Adventurings in the Psychical

Other Books By The Same Author

Psychological

Scientific Mental Healing Historic Ghosts and Ghost Hunters The Riddle of Personality

Historical

Woman in the Making of America Daniel Boone and the Wilderness Road The Romance of American Expansion

Adventurings in the Psychical

By H. Addington Bruce

Boston Little, Brown, And Company 1914

_Copyright, 1914_, BY LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY.

_All rights reserved_

Published, April, 1914

The Colonial Press C. H. Simonds & Co., Boston, U. S. A.

Preface

The present volume is somewhat in the nature of a sequel to "The Riddle of Personality," published six years ago. In that book I reviewed the results of modern psychological research in the realm of the abnormal and the seemingly supernormal, with the special purpose of making clear their bearings on the problem of the nature and possibilities of man. Having this special purpose in mind, it was inadvisable to attempt any topical and detailed treatment of the phenomena made the subject of scientific investigation. Such a method of treatment, no matter how it might have added to the interest of the book, would inevitably have obscured its message to the reader.

Now, however, I have undertaken this very thing, in the hope both of reinforcing the view of personality set forth in the earlier work, and of contributing something towards a wider knowledge of the progress science is making in the naturalization of the supernatural, to borrow Mr. Frank Podmore's happy phrase. Especially have I tried to bring out the exceedingly practical character of many of the discoveries made by those scientists who, despite the often contemptuous criticism of their colleagues, have valiantly persisted in their adventurings in the psychical. The world has undoubtedly been the gainer, and richly the gainer, by their labors; and it surely is well worth while to survey in some detail the field they have explored and the results of their explorations.

H. Addington Bruce.

CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS, February, 1914.

Contents

CHAPTER PAGE PREFACE v

I. Ghosts And Their Meaning 1

II. Why I Believe In Telepathy 58

III. Clairvoyance And Crystal-Gazing 102

IV. Automatic Speaking And Writing 134

V. Poltergeists And Mediums 171

VI. The Subconscious 201

VII. Dissociation And Disease 230

VIII. The Singular Case Of Bca 265

IX. The Larger Self 290

Index 315

Adventurings In The Psychical

Chapter I

Ghosts And Their Meaning

A witty Frenchwoman was once asked if she believed in ghosts.

"No, not at all," was her reply. "But I am terribly afraid of them."

Most people feel precisely this way about ghosts, though few are candid enough to acknowledge it. In broad daylight, or when seated before a cheery fire among a group of congenial friends, it is easy to be skeptical, and to regard ghosts as mere products of imagination, superstition, credulity, hysteria, or indigestion. But it is notorious that even the most skeptical are liable to creepy sensations and sometimes outright panic if they experience "uncanny" sights or sounds in the darkness of the night, or in lonely, uninhabited places. Churchyards have never been popular resorts of those who go for a stroll in the cool of the evening. And let a house once get the reputation of being "haunted," it is next to impossible to find tenants for it.

Yet this almost universal attitude is entirely and fundamentally wrong. There is no reason for being afraid of ghosts, and there are many reasons for believing in them.

I do not, of course, mean to say that all ghosts are real ghosts. There are plenty of bogus ghosts, and there always will be, as long as men eat and drink too much, play practical jokes on one another, and allow their houses to become run down and infested by rats and mice.

A single rat, scampering at midnight over the loose planks of an old attic, has often been quite sufficient to produce a counterfeit "poltergeist," or troublesome ghost, of a highly impressive character. So, too, a pillow-slip swaying from a clothesline is apt to seem most ghostly to a gentleman returning home from a late supper. Ghosts, like much else in this amazing world of ours, have to be pretty sharply scrutinized.

And the point is that, after centuries of contemptuous neglect, they have at last been made the subject of investigation by men and women competent for the task--persons trained in the cautious methods of scientific inquiry, and insisting upon the strictest evidential standards, but devoid of prejudice or prepossession. Their researches are still in progress, but they have already demonstrated that amid a multitude of sham ghosts there are perfectly authentic apparitions, displaying credentials too convincing to be denied.

What is still more important, the labors of these scientific ghostologists--especially of those enrolled in the famous English Society for Psychical Research--have also resulted in throwing much light on the nature, origin, and habits of real ghosts.

Usually, it seems, a genuine ghost is seen or heard but once or twice, and then, having accomplished its purpose, it departs to return no more. But there are plenty of well-attested cases in which a ghost attaches itself to a house or family, and keeps up its haunting for years, sometimes for centuries.

Take, for example, an experience that befell Miss Goodrich-Freer, at the time a most active member of the Society for Psychical Research, in Hampton Court Palace. This old building is unquestionably one of the most famous of all haunted houses. It dates back to the time of the first Tudors, and according to tradition is haunted by several ghosts, notably the ghosts of Jane Seymour, Henry VIII's third queen; Catharine Howard, whose spirit is said to go shrieking along the gallery where she vainly begged brutal King Henry to spare her life; and Sybil Penn, King Edward VI's foster-mother. Twice of late years the Howard ghost--or something that passed for it--has been heard, once by Lady Eastlake, and once by Mrs. Cavendish Boyle. The latter was sleeping in an apartment next to the haunted gallery--which has long been unoccupied and used only as a storeroom for old pictures--when she was suddenly awakened by a loud and most unearthly shriek proceeding from that quarter, followed immediately by perfect silence. Lady Eastlake's experience was exactly similar.

Both ladies, of course, may have heard a real shriek, possibly coming from some nightmare-tormented occupant of the palace. But no explanation of this sort is adequate in the case of Miss Goodrich-Freer, who passed a night at Hampton Court for the sole purpose of ascertaining whether or not there was any foundation for its ghostly legends.

The room she selected for her vigil was one especially reputed to be haunted, and opened into a second room, the door between the two, however, being blocked by a heavy piece of furniture. Thus the only means of entrance into her room was by a door from the corridor, and this she locked and bolted. After which, feeling confident that nothing but a real ghost could get in to trouble her, she settled down to read an essay on "Shall We Degrade Our Standard of Value?" a subject manifestly free from matters likely to occasion nervousness.

In fact, the essay was so dull that by half past one Miss Goodrich-Freer, not able to keep awake longer, undressed, dropped into bed, and was almost instantly asleep. Several hours later she was aroused by a noise as of some one opening the furniture-barricaded door. At this she put out her hand to reach a match-box which she knew was lying on a table at the head of the bed.

"I did not reach the matches," she reports. "It seemed to me that a detaining hand was laid on mine. I withdrew it quickly and gazed around into the darkness. Some minutes passed in blackness and silence. I had the sensation of a presence in the room, and finally, mindful of the tradition that a ghost should be spoken to, I said gently: 'Is any one there? Can I do anything for you?' I remembered that the last person who entertained the ghost had said: 'Go away, I don't want you,' and I hoped that my visitor would admire my better manners and be responsive. However, there was no answer, no sound of any kind."

Now Miss Goodrich-Freer left the bed and felt all around the room in the dark, until satisfied that she was alone. The corridor door was still locked and bolted; the piece of furniture against the inner door was in place. So she returned to bed. Almost at once a soft light began to glow with increasing brightness. It seemed to radiate from a central point, which gradually took form and became a tall, slender woman, moving slowly across the room. At the foot of the bed she stopped, so that the amazed observer had time to examine her profile and general appearance.

"Her face," Miss Goodrich-Freer says, "was insipidly pretty, that of a woman from thirty to thirty-five years of age, her figure slight, her dress of a soft, dark material, having a full skirt and broad sash or soft waistband tied high up almost under her arms, a crossed or draped handkerchief over the shoulders and sleeves which I noticed fitted very tight below the elbow. In spite of all this definiteness I was conscious that the figure was unsubstantial, and felt quite guilty of absurdity in asking once more: 'Will you let me help you? Can I be of any use to you?'

"My voice sounded preternaturally loud, but I felt no surprise at noticing that it produced no effect upon my visitor. She stood still for perhaps two minutes, though it is very difficult to estimate time on such occasions. Then she raised her hands, which were long and white, and held them before her as she sank upon her knees and slowly buried her face in the palms in an attitude of prayer--when quite suddenly the light went out, and I was alone in the darkness.

"I felt that the scene was ended, the curtain drawn, and had no hesitation in lighting the candle at my side.... The clock struck four."

Again investigation showed that the corridor door was locked and bolted as she had left it, and the inner door still firmly barricaded. Consequently, skeptical though she had been when she arrived at Hampton Court Palace, Miss Goodrich-Freer in leaving it entertained no doubt that she had witnessed a genuine psychical manifestation.

The same conclusion was forced upon two ladies, Miss Elizabeth Morison and Miss Frances Lamont, in connection with a visit paid by them to another famous haunted house, the Petit Trianon at Versailles, the favorite summer home of that unfortunate queen Marie Antoinette, whose ghost, as well as the ghosts of her attendants, has long been alleged to be visible at times in and around it. Miss Morison and Miss Lamont had been sightseeing in the royal palace, but tiring of this had set off, in the early afternoon, to walk to the Trianon. Neither of them knew just where it was located, but taking the general direction indicated on Baedeker's map, they finally came to a broad drive, which, had they only known it, would have led them directly to their destination. As it was, they crossed the drive and went up a narrow lane through a thick wood to a point where three paths diverged. Here they began to have a series of experiences which, comparatively insignificant in themselves, had a sequel so amazing that it would be incredible were it not that the veracity of both ladies has been established beyond question.[1]

[1] In a prefatory note to the book, "An Adventure," in which these ladies detail their experience, their publishers, Messrs. Macmillan and Company, of London, guarantee "that the authors have put down what happened to them as faithfully and accurately as was in their power." Their good faith is also vouched for by a reviewer in _The Spectator_.

Ahead of them, on the middle path, they saw two men clad in curious, old-fashioned costumes of long, greenish coats, knee breeches, and small, three-cornered hats. Taking them for gardeners, they asked to be shown the way, and were told to go straight ahead. This brought them to a little clearing that had in it a light garden kiosk, circular and like a bandstand, near which a man was seated. As they approached, he turned his head and stared at them, and his expression was so repellent that they felt greatly frightened. The next instant, coming from they knew not where, and breathless as if from running, a second man appeared, and speaking in French of a peculiar accent, ordered them brusquely to turn to the right, saying that the Trianon lay in that direction. Just as they reached it, they were again intercepted, this time by a young man who stepped out of a rear door, banged it behind him, and with a somewhat insolent air guided them to the main entrance of the palace.

While they were hurrying thither, Miss Morison noticed a lady, seated below a terrace, holding out a paper as though reading at arm's length. She glanced up as they passed, and Miss Morison, observing with surprise the peculiar cut of her gown, saw that she had a pretty "though not young" face.

"I looked straight at her," she adds in the published statement she has made regarding their adventure, "but some indescribable feeling made me turn away, disturbed at her being there."

Afterwards this "indescribable feeling" was accounted for when Miss Morison identified in a rare portrait of Marie Antoinette the lady she had seen seated below the terrace!

Still more remarkable, subsequent visits to the Trianon brought to both ladies the startling knowledge that the actual surroundings of the place and the place itself differ vastly from what they saw that summer afternoon. The woods they entered are not there, and have not been there in the memory of man; the paths they trod have long been effaced; there is no kiosk, nor does anybody living, except Miss Morison and Miss Lamont, remember having seen one in the Trianon grounds; on the very spot where Miss Morison saw the lady in the peculiar dress a large bush is growing; and the rear door, out of which stepped the young man who guided them around to the front, opens from an old chapel that has been in a ruinous condition for many years, the door itself being "bolted, barred, and cobwebbed," and unused since the time of Marie Antoinette.

On the other hand, their personal researches in the archives of France have brought to light so many confirmatory facts that both Miss Morison and Miss Lamont are firmly persuaded that the Trianon, its environment, and its people were once exactly as they appeared to them; and that in very truth they saw the place as it looked, not at the time they first visited it, but in the closing years of the French Monarchy, more than a century before.

That historic German ghost, the White Lady of the Hohenzollerns, would likewise seem to have more than a legendary basis. Her mission, apparently, is to announce the death of some member of the Hohenzollern family, and her most frequent haunting-place is the royal palace at Berlin. She was seen as early as 1628, and since the time of Frederick the Great her appearance has been regularly chronicled on the eve of the death of the King of Prussia.

For the matter of that, there are not a few families whose ancestral homes, according to tradition, are haunted by death-announcing ghosts. This is particularly the case with certain distinguished British families. Two white owls perching on the roof of the family mansion are taken as a sure omen of death in the Arundel of Wardour family. The Yorkshire Middletons, a Catholic family, are said to be warned of approaching death by the apparition of a Benedictine nun. Equally noteworthy as a spectral messenger of tragedy is the so-called Drummer of Cortachy Castle, a Scottish ghost that haunts the ancient stronghold of the Ogilvys, Earls of Airlie, but is in evidence only when an Ogilvy is about to die.

The story goes that, hundreds of years ago, when the Scots were little better than barbarians, a Highland chieftain sent a drummer to Cortachy Castle with a message that was not at all to the liking of the Ogilvy of that time. As an appropriate token of his displeasure, he seized the luckless drummer, stuffed him into his drum--he must have been a very small drummer, and have carried a very big drum--and hurled him from the topmost battlements of the castle, breaking his neck.

Just before he was tossed off, the drummer threatened to make a ghost of himself, and haunt the Ogilvys forevermore. He has been, it would seem, as good as his word. Every once in a while ghostly drumming is heard at Cortachy Castle, and always the death of an Ogilvy follows. An especially impressive account of one instance of this peculiar and most unpleasant haunting has been left by a Miss Dalrymple, who happened to be a guest at Cortachy during Christmas week of 1844.

It was her first visit to the Castle, and she was entirely unaware of the existence of the family ghost. On the evening of her arrival, while dressing for dinner, she was startled by hearing under her window music like the muffled beating of a drum. She looked out, but could see nothing, and presently the drumming died away. For the time she thought no more of it, but at dinner she turned to her host, the Earl of Airlie, and asked:

"My lord, who is your drummer?"

His lordship made no reply, Lady Airlie became exceedingly pale, and several of the company, all of whom had heard the question, looked embarrassed. Realizing that she had made a slip of some sort, Miss Dalrymple quickly changed the subject, but after dinner, naturally feeling somewhat curious, she brought it up with one of the younger members of the family, and was answered:

"What! Have you never heard of the Drummer of Cortachy?"

"No," said she. "Who in the world is he?"

"Why, he is a person who goes about playing his drum whenever there is a death impending in our family. The last time he was heard was shortly before the death of the late countess, the earl's first wife, and that is why Lady Airlie turned so pale when you mentioned it."

The next night Miss Dalrymple heard the drumming again, and, falling into a panic when she learned that nobody else had heard it, hurriedly left Cortachy Castle. But the drumming was not for her. True to tradition, the drummer was concerned only with announcing the death of an Ogilvy, one of whom, the Lady Airlie who had been so disturbed by Miss Dalrymple's question, died soon afterward while on a visit to Brighton.

Five years later the drumming was once more heard, this time by an Englishman who had been invited to spend a few days with the Earl of Airlie's oldest son, Lord Ogilvy, at a shooting box near Cortachy. Crossing a gloomy moor, in company with an old Highlander, the Englishman suddenly stopped, and, with a look of amazement, exclaimed:

"What can a band be doing in this lonely place? Has Lord Ogilvy brought a band with him?"

The Highlander glanced at him strangely.

"I hear naething," he said.

"Why, yes, can't you hear it? A band playing in the distance--or at any rate, somebody playing a drum."

"An' is it a drum ye hear?" cried the Highlander. "Then 'tis something no canny."

In another moment the lighted windows of the shooting box came into view, and the Englishman hastened forward, fully expecting to have the mystery solved. But he found no musicians--only a scene of considerable confusion. Lord Ogilvy, it appeared, had just started for London, summoned by news that his father was dangerously ill.

And the very next day, as the Englishman's Highlander guide was not at all surprised to learn, the Earl of Airlie died.

Of all family ghosts, however, none is so strongly substantiated by documentary[2] evidence as the Knocking Ghost of the Basil Woodds, an old English family. This ghost began operations about the time of the Stuart Restoration, and it is alleged has ever since continued to announce, by three or more loud knocks, the approaching death of a Basil Woodd. First-hand and thoroughly trustworthy accounts are extant of its activity in quite recent times.

[2] The documents in this case are published in the _Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research_, vol. xi, pp. 538-542.

December 15, 1893, Mr. Charles H. L. Woodd died at Hampstead, England, after a brief illness. The night before he died the Knocking Ghost was heard by two persons, at Hampstead by his daughter, and in London by his son, the Reverend Trevor Basil Woodd. Both have made statements describing their singular experiences.

"On Thursday evening, December 14, 1893, after church," says the Reverend Mr. Woodd, "I was sitting before my fire. I knew my father was ill, and had a presentiment that he was dangerously ill, though if I had known this I should have remained at Hampstead, where I had been that day. As I sat, I distinctly heard three knocks, perhaps more, like the sound of some one emptying a tobacco pipe upon the bars of my fire grate.

"Thinking it might be a warning, I did not go to bed for an hour, fearing I would be sent for. At one A. M. I was awakened by a ringing of the front door-bell and knocking. It was my father's butler, who told me the doctor had sent for me, as my father was very ill. I said to my housekeeper:

"'I must go. I feel sure that my father is dying, because I heard the Woodd knocks, as I sat in my chair before going to bed.'

"On my arrival my first question was: 'Is he still alive?' for I believed he must have passed away at the time of the knocking. He died at eight-forty-five next morning."

Mr. Woodd's housekeeper corroborates this statement. As to the knocking heard at Hampstead, the daughter, Mrs. Winifred Dumbell, testifies:

"On December 14, 1893, Thursday morning, hearing my father, Mr. Charles Woodd, was not well, I left Epsom, where I had been staying, for Hampstead, and found my father in bed and very weak, but I was in no way anxious about him, as I did not suppose him to be seriously ill. At eleven o'clock at night, being tired and finding I could not assist my mother or the nurse, I lay down in an adjoining room, leaving the door wide open, and fell asleep.

"In a short time I was suddenly awakened by a loud rapping as if at the door. I jumped up and ran into the passage, thinking my mother had called me. I listened at the door of my father's room, but no one was moving. I lay down again and instantly fell asleep, when exactly the same thing occurred. I did not actually sleep again, and cannot say whether any sound made me get up the third time, but I went in search of the doctor and gathered that he was anxious about my father, who was getting much weaker. We were all aroused, and about eight o'clock A. M. my father died.

"I did not connect this rapping with the Woodd warning, as all was so sudden and unexpected, but on mentioning it at breakfast the next morning to my brother, the Reverend Trevor Basil Woodd, he told me he also heard a similar warning in his rooms at Vauxhall Bridge Road about the same time."

To mention only one other of the many instances that might be cited, the Knocking Ghost was again heard on June 3, 1895, just twenty-four hours before the death of Mr. Thomas Basil Woodd at Hampstead. Again, too, it was heard by more than one person and in more than one place, by Mr. Woodd's daughters, Fanny and Kate, and by his niece, Miss Ethel G. Woodd, who was at the time visiting friends in Yorkshire, and at first mistook the Knocking Ghost for somebody hammering nails into the wall of the next room. Oddly enough, this was also the way it sounded to Fanny Woodd, in London, as appears from the following statement signed by her:

"On June 3, 1895, at ten-thirty P. M., Fanny Woodd, staying with Mrs. Stoney, 83 Wharton Road, West Kensington, heard knocks, apparently from next door, as of nails being hammered in and pictures hung, which seemed so unlikely at that hour of night that the next morning she mentioned it to Mrs. Stoney, whose bedroom was just below hers, asking if she had heard it or could account for it."

But Mrs. Stoney had heard nothing, and the next-door neighbor, Mrs. Harriet Taylor, rather tartly declared that: "There has been no putting up of pictures or knocking of any sort in this house for quite two years. We are also early risers, and are always in bed and asleep by ten P. M." That same day Miss Woodd rejoined her father and sister in Hampstead, and was astonished to hear that the latter had been awakened about half past ten the previous night by loud knockings against the window shutters.

A few hours more and the mystery was solved by the startlingly sudden death of Mr. Woodd, from an attack of apoplexy. The Knocking Ghost of the Basil Woodds had lived up to its reputation.

The giving of death warnings is by no means confined to family ghosts, as may be sufficiently indicated by relating an incident that happened in Canada some years ago, and that has always impressed me as one of the best ghost stories I have ever heard. It was told me by an actor in the strange little drama, and knowing as I do the persons concerned, I have not the slightest hesitation in vouching for its authenticity, incredible though the reader may be inclined to regard it.

In this instance the ghost was seen by a clergyman, the Reverend John Langtry, who afterward became a prominent dignitary of the English Church in Canada. His home was in Toronto, but on the occasion of the ghostly visitation he was at the house of a Mr. and Mrs. Ruttan, who lived with their only child, a young girl, in a small town some fifty or sixty miles north of Toronto. Mr. Ruttan was another Church of England clergyman, and was a warm friend of Doctor Langtry's. This time, however, the latter had journeyed to see him simply on a matter of diocesan business, and was anxious to complete it and get back to Toronto.

To his disappointment he found that Mr. Ruttan had been called out of town, and would not be home until a late hour, possibly not until the following day. On the chance that he might return earlier than expected, Doctor Langtry accepted Mrs. Ruttan's invitation to spend the evening with her.

As they were chatting together--she being so seated that her back was toward the door leading from the parlor, whereas Doctor Langtry's position gave him a full view of the hall--she noticed that all at once he stopped in the middle of a sentence, leaned forward, and stared fixedly into the hall. She instantly turned her head, and followed the direction of his gaze, but could see nothing.

"What is the matter, Doctor Langtry?" she asked. "What are you looking at?"

"Nothing, nothing," he muttered, recovering himself with an effort. "I fancied for a moment--"

He paused, then changed the conversation. But Mrs. Ruttan--from whom I got the story--saw that from time to time he glanced furtively into the hall, and finally half rose from his seat, his face white, his limbs trembling.

"Doctor Langtry!" was her startled exclamation. "Are you ill? Whatever is the matter?"

"Oh," he said shortly, "it is only a momentary faintness. I shall be all right presently. The fatigue of the journey must have unstrung me. I will trouble you to get me a glass of water, and then I think I will return to the hotel."

He drank the water, and rose to go. But when near the front door, he turned to Mrs. Ruttan, and said:

"I don't believe I have asked after your daughter. I trust she is well?"

"She is quite well, thank you. I put her to bed just before you came in."

With his hand on the knob of the door, Doctor Langtry again paused irresolutely.

"If it's not too much trouble," he asked, "I wish you would go up-stairs and make sure she is all right now."

Wondering at his request and at his manner, Mrs. Ruttan complied, and presently returned to report that the child was sleeping peacefully. Doctor Langtry bowed with an air of obvious relief, bade her good night, and left the house. But next day, after he had transacted his business, and was about to start for Toronto, he said to Mr. Ruttan, who had accompanied him to the train:

"Ruttan, if your little girl should happen to fall ill while away from home, go to her at once, and take Mrs. Ruttan with you, even if you have no reason to feel that the illness is serious."

Mr. Ruttan laughed.

"Of course we would go to her. You may be sure of that. But why--"

"Ask me no questions," said Doctor Langtry, "but bear my request in mind if the occasion should arise."

Within a very short time the child, visiting an aunt in a near-by town, was taken ill, failed rapidly, and died almost before her parents, who had been hastily telegraphed for, could reach her bedside. Doctor Langtry's warning immediately recurred to them, and they wrote him, beseeching an explanation.

"The reason I was anxious about your little girl," he then told them, "was because the night I was sitting with Mrs. Ruttan I saw an angel enter the hall, pass up the stairs, and return, carrying the child in its arms."

But the kind of ghost most frequently seen is that which appears not before but immediately after, or coincidental with, a death. Its purpose is not to give warning of impending tragedy, but to convey the news of a tragedy already consummated. There are thousands of instances of this sort, so well authenticated as to compel credence. Not long ago an interesting case was reported to me by a gentleman living in Burlington, Vermont, the nephew of the lady--a Mrs. Hazard of Newport, Rhode Island--who saw the ghost.

She was ill at the time, and under the care of a trained nurse. One afternoon, her physician having allowed her to sit up for a couple of hours, she was seated in a chair by the side of her bed, when the nurse noticed her open wide her eyes and turn her head as if following the movements of some one. Then she heard her say, in a tone of surprise:

"Hello! Hello! There he goes! There he goes!"

As far as the nurse could see, nobody was in the room with them. But, not wishing to alarm her patient, she merely asked:

"Who is it, Mrs. Hazard?"

"Chet Keech. But he doesn't see me. And now he's gone."

Later in the day the nurse mentioned the incident to Mrs. Hazard's daughter, asking her if she knew anybody by the name of Chet Keech.

"Why, certainly I do," was the reply. "He is my cousin, and lives in Danielson, Connecticut."

That day Chet Keech had died at Danielson, as a letter informed the Hazards next morning.

Consider also this statement[3] by the Reverend C. C. McKechnie, a Scotch clergyman:

[3] First published in the _Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research_, vol. x, p. 240.

"I was about ten years of age at the time, and had for several years been living with my grandfather, who was an elder in the Kirk of Scotland and in good circumstances. He was very much attached to me and often expressed his intention of having me educated for a minister in the Kirk. Suddenly, however, he was seized with an illness which in a couple of days proved mortal.

"At the time of his death, and without my having any apprehension of his end, I happened to be at my father's house, about a mile off. I was leaning in a listless sort of way against the kitchen table, looking upward at the ceiling and thinking of nothing in particular, when my grandfather's face appeared to grow out of the ceiling, at first dim and indistinct, but becoming more and more complete until it seemed in every respect as full and perfect as I had ever seen it.

"It looked down upon me, as I thought, with a wonderful expression of tenderness and affection. Then it disappeared, not suddenly but gradually, its features fading and becoming dim and indistinct, until I saw nothing but the bare ceiling. I spoke at the time of what I saw to my mother, but she made no account of it, thinking, probably, it was nothing more than a boyish vagary. But in about fifteen or twenty minutes after seeing the vision, a boy came running breathless to my father's with the news that my grandfather had just died."

Even more remarkable was the experience of an Illinois physician, Doctor J. S. W. Entwistle, a resident of one of the Chicago suburbs. Hurrying one morning to catch a train Doctor Entwistle saw approaching him an acquaintance, once well-to-do, who had ruined himself by drink. Glancing at him as they met, the physician noticed that his clothing was torn and his face bruised, and that there was a cut under one eye. He noticed, too, that the other kept looking steadily at him with a "woe-begone, God-forsaken expression." Had he not been in such a hurry, he would have stopped and spoken to him, but as it was he passed him with a nod.

At the station Doctor Entwistle met his brother-in-law, and said, while the train was drawing in:

"Oh, by the way, I just saw Charlie M., and he was a sight. He must have been on a terrible tear."

"I wonder what he's doing in town, anyway?" commented the brother-in-law.

"I suppose he was going to see his wife."

"Not a bit of it. She won't have him around."

Then the subject was dropped, and nothing more was said about it until after they had reached Chicago. Both men, as it happened, had business at the Grand Pacific Hotel and went directly there from the train. They were met by a mutual friend, who had a copy of the Chicago _Tribune_ in his hand.

"Hello," he greeted them. "Did you know that Charlie M. is dead? Here is a notice in the paper, stating that his body is at the morgue. He was killed in a saloon fight. The paper hasn't got the name quite right, but from the description it's Charlie, sure enough."

"But he can't be dead," said Doctor Entwistle, aghast, "for it was only a few minutes ago that I met him on the street in Englewood."

Nevertheless, it turned out that Charlie M. _was_ dead, and that his body had been taken to the morgue several hours before Doctor Entwistle thought he saw him in the Chicago suburb. Moreover, on inquiry it was learned that the clothes worn by him when he was killed and the marks on his face "tallied in every particular with the description given by the doctor."

Quite a similar experience occurred to Mr. Harry E. Reeves when he was choirmaster at St. Luke's Church in San Francisco. On a Friday, about three in the afternoon, Mr. Reeves was in an up-stairs room at his home. He had been working on some music. Wishing to rest for a few minutes, he threw himself on a lounge, but almost immediately an unaccountable impulse led him to get up again and open the door of his room.

Standing at the head of the stairs he saw Edwin Russell, a member of his choir and a well-known San Francisco real estate broker. Mr. Russell had promised to call on him the following day to look over the music for Sunday, and Mr. Reeves's first thought was that he had come a day earlier than intended. He advanced to greet him, when, to his amazement and horror, the figure on the stairs turned as though to descend, and then faded into nothingness.

"My God!" gasped Reeves, and fell forward.

A door below was hastily opened, and two women and a man ran to his aid. The women were his sister and niece, the man was a Mr. Sprague. They found Mr. Reeves seated on the stairs, his face white and covered with perspiration, his body trembling.

"Uncle Harry!" cried the niece. "What in the world is the matter?"

Mr. Reeves was in such a panic that he could hardly speak, but he managed to reply:

"I have seen a ghost!"

"Whose ghost?" inquired Mr. Sprague, with a skeptical smile.

"The ghost of Edwin Russell."

Instantly the smile left Mr. Sprague's face.

"That's strange," said he, "that's very strange. For, as these ladies will tell you, I came to consult with you regarding the music for Mr. Russell's funeral. He had a stroke of apoplexy this morning, and died a few hours ago."[4]

[4] Detailed reports of this case are published in the _Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research_, vol. viii, pp. 214-218.

Sometimes ghosts of this type present themselves in such a way as to leave no doubt as to the fact and manner of the death of the person seen. As striking a case in point as has come to my knowledge is afforded by the singular experience of an old friend of mine, Edward Jackson, son of the late General Jackson, of Bideford, England.

Born in India, Jackson was from his boyhood of a roving and adventurous disposition. He went in for all forms of athletics, more particularly boxing, cricket, and polo, and before he left India was one of the best known and most popular men in the younger sporting set.

He was still in his early twenties when he came to the United States, drifting West to go on a ranch in Wyoming. Tiring of this, though not of his fondness for adventure, he found work in a Lake Superior mine, where his quickly demonstrated ability to take care of himself in a rough-and-tumble encounter won him the position of superintendent over a gang of men whom it had hitherto been most difficult to superintend.

As superintendent he was privileged to live by himself in a small, two-room cabin, somewhat neater and more comfortable than the ordinary sleeping-shacks. It was in this cabin that he saw the ghost.

"I had returned from the mine one evening, thoroughly tired out," he said, in telling me the story, "and sat down to rest for a few minutes before an open fire. While I was sitting there, half dozing, I felt a cold current of air, and looked up, thinking that somebody had thrown the door open.

"The door was not open, but standing between me and it was the figure of a young man whom I instantly recognized as a boyhood chum in India. He was dressed in polo costume--we had often played the game together--but for a moment I forgot all about the incongruity between his dress and the rough, outlandish place in which I then saw him. I jumped up, exclaiming:

"'By Jove, Jack, I'm glad to see you. When did you get here? And how--'

"I stopped. He had been standing with his profile toward me. Now he turned, facing me, and I saw that he was ghastly white, with a deep cut over one eye. Without a word he walked past me, gazing at me solemnly, and disappeared in the inner room.

"I don't think I am a coward, but I confess that for a moment I felt faint. Recovering, and believing that somebody must be playing me a trick, I made a dash after him.

"There was no one there--and no way in which anybody could have got out unknown to me.

"That night I wrote to my father, telling him what had happened. In his reply he informed me that my friend had been killed the same day that I saw him in my cabin on the shore of Lake Superior. He had been playing polo in far-away India, had been thrown from his horse, and had struck on his head, sustaining a wound similar to that I had seen in my vision."

Of a somewhat different order, and at once recalling to mind the adventure of Miss Morison and Miss Lamont at the Petit Trianon, is an instance reported by an Englishwoman whose name must be withheld, for reasons that will become obvious. With her husband she had recently moved into a fine old mansion surrounded by a splendid park, with a broad stretch of lawn between the trees and the house. The place had for many years been the home of a family of ancient lineage.

One night, shortly after eleven o'clock, when Mrs. M., as I shall call her, had gone to her bedroom, she thought she heard a moaning sound, and some one sobbing as though in great distress. Mr. M. was away from home, the servants slept in another part of the house, and she was quite alone except for a friend who had come to keep her company during her husband's absence, and to whom she had said good night a few minutes before. But being a courageous woman, she resolved to make an investigation and soon located the sound as coming from outdoors. Tiptoeing over to a window on the staircase landing, she raised the blind and cautiously peered out.

Below, on the lawn, in the pale glow of the moon, she saw an amazing scene. A middle-aged man, stern of face and wearing a general's uniform, was standing menacingly over a young girl, who, with hands clasped in anguish, was on her knees before him. At the sight of his hard, unrelenting expression, Mrs. M.'s one thought was not of fear for herself but pity for the unfortunate girl.

"So much did I feel for her," she said, in narrating the affair, "that without a moment's hesitation I ran down the staircase to the door opening upon the lawn to beg her to come in and tell me her sorrow."

When she reached the door, the figures of the soldier and the girl were still plainly visible on the lawn, and in precisely the same attitude. But at the sound of her voice they disappeared.

"They did not vanish instantly," Mrs. M. explained, "but more like a dissolving view--that is, gradually. And I did not leave the door until they had gone."

Months afterwards, when calling with her husband at a neighboring house, she noticed on the wall the portrait of a distinguished-looking man in a military uniform. At once she recognized it.

"That," she told her husband, in an undertone, "is a picture of the officer I saw on the lawn."

Aloud she asked: "Whose portrait is that?"

"Why," replied her host, "it is a portrait of my uncle, General Sir X. Y. He was born and died in the house you now occupy. But why do you ask?"

When she had told the story, her host commented:

"What you say is most singular. For it is an unhappy fact that Sir X. Y.'s youngest daughter, a beautiful girl, brought disgrace upon the family, was disowned and driven from home by her father, and died broken-hearted."[5]

[5] Mrs. M.'s detailed account of this experience, with a corroboratory statement by Mr. M., is published in the _Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research_, vol. viii, pp. 178-179.

Not all ghosts, it is pleasant to know, bring notification of impending or already consummated tragedy. Many seem to exist solely for the purpose of giving a warning of trouble which may be averted by taking proper precautions, and sometimes they are a direct means of preventing disaster. Thus, a guest at a Back Bay hotel in Boston was hurrying along a dimly lighted corridor to catch an elevator she thought she saw waiting for her, when unexpectedly the form of a man appeared at the entrance to the elevator. She was almost upon him, and stopped short in order to avoid a collision. At once he disappeared, and she then saw that although the door in the elevator shaft was wide open, the car was at the bottom of the shaft, into which she certainly would have fallen had not the phantasmal figure checked her onward rush.

Or take this instance, reported by Lady Eardley:

"One day I went to my bathroom, locked the door, undressed, and was just about to get into the bath, when I heard a voice say:

"'Unlock the door!'

"I was startled and looked around, but of course no one was there. I had stepped into the bath when I heard the voice twice more, saying:

"'Unlock the door!'

"On this I jumped out and did unlock the door, and then stepped into the bath again. As I got in I fainted away and fell down flat in the water. Fortunately, as I fell, I was just able to catch at a bell handle, which was attached to the wall above the tub. My pull brought the maid, who found me, she said, lying with my head under water. She picked me up and carried me out. If the door had been locked I would certainly have been drowned."

Still more impressive is an experience in the life of an Englishwoman named Mrs. Jean Gwynne Bettany. Her statement is corroborated by her father and mother.[6]

[6] See "Phantasms of the Living," vol. i, pp. 194-195.

"On one occasion," she says, "I was walking in a country lane. I was reading geometry as I walked along, a subject little likely to produce fancies or morbid phenomena of any kind, when, in a moment, I saw a bedroom in my house known as the 'White Room,' and upon the floor lay my mother, to all appearance dead. The vision must have remained some minutes, during which time my real surroundings appeared to pale and die out; but as the vision faded, actual surroundings came back, at first dimly, and then clearly.

"I could not doubt that what I had seen was real, so, instead of going home, I went at once to the house of our medical man, and he immediately set out with me, on the way putting questions I could not answer, as my mother was to all appearance well when I left home.

"I led the doctor straight to the 'White Room,' where we found my mother actually lying as in my vision. This was true even to minute details. She had been seized suddenly by an attack at the heart, and would soon have breathed her last but for the doctor's timely advent."

Mrs. Bettany's father, Mr. S. G. Gwynne, adds:

"I distinctly remember being surprised by seeing my daughter, in company with the family doctor, outside the door of my residence; and I asked: 'Who is ill?' She replied: 'Mamma.' She led the way at once to the 'White Room,' where we found my wife lying in a swoon on the floor. It was when I asked when she had been taken ill that I found it must have been after my daughter had left the house. None of the servants in the house knew anything of the sudden illness, which our doctor assured me would have been fatal had he not arrived when he did."

In this last case, it should be noted the ghost seen was an apparition not of a dead person, but of a living one. This is most important, from the point of view of gaining insight into the nature and characteristics of ghosts.

The investigators who, a matter of twenty-five or thirty years ago, began for the first time to inquire into the subject in a scientific way, early made the interesting discovery that phantasms of the living are seen quite as frequently as phantasms of the dead. Besides which, it was found that ghosts could be produced experimentally--that by a mere act of willing, one person could make another, sometimes miles distant, see a ghost. Many successful experiments of the kind, supported by ample corroborative evidence, are now on record. For example:

Mr. B. F. Sinclair, at the time a resident of Lakewood, New Jersey, had occasion to go to New York to be absent several days. His wife was not feeling well when he left home, and he was greatly worried about her.

"That night," to continue the narrative[7] in his own words, "before I went to bed, I thought I would try to find out, if possible, her condition. I had undressed, and was sitting on the edge of the bed, when I covered my face with my hands and willed myself in Lakewood at home, to see if I could see her. After a little, I seemed to be standing in her room before the bed, and saw her lying there, looking much better. I felt satisfied she was better, and so spent the week more comfortably regarding her condition.

[7] I quote from Mr. Sinclair's report to the Society for Psychical Research, and published by him in its _Journal_, vol. vii, p. 99.

"On Saturday I went home. When she saw me, she remarked:

"'I thought something had surely happened to you. I saw you standing in front of the bed the night you left, as plain as could be, and I have been worrying about you ever since.'

"After explaining my effort to find out her condition, everything became clear to her. She had seen me when I was trying to see her. I thought at the time I was going to see her and make her see me."

In at least one instance another experimenter, a German savant named Wesermann, performed the seemingly impossible feat of creating, by a simple act of volition, a ghost not of himself but of a person who was dead.

Herr Wesermann had been greatly troubled by the conduct of a friend, a young officer in the German army, and in the hope of reforming him, "willed" one evening that at eleven o'clock that night he should see in a dream an apparition of a lady in whom he had once been greatly interested, but who had been dead five years.

It chanced that at eleven o'clock, instead of being in bed and asleep, Herr Wesermann's friend was chatting with a brother officer. Nevertheless, the apparition came to him at the hour appointed, and was seen, not only by him, but by his companion also.

The door of his chamber seemed to open, and the ghost of his dead sweetheart walked in, "dressed in white, with black kerchief and bared head." Both officers started to their feet, and watched with bulging eyes while the ghost bowed gravely to them, turned, and without a word disappeared.

They followed instantly, rushing into the corridor, but saw only the sentry, who solemnly assured them that nobody but themselves had entered or left the room.[8]

[8] Herr Wesermann's experiments were reported by him in the _Archiv für den Thierischen Magnetismus_, vol. vi, pp. 136-139.

Facts like these naturally raised in the minds of many of the investigators a belief that quite possibly ghosts could be explained without resorting to the alternative of dogmatically denying their reality or regarding them as supernatural beings. This belief was strengthened by other facts brought to light in the course of experiments to determine the actuality of telepathy, or thought transference as it used to be called.

It was discovered that, under certain favoring conditions, thoughts could indeed be transmitted from mind to mind without passing through the ordinary known channels of communication; and furthermore that thoughts thus transmitted were often apprehended, not as mere ideas, but in the form of auditory or visual hallucinations.

Thus, if it were a question of "telepathing" the idea of a certain playing card, say the three of diamonds, the recipient, instead of simply getting the thought, "three of diamonds," might hear an hallucinatory voice saying to him, "three of diamonds," or might see three diamond-shaped objects floating before his eyes, the "ghosts" of three diamonds, so to speak.

Of even greater significance was the discovery that it frequently happened also that instead of getting the message which the experimenter had consciously attempted to send, the recipient would get other ideas merely latent in the experimenter's mind--ideas connected with his environment, something he had been doing, etc. Or the recipient might get the right message several hours after the experiment had been made--receiving it, for example, in a dream.

The obvious conclusion was that telepathy must be a function not of a person's ordinary consciousness, but of what psychologists call the subconsciousness, thus accounting for the difficulty of invariably obtaining satisfactory results in telepathic experiments.

In the light of these discoveries, then, the belief has been gaining ground that ghosts--real ghosts--are at most nothing but mental images impressed upon one mind by another through the subtle power of telepathy, and apprehended in the form of hallucinations of the various senses, just as any ordinary telepathic message may be apprehended.

A person is stricken with a mortal illness, is fatally injured, or is passing through some other great crisis likely to terminate in death. Consciously or subconsciously, he thinks of loved ones far away, and is seized with a longing to get into touch with them once more, if only to notify them of the catastrophe threatening him.

Across the intervening space, by what mechanism we as yet do not know, his thought wings its way to them, finds lodgment in their subconsciousness, and thence, when favoring conditions arise--as in some moment of mental relaxation--is projected into their consciousness before, at the time of, or after the sender's death, and is seen, or heard, it may be, as a Phantom Drummer, a Knocking Ghost, or the phantasmal image of the sender himself.

If, however, conditions are such as to prevent the message from emerging from the recipient's subconsciousness into his field of conscious vision, it may, on occasion, as telepathic experiments have proved, be retransmitted to a third party, and by him be apprehended; as, for example, the Drummer of Cortachy, in the two instances cited above, was heard not by members of the Ogilvy family, but by comparative strangers.

More than this, evidence has been accumulating to make it certain that in most cases not even telepathy is involved in the creation of ghosts, but that they are merely products of the seer's own subconsciousness. This was first clearly indicated by the results of an interesting "census of hallucinations," originated some years ago at the International Congress of Psychology, and simultaneously carried on--principally by members of the Society for Psychical Research--in the United States, England, France, Germany, and other countries. To thousands of persons the question was put:

"Have you ever, when believing yourself to be completely awake, had a vivid impression of seeing or being touched by a living being or inanimate object, or of hearing a voice, which impression, so far as you could discover, was not due to any external physical cause?"

Of the 27,339 replies received to this question[9] no fewer than 3,266 were in the affirmative. Many of those replying narrated true "ghost stories" similar to the ones given above; many testified to apparitions not of dead persons but of living friends; and in addition to this, the replies of many others brought out the interesting fact that there often were "ghosts" of inanimate objects--of hats and chairs and tables as well as of human beings.

[9] The detailed report of the results of this census will be found in the _Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research_, vol. x, pp. 25-422.

One respondent, Mrs. Savile Lumley, testified that, in broad daylight and while taking a calisthenic lesson, she and another young woman "distinctly saw a chair over which we felt we must fall, and called out to each other to avoid it. But no chair was there."

The Reverend G. Lyon Turner, professor of philosophy at the Lancashire Independent College, Manchester, England, woke up one morning to find the ceiling of his room adorned with a huge chandelier of some ten arms, and the jets shining brightly through the ground-glass globes at the end of each arm. He knew that when he went to bed no chandelier had been there, and naturally feared that something was the matter with his eyesight.

"I moved my head," he said, "to see whether the phantom moved, too. But no, it remained fixed; and the objects behind and beyond it became more or less completely visible as I moved, exactly as would have been the case had it been a real chandelier. So I woke my wife, but she saw nothing."

Even more bizarre was the phantasm that appeared to another Englishman. Here is his own account of it:

"I had just gone to bed, and was--at least, this was my impression at the time--quite awake. The door of my room was ajar, and there was a light in the passage which half-illumined my room. Suddenly I became aware of a series of slight taps on the passage outside. These taps were not sufficiently loud for a human footstep; on the other hand, the volume of their sound was greater than that made by a walking-stick. I fully remember sitting up in bed and beholding two top-boots trot rapidly across the room and vanish into the opposite wall. The illusion was astonishingly vivid, and I can recall the details to this day. I have never had a waking dream since, and have never experienced ambulant top-boots except on this occasion."

Whence the origin of these odd apparitions? The reply of modern science is that they were nothing more than the weird externalization of ideas latent in the minds of those perceiving them. Indeed, in the case of Mr. Turner there is absolute proof that this was the case, for that gentleman afterwards identified the phantom chandelier with one familiar to him as hanging from the ceiling of the college chapel in which he daily said prayers. Furthermore, there is proof--of which an abundance will be given in subsequent chapters--that often the ideas thus externalized relate to things once seen or heard but long since forgotten; it may be to things seen or heard in a wholly unconscious, or, rather, subconscious, way. And as with ideas of things, so with ideas of persons.

In this connection, as illuminating vividly the problem of ghosts, may well be given an experience narrated to me by Doctor Morton Prince, the eminent Boston psychopathologist, or medical psychologist.

A patient of his came to him one morning in a condition of extreme nervousness, declaring that the previous night she had seen a ghost. "I woke up," said she, "and saw at the foot of my bed a young woman, who gradually faded away." She maintained that at no time had she seen anybody resembling the apparition, but in the minute description she gave, Doctor Prince at once recognized a relative of his, with whom he remembered he had been talking in the hall when the patient last visited him. Saying nothing to her he quietly assembled a few photographs, and, before she departed, asked her to look them over.

"Why," she said, picking one up, "here is my ghost!"

"Yes," was Doctor Prince's reply, "and you saw your ghost in this house when you were here only a few days ago. I was talking to her as you came in."

"But," objected the patient, "I certainly did not see her, for I noticed somebody was with you, and I purposely turned away as I passed, lest I should seem rude."

"All the same," said Doctor Prince, "you saw her without being conscious of it--saw her, as it were, out of the corner of your eye. One fleeting glance would be enough to give you the memory image that you mistook for a ghost."

Undoubtedly Doctor Prince was right, and undoubtedly this dual law of subconscious perception and memory is enough to account for some of the most impressive ghosts cited in this chapter. Even the strange haunting of the Petit Trianon, as experienced by Miss Morison and Miss Lamont, may be said to find its explanation here.

It is true that both Miss Morison and Miss Lamont profess to have known little about the history of the Petit Trianon previous to their visit to Versailles. But their detailed report of the haunting contains statements showing that, subconsciously at any rate, they must have possessed considerable knowledge of the place. Miss Morison admits that she had, as a girl, great enthusiasm for Marie Antoinette, and had read not a little about her, including an article descriptive of her summer home; while Miss Lamont is a teacher of French history, and accordingly must have had rather more knowledge than the average person regarding the life story of Queen Marie. Besides which, and most significant, there was published, just before they went to Versailles, an illustrated magazine article picturing a historical fête in the gardens of the Petit Trianon, with some account of its history.

It is worth noting, too, that the two ladies were not haunted in exactly the same way, each of them seeing certain people and scenes that were not visible to the other. On the theory of a supernatural manifestation this would be hard to explain, but the difficulty vanishes if we recognize that the subconscious knowledge of the Trianon possessed by each must necessarily have differed.

The problem remains to account for the fact, as distinct from the facts, of the haunting. Why should Miss Morison and Miss Lamont, among all the thousands of visitors to the Petit Trianon, alone have had such an experience? To this, assuredly, there is no answer if one is going to stick to the old-fashioned notion of ghosts and attribute to them objective reality. But the answer is very simple on the modern scientific hypothesis.

Miss Morison and Miss Lamont, the psychologist would say, were haunted for the reason that, being of exceptionally romantic, impressionable temperaments, the ideas associated in their minds with the Petit Trianon, appealed to them with such "suggestive" force as to plunge them for the time being into a state of "psychical dissociation," during which their subconsciousness obtained complete control over the upper consciousness, and flooded them with its latent memories of all that they had ever read or heard about the place and its historic residents. In other words, they were as two persons "dreaming awake."

The same explanation would obviously apply to the ghostly vision seen on the lawn by Mrs. M. Nor do we need to go beyond the hypothesis of subconscious perception to account for the experiences of Lady Eardley and the guest at the Boston hotel. In the latter case it is necessary to assume nothing more than that the lady who saw the apparition at the elevator entrance perceived her danger without being aware of it, and subconsciously developed the hallucination that enabled her to avoid it.

As to the Eardley case, it is a well-established medical fact that some diseases, in their initial stages, cause organic changes too slight to be noticed by the sufferer's upper consciousness, but plainly perceptible to his subconsciousness which, through symbolical dreams or hallucinations, sometimes seeks to convey to the upper consciousness a warning that all is not well.

I myself have had such an experience. A number of years ago, beginning in the summer, I was troubled by a recurrent nightmare in which, although the details were not always the same, the central incident never varied. Always the nightmare ended with a phantom cat clawing viciously at my throat. I did not then know as much about dreams as I do now, so, beyond thinking vaguely that "it must mean something," I paid no attention to this repeated nightmare.

At the end of six months I had an attack of grippe, necessitating treatment by a throat specialist, who speedily discovered in my throat a growth of which I consciously had had no knowledge. With its removal the recurrent dream of the cat instantly ceased to trouble me.

Lady Eardley's case was, doubtless, quite similar, the only difference being that the subconscious warning was conveyed to her upper consciousness, not in dream, but as an auditory hallucination. And, in the somewhat parallel case of the ghost seen by Doctor Langtry, it seems a safe assumption that if the frightened clergyman had advised the child's father to place her under medical care at once, the subsequent fatality might have been averted.

In the Langtry case, however, there must have been operative also a telepathic factor. And since the telepathic explanation of ghosts is still the subject of much controversy, it will be well, before proceeding farther, to state exactly what is known to-day regarding telepathy.

Chapter II

Why I Believe In Telepathy

Some years ago, when living near New York, I had a curious dream that made a deep impression on me. In this dream I seemed to be at a club or hotel, when a messenger boy entered and announced that I was wanted up-stairs. There I found in a large room a family with whom I had been intimate in my boyhood in Canada. I had heard nothing of them for years, and naturally was delighted to see them. But I was struck with the absence of one of the sons, Archie, who, as a youngster of about my own age, had been one of my closest friends.

To my inquiry as to why he was not with them, I was told: "He's gone," a statement which, despite its vagueness, seemed in the dream a wholly adequate and satisfactory reply. When I awoke, however, with the dream details vividly in mind, I had a strong feeling that, as I said to my wife: "Something serious must have happened to Archie Tisdale." The sequel proved that this feeling was amply justified.

For it developed that, at about the time of my dream, he had died from an illness of which I knew nothing until, prompted by the dream, I made inquiries about him.

Again, many years earlier, whiling away the time one summer evening in a green lane that led to the shore of a beautiful Canadian lake, I had an experience which similarly gave me food for thought. I had been leaning on a rail fence, taking in the glories of the fading sunset. It was one of those evenings and one of those scenes of which poets delight to sing, and as I gazed across the lake at the changing hues on the distant hills, slowly turning from blue to gray as the twilight deepened, I gave myself up to the pleasurable day-dreaming so common in the romantic age of youth.

Suddenly I was roused by hearing my name called, in a tone so faint, albeit perfectly audible, that for a moment I could fancy the call came from beyond the lake. The next instant, however, I realized that it was what, with my larger psychological knowledge of to-day, I should term wholly subjective, coming from within me rather than from without; and at the same time I distinctly got the impression that it was connected in some way with accident or illness befalling a young lady in whom I was then much interested--the young lady, in fact, who afterwards became my wife.

It was in vain that I sought to dismiss this impression as a mere freak of the imagination. So insistent did it at last become that I returned to the house and hastily scribbled a note, stating what I had heard--or, rather, thought I had heard--and expressing the hope that all was well.

My letter had to go to a distant city, and it was therefore several days before an answer could arrive. I well remember how, in the interval, I fretted and worried. But by return mail a reassuring reply reached me. Only, most strangely, the writer added that late in the afternoon of the day on which I heard the hallucinatory call, she had been overcome by heat, and was for some hours thought to be in a serious condition.

Once again I heard the same weird inward calling of my name--this time at eleven o'clock on the night of a Fourth of July celebration, when I was lounging in a hammock on the bank of the Niagara River, watching the last of the fireworks on the American side. I was quite alone, as the friends with whom I was staying had retired an hour or more before; and, for that matter, it was not their custom to address me by my first name. Yet I heard myself called, faintly but distinctly, and seemingly from across the water, precisely as in my previous experience.

As in that experience, also, I instinctively associated the calling with my absent sweetheart, and wrote to her at once. Two days later, our letters crossing, I received word that on the night of the Fourth she had taken an overdose of headache powder, with consequences that might have been serious had not medical assistance been promptly obtained.

But even more singular than any of the foregoing is a happening connected with an accident that occurred to my wife while she was still a mere schoolgirl.

With a party of young people she had gone on an outing to a Maine lake resort, and in the dusk of a pleasant evening started for a drive in an old-fashioned hay-wagon. There was no thought of danger, and the drive was thoroughly enjoyed by all until, coming down a long and rather steep hill, the breeching broke, and the horses ran away. At a sharp turn in the road, half-way down the hill, the drive came to a sudden and disastrous end with the overturning of the wagon.

A number of its occupants were seriously hurt, my wife, with great presence of mind, saving herself by jumping clear of the wagon just as it began to go over. Even so, she did not escape uninjured, her face being badly cut.

Now comes the curious part of the affair. Early the next morning a telegram from her mother in Boston was handed to her. It read: "Are you hurt or ill? Wire at once. Am writing." The letter which followed gave the amazing information that the previous night--that is, the night of the accident--the mother had had an unusually vivid dream in which she saw her daughter driving in a carriage, thrown out of the carriage, and badly cut about the face. So realistic was the dream that on waking it frightened her, and led to the sending of the telegram.

Obviously the question arises: Were these four strange experiences representative merely of extraordinary chance coincidences, or were they indicative of the action of some direct means of communication from mind to mind by other than the ordinary recognized channels of communication?

Personally I am satisfied that chance alone will not suffice to account for them, and that they are veritable instances of the workings of a faculty latent in all mankind and operable in accordance with a true, if as yet little understood, law of nature--call it telepathy, thought transference, or what you will.

And in saying this, I am well aware that, even if my belief is in agreement with that entertained by many eminent men of science--such as Sir Oliver Lodge, Sir William Crookes, Camille Flammarion, Charles Richet, Theodore Flournoy, Henri Morselli, Professor W. F. Barrett and the late William James--it is contrary to the opinion held by the great majority of scientists at the present day. Their view, to put it briefly, is that there is no such thing as telepathy; that chance coincidence, deliberate or unconscious falsification, and errors of memory are sufficient to explain most instances of alleged telepathic communication; and that the remainder are reducible to the operation of more or less familiar principles in the psychology of the subconscious--notably the law of hyperæsthesia, or unusual extension of the senses of sight, hearing, smell, etc.

I am perfectly willing to admit that much which passes as telepathy may be thus reducible. For example, I am seated writing at the desk in my study. Unexpectedly there flashes into my mind an idea concerning a person of whom I have not thought for weeks or months. The next instant the doorbell rings, and presently the maid informs me that the very person of whom I have that moment been thinking has entered the house.

This is a not infrequent experience, as most of my readers will concede. So frequent is it that it is absurd to attempt to account for it on the hypothesis of chance coincidence. But neither would it be always safe to raise the theory of telepathy. For it might well happen that while I was seated intent on my work, with the study windows closed, my ear nevertheless caught the sound of footsteps coming down the street, or on my porch; that I subconsciously recognized in them my friend's walk, and that I consequently, though without knowing why, thought of him at that precise moment. This is assuredly a possible explanation--though I am far from conceding that in all such cases it is the only explanation properly applicable.

So, likewise, one must be constantly on guard against over-readily accepting as evidences of telepathic action the feats of "mind reading" often undertaken by way of parlor amusement. Stage "mind reading" by professional entertainers may be safely left out of the reckoning, as undoubtedly based on methods of conscious trickery and deceit. But in a private gathering, where there can be no question of confederates and deliberate signaling, surprising results are sometimes obtained in the finding of hidden objects, etc. On the surface this would seem explicable only on a telepathic basis, yet in reality it is commonly brought about by "muscle reading" rather than by true "mind reading."

Experiment has shown that the effort to concentrate thought on a given matter--a name or an object--tends to produce some form of muscular activity, either subconscious whispering of the name thought of, or subconscious movement in the direction of the object. If, as is the rule, the spectators are supposed to keep their minds fixed intently on the name or object they have selected for the "test," some of them are apt to give these involuntary muscular hints, which the performer will accept and act upon, it may be without being clearly conscious of the source of his information.

Still it must be added that experiments in the "willing game" have been carried out under conditions and with results indicating that occasionally, at all events, successes are achieved without any such subconscious guidance. Not so very long ago some interesting and most striking experiments of this sort were described to me by Professor J. H. Hyslop.

"The subject of my experiments," said he, "was a young woman of good family, who was credited with having exceptional ability in divining the thoughts and wishes of others. It was arranged that I should investigate her powers, and accordingly for a period of some weeks I had frequent sittings with her, in the presence of a few interested and trustworthy friends.

"The plan followed in every experiment was this: The young woman having left the room, I mentally selected some more or less complicated action for her to perform upon her return. I then wrote down on a slip of paper what I wished her to do, showed it to the others, and concealed it in a book, which did not leave my hand until after the completion of the experiment. From first to last not a word was spoken by any one, so as to guard against any possible hyperæsthesia of hearing on her part.

"The young woman was then called back, and almost invariably proceeded to execute the commands mentally given her. She did this so promptly that I cannot conceive how she could possibly have got any unconscious hints from those present, and conscious signaling was out of the question.

"For instance, I once wrote on my paper an order for her to pick out of a vase a bunch of keys I had hidden there, cross the room with the keys, and place them on the mantel-piece. She entered, stood for but a moment with her eyes closed, and then, swiftly passing to the vase, which was on the floor, picked up the keys, turned, and deposited them on the mantel-piece as I had mentally suggested. It was all done so quickly and spontaneously that to my mind it afforded strong evidential proof of true thought transference.

"She was not always successful, but some of her failures were quite as instructive as her successes. On three occasions she executed, not the commands I had written on the paper, but commands I had thought of writing but for one reason or another had abandoned. No one in the room excepting myself knew of these previous intentions, so she could have derived her knowledge of them from the involuntary movements of no one excepting me; and if it had actually been a matter of subconscious guidance, it is obvious that my muscular indications would have related not to the abandoned commands but to the commands I actually wished her to carry out.

"All things considered, my experiments with this young woman satisfy me that the hypothesis of subconscious guidance is not always properly applicable, even when the 'mind reader' is in a position to see or hear the persons testing him."

Assuming, however, for the sake of argument, that Professor Hyslop's conclusion is erroneous, and that the involuntary movement theory does always suffice as an explanatory hypothesis when experimenter and subject are in the same rooms, it becomes manifestly and hopelessly inadequate when applied to explain the transmission of ideas between persons a considerable distance apart. Yet what I consider abundant proof has been experimentally obtained that such transmission may, and sometimes does, take place--occasionally in most dramatic form.

Take, for example, the experience of a French lady, Mme. Clarence de Vaux-Royer, who, feeling uneasy one day about a friend who was then living in the United States, thought she would cable to him. Unfortunately it was Sunday, and her maid found the cable office closed. Mme. de Vaux-Royer then decided to attempt a telepathic experiment, and, knowing that her friend was mourning the death of his mother and of a favorite sister, decided to try and impress him with an idea that they were near him and would comfort him in any trial he might be undergoing. She told her maid of her intention, and asked the maid to note the date, so as to be able to give corroborative evidence if the experiment succeeded.

This was on November 7. Ten days later the American mail brought to Mme. de Vaux-Royer a letter from her absent friend, who, after referring to some matters of wholly private interest, stated:

"Last night (the 7th), while I was praying, I saw, hovering above my head, some gold circles, which gradually floated away until I could no longer see them. At the same time I seemed to hear some one calling to me: 'Mother! Mother! Sister Minnie!' Then the circles floated back, approaching until they almost touched my head. Oh, how much comfort I felt! How they inspired me with sentiments of goodness and happiness!"

From this it is manifestly only a step to the experimental production of telepathic phantasms of the human form, as in the two instances given in the previous chapter (the Wesermann and Sinclair experiments), and in numerous other instances, of which one or two additional may well be narrated here. In one, a Harvard professor, an acquaintance of Professor James, on whose authority I quote the story, having heard of the possibility of telepathic hallucinations, determined one evening that he would try to make an apparition of himself appear to a friend, a young lady who lived half a mile from his home. He did not mention his intention to her or to anybody else. The next day he received a letter, in which she said:

"Last night about ten o'clock I was in the dining-room at supper with B. Suddenly I thought I saw you looking in through the crack of the door at the end of the room, toward which I was looking. I said to B.: 'There is Blank, looking through the crack of the door!' B., whose back was toward the door, said: 'He can't be there. He would come right in.' However, I got up and looked in the other room, but there was nobody there. Now, what were you doing last night, at that time?"

At that precise moment, as he told Professor James, "Blank" had been at home, sitting alone in his room, and trying "whether I could project my astral body to the presence of A."

Possibly had the young lady been alone, and not actively engaged, she might have had a more definite view of the phantasm of her absent friend, for experience has shown that solitude and quiet are favoring conditions for the perception of telepathic apparitions. In nearly every instance reported to the Society for Psychical Research the percipient of the phantasm is alone and in a more or less passive, quiescent frame of mind. Such a condition usually obtains immediately before or immediately after sleep, and it is then that experimental apparitions are seen most plainly. Though occasionally they are vividly experienced when the percipient is in a state of the most active consciousness, as in the following case, reported by the agent--that is, the person sending the telepathic message--and confirmed by the percipient, an English clergyman now dead, the Reverend W. Stainton Moses.

"One evening," runs the agent's account, "I resolved to try to appear to Z., at some miles distance. I did not inform him beforehand of the intended experiment; but retired to rest shortly before midnight with thoughts intently fixed on Z., with whose rooms and surroundings, however, I was quite unacquainted. I soon fell asleep, and awoke next morning unconscious of anything having taken place. On seeing Z. a few days afterward, I inquired:

"'Did anything happen at your rooms on Saturday night?'

"'Yes,' replied he, 'a great deal happened. I had been sitting over the fire with M., smoking and chatting. About twelve-thirty he rose to leave, and I let him out myself. I returned to the fire to finish my pipe, when I saw you sitting in the chair just vacated by him.

"'I looked intently at you, and then took up a newspaper to assure myself I was not dreaming, but on laying it down I saw you still there. While I gazed without speaking, you faded away.'"

Of course in the case of all single experiments like these,[10] the skeptically inclined might plausibly fall back on the theory of chance coincidence. But it is impossible seriously to entertain this hypothesis in cases where experiments in the telepathic transmission of ideas have been carried on repeatedly and with an astonishing measure of success.

[10] Accounts of other experiments of the same type will be found in my book, "The Riddle of Personality," pp. 140-142.

To mention only the most notable experiments of this systematic kind, I would call attention to the results obtained by two sets of English investigators, the first comprising two ladies named Clarissa Miles and Hermione Ramsden, the second two gentlemen, F. R. Burt and F. L. Usher. As I see it, indeed, the Miles-Ramsden and Burt-Usher experiments have the additional interest that they not only make clear some of the fundamental laws of genuine thought transference, but also show just why it is that we can never hope to obtain such absolute control of the telepathic process as to be able to send mental messages from one to another with the same ease and certainty as we now send ordinary telegrams and marconigrams.

This inability of control has long been a stock objection against belief in telepathy, especially among the scientifically trained. "Not until we can repeat at will, and with invariable success, the experiment of direct transference of thought, will we accept telepathy as established," say these scientific skeptics. "We know that if, in our chemical and physical laboratories, we bring such and such elements together, such and such action will always follow. We must be able to do as much with telepathy before we will accept it." But the Miles-Ramsden and Burt-Usher experiments show that there are excellent reasons for affirming that telepathy is a fact, and that nevertheless its processes cannot be governed with the certitude possible in the case of chemical and physical processes. There are factors involved which elude, and must always elude, the directive control of the experimenter.

In the experiments by the Misses Miles and Ramsden it was arranged that, at a stated hour of a stated evening in each week, Miss Ramsden--who acted throughout as the percipient, or receiver of the telepathic messages--was to remain for a few minutes in a condition of complete passivity, and immediately afterwards was to note on a post-card whatever ideas came into her mind during that time. The post-card was then to be mailed to Miss Miles, who, for her part, was to think of Miss Ramsden at intervals during the day agreed on, and in the evening was to make a post-card entry--to be mailed to her friend forthwith--of the idea or ideas she had tried to convey to her telepathically. Thus, in the event of achieving any degree of success, they would have a perfect documentary record to substantiate their claims.

As to the distance separating them, it ranged from a few score to several hundred miles. They made, in fact, three distinct series of experiments, with about a year's interval between each series. During the first they were at their homes, Miss Miles in London, Miss Ramsden in Buckinghamshire. During the second, Miss Ramsden was in Inverness, in northern Scotland, and Miss Miles visiting friends in various parts of England. The third series was carried on while Miss Miles was making a tour of the beautiful Ardennes region of France and Belgium, Miss Ramsden at the same time being again in the Scottish Highlands.

Thus there was a progressive increase in the distance between them for each series, but this seems to have made no difference in the result. In each, as the attested record shows, Miss Ramsden succeeded in getting, completely or in part, no fewer than two out of every five of the messages her co-experimenter tried to "telepath" to her. Such a proportion is clearly too high to be explained away on the theory of chance coincidence, and this theory is rendered still more untenable by the attendant circumstances which the record reveals.

On one occasion Miss Miles, who is an artist, had been busy in the afternoon painting a model's hands. She thought of this when evening came, and determined to endeavor to impress Miss Ramsden with the idea "hands". In her post-card, written at seven o'clock the same evening, Miss Ramsden stated that of several ideas which had come into her mind at the experiment-hour the "most vivid" was "a little black hand, quite small, much smaller than a child's, well formed, and the fingers straight. This was the chief thing.

Similarly, having noticed at a meeting in London a curious pair of spectacles worn by a gentleman seated near her, Miss Miles, on returning home in the early evening, wrote down the word "spectacles," with the idea of "telepathing" it to Miss Ramsden. The latter's post-card entry for that evening noted that "spectacles" was "the only idea that came to me after waiting a long time."

Again, while on a sketching expedition to an English village, Miss Miles was much amused by an adventure with a large white pig. She selected this pig as the subject of her next telepathic communication, the result of which Miss Ramsden, writing as almost always on the night of the experiment, thus reported:

"You were out of doors rather late, a cold, raw evening, near a railway station; there was a pig with a long snout, and some village children. It was getting dark."

On the other hand, in several instances Miss Ramsden's impressions contained much which Miss Miles had not consciously sought to convey to her. And this brings us to what is unquestionably the most important feature of the experiments.

As was said, about two out of every five messages were correctly received, in whole or in part. But it frequently happened in the case of the seeming failures, that while Miss Ramsden did not get the ideas which Miss Miles was endeavoring to send to her, she did get ideas relating to people, things and events much in Miss Miles's mind at that moment, or which had been more or less in her mind during the day of the experiment.

To illustrate, Miss Miles once tried to make Miss Ramsden think of "pussies, or cats." What Miss Ramsden did think of was "a manuscript, pinned by a patent fastener in one corner." And, oddly enough, Miss Miles had spent a good part of that afternoon reading to a friend from a manuscript "fastened together," as the friend has testified, "with a patent fastener." Similarly, during Miss Miles's visit to the English village above mentioned, Miss Ramsden's report for one experiment ran:

"First I saw dimly a house, but I think that you wish me to see a little girl with brown hair down her back, tied with a ribbon in the usual way. She is sitting at a table with her back turned and seems very busy indeed. I think she is cutting out scraps with a pair of scissors. She has on a white pinafore, and I should guess her age to be between eight and twelve."

Miss Miles had not been trying to make Miss Ramsden think of anything of the sort. But the description fitted perfectly her landlady's little daughter, of whom the mother, Mrs. Laura Lovegrove, says:

"I have a little girl aged eleven, with brown hair, tied with a ribbon in the usual way. She wears a pinafore, and, being ill, often amuses herself cutting out scraps."

Another time, when the hour for the experiment arrived, Miss Miles forgot all about it, being busy writing letters to some friends. In particular she was absorbed in framing an answer to an important letter from a Polish artist, written in a peculiar script. Miss Ramsden's report for that evening was:

"I felt that you were not thinking of me, but were reading a letter in a sort of half-German writing. The letters have very long tails to them. Is there any truth in that?"[11]

[11] The experiments of the Misses Miles and Ramsden are reported in detail in the _Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research_, vol. xxi, and in the _Journal of the Society for Psychical Research_, vol. viii. The report of the Burt-Usher experiments appears in the _Annales des Sciences Psychiques_, January and February, 1910.

Significant also is the fact that precisely the same sort of thing occurred in the more recent experiments between Mr. Burt and Mr. Usher, who, like Miss Miles and Miss Ramsden, conducted their investigations in a careful, methodical, conscientious way, and over a long period of time.

Mr. Usher, like Miss Miles, invariably acted as the sender of the telepathic communications, while Mr. Burt was the percipient. From first to last the latter remained in London, while Mr. Usher was part of the time in Bristol, more than one hundred miles from London, and part of the time in the Austrian city of Prague, a thousand miles away. On each experiment-evening it was Mr. Usher's practice, at the hour previously agreed upon, to sit alone in a dimly lighted room, draw some design on a piece of paper, and remain for fifteen minutes thinking intently of the design and "willing" to transmit it to Mr. Burt, who, at the same hour, would be seated in a darkened room in London, noting the images that passed before his mind's eye, and, at the expiration of fifteen minutes, setting down on paper the one or two that had seemed to him most vivid.

Nearly fifty experiments were thus made, with results defying any explanation by the theory of chance coincidence. And, as in the Miles-Ramsden experiments--for the matter of that, as also in Professor Hyslop's experiments--it at times happened that when Mr. Burt totally failed to draw a design corresponding with that which Mr. Usher had drawn, Mr. Burt's design did correspond with images demonstrably in Mr. Usher's mind at or immediately before the moment of the experiment.

Thus, one evening in Prague Mr. Usher tried to make Mr. Burt get the impression of an oblong composed of numerous small dots. Instead Mr. Burt saw and designed a peculiar plume-like ornamentation, which Mr. Usher instantly recognized as a picture of part of the unusual carving on the table at which he had been seated. On another occasion--the eighteenth experiment--Mr. Usher sought to transmit a crude design of a flower in a pot. What Mr. Burt actually drew was an excellent representation of a lighted cigarette with the smoke curling away from it.

"And," says Mr. Usher, "the evening that he drew this was the first evening I had smoked a cigarette while experimenting with him."

Such incidents, with those cited in connection with the experiments of Professor Hyslop and the Misses Miles and Ramsden, in my opinion go to show exactly why it is that one cannot hope to obtain unfailing control over the process of telepathy. For they indicate that at bottom genuine thought transference depends not so much on conscious _willing_ as on subconscious _feeling_. It is not necessarily the things about which one thinks most strongly, but rather things which are tinged with some emotional coloring, that are most likely to become subjects of telepathic communication.

And these experiments further indicate that, on the receiver's part also, the mechanism involved in the transmission of telepathic messages belongs rather to the subconscious than to the conscious portion of the mind. In order to allow the emergence of the transmitted ideas into the field of conscious knowledge, there seems to be always necessary some form of psychical "dissociation"--as in a trance, dream, reverie, or moment of absentmindedness. Such states of dissociation are not always easy to bring about voluntarily; and when they are brought about, whether voluntarily or involuntarily, it by no means follows that ideas received telepathically will forthwith and rapidly rise above the threshold of consciousness.

For, as recent psychological experiment and observation have shown, in dissociated states the tendency is for the emergence chiefly of ideas which, through their emotional associations, are of deep personal significance--as when we dream of persons or things associated with events that once affected us profoundly. Every one of us has subconscious reminiscences of this sort, and with these personal subconscious reminiscences any ideas which have been transmitted telepathically have of necessity to compete for emergence. They may get through or they may not; whether they will get through apparently depends in large measure on the degree of their own emotional intensity.

Hence it is that that scientist is doomed to perpetual unbelief who boasts that he will never place credence in telepathy until he can play with it as he plays with the chemicals in his test tubes. One cannot handle feelings as one can handle a chemical compound, nor can one manipulate at will the subconscious as though it were a physical substance. Hence, too, the case for telepathy must always rest less on experimental evidence--strong though the Miles-Ramsden and Burt-Usher experiments demonstrate that this sometimes is--than on well-authenticated instances of spontaneous occurrence, which have been recorded in ever-increasing volume since systematic investigation of the subject was first undertaken a scant quarter of a century ago.

In such instances, the records further show, one of the commonest forms in which the telepathic message is received is that of an auditory hallucination, as in the "voice" heard by me on the shore of the Canadian lake and on the bank of Niagara River. When there is connected with the sending of the message some supreme crisis in the career of the sender--the crisis, it may be, of the moment of death--the auditory hallucination is sometimes of such a nature as to make its dire meaning almost self-evident. In this respect I know of nothing more striking than a strange case reported, with ample corroborative evidence, to the Society for Psychical Research.

The narrator, a well-to-do Englishman, was living at the time in a country house. It was early spring, and on the night of his telepathic experience there had been a slight snowfall, just sufficient to make the ground white. After dinner he spent the evening writing until ten o'clock, when, to continue the story in his own words:

"I got up and left the room, taking a lamp from the hall table, and placing it on a small table standing in a recess of the window in the breakfast-room. The curtains were not drawn across the window. I had just taken down from the nearest bookcase a volume of 'Macgillivray's British Birds' for reference, and was in the act of reading the passage, the book held close to the lamp, and my shoulder touching the window shutter, and in a position when almost the slightest sound would be heard, when I distinctly heard the front gate opened and shut again with a clap, and footsteps advancing at a run up the drive; when opposite the window the steps changed from sharp and distinct on gravel to dull and less clear on the grass-slip below the window, and at the same time I was conscious that some one or something stood close to me outside, only the thin shutter and a sheet of glass dividing us.

"I could hear the quick, panting, labored breathing of the messenger, or whatever it was, as if trying to recover breath before speaking. Had he been attracted by the light through the shutter? Suddenly, like a gunshot, inside, outside, and all around, there broke out the most appalling shriek--a prolonged wail of horror, which seemed to freeze the blood. It was not a single shriek, but more prolonged, commencing in a high key, and then less and less, wailing away toward the north, and becoming weaker and weaker as it receded in sobbing pulsations of intense agony.

"Of my fright and horror I can say nothing--increased tenfold when I walked into the dining-room and found my wife sitting quietly at her work close to the window, in the same line and distant only ten or twelve feet from the corresponding window in the breakfast-room. _She had heard nothing._ I could see that at once; and from the position in which she was sitting, I knew she could not have failed to hear any noise outside and any footsteps on the ground. Perceiving I was alarmed about something, she asked:

"'What is the matter?'

"'Only some one outside,' I said.

"'Then, why do you not go out and see? You always do when you hear any unusual noise.'

"'There is something queer and dreadful about this noise,' I replied. 'I dare not face it.'"

Nothing more was heard, and early next morning he made a careful search in the grounds around the house, but not a footprint was to be seen in the snow, which had ceased falling long before the occurrence of the wailing cry. A little later in the day, however, word arrived that at ten o'clock the previous night one of his tenants, who lived half a mile distant and with whom he had spent the afternoon, had committed suicide by drinking prussic acid.

He had gone up to his bedroom, his groom testified at the inquest, had mixed the poison in a tumbler of water, drank it off, and, with a terrible scream, fell dead on the floor.

Fortunately, telepathic hallucinations do not usually come with such intensity or in such an alarming form. Often they are mere vague impressions that something unpleasant or disastrous is occurring to a relative or friend, and, as in the case of self-originating hallucinations like that reported by Lady Eardley, they occasionally impel to action that averts disaster. It was thus, to give a single instance, in an experience reported[12] by William Blakeway, a Staffordshire Englishman:

[12] In "Phantasms of the Living," vol. ii, pp. 377-378.

"I was in my usual place at chapel one Sunday afternoon, when all at once I thought I must go home. Seemingly against my will, I took my hat. When reaching the chapel gates I felt an impulse that I must hasten home as quick as possible, and I ran with all my might without stopping to take breath. Meeting a friend who asked why I hurried so, I passed him almost without notice.

"When I reached home I found the house full of smoke, and my little boy, three years old, all on fire, alone in the house. I at once tore the burning clothes from off him, and was just in time to save his life. It has always been a mystery to me, as no person whispered a word to me, and no one knew anything about the fire till after I made the alarm at home, which was more than a quarter of a mile from the chapel."

Here the wholly subconscious nature of the phenomenon, on the percipient's part at all events, is plainly evident. It is even more evident in all cases where, as frequently occurs, the telepathic message is received in a dream like that which was recorded in the opening paragraphs of this chapter. As is to be expected, too, in telepathic dreams we often find an element of symbolism. The news of illness, of accident, of death, or whatever it may be, is not conveyed directly, but indirectly, amid a mass of more or less relevant details of dream imagery.

A couple of years ago I received a letter from a lady living in Brooklyn, describing an experience that admirably illustrates this point. Her dream, however, was of such an intimate character that the names of the persons and places must be suppressed. Five years ago, this lady writes, her daughter became interested in a young man, Mr. V., whose suit, however, the mother discouraged. Afterwards her daughter met, fell in love with, and was happily married to a physician in the Government service. She soon went abroad with her husband, to a remote and isolated post. My informant continues:

"We could not hear from them all winter because they were ice-bound, but my thoughts of them were always most delightful, for their last letters were bubbling over with happiness, and I was lovingly busy getting things ready for them.

"Mr. V. had almost passed from my mind, when one morning, in the middle of June, I arose, took a bath, and, having a half-hour to spare, went back to bed again, falling into a deep sleep.

"Suddenly Mr. V. appeared to me in one of my lower rooms. It seemed to be breakfast time, and I invited him to have some. He accepted, and we sat together for some time, but I do not remember any of our conversation. Suddenly he arose, faced me, and, looking straight into my eyes, said emphatically:

"'Now she is mine! Nothing you can do will ever separate us again! This time she will belong to me!'

"I awoke with a start, much frightened. Then, realizing the situation, I thanked Heaven she was safely married, and promptly put the dream from me. This was about eight o'clock. At ten a despatch reached me saying that my daughter's husband had died, from the result of a boating accident two weeks before."

Or, when apprehended in dream, the telepathic message may be so distorted that its true meaning cannot possibly be recognized immediately. A characteristic case of this kind occurred at the time of President Lincoln's assassination, though it is only recently that it was for the first time reported in detail by Mrs. E. H. Hughes, daughter of the San Francisco architect, S. C. Bugbee. It should be explained that before removing to California from Massachusetts in 1863, the Bugbees were well acquainted with the Booth family, and that John Wilkes Booth was an especial favorite of Mrs. Bugbee's. Says Mrs. Hughes, in her report to the American Institute for Scientific Research:[13]

[13] _Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research_, vol. iv, pp. 210-217.

"One night my mother woke my father suddenly, saying: 'Oh, Charles! I have had such a terrible dream! I dreamed that John Wilkes Booth shot me! It seemed that he sent me seats for a private box in a theater, and I took some young ladies with me. Between the acts he came to me, and asked me how I liked the play. I exclaimed, "Why, John Booth! I am surprised that you could put such a questionable play upon the stage. I am mortified to think that I have brought young ladies to see it." At that he raised a pistol, and shot me in the back of the neck. It seems as if I felt a pain there now.' After a while my mother fell asleep, and dreamed the same thing a second time.

"The next morning came the terrible news which plunged the nation into grief and mourning. Almost at the hour of my mother's dream, President Lincoln was assassinated; shot, in the back of the neck, in a private box at a theater, by John Wilkes Booth."

On the other hand, there may be no symbolism or distortion, the dream corresponding so realistically with the event as to make its significance manifest. To give an illustration, Mrs. Morris Griffith, an Englishwoman, reports:

"On the night of Saturday, the eleventh of March, I awoke in much alarm, having seen my eldest son, then at St. Paul de Loanda on the southwest coast of Africa, looking dreadfully ill and emaciated, and I heard his voice distinctly calling to me. I was so disturbed I could not sleep again, but every time I closed my eyes the appearance recurred, and his voice sounded distinctly, calling me 'Mamma!' I felt greatly depressed all through the next day, which was Sunday, but I did not mention it to my husband, as he was an invalid, and I feared to disturb him. Strange to say, he also suffered from intense low spirits all day, and we were both unable to take dinner, he rising from the table, saying: 'I don't care what it costs, I must have the boy back,' alluding to his eldest son.

"I mentioned my dream and the bad night I had had to two or three friends, but begged that they would say nothing of it to Mr. Griffith. The next day a letter arrived, containing some photos of my son, saying he had had fever, but was better, and hoped immediately to leave for a much more healthy station. We heard no more till the ninth of May, when a letter arrived with the news of our son's death from a fresh attack of fever, on the night of the eleventh of March, and adding that just before his death he kept calling repeatedly for me."[14]

[14] "Phantasms of the Living," vol. i, pp. 343-344.

It is only a short transition from such a dream as this to a waking hallucination in which--as in the cases of experimental occurrence mentioned above, and those other cases detailed in the preceding chapter--phantom forms are discerned at the moment when the person seen is threatened by some danger or is passing through the supreme crisis of death.

But now, accepting telepathy as an established fact, the problem remains: How are we to explain it? What is the mechanism by which one person is able to transmit messages directly and instantaneously to another person although they may be half the world apart?

To this question, it must frankly be admitted, no positive answer can as yet be returned. But some extremely plausible hypotheses have been advanced, not by mere theorists but by eminent men of science, who, themselves affirming the actuality of telepathy, have given much thought to the problem of its mode of operation.

Sir William Crookes, for example, calling attention to the marvelous but undisputed facts of ethereal vibration as evidenced by the phenomena of wireless telegraphy and the Röntgen rays, urges that here we have quite possibly an adequate explanation of the mystery of telepathy on a wholly naturalistic basis--that is to say, a basis which enables us to accept telepathy without dislocating our entire conception of the physical universe.

"It seems to me," he suggests, "that in these rays [Röntgen rays] we may have a possible way of transmitting intelligence which, with a few reasonable postulates, may supply the key to much that is obscure in psychical research. Let it be assumed that these rays, or rays of even higher frequency, can pass into the brain and act on some nervous center there. Let it be conceived that the brain contains a center which uses these rays as the vocal chords use sound vibrations (both being under the command of intelligence), and sends them out, with the velocity of light, to impinge on the receiving ganglion of another brain. In this same way the phenomena of telepathy, and the transmission of intelligence from one sensitive to another through long distances, seem to come into the domain of law and can be grasped."[15]

[15] Presidential Address to the Society for Psychical Research, January 29, 1897.

This undoubtedly is the explanation that most strongly commends itself to those scientists who courageously acknowledge their belief in telepathy. Nor do they see any objection to it in the fact that people apparently are affected by the telepathic impulse only at certain times. For the brain of both sender and receiver may conceivably, on the analogy of wireless telegraphy, be set to transmit and receive telepathic communications only when attuned to vibrations of a certain amplitude. There is, however, as Sir William Crookes himself has recognized, another and really formidable objection to this vibratory hypothesis.

It is found in the fact that, assuming telepathic messages to be conveyed by a system of infinitely minute waves in the ether, we logically have also to assume that these waves would still obey what is known as the law of inverse squares. By this is meant that, spreading on every side in ever-expanding waves, they would lose power in proportion to the square of the distance from their source. Consequently, it would not only require a tremendous initial energy to project them any great distance, but the farther they were sent the feebler they would become, so that in the case of a percipient remote from the agent, either the telepathic message would not be received at all or at most it would be received in exceedingly attenuated fashion. Whereas the fact is that, according to the results of such experimentation as that which I have described, complete failure often occurs when the experimenters are only a few yards apart, and brilliant successes are sometimes achieved at distances of hundreds of miles.

This consideration has led some thinkers--notably Sir Oliver Lodge, Professor W. F. Barrett, and the late F. W. H. Myers--to abandon outright all attempt at an explanation on a naturalistic basis, and to advance instead the view that telepathy is not explicable in physical terms because it is a wholly psychical process--"a direct and supersensuous communion of mind with mind." After all, though, as Mr. Frank Podmore has pointed out, this view rests simply on a negation--our present inability to conceive a thoroughly satisfactory explanation; and at any time scientific research may remove that inability, as has happened again and again in the past in the case of other and seemingly equally inexplicable phenomena.

Meanwhile, all that we, scientists and laymen alike, need do, is to remember that inability to explain gives us of itself no warrant to deny. We must acquaint ourselves with the facts before accepting or rejecting them. And for myself I can only say that the actuality of telepathy has to my mind been absolutely proved. With Sir Oliver Lodge:

"I am prepared to confess that the weight of testimony is sufficient to satisfy my own mind that such things do undoubtedly occur; that the distance between England and India is no barrier to the sympathetic communication of intelligence in some way of which we are at present ignorant; that just as a signaling-key in London causes a telegraphic instrument to respond instantaneously in Teheran--which is an everyday occurrence--so the danger or death of a distant child, or brother, or husband, may be signaled without wire or telegraph clerk, to the heart of a human being fitted to be the recipient of such a message."

Chapter III

Clairvoyance And Crystal-Gazing

The word clairvoyance has acquired a decidedly sinister meaning in most people's minds. It is associated with professional spiritistic mediums, who lay claim to supernatural powers which they are ready, at a moment's notice, to exercise for all who are credulous enough to pay the fee they demand. Newspapers throughout the country daily contain advertisements of clairvoyants of this type, arrant humbugs, most of them, but often able, through cunningly acquiring information regarding their "sitters'" lives and family relationships, to persuade their victims that while "entranced" they are actually in contact with the "spirit world." Repeated exposures of their fraudulent methods have not driven them out of business, but have inspired a widespread and healthy distrust of their pretensions.

Nevertheless, it would be rash to conclude, as many of us do, that there is no such thing as genuine clairvoyance, by which is meant the ability to perceive distant scenes and events as if one were bodily present at the place of their occurrence. That such a faculty exists, although usable only on rare occasions, and that there is nothing in the least supernatural about it, are facts definitely established by the scientifically trained investigators who have been diligently attacking this and other psychical problems the past twenty-five years. Their researches have made it evident that in order to explain genuine clairvoyant phenomena it is not necessary to postulate the intervention of "spirits," or the flight through space of the clairvoyant's "astral body." At most, clairvoyance is simply a special form of telepathy, differing in degree but not in kind from the phenomena discussed in the preceding chapter.

There is absolutely no evidence to justify the hypothesis of so-called "independent clairvoyance," advocated by occultists of every shade of spiritistic belief, and utilized by unscrupulous tricksters to dazzle the imagination of their dupes. On the other hand, as I hope to make convincingly clear, there is plenty of proof that the scenes which the true clairvoyant perceives, and is frequently able to describe with graphic detail, are in reality only mental images, visual hallucinations, developed by the same process that enables any ordinary telepathic message to be apprehended.

It must be acknowledged, however, that the telepathic connection is sometimes extremely difficult to trace; as, for example, in the few indisputable instances, reported by Professor James and other trustworthy investigators, in which the services of clairvoyants have been successfully invoked to find the bodies of persons drowned or otherwise accidentally killed under circumstances seemingly precluding any one from having knowledge of the place or manner of their death.

A typical case of the kind occurred a few years ago in connection with the mysterious death of a New Hampshire girl, Miss Bertha Huse, of Enfield, who was drowned in Mascoma Lake.

For three days after the disappearance of Miss Huse, one hundred and fifty of her townspeople searched vainly for her. She had last been seen alive on a long bridge crossing the lake, and it was supposed that she had fallen from it or had deliberately committed suicide. The waters were dragged but without result, and failure also attended the efforts of a professional diver from Boston employed by a sympathetic citizen.

Meantime, in the little town of Lebanon, some miles distant, a Mrs. Titus fell into a trance, during which she talked to her husband and described to him a spot in the lake where she said the body of the Huse girl was lying. So strongly was Mr. Titus impressed by her statements that, next day, he took her to Enfield, where the diver, following her instructions, quickly found the body in the place located by her.

Mrs. Titus afterwards gave other, if less sensational, demonstrations of a similar character; and Professor James, who made a close study of her case, publicly stated his belief that her experiences form "a decidedly solid document in favor of the admission of a supernormal faculty of seership--whatever preciser meaning may later come to be attached to such a phrase."

There are also on record certain well-attested dreams presenting the same difficulty of identifying the agent, or sender, of the clairvoyant vision. A characteristic dream of this sort is reported by Mrs. Alfred Wedgwood, daughter-in-law of the English savant, Hensleigh Wedgwood.

"I spent the Christmas holidays with my father-in-law in Queen Anne Street," says Mrs. Wedgwood,[16] "and in the beginning of January I had a remarkably vivid dream, which I told to him next morning at breakfast.

[16] _Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research_, vol. vii, pp. 47-48.

"I dreamed I went to a strange house, standing at the corner of a street. When I reached the top of the stairs I noticed a window opposite with a little colored glass, short muslin blinds running on a brass rod. The top of the ceiling had a window veiled by colored muslin. There were two small shrubs on a little table. The drawing-room had a bow window, with the same blinds; the library had a polished floor, with the same blinds.

"As I was going to a child's party at a cousin's, whose house I had never seen, I told my father-in-law I thought that that would prove to be the house.

"On January tenth I went with my little boy to the party, and, by mistake, gave the driver a wrong number. When he stopped at number twenty, I had misgivings about the house, and remarked to the cabman that it was not a corner house. The servant could not tell me where Mrs. H. lived, and had not a blue-book. Then I thought of my dream, and, as a last resource, I walked down the street, looking up for the peculiar blinds I had observed in my dream. These I met with at number fifty, a corner house, and, knocking at the door, was relieved to find that it was the house of which I was in search.

"On going up-stairs, the room and windows corresponded with what I had seen in my dream, and the same little shrubs in their pots were standing on the landing. The window in which I had seen the colored glass was hidden by the blind being down, but I learned on inquiry that it was really there."

In this case the dream, though devoid of any dramatic feature, served a useful purpose, as did a much more spectacular dream occurring to Doctor A. K. Young, an Irish magistrate and land-owner.[17] In his dream he suddenly found himself standing at the gate of a friend's park, many miles from home. Near by were a group of persons, one a woman with a basket on her arm, the rest men, four of whom were tenants of his own, while the others were unknown to him. Some of the strangers seemed to be making a murderous attack on one of his tenants, and he ran to his rescue.

[17] The evidence relating to this dream will be found in "Phantasms of the Living," vol. i, pp. 381-383.

"I struck violently at the man on my left," he says, "and then with greater violence at the man to my right. Finding to my surprise that I did not knock either of them down, I struck again and again, with all the violence of a man frenzied at the sight of my poor friend's murder. To my great amazement, I saw that my arms, although visible to my eye, were without substance; and the bodies of the men I struck at and my own came close together after each blow through the shadowy arms I struck with. My blows were delivered with more extreme violence than I think I ever exerted; but I became painfully convinced of my incompetency. I have no consciousness of what happened, after this feeling of unsubstantiality came upon me."

Next morning Doctor Young awoke feeling stiff and sore, and his wife informed him that he had greatly alarmed her during the night by striking out "as if fighting for his life." He then told her of his curious dream, and asked her to remember the names of the actors in it recognized by him. The following day he received a letter from his land agent stating that the tenant whom he had dreamed he saw attacked had been found unconscious, and apparently dying, at the very spot where Doctor Young had in his dream tried to defend him; and that there was no clue to his assailants.

That night Doctor Young started for the scene of the tragedy, and immediately upon his arrival applied to the local magistrate for warrants for the arrest of the three men whom, besides the injured tenant, he had recognized in the vision. All three, when arrested and questioned separately, told the same story, confirming the details of the dream, even to the incident of the presence of the woman with the basket. They had said nothing about the affair because they were afraid it would make trouble for them, but they denied any complicity in it, asserting that while walking home with them between eleven and twelve at night, the tenant--who, by the way, ultimately recovered--had been attacked by a couple of strangers, whose companions had prevented them from interfering to protect him.

According to Mrs. Young, it was between eleven and twelve o'clock on the night of the fight that her sleeping husband had frightened her by his violent actions.

Here the telepathic impulse causing the clairvoyant dream may have come either from the injured tenant himself or from one of the three spectators known to Doctor Young. The difficulty is to conceive an adequate reason for any of them thinking of him, even subconsciously. But, granting for argument's sake the possibility of independent clairvoyance, the still more thorny question at once arises why his "astral body" should have chosen to journey to that precise spot at that precise moment.

The obstacles in the way of such a conception as independent clairvoyance are too serious to be overcome. Nor is it necessary to resort to it, in view of the fact that in the vast majority of clairvoyant cases it is possible to establish definitely the telepathic association.

Here, by way of illustration, is a typical case, fully as impressive as Doctor Young's, but leaving no doubt as to its origin. It was reported to the Society for Psychical Research by Mrs. Hilda West, daughter of Sir John Crowe, who was at the time British consul general for Norway.

"My father and brother," runs Mrs. West's narrative, "were on a journey during the winter. I was expecting them home, without knowing the exact day of their return. I had gone to bed at the usual time, about eleven P. M. Some time in the night I had a vivid dream, which made a great impression on me.

"I dreamed I was looking out of a window, when I saw father driving in a Spids sledge, followed in another by my brother. They had to pass a cross-road, on which another traveler was driving very fast, also in a sledge with one horse. Father seemed to drive on without observing the other fellow, who would, without fail, have driven over father if he had not made his horse rear, so that I saw my father drive under the hoofs of the horse. Every moment I expected the horse would fall down and crush him. I cried out 'Father! Father!' and woke in a great fright.

"The next morning my father and brother returned. I said to them: 'I am so glad to see you arrive quite safely, as I had such a dreadful dream about you last night.' My brother said: 'You could not have been in greater fright about him than I was.' And then he related to me what had happened, which tallied exactly with my dream. My brother in his fright, when he saw the feet of the horse over father's head, called out: 'Oh, father! Father!'"

Compare with this the very similar instance of clairvoyance in a waking or semi-waking state, experienced by Mrs. Helen Avery Robinson, of Anchorage, Kentucky, and communicated by her, with a corroborative letter from her son, to Professor Hyslop:

"My son and a friend had driven across the country to dine and spend the evening with friends. The rest of the household had retired for the night. I was awakened by the telephone, and looked at the clock, finding it eleven-thirty. I knew my son would soon be in, and thought of a window down-stairs, which I felt might not have been locked, and I determined to remain awake and ask my son to make sure it was secure.

"As I lay waiting and listening for him, I suddenly saw their vehicle, a light break-cart, turn over, my son jump out, land on his feet, run to the struggling horse's head, his friend hold on to the lines, and in a moment it was gone and I knew all was right and felt no disturbance.

"I met my son as he came in, and spoke of the window. He said: 'We tipped over, mother.' I replied: 'Yes, I know it. I saw you.' And described what I saw, which he said was just as it happened. I did not see them before they started out, as his friend called for him with his horse and vehicle, so I did not know in what style they went."

It should be added that the spot where the cart was overturned was so far from the Robinson house that, even had it been broad daylight, Mrs. Robinson could not possibly have witnessed the accident from her bedroom.

In the same way a young man named Frederic Marks, in Wallingford, Connecticut, clairvoyantly--and most dramatically--beheld an accident occurring to his brother, Charles, on Oneida Lake, in New York State, hundreds of miles from Wallingford.[18] Charles Marks and a friend, Arthur Bloom, had gone for a sail on the lake, were caught in a storm, and almost wrecked through the giving way of their boom. Charles, however, springing into the bow, managed to make the boom fast again, and they succeeded in running to shore.

[18] The evidence relating to this case is published in the _Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research_, vol. vii, pp. 359-364.

It was when their danger was greatest that they were seen clairvoyantly by Frederic Marks, who, it being a rainy afternoon in Wallingford, was lounging in his room.

"I do not think I fell asleep," he testifies, "nor did I seem fully awake. But all at once I seemed to be facing a severe storm of wind and rain. As I looked into the storm a small boat with a sail came, driven helplessly along through a seething, boiling mass of water. Two young men were in it, one trying to steer and control the boat, the other apparently trying to dip out water and work on the sail.

"One of the two, in a moment of greatest peril, tried to tear down the sail from its mast. The face of my brother came clearly into view, with an expression on it that remains with me now. The boat righted and sped on. I saw a low shore that it was driving toward. The boat grew fainter as it neared the shore, and consciousness came back to me, and, whatever it was, whether a dream or a vision, passed away."

Fortunately, young Marks did not keep his singular experience to himself, but hastened down-stairs and told his employer--a Mr. Bristol, with whom he was living--of what he had seen. He was laughed at, of course, and assured that it was "only a dream." But three or four days afterward a letter arrived from Charles Marks, bringing unexpected verification of his brother's story.

Even more detailed, in point of clairvoyant perception of a distant scene, is the strange dream of a physician, Doctor C. Golinski, of Krementchug, Russia. It was Doctor Golinski's custom to take a nap during the day, and one afternoon he lay down on a sofa as usual, about half-past three. While asleep, he says:[19]

[19] _Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research_, vol. vii, pp. 39-41.

"I dreamed that the doorbell rang, and that I had the usual rather disagreeable sensation that I must get up and go to some sick person. Then I found myself transported directly into a little room with dark hangings. To the right of the door leading into the room is a chest of drawers, and on this I see a little paraffin lamp of a special pattern. To the left of the door I see a bed, on which lies a woman suffering from severe hemorrhage. I do not know how I come to know that she has a hemorrhage, but I know it. I examine her, but rather to satisfy my conscience than for any other reason, as I know beforehand how things are, although no one speaks to me. Afterward I dream vaguely of medical assistance which I give, and then I awake."

It was then half-past four. About ten minutes later the doorbell rang, and Doctor Golinski was summoned to a patient. His surprise may be imagined when he found that he was ushered into the identical room of his dream. So astonished was he that he immediately approached the bed on which his patient was lying, and said to her:

"You are suffering from a hemorrhage."

"Yes," was her reply, in a tone of great astonishment. "But how do you know it?"

She then told him, in answer to his questions, that the hemorrhage had set in about one o'clock, but had not been severe enough to alarm her until between three and four; and that it was not until nearly half-past four that she had decided to send for him.

Nearly every instance of spontaneous clairvoyance that is sufficiently authenticated to compel credence, resembles these cases, and the similarity between them and cases of ordinary telepathic hallucination, as described in the chapter on telepathy, is too striking, it seems to me, to leave any doubt regarding their true nature. The only points of difference are that there is a greater amount of detail in clairvoyant visions, and that the percipient often experiences a sensation of being actually present at the scene beheld. But this latter fact is easily comprehensible when we remember that the same sensation of "otherplaceness" is often experienced in dreams that have no clairvoyant significance, and experienced with an equal feeling of reality, dissipated only when the dreamer awakes. As to the greater amount of detail, it is only necessary to assume that in clairvoyant cases the telepathic action is intensified by some favoring condition in the percipient's mind, just as some non-clairvoyant dreams are more detailed and vivid than others.

Besides which, the telepathic basis of clairvoyance has been experimentally demonstrated. One of the investigators for the Society for Psychical Research, Mr. G. A. Smith, once hypnotized a lady and requested her to "look into" the business office of a friend of his and tell him what she saw there. Much to his surprise she immediately began to describe the office with great exactness, although he was positive she had never visited it.

It then occurred to him that possibly she was acquiring her knowledge of it by telepathy from his own mind, and to test this theory he thought of an imaginary umbrella, which he pictured to himself as lying open on his friend's writing table. In a minute or so, the clairvoyant uttered a cry of astonishment, and exclaimed:

"Why, how strange! There's a large umbrella open on the table!"

Usually, however, experiments like this fail, the entranced clairvoyant being able to discriminate between the thoughts which correspond to reality and those which are wholly imaginary. But that the process involved in clairvoyance is unquestionably telepathic has been otherwise proved by the fact that when conditions are imposed on clairvoyants absolutely excluding the possibility of thought transference from one mind to another, they are conspicuously unsuccessful in their efforts to obtain results. If, as often happens, they are able to describe distant places which they have never seen but with which other persons are necessarily familiar, they are nevertheless unable to state, for example, the number on a bank note, chosen at random from among others and placed in their hands in a sealed box without anybody previously ascertaining just what the number is.

Such a test, if successful, would be decisive proof of independent clairvoyance; but I have yet to learn of any clairvoyant who has been able to meet it, although the effort has been frequently made. It should be pointed out that, in order to give it evidential value, there must not be the slightest possibility of any one even glancing at the bank note before it is put into the sealed box; for, as has already been said, it is now known that the eye is far keener than we usually realize, and that the merest glance may often put us in possession of facts which, sinking into the memory, may afterward emerge to astonish and perhaps mystify us. Once they were lodged in the mind, a clairvoyant could, of course, obtain these facts from us telepathically, and thus achieve a seeming success even in the bank note or some similar test.

Indeed, this power of subconscious perception is of itself sufficient to explain many undoubtedly genuine instances of clairvoyance. There is obviously no need to go beyond it to account for such a clairvoyant dream as the following, reported by a lady who has declined to allow her name to be published:

"A number of years ago I was invited to visit a friend who lived at a large and beautiful country seat on the Hudson. Shortly after my arrival I started, with a number of other guests, to make a tour of the very extensive grounds. We walked for an hour or more, and thoroughly explored the place. Upon my return to the house, I discovered that I had lost a gold cuff-stud, which I valued for association's sake. I merely remembered that I wore it when we started out, and did not think of or notice it again until my return, when it was missing. As it was quite dark, it seemed useless to search for it, especially as it was the season of autumn and the ground was covered with dead leaves.

"That night I dreamed that I saw a withered grapevine clinging to a wall, and with a pile of dead leaves at its base. Underneath the leaves, in my dream, I distinctly saw my stud gleaming. The following morning I asked the friends with whom I had been walking the previous afternoon if they remembered seeing any such wall and vine, as I did not. They replied that they could not recall anything answering the description. I did not tell them why I asked, as I felt somewhat ashamed of the dream; but, during the morning, I made some excuse to go out on the grounds alone. I walked hither and thither, and, after a long time, I suddenly came upon the wall and vine exactly as they looked in my dream.

"I had not the slightest recollection of seeing them, or passing by them on the previous day. The dead leaves at the base were lying heaped up, as in my dream. I approached cautiously, feeling rather uncomfortable and decidedly silly, and pushed them aside. I had scattered a large number of the leaves when a gleam of gold struck my eye, and there lay the stud, exactly as in my dream."[20]

[20] _Proceedings of the American Society for Psychical Research_, vol. i, pp. 361-362.

Akin to this is an exceptionally interesting case that was reported to me by a young lady attending college at Greeley, Colorado. Her father, it appears, had sent her a check, which for a day or two she delayed cashing. Then, being without money, she looked for it in the place where she supposed she had put it, but, to her dismay, discovered that it was not there. A thorough search of her room failed to bring it to light, and, as it was not a personal check of her father's, she was greatly worried, thinking that it might be impossible to duplicate it.

A couple of nights later she had a curious dream in which she saw herself standing in front of a bookcase in the college library. On a certain shelf were five books, one bound in blue, another in yellow, and between them three with a white binding. She took down one of the white-covered volumes, opened it idly, and in the middle of the book found her check.

Next morning she awoke with no memory of the dream, nor did she recall it when, later in the day, she visited the college library and came across this identical placing of books. It recurred to her only when she glanced into one of the white-covered volumes. Feeling rather "foolish," and also not a little apprehensive, she took down a second volume of the same set, opened it, and there, sure enough, was the missing check!

She then remembered that the book in which it was found had been in her room for some hours the day she received her father's letter. What happened, I have no doubt, was that she absentmindedly slipped the check into the book, and then, so far as her upper consciousness was concerned, forgot all about it. But subconsciously she would remember and subconsciously would be reminded of it the day before the dream when, in the college library, she happened to see the same book again, without, perchance, any conscious knowledge of seeing it. That night, in sleep, her mind busied itself once more with the problem of the missing check, this time to good purpose.

Very similar is a dream for which I am indebted to Mr. Andrew Lang, who got it from the dreamer, an English lawyer. This gentleman had sat up late to write letters, and about half-past twelve went out to post them. On his return he missed a check for a large amount received by him during the day. He searched everywhere in vain, went to bed, and soon fell asleep. Then he dreamed that he saw the check curled around an area railing not far from his own door. Waking, he was so impressed that, although it was not yet daylight, he got up, dressed, walked out of the house, and found the check at the spot indicated by his dream.

In another case a Californian, visiting in Sullivan County, New York, lost a gold ring given him by his sister. That night he dreamed he saw it lying in the sand beneath a swing, in which he had been sitting in the afternoon. It was actually there, as he ascertained by looking next day. Similarly, a clerk in a customs house recovered a valuable document, the loss of which would have cost him his position. And the wife of a clergyman, the Reverend W. F. Brand, of Emmorton, Maryland, had revealed to her in a dream the hiding-place of a sum of money which, six months before, she had put away at her husband's request, but had afterward accidentally slipped into a bundle of shawls.

Decidedly, we not only see more than we are aware of, but we also remember more and for a far longer time than is usually supposed.

Which brings me to another point of great importance to the student of clairvoyance and other psychical problems, and also, as will appear in a later chapter, of tremendous significance in affairs of everyday life. The tenacity of memory is such that nothing one sees is really forgotten. It merely slips, as it were, into some subterranean region of the mind, whence, days and months and even years afterward, it may be recalled. Of this we have incontrovertible proof in the phenomena of crystal-gazing, a species of clairvoyance in which, by gazing into a crystal or a glass of water, or any small body with a reflecting surface, it is sometimes possible to perceive hallucinatory pictures of people and places situated far beyond the gazer's normal field of vision, and occasionally depicting events occurring at the moment they are seen in the crystal.

Occultists, as will readily be understood, set great store by crystal-gazing, finding in it positive proof of spirit action. But again it is unnecessary, even in the most extraordinary instances recorded, to adopt any other explanatory hypothesis than that of telepathy, and in most cases the source of the visions can be traced directly to latent memories in the gazer's own mind.

This has been beautifully demonstrated by Miss Goodrich-Freer, a lady who developed the faculty of crystal-gazing for the express purpose of studying and analyzing its hallucinatory images. Not everybody, I should perhaps say, can attain the degree of mental passivity requisite to seeing pictures in the crystal, but fortunately for the cause of scientific progress, Miss Goodrich-Freer was eminently successful.

With the aid of her crystal, Miss Goodrich-Freer has frequently recalled dates and other information which she had forgotten and wished to remember; and on at least one occasion, under exceptionally peculiar circumstances, she was enabled to supply an address which was of no special interest to her, but was of special interest to a relative. Here is her own account of the episode:[21]

[21] In the _Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research_, vol. viii, p. 489.

"A relative of mine was talking one day with a caller in the room next to that in which I was reading, and beyond wishing that they were _farther_, I paid no attention to anything they said, and certainly could have declared positively that I did not hear a word. Next day I saw in a polished mahogany table, '1, Earl's Square, Notting Hill.' I had no idea whose this address might be; but some days later my relative remarked: 'H. (the caller aforesaid) has left Kensington. She told me her address the other day, but I did not write it down.' It occurred to me to ask: 'Was it, 1, Earl's Square?' And this turned out to be the case."

On another occasion, she says in the long report she has made on the subject to the Society for Psychical Research, she saw in the crystal the picture of a dark-colored wall, covered with white jessamine. She had been taking a walk that morning through the streets of London, and she thought that perhaps the crystal image represented some spot she had passed in her walk, though this seemed unlikely, both because she could not remember having seen such a wall, and because jessamine-covered walls are by no means common in London streets. But the next day she retraced her steps, and presently came to the identical scene of her crystal vision, the sight of it bringing the immediate recollection that at the moment she passed this spot the day before she had been engaged in absorbing conversation with a friend, and her attention was wholly preoccupied. The fact, however, of its reproduction in the crystal made it evident that, by the subtle power of subconscious perception she had obtained a perfect mental image of it.

Similarly, while busied one day with household accounts, she opened the drawer of her writing table to get her bank-book, and her hand came in contact with her crystal. Welcoming the suggestion of a change in occupation, she took it up, and began to gaze into it. But, she says:

"Figures were still uppermost, and the crystal had nothing more attractive to show me than the combination seven-six-nine-four. Dismissing this as probably the number of the cab I had driven in that day, or a chance grouping of the figures with which I had been occupied, I laid aside the crystal and took up my bank-book, which I certainly had not seen for some months, and found, to my surprise, that the number on the cover was 7694. Had I wished to recall the figures, I should, without doubt, have failed, and could not even have guessed at the number of digits or the value of the first figure."

It is not surprising to find Miss Goodrich-Freer adding:

"Certainly, one result of crystal-gazing is to teach one to abjure the verb 'to forget' in all its moods and tenses."

Still it is possible that in the act of opening the drawer, she caught a glimpse, without realizing it, of the number on the bank-book. There are many cases, though, in her experience and in the experience of other crystal-gazers, proving absolutely that latent memories dating back even to childhood may be thus recalled; and similar evidence is forthcoming from hallucinations experienced without the aid of a crystal. A "psychic" with whom Professor Hyslop has often experimented, and whose home is in Brooklyn, used to have a recurrent visual hallucination of a bright blue sky overhead, a garden with a high fence, and a peculiar chain pump in the garden, situated at the back of the house.

Some time later she left Brooklyn to pay a visit to her girlhood home in Ohio, where she met a lady who invited her to tea. After tea they went into the garden, and there, to her amazement, she saw the high fence and the chain pump of her hallucination. She felt quite sure that she had never been in the place until that day, and it looked very much as though she had been given a supernatural revelation of it. But the mystery was solved on her return to Brooklyn.

Telling her mother of her odd experience, she asked if she thought there was any possibility she could have visited that particular house and garden in her younger days.

"Why, yes," was the unexpected reply. "When you were a little girl, two or three years old, I often took you to it."

But not all crystal visions may thus be attributed to the emergence of subconscious perceptions or the recrudescence of forgotten memories. There are some in which the telepathic action of mind upon mind is clearly manifested, and in which the crystal seems to serve as a mechanical aid, enabling the percipient to become aware of the telepathic message. In no case, however, as I have already said, is it necessary to go beyond telepathy to find an adequate explanation.

The same applies to the still more singular phenomena to which we shall turn next--the phenomena of automatic speaking and writing, regarded by many as affording incontrovertible proof of the validity of the spiritistic belief that the dead can and do communicate with the living.

Chapter IV

Automatic Speaking And Writing

There is a widespread belief that spiritism--or spiritualism, as it is more commonly known--is on the wane, and will soon be relegated to the limbo of extinct religions. But the facts indicate otherwise. At a conservative estimate, there are to-day, in the United States alone, no fewer than 75,000 avowed spiritists, in more or less regular attendance at the meetings of nearly 450 spiritist societies, and possessing church property valued at $2,000,000; and more than 1,500,000 believers who, without openly identifying themselves with any society, accept the ministrations of 1,500 public and 10,000 private mediums. Spiritism has even "followed the flag" into the Philippines, séances being held at Manila and elsewhere.

This certainly is a remarkable showing for a moribund religion, and what makes it more remarkable is the fact that spiritism, from its very beginnings sixty years ago, has been permeated with fraud. Its founders, the Fox sisters, daughters of a New York farmer, were naughty little girls who amused themselves by making strange noises which superstitious persons interpreted as communications from the dead. This proving profitable to the sisters Fox, the business of producing "spirit knockings" spread from town to town, and forthwith modern spiritism was born. Since then its record has been a long and dismal catalogue of swindles exposed by skeptical investigators. Scarcely a month passes without a story of some sensational exposé; yet, disproving all predictions to the contrary, spiritism continues to expand, constantly welcoming new recruits to its ranks.

Several reasons account for its amazing progress under what would appear to be the most adverse conditions imaginable. One is the innate tendency of many people to dabble with the occult and mysterious. Another is the appeal spiritism makes to the most sacred emotions of humanity. Its central doctrine is that it is possible for the dead to communicate with their surviving relatives and friends, through the mediumship of "psychics" gifted with extraordinary powers. Thus the hope is raised that messages of good cheer may be received from loved ones who have passed to the great Beyond--that their voices may be heard, their faces seen, and their hands clasped by those from whom death has separated them.

To the spiritistic séance, consequently, go grief-stricken men and women, skeptical perhaps, but fervently hopeful that their skepticism will be overcome. To borrow Professor James's striking phrase, they are already deeply imbued with "the will to believe," and are in no mood for close observation of what happens in the séance room. Usually, to speak plainly, they are utterly lacking in the qualities that make a scientific investigator. The sense of their loss is all-absorbing, and in this state of mind it is easy for any trickster who poses as a medium to delude them into fancying that they have actually been in touch with the dead.

But the main reason why spiritism has survived repeated exposés, and persists as a force to be reckoned with in the religious life of to-day, is the fact that it is by no means altogether synonymous with swindling. There are certain phenomena, particularly so-called automatic speaking and writing, which it is out of the question to attribute invariably to trickery and deceit. While one need have no hesitation in dismissing as fraudulent[22] all "physical" mediums--that is to say, mediums whose stock in trade is the production of such phenomena as the "materialization" of spirit forms and faces, the levitation and flinging about of furniture, and the striking of the "sitters" by unseen hands--the case of the automatists, or "psychical" mediums, is decidedly different.

[22] Of course, strictly speaking, the term "fraudulent" should not be applied to those mediums who are the victims of a peculiar form of hysteria. This is discussed in detail in the next chapter.

These are mediums who, after passing into a peculiar condition of trance, and occasionally while seemingly in their usual waking state, appear to be controlled by some outside intelligence, and, when so controlled, utter or write information which it is hard, if not impossible, to believe they could have obtained by any ordinary means. To be sure, there is a host of spurious automatists, against whom one cannot be too watchfully on guard. Some of these are out and out cheats, as brazen as the most rascally materializers. Some depend for their success on guessing and on inferences shrewdly drawn from hints unconsciously dropped by their patrons. Quite a number, however, undoubtedly seem to exercise a gift not possessed--or, at all events, not utilized--by everyday men and women.

One Sunday evening, in the late nineties, I visited the spiritist church on Bedford Avenue, Brooklyn, of which the late Ira Moore Corliss was then pastor. In his day Mr. Corliss was probably the most prominent medium in Brooklyn, a city where spiritism has always flourished. He was an obviously religious-minded man, and one who sincerely believed that it was his mission to act as an intermediary between this world and the next. That evening the usual order of services in spiritist churches was followed--a prayer, some hymn singing, a sermon, or "inspirational discourse," and, lastly, the giving of "test messages," in which the medium passed rapidly up and down the aisles, pausing here and there to deliver oral communications alleged to come from the world of spirits.

Seated next to me was an elderly gentleman of dignified appearance, who watched the proceedings with a quiet smile of contempt. It was evident that this was the first time he had ever seen anything of the kind, and that he was both amused and disgusted. Suddenly Mr. Corliss, halting directly in front of him, said, in the quick, nervous way common to him when under "spirit control":

"I have a message for you, sir."

"For me?" repeated the elderly gentleman, incredulously.

"Yes, sir, for you. There is a spirit here that wants to thank you for your kindly thought of him to-day. It is the spirit of a rather tall man, heavily built, clean-shaven, with bright, tender eyes. He says his name is Henry Ward Beecher."

The smile faded from the other's face. He bent forward, listening intently.

"Go on," he said.

"This spirit," continued the medium, "says that