an old 
 Elizabethan manor-house {Proc. S.P.R., vol. iii. p. 118); 
 
LESS COMMON TYPES OF HALLUCINATION. 325 
 
 and in a quite modern house in the South of England 
 various phantasmal figures were seen between 1882 
 and 1888 by two successive sets of occupants. {Proc. 
 S.P.R., vol. vi. pp. 256 et seq?) 
 
 1 Those desiring to study further the evidence on this subject are 
 referred to the paper on ' ' Phantasms of the Dead," Proc. S.P.P., 
 vol. iii., by Mrs. Henry Sidgwick, and the papers on " Recognised 
 Apparitions occurring after Death," and on 11 Phantasms of the Dead," 
 by Messrs. Gurney, Myers, and the present writer respectively, in Proc. 
 v. and vi., and the " Record of a Haunted House," in Proc. viii. Many 
 cases of the kind are also printed in the monthly journal of the Society; 
 and there are one or two striking cases in the Annates des Sciences 
 Psychiqties, 
 
326 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 ON CLAIRVOYANCE IN TRANCE. 
 
 The word " clairvoyance " was used by the older 
 mesmerists to denote somewhat heterogeneous pheno- 
 mena. It was applied in the first place to a supposed 
 faculty by which the subject was enabled to ascertain 
 facts not within human knowledge, 1 and in the second 
 place to a power of discerning facts within the know- 
 ledge of some living mind. Of " clairvoyance " in the 
 first sense there is not at present so much evidence as 
 need cause hesitation in appropriating the name for 
 other uses ; and it is obvious that if such a faculty 
 could be shown to exist, a discussion of it would find 
 no place in a work which treats only of the affec- 
 tion of one human mind by another. But we have 
 abundant evidence of clairvoyance in the second 
 sense, that is, of a form of telepathy in which the 
 
 1 For instance, Gregory and others record that the clairvoyant sub- 
 jects of a certain Major Buckley were able to read the mottoes enclosed 
 in nuts (the equivalent of the modern Christmas crackers) purchased at 
 random from a confectioner's shop, and still unopened. The recent 
 evidence of the kind is quite inconsiderable, and is perhaps hardly 
 sufficient to allow of the existence of a faculty of independent clairvoy- 
 ance being treated as an open question. Experiments with Mrs. Piper 
 in this direction have yielded negative results, and Professor Richet's 
 trials with Madame B. \Proc. S.P.R., vol. v. pp. 77 and 149) are neither 
 sufficiently numerous nor sufficiently striking to justify any conclusions 
 being drawn from them. Some curious results have, however, been 
 obtained by M. J. Ch. Roux (Annates des Sciences Psychiques, vol. iii. 
 pp. 198 et seq.), and somewhat similar results have been obtained in this 
 country by two Associates of the S.P.R. But it is possible that all 
 these instances may be susceptible of another explanation. See, how- 
 ever, Mr. Myers' article on " Sensory Automatism," Proc. S.P.P., vol. 
 viii. pp. 436 et seq. 
 
ON CLAIRVOYANCE IN TRANCE. 
 
 327 
 
 transmitted idea seems to reach the mind of the per- 
 cipient no longer as the meagre result of a serious 
 crisis, or of a direct and often prolonged effort of 
 attention on the part of the agent, but spontaneously, 
 with great fulness of detail, and often with remarkable 
 ease and rapidity, as the outcome of a special recep- 
 tivity on the part of the percipient. Such clairvoy- 
 ance — and the word must be understood to include 
 the impressions of other senses than sight — occurs in 
 its most striking form with hypnotised percipients; 
 and in the present chapter I propose to deal with 
 results obtained in hypnotism and analogous states, 
 reserving for the following chapter instances of what 
 appears to be the same faculty occurring in the normal 
 state. 1 
 
 Mrs. Piper. 
 
 The phenomena of clairvoyance, as thus defined, 
 have been observed with great care in the case of an 
 American lady, Mrs. Piper. Mrs. Piper had been 
 known for some years in the United States as a clair- 
 voyante and spirit medium, and her trance utterances 
 had been carefully studied by Professor James and 
 Dr. Hodgson. In the winter of 1888-89 srie spent 
 two months and a half in this country, at the invita- 
 tion of certain members of the S.P.R. She came to 
 England as a complete stranger, and was met on her 
 landing at Liverpool by Professor Lodge, and during 
 
 1 The definition of clairvoyance given in the text differs somewhat 
 from that adopted by Mrs. Sidgwick (Proc, S.P.P., vol. vii. p. 30) — 
 viz., "A faculty of acquiring supernormally, but not by reading the 
 minds of persons present, a knowledge of facts such as we normally 
 acquire by the use of our senses." Whether such a faculty exists or not, 
 it is certain that the phenomena which suggest it occur under the same 
 conditions and inextricably mingled with others which can, with some 
 plausibility, be explained as due to thought-transference from the con- 
 scious or unconscious memory of persons actually present. And as 
 the two sets of phenomena are found together in fact, it seemed best as 
 a matter of practical convenience that they should not be separated 
 in discussion. Moreover, the suggested application of the word finds 
 ample justification in popular usage. 
 
328 APPARITIONS AND THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 
 
 the whole period she stayed either in the houses of 
 Professor Sidgwick or Mr. Myers at Cambridge, in 
 Professor Lodge's house at Liverpool, or in rooms in 
 London selected by Dr. Leaf. Neither at Cambridge 
 nor Liverpool were there any opportunities of her 
 acquiring knowledge of the histories and circum- 
 stances of the persons who visited her for experi- 
 ments, other than those afforded during the actual 
 progress of the experiment, or by inquiries of servants 
 and children, the examination of books and photo- 
 graph albums, or from the newspapers and private 
 correspondence. Practically she was under close and 
 almost continuous surveillance during the whole 
 period, and, independently of the special precautions 
 taken to guard against the acquisition of knowledge 
 by any of the means above indicated (Proc. S.P.R., 
 vol. vi. pp. 438-440, 446-447, etc.), it is important to 
 note that the sitters were in almost every instance in- 
 troduced to Mrs. Piper under an assumed name; that 
 some of them, and those not the least successful, were 
 persons in no way connected with the S.P.R., whose 
 admission was due to circumstances more or less 
 accidental; and that on several occasions she stated 
 facts which were not within the conscious knowledge 
 of any person present, and which could not conceiv- 
 ably have been discovered by any process of private 
 inquiry. 1 
 
 The actual method of experiment was as follows: 
 Mrs. Piper would sit in a room partially darkened, 
 holding the hands of the sitter, whilst some other 
 person (generally Mr. Myers, Dr. Leaf, Professor 
 Lodge, or a shorthand writer) would be present to 
 take notes. Mrs. Piper would presently go off into 
 
 1 It should be added that during the progress of similar investi- 
 gations in the United States of America, Dr. Hodgson employed private 
 detectives to shadow Mr. and Mrs. Piper for some weeks, and that 
 nothing was discovered to intimate that any steps were taken by either, 
 whether by personal inquiry or by correspondence, to ascertain facts 
 relating to the history of actual or possible sitters. Mr. Piper did not 
 accompany his wife to this country. 
 
ON CLAIRVOYANCE IN TRANCE. 
 
 329 
 
 a trance, attended at its outset by slight convulsive 
 movements resembling those of an epileptic attack, 
 and would after a brief interval assume the voice, 
 gestures, and phraseology of a man. In this guise 
 she gave herself out as one " Dr. Phinuit," a medical 
 man who had studied medicine in Paris in the first 
 quarter of the present century. In the impersonation 
 of this character Mrs. Piper used occasionally broken 
 English, pronounced some words, proper names 
 especially, with a French accent, and was admittedly 
 sometimes very successful in diagnosing and prescrib- 
 ing for the complaints of her sitters and their friends. 
 "Dr. Phinuit" would then pour out a more or less 
 coherent flood of conversation, questions, and remarks 
 about the relatives and friends of those present, their 
 past history and personal affairs generally, some of 
 which was apparently mere padding, some obviously 
 chance shots, or "fishing" for further information; 
 whilst, in the midst of all the irrelevancy and inco- 
 herence, there would occasionally be clear, detailed 
 statements on intimate matters of which it is incon- 
 ceivable that Mrs. Piper could have attained any 
 knowledge by normal means ; just as, to quote the 
 apt metaphor of Professor Lodge, in listening at a 
 telephone "you hear the dim and meaningless 
 fragments of a city's gossip, till back again comes 
 the voice obviously addressed to you, and speaking 
 with firmness and decision." In regard to the trance 
 itself, it has no doubt close analogy with the hypnotic 
 trance, though Mrs. Piper is not readily amenable 
 to hypnotism by ordinary means, and when hypno- 
 tised her condition is described by Professor James 
 as very different from that of the " medium trance." 
 (Proc.y vol. vi. p. 653 ; viii. p. 56.) In the latter state 
 Mrs. Piper is, occasionally at least, anaesthetic in cer- 
 tain senses, and analgesic in various parts of the body 
 (viii. pp. 4-6), and her eyes are closed, with the eye- 
 balls turned upwards. 
 
 There is no reason to suppose that the simulacrum 
 
330 APPARITIONS AND THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 
 
 of " Dr. Phinuit" is anything else than an impersona- 
 tion assumed by Mrs. Piper's subconsciousness. Such 
 impersonations are very common amongst " spirit 
 mediums" everywhere, and in all forms of spon- 
 taneously induced trance. 1 Nor is " Dr. Phinuit " 
 the only form assumed by Mrs. Piper's secondary 
 consciousness. It frequently happened in the trance 
 that "Dr. Phinuit" gave place to an impersonation, 
 often recognised as life-like and characteristic, of 
 some deceased relative of the sitter's, as in the case 
 of " Uncle Jerry," mentioned below. 2 Probably in 
 many cases the basis of these representations was 
 supplied by unguarded remarks of the sitters them- 
 selves, or by skilful guesses on the part of " Phinuit," 
 sometimes possibly eked out by telepathic drafts on 
 the sitters' memories. As regards Mrs. Piper's con- 
 scious share in the matter, the persons who have 
 observed her most closely, both in this country and 
 in America, agree in believing that she is a woman 
 of transparent simplicity, and with a marked absence 
 of inquisitiveness or even ordinary interest in matters 
 outside her domestic concerns, and that she is incap- 
 
 1 Independently of the fact that " Dr. Phinuit " is as obviously 
 untrustworthy as Mrs. Piper in her natural state is apparently the 
 reverse, the inquiries which have been made have entirely failed to 
 corroborate the accounts, in themselves not always concordant, which 
 "Dr. Phinuit" has given of his birth, his education, and other circum- 
 stances in his " earth-life." His knowledge of his native language is 
 confined to a few simple phrases and a slight accent, frequently found 
 useful in disguising a bad shot at a proper name ; and the careful 
 investigations conducted by Dr. Hodgson into Mrs. Piper's antecedents 
 as a "medium" have made it almost certain that "Dr. Phinuit" is an 
 invention, borrowed from the person through whose agency Mrs. Piper 
 first became entranced, and who purported himself to be controlled by 
 a French doctor named Albert Finnett (pronounced Finne). It should 
 be added that "Dr. Phinuit" possesses apparently no knowledge of the 
 medical names of drugs, nor any more intimate acquaintance with their 
 properties than could be gathered from a manual of domestic medicine. 
 (Vol. viii. pp. 47, 50, 51, etc.) 
 
 2 At the present time (May 1894) "Dr. Phinuit" has, I understand, 
 almost entirely ceased to "control" Mrs. Piper; his place being taken 
 by the soi-disant spirit of a young American, recently deceased, who 
 has given remarkable proofs of his identity. 
 
ON CLAIRVOYANCE IN TRANCE. 331 
 
 able, morally and intellectually, of carrying on a 
 prolonged and systematic deception, and must by all 
 impartial persons be fully acquitted of responsibility 
 for "Dr. Phinuit's" proceedings. As is almost invari- 
 ably the case with entranced persons, in the normal 
 state she appears to know nothing of what goes on 
 in the trance, and to share none of the information 
 supernormally acquired by her secondary conscious- 
 ness. As to whether " Dr. Phinuit " is equally ignorant 
 of Mrs. Piper's thoughts and of knowledge acquired 
 normally by her, it is impossible to speak with equal 
 confidence. There can be little doubt either that he 
 is, or that he wishes, for the sake of effect, to produce 
 the impression that he is. But, as is not infrequently 
 the case, the second personality is markedly inferior 
 in its moral character to the normal consciousness. 
 Its ruling motive in this case appears to be a pro- 
 digious vanity, which drives "Dr. Phinuit," when 
 telepathy fails, into shuffling, equivocation, and all 
 manner of contemptible devices for eliciting informa- 
 tion, and passing it off as supernormally acquired. 
 Like the Strong Man of the music-halls, to make 
 good his bragging he is forced continually to eke 
 out what is genuinely abnormal by artifices at once 
 disingenuous and transparent. 1 
 
 The following is a summary of the proceedings at 
 two of the more successful sittings. Mrs. Piper was 
 at the time staying in Liverpool, with Professor 
 Lodge, who introduced to her on the morning of 
 December 23rd, 1888, under the pseudonym of Dr. 
 Jones, 2 a medical man practising in the city. Notes 
 
 1 I am glad to be able to append the following testimonial to 
 Phinuit's good qualities. An investigator who has had unusual facilities 
 for observing both Dr. Phinuit and Mrs. Piper, after reading the account 
 given in the text, writes to me: "I suppose the account of Phinuit is 
 true as far as it goes, but all the same ... I suppose because he is 
 more sympathetic, I am rather fond of Phinuit." 
 
 2 At the evening sitting a servant unfortunately introduced the sitters 
 by their real names, but the circumstance will hardly, I think, be held 
 materially to affect the evidence. 
 
332 APPARITIONS AND THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 
 
 were taken throughout by Professor Lodge, who was 
 himself ignorant of nearly all the details given. The 
 conversation was practically a monologue, as Dr. C. 
 himself remained almost entirely silent, assenting, 
 " with a grunt, to wrong quite as much as to right 
 statements." It will be observed that here, as through- 
 out, "Dr. Phinuit" appears to gain his information 
 in an auditory form. 
 
 No. 96. 
 
 Sitting No. 42. Monday morning, December 23rd. 
 
 Present: Dr. C. (introduced as Dr Jones) and O. J. L. 
 
 [The following is an abstract of the correct, or subsequently 
 corrected or otherwise noteworthy, statements.] 
 
 " You have a little lame girl, lame in the thigh, aged thirteen ; 
 either second or third. She's a little daisy. I do like her. Dark 
 eyes, the gentlest of the lot ; good deal of talent for music. She 
 will be a brilliant woman ; don't forget it. She has more sym- 
 pathy, more mind, more — quite a little daisy. She's got a mark, 
 a curious little mark, when you look closely, over eye, a scar 
 through forehead over left eye. The boy's erratic ; a little thing, 
 but a little devil. Pretty good when you know him. He'll 
 make an architect likely. Let him go to school. His mother's 
 too nervous. It will do him good. [This was a subject in 
 dispute.] You have a boy and two girls and a baby ; four in the 
 body. It's the little lame one I care for. There are two 
 mothers connected with you, one named Mary. Your aunt 
 passed out with cancer. You have indigestion, and take hot 
 water for it. You have had a bad experience. You nearly 
 slipped out once on the water." [Dangerous yacht accident last 
 summer. Above statements are correct except the lameness. 
 See next sitting.] 
 
 Sitting A'O. 43. Monday evening, December 23rd. 
 
 Present: Dr. and Mrs. C. and O. J. L. [Statements correct 
 when not otherwise noted.] 
 
 " How's little Daisy ? She will get over her cold. But there's 
 something the matter with her head. There's somebody round 
 you lame and somebody hard of hearing. That little girl has 
 got music in her. This lady is fidgety. There are four of you, 
 four going to stop with you, one gone out of the body. One got 
 irons on his foot. Mrs. Allen, in her surroundings, is the one 
 
ON CLAIRVOYANCE IN TRANCE. 
 
 333 
 
 with iron on leg. [Allen was maiden name of mother of lame 
 one.] There's about 400 of your family. There's Kate ; you 
 call her Kitty. She's the one that's kind of a crank. Trust- 
 worthy, but cranky. She will fly off and get married, she will. 
 Think's she knows everything, she does. [This is the nurse- 
 girl, Kitty, about whom they seem to have a joke that she is 
 a walking compendium of information.] (An envelope with 
 letters written inside, N — H — P — O — Q, was here handed in, 
 and Phinuit wrote down B — J — R — O — I — S, not in the best 
 of tempers.) A second cousin of your mother's drinks. The 
 little dark-eyed one is Daisy. I like her. She can't hear very 
 well. The lame one is a sister's child. [A cousin's child, the 
 one nee Allen, really.] The one that's deaf in her head is the 
 one that's got the music in her. That's Daisy, and she's going 
 to have the paints I told you of. [Fond of painting.] She's 
 growing up to be a beautiful woman. She ought to have a 
 paper ear. [An artificial drum had been contemplated.] You 
 have an Aunt Eliza. There are three Maries, Mary the mother, 
 Mary the mother, Mary the mother. [Grandmother, aunt, and 
 granddaughter.] Three brothers and two sisters your lady has. 
 Three in the body. There were eleven in your family, two 
 passed out small. [Only know of nine.] Fred is going to pass 
 out suddenly. He married a cousin. He writes. He has 
 shining things. Lorgnettes. He is away. He's got a catchy 
 trouble with heart and kidneys, and will pass out suddenly." 
 [Not the least likely.] 
 
 NOTES. — The most striking part of this sitting is the promin- 
 ence given to Dr. C.'s favourite little daughter, Daisy, a child 
 very intelligent and of a very sweet disposition, but quite deaf ; 
 although her training enables her to go to school and receive 
 ordinary lessons with other children. At the first sitting she is 
 supposed erroneously to be lame, but at the second sitting this 
 is corrected and explained, and all said about her is practically 
 correct, including the cold she then had. Mrs. Piper had had 
 no opportunity whatever of knowing or hearing of the C. children 
 by ordinary social means. We barely know them ourselves. 
 Phinuit grasped the child^s name gradually, using it at first as a 
 mere description. I did not know it myself. 
 
 The following is a summary of the false assertions : — 
 
 Erroneous Statements. 
 At Sitting 42 : — 
 
 " Your lady's Fanny ; well, there is a Fanny. [No.] Fred 
 has light hair, brownish moustache, prominent nose. [No.] 
 Your thesis was some special thing. I should say about lungs." 
 [No.] 
 
334 APPARITIONS AND THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 
 
 At Sitting 43 : — 
 
 "Your mother's name was Elizabeth. [No.] Her father's 
 lame.^ [No.] Of your children there's Eddie and Willie and 
 Fannie or Annie and a sister that faints, and Willie and Katie 
 (no, Katie don't count) [being the nurse], and Harry and the 
 little dark-eyed one, Daisy. [All wrong except Daisy.] One 
 passed out with sore throat. [No.] The boy looks about 8. 
 [No, 4.] Your wife's father had something wrong with leg; one 
 named William. [No.] Your grandmother had a sister who 
 married a Howe — Henry Howe. [Unknown.] There's a 
 Thomson connected with you [no], and if you look you will 
 find a Howe too. Your brother the captain [correct], with a 
 lovely wife, who has brown hair [correct], has had trouble in 
 head [no], and has two girls and a boy." [No, three girls.] 
 
 In this case it will be seen that no details were 
 given which could not have been derived from the 
 conscious knowledge of the sitter. Apart from the 
 fact that the agent made no effort to impress his 
 thought, it resembles a case of ordinary telepathy. 
 Of much the same character are the following details, 
 quoted from Professor James's account of his inter- 
 views with Mrs. Piper (Proc. S.P.R., vol. vi. pp. 658, 
 659):- 
 
 No. 97. — From Professor W. JAMES. 
 
 " The most convincing things said about my own immediate 
 household were either very intimate or very trivial. Unfortu- 
 nately the former things cannot well be published. Of the trivial 
 things, I have forgotten the greater number, but the following, 
 rarce na?ttes, may serve as samples of their class : She said that 
 we had lost recently a rug, and I a waistcoat. [She wrongly 
 accused a person of stealing the rug, which was afterwards 
 found in the house.] She told of my killing a grey-and-white 
 cat, with ether, and described how it had 'spun round and 
 round' before dying. She told how my New York aunt had 
 written a letter to my wife, warning her against all mediums, 
 and then went off on a most amusing criticism, full of traits vifs, 
 of the excellent woman's character. [Of course no one but my 
 wife and I knew the existence of the letter in question.] She 
 was strong on the events in our nursery, and gave striking 
 advice during our first visit to her about the way to deal with 
 certain 'tantrums' of our second child, 'little Billy-boy,' as 
 
ON CLAIRVOYANCE IN TRANCE. 
 
 335 
 
 she called him, reproducing his nursery name. She told how 
 the crib creaked at night, how a certain rocking-chair creaked 
 mysteriously, how my wife had heard footsteps on the stairs, 
 etc., etc. Insignificant as these things sound when read, the 
 accumulation of a large number of them has an irresistible effect. 
 And I repeat again what I said before, that taking everything 
 that I know of Mrs. P. into account, the result is to make me 
 feel as absolutely certain as I am of any personal fact in the 
 world that she knows things in her trances which she cannot 
 possibly have heard in her waking state, and that the definitive 
 philosophy of her trances is yet to be found. The limitations of 
 her trance-information, its discontinuity and fitfulness, and its 
 apparent inability to develop beyond a certain point, although 
 they end by rousing one's moral and human impatience with the 
 phenomenon, yet are, from a scientific point of view, amongst its 
 most interesting peculiarities, since where there are limits there 
 are conditions, and the discovery of these is always the begin- 
 ning of an explanation. 
 
 " This is all that I can tell you of Mrs. Piper. I wish it were 
 more ' scientific.' But, valeat quantum ! it is the best I can 
 do." 
 
 But there are many cases (Professor Lodge enu- 
 merates forty-one instances, Proc. S.P.R., vol. vi. pp. 
 649, 650) in which details were faithfully given by 
 " Phinuit," which had either been forgotten by the 
 sitters, or could not at any time have been within 
 their knowledge. The instances clearly falling under 
 the last head are perhaps too few to justify any 
 inference being founded on them, although in view of 
 some of the cases to be quoted later, telepathy from 
 persons at a distance from the percipient seems a not 
 impossible explanation. The following case, given 
 by Professor Lodge, which at first sight seems to 
 involve some such hypothesis, may perhaps be ex- 
 plained by the telepathic filching from his mind of 
 the memories of incidents heard in his boyhood and 
 long forgotten. It is right to say that Professor 
 Lodge has no recollection of ever having heard of 
 these incidents, and regards this explanation (or 
 indeed any other which has been suggested) as 
 extremely improbable. (Proc. S.P.R., vol. vi. pp. 
 458-460.) 
 
336 APPARITIONS AND THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 
 
 No. 98. — From Professor Lodge, F.R.S. 
 
 " It happens that an uncle of mine in London, now quite an 
 old man, and one of a surviving three out of a very large family, 
 had a twin brother who died some twenty or more years ago. I 
 interested him generally in the subject, and wrote to ask if he 
 would lend me some relic of this brother. By morning post on 
 a certain day I received a curious old gold watch, which this 
 brother had worn and been fond of ; and that same morning, 
 no one in the house having .seen it or knowing anything about 
 it, I handed it to Mrs. Piper when in a state of trance. 
 
 " I was told almost immediately that it had belonged to one 
 of my uncles — one that had been mentioned before as having 
 died from the effects of a fall — one that had been very fond of 
 Uncle Robert, the name of the survivor — that the watch was 
 now in possession of this same Uncle Robert, with whom he 
 was anxious to communicate. After some difficulty and many 
 wrong attempts Dr. Phinuit caught the name, Jerry, short for 
 Jeremiah, and said emphatically, as if a third person was 
 speaking, £ This is my watch, and Robert is my brother, and I 
 am here. Uncle Jerry, my watch.' All this at the first sitting 
 on the very morning the watch had arrived by post, no one but 
 myself and a shorthand clerk who happened to have been 
 introduced for the first time at this sitting by me, and whose 
 antecedents are well known to me, being present. 
 
 u Having thus ostensibly got into communication through 
 some means or other with what purported to be a deceased 
 relative, whom I had indeed known slightly in his later years of 
 blindness, but of whose early life I knew nothing, I pointed out 
 to him that to make Uncle Robert aware of his presence it 
 would be well to recall trivial details of their boyhood, all of 
 which I would faithfully report. 
 
 " He quite caught the idea, and proceeded during several 
 successive sittings ostensibly to instruct Dr. Phinuit to mention 
 a number of little things such as would enable his brother to 
 recognise him. 
 
 " References to his blindness, illness, and main facts of his life 
 were comparatively useless from my point of view ; but these 
 details of boyhood, two-thirds of a century ago, were utterly and 
 entirely out of my ken. My father was one of the younger 
 members of the family, and only knew these brothers as men. 
 
 " 4 Uncle Jerry 5 recalled episodes such as swimming the creek 
 when they were boys together, and running some risk of getting 
 drowned ; killing a cat in Smith's field ; the possession of a 
 small rifle, and of a long peculiar skin, like a snake-skin, which 
 he thought was now in the possession of Uncle Robert. 
 
 " All these facts have been more or less completely verified. 
 But the interesting thing is that his twin brother, from whom I 
 
ON CLAIRVOYANCE IN TRANCE. 
 
 337 
 
 got the watch, and with whom I was thus in a sort of com- 
 munication, could not remember them all. He recollected 
 something about swimming the creek, though he himself had 
 merely looked on. He had a distinct recollection of having 
 had the snake-skin, and of the box in which it was kept, though 
 he does not know where it is now. But he altogether denied 
 killing the cat, and could not recall Smith's field. 
 
 " His memory, however, is decidedly failing him, and he was 
 good enough to write to another brother, Frank, living in Corn- 
 wall, an old sea captain, and ask if he had any better remem- 
 brance of certain facts — of course not giving any inexplicable 
 reasons for asking. The result of this inquiry was triumphantly 
 to vindicate the existence of Smith's field as a place near their 
 home, where they used to play, in Barking, Essex; and the 
 killing of a cat by another brother was also recollected ; while 
 of the swimming of the creek, near a mill-race, full details were 
 given, Frank and Jerry being the heroes of that foolhardy 
 episode. 
 
 " Some of the other facts given I have not yet been able to 
 get verified. Perhaps there are as many unverified as verified. 
 And some things appear, so far as I can make out, to be false. 
 One little thing I could verify myself, and it is good, inasmuch 
 as no one is likely to have had any recollection, even if they 
 had any knowledge, of it. Phinuit told me to take the watch 
 out of its case (it was the old-fashioned turnip variety) and 
 examine, it in a good light afterwards, and I should see some 
 nicks near the handle which Jerry said he had cut into it with 
 his knife. 
 
 " Some faint nicks are there. I had never had the watch out 
 of its case before ; being, indeed, careful neither to finger it 
 myself nor to let any one else finger it. 
 
 " I never let Mrs. Piper in her waking state see the watch till 
 quite towards the end of the time, when I purposely left it lying 
 on my desk while she came out of the trance. Before long she 
 noticed it, with natural curiosity, evidently becoming conscious 
 of its existence then for the first time." 1 
 
 There are many other cases of clairvoyance on 
 record of the same type as Mrs. Piper's, but none 
 
 1 It is impossible by means of a few short extracts to give a fair idea 
 either of the strength of the evidence for telepathy afforded by the 
 phenomena observed with Mrs. Piper, or of the variety and complexity 
 of the problems there presented. Readers who are interested in the 
 subject are referred to the record of the observations made by the 
 S. P. R. , occupying nearly 400 closely-printed octavo pages. (Proc. , vol. 
 vi. pp. 436-660; vol. viii. pp. 1-167. ) Further observations have 
 been made during the year 1893 in the United States by Dr. Hodgson 
 and others, the records of which have not yet been published. 
 
 22 
 
338 APPARITIONS AND THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 
 
 which have been studied by so many observers with 
 equal care, and through so prolonged a period. In 
 the more usual form of trance clairvoyance, however, 
 the percipient's impressions are of a visual character. 
 He describes scenes which he appears to himself to 
 see. In the pages of the Zoist and elsewhere vision 
 of the kind is commonly called " travelling clair- 
 voyance," it having generally been suggested to the 
 hypnotised subject that he was actually present at 
 the scene which he was desired to describe. It is 
 possible that this suggestion, almost universally given, 
 may have had some influence in determining the 
 pictorial form which the telepathic impressions 
 assume in such cases, as it has certainly led the 
 percipient himself and the bystanders in many cases 
 to believe in an extra-corporeal visitation of the 
 scenes described. Often no details are given which 
 were not within the knowledge, if not consciously pre- 
 sent to the thoughts, of one of the bystanders. Such, 
 for instance, is the case quoted by Dr. Backman, of Kal- 
 mar, in his paper on clairvoyance (Proc. S.P.R., vol. vii. 
 pp. 205, 206 ; viii. 405-407), in which the Director- 
 General of Pilotage for Sweden, M. Ankarkrona, re- 
 cords how, when absent from home, he received from a 
 maid-servant hypnotised by Baron Von Rosen an ex- 
 tremely detailed description of the interior of his own 
 house and its inmates. Hardly a detail was incorrect, 
 but no single detail was given which could not have 
 been extracted from M. Ankarkrona's mind. To 
 such a case there is no difficulty in applying the 
 telepathic explanation. 
 
 No. 99. — From A. W. DOBBIE. 
 
 In the case to be next quoted, however, the infor- 
 mation given by the hypnotised subject transcends 
 the conscious knowledge, at all events, of those 
 present. The account comes from Mr. A. W. Dobbic, 
 of Adelaide, South Australia, who has for some years 
 
ON CLAIRVOYANCE IN TRANCE. 339 
 
 studied the phenomena of hypnotism on a number of 
 subjects, and has observed some striking manifesta- 
 tions of telepathy and clairvoyance. I quote from a 
 letter written to me in July 1886, containing a copy 
 of his notes made at the time of the experiment, " the 
 moment the words were uttered." The Hon. Dr. 
 Campbell, M.L.C., who had lost a gold sleeve-link, 
 brought its fellow on the 28th May 1886 to Mr. 
 Dobbie, who placed it in the hand of one of his 
 subjects. Then 
 
 " Miss Martha began by first accurately describing Dr. Camp- 
 bell's features, then spoke of a little fair-haired boy who had 
 a stud, or sleeve-link, in his hand, also of a lady calling him 
 ' Neil'; then said that this little boy had taken the link into a 
 place like a nursery where there were some toys, especially a 
 large toy elephant, and that he had dropped the link into this 
 elephant through a hole which had been torn or knocked in 
 the breast ; also that he had taken it out again, and gave two 
 or three other interesting particulars. We were reluctantly 
 compelled to postpone further investigation until two or three 
 evenings afterwards. 
 
 " On the next occasion (in the interval, however, the missing 
 sleeve-link had been found, but left untouched), I again placed 
 the link in her hand and the previous particulars were at once 
 reproduced ; but as she seemed to be getting on very slowly, it 
 occurred to Dr. Campbell to suggest placing his hand on that 
 of the clairvoyant, so I placed him en rapport and allowed him 
 to do so, he simply touching the back of her hand with the 
 points of his fingers. As she still seemed to have great diffi- 
 culty (she is always much slower than her sister) in proceeding, 
 it suddenly occurred to me that it would be an interesting 
 experiment to place Miss Eliza Dixon en rapport with Miss 
 Martha, so I simply joined their disengaged hands, and Miss 
 Eliza immediately commenced as follows, viz. : — 
 
 " ' I'm in a house, upstairs, I was in a bathroom, then I went 
 into another room nearly opposite, there is a large mirror just 
 inside the door on the left hand, there is a double-sized dressing- 
 table with drawers down each side of it, the sleeve-link is in 
 the corner of the drawer nearest the door. When they found it 
 they left it there. I know why they left it there, it was because 
 they wanted to see if we would find it. I can see a nice easy- 
 chair there, it is an old one, I would like it when I am put to 
 sleep, because it is nice and low. The bed has curtains, they 
 are a sort of brownish net and have a fringe of darker brown. 
 The wall paper is of a light blue colour. There is a cane lounge 
 
340 APPARITIONS AND THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 
 
 there and a pretty Japanese screen behind it, the screen folds 
 up. There is a portrait of an old gentleman over the mantel- 
 piece, he is dead, I knew him when he was alive, his name is the 
 same as the gentleman who acts as Governor when the Gover- 
 nor is absent from the colony, 1 I will tell you his name directly 
 — it is the Rev. Mr. Way. It was a little boy who put the 
 sleeve-link in that drawer, he is very fair, his hair is almost 
 white, he is a pretty little boy, he has blue eyes and is about 
 three years old." The link had been left on that table, the little 
 boy was in the nursery, and he went into the bedroom after 
 the gentleman had left. I can see who the gentleman is, it is 
 Dr. Campbell. Doesn't that little boy look a young Turk, the 
 link is quite a handful for his little hand, he is running about 
 with it very pleased ; but he doesn't seem to know what to do 
 with it. (A.) 
 
 [Dr. Campbell was not present from this point.] 
 
 " ' Now I can hear some one calling up the- stairs, a lady is 
 calling two names, Colin is one and Neil is the other, the other 
 boy is about five years old and is darker than the other. The 
 eldest, Colin, is going downstairs now, he is gone into what 
 looks like a dining-room, the lady says, "Where is Neil?" 
 " Upstairs, ma." " Go and tell him to come down at once." 
 The little fair-haired boy had put the link down ; but when he 
 heard his brother coming up, he picked it up again. Colin 
 says — " Neil, you are to come down at once." " I won't," says 
 Neil. " You're a goose," replies Colin, and he turned and went 
 down without Neil. What a young monkey ! now he has gone 
 into the nursery and put the link into a large toy elephant, he 
 put it through a hole in front, which is broken. He has gone 
 downstairs now, I suppose he thinks it is safe there. 
 
 " ' Now that gentleman has come into the room again and he 
 wants that link; he is looking all about for it, he thinks it might 
 be knocked down : the lady is there now too, and they are both 
 looking for it. The lady says, "Are you sure you put it there?" 
 The gentleman says, " Yes." 
 
 " ' Now it seems like next day, the servant is turning the 
 carpet up and looking all about for it ; but can't find it. 
 
 "'The gentleman is asking that young Turk if he has seen it, he 
 knows that he is fond of pretty things. The little boy says, "No." 
 He seems to think it is fine fun to serve his father like that. 
 
 " 1 Now it seems to be another day and the little boy is in the 
 nursery again, he has taken the link out of the elephant, now 
 he has dropped it into that drawer, that is all I have to tell you 
 about it, I told you the rest before.' " 
 
 1 Chief Justice Way is the gentleman who acts as Deputy for his 
 Excellency when absent from the colony. — A. W. D. 
 
ON CLAIRVOYANCE IN TRANCE. 
 
 341 
 
 Dr. Campbell, after reading through the above 
 account writes : — 
 
 " Adelaide, July g/k, 1886. 
 " At the point (A) the seance was discontinued till the next 
 sitting, when I was absent. The conversation reported as 
 passing between the children is correct. The description of 
 the room is accurate in every point. The portrait is that of the 
 late Rev. James Way. The description of the children and 
 their names are true. The fact that the link was discovered in 
 the drawer, in the interval between one sitting and the final one, 
 and that the link was left there, pending the discovery of it by 
 the clairvoyant, is also correct, as this was my suggestion to 
 Mrs. Campbell when she showed it to me in the corner of the 
 drawer. In fact, every circumstance reported is absolutely 
 correct. I know, further, that neither of the clairvoyants has 
 ever been inside of my door. My children are utterly unknown 
 to them, either in appearance or by name. I may say also that 
 they had no knowledge of my intention to place the link in their 
 possession, or even of my presence at the seance, as they were 
 both on each occasion in the mesmeric sleep when I arrived.' 5 
 
 In a later letter, dated December 16th, 1887, Dr. 
 Campbell writes: — 
 
 " With respect to the large toy elephant, I certainly knew of 
 its existence, but was not thinking of it at the time the clairvoy- 
 ant was speaking. I did not know even by suspicion that the 
 elephant was so mutilated as to have a large opening in its chest, 
 and on coming home had to examine the toy to see whether the 
 statement was correct. I need hardly say that it was absolutely 
 correct." 
 
 Mr. Dobbie tells us that " neither he nor his clairvoyants had 
 any opportunity, directly or indirectly, of knowing any of the 
 particulars brought out by the clairvoyant." He afterwards 
 saw the room described, and says "the description is simply 
 perfect in every particular." 
 
 This narrative presents us, at any rate, with a case 
 of thought-transference of a very remarkable kind, an 
 accurate and detailed description being given of a 
 room wholly unknown to the clairvoyantes. But it is 
 doubtful whether even here more was stated by the 
 percipients than could have been extracted from the 
 minds of those present. The statement as to the 
 child placing the sleeve-link in the toy elephant could 
 
342 APPARITIONS AND THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 
 
 not, unfortunately, be verified, and the conversation 
 described was natural enough under the circumstances, 
 and may have been the result of a happy conjecture. 
 It is unfortunate that a detailed description of the 
 room was not given until the second sitting, since 
 that lessens the improbability, in any case consider- 
 able, that some information as to the details given 
 might have reached the ears of the clairvoyantes. 1 
 The most remarkable feature in the case is the state- 
 ment, subsequently verified, as to the hole in the front 
 of the elephant. We must suppose either that this 
 detail was derived from the mind of the child, or that 
 Dr. Campbell had once observed the hole but had 
 forgotten its existence at the time of the experiment. 
 Mr. Dobbie gives other instances of clairvoyance, by 
 one of which the hypothesis of thought-transference 
 from a distant and unknown person is strongly 
 suggested. [Proc. S.P.R., vol. vii. p. 63, etc.) 
 
 No. 100. — From Dr. Wiltse. 
 
 We next quote two cases out of several recorded 
 by Dr. A. S. Wiltse, of Skiddy, Kansas (Proc. S.P.R., 
 vol. vii. pp. 72 et seq.). The percipient was Fannie G., 
 a servant of about fifteen years, who was frequently 
 hypnotised by Dr. Wiltse in the summer of 1882, and 
 developed clairvoyant powers of a very remarkable 
 kind. Dr. Wiltse unfortunately took no notes at the 
 time of the experiments, but he appears to be an 
 accurate reporter, and it will be seen that his account 
 of the incidents quoted is confirmed in each case by 
 other observers. The first experiment was recorded 
 with others in 1886, in a paper read before the Owosso 
 Academy of Medicine; the second was not apparently 
 written down until the account was sent to us in 
 1890: — 
 
 1 It is hardly necessary to say that such an interpretation in no way 
 reflects upon the good faith of the hypnotics. Hints derived from 
 conversation overheard unconsciously might be quite sufficient. 
 
ON CLAIRVOYANCE IN TRANCE. 
 
 343 
 
 44 Miss Florence F., now Mrs. R., a neighbour, was invited to 
 attend one evening with tests which she was to arrange during 
 the day. She came and told the subject to go to her kitchen 
 and tell her what she saw. It was about twenty rods to Miss 
 F.'s kitchen. Subject was led to suppose she had gone to the 
 kitchen, and being asked what she saw, readily answered : ' The 
 table sits in the centre of the room, and upon it is a box 
 covered with a cloth.' 4 What is in the box, Fannie ?' I asked. 
 'Oh, I daren't look in the box ! Miss Florence might be mad.' 
 4 Miss Florence is willing you should look; raise the cloth, 
 Fannie, and tell me what is there.' She immediately answered, 
 4 There are seven loaves of bread and sixteen biscuits in it.' 
 (Correct.) 
 
 44 1 set this down as telepathy because Miss Florence F. was 
 in the room, and undoubtedly the facts were prominently in her 
 mind, having been purposely so arranged by her for a test ; but 
 what follows is not so plainly telepathy. 
 
 44 Miss Florence asked Fannie to tell her what was in her 
 stable. She answered, 4 Two black horses, one grey horse, and 
 one red horse' (meaning a bay horse). Miss Florence: 'That 
 is wrong, Fannie ; there are only my black horses in the stable.' 
 Ten or fifteen minutes later, a brother of Miss Florence came to 
 the house and told Miss Florence that there were travellers at 
 the house, and upon inquiry we learned that the grey and 4 red ' 
 horse belonged to them, and that they had been in the stable 
 half-an-hour when Fannie's clairvoyant eye scanned it." 
 
 Mrs. Roberts, the Miss Florence F, of the narrative, 
 writes to Dr. Wiitse: — 
 
 44 Cardiff, Tenn., January 13?%, 1891. 
 
 44 Your letter was received late last night, and I hasten to 
 reply. Your statement 1 is correct as far as it goes. But if you 
 remember we asked, or rather you asked Fannie, to go into 
 our store-room and see what was in there, and she said a hind 
 quarter of beef, which was true, we had got it late that evening. 
 You also asked her to go in the kitchen and see how many 
 loaves of bread she could find, which she told, and on counting 
 them after returning home, she was correct. It was in the 
 winter of '81 or '82, I think, either December '8i, or in the 
 January or February of '82, I cannot remember the month ; I 
 know it was cold weather If you remember when old Julian 
 
 1 The statement sent to Mrs. Roberts was substantially a copy of the 
 last nine lines only of the preceding account. No reference was made 
 to the visit to the kitchen. 
 
344 APPARITIONS AND THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 
 
 Scott was drowned, it was about that time, for if I remember 
 right you were trying that same night to get her to find his 
 body. I think, as well as I remember, that she located his 
 saddle, and a few days after it was found in a place that she 
 described, but she could not find the body. 
 
 " Mrs. Florence F. Roberts." 
 
 In the second of the incidents above described, and 
 in the account which follows, the percipient's state- 
 ments included facts which were not within the know- 
 ledge of any of those present, and we are forced to 
 the conclusion that the percipient in some way derived 
 her knowledge from persons at a distance. The case 
 presents a curious experimental parallel to the dream 
 (No. 60) recorded in Chapter VIII., and to case No. 
 107 below. In the present instance, however, the per- 
 sons whom we may perhaps call the agents, though 
 unconscious of their agency in the matter, do not 
 appear to have been personally unknown to the 
 percipient. 
 
 No. 101. — From Dr. WlLTSE. 
 
 " Mr. Howard lived six miles from me. He had just built 
 a large frame house; our subject had never seen the house, 
 although, I presume, she may have heard it talked of. Mr. 
 Howard had not been home for some days, and asked that 
 Fannie should go there and see if all were well. She exclaimed 
 at the size of the house, but railed at the ugliness of the front 
 fence, saying she would not have ' such an old torn-down ' fence 
 in front of so nice a house. ' Yes,' said Howard, laughing, ' my 
 wife has been worrying the life out of me about the fence and 
 the front steps.' ' Oh,' interrupted Fannie, ' the steps are nice 
 and new ! ' i She is off there,' said Howard, * the steps are 
 worse than the fence.' 4 Don't you see,' exclaimed Fannie, 
 impatiently, ' how new and nice the steps are ? Humph ! ' 
 (And she seemed absolutely disgusted, judging by the tone.) 
 ' 1 think they are real nice.' 
 
 "Changing the subject, Howard asked her how many 
 windows were in his house. Almost instantly she gave a 
 number (I think it was twenty-six). Howard thought it was 
 too many, but upon carefully counting, found it exact. 
 
 "From my house he went directly home, and, to his great 
 surprise, found that during his absence his wife had employed 
 
ON CLAIRVOYANCE IN TRANCE. 
 
 345 
 
 a carpenter who had built new front steps, and they had 
 been completed a day or two before Fannie had scanned the 
 premises for him with her invisible telescope. 
 
 " Mr. Howard's son, a youth, had gone into an adjoining 
 county and was not expected back for some days. Fannie 
 was acquainted with the young man (Andrew). Mr. Howard, 
 having business back at the station, was with us again the next 
 night. His faith in our 4 oracle ' had assumed larger propor- 
 tions, and he suggested a visit home by means of Fannie's 
 wonderful faculty. She described the rooms excellently, even 
 to a bouquet on one of the tables, and said that several young 
 people were there. Asked who they were, she replied that she 
 did not know any of them except Andrew. ' But,' I said, 
 * Andrew is not at home.' Fannie : { Why, don't you see him ? 1 
 Q. ' Sure, Fannie?' F. 6 Oh, don't I know Andrew? Right 
 there, he is.' Mr. Howard returned home the next morning, 
 where he found that Andrew had returned late the day before, 
 and that several young people in the neighbourhood had passed 
 the evening with him." 
 
 The following are copies of questions addressed to 
 Mr. Howard, and his replies to them : — 
 
 " ' Did she describe your new doorsteps to you before you 
 knew they were built ?' 'Yes.' 
 
 " Question. — 4 Did she describe your house and tell you 
 Andrew was there when you thought he was away, and, if so, 
 was he actually at home as she stated?' 
 
 " Answer. — * Yes.' 
 
 " Questio?i. — ' From what you saw, were you satisfied that 
 Fannie had, when mesmerised, powers of imparting knowledge 
 unknown to others about her?' 
 
 " A?iswer. — ' Yes.' 
 
 "William Howard, 
 
 Kismet, Tenn., Morgan Co." 
 
 "We testify to these questions, asked William Howard, to be 
 facts. We were present at the same time Mr. Howard was 
 when Miss G. was mesmerised by Dr. A. S. Wiltse. We 
 further state that when any of us would prick the doctor with a 
 pin, she would flinch with the same part of her body. Miss G. 
 was not in the habit of the use of tobacco. The doctor was in 
 a different room, with a wall between them. Wlien he would 
 smoke, she grew nauseated and seemed to taste the same 
 as he did. 
 
 " W. T. Howard and Lizzie Howard," 
 
346 APPARITIONS AND THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 
 
 No. 102. — From Mr. William Boyd. 
 
 A remarkable case has been recorded, from contem- 
 porary knowledge, by Mr. William Boyd, of Peterhead, 
 N.B. {Proc. S.P.R., vol. vii. pp. 49 et seg.). The events 
 occurred as far back as 1850, but a full account of 
 them was contributed by Mr. Boyd to the Aberdeen 
 Herald for May 8th and 18th of that year, from which 
 it appears that the statements made by the percipient 
 were written down and communicated to Mr. Boyd 
 and others before their correspondence with the facts 
 was known. The incident attracted much notice at 
 the time, from its connection with the whaling fleet, 
 the chief topic of local interest. The following is an 
 extract from the original notes made by Mr. Reid, 
 the hypnotiser, published in the Aberdeen Herald, 
 May 18th, 1850:— 
 
 " On the evening of April 22nd I put John Park, tailor, aged 
 twenty-two, into a state of clairvoyance, in presence of twelve 
 respectable inhabitants of this town. (Here follows a description 
 of certain statements regarding the fate of Franklin's expedition 
 and the ships Erebus and Terror ; which in the light of informa- 
 tion subsequently received proved to have been inaccurate.) 
 He (the clairvoyant) then visited Old Greenland, as was 
 desired, and having gone on board the Hamilton Ross, a. whale- 
 ship belonging to this port, saw David Cardno, second mate, 
 getting his hand bandaged up by the doctor in the cabin, having 
 got it injured while sealing. He was then told by the captain 
 that they had upwards of 100 tons of oil. I again, on the even- 
 ing of the 23rd, put him into a clairvoyant state. (Here follow 
 some further particulars regarding Sir John Franklin's expedi- 
 tion, which also are proved to have been inaccurate.) I again 
 directed him to Old Greenland, and he again visited the 
 Hamilto?i Ross, and found Captain Gray, of the Eclipse, con- 
 versing with the captain about the seal fishing being up. 
 
 "(Signed) William Reid." 
 
 It appears from the Herald of May 8th that the 
 Hamilton Ross did come to port first out of eleven 
 ships, that she brought 159 tons of oil, that Cardno 
 had injured his hand, and arrived with his arm in 
 
ON CLAIRVOYANCE IN TRANCE. 347 
 
 a sling, and that on the 23rd April the captain of the 
 Hamilton Ross was conversing with the captain of the 
 Eclipse, Mr. Boyd points out, however, that Cardno 
 had some years before lost the tip of one finger, so 
 that the clairvoyant's statement of the accident may 
 have been simply a reminiscence. It is worth noting 
 that here, as generally in visions of the kind, the false 
 was mingled with the true, and that the percipient 
 appears quite unable to distinguish between pictures 
 which are obviously the work of his own imagination, 
 and those which are apparently due to inspiration 
 from without. 
 
 The next case is also remote in date, but we have 
 received the evidence of several persons still living 
 who were conversant with the facts at the time of their 
 occurrence, and the account given below is taken from 
 contemporary notes. "Jane" was the wife of a pit- 
 man in County Durham, who for many years, from 
 1845 onwards, was hypnotised for the sake of her 
 health by Mrs. T. Myers, of Twinstead Rectory, Mrs. 
 Fraser, her sister, and other members of the same 
 family. In the hypnotic sleep she appears to have 
 been sensible to telepathic influences of the same kind 
 as those described at the beginning of Chapter III. 
 But she also gave remarkable demonstrations of 
 " travelling clairvoyance," and frequently described 
 correctly the interior of houses she had never seen. 
 Occasionally she went beyond this, and stated facts 
 not within the knowledge of those present, and 
 opposed to their preconceptions. A good instance is 
 the following, taken from notes made in the summer 
 of 1853:— 
 
 No. 103. — From Dr. F. 1 
 
 "Before commencing the sitting, I fixed to take her to a 
 house, without communicating my intentions to any of the 
 
 1 Dr. F., who is still living, is disinclined to have his name published, 
 $s he does not wish to be troubled with correspondence on the subject. 
 
348 APPARITIONS AND THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 
 
 parties present. In the morning of the day I stated to a patient 
 of my own, Mr. Eglinton, at present residing in the village of 
 Tynemouth, that I intended to visit him. He stated that he 
 would be present between 8 and 10 p.m. in a particular room, so 
 that there might be no difficulty in finding him. He was just 
 recovering from a very severe illness, and was so weak that he 
 could scarcely walk. He was exceedingly thin from the effects 
 of his complaint. 
 
 " After the usual state had been obtained, I said, * We are 
 standing beside a railway station, now we pass along a road, 
 and in front of us see a house with a laburnum tree in front of 
 it.' She directly replied, ' Is it the red house with a brass 
 knocker?' I said, i No, it has an iron knocker.' I have since 
 looked, however, and find that the door has an old-fashioned 
 brass handle in the shape of a knocker. She then asked, ' Shall 
 we go up the steps ? Shall we go along this passage, and up 
 these stairs ? Is this a window on the stair-head?' I said, 
 ' You are quite right, and now I want you to look into the room 
 upon the left-hand side.' She replied, ' Oh, yes, in the bed- 
 room. There is no one in this room ; there is a bed in it, but 
 there is no person in it.' I was not aware that a bedroom was 
 in the place I mentioned, but upon inquiry next day I found she 
 was correct. I told her she must look into the next room, and 
 she would see a sofa. She answered, c But there is here a little 
 gallery. Now I am in the room, and see a lady with black hair 
 lying upon the sofa.' I attempted to puzzle her about the colour 
 of her hair, and feeling sure it was Mr. Eglinton who was lying 
 there, I sharply cross-questioned her, but still she persisted in 
 her story. The questioning, however, seemed to distract her 
 mind, and she commenced talking about a lady at Whickham, 
 until I at last recalled her to the room at Tynemouth, by asking 
 whether there was not a gentleman in the room. 'No,' she 
 said ; ' we can see no gentleman there.' 
 
 " After a little she described the door opening, and asked, 
 with a tone of great surprise, ' Is that a gentleman ?' I replied, 
 'Yes; is he thin or fat?' ' Very fat,' she answered; 'but has 
 he a cork leg ? ' I assured her that he had no cork leg, and 
 tried to puzzle her again about him. She, however, assured me 
 that he was very fat and had a great corporation, and asked me 
 whether I did not think such a fat man must eat and drink a 
 great deal to get such a corporation as that. She also described 
 him as sitting by the table with papers beside him, and a glass 
 of brandy and water. ' Is it not wine ? ' I asked. ' No,' she said, 
 * it's brandy.' ' Is it not whisky or rum?' ' No, it is brandy,' 
 was the answer ; * and now,' she continued, i the lady is going to 
 get her supper, but the fat gentleman does not take any.' I 
 requested her to tell me the colour of his hair, but she only 
 answered that the lady's hair was dark. I then inquired if he 
 
ON CLAIRVOYANCE IN TRANCE. 
 
 349 
 
 had any brains in his head, 1 but she seemed altogether puzzled 
 about him, and said she could not see any. I then asked her if 
 she could see his name upon any of the letters lying about. She 
 replied, * Yes ' ; and upon my saying that the name began with 
 E, she spelt each letter of the name 4 Eglinton.' 
 
 " I was so convinced that I had at last detected her in a com- 
 plete mistake that I arose, and declined proceeding further in 
 the matter, stating that, although her description of the house 
 and the name of the person were correct, in everything connected 
 with the gentleman she had guessed the opposite from the 
 truth. 
 
 " On the following morning Mr. E. asked me the result of the 
 experiment, and after having related it to him, he gave me the 
 following account : — He had found himself unable to sit up to 
 so late an hour, but wishful fairly to test the powers of the clair- 
 voyante, he had ordered his clothes to be stuffed into the form 
 of a figure, and to make the contrast more striking to his 
 natural appearance, had an extra pillow pushed into the clothes 
 so as to form a ' corporation.' The figure had been placed near 
 the table, in a sitting position, and a glass of brandy and water 
 and the newspapers placed beside it. The name, he further 
 added, was spelt correctly, though up to that time I had been in 
 the habit of writing it 1 Eglington,' instead of as spelt by the 
 clairvoyante, * Eglinton.' " 
 
 In this case it will be seen that the only person 
 from whom knowledge of the facts given could have 
 been derived was personally unknown to the per- 
 cipient, the only apparent link of connection being 
 their common acquaintance with Dr. F. 
 
 In the last case to be mentioned there are again 
 some indications of thought-transference from the 
 mind of a person at a distance. On April 8th, 1890, 
 Dr. Backman, at Kalmar, received a letter from Dr. 
 Kjellman, at Stockholm, asking that on the following 
 day Dr. Backman should request one of his subjects, 
 Alma Radberg, to "find" Dr. von B. (known to 
 Alma), and describe the apartment (Dr. Kjellman's 
 own) in which he would be sitting, adding that some- 
 thing would be hung on the chandelier for her to 
 describe. The percipient in the trance gave a 
 
 1 On a previous occasion she had described a skull in a surgery as a 
 head, but " not a live head, and with no brains in it." 
 
350 APPARITIONS AND THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 
 
 description of the room, and when asked to look at the 
 chandelier she said there was no chandelier, some- 
 thing more like a lamp, and described something long 
 and narrow, of white metal, hanging from it, with 
 some red stuff round it. When awake she said that 
 what she saw was probably a pair of scissors for cut- 
 ting paper, or a paper-knife. Dr. Backman sent his 
 notes to Dr. Kjellman, who replied, showing that the 
 description of the room, though in some respects 
 accurate (e.g., she mentioned a long stuffed easy-chair, 
 a glass bookcase, three doors in the lobby, etc.), was 
 in other features incorrect, and should on the whole 
 be regarded as inconclusive. " But," he adds, " her 
 statement that the object was hanging in a lamp, not 
 a chandelier, was right. It is both a lamp and a 
 chandelier, and the lamp was drawn down a long way 
 under the chandelier," and that the object hanging 
 there was " a large pair of paper scissors, fixed by an 
 india-rubber otoscope, and with a tea-rose and some 
 forget-me-nots in one of the handles of the scissors." 
 It will thus be seen that on the one point to which 
 her attention had been specially directed, the hyp- 
 notic's description was strikingly accurate; and the 
 articles described were hardly within the range of 
 conjecture. 
 
 Dr. Backman has made other experiments with the 
 same subject, in which he obtained further indications 
 of clairvoyance of this kind. (Proc. S.P.R., vol. vii. p. 
 207, etc.) 
 
351 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 ON CLAIRVOYANCE IN THE NORMAL STATE. 
 
 There is probably no sharp line to be drawn between 
 the cases just described and those to be dealt with in 
 the first part of the present chapter. Both present 
 the common feature that the percipient receives a 
 clear and detailed telepathic impression of an incident 
 or scene in the experience of some other person, and 
 in bath the condition of that impression is manifestly 
 not an effort of attention or an exceptional state on 
 the part of the person whose experience is thus repre- 
 sented, but a specially stimulated receptivity on the 
 part of the percipient. But in some cases the con- 
 ditions of this special receptivity are found in trance, 
 whilst in others the percipient is apparently in the 
 normal state. This would seem indeed to constitute 
 only a superficial difference, for in the majority of 
 cases hitherto observed the waking clairvoyance does 
 not occur spontaneously, but requires special prepara- 
 tion for its induction, and sometimes the percipient 
 appears to pass into a state resembling the earlier 
 stages of a hypnotic trance. Thus Mr. Keulemans, 
 the well-known scientific draughtsman, who has had 
 many experiences of telepathic clairvoyance, 1 has 
 noticed in the course of his work, which consists 
 largely of making drawings of birds for lithographic 
 reproduction, that, in his own words, 
 
 1 Several instances of Mr. Keulemans' telepathic experiences are given 
 in Phantasms of the Living (cases 21, 38, 56, 184). 
 
3?2 APPARITIONS AND THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 
 
 " Whenever strong impressions had got hold of my mind they 
 had a tendency to develop themselves into a vivid mind-picture 
 as soon as my eye and attention were concentrated upon the eye 
 in the drawing ; and that whenever I began darkening the iris, 
 leaving the light speck the most prominent part, I would slowly 
 pass off into a kind of dream-state. The mere act of drawing 
 the eye is not enough to bring me into this state, or I should 
 experience such a state at least once a day, which I do not. 
 But if a strong mental impression takes hold of me I begin 
 drawing an eye. . . . The drawing will then convey to me the 
 news, either in the form of a vague, imperfect representation of 
 the person indicated in the impression, or by a correct hallu- 
 cinatory picture of the event as it actually occurred, both as 
 regards the person and the surroundings. Sometimes I cannot 
 get at the vision at once; other thoughts and scenes interfere. 
 But when I begin to feel drowsy I know I shall have it right in 
 a second ; and here I lose normal consciousness. That there is 
 an actual loss of consciousness I know from the fact that on one 
 occasion my wife had been in the room talking to me, and not 
 receiving a reply thought that something was wrong with me 
 and shook my shoulder. The shake brought me back to my 
 waking state." (Proc. S.P.R., vol. viii. p. 517.) 
 
 But this would seem to be an extreme case, as 
 under ordinary circumstances there is no apparent 
 loss of consciousness ; and the essential condition 
 appears to be freedom from interruption and preoccu- 
 pation. But the percipient generally finds it helpful, 
 if not absolutely necessary, to employ a crystal, or 
 some other object, for the full development of the im- 
 pression. The exact part played by the crystal, glass 
 of water, shell, or other object, in facilitating the 
 hallucination, it is not easy to determine. In some 
 cases, no doubt, it acts by furnishing a point de repere, 
 or nucleus of actual sensation, round which the hallu- 
 cination may develop. It is probable also that the 
 mere act of fixing the eyes on one particular point 
 may, by shutting out other sources of sensation, help 
 to bring about the state of quietude necessary for the 
 experiments ; and yet again it is likely that the 
 intrinsic virtue of the act, whatever that may be, is 
 enhanced by the self-suggestion that it will prove 
 beneficial ; if indeed its virtue may not in some cases 
 
ON CLAIRVOYANCE IN THE NORMAL STATE. 353 
 
 be altogether due to that cause. It should be remem- 
 bered in this connection that fixation of the eye on a 
 small bright object is one of the readiest means of 
 inducing hypnosis. 1 
 
 Induced Clairvoyance. 
 
 No. 104. — From Miss X. 
 
 Miss X., some of whose experiments have already 
 been quoted, has been amongst the most constant 
 and successful of crystal seers. The bulk of her 
 visions, as she has pointed out (Proc. S.P.R., vol. v. p. 
 505), consist either of mere after-images, recrudescent 
 memories of things seen and heard, or of fancy 
 pictures built out of a rearrangement of existing 
 materials. But occasionally there occur visions of 
 events then taking place, or representations of the 
 past experience of some friend. Space will not 
 permit of illustrations being given of the first two 
 classes, though the first especially has some bearing 
 on our researches. The following account of what 
 appears to have been a telepathic vision is included 
 by Mr. Myers in a paper on the subliminal con- 
 sciousness {Proc. S.P.R., vol. viii. p. 491). D. is the 
 friend mentioned in Chapter V., p, 122. 
 
 1 It should perhaps be said that there is nothing in the experience of 
 the many persons who have so far tried crystal gazing, at the instance 
 of the S.P. R., to indicate risk of injury to health. It is no doubt not 
 advisable for an invalid, or for any one suffering from headache, or 
 undue fatigue, to try the experiment. Indeed, the experience of Mrs. 
 Verrall and others is that success under such conditions is unattainable. 
 But with ordinary care to avoid straining the eyes, no evil effect, it is 
 thought, need be apprehended; and there is probably no form of 
 experiment which at the cost of so little trouble may be expected to 
 yield results of so great interest and value. There is of course no 
 magic in the crystal ; a glass paper-weight, a mirror, or a glass of water 
 will serve the purpose equally well. Records of experiments will be 
 welcomed by Mr. F. W. H. Myers, from whose suggestive article many 
 of the illustrations quoted in the text are taken. (See Proc, vol. viii, 
 p. 436, etc.) 
 
 23 
 
354 APPARITIONS AND THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 
 
 "On August ioth of this year [1892] D. went with her 
 family to spend the autumn at a country house which they had 
 taken furnished, and which neither of us had ever seen. I was 
 also away from home, the distance between us being at least 
 200 miles. 
 
 "On the morning of the 12th I received a pencil note from 
 her, evidently written with difficulty, saying that she had been 
 very fiercely attacked by a savage dog, from which she and our 
 own little terrier had defended themselves and each other as 
 best they could, receiving a score or so of wounds between 
 them before they could summon any one to their assistance. 
 She gave me no details, assuming that, as often happens 
 between us, I should have received intimation of her danger 
 before the news could reach me by ordinary methods. 
 
 " D. was extremely disappointed on hearing that I had known 
 nothing. I had not consulted the crystal on the day of the 
 accident, and had received no intimation. Begging her to tell 
 me nothing further as to the scene of her adventure, I sought 
 for it in the crystal on Sunday, 14th, and noted the following 
 details : — The attacking dog was a large black retriever, and 
 our terrier held him by the throat while D. beat at him in the 
 rear. I saw also the details of D.'s dress. But all this I knew 
 or could guess. What I could not know was that the terrier's 
 collar lay upon the ground, that the struggle took place upon a 
 lawn beyond which lay earth — a garden bed probably — over- 
 shadowed by an aucuba bush. 
 
 " On September 9th I had an opportunity of repeating all 
 this to Mr. Myers, and on the ioth I joined D. at their country 
 house. The rest of the story I give in her own words : — 
 
 From D. 
 
 " ' As we were somewhat disappointed that no intimation of 
 the accident which had occurred to me had reached Miss X., 
 she determined to try to call up a mental picture of the scene 
 where it had occurred, and if possible to verify it when visiting 
 us later on. 
 
 " 1 On the night of her arrival at C , we were not able to 
 
 go over the whole of the grounds alone, and it was therefore 
 not until the following morning that we went together for the 
 special purpose of fixing on the exact spot. Miss X. was in 
 front, as I feared some unconscious sign of recognition on my 
 part might spoil the effect of her choice. The garden is a very 
 large one, and we wandered for some time without fixing on a 
 spot, the sole clue given by Miss X. being that she " could not 
 get the right place, it wanted a light bush." I pointed out 
 several, silver maples, etc., in various directions, but none would 
 do, and she finally walked down to the place where the accident 
 
ON CLAIRVOYANCE IN THE NORMAL STATE. 355 
 
 had occurred, close to a large aucuba (the only one, I believe, 
 in the shrubbery), and said, " This must be it ; it has the path 
 and the grass and the bush, as it should, but I expected it to be 
 much farther from the house." 
 
 " ' 1 may add that I was not myself aware of this bush, but 
 as I was studying them all at the time we were attacked by the 
 dog, and as this one is close to the spot where I was knocked 
 down, it seems possible that it was the last I noticed, and it 
 may therefore have influenced me more than I knew.' 55 
 
 Mr. Myers adds : — 
 
 " I understand that there are a good many acres of ground 
 round the house in question, and that the dog's attack was 
 made within fifty yards of the house — plainly an unlikely place 
 for a struggle so long protracted without the arrival of help." 
 
 As the crystal picture was described to Mr. Myers 
 before its verification, there was no room for the 
 reading back of details from the actual scene. 
 
 No. 105.— From Miss X. 
 
 Miss X. has also succeeded on several occasions in 
 obtaining telepathic information by holding a shell 
 to her ear. Of one such case she writes {ibid., 
 p. 494) :— 
 
 "On Saturday, June nth, Mr. G. A. Smith spent some time 
 with us attempting some thought-transference experiments, 
 which were fairly successful, and interested me greatly. Mr. 
 Smith left the house soon after seven. After dinner, I took up 
 the shell which had played some part — not very successfully — 
 in our experiments. What occurred is best given in the 
 following extracts : — 
 
 Ui [June nth, 1892] Saturday Evening, 8.30. [X. to G. A. S.] 
 
 " ' Why — when the shell was repeating to me just now what 
 you said about clambering over rocks at Ramsgate — did it stop 
 suddenly to ask, still in your voice, "Are you a vegetarian 
 then ? " . . . Perhaps you dined at [your next appointment], and 
 declined animal food ? Do tell me whether you are responsible 
 for this irrelevance.' 
 
 - June 13th, Monday. [G. A. S. to X.] 
 
 " 6 . . . Without doubt the shell spoke the truth. ... As you 
 know, I left you soon after seven. After walking fifteen minutes 
 
356 APPARITIONS AND THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 
 
 I suddenly met Mr. M. . . . I was thinking about points in 
 connection with the experiments we had been engaged in, and 
 am afraid I did not follow his remarks very closely . . . but he 
 made some allusion to little dishes at a vegetarian restaurant 
 somewhere, and immediately feeling an interest in the question 
 whether he was a champion of the vegetarian cause, I inter- 
 rupted him with "Are you a vegetarian thenf" I believe these 
 are the exact words I used. He will be sure to remember 
 this, and must be questioned.' 
 
 " 'June 23rd [G. A. S. to X.] 
 
 " ' I have to-day walked over the course which I took on June 
 nth, from [Miss X.'s house] to the spot where I met Mr. M. It 
 took just eleven minutes. If I left you at 7.15, it was probably 
 about 7.30, or a very few minutes later, that I put the query to 
 Mr. M.' » 
 
 Mr. M. was away from home, and though at once applied to 
 for corroboration, did not send a written statement till June 
 22nd, when he writes to Mr. Smith (after failing to recall the 
 exact particulars of the previous conversation) : — 
 
 " The main fact remains that you asked me, to the best of my 
 belief — bearing on my strong praise of the cooking at the 
 Oxford Street Cafe — whether ' I was a vegetarian. 5 That is the 
 core of the whole matter, and that is sound." 
 
 From Mr. Smith's statement it would appear that 
 the voice in the shell reproduced words actually- 
 spoken about three-quarters of an hour before. That 
 is, as is very generally the case, the clairvoyante 
 perceived, not the events actually happening at the 
 moment, but events already passed and chronicled in 
 the memories of those who took part in them. This 
 fact, which seems to have been commonly overlooked 
 by the earlier writers on the subject, is in itself a 
 very strong argument for the telepathic explanation 
 of clairvoyance. Knowledge of a contemporaneous 
 scene might be conceived as due to independent vision 
 on the part of the percipient ; knowledge of what is 
 already past can most readily be explained as derived 
 from other minds. 1 
 
 1 Of course in this case there is an alternative explanation — viz., that 
 Miss X. received the impression at the time the words were spoken, 
 and that the shell merely developed it for her conscious self. 
 
ON CLAIRVOYANCE IN THE NORMAL STATE. 357 
 
 No. 106. — From Dr. Backman. 
 
 This explanation is very clearly indicated in the 
 following case, quoted from the paper already referred 
 to {Proc. S.P.R., vol. vii. p. 216). Dr. Backman, after 
 describing how occasionally he asked his subject, 
 while awake, to look in the crystal, writes : — 
 
 " I told the clairvoyant, Miss Olsen, to see in the crystal what 
 
 Miss , who was present, had been doing the night before. 
 
 After a few moments she said that she saw a meadow in the 
 crystal, and in it a certain number (giving the number correctly) 
 of ladies and gentlemen, who were dancing and drinking cham- 
 pagne. This seemed to her very improbable, because it was 
 then November, a season that is not chosen in this country 
 [Sweden] for picnics. She described minutely several other 
 things which were not written down, but were quite correct, 
 according to what Miss said later on." 
 
 In a letter dated December 19th, 1890, Dr. Backman 
 adds: — 
 
 " Several persons were present. No notes were taken, but the 
 story made so much sensation that it has not been forgotten. 
 
 Miss supplemented the account to-day by reminding me 
 
 that on looking into the crystal Miss Olsen first gave a perfect 
 
 description of a lady with whom Miss had talked on meeting 
 
 her in the street the day before; she described her face, her 
 dress, etc., very accurately, and said besides that she had two 
 gold rings on the fourth finger of her left hand (a sign of 
 marriage). After that Miss Olsen suddenly began to laugh and 
 
 said : ' Miss is in a merry company — they are dancing — 
 
 the corks of the champagne bottles are jumping,' etc. Miss 
 
 cannot remember that any wrong detail was given by Miss 
 Olsen, except that she thinks the number of persons present was 
 not correctly given." 
 
 With Dr. Backman's permission we wrote to Miss 
 
 asking for her confirmation of these incidents, 
 
 and she replied as follows, on March 8th, 1891 : — 
 
 " I am very willing to give you a description of what I saw and 
 heard at Dr. Backman's the day he has mentioned in his letter 
 to you. 
 
 " When I came to him, he made a hypnotic experiment with 
 Miss Olsen, who should endeavour to find some papers lying 
 
358 APPARITIONS AND THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 
 
 somewhere in Dr. Backman's apartment, and, to my great 
 surprise, she succeeded in finding them. After her being 
 awakened, Dr. Backman gave her a large glass button and 
 asked her to look in it and see if she could find out what I had 
 done the day before. She succeeded even in this to an astonish- 
 ing degree." 
 
 No. 107. — From Sir Joseph Barnby. 
 
 In the next case, however, the vision appears to 
 have been as nearly as possible contemporaneous with 
 the event. Miss A. is a lady who has had many 
 telepathic experiments of a striking kind. She is 
 extremely short-sighted and a bad visualist, but her 
 crystal visions she describes as being clear and well 
 defined, as if she were looking on a real scene through 
 strong glasses. The following account of an incident 
 in Miss A.'s experience is given by Sir Joseph 
 Barnby, who was a witness before the verification. 
 His account has been revised throughout by Lady 
 Radnor, who has interpolated an explanatory note. 
 Sir Joseph writes, in November 1892 : — 
 
 " I was invited by Lord and Lady Radnor to the wedding of 
 their daughter, Lady Wilma Bouverie, which took place August 
 15th, 1889. 
 
 " I was met at Salisbury by Lord and Lady Radnor and 
 driven to Longford Castle. In the course of the drive, Lady 
 Radnor said to me : ' We have a young lady staying with us in 
 whom, I think, you will be much interested. She possesses the 
 faculty of seeing visions, and is otherwise closely connected 
 with the spiritual world. Only last night she was looking in her 
 crystal and described a room which she saw therein, as a kind 
 of London dining-room. [The room described was not in 
 London but at L., and Miss A. particularly remarked that the 
 floor was in large squares of black and white marble — as it is 
 in the big hall at L., where family prayers are said. — H. M. 
 Radnor.] With a little laugh, she added, ' And the family are 
 evidently at prayers, the servants are kneeling at the chairs 
 round the room and the prayers are being read by a tall and 
 distinguished-looking gentleman with a very handsome, long 
 grey beard.' With another little laugh, she continued : 4 A lady 
 just behind him rises from her knees and speaks to him. He 
 puts her aside with a wave of the hand, and continues his read- 
 
ON CLAIRVOYANCE IN THE NORMAL STATE. 359 
 
 ing. 5 The young lady here gave a careful description of the 
 lady who had risen from her knees. 5 
 
 " Lady Radnor then said : ' From the description given, I 
 cannot help thinking that the two principal personages de- 
 scribed are Lord and Lady L., but I shall ask Lord L. this even- 
 ing, as they are coming by a later train, and I should like you 
 to be present when the answer is given. 5 
 
 " The same evening, after dinner, I was talking to Lord L. 
 when Lady Radnor came up to him and said : ' I want to ask 
 you a question. I am afraid you will thmk it a very silly one, 
 but in any case I hope you will not ask me why I have put the 
 question? 5 To this Lord L. courteously assented. She then 
 said : 6 Were you at home last night ? 5 He replied, 4 Yes. 5 She 
 said : c Were you having family prayers at such a time last even- 
 ing ? 5 With a slight look of surprise he replied, ' Yes, we were. 5 
 She then said : 1 During the course of the prayers did Lady L. 
 rise from her knees and speak to you, and did you put her aside 
 with a wave of the hand ? 5 Much astonished, Lord L. answered : 
 ' Yes, that was so, but may I inquire why you have asked this 
 question ? 5 To which Lady Radnor answered : 6 You promised 
 you wouldn 5 t ask me that ! 5 55 
 
 In commenting on the account, Mr. Myers adds : — 
 
 " This incident has been independently recounted to me both 
 by Lady Radnor and by Miss A. herself. Another small point not 
 given by Sir J. Barnby is that Miss A. did not at first under- 
 stand that family prayers were going on, but exclaimed : 6 Here 
 are a number of people coming into the room. Why, they 5 re 
 smelling their chairs ! 5 This scene may have been exactly 
 contemporaneous. 55 (Proc. S.P.R., vol. viii. pp. 502, 503.) 
 
 Spontaneous Clairvoyance. 
 
 This incident was unquestionably very odd, but its 
 evidential value is not lessened by that fact. In- 
 stances of a similar detailed perception of events at a 
 distance are occasionally found to occur spontaneously. 
 Two or three cases coming under this category have 
 indeed already been quoted in Chapters VII. and VIII. 
 The type, however, is interesting and important, and 
 it is perhaps worth while citing a few more illustrative 
 cases. It should be noted, however, that whereas in 
 the cases of induced clairvoyance so far considered 
 there is little evidence of any active contribution on 
 
360 APPARITIONS AND THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 
 
 the part of other persons to the percipient's impres- 
 sion, in the majority of the spontaneous instances the 
 central figure in the vision was undergoing, or had 
 just emerged from, some unusual experience, and his 
 condition appears to have contributed to bring about 
 the result. In the case which follows the vision 
 represented a dying man. It is noteworthy that, 
 as in other cases already given (e.g., No. 46), the 
 percipient's impression presented a substantially 
 accurate picture of the scene of the drama, but of a 
 scene which preceded its telepathic representation by 
 some hours. It seems probable, therefore, that the 
 vision was merely the reflection of the thoughts of 
 one of the bystanders. And, indeed, in any case it 
 would be difficult to attribute the impression to the 
 mind of the dying man, who could scarcely be 
 supposed to have a mental picture of himself in the 
 act of falling overboard. In the present instance it 
 does not appear that the percipient was personally 
 acquainted with any of the witnesses of the scene, 
 amongst whom, on this interpretation, the agent must 
 be sought, and in this respect the case presents a 
 parallel to Miss A.'s vision. 
 
 No. 108.— From Mrs. Paquet. 
 
 The case comes to us through the American 
 Branch of the S.P.R. The evidence has been 
 prepared by Mr. A. B. Wood, who received an 
 account of the incident from Mrs. Paquet at a 
 personal interview. Mr. Wood writes on April 29th, 
 1890:— 1 
 
 "On October 24th, 1889, Edmund Dunn, brother of Mrs. 
 Agnes Paquet, was serving as fireman on the tug Wolf, a small 
 steamer engaged in towing vessels in Chicago Harbour. At 
 about 3 o'clock A.M., the tug fastened to a vessel, inside the 
 piers, to tow her up the river. While adjusting the tow-line 
 Mr. Dunn fell or was thrown overboard by the tow-line, and 
 drowned." 
 
 1 S.P.K., vol. vi. pp. 33, 34. 
 
ON CLAIRVOYANCE IN THE NORMAL STATE. 36 1 
 
 Mrs. Paquefs Statement. 
 
 " I arose about the usual hour on the morning of the accident, 
 probably about six o'clock. I had slept well throughout the 
 night, had no dreams or sudden awakenings. I awoke feeling 
 gloomy and depressed, which feeling I could not shake off. 
 After breakfast my husband went to his work, and, at the 
 proper time, the children were gotten ready and sent to school, 
 leaving me alone in the house. Soon after this I decided to 
 steep and drink some tea, hoping it would relieve me of the 
 gloomy feelings aforementioned. I went into the pantry, took 
 down the tea canister, and as I turned around my brother 
 Edmund — or his exact image — stood before me and only a few 
 feet away. The apparition stood with back towards me, or, 
 rather, partially so, and was in the act of falling forward — away 
 from me — seemingly impelled by two ropes or a loop of rope 
 drawing against his legs. The vision lasted but a moment, 
 disappearing over a low railing or bulwark, but was very 
 distinct. I dropped the tea, clasped my hands to my face, and 
 exclaimed, ' My God ! Ed. is drowned. 5 
 
 "At about 10.30 A.M. my husband received a telegram from 
 Chicago, announcing the drowning of my brother. When 
 he arrived home he said to me, 6 Ed. is sick in hospital at 
 Chicago ; I have just received a telegram,' to which I replied, 
 ' Ed. is drowned ; I saw him go overboard.' I then gave him 
 a minute description of what I had seen. I stated that my 
 brother, as I saw him, was bareheaded, had on a heavy, blue 
 sailor's shirt, no coat, and that he went over the rail or bulwark. 
 I noticed that his pants' legs were rolled up enough to show the 
 white lining inside. I also described the appearance of the 
 boat at the point where my brother went overboard. 
 
 " I am not nervous, and neither before nor since have I had 
 any experience in the least degree similar to that above related. 
 
 " My brother was not subject to fainting or vertigo. 
 
 "Agnes Paquet." 
 Mr. Paquefs Statement. 
 
 "At about 10.30 o'clock a.m., October 24th, 1889, I received 
 a telegram from Chicago, announcing the drowning of my 
 brother-in-law, Edmund Dunn, at 3 o'clock that morning. I 
 went directly home, and, wishing to break the force of the sad 
 news I had to convey to my wife, I said to her : 1 Ed. is sick in 
 hospital at Chicago ; I have just received a telegram.' To 
 which she replied : ' Ed. is drowned ; I saw him go overboard.' 
 She then described to me the appearance and dress of her 
 brother as described in her statement ; also the appearance of 
 the boat, etc. 
 
362 APPARITIONS AND THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 
 
 " I started at once for Chicago, and when I arrived there 
 I found the appearance of that part of the vessel described by 
 my wife to be exactly as she had described it, though she had 
 never seen the vessel ; and the crew verified my wife's descrip- 
 tion of her brother's dress, etc., except that they thought that he 
 had his hat on at the time of the accident. They said that Mr. 
 Dunn had purchased a pair of pants a few days before the 
 accident occurred, and as they were a trifle long before, wrink- 
 ling at the knees, he had worn them rolled up, showing the white 
 lining as seen by my wife." 
 
 Visions of this kind are of rare occurrence with 
 waking percipients. The preoccupations of the day- 
 time are probably in themselves sufficient to prevent 
 the emergence of telepathic impressions under ordin- 
 ary circumstances. But in the present instance it 
 will be observed that the vision occurred in an interval 
 of comparative rest after a period of active occupation. 
 The feeling of gloom and depression mentioned by 
 Mrs. Paquet may have marked the period of incuba- 
 tion, so to speak, of a latent impression of calamity. 
 But a comparison of the case with those which follow 
 suggests that this feeling of depression may have 
 been not the effect, but the necessary condition of the 
 transmission of the agent's thought, and that a slight 
 degree of fatigue or ill-health may under certain 
 circumstances facilitate the emergence of impressions 
 of this kind. It is, at all events, noteworthy that in 
 two of the three cases quoted the percipient was 
 suffering from unusual fatigue or depression, and in 
 the third was recovering from a long illness. In the 
 next two cases the percipient's experience may have 
 been actually synchronous with the events perceived. 
 
 No. 109.— From Mr. F. A. Marks. 
 
 The accounts, from which extracts arc given below, 
 were published in the Oneida Circular (U.S.A.) for 
 January 19th, 1874. The percipient, Mr. F. A. Marks, 
 writes : — 
 
ON CLAIRVOYANCE IN THE NORMAL STATE. 363 
 
 W. C, January 14th, 1874. 
 
 "You wish the simple facts of my dream. They are these : — 
 One afternoon in October [1873], being tired, I lay down to rest. 
 I soon fell asleep ; at least I have no reason for thinking that I 
 did not sleep. I was not on the bed more than a few minutes. 
 During this time I dreamed of being near a large body of 
 water. I knew it to be the Oneida Lake. The wind was blowing 
 violently, and the waves ran exceedingly high. While standing 
 near the lake I felt under a strong disposition to sleep. My 
 eyes were heavy, they would close themselves. It was with an 
 exertion that I kept them open. I was like a man under night- 
 mare ; struggling to rouse myself, yet only partially successful. 
 Darkness was settling over me. Suddenly, when the wind was 
 blowing a gale and the waves seemed rolling one over the other, 
 a small sail-boat broke upon my sight, driven wildly before the 
 storm. For the moment it seemed as if it would be lost. It 
 appeared to be at the mercy of the waves, for they rose high 
 above its sides and almost concealed it at times. It was 
 manned by two persons — one in the after part ; the other trying 
 to pull down the sail! Their situation was critical. At this 
 moment a feeling of horror shot through me as I recognised in 
 the man whose full length I saw standing near the mast and 
 struggling with the sail my brother Charles ! The man in the 
 stern I did not recognise. In the time of the greatest peril, 
 something — I can scarcely tell what ; I dare not call it an 
 apparition — gave me the impression that good beings were 
 interested and watchful over the voyagers. 
 
 " The shock I received on seeing my brother did not allow me 
 to sleep long. On awaking I was troubled, and thought I would 
 immediately write to Charles, entreating him to be careful. 
 Afterwards, thinking it merely a dream, I turned my attention 
 from writing, but I mentioned to Frank Smith that I had a 
 troubled dream about Charles. After this experience, perhaps 
 three or four days, a letter was received from Mrs. Mallory 
 giving an account of Charles' condition when he returned to the 
 joppa station. 
 
 " This letter recalled the dream ; and the coincidence of time 
 and circumstances made a deep impression on me, though I was 
 unable then, and am now, to accurately identify the time of my 
 vision with the time of actual peril described in Mrs. Mallory's 
 letter. (The letter, however, came so soon as to make it certain 
 that the peril and the vision were nearly, if not exactly, simul- 
 taneous)" 
 
 Mr. C. R. Marks explains that on a beautiful day 
 in October he and a friend sailed eighteen miles down 
 the lake in a small open boat. They started for the 
 
364 APPARITIONS AND THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 
 
 return voyage on the day following, at 2.45 P.M., in 
 threatening weather. They had gone but a short 
 distance when a violent storm came on, and they were 
 in a position of considerable peril : — 
 
 " To add to our apprehensions it began raining, and the wind 
 instead of slacking was evidently increasing. We had gone 
 about two miles when I was startled by a cry from Arthur to 
 'look out for the sail ! J as it was shifting to the other side. I 
 lay down to let the sail pass over me, and got on to the other 
 side of the boat to counteract the effect of the sail. This is told 
 in a few words, but the actual event seemed to take a long 
 time. When down in the boat I heard and felt the swash of the 
 waves coming in, and for a moment I had the impression that 
 Arthur was already in the water and that it would soon be my 
 turn. But on looking round I saw he was still in his place, and 
 also that we had shipped considerable water. The next thing 
 was to take in sail, and that quickly. I let go the halyards, but 
 the sail would not come down, as it was held by a miserable 
 toggle at the top. In the excitement of the moment I jumped 
 upon the seat at the imminent risk of capsizing the boat, and 
 pulled down the sail as far as it would go, which left it about 
 six feet high. This was still dangerous, as the slack of the sail 
 was distended, looking like a huge bag. This was remedied by 
 cutting away the rings in the lower part of the sail and winding 
 up the lower yard. After this, with considerable baling, we got 
 along tolerably well." 
 
 Appended is an extract from a letter written by 
 Mr. B. Bristol, with whom Mr. F. A. Marks was 
 working at the time of the vision, corroborating 
 the accounts given above: — 
 
 " I was living in Wallingford at that time, raising small fruit. 
 My principal helper was a young man named Frederic Marks, 
 a graduate of Yale Scientific School. Frederic had a brother 
 named Charles, who was living then in Central New York, near 
 Oneida Lake. One rainy afternoon Frederic went upstairs to 
 his room and lay down on a lounge. An hour or so after he 
 came back and said he had just seen his brother Charles in 
 vision, he thought, as he was not conscious of having been 
 asleep. Charles was in a small sail-boat, and a companion 
 with him, who sat in the stern steering. There seemed to 
 be a wild storm prevailing, for the sea ran high. Charles stood 
 in the bow grasping the mast with one arm, with the other he 
 
ON CLAIRVOYANCE IN THE NORMAL STATE. 365 
 
 had hold of the boom, which appeared to have broken loose. 
 His dangerous position so frightened Frederic that he awoke, 
 or the vision departed." 
 
 In the next case the coincidence was not of itself a 
 striking one, nor, as the account was not sent to the 
 American S.P.R. until six years after the event, is 
 the evidence as good as in the last narrative. But 
 as an incident in itself trivial has remained in the 
 memories of the other persons concerned, as well as 
 in that of the percipient, it may be presumed to 
 have made some impression at the time. The case is 
 quoted from the Proceedings of the American S.P.R. 
 (pp. 464-467). 
 
 No. 1 10.— From Mrs. L. Z. 
 
 "/une 6tk, 1887. 
 
 "About the end of March 1881, after recovering from 
 severe illness, while I was yet confined to my bed, I had the 
 following experience. I was staying at the time at 172 Benefit 
 Street, Providence, R.I. 
 
 " I had been asleep and suddenly became, as it were, half 
 awake, being conscious of some of the objects in the room. I 
 then heard a voice as if from the room adjoining, and made an 
 effort to see the speaker, but I found myself unable to move. 
 Then appeared, as though in a mist, an ordinary sofa, and 
 behind it the vague outline of a woman's figure. I did not 
 recognise the figure, but I recognised the voice which I heard : 
 it was the voice of my hostess, Mrs. B., who was at that time 
 not in the house. She was saying, 1 1 am ill and all worn out. 
 Mrs. Z. has been so nervous, and in such a peculiar mental state, 
 that it has quite affected my health ' (or words to that effect), 
 'but I wouldn't for the world have her know it.' I then made a 
 stronger effort to distinguish the figure, and woke completely to 
 find myself in my room with my nurse. I inquired of the nurse 
 who was in the other room, which was used as a sleeping-room 
 by my child and her nurse. She said that no one was there ; 
 but I was so convinced that the voice had come from there that 
 I insisted upon her going and looking. She went, but found no 
 one there, and the door into the hall was latched. I then 
 looked at the clock, which was opposite my bed. It was about 
 5 P.M. In the evening, about 8 p.m., Mrs. B. came up to see 
 me, and I asked her where she had been that afternoon at 5 
 o'clock. She said that she had been at Mrs. G.'s (about two 
 miles off). I said, 'You were talking about me.' She said, 
 
366 APPARITIONS AND THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 
 
 ' Yes, I was,' looking very much surprised. I repeated to her 
 what I had seemed to hear her say, word for word. She was 
 much astonished, and was very curious as to what else I had 
 heard or seen. I told her that it was all very vague, except the 
 appearance of the sofa, which I described in detail as being 
 covered with a peculiar striped linen cloth, green stripes about 
 two inches wide, alternating with pale-drab stripes, somewhat 
 wider, which appeared to be the natural colour of the unbleached 
 linen. She said that she had spoken the words which I had 
 heard, and that she was at the time reclining on a sofa, but she 
 said that the sofa was covered with green velvet. 
 
 " Next day Mrs. G. paid me a visit, and after hearing my 
 story she exclaimed, ' You're right. The sofa had at the time 
 the covering which you describe; it had just been put on. 
 There is green velvet under the covering. I suppose Mrs. B. 
 didn't notice the cover.' ; ' 
 
 Mrs. B. writes : — 
 
 "In the year 1881, while living in Providence, on Benefit 
 Street, No. 272, Mrs. Z. was with me, and during the 
 winter of 1880 and the spring of 1881 she was in a peculiar 
 mental state, and on two occasions read my thoughts and heard 
 my voice. I remember distinctly on one occasion, when I 
 returned from a visit to a friend, Mrs. Z. repeated the conver- 
 sation that had passed between my friend and myself, and 
 spoke of my lying on a lounge that had a striped covering. I 
 said, ' No, it was a green plush,' but found afterwards she was 
 right, as the summer covering had been put on. 
 
 " Elizabeth L. B. 
 
 "Brooklyn, N.Y.,/«»* 1887." 
 
 Mrs. G. writes from Providence, July 12th, 1887 : — 
 
 " When I received your note I could not at all recall the cir- 
 cumstances of the vision you referred to, but afterwards Mrs. B. 
 refreshed my memory upon the subject, and I distinctly recalled 
 it. It was as Mrs. Z. related it to you. At the time it occurred, 
 I remember, I thought it quite marvellous. 
 
 " Sickness had prevented my writing you these few lines 
 before. " C. B. Y. G." 
 
 Even if the conversation was correctly reported, it 
 is probably not beyond the range of conjecture by a 
 morbidly sensitive invalid; but the details given of 
 the appearance of the sofa cover seem to indicate a 
 telepathic faculty, like Dr. Phinuit's, of drawing on 
 
ON CLAIRVOYANCE IN THE NORMAL STATE. 367 
 
 the agent's unconscious perceptions. Mrs. L. Z. gives 
 also an account of a voluntarily induced clairvoyant 
 dream, in connection with the same friend, which 
 occurred about this time, and this account also Mrs. 
 B. is able to corroborate. The whole case is interest- 
 ing as serving to indicate that some conditions of 
 disease may be favourable to this form of telepathy, 
 and as being the only case which I am able to quote 
 of spontaneous clairvoyance in which the impressions 
 transferred were of quite trivial incidents. Mrs. Z. 
 appears to have been in a state between sleeping and 
 waking. 
 
 The next case occurred in a dream at night. The 
 dream, it will be noted, caused the percipient to 
 awake. 
 
 No. in. — From Mrs. Freese. 
 
 "Granite Lodge, Chiselhurst, 
 March 1884. 
 
 " In September 1881 I had another curious dream, so vivid 
 that I seemed to see it. 
 
 " My two boys of eighteen and sixteen were staying in the 
 Black Forest, under the care of a Dr. Fresenius. I must say 
 here that I always supposed the boys would go everywhere 
 together, and I never should have supposed that in that lonely 
 country, so new to them, they would be out after dark. My 
 husband and I were staying at St. Leonards, and one Saturday 
 night I woke at about 12 o'clock (rather before, as I heard it 
 strike) having just seen vividly a dark night on a mountain, and 
 my eldest boy lying on his back at the bottom of some steep 
 place, his eyes wide open, and saying, ' Good-bye, mother and 
 father, I shall never see you again.' I woke with a feeling of 
 anxiety, and the next morning when I told it to my husband, 
 though we both agreed it was absurd to be anxious, yet he would 
 write and tell the boys we hoped they would never go out alone 
 after dark. To my surprise my eldest boy, to whom I wrote the 
 dream, wrote back expressing his great astonishment, for on 
 that Saturday night he was coming home over the mountains, 
 past 11 o'clock ; it was pitch dark, and he slipped and fell down 
 some 12 feet or so, and landed on his back, looking up to the 
 sky. However, he was not much hurt, and soon picked himself 
 up and got home all right. He did not say what thoughts 
 passed through his mind as he fell." 
 
368 APPARITIONS AND THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 
 
 In answer to inquiries, Mrs. Freese adds : — 
 
 " Before my son wrote about his fall in the Black Forest, I 
 related my dream to my husband, and as he seemed a little 
 moved by it, I wrote an account of it to my boy, saying his father 
 did not wish them to be out after dark alone. I had not told my 
 boy when it was, deeming that immaterial, but when in his 
 letter, received days after, he said, 4 Was it Saturday night, 
 because then so-and-so ? 5 I remembered what I should not 
 otherwise have noted, that it was Saturday night ; for on the 
 Sunday morning my husband, being much worried about some 
 business matter, elected to spend the morning with me in the 
 fields instead of going to church, and as much to divert his mind 
 as anything I related to him my dream of the night before." 
 
 Mrs. Freese sent us the letter from her son, which 
 contained the following passage: — 
 
 " With regard to your dream : did you dream it on September 
 3rd ? if so it was on that night, coming home rather late, that 
 I fell down a precipice of 8 feet, or perhaps more, in the dark, 
 and might have broken my neck, but didn't. However, I don't 
 think you will find me walking about after dark more than I can 
 help, as' the roads are very dark, and the fogs in the village 
 awful. 
 
 "Fred. E. Freese." 
 [September 3rd, 1881, was a Saturday.] 
 
 Mr. Freese wrote on March 7th, 1884, to confirm 
 his wife's account of the dream. 
 
 An account by Dr. Gibotteau, given in the Annales 
 des Sciences PsycJiiques, Nov.-Dec. 1892, deserves con- 
 sideration in this connection. It is the record of a 
 series of unusually successful experiments in the 
 transfer of visual images. But the success obtained 
 was apparently due to a condition of spontaneous 
 clairvoyant perceptivity on the part of the subject. 
 The percipient, who was throughout in a state not 
 clearly distinguishable from that of normal wakeful- 
 ness, was a head-nurse at the hospital to which Dr. 
 Gibotteau was attached. The occurrence took place 
 in 1888. Madame R. has now remarried and Dr. 
 Gibotteau has lost sight of her, so that her testimony 
 
ON CLAIRVOYANCE IN THE NORMAL STATE. 369 
 
 cannot be obtained, and unfortunately Dr. Gibotteau 
 appears not to have committed the incident to writing 
 until 1892. The account therefore represents merely 
 the general impression left after the lapse of some 
 years upon the memory of a trained observer by a very 
 unusual and striking experience. Briefly, Dr. Gibot- 
 teau reports that he succeeded in inducing in Madame 
 R., by the mere silent will, an immense number of 
 striking hallucinatory, or rather semi-hallucinatory 
 mental pictures. The ideas thus transferred included 
 transformations and imaginary movements of objects 
 actually present in the room ; the appearance of 
 human figures and animals, a serpent, a rabbit, a 
 dog, horses, a bear rampant ; and the disappearance 
 of Dr. Gibotteau himself, leaving behind him an 
 empty arm-chair. The seance lasted for nearly three 
 hours, with very few failures of any kind, and left the 
 narrator much exhausted. 1 
 
 The experience, as described, it will be seen, was of 
 an almost unprecedented kind. It is by no means 
 clear that under a natural classification either this or 
 others of the somewhat heterogeneous phenomena 
 described in the present and preceding chapters would 
 be grouped under the same genus, or that any of 
 them are rightly called telepathic. They are pro- 
 visionally ascribed to telepathy, in the sense already 
 explained (p. 326, Chapter XIV.), because if we accept 
 the facts at all, that appears to be the cheapest 
 solution. The writer is not committed to telepathy 
 as the true explanation; he has adopted it provision- 
 ally, as an alternative to some hypothetical faculty 
 of direct intuition beyond the range of sense. If to 
 any reader who accepts the writer's estimate of the 
 alleged facts as beyond chance or misrepresentation, 
 the hypothesis of telepathy appears in such cases to 
 be strained, it may be replied that when the choice of 
 
 1 A translation of Dr. Gibotteau's account is given by Mr. Myers, 
 Proc. S.P.R., vol. viii. pp. 468, 469. 
 
 24 
 
370 APPARITIONS AND THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 
 
 explanation seems to lie between telepathy and some 
 faculty even more dubious and more remote from 
 ordinary analogies, it is right that the hypothesis of 
 telepathy should be strained — if necessary, to the 
 breaking-point — before we invoke a stage-deity to cut 
 the knot. 
 
37i 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 THEORIES AND CONCLUSIONS. 
 
 CONSIDERATION more or less adequate has now been 
 given to the various phenomena in which there is 
 proof apparent of the action of telepathy. The ex- 
 perimental evidence has shown that a simple sensa- 
 tion or idea may be transferred from one mind to 
 another, and that this transference may take place 
 alike in the normal state and in the hypnotic trance. 
 It has been shown also that the transferred idea 
 may be reproduced in the percipient's organism under 
 various disguises ; at one time, for instance, it may 
 cause vague distress or terror, or a blind impulse to 
 action ; under other circumstances it may inspire 
 definite and complicated movements, as those in- 
 volved in writing. Again, it may induce sleep or 
 even more deep-seated organic effects, such as hysteria 
 or local anaesthesia. Once more, it may be embel- 
 lished with imagery presumably furnished by the 
 percipient's own mind, and may appear as a dream 
 or hallucination representing the distant agent. And 
 these various results may be obtained either by delib- 
 erate experiment ; as the result of some crisis affecting 
 another mind ; or, lastly, as following on some peculiar 
 state of receptivity established, under conditions not 
 yet clearly ascertained, in the percipient's mind. 
 
 But it would not be reasonable to infer that the few 
 hundreds or thousands of examples collected during 
 the last twelve years by a few groups of investigators 
 exhaust the possibilities or indicate the limits of 
 telepathic action. By those, at least, who accept the 
 
372 APPARITIONS AND THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 
 
 demonstration of telepathy as a real agency it will 
 hardly be anticipated that its action should be con- 
 fined to the comparatively few cases which present 
 a coincidence sufficiently striking to be quoted as 
 ostensive instances. That the distribution, indeed, 
 of telepathic sensitiveness at the present time should 
 be sporadic — as the distribution of a musical ear or 
 the power of visualisation is sporadic — may appear 
 not improbable. But we should be prepared to find 
 instances of its presumptive operation which fall below 
 the level of demonstration, and might with almost 
 equal plausibility be referred to some other cause. 
 And such instances we do certainly find, in simul- 
 taneous dreams and in vague presentiments, and in 
 innumerable coincidences of thought and expression 
 in ordinary life. And the suggestion that the same 
 power may serve as an auxiliary to more completely 
 systematised modes of expression, though incapable 
 of proof, may yet be thought worthy of consideration. 
 It is conceivable, for instance, that it may aid the 
 intercourse of a mother with her infant child, that 
 the influence of the orator may be due not only to 
 the spoken word, and that even in our daily con- 
 versation thoughts may pass by this means which 
 find no outward expression. The personal influence 
 of the operator in hypnotism may perhaps be regarded 
 as a proof presumptive of telepathy. When all the 
 phenomena of " mesmerism " were attributed, by the 
 few who believed in them, to the passage of a fluid 
 from the mesmerist to his patient, it was easy to 
 credit the successful operator with as large an endow- 
 ment of available fluid as the facts might seem to 
 require. But from those who assert that the results 
 arc not merely explicable, but are in practice to be 
 explained, as due to suggestion alone, no entirely 
 satisfactory explanation has ever been forthcoming of 
 the observed differences between one operator and 
 another. It is difficult to believe that Licbcault, 
 Bernheim, Schrenck-Notzing, Van Eeden, Lloyd 
 
THEORIES AND CONCLUSIONS. 
 
 373 
 
 Tuckey, Bramwell, etc., have succeeded where so 
 many others have failed, merely through the exercise 
 of greater patience, or the possession of an established 
 reputation, which after all is based on the successes 
 which it is now invoked to explain. 1 And the fact that 
 a large proportion of well - known hypnotists have 
 acted as agents in successful telepathic experiments 
 of an unusual kind is a further argument in the same 
 direction. There are, moreover, some more dubious 
 beliefs, for the most part discredited by educated 
 persons, yet persisting with a singular vitality, which 
 receive in telepathy a simple and perhaps sufficient 
 explanation. It has already been shown that some 
 of the marvels of Dr. Dee and the Specularii have 
 been paralleled by recent visions in "the crystal," 
 revealing events then passing at a distance unknown 
 to the seer; and that the nucleus of fact in some 
 legends of ghosts and haunted houses is probably to 
 be sought in a telepathic hallucination. And many 
 of the alleged wonders of witchcraft and of ancient 
 magic in general, when disentangled from the ac- 
 cretions formed round them by popular myth and 
 superstition, present a marked resemblance to some 
 of the facts recorded in this book. It is obvious, for 
 instance, that the same power which inhibited Mr. 
 Beards utterance (p. 83) could have prevented the 
 witch's victim from repeating the Lord's Prayer. And 
 Mr. Godfrey (p. 228), in the sixteenth century, might 
 have found that to appear in two places at once would 
 be perilously strong evidence of unlawful powers. 2 
 
 1 The fact that most, if not all, the medical men quoted would them- 
 selves reject the explanation hinted at in the text, and would regard 
 their own success as due rather to skill and patience than to any specific 
 endowment, should, of course, have due weight, but cannot be regarded 
 as decisive. 
 
 2 See also the account given by Dr. Gibotteau in the Annales des 
 Sciences Psychiques of the power possessed by Berthe (see ante, p. 139) 
 of causing people to stumble or lose their sense of direction. Mr. 
 Andrew Lang has recently drawn attention to the remarkable resem- 
 blances between accounts of medieval magic, etc., and modern tele- 
 pathic phenomena (see, e.g., his article in Cont. Review, Sept. 1893). 
 
374 APPARITIONS AND THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 
 
 But there are two special kinds of marvels, whose 
 occurrence has been widely vouched for within quite 
 recent times by men of proved ability and trained in 
 the experimental methods of the modern laboratory, 
 which deserve to be considered in this connection — 
 the influence of metals and magnets on the human 
 organism, and the physical phenomena of Spiritualism. 
 Baron von Reichenbach in the last generation pub- 
 lished the results of numerous observations on various 
 sensitives, who alleged that they could see flame- 
 like emanations from crystals, from the poles of a 
 magnet, from the bodies of the sick, and from newly- 
 made graves, and that they experienced various sen- 
 sations from contact with magnets and metals. On 
 the evidence of Reichenbach's prolonged and laborious 
 researches the existence of this supposed magnetic 
 sense obtained a certain degree of credence. Accord- 
 ingly the S.P.R., shortly after its foundation in 1882, 
 conducted a series of control experiments on a number 
 of persons with a powerful electro-magnet, which was 
 alternately magnetised and demagnetised by a com- 
 mutator in an adjoining room. Of forty-five persons 
 tested three professed to see luminous appearances 
 on the poles of the magnet; and on two or three 
 occasions they were able to indicate with surprising 
 accuracy throughout a whole evening the exact 
 moment at which the current was switched on or 
 off — the light, as they alleged, appearing or disap- 
 pearing simultaneously. But these isolated successes 
 were not repeated, and the very conditions of the ex- 
 periment implied that it was known to some of those 
 present whether or not the magnet was charged. Now 
 it is obvious that unless special precautions arc taken 
 to guard against the telepathic 1 communication of 
 this knowledge all experiments of the kind must 
 be inconclusive ; and other investigators have failed 
 
 1 It is possible that we need not go so far as telepathy for an explana- 
 tion. Slight indications unconsciously apprehended may have furnished 
 the necessary clue in all cases, as they almost certainly did in some. 
 
THEORIES AND CONCLUSIONS. 
 
 375 
 
 to detect any trace of the so-called magnetic 
 sense. 1 
 
 Within the last few years this supposed sensitive- 
 ness has appeared in another form. M. Babinski of 
 the Salpetriere claims to have shown that certain 
 ailments — such, for example, as hemiplegia and 
 hysterical mutism — can be transferred by the in- 
 fluence of a magnet from one side of the body to 
 another, or from one patient to another. MM. Binet 
 and Fere 2 find that unilateral hallucinations can be 
 shifted by the same influence from one side of the 
 body to the other, and that in general memories and 
 sensations — real or imaginary — can be modified and 
 destroyed by the magnet. And MM. Bourru, Burot, 
 Luys, and others have published whole treatises deal- 
 ing with the alleged influence of various drugs and 
 metals on certain patients. A few drops of laurel- 
 water enclosed in a flask and brought near to the 
 patient, will, according to these writers, induce 
 ecstasy; ipecacuanha will cause vomiting; alcohol 
 intoxication, and so on ; each drug, though securely 
 stoppered and sealed, giving rise to the appropriate 
 physical symptoms in the patient. However, MM. 
 Bernheim, 3 Delboeuf, 4 and Jules Voisin 5 showed 
 some time since, and Mr. Ernest Hart 6 has lately 
 repeated the demonstration, that the same results can 
 be made to follow if the patient is led to believe that 
 an inert piece of wood is a magnet, or that an empty 
 flask contains a powerful drug. It may be fairly 
 assumed therefore that when special precautions are 
 not shown to have been taken — and there is little 
 
 1 See Proc. S.P.R., vol. i. p. 230, vol. ii. p. 56; Phil. Mag., April 
 1883 ; Proc. Amer. S.P.R., p. 116. 
 
 2 Ani?nal Magnetism (International Science Series), pp. 264 et seq. 
 Cf. Ottolenghi and Lombroso, in Rev. Phil., Oct. 1889, on polarisa- 
 tion of hallucinations by magnets. 
 
 3 Rev. de V Hypnotisme, Dec. 1887. 
 
 4 Ibid., June 1887. 
 
 5 Rev. des Sciences Hypnotiques, 1887-88, p. ill. 
 
 6 Brit. Med. Journal, Jan. 1893. 
 
376 APPARITIONS AND THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 
 
 evidence that such precautions were as a rule taken — 
 suggestion by word or look would be sufficient to 
 account for the phenomena observed. But it is 
 obvious that negative experiments of this kind are 
 not in themselves conclusive; and it is difficult to 
 believe that all the results recorded by investigators 
 of such experience as Babinski, Fere, and others 
 could have been due simply to carelessness on their 
 part, or hypnotic cunning on the part of the subject. 
 Indeed, in commenting on the counter experiments 
 made by M. Jules Voisin, MM. Bourru and Burot 
 expressly state that if the results obtained by them 
 are to be attributed to suggestion, as he proposes, it is 
 " une suggestion sans parole, sans geste y sans pensee 
 minted 1 But a suggestion without word, gesture, or 
 conscious thought is an accurate description of one 
 form of telepathic suggestion ; and if such suggestion 
 has indeed been at work we have an explanation of 
 the otherwise inexplicable reliance placed by these 
 French investigators upon experiments so much con- 
 troverted, and their faith in an interpretation so little 
 supported by scientific analogy. 
 
 That in general the so-called physical phenomena 
 of Spiritualism are due to self-deception and ex- 
 aggeration on the one hand, and to fraud on the 
 other, is a proposition which to most readers, it is 
 likely, will seem to need little demonstration. And 
 there are of course many cases, such as the recent 
 experiments with Eusapia Palladino 2 at Milan, where, 
 though competent observers — Richet, Schiaparelli, 
 Lombroso, Brofferio — have seen things beyond their 
 power to explain, yet the line between what was 
 possible to fraudulent ingenuity and what was not 
 
 1 Rev. des Sciences Hypnotiques, 1887-88, p. 151. See also Force 
 Psychique et Suggestion Mentale, by Dr Claude Perronnet, pp. 21-26, 
 who shows clearly how thought-transference may vitiate many hypnotic 
 experiments. 
 
 2 Annates des Sciences Psychiques, Jan. -Feb. 1893; Proc. S.P.R., 
 Vol. ix. p. 218. 
 
THEORIES AND CONCLUSIONS. 377 
 
 possible cannot be drawn with sufficient sharpness to 
 warrant the invocation of any new agency. But 
 there are other records which cannot be so summarily 
 dismissed. Thus Mr. Crookes, F.R.S., 1 has described 
 the movements of a balance, specially constructed for 
 the purpose of the experiments, in the presence of 
 himself and other observers, under conditions which 
 seemed to render it impossible for the effects to have 
 been produced by the muscular force of any of those 
 present. Lord Lindsay has testified to having seen 
 Home's stature elongated to the extent of 1 1 inches, 
 and heavy tables and other articles of furniture rise 
 in the air without visible support, and to having him- 
 self, at Home's instance, handled, and seen others 
 handle, red-hot coals with impunity. Other witnesses 
 of repute have testified to the appearance of strange 
 luminous bodies, the raining down of liquid scent, the 
 production of inexplicable musical sounds and other 
 phenomena equally marvellous. 2 
 
 Now it is difficult to believe that Mr. Crookes and 
 those with him could in their normal senses have 
 imagined movements of a self-registering balance 
 which never really took place, or have failed to 
 detect actual movements on Home's part ; or that 
 Home could have seemed to Lord Lindsay and 
 others to add some fraction of a cubit to his 
 stature or to float unsupported in the air, when 
 he was really only stretching cramped muscles, or 
 supporting himself on a captive balloon, or by 
 unseen wires ; or that when he was seen to carry 
 hot coals about the room, and to place them, still 
 glowing, upon the bare head of Mr. S. C. Hall, he 
 relied upon the observers overlooking such incon- 
 spicuous objects as a pair of tongs and an asbestos 
 
 1 Proc. S.P.R., vol. vi. p. 98. 
 
 2 See, for instance, the Report on Spiritualism of the London Dia* 
 lectical Society; Experiences of Mr. Stainton Moses in Proc. S.P.R., 
 vol. ix. p. 245; and article, "Spiritualism," in the Encyclopcedia 
 Britannica, by Mrs. Henry Sidgwick, and in Chambers' Encyclopcedia, 
 by Alfred Russel Wallace, F.R.S. 
 
378 APPARITIONS AND THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 
 
 skull-cap — alternatives which must have been at 
 least as obvious at the time to the observers who, 
 by recording these things, have imperilled their 
 reputation for scientific acumen, and even for com- 
 mon sense, as now to their irresponsible critics. 
 But it is certainly not less difficult to believe, on 
 such grounds as these, in the discovery of a new 
 physical force — or rather new forces ; for the energy 
 which could move a balance cannot properly be 
 assumed to be identical with the energy which 
 could increase Home's stature, or restrain the 
 action of fire ; or, as elsewhere recorded, bring 
 delicate flowers uninjured through closed doors. 
 But fortunately we are not compelled to choose 
 between the alternatives of such almost incredible 
 stupidity and a multiplicity of new modes of 
 energy. It has been plausibly suggested that the 
 observers in such cases are the subjects of a 
 collective hallucination. It is true that we have 
 no precise analogy to support such a hypothesis. 
 The hallucinations of hypnotism can be imposed 
 upon several subjects simultaneously by dint of 
 repeated verbal suggestions. But here there were 
 none of the recognised preliminaries to the hypnotic 
 trance : in many of the recorded cases the observers 
 did not know what to expect, and it is clear that 
 verbal suggestion was not essential to the results; 
 while there is no trace of that break in the continuity 
 of consciousness which elsewhere marks the passage 
 from the hypnotic to the normal state. Moreover, 
 in some of the best-attested cases it was the pre- 
 sumed operator, and not the witnesses, who was 
 entranced. Assuredly if the phenomena described 
 were due to hypnotic hallucination, it was halluci- 
 nation without any of the characteristic features of 
 hypnotism. But if we assume — as in the absence 
 of any evidence to the contrary we arc entitled, 
 if not bound, to assume — that the observers were 
 in their normal state, we can find no nearer parallel 
 
THEORIES AND CONCLUSIONS. 
 
 379 
 
 to this supposed hallucination than the collective 
 telepathic hallucinations of which examples have 
 been given in Chapter XII. 1 
 
 It is true that the parallel is by no means exact. 
 The hypothesis requires us to suppose not merely 
 that investigators of spiritualistic phenomena are liable 
 to see, by hallucination, things which are not there, 
 but also that they are occasionally withheld, by hallu- 
 cination, from seeing actual movements and objects. 
 For Mr. Crookes' automatic balance recorded a real 
 movement; flowers and other objects have actually 
 been brought into locked rooms ; furniture has 
 been demonstrably displaced, or has even moved 
 before the eyes of the investigators, and been found 
 at the conclusion of the experiment in its new 
 position ; an actual blister was raised on Lord 
 Lindsay's skin by the touch of a live coal which 
 Home held in a hand apparently bare. Now if 
 these results were due to the action of known 
 forces, muscular and other, it seems clear that some 
 of the medium's movements and appliances escaped 
 observation. We have, however, no record, so far 
 as I know, of collective negative hallucination tele- 
 pathically caused. But it may be pointed out that 
 whilst it is only in unusual circumstances that a 
 hallucination of the kind could attract sufficient 
 attention to be recorded, negative hallucinations can 
 be imposed without difficulty on a hypnotic subject. 
 So that their telepathic origination in the circum- 
 stances suggested presents no greater a priori diffi- 
 culty than that of positive hallucinations. There 
 are, however, other differences between the col- 
 
 1 It need hardly be said that the oft-quoted story of the European 
 who came late and unobserved to the performance of an Indian Fakir, 
 and from a distant tree saw him cutting up a pumpkin when the 
 crowd saw him cutting up a child, is merely ben irovato. Nor r indeed, 
 until we have contemporaneous accounts of these performances from 
 carefully trained observers is there need of any such hypothesis to 
 explain the feats of Indian jugglery. See Mr. Hodgson's article in 
 Proc. S.P.R., vol. ix. p. 354. 
 
380 APPARITIONS AND THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 
 
 lective hallucinations recorded in Chapter XII. and 
 those which the hypothesis requires. For the former 
 were for the most part vague and transitory, and were 
 rarely shared by more than two persons ; whilst the 
 hypothetical hallucinations of the spiritualistic seance 
 are persistent, and may affect several persons simul- 
 taneously and to an equal extent. It may be 
 suggested, however, that the different conditions in 
 the latter case — the common expectancy, the attune- 
 ment of the minds of all present to a common mood, 
 the absence of external solicitation to the senses — 
 may be sufficient to account for the differing charac- 
 teristics of the phenomena observed. 
 
 It may be objected that the problem does not 
 require the intervention of such a Dens ex machina 
 as collective hallucination ; that fraud and mal- 
 observation are adequate to account for all the 
 facts reported. I confess that I am unable so 
 lightly to set aside the deliberate testimony of 
 men of proved scientific distinction, whose word 
 is still regarded as authoritative in observations 
 not less delicate, and for results to the layman 
 hardly less dubious. But I do not suggest that 
 the phenomena, however interpreted, are likely to 
 add anything to the proof of telepathy. I would 
 merely urge that, as until the possibility of thought- 
 transference in its various forms has been patiently 
 and rigorously excluded, odylic flames and magnetic 
 influences must remain unproven, so, in dealing 
 with that residuum of evidence for the physical 
 phenomena called spiritualistic which appears in- 
 explicable by fraud and malobservation, the possi- 
 bility of collective hallucination telepathically caused 
 should be kept in view. 1 
 
 It should be observed that the treatment of tcle- 
 
 1 The explanation suggested in the text for the physical phenomena 
 of Spiritualism is worked out in some detail by Von Hartmann, the 
 philosopher of the unconscious, in a little treatise on Spiritism, which 
 has been translated into English by "C.C.M.," 1885. Bui Yon 
 
THEORIES AND CONCLUSIONS. 38 1 
 
 pathy by those responsible for the word involves as 
 little of theory as Newton's conception of gravitation. 
 What Newton did was to find the simplest general 
 expression for the observed facts by saying that the 
 heavenly bodies acted upon each other with a certain 
 measurable force. He did not attempt to explain the 
 mode of this action. And whilst succeeding astron- 
 omers have for the most part been content to follow 
 Newton's example, the science has, nevertheless, 
 advanced in a steady and continuous progression. 
 So the conception of telepathy simply colligates the 
 observed facts of spontaneous and experimental 
 thought-transference, as instances of the action of one 
 mind upon another. The nature of the action the 
 theory does not discuss ; it merely defines it nega- 
 tively, as being outside the normal sensory channels. 
 In accordance with this view, Mr. Gurney, and the 
 English investigators generally, have consistently 
 employed psychical terms in their discussion ©f the 
 subject : they have spoken of the transmission of 
 ideas, not neuroses, and of the affection of mind by 
 mind, rather than of brain by brain. 1 This treatment 
 involves no prejudgment of the question. Whatever 
 may be the nature of the cause, we know the effects 
 at present only in their psychical aspect, and in 
 default of a physical theory, as psychical it seemed 
 convenient to discuss them. This mode of speech is 
 of course as legitimate as the popular usage which 
 permits us, when the sun's rays strike upon our retina, 
 to ignore the intervening physical processes, and to 
 express only the psychical result, " I see the sun." 
 But Mr. Gurney and his colleagues were further 
 influenced in adopting and maintaining this usage by 
 a conviction that the advancement of the subject has 
 
 Hartmann believes that some of the phenomena are produced by a 
 hypothetical nerve-force under the direction of the somnambulic self 
 of the medium — a prodigality of hypotheses which in the circumstances 
 is surely superfluous. 
 
 1 See Phantasms of the Livings vol. i. pp. 1 10- 1 13. 
 
382 APPARITIONS AND THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 
 
 not hitherto been dependent upon the discovery of 
 physical correlates for the observed psychical action, 
 and that the energy which would be diverted to 
 the search for explanations, could be more fruitfully 
 employed on the still imperfect demonstration that 
 there is something to be explained. 
 
 But it is obvious that this attitude of reserve can- 
 not be maintained indefinitely. Since Mr. Gurney 
 wrote the sum-total of observations and experiments 
 has steadily increased, and there is hardly any longer 
 room for doubt that we have something here which no 
 physical processes at present known can adequately 
 account for. It is not possible to observe facts with- 
 out speculating on the underlying law : it is the law 
 indicated by the facts, more than the facts themselves, 
 which is of permanent interest to the human mind. 
 Nor indeed can any fruitful observation be long main- 
 tained, which is not accompanied, guided, and stimu- 
 lated by theoretical speculation. Professor Lodge has 
 called upon us, in this matter, to " press the doctrine 
 of ultimate intelligibility 1 and in so saying he has 
 at once given articulate expression to an impulse from 
 whose blind urgency no student of nature can escape, 
 and has formulated what is after all the differentia 
 of the scientific mind. The average man accepts 
 things as they are ; the man of science presses the 
 doctrine of ultimate intelligibility. 
 
 But however legitimate at the present stage of 
 the inquiry theoretical speculation might seem, such 
 speculation has for the most part been conspicuously 
 wanting in the treatment of the subject by those best 
 qualified to deal with it. At any rate the attitude 
 of most continental investigators, like that of their 
 English colleagues, has been a purely positive one. 
 They have contented themselves with describing in 
 psychical terms the psychical phenomena which they 
 
 1 Presidential Address to the Section of Mathematics and Physics of 
 the British Association, August 1891. 
 
THEORIES AND CONCLUSIONS. 
 
 383 
 
 have observed. There are, indeed, some competent 
 inquirers at the present time who incline to attribute 
 thought-transference to the direct action of mind upon 
 mind, or to some process yet more transcendent, just 
 as in the last generation there were some who thought 
 they were able to discern, in such instances as came 
 under their notice, proof of the agency of disembodied 
 spirits. And Von Hartmann, boldly accepting the 
 facts wholesale, ascribes them to a communication 
 between finite minds effected through the inter- 
 mediation of the Absolute. 1 But until we have ex- 
 hausted the resources of the world which we know, 
 we should perhaps conclude, with Mistress Quickly, 
 that there is no need to trouble ourselves with any 
 such thoughts yet. 
 
 Any attempt at a physical explanation is, of 
 course, beset with many difficulties. To begin 
 with, there is no sense-organ for our presumed 
 new mode of sensation; nor at the present stage 
 of physiological knowledge is there likelihood that 
 we can annex any as yet unappropriated organ, 
 to register telepathic stimuli, as the semicircular 
 canals are supposed to register the movements of the 
 body in space. In lacking an elaborate machinery 
 specially adapted for receiving its messages and con- 
 centrating them on the peripheral end of the nerves, 
 telepathy would thus seem to be on a par with radiant 
 energy affecting the general surface of the body. But 
 the sensations of heat and cold are without quality or 
 difference, other than difference of degree ; whereas 
 telepathic messages, as we have seen, purport often to 
 be as detailed and precise as those conveyed by the 
 same radiant energy falling on the organs of vision. 
 
 1 "If all individuals of higher or lower order are rooted in the Absolute, 
 retrogressively in this they have a second connection among themselves, 
 and there is requisite only a restoration of the rapport or telephonic 
 junction ( TelepJionanschhiss) between two individuals in the Absolute, 
 by an intense interest of the will, to bring about the unconscious inter- 
 change between them without sense-mediation." {Spiritism, by Ed. 
 von Hartmann, trans. C.C.M., p. 75.) 
 
384 APPARITIONS AND THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 
 
 As regards the mode of transmission, we find first 
 the theory of a fluid, which owes its origin to Mesmer, 
 and was in vogue at a time when fluids were still 
 fashionable in scientific circles. Dr. Barety 1 has 
 recently revived this theory in a new form. He 
 alleges that there is a nerve-energy {force neurique 
 rayonnante) which radiates from the eyes, the fingers, 
 and the breath of the operator, and is capable of 
 producing various effects upon hypnotised subjects. 
 He finds that a knitting-needle acts as a conductor 
 for this force, and water as a non-conductor; that the 
 nerve-rays can be focussed by a magnifying-glass, 
 refracted by a prism, and reflected from a mirror or 
 other plane surface at an angle equal to the angle of 
 incidence. Dr. Barety has omitted to state whether 
 in the latter case the rays are polarised, nor has 
 he shown whether the force varies inversely to the 
 square of the distance. But the consideration of these 
 remarkable results need hardly detain us long, since 
 they can all readily be explained by suggestion, 
 verbal or telepathic. 
 
 If we leave fluids and radiant nerve-energy on one 
 side, we find practically only one mode suggested for the 
 telepathic transference — viz., that the physical changes 
 which are the accompaniments of thought or sensa- 
 tion in the agent are transmitted from the brain as 
 undulations in the intervening medium, and thus 
 excite corresponding changes in some other brain, 
 without any other portion of the organism being 
 necessarily implicated in the transmission. This 
 hypothesis has found its most philosophical champion 
 in Dr. Ochorowicz, who has devoted several chapters 
 of his book, De la Suggestion mentalc, to the dis- 
 cussion of the various theories on the subject. He 
 begins by recalling the reciprocal convertibility of all 
 physical forces with which we are acquainted, and 
 
 1 Des Proprie'te's physiques (Vune foix-e particiilih-e (hi corps humain % 
 1882. 
 
THEORIES AND CONCLUSIONS. 389 ^ 
 
 sions lateral inversion or complementary colours can 
 be detected, and so on. 
 
 Once more, but little has been learnt of the purely 
 mechanical conditions under which the transmission 
 is effected. There are indeed indications that contact 
 facilitates the transference; 1 but from the difficulty 
 of discriminating, when contact is permitted, between 
 thought-transference and muscle-reading, even thus 
 much can hardly be affirmed with certainty. On the 
 analogy of the known physical forces it is of course to 
 be anticipated that the difficulty of effecting telepathic 
 communication would increase very rapidly with the 
 distance. Yet even here experimental verification is 
 difficult to obtain. It is obvious, indeed, in our ex- 
 periments, that an increased interval between agent 
 and percipient, especially if a wall or floor is made to 
 intervene, has affected the results prejudicially. But 
 it is by no means clear, as already said, how far the 
 observed effects are to be attributed, not to the 
 physical obstacle of the intervening space, but to the 
 psychical effect produced thereby on the parties to 
 the experiment. 
 
 There is, however, a difference, already referred to, 
 in the characteristics of the ideas transferred at close 
 quarters, and those transferred at a distance, which is 
 so marked and so general as to call for some explana- 
 tion of this kind. In the experiments conducted in 
 the same room or house, and in most of the spon- 
 taneous cases at close quarters, the idea transferred 
 corresponds to a mental image consciously present 
 to the mind of the agent. But the cases, whether 
 experimental or spontaneous, of such detailed trans- 
 ference at a distance of more than a mile or two are 
 very few — too few to justify any valid generalisation. 
 For in most cases of thought-transference at a distance 
 the idea transferred is one not consciously present to 
 the agent's mind at all — the idea of his own personality. 
 
 1 See, for instance, Professor Lodge's paper in Proc, S.P.J?., vol. 
 vii. p. 374. 
 
390 APPARITIONS AND THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 
 
 To some critics indeed (see Mind, 1887, p. 280) this 
 difficulty has seemed so serious as to suggest doubts 
 of the propriety of referring the two sets of results to 
 a common category ; and Von Hartmann, whilst 
 claiming, as already said, connection through the 
 Absolute as the explanation of the results obtained 
 at a distance, is content to postulate some kind of 
 nervous induction in the case of experiments at close 
 quarters. But if we examine the facts more closely 
 we find, as has already been shown in some of the 
 trials conducted by MM Gibert and Pierre Janet 
 in inducing sleep at a distance, and in a few other 
 cases {e.g., Nos. 40, 53, 58), that the idea of the 
 personality of the agent may be transferred to the 
 percipient, together with the specific idea present to 
 the agent's mind. Moreover, in the recorded cases 
 of thought-transference at close quarters, with hardly 
 any exception, the presence of the agent was known 
 to the percipient, and no evidence for the telepathic 
 transmission of the idea of him can therefore be 
 furnished. But since the idea of self is probably 
 always present as part of the permanent substratum 
 of consciousness, and since we have actual evidence 
 that in some cases that idea may be communicated 
 to the percipient, together with the idea consciously 
 willed by the agent, it seems permissible to conclude 
 that it may form an element in every case of transfer- 
 ence. And if this be admitted, not merely will the 
 difficulty referred to disappear, but some progress 
 will have been made towards obtaining experimental 
 verification of the physical effects of distance on tele- 
 pathic transmission. For it would seem to follow that 
 the telepathic energy, which at close quarters is able 
 to effect the transference even of the trivial and 
 momentary contents of the agent's mind, is competent 
 when acting at a distance to convey only those con- 
 tinuous and more massive vibrations which may be 
 presumed to correspond to his conception of his own 
 personality. That the agent is not consciously 
 
THEORIES AND CONCLUSIONS. 
 
 391 
 
 "thinking of himself 5 ' need not prevent us from 
 accepting this view. Nor would a like unconscious- 
 ness on the part of the percipient be a serious objec- 
 tion. For, as we have already seen (Nos. 24, 25, 
 27, etc.), ideas can be transferred from the sub- 
 conscious to the subconscious; and indeed there is 
 some ground for thinking that, outside of direct 
 experiment, the intervention of the conscious mind 
 in the telepathic transmission of thought is excep- 
 tional. Even in some of the most striking experi- 
 mental cases it has been shown that either agent 
 or percipient, or both, were asleep or entranced at 
 the time. (See Chapter X., p. 239.) 
 
 This close connection of the activity of thought- 
 transference with the subliminal consciousness, 
 the consciousness which appears in hypnosis, and 
 occasionally in dream - life and in spontaneous 
 trance and automatism, may perhaps offer a clue to 
 the origin of the faculty. For the future place of 
 telepathy in the history of the race concerns us 
 even more nearly than the mode of its operation ; 
 and we are led therefore to ask whether the faculty 
 as we know it is but the germ of a more splendid 
 capacity, or the last vestige of a power grown stunted 
 through disuse. By those who view the matter simply 
 as a topic of natural history the latter alternative will 
 be preferred. The possible utility of telepathy as a 
 supplement to gesture, etc., at a time when speech 
 and writing were not yet evolved, is too obvious for 
 comment. Whilst, on the other hand, such a faculty 
 can with difficulty be conceived as originating by any 
 physical process of evolution in our modern civilisa- 
 tion. But more direct evidence of the place of tele- 
 pathy in our development is not wanting. For there 
 are indications that the consciousness which lies below 
 the threshold, with which the activity of telepathy is 
 constantly associated, may be regarded as represent- 
 ing an earlier stage in the consciousness of the 
 individual, and even it may be an earlier stage in 
 
39^ APPARITIONS AND THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 
 
 the history of the race. The readiest means of 
 summoning into temporary activity this subter- 
 ranean consciousness is in the hypnotic trance. 
 Now the consciousness displayed by the hypno- 
 tised subject includes, as a rule, the whole of the 
 normal consciousness, and also extends beyond it. 
 That is, the hypnotised subject is aware not only 
 of what goes on in the trance but also of his 
 normal life : when awaked the events of the trance 
 have passed from his memory and are not revived 
 until the next period of trance. Our work-a-day 
 consciousness would appear to be, in fact, a selec- 
 tion from a much larger field of potential conscious- 
 ness. Or, to put it in another way, the pressure on 
 the narrow limits of our working^consciousness is so 
 great that ideas and sensations are continually being 
 crowded out and forced down below the threshold. 
 The subliminal consciousness thus becomes the re- 
 ceptacle of lapsed memories and sensations ; and up 
 to a certain point in the history of each individual 
 these lapsed ideas can be temporarily revived. Long 
 forgotten memories of childhood, for instance, can be 
 resuscitated in the hypnotic trance, and ideas which 
 have demonstrably never penetrated into conscious- 
 ness at all can be brought to light by crystal-vision, 
 planchette-writing, or other automatic processes. 
 
 Again, one of the most marked characteristics 
 of the subliminal consciousness, whether in dream, 
 hypnosis, spontaneous trance, or in crystal vision and 
 other automatism, is its power of visualisation — a 
 power which, as Mr. Galton has shown, and our daily 
 experience proves, tends to become aborted in later 
 life. And beyond these indications of memories lost 
 and imagery crowded out in the lifetime of the 
 individual, we come across traces of faculties which 
 have long ceased to obey the guidance or minister 
 to the needs of civilised man — the psychological 
 lumber of many generations ago. Such at least, it 
 may be suggested, is a possible interpretation of the 
 
THEORIES AND CONCLUSIONS. 393 
 
 control frequently exercised by the hypnotic over 
 the processes of digestion and circulation and the 
 functions of the organic life generally. And the more 
 doubtful observations, which seem to indicate the 
 possession by the subconscious life of a sense of the 
 passage of time and of a muscular sense superior to 
 that of the waking state, may be held to point in the 
 same direction. 
 
 From such facts and such analogies as these it may 
 be argued that telepathy is perchance the relic of 
 a once-serviceable faculty, which eked out the 
 primitive alphabet of gesture, and helped to bind 
 our ancestors of the cave or the tree in as yet inarticu- 
 late communit3^ Dr. Jules Hericourt, 1 indeed, goes 
 further, and suggests that we find here traces of the 
 primeval unspecialised sensitiveness which preceded 
 the development of a nervous system — a heritage 
 shared with the amoeba and the sea-anemone. 
 
 On the other hand, it may be urged that our 
 present knowledge, either of telepathy itself or of the 
 subconscious activities with which it is sought to link 
 it, cannot by any means be held sufficient to support 
 such an inference as to the probable origin of the 
 faculty; and further, that the absence of mundane 
 analogies, and the difficulties attending any such 
 explanation yet suggested, forbid us to assume that 
 the facts are capable of expression in physical terms. 
 
 It is further urged that whilst the dependence 
 of telepathy on any material conditions is not 
 obvious, it is constantly associated not only in 
 popular belief, but in testimony from trustworthy 
 sources, with phenomena which seem to point to 
 supernormal faculties, such as clairvoyance, retro- 
 cognition, and prevision, themselves hardly suscep- 
 tible of a physical explanation. This view has 
 found its ablest exponent in Mr. F. W. H. Myers. 2 
 
 1 Annates des Sciences Psychiques, vol. i. p. 317. 
 
 2 See his articles on the " Subliminal Consciousness," etc., Proc, 
 S.P.P., vol. vii. p. 298; vol. viii. p. 333, pp. 436 et seq. 
 
 25* 
 
394 APPARITIONS AND THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. 
 
 And though Mr. Myers would himself readily 
 admit that the evidence for these alleged super- 
 normal faculties is not on a par with the evidence 
 for telepathy, yet he maintains that such as it is 
 it cannot be summarily dismissed. No doubt if it 
 should appear with fuller knowledge that there arc 
 sufficient grounds for believing in faculties which 
 give to man knowledge, not derivable from living 
 minds, of the distant, the far past, and the future, 
 it would be more reasonable to regard telepathy 
 as a member of the group of such supernormal 
 faculties, operating in ways wholly apart from the 
 familiar sense activities, and not amenable, like 
 these, to terrestrial laws. 
 
 Such considerations may at any rate be held to 
 justify a suspension of judgment. We are not yet, 
 it may be said, called upon to decide whether tele- 
 pathy is a vestigial or a rudimentary faculty; whether 
 its manifestations are governed by forces correlative 
 with heat and electricity, or whether we are justified 
 in discerning in them the operation of some vaster 
 cosmic agencies. But there is another aspect of the 
 question. The first stage of our inquiry is not yet 
 complete. It would be futile for us to debate what 
 manner of new agency we propose to believe in until 
 it is generally admitted by competent persons that 
 the facts are not to be attributed to such recognised, 
 if insufficiently familiar, causes as illusion, misrepre- 
 sentation, and the subconscious quickening of normal 
 faculties. More and varied experiments are wanted, 
 more and more accurate records of spontaneous phe- 
 nomena ; and at the present stage there should be no 
 lack of either one or other, Most scientific inquiries 
 demand of the investigator long years of special study 
 and preparation, and an elaborate mechanical equip- 
 ment. But experiments in thought-transference can 
 be conducted by any one with sufficient leisure and 
 patience to observe the requisite precautions ; whilst 
 telepathic visions need for their recording no other 
 
THEORIES AND CONCLUSIONS. 395 
 
 qualifications than accuracy and good faith. In fact 
 Science, whose boast it was once 
 
 " Aerias tentasse domos animoque rotundum 
 Percurrisse polum," 
 
 has now come down from those airy realms and 
 turned its attention to the things of earth, and 
 especially to the study of our human environment 
 and the growth of human intelligence. And in this 
 its latest phase Science has, of necessity, followed 
 the tendency of the age and become democratic. 
 Every parent can become a fellow-worker with Darwin 
 in the laboratory of the infant mind ; in investi- 
 gating the faculties and idiosyncrasies of man, even 
 the lines imprinted on his finger-tips and his shifts to 
 remember the multiplication-table, there is not less 
 need of the accumulated small contributions of the 
 many than of the life-long labours of the expert. And 
 in this newest field of scientific research there can be 
 no doubt that results of permanent value await the 
 worker who is content to walk upon the solid earth, 
 and to turn his eyes from the mirage which has 
 dazzled many of his predecessors. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 Aksakof A., cases recorded by, 
 184, 266 
 
 American Society for Psychical Re- 
 search, founding of, 4 ; experi- 
 ments by, 15, 27 
 
 Anaesthesia telepathically produced, 
 101-104 
 
 Anxiety as cause of hallucination, 
 216, 223 
 
 Auditory hallucinations, 25, 218, 
 
 247-251, 274-276 
 Automatic writing, 91-96, 183 
 Azam Dr., experiments by, 59 
 
 Babinski, 375 
 
 Backman, Dr., experiments by, 
 
 338, 349, 357 
 Barber, Mrs., case recorded by, 
 168 
 
 Barety, Dr., 384 
 
 Barnby, Sir Joseph, case recorded 
 
 by, 358 
 
 Barrett, Professor, 19, 72; experi- 
 ments by, 84 
 Beard, S. H., 83 
 
 Bergson, case of cornea-reading, 12 
 Bernheim, Professor, 3, 212, 375 
 Bidder, the Misses, case recorded 
 by, 190 
 
 Binet and Fere, experiments by, 
 
 209, 375 
 Bonjean, 1 1 
 
 Booth, Miss Mabel Gore, case 
 
 recorded by, 263 
 Borderland hallucinations, 193, 217, 
 
 257, 292 
 
 Bourru and Burot, 375 
 Boyd, W., case recorded by, 346 
 Boyle, R. V., case recorded by, 
 196 
 
 Brown, Mrs., experiments by, 27 
 Bruce, Archdeacon, case recorded 
 by, 182 
 
 Busk, Miss, case recorded by, 205 
 Buttemer, R. H., experiments by, 
 95 
 
 Caldecott, Miss L., case re- 
 corded by, 255 
 
 Campbell, Captain, case recorded 
 by, 198 
 
 Campbell, Miss, and Miss Des- 
 pard, experiments by, 127 
 
 Carat, Dr., case recorded by, 257 
 
 Cards, power of distinguishing by 
 touch, 13 
 
 Cary, C. H., case recorded by, 
 274 • 
 
 Casual hallucinations, 208, 215- 
 225 
 
 Census of hallucinations, 215 
 Chance coincidence, 27, 143, 146, 
 
 186-188, 220-225 
 Clairvoyance, 2, 19, 204, 393 ; 
 
 definition of, 326 , travelling, 
 
 295, 338-350 
 Clairvoyant, dream, 204, 363, 367 
 Clark, Miss C, case recorded by, 
 
 247 
 
 Clothes of apparitions, 152, 200, 
 
 230, 244, 246 
 Codes, fraudulent, 10, 11, 25 
 
398 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Collective agency, 21, 23, 30, 37, 
 
 43, 64, 74 
 Collective hallucinations, 378-380; 
 
 evidential defects, 1 53, 268-272 ; 
 
 explanation of, 272-274 
 Collective illusion, 268 
 Colour, transference of, 32, 34, 35, 
 
 64 
 
 Commands, execution of telepathic, 
 
 87, 90, 110-113, 121 
 Commands, telepathic disobeyed, 
 
 89, 90 
 
 Community of sensation, 18 
 
 Contact in thought-transference 
 experiments, 14, 19, 30, 34, 389 
 
 Contagious hallucinations, 273, 
 308, 316 
 
 Cornea-reading, 11, 12, 35 
 
 Crookes, William, 377 
 
 Crystal as means of inducing hal- 
 lucination, 352 
 
 Crystal vision, 2, 75, 353, 357-359, 
 373 
 
 Cumberland, Stuart, 14 
 
 Dariex, Dr., 89, 118 
 Dates, unconsciously falsified, 153 
 Death, dreams of, 188; hallucina- 
 tions coinciding with, 147, 220- 
 225 
 
 Deferred recognition, 247, 254 
 Deferred telepathic impression, 65, 
 
 79, 264 
 
 Delboeuf, Professor, 212, 375 
 Dessoir, Max, experiments by, 38 
 Dempster, Miss Hawkins, case 
 
 recorded by. 302 
 De Vesci, Lady, case recorded by, 
 
 181 
 
 " Dick," case of pseudo-clairvoy- 
 ance, 13 
 
 Direction, hallucination in sense of, 
 139, HI 
 
 Distance, effect of on experiments, 
 
 74.. 105, 132, 139, 389-391 
 Dobbie, A. W., experiments by, 
 
 338 
 
 Documentary evidence, 157-159, 187 
 Double impression, transference of, 
 37 
 
 Dreams, analogy with hallucina- 
 tions, 186, 189, 197, 207-208 
 
 Dreams, clairvoyant, 204, 363, 367 
 Dream evidence, 185-189 
 Dufay, Dr., experiments by, 116 
 Dupre, Dr., case recorded by, 172 
 Dusart, Dr., 118 
 
 Edgeworth, Prof., calculations of 
 
 probabilities, 27 
 Elliotson, Dr., experiments by, 19 
 Emotion, transference of, 141, 173- 
 
 180 
 
 Errors of inference, 148 ; of memory, 
 152, 220-222; of narration, 149; 
 of observation, 147 
 
 Esdaile, Dr., 19 
 
 Evans, Rev. C. L., case recorded 
 
 by, 299 
 
 Experiments in physical sciences, 
 6-9 
 
 Falkinburg, S. S., case recorded 
 by, 283 
 
 Fatigue, influence on clairvoyance, 
 
 353, 362, 367 
 Fere (and Binet), experiments by, 
 
 209, 375 
 Fraud, 10, 1 1 
 
 Freese, Mrs., case recorded by, 
 
 367 
 
 Frost, Rev. Matthew, case recorded 
 
 by, 265 
 
 Fryer, Rev. A. T,, case recorded 
 by, 295 
 
 Ghosts, 2, 150, 153, 226, 272 
 Gibert, Dr., experiments by, 88, 
 108 
 
 Gibotteau, Dr., experiments by, 
 So, 139, 368 
 
 Godfrey, Rev. Clarence, experi- 
 ments by, 228 
 
 Goodall, Edward, case recorded 
 by, 202 
 
 Goodrick, Rev. A. T. S., case 
 
 recorded by, 279 
 Gower, Leveson, case recorded by, 
 
 175 
 
 Gradual development of impres- 
 sions, 76-78, 176, 255 
 
 Gregory, Prof., 19 
 
 Greiffenberg, Mrs., case recorded 
 by, 277 
 
INDEX. 
 
 399 
 
 Greves, Dr. Hyla, 23 
 Grimaldi and Fronda, experiments 
 by, 56 
 
 Gurney, Edmund, 20, 91, 102, 155, 
 188, 215, 381 ; experiments by, 
 20, 27, 33, 57, 60, 101, 213 
 
 Guthrie, Malcolm, experiments by, 
 20, 23, 33 
 
 Hall, Prof. Stanley, 386 
 
 Hallucinations, " borderland," 193, 
 217, 257, 292; casual, 208, 215- 
 225; census of, 215; centrally 
 initiated, 214; contagious, 273, 
 308, 316; grotesque, 273, 277, 
 278 ; heteroplastic, 233, 246, 304- 
 315; hypnotic, 208-211, 270, 
 378; of memory, 154-155. 187, 
 271; post-hypnotic, 211-214; 
 pseudo, 68 ; rudimentary, 126, 
 217, 251, 278, 279; telepathic, 
 experimentally induced, 68, 132, 
 134, 140, 141, 226-246 
 
 Hamilton, E. W., case recorded 
 by, 200 
 
 Harrison, Mrs., case recorded by, 
 194 
 
 Hart, Ernest, 375 
 Hartmann, Edward, 383, 390 
 Haunted houses, 315-325, 373 
 Hay, Sir John Drummond, case 
 
 recorded by, 251 
 Haynes, Gideon, case recorded by, 
 
 170 
 
 Hennique, Leon, experiments by, 
 129 
 
 Herbert, Auberon, 81 
 
 Herdman, Prof., 23 
 
 Hericourt, Dr., 118; Dr. Jules, 
 
 Heteroplastic hallucinations, 233, 
 
 246, 304-315 
 Hicks, Dr., 23 
 
 Hodgson, Dr. R., 13, 155, 379; 
 
 case recorded by, 304 
 Hudson, W. H., 13 
 Hurly, Miss Berta, case recorded 
 
 by, 258 
 
 Husbands, John, case recorded by, 
 309 
 
 Hyperoesthesia, II, 59, 70 
 Hypnotic state favourable to 
 
 thought-transference, 18, 58, 91, 
 393 
 
 Hypnotism, 3, 18, 58, 59, 372 
 
 Inference, errors of, 148 
 Illusion, collective, 268; tele- 
 pathic, 64, 65, 169 
 Impersonal agency, 179 
 Impersonations in trance, 329-331 
 
 Janet, Professor Pierre, 88, 91, 
 209, 390 ; experiments by, 108 
 
 James, Professor W. , cases recorded 
 by, 174, 334 
 
 Johnson, Miss, experiments by, 70, 
 
 75 
 
 Jones, Sir Lawrence, case recorded 
 by, 293 
 
 Jupp, Rev. C. H., case recorded 
 by, 290 
 
 Kapnist, Countess Eugenie, case 
 
 recorded by, 252 
 Keulemans, J. G., self-induced 
 
 trance, 351 
 Kirk, Joseph, experiments by, 131- 
 
 139, 244 
 
 Knott, Mrs., case recorded by, 316 
 Krebs, F. H., case recorded by, 174 
 
 Lang, Andrew, 373 
 Latency of telepathic impression, 
 65, 264 
 
 Latour, Dr. Tolosa, experiments 
 by, 119 
 
 Liebeault, Dr., case recorded by, 
 184; experiments by, 63, 212 
 
 Liegeois, Professor, experiments 
 by, 63, 212 
 
 Lip-reading, 11, 70 
 
 Local association of some appari- 
 tions, 314 
 
 Lodge, Professor Oliver, 382, 387, 
 389 ; experiments by, 33, 35, 
 33?, 336 
 
 Luminosity accompanying tele- 
 pathic hallucinations, 255, 257, 
 
 286 
 
 Luys, Dr., 375 
 
 Mabire, Etienne, and Anton 
 Schmoll, experiments by, 42 
 
400 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 " Magnetic sense," 374 
 Magnets, alleged influence of, 
 375 
 
 Marks, F. A., case recorded by, 
 362 
 
 Maughan, Miss Edith, experiments 
 by, 238 
 
 Mc Alpine, Mrs., case recorded by, 
 260 
 
 Memory, errors of, 152, 220-222 ; 
 hallucination of, 154, 155, 187, 
 271 
 
 Mesmer, 384 
 
 Mesmerism [See Hypnotism) 
 Metals, alleged influence of, 375 
 Milman, Mrs., case recorded by, 
 280 
 
 Misinterpretation of telepathic mes- 
 sage, 302 
 
 Muscle-reading, 14, 30 
 
 Music, transference of, at a dis- 
 tance, 122 
 
 Myers, Dr. A. T., 71, 109 
 
 Myers, F. W. H., 20, 325, 328, 
 393 ; cases recorded by, 183, 
 236, 3 XI > 353 5 experiments by, 
 21, 49, 109-113, 2IO 
 
 Narration, errors of, 149 
 " Nervous induction," 102, 386, 390 
 Newbold, Miss Annie, case re- 
 corded by, 275 
 Newnham, Rev. P. H. , experiments 
 
 by, 92 
 Number-habit, 16 
 
 Observation, errors of, 147 
 Ochorowicz, Dr., 384; experiments 
 by, 28, 88 
 
 P , J. II., experiments by, 89, 
 
 120 
 
 Pain, experimental transference of, 
 23, 34, 60; spontaneous transfer- 
 ence of, 162, 192 
 Paquet, Mrs., case recorded by, 360 
 Pickering, Prof., on number-habit, 
 16 
 
 Piper, Mrs., phenomena observed 
 
 with, 327 
 Point de reptrc, 1 83, 2 10, 214, 217, 
 
 352 
 
 Post-hypnotic hallucinations, 211- 
 214 
 
 Precautions necessary in experi- 
 ments, 10-17 
 Presumptive action of telepathy, 
 
 372, 373 
 Pseudo-hallucinations, 68 
 Pseudo-presentiments, 154, 187 
 Pseudo-telepathy. 10, II, 13 
 
 Real person mistaken for ghost, 
 148 
 
 Reciprocal impressions, 298-302 
 Reddell, Frances, case recorded by, 
 306 
 
 Reichenbach's phenomena, 374 
 Richet, Prof., 113, 166; cases re- 
 corded by, 113, 166, 171, 295, 
 311; experiments by, 26, 57, 98, 
 116, 376 
 
 Roux, J. C, experiments by, 124 
 Royce, Prof., cases recorded by, 
 192, 195; on pseudo-presenti- 
 ment, 154 
 
 Sauvaire, Dr., hyperesthesia de- 
 scribed by, 13 
 
 Schmoll, Anton, and Etienne 
 Mabire, experiments by, 42 
 
 Schrenck-Notzing, Dr. Von, experi- 
 ments by, 54, 239 
 
 Secondary consciousness, moral in- 
 feriority of, 95, 96, 331 
 
 Second-hand evidence of little 
 value, 150, 152, 156, 288; useful 
 as standard of comparison, 156, 
 160, 298, 304 
 
 Severn, Arthur, case recorded by, 
 162 
 
 " Shell-hearing," 355 
 
 Sidgwick, Mrs. II., experiments 
 
 by, 65, 70, 75, 102; Professor, 
 
 4, 20, 65, 70, 215 
 Sister Martha, case recorded by, 292 
 Sleep, produced telepathically, 107- 
 
 119. 135, 139 
 Sloman, Rev. A., case recorded 
 
 by, 167 
 Smell, transference of, 164 
 Smith, G. A., 60, 65, 71, 75, S3, 
 
 101, 211, 355 
 Smith, 11., case recorded by, 219 
 
INDEX. 
 
 401 
 
 Society for Psychical Research, 4, 
 10, 83, 215, 374 
 
 Society for Psychical Research, 
 American, founding of, 4 ; ex- 
 periments by, 15, 27 
 
 Sounds, transference of, experimen- 
 tal, 24, 122; spontaneous, 168, 
 247-251, 274-276 
 
 Sparks, H. P., experiments by, 
 234 
 
 Spiritualism, 3, 19, 376-380 
 Stewart, Professor Balfour, 20 
 Subconscious action of telepathy, 
 
 58, 91, 139, 239, 254, 391 
 Subliminal consciousness, 95, 254, 
 
 392 
 
 Sully, Professor, 215 
 
 Table-tilting, 73, 96, 99 
 Tamburini, Prof. , case recorded by, 
 175 
 
 Taste, experiments with sense of, 
 20, 34, 58 
 
 Telepathy, definition, 6; frequently 
 subconscious, 58, 91, 139, 239, 
 2 54> 391 ; a generalisation not a 
 theory, 381 ; origin of faculty, 
 
 391-393; suggested explanation 
 
 of, 382-388 
 Terror, experimentally induced, 141 
 Thaw, Dr. Blair, experiments by, 
 
 31, 81, 86 
 Thought-forms, 15 
 Thought-transference, definition, 6; 
 
 first observations, 18 
 Townshend, C. H., 19 
 Tudor, William, case recorded by, 
 
 249 
 
 Tunes, transference of, 25 
 
 Venturi, Prof., case recorded by, 
 181 
 
 Verrall, Mrs., 13, 210 
 
 Wesermann, H. M., experiments 
 by, 231 
 
 Will, influence of, 82, 85, 108 
 
 Willing-game, 15, 19 
 
 Wiltse, Dr., experiments by, 242, 
 
 342, 344 
 Witchcraft, 3, 373 
 X., Miss, experiments by, 122, 210, 
 
 353 J cases recorded by, 164, 166 
 
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 Life of Thomas Carlyle. By R. Garnett, LL.D. 
 
 "This is an admirable book. Nothing could be more felicitous and 
 fairer than the way in which he takes us through Carlyle's life ana! works." 
 — Pall Mall Gazette. 
 Life of Coleridge. By Hall Caine. 
 
 " Brief and vigorous, written throughout with spirit and great literary 
 skill. " — Scotsman. 
 Life of Congreve. By Edmund Gosse. 
 
 " Mr. Gosse has written an admirable and most interesting biography of 
 a man of letters who is of particular interest to other men of letters." — 
 The Academy. 
 Life of Crabbe. By T. E. Kebbel. 
 
 " No English poet since Shakespeare has observed certain aspects of 
 nature and of human life more closely; and in the qualities of manliness 
 and of sincerity he is surpassed by none. . . . Mr. Kebbel's monograph 
 is worthy of the subject." — Athenceum, 
 Life of Darwin. By G. T. Bettany. 
 
 " Mr. G. T. Bettany's Life of Darwin is a sound and conscientious 
 work." — Saturday Review. 
 
 Life of Dickens. By Frank T. Marzials. 
 
 " Notwithstanding the mass of matter that has been printed relating to 
 Dickens and his works ... we should, until we came across this volume, 
 have been at a loss to recommend any popular life of England's most 
 popular novelist as being really satisfactory. The difficulty is removed by 
 Mr. Marzials's little book." — Athenceum. 
 
 Life of George Eliot. By Oscar Browning. 
 
 11 We are thankful for this interesting addition to our knowledge of the 
 great novelist." — Literary World. 
 Life of Emerson. By Richard Garnett, LL.D. 
 
 M As to the larger section of the public, to whom the series of Great 
 Writers is addressed, no record of Emerson's life and work could be more 
 desirable, both in breadth of treatment and lucidity of style, than Dr. 
 Garnett's." — Saturday Review. 
 Life of Goethe. By James Sime. 
 
 " Mr. James Sime's competence as a biographer of Goethe, both in 
 respect of knowledge of his special subject, and of German literature 
 generally, is beyond question." — Manchester Guardian. 
 Life of Goldsmith. By Austin Dobson. 
 
 "The story of his literary and social life in London, with all its 
 humorous and pathetic vicissitudes, is here retold, as none could tell it 
 better." — Daily News. 
 
 New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. 
 
Life of Nathaniel Hawthorne. By Moncure Conway. 
 
 « Easy and conversational as the tone is throughout, no important fact 
 is omitted, no useless fact is recalled."— Speaker. 
 Life of Heine. By William Sharp. . 
 
 -This is an admirable monograph . . . more fully written up_ to the 
 level of recent knowledge and criticism of its theme than any other English 
 work. " — Scotsman. 
 Life of Victor Hugo. By Frank T. Marzials. 
 
 « Mr. Marzials s volume presents to us, in a more handy form than any 
 English, or even French handbook gives, the summary of what, up to he 
 moment in which we write, is known or conjectured about the life of the 
 great poet."— Saturday Review. 
 Life of Samuel Johnson. By Colonel F. Grant. 
 
 " Colonel Grant has performed his task with diligence, sound judgment, 
 good taste, and accuracy."— Illustrated London News. 
 
 Life of Keats. By W. M. Rossetti. mmhrid** 
 "Valuable for the ample information which it contains. —Cambridge 
 Independent. 
 Lifa of Lessing By T. W. Rolleston. 
 
 ~ " A picture of Lessing which is vivid and truthful, and has enough of 
 detail for all ordinary purposes."— Nation (New York). 
 Life of Longfellow. By Prof. Eric S. Robertson. 
 
 " A most readable little book.' 1 '—Liverpool Mercury. 
 Life of Marryat. By David Hannay. 
 
 "What Mr. Hannay had to do-give a craftsman-like account of a 
 great craftsman who has been almost incomprehensiDly undervalued-- 
 could hardly have been done better than in this little volume. -Man- 
 Chester Guardian. 
 
 Life of Mill. By W. L. Courtney. 
 
 " A most sympathetic and discriminating memoir. —Glasgow Herald. 
 
 Life of Milton. By Richard Garnett, LL.D. 
 
 " Within equal compass the life-story of the great poet of Puritanism has 
 never been more charmingly or adequately toW." -Scottish Leader. 
 Life of Dante Gabriel Rossetti. By J. Knight. m 
 
 « Mr. Knight's picture of the ^ great poet and painter is the fullest and 
 best yet presented to the public."— Graphic. 
 Life of Scott. By Professor Yonge. 
 
 " For readers and lovers of the poems and novels of Sir Walter _ott, 
 this is a most enjoyable book."— Aberdeen Free Press. 
 Life of Arthur Schopenhauer. By William Wallace. . 
 
 " The series of ' Great Writers' has hardly had a contribution of more 
 marked and peculiar excellence than the book which the Whyte Professor 
 of Moral Philosophy at Oxford has written for it on the attractive and 
 still (in England) little known subject of Schopenhauer. —Manchester 
 Guardian. 
 
 Life of Shelley. By William Sharp. 
 
 " The criticisms . . . entitle this capital monograph to be ranked with 
 the best biographies of Shelley. "— Westminster Review. _____ 
 
 New York; Charles Scribner's Sons. 
 
Life of Sheridan. By Lloyd Sanders. 
 
 " To say that Mr. Lloyd Sanders, in this volume, has produced the 
 best existing memoir of Sheridan is really to award much fainter praise 
 than the book deserves." — Manchester Examiner. 
 
 " Rapid and workmanlike in style ; the author has evidently a good 
 practical knowledge of the stage of Sheridan's day. Saturday Review. 
 
 Life of Adam Smith. By R. B. Haldane, M.P. 
 
 " Written with a perspicuity seldom exemplified when dealing with 
 economic science. " — Scotsman. 
 
 "Mr. Haldane's handling of his subject impresses us as that of a man 
 who well understands his theme, and who knows how to elucidate it."— 
 
 Scottish Leader. 
 
 " A beginner in political economy might easily do worse than take Mr. 
 Haldane's book as his first text-book." — Graphic. 
 
 Life of Smollett. By David Hannay. 
 
 "A capital record of a writer who still remains one of the great masters 
 of the English novel," — Saturday Review. 
 
 "Mr. Hannay is excellently equipped for writing the life of Smollett. 
 As a specialist on the history of the eighteenth century navy, he is at a 
 great advantage in handling works so full of the sea and sailors as 
 Smollett's three principal novels. Moreover, he has a complete acquaint- 
 ance with the Spanish romancers, from whom Smollett drew so much of 
 his inspiration.^ His criticism is generally acute and discriminating ; and 
 his narrative is well arranged, compact, and accurate. "—vS*. James's 
 Gazette. 
 
 Life of Schiller. By Henry W. Nevinson. 
 
 "This is a well-written little volume, which presents the leading facts of 
 the poet's life in a neatly-rounded picture."— Scotsman. 
 
 " Mr. Nevinson has added much to the charm of his book by his spirited 
 translations, which give excellently both the ring and sense of the 
 original. " — Manchester Guardian. 
 
 Life of Thackeray. By Herman Merivale and Frank T. Marzials. 
 
 "The book, with its excellent bibliography, is one which neither the 
 student nor the general reader can well afford to miss. "— Pall Mall Gazette. 
 
 " The last book published by Messrs. Merivale and Marzials is full of 
 very real and true things."— Mrs. Anne Thackeray Ritchie on " Thackeray 
 a/id his Biographers," in Illustrated London News. 
 
 Life of Cervantes. By H. E. Watts. 
 
 Life of Voltaire. By Francis Espinasse. 
 
 Life of Leigh Hunt. By Cosmo Monkhouse. 
 
 Life of Whittier. By W. J. Linton. 
 
 Life of Rcnan. By Francis Espinasse. 
 
 Complete Bibliography to each volume, by J. P. Anderson, British 
 
 Museum, London. 
 
Cloth Elegant, Large 12/00, 
 Price $1.25 per vol. 
 
 LIBRARY OF 
 HUMOUR. 
 
 EDITED BY W. H. DIRCKS. 
 
 Each Volume will contain from jo to 70 Illustrations and 
 from 350 to 300 pages. 
 
 In each of these volumes the object will be to 
 give an anthology of the humorous literature 
 of the particular nation dealt with. France, 
 Germany, Italy, Russia, Spain, and Holland 
 % will each have their respective volumes ; England, 
 
 \ Ireland, and Scotland will each be represented, 
 
 I as will also America and Japan. ' From China 
 
 to Peru* the globe will be traversed in search of its jokes, in 
 so far as they have recorded themselves in literature. The 
 word Humour admits of many interpretations; for the pur- 
 poses of this Series it has been interpreted in its broadest 
 generic sense, to cover humour in all its phases as it has 
 manifested itself among the various nationalities. Necessarily 
 founded on a certain degree of scholarly knowledge, these 
 
volumes, while appealing to the literary reader, will never- 
 theless, it is hoped, in the inherent attractiveness and variety 
 of their contents, appeal successfully and at once to the in- 
 terest of readers of all classes. Starting from the early periods 
 of each literature — in Italy, for instance, from the fourteenth 
 century, with Boccaccio, Sacchetti, and Parabosco; in France 
 with the amusing Fabliaux of the thirteenth century ; in Germany 
 from Hans Sachs; characteristic sketches, stories, and extracts 
 from contemporary European and other writers whose genius is 
 especially that of humour or esprit will be given. Indicating 
 and suggesting a view and treatment of national life from a 
 particular standpoint, each volume will contain matter suggestive 
 of the development of a special and important phase of national 
 spirit and character, — namely, the humorous. Proverbs and 
 maxims, folk-wit, and folk -tales notable for their pith and humour, 
 will have their place; the eccentricities of modern newspaper 
 humour will not be overlooked. Each volume will be well and 
 copiously illustrated ; in many cases artists of the nationalities of 
 the literatures represented will illustrate the volumes. To each 
 volume will be prefixed an Introduction critically disengaging and 
 marking the qualities and phases of the national humour dealt 
 with ; and to each will be appended Notes, biographical and 
 explanatory.