EXPERIENCES OF WELL-KNOWN PERSONS

 IT has frequently been the accusation that experiences purporting to represent the supernatural are confined to the ignorant and superstitious. The work of the English Society has been a convincing refutation of this reproach; there can be no doubt of the respectability and intelligence of those who reported the facts of their experience. It is true enough that "old wives' fables," and dreams of sailors, porters, and coachmen will never affect the minds of scientific psychologists, for obvious reasons. It is just as true that experiences from these classes, if subjected to cross­questioning and to corroboration, have interest. But the mere word of an intelligent person secures attention, and in scientific matters may often go far to silence ridicule or to invite investigation.

 The first instance of note is the apparition of his friend, appearing to Lord Brougham. It is taken from "Phantasms of the Living," where it was copied from his own biography. He and a friend at the University of Edinburgh had discussed the immortality of the soul, and had signed in their own blood an agreement that whichever died first should appear to the other. Soon after they left the University the friend went out to India in the government service, and was there some years; meanwhile he was almost forgotten by Lord Brougham. The latter was travelling in Sweden in cold weather, and at about 1 P.M. he was taking a hot bath. Suddenly he saw an apparition of his friend in the chair where he had left his own clothes. He got out of the bath; but, on recovering from what was evidently a trance, he found that his friend had disappeared. He wrote down the facts, with the date, in his journal. He returned to Edinburgh; and some weeks later received a letter from India, bearing the same date as that recording his experience in his journal, and, telling of the death of his friend

 Mr. Andrew Lang records that he once saw an apparition which he took for Professor Conington; he ascertained afterwards that the time coincided very closely with that of Professor Conington's death. The latter was one hundred miles distant at the time.

 James Cotter Morison, a literary man well-known in England, is sponsor for an incident of some interest. He writes to the authors of "Phantasms of the Living ":

"My mother and grandmother were together in the dining room of their house in the Isle of Wight, occupied in some domestic matter which made the exclusion of chance visitors desirable. A sudden knock at the door caused my grandmother to hasten to it with a view to taking the stranger into the drawing room. The knock was heard by both mother and daughter. On opening the door with the least loss of time possible, my grandmother was surprised to find not only no one there, but no one even in the long corridor which led to the drawing room. My mother distinctly remembered the look of astonishment in her mother's face as she returned from the door. Nothing more was said on the subject, but in a short time afterwards a letter was received from London from my grandmother's sister, saying that she (the sister) had been most seriously ill, at death's door indeed, but was now a little better, and wished my grandmother to come and see her. The latter went up to town and found her sister still very ill, but slowly recovering. After the mutual endearments natural to such an occasion, my grandmother said:

"'Do you know, such a strange thing occurred, exactly at the time, it seems, when you were supposed to be dead or dying.'

 "'I know what you are going to say,' said the other. 'When I was in the trance which was mistaken for death, I thought I went to your house in the Isle of Wight and knocked at your drawing room door. You opened it instantly and looked much affrighted at not seeing me or any one, though I saw you.'

"The singular point in the story is the anticipation by the one sister of what the other was going to say.

"No theory or inference was ever deduced by my relations from the circumstance and it was only mentioned as an odd coincidence by them and their friends, who, as well as my mother, have often told me the story"

Mr. Morison then adds that his grandmother was a woman of "strong understanding" and "had an aversion to what she called superstition, belief in ghosts, etc."

G. J. Romanes, the contemporary and scientific peer of Charles Darwin, narrates the following as his own personal experience. As an evolutionist, his name is known the world over.

"Towards the end of March, 1879, in the dead of night, while believing myself to be awake, I thought the door at the head of my bed was opened and a white figure passed along the side of the bed to the foot, where it faced about and showed me it was covered head and all in a shroud. Then with its hands it suddenly parted the shroud over the face, revealing between its two hands the face of my sister, who was ill in another room. I exclaimed her name, whereupon the figure vanished instantly. Next day (and certainly on account of the shock given me by the above experience), I called in Sir William Jenner, who said my sister had not many days to live. (She died, in fact, very soon afterward.)

"I was in good health, without any grief or anxiety. My sister was being attended by our family doctor, who did not suspect anything serious; therefore I had had no anxiety at all on her account, nor had she herself."

Robert Louis Stevenson reported to Mr. Myers four different experiences which represent dissociation or split consciousness. It is not necessary to detail them here.

Professor J. Estlin Carpenter reports a case of apparition within his own knowledge, though it is not evidential.

Ben Jonson had a vision of his son "with a bloodie cross upon his forehead," coincidental with the child's death at a distance.

Among experiences of Americans, the first case of interest is that of James G. Blaine as told by Gail Hamilton in a little brochure called "X­Rays." She collected there a large number of significant experiences; the present incident is connected with death visions and represents two different persons seeing the same deceased man or an apparition of him at different times. Mrs. Coppinger was the daughter and Walker was the son of James G. Blaine.

 "Mrs. Coppinger died two weeks after the death of her brother Walker. In the later stages of her illness, she more than once spoke of his presence and tried to convince others of it. 'Do not you see Walker?' she asked. 'He is looking at you as if he loved you.' When, two years afterwards, her father was near the other world, as he lay quiet and silent in the evening dusk, a sorrowing watcher said, in a low voice, 'I am dreading all the time to hear him talk of Walker. Don't you remember Alice?' The next evening at the same hour we were sitting in the same place, when Mr. Blaine suddenly exclaimed 'Walker!' in the familiar tone of slight, pleasant surprise."

 Such visions are not necessarily premonitory of death, though they are invariably indications that the person is near death. He or she may recover, but as the larger proportion of people so near death actually die, the popular belief has arisen that such visions are premonitions.

 Carl Schurz, an officer in the Civil War and afterwards a member of the United States Senate from Missouri, tells the following experience in his "Memoirs," which were published in "McClure's Magazine" for April, 1908. He was a scholar of the best type as well as an able statesman.

 "On the way to Washington, something strange happened to me which may be of interest to the speculative psychologist. In Philadelphia I had supper at the home of my intimate friend, Mr. Tiedemann, son of the eminent professor of medicine at the University of Heidelberg, and brother of Colonel Tiedemann, one of whose aides-de-camp I had been during the siege of the Fortress of Rastatt in 1849. Mrs. Tiedemann was a sister of Frederick Hecker, the famous revolutionary leader in Germany, who in this country had rendered distinguished service as a Union officer. The Tiedemanns had lost two sons in our army, one in Kansas, and the other, a darling boy, in the Shenandoah Valley. The mother, a lady of a bright mind and a lively imagination, happened to become acquainted with a circle of spiritualists, and received 'messages' from her two sons, which were of the ordinary sort, but which moved her so much that she became a believer. The Doctor, too, although belonging to a school of philosophy which looked down upon such things with a certain disdain, could not restrain a sentimental interest in the pretended communication from her lost boys, and permitted experiment to be made in his family. This was done with much zest. On the evening of which I speak it was resolved to have a seance. One of the daughters, an uncommonly beautiful, intelligent, and highs-spirited girl of about fifteen, had shown remarkable qualities as a I writing medium,' When the circle was formed around the table, hands touching, a shiver seemed to pass over her, her fingers began to twitch, she grasped a pencil held out to her, and, as if obeying an irresistible impulse, she wrote in a jerking way upon a piece of paper placed before her the 'messages' given her by the 'spirits' who wore present. So it happened that evening. The names of various deceased persons known to the family were announced, but they had nothing to say except that they 'lived in a higher sphere,' and were 'happy,' were 'often with us,' and 'wished us all to be happy,' etc.

 "Finally I was asked by one of the family if I could not take part in the proceeding by calling for some spirit in whom I took an interest. I consented and called for Schiller. For a minute or two the hand of the girl remained quiet; then she wrote that the spirit of Schiller had come and asked what I wished of him. I answered that I wished him by way of identification, to quote a verse or two from one of his works. Then the girl wrote in German the following:

 

Vcn Lichtern hell. Wer sind die frohlichen? Ich hore rauschende music, das Schloss ist

 

We were all struck with astonishment; the sound of the language was much like Schiller's works but none of us remembered for a moment in which of Schiller's works the lines might be found. At last it occurred to me that they might be in the last act of 'Wallenstein's Tod.' The volume was brought out and true enough there they were. I asked myself, 'Can it be that the girl, who, although very intelligent, has never been given to much reading, should have read so serious a work as 'Wallenstein's Death'; and, if she has, that those verses, which have meaning only in connection with what precedes and follows them, should have stuck in her memory? I asked her, when the seance was over, what she knew about the Wallenstein tragedy, and she, an entirely truthful child, answered that she had never read a line of it.

 "But something still stranger was in store for me. Schiller's spirit would say no more, and I called for the spirit of Abraham Lincoln. After several minutes had elapsed, the girl wrote that Abraham Lincoln's spirit was present. I asked whether he knew to what purpose President Johnson had summoned me to Washington. The answer came: 'He wants you to make an important journey for him.' I asked where that journey would take me. Answer: 'He will tell you to-morrow.' I asked further whether I should undertake that journey. Answer: 'Yes, do not fail.' (I may add, by the way, that at the time I had not the slightest anticipation as to what President Johnson's intention with regard to me was; the most plausible supposition I entertained was that he wished to discuss with me the points urged in my letter.)

 "Having disposed of this matter I asked whether the spirit of Lincoln had anything more to say to me. The answer came: 'Yes, you will be senator of the United States.' This struck me as so fanciful that I could hardly suppress a laugh; but I asked further: 'From what state?' Answer: 'From Missouri.' This was more provokingly mysterious still; but there the conversation ceased. Hardly anything could have been more improbable at that time than that I should be a senator of the United States from Missouri. My domicile was in Wisconsin, and I was thinking of returning there. I had never thought of removing from Wisconsin to Missouri, and there was not the slightest prospect of my ever doing so. But—to forestall my narrative—two years later I was surprised by an entirely unsought and unexpected business proposition which took me to St. Louis, and in January, 1869, the legislature of Missouri elected me a senator of the United States. I then remembered the prophecy made to me at the spirit seance in the house of my friend Tiedemann in Philadelphia which, during the intervening years, I had never thought of. I should hardly have trusted my memory with regard to it, had it not been verified by friends who witnessed the occurrence."

 Inquiring on my own part of a friend in Philadelphia, a physician, I ascertained that he knew this Dr. Tiedemann, and, from another who knew him well, I found out that he was a man of intelligence and that the phenomena were entirely private and had no connection with professional mediumship, a fact apparent in the account of Mr. Schurz.

 The following incident, published in the "Journal" of the American Society for Psychical Research, Volume VII, p. 129, can be found in the life of Laura Bridgman, the blind, deaf and dumb girl of especial interest for her intelligence as manifested through the tactual sense alone.

 "Miss Paddock and Miss Wight [two teachers in the 'Perkins Institute,' each of whom had Laura as a special pupil] were greatly attached to each other, and spent much of their leisure time together. They often noticed, as they sat talking of an afternoon, with Laura near by knitting at her purses or pretty lace edging, that she would suddenly lay down her work and begin talking [with her fingers] of the person or topic they had been discussing. The two young women were so much impressed by the frequency with which Laura took up the subject of their conversation when no possible clue of it had been given to her by word or act, that both believed the girl often knew what they were talking about, and the girls often said to each other, what they would have been abashed to say to older and wiser people, that Laura always knew what they were thinking of, if their thoughts were strongly concentrated upon an idea or a person."

 There was an excellent opportunity here to investigate either hyperaesthesia of touch or telepathy, but no scientific spirit existed and a transcendent opportunity was lost.

 Horace Bushnell in 1858 published a book called "Nature and the Supernatural," in which he mentions a number of incidents that show he anticipated psychic research. He was a reforming theologian, founder of the "moral theory" of the atonement, and perhaps the forerunner of all progressive theology in this country. Some of the incidents which he narrates would not stand the test of science, but one of them so accords with what has been proved by later investigation that it deserves quotation. He reports from an apparently reliable source the fact of an interesting coincidental dream, which was told by him by the dreamer, Captain Yonnt.

 "About six or seven years previous, in a mid-winter's night, he had a dream in which he saw what appeared to be a company of emigrants, arrested by the snows of the mountains, and perishing rapidly by cold and hunger. He noted the very cast of the scenery, marked by a huge perpendicular front of white rock cliff; he saw the men cutting off what appeared to be tree tops, rising out of deep gulfs of snow: he distinguished the very features of the persons and the look of their particular distress. He woke, profoundly impressed with the distinctness and apparent reality of his dream. At length he fell asleep and dreamed exactly the same dream again. In the morning he could not expel it from his mind. Falling in shortly with an old hunter comrade he told him the story and was only the more deeply impressed by his recognizing, without hesitation, the scenery of the dream. This comrade came over the Sierra by the Carson Valley Pass, and declared that a spot in the pass answered exactly to his description. By this the unsophisticated patriarch was decided. He immediately collected a company of men, mules and blankets, and all necessary provisions. The neighbors were laughing in the meantime at his credulity. 'No matter,' said he, 'I am able to do this, and I will, for I verily believe that the fact is according to my dream.' The men were sent into the mountains, one hundred and fifty miles distant, directly to the Carson Valley Pass. And there they found the company in exactly the condition of the dream, and brought in the remnant alive.

 "A gentleman present said, 'You need have no doubt of this; for we in California all know the facts, and the names of the families brought in, who now look upon our venerable friend as a kind of savior.' These names he gave and the place where they reside, and I found afterwards that the California people were ready everywhere to second his testimony."

 Psychic researchers are familiar enough with coincidental dreams and would have no difficulty now in accepting this one. 

Louisa M. Alcott tells a story, corroborated by the physician, of an experience relating to the death of her sister.

 "A few moments after the last breath came, as mother and I sat watching the shadow fall on the dear little face, I saw a light mist rising from the body, and float up and vanish in the air. Mother's eyes followed mine, and when I said, 'What did you see?' she described the same light mist. Dr. G. said it was life departing visibly."

 The character of the experience as shared, removes it from easy explanation as an ordinary hallucination; and the character of the informant makes it the more impressive.

 Mark Twain had an experience which he called "mental telegraphy "; he offered it to the publisher of a well-known magazine, but it was rejected as one of his jokes. He kept it some years; and, after psychic research had become respectable and coincidences of the kind had become credible, the magazine published it. He also had a premonitory dream, which his biographer, Mr. Albert Bigelow Paine, records. Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) was a steersman at the time on one of the Mississippi steamers.

 "One, night, when the Pennsylvania lay in St. Louis, he slept at his sister's house and had this vivid dream:

 "'He saw Henry [his brother] a corpse, lying in a metallic burial case in the sitting room, supported on two chairs. On his breast lay a bouquet of flowers, white, with a single crimson bloom in the center.'

 "When he awoke, it was morning, but the dream was so vivid that he believed it real. Perhaps something of the old hypnotic condition was upon him, but he rose and dressed, thinking he would go in and look at his dead brother. Instead he went out on the street in the early morning and had walked to the middle of the block before it suddenly flashed upon him that it was only a dream. He bounded back, rushed to the sitting room and felt a great trembling revulsion of joy when he found it really empty. He told Pamela [his sister] the dream, then put it out of his mind as quickly as he could. The Pennsylvania sailed from St. Louis as usual and made a safe trip to New Orleans. [Henry and Samuel both being employees on the steamer.] 

"It is doubtful if he remembered his recent disturbing dream, though some foreboding would seem to have hung over him the night before the Pennsylvania sailed on the return trip.... On this particular night the elder, Samuel, spoke of disaster on the river. Finally he said:

 "'In case of accident, whatever you do, don't lose your head—the passengers will do, that. Rush for the hurricane deck and to the life boat, and obey the mate's orders. When the boat is launched, help the women and children into it. Don't get in yourself. The river is only a mile wide. You can swim ashore easily enough.'

"It was good manly advice, but it yielded a long harvest of sorrow. Henry was burned on the return trip by the escaping steam from the steamer's engines, four of which blew up, causing an immense loss of life by drowning and scalding. Henry, clear of danger and able to swim ashore, returned to help others and was scalded by breathing steam and died after several days.

 "He, Samuel, saw the body down to the dead room, then the long strain of grief, the days and nights without sleep, the ghastly realization of the end, overcame him.... It was many hours before he awoke; when he did... he dressed and went to where Henry lay. The coffins provided for the dead were of unpainted wood, but the youth and striking face of Henry Clemens had aroused a special interest. The ladies of Memphis had made up a fund of sixty dollars and bought him a metallic case. Samuel, entering, saw his brother lying exactly as he had seen him in his dream, lacking only the bouquet of white flowers with its crimson center—a detail made complete while he stood there, for at the moment an elderly lady came in with a large white bouquet, and in the center of it was a single red rose."

 This is a graphic incident; but the details of the premonition must excite skepticism, which would be supported by the risk of paramnesia, an illusion of memory, especially since his biographer speaks of Mark Twain's liability to strange mistakes of memory, probably connected with the intensity of his imagination. But such as it is, he told his biographer the story as a fact.

 Professor James obtained through Frank R. Stockton a narrativeof some experiences in his sister's house which, though not his own, he could vouch for. His sister was the subject of them. They consisted of apparent footsteps in the house, which, though not assuredly extraordinary, were inexplicable, and were made the subject of critical examination.

 James Otis, the celebrated lawyer, had often expressed the wish that he should meet his death by lightning. While staying in the country, he was standing in the door when he was killed by a sudden stroke of lightning. The coincidence is hardly evidence of a supernormal premonition, but it is reported as a fact.

 An experience of Mr. Chauncey Depew, former United States senator from the State of New York, has at least the suggestion of premonition. The following is the newspaper account of the experience, which Mr. Depew confirmed by a personal letter to Professor Newbold, of the University of Pennsylvania, in which he states that "the story is substantially true as written." It occurred on the eve of the political convention which nominated Theodore Roosevelt for the governorship of New York State. This was in October, 1898.

 "On Saturday afternoon, before the Republican Convention was to meet, Mr. Depew went to the Country Club, at Ardsley-on-the-Hudson, which was his temporary home, and after luncheon he went out upon the piazza, from which a beautiful vista across the Hudson can be obtained.

 "He sat there, lazily intent upon the scenery, which was especially agreeable to a man who had been for a week in the thick of the most exciting business undertakings. By and by the vista seemed to pass away. He saw as vividly as though the scene were real the convention hall in Saratoga. He saw the delegates stroll in. He looked at the presiding officer, whose name he did not know, as he called the convention to order.

 "He heard the temporary chairman's speech, he saw the various details of preliminary organization, and all the work in the convention was as vivid as though he were a part of it at the moment. Then at last he saw Mr. Quigg make a motion for the nomination of candidates and heard the brief comment with which Mr. Quigg accompanied that motion.

"He did not, it is true, know that as a matter of fact Mr. Quigg was to make that motion; nevertheless he saw him do it. He said to himself, 'Your time is come for your speech placing Roosevelt in nomination.' He saw himself rise, address the chair, and heard himself deliver the speech and felt the glow of satisfaction at its reception, which is the highest reward of eloquence.

 "After that, the convention hall, the voices of the orators, the faces of the delegates faded away as in a dream, and Mr. Depew again saw the vista of the Hudson and the distant mountains across the stream. He got up, went to his room and wrote out with his own hand the speech, exactly as he afterward in fact delivered it.

 "The address which the delegates heard was the address which by that singular preoccupancy of the mind, Mr. Depew composed on that dreamy Saturday afternoon. Afterward, at the convention, he was amazed to discover that the picture which he saw with his mind's eye was perfectly reproduced to his physical eye and ear in the convention, even to the words of the chairman and the manner and motion of Mr. Quigg."

 We should like to have had the details of the "vision" before it was fulfilled at Saratoga. Though we cannot obtain these, the experience has the character of Mr. Depew to give it interest.

 Ernest Thompson-Seton, the traveler, tells some experiences in connection with prediction and clairvoyance among the Indians. There was an especially reliable old guide whom he asked to accompany him on an important trip. The old Indian went, taking with him "a new shirt and a pair of pants"—this was the outfit of a corpse; and the Indian explained that he was to die, "when the sun rose at that island" (a week ahead), before the officer in charge came back. A week after they had started he put on the new clothes and said, "To-day I die when the sun is over that island." The author adds: "He went out looking at the sun from time to time, placidly smoking. When the sun got to the right place he came in, lay down by the fire and in a few minutes was dead."

 Auto-suggestion is probable in this case; but we do not know what auto­suggestion is! It may be as supernormal as any materialization would be. The main point is, that the incident is vouched for by a reliable and disinterested reporter.

 Dwight L. Moody, the evangelist, had an experience which apparently forecast some danger to him, a few days before the arrest of a lunatic, who felt himself commissioned to assassinate Mr. Moody and had tried for days to get an opportunity to stab him. The incident is not striking, and would have no standing alone in a scientific court; but it is one of a large number with good credentials.

 Sir Henry Stanley, the African explorer, narrates a personal experience of the coincidental type. While a private in the Confederate Army, he was captured at Shiloh and sent to Camp Douglas near Chicago. His biographer writes the account as he told it:

 "On the next day (April 16, 1862), after the morning duties had been performed, the rations divided, the cooks had departed contented, and the quarters had been swept, I proceeded to my nest and reclined alongside of my friend Wilkes in a posture that gave me command of one half of the building. I made some remarks to him upon the card-playing groups opposite, when suddenly I felt a gentle stroke on the back of my neck, and in an instant I was unconscious. The next moment I had a vivid view of the village of Tremeirchion and the glassy slopes of the hills of Hirradog, and I seemed to be hovering over the rook woods of Brynbella. I glided to the bed chamber of my Aunt Mary. My aunt was in bed and seemed sick unto death. I took a position by the side of the bed, and saw myself, with head bent down, listening to her parting words, which sounded regretful, as though conscience smote her for not having been so kind as she might have been, or had wished to be. I heard the boy say, 'I believe you, Aunt. It is neither your fault nor mine. You were good and kind to me, and I knew you wished to be kinder; but things were so ordered that you had to be what you were. I also dearly wished to love you, but I was afraid to speak of it, lest you would check me or say something that would offend me. I feel our parting was in this spirit. There is no need of regrets. You have done your duty to me, and you had children of your own, who required all your care. What has happened to me since, was decreed should happen. Farewell.'

"I put forth my hand and felt the clasp of the long thin hands of the sore­sick woman. I heard a murmur of farewell, and immediately I woke.

 "It appeared to me that I had but closed my eyes. I was still in the same reclining attitude, the groups opposite me were still engaged in their card games, Wilkes was in the same position Nothing had changed. I asked, 'What has happened?'

 "'What could happen?' said he. 'What makes you ask? It is but a moment ago you were speaking to me.'

 "' Oh, I thought I had been asleep a long time.'

 "On the next day, the 17th of April, 1862, my Aunt Mary died at Fynnon Beuno [in Wales]!"

 General John C. Fremont, who was the first candidate for the Presidency of the newly formed Republican party, and who was also a United States senator, and an explorer of some ability, once came near starving on the western plains. In his biography by his daughter, the following incident is told. It is abbreviated here. 

After the escape from danger, he wrote in his diary an account of the facts and felt relief at the thought that his wife would be glad to know of his safety. In Washington, D. C., his wife had suddenly been seized with foreboding and despondency about him and could not sleep, eat, nor go into company on account of her fears. She had the feeling that he was starving. This weight of fear, however, was lifted as suddenly as it had come. Her sister Susie and others had returned from a wedding and they sat down by the fire. Mrs. Fremont went out to get some wood; and, as she knelt to pick up a stick, she felt an invisible hand on her shoulder and heard the laughing voice of her husband whisper her name, "Jessie." There was no sound. When she came back to the others her sister Susie uttered a scream and fell on the rug. Her cousin asked Mrs. Fremont what she had seen, and she explained that she had seen nothing but had heard her husband tell her to keep still until he could scare Susie. Peace of mind came to the wife instantly. When General Fremont returned home it was found that the wife's fears coincided with the time he was starving in the desert and his diary showed that at the very time he was writing the journal note of his escape and happiness his wife had her experience and lost her anxiety.