deal happened. I had been sitting over the fire with M., smoking and chatting. About 12:30 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 that I was not dreaming; but on laying it down I saw you still there. While I gazed, without speaking, you faded away.’ ”
In the case which follows, the initials only are used; but the writer of the account was known to the officers of the S. P. R., who vouched for the general trustworthiness of the writer:
“On a certain Sunday evening in November, 1881, having been reading of the great power which the human will is capable of exercising, I determined, with the whole force of my being, that I would be present in spirit in the front bedroom of the second floor of a house situated at 22 Hogarth Road, Kensington, in which room slept two young ladies of my acquaintance—namely, Miss L. S. V. and Miss E. C. V., aged respectively twenty-five and eleven years. I was living at the time at 23 Kildare Gardens, at a distance of about three miles from Hogarth Road, and I had not mentioned in any way my intention of trying this experiment to either of the above ladies, for the simple reason that it was only on retiring to rest upon this Sunday night that I made up my mind to do so. The time at which I determined to be there was one o’clock in the morning; and I had a strong intention of making my presence perceptible. On the following Thursday I went to see the ladies in question, and, in the course of my conversation (without any allusion to the subject on my part), the elder one told me that on the previous Saturday night she had been much terrified by perceiving me standing by her bedside, and that she screamed when the apparition advanced towards her, and awoke her little sister, who also saw me.
“I asked her if she was awake at the time, and she replied most decidedly in the affirmative; and, upon my inquiring the time of the occurrence, she replied, ‘About one o’clock in the morning.’
“This lady at my request wrote down a statement of the event, and signed it. …”
Mr. Gurney (one of the authors of Phantasms of the Living) became deeply interested in these experiments, and requested Mr. B. to notify him in advance on the next occasion when he proposed to make his presence known in this strange manner. Accordingly, March 22d, 1884, he received the following letter:
“Dear Mr. Gurney:—I am going to try the experiment to-night of making my presence perceptible at 44 Morland Square, at 12 P. M. I will let you know the result in a few days. Yours very sincerely, “S. H. B.”
The next letter, which was written on April 3, contained the following statement, prepared by the recipient, Miss L. S. Verity:
“On Saturday night, March 22, 1884, at about midnight, I had a distinct impression that Mr. S. H. B. was present in my room, and I distinctly saw him, being quite awake. He came toward me and stroked my hair. I voluntarily gave him this information when he called to see me on Wednesday, April 2, telling him the time and the circumstances of the apparition without any suggestion on his part. The appearance in my room was most vivid and quite unmistakable.”
Miss A. S. Verity also furnishes this corroborative statement:
“I remember my sister telling me that she had seen S. H. B. and that he touched her hair, before he came to see us on April 2.”
The agent’s statement of the affair is as follows:
“On Saturday, March 22, I determined to make my presence perceptible to Miss V. at 44 Morland Square, Notting Hill, at twelve midnight; and as I had previously arranged with Mr. Gurney that I should post him a letter of the evening on which I tried my next experiment (stating the time and other particulars) I sent him a note to acquaint him with the above facts. About ten days afterwards I called upon Miss V., and she voluntarily told me that on March 22, at twelve o’clock, midnight, she had seen me so vividly in her room (whilst wide awake) that her nerves had been much shaken, and she had been obliged to send for a doctor in the morning.”
These cases will at least prove the possibility of such a thing as “experimental apparitions,” and, explain them as we may, they are, at all events, most interesting and significant. They prove the reality of “telepathic phantasms”—of apparitions produced in another by the power of mind. This is, at least, the modern conception of the facts.
TELEPATHIC HALLUCINATIONS
How may the theory be said to work? How can a telepathic impulse from a distant mind cause a picture to appear in space, as it were, before the recipient? Here is the last word of modern science in this direction; here is the theory which has been advanced to explain puzzling cases of this character.
When we look at and see an object, the sight-centers of the brain are roused into activity; unless they are so aroused, we see nothing, and whenever they are so aroused, no matter from what cause, we have the sensation of sight. We see.
But we get no further than this; we do not reason about the thing seen, or analyze; or think to ourselves, “this is a red apple; I like red apples,” etc. No, we only see or perceive the object. All the reasoning about the object takes place in the higher thought-centres of the brain. A diagram will, perhaps, help to make all this clear.
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