|
Abstracts of Selected Case Studies
|
from Phantasms of the Living Cases cited below: Unnumbered, 21, 26, 27, 28, 29, 38, 56, 165, 170, 172, 173, 174, 175, 177, 180, 182, 184, 195, 197, 199, 201, 202, 214, 231, 235, 236, 237, 238, 240, 249, 258, 298, 300, 306, 350, 355, 500, 552, 579, 588, 607, 695, 697, 702.
Thirty-one of the following cases from Gurney, Podmore and Myers's two-volume
Phantasms of the Living
(London: Trübner, 1886) are cited by Peirce in his
"Criticism on Phantasms of the Living"
(selection 16); the remaining fourteen are mentioned or discussed by
Phantasm's
principal author Edmund Gurney in "Remarks on Professor Peirce's Paper" (selection 17), in "Mr. Peirce's Rejoinder" (selection 18), and in Gurney's "Remarks on Mr. Peirce's Rejoinder" (selection 19).
Gurney and his associates published 702 case studies in
Phantasms,along with dozens of unnumbered incidents of experiential and spontaneous telepathy. Peirce focused on the 31 cases of visual telepathic phantasms which Gurney put forth as well-attested cases; these are identified by asterisk (*) below.
Gurney and his co-authors divided the cases into a series of overlapping classifications according to the nature of the impression:
General Criticism of the Evidence for Spontaneous Telepathy
*
Unnumbered
(Type A). The percipient was a lady preparing to play the piano one day in 1882. As she was about to sit down at the piano, an old school-friend appeared close to her; she subsequently found out that the friend died on that day. There is no information on the hour of either the vision or the death, and the percipient did not indicate whether she had reason to be thinking about agent of the vision. Gurney felt restrained "from quoting the account in a form which could have any evidential value, by her feeling that such publication would be wrong" (I:130n); yet he considers it one of his 31 well-attested cases of coincidental spontaneous telepathy (II:17n2).
Specimens of the Various Types of Spontaneous Telepathy
Case 21
(Type B). A father, at home while his wife and youngest child were at the seaside, sensed that the 13-month-old child "had fallen
out of the bed
, upon chairs, and then rolled down upon the floor. This was about 11 a.m., and I at once wrote to my wife . . ." (I:196). A subsequent visit to the seaside by the father confirmed that the child "had tumbled out of bed upon the chairs placed at the side, and then found his way upon the floor, without being hurt" (I:197). The accident coincided with the date and time of the father's mental picture of the event. The percipient, a scientific draftsman, was subject to many such experiences (see also cases 38, 56, and 184).
*
Case 26
(Type E). "That the percipient in the next example was completely awake is, I think, nearly certain; but as he was in bed, the account may serve as a transition to the cases where the matter admits of no doubt" (I:206). An elderly farmer perceived the late-night apparition of a cousin (and former employee) in his townhouse bedroom. The image appeared at 2 a.m., a time when the farmer routinely awakened. The next day, he confided the incident to three others; several days later, he learned that his cousin had died at the hour of the apparition. He was not subject to any prior hallucination, and had not spoken to his cousin in twenty years.
*
Case 27
(Type C). The percipient felt the unseen presence of another person in his dressing room one morning. He looked around and saw no one, but the face of an old friend appeared distinctly in his mind's eye. He immediately mentioned the sensation and accompanying vision to his wife, who was in another room at the time. The next morning he was notified that the subject of his vision had died the previous day, at the same time as the vision. "It is right to add that we had heard some two months previously that X. was suffering from cancer, but still we were in no immediate apprehension of his death" (I:209).
*
Case 28
(Type A). The percipient's close business associate complained of indigestion on a Monday, and missed work to see a physician on the following Saturday. That evening, the percipient was resting on a sofa after complaining to his wife of a headache and warm discomfort. He suddenly saw his associate standing before him in business clothes. The image faded without speaking, but left the percipient with the absolute certainty that his associate was dead. He immediately related the incident to his wife; she was reading in the sunny side of the same room, but had noticed nothing in the shaded area where her husband was seated. The next day, news that the business associate had died the previous evening (close to the moment of the vision) was conveyed by the dead man's brother. As he arrived with the tidings, the brother felt an unaccountable certainty that the percipient already knew of the death. Neither man believed in or had previously experienced extrasensory perceptions.
*
Case 29
(Type A). The percipient was a gardener passing through his village churchyard on his way home from work. Sometime after 9 p.m., he noticed the figure of an elderly woman of his acquaintance kneeling at the tomb of her husband. She was excessively pale, and regarded him constantly but silently. As the gardener moved around the tomb to see if either the gate or the tomb were open for work, he stumbled and looked down for a moment. The apparition vanished, leaving no indication that the edifice had been disturbed. He described the vision to his wife that night; the next day, news that the woman had passed away earlier the previous evening (in London) reached the village. The percipient had no previous history of hallucination.
Transference of Ideas and of Mental Pictures
Case 38
(Type B). The percipient (the same as in Cases 21, 56 and 184), was a scientific draftsman. ". . . about eight in the evening, I was returning to my home . . . on a tramcar, when it flashed into my mind that my assistant, Herr Schell, a Dutchman, who knew but little English (who was coming to see me that evening), would ask me what the English phrase, 'to wit,' meant in Dutch. So vivid was the impression that I mentioned it to my wife on arriving at my house, and I went so far as to scribble it down on the edge of a newspaper which I was reading. Ten minutes afterwards Schell arrived, and almost his first words were the inquiry, 'Wat is het Hollandsch voor
"to wit"
?'" (I:235). The newspaper notation was not visible when Schell arrived. "He told me that he had resolved to ask me just before leaving his house . . . the time of his resolution corresponded (as far as we could reckon) with that of my impression" (I:235). The percipient was subject to many such coincidences.
Case 56
(Type B). The percipient is the same as in cases 21, 38, and 184. At mid-morning the percipient had a mind's eye image of an egg basket containing five eggs--four elongated and yellowish, one more round and white but soiled. At noon he discovered that these eggs had been sent over for lunch by his mother-in-law about a half-hour earlier; in pursuing the matter, he learned that his mother-in-law had thought of sending the basket of eggs at 10 o'clock, the time of the mental image. Gurney notes that, as a scientific draftsman, the percipient was a trained observer by habit; but he also notes that the percipient's wife had "almost forgotten" the incident; in her words, "All I can say is that my husband looked at some eggs and made the remark that he had seen them before. I know he told me my mother had sent them" (I:256).
Case 165
(Types A and E). A merchant captain recalled making a pact with a woman of close acquaintance "that whichever of us first died should appear after death to the other" (I:419). The pact was made in 1868; the following June, the man was swept overboard with six other crewmen during a gale in the Indian Ocean. He had time to realize the magnitude of his predicament, but was able to grab a loose line and pull himself back aboard the merchant vessel; the other crewmen were lost. A few months later, he received a letter from his friend indicating that during the night of the near-death experience, she had awakened to see him standing in her room, moving toward her. She later confirmed the story in person, but did not provide a description of clothing. The account was written in 1884; the agent believed the event and vision were simultaneous, but he could no longer recall the details of his friend's story; the percipient, a Catholic, refused to confirm the story on religious grounds.
*
Case 170
(Types A and E). The percipient, a carpenter's wife, awoke one night in 1874 to the sound of the work call for railroad men lodged nearby. She looked up to learn the time, and saw (by moonlight) an apparent image of her mother seated in a corner of the bedroom. The image persisted at a second glance; at the third glance, it was gone. The next day she checked for word of her mother's death, but heard nothing. A month later she learned that her favorite maternal aunt, who closely resembled her mother, had died on the night (and near the hour) of the vision. Gurney notes that the case is close to a Type A subcategory of "unrecognized phantasms" (I:429).
*
Case 172
(Types A and E). One Sunday evening in 1883, the percipient, an Edinburgh housekeeper, had retired to her room. She was "lying half-asleep" (I:430), but remembers that her eyes were open (though turned to the wall by her bed). The residents were all away in the country, but around 9 p.m. she felt the presence of another and turned to see an image of her close friend, a woman who had been seriously ill for some time. The next evening she received word from Aberdeen that her friend had passed away the previous evening, at the exact time of the vision. The percipient was not subject to phantasms of any kind.
*
Case 173
(Types A and E). The percipient was a stewardess on a British steamer in February 1878. She awoke one morning to see the head of the ship's captain "passing slowly along her berth and looking at her. This was a familiar gesture on his part, as he used to . . . ask her to sit on a seat outside his cabin, and used to look through his window in this way when he thought she was sitting there" (I:431). She soon learned from crew members that the captain had been killed in an accident a short time prior to her vision that morning. The percipient admitted to one other hallucination, apparently unrelated to this incident.
*
Case 174
(Types A and E). During the spring of 1884, the percipient, a woman, was ill with rheumatism and nervous prostration. One evening, "lying awake alone, with a night-light burning," she saw the figure of a retired army major pass across the lower end of her room. The officer was an acquaintance who had returned in bad health from duty in the Egyptian campaigns of 1883. The next morning she was informed that the major had died the previous evening at the time of her vision. She had known for some time that his condition was terminal, and she had recently received news that his condition was critical; but she was not close to him, and he was not on her mind at the time of his death. Gurney concedes that this knowledge "is, of course, an element of weakness" (I:433).
*
Case 175
(Types A and E). Early one morning in 1883, the percipient had "a dream which merged into a waking hallucination" (I:433) of a friend, clothed and apparently alive, lying above the bedcovers but between the percipient and his wife. There was both early morning light and a low gas burner in the room, allowing the percipient to check his watch and determine the time. He mentioned the incident to others that day, and received a note the following day that his friend had died about six hours after the vision. The deceased had had asthma for years, but the percipient had no sense that a fatal attack was near. The percipient had had sleeping apparitions on a number of occasions, but previously none of the borderland type.
Case 177
(Types A and E). The percipient was thirteen at the time of the incident. At dawn on 3 August 1867, she was awakened by the appearance of her brother standing by her bed. At the time he was an officer in the 16th Lancers and stationed in Madras, India. The figure bent down and kissed her, and then made signs for her to be silent as he left the room. During the incident, she also detected a particular scent that her brother was known to favor. She told members of her family and her maid, but was not believed. Subsequently, news arrived that the brother had died of jungle fever after 10 p.m. on 2 August. Gurney notes that the time difference was nine or ten hours. The maid was contacted for verification, but she recalled only a vague memory of the event. The percipient's childhood diary was lost as well. Gurney notes that young percipients are less likely to correctly distinguish waking from sleeping incidents.
Case 180
(Types A and E). A case involving multiple sensations, for the percipient woke to feel the grip of a cold hand on his hand, and saw as well the image of his aunt rushing out of the room. The door was chained through the night, and no one could enter. The hallucination occurred in mid-July 1880; a month earlier, he had seen his aunt off for a trip to America. Two weeks after the incident, the percipient received word that his aunt had fallen ill in Canada and died about sixteen hours after the hallucination. The percipient was a sheriff's officer and not prone to phantasms.
*
Case 182
(Types A and E). A case involving the higher senses of sight and hearing. A young lady enroute by steamer from England to Capetown was awakened by sounds of someone in her private cabin; by the light burning in her cabin, she then saw the image of another girl, an acquaintance from home whom she knew to be consumptive. The percipient had no idea that her friend was seriously ill, and had not been thinking of her at all prior to the event. She identified four fellow travelers who heard her account prior to landing (10 May 1883), and stated that she wrote to her father immediately upon arrival in Capetown with an account of the incident. She subsequently received word from her father that her friend had died on 2 May. The two postings crossed at sea. Her first letter home (apparently written soon after 10 May) was unlocated during Gurney's 1885 investigation of the case, but her father supplied a subsequent letter of 5 June 1883 giving time as well as date of the apparition. Gurney was able to contact two of the individuals who heard the tale aboard ship, but neither recalled any knowledge of the event. Peirce mistakes the 5 June letter for the missing first letter, and notes that she could have received her father's notification by that date; however, his general point--the lack of corroborating evidence for the phantasm prior to knowledge of the death--is sound.
*
Case 184
(Types A and E). The percipient, the scientific draftsman of cases 21, 38, and 56, was working in Paris at the close of 1880. Shortly after the outbreak of a smallpox epidemic, he sent three of his children home to his wife's mother in England. One morning he awoke to the sound of his absent 5-year-old's voice and a vision of his face. The phenomenon repeated later in the day; even though the latest letters from England indicated excellent health, the percipient expressed apprehension to his wife. The family subsequently received word that the child had taken ill suddenly and died at the time of the first apparition. The wife only corroborates her husband's sense of apprehension, noting: "He said afterwards that he had seen a vision" (I:445).
The Development of Telepathic Hallucinations
*
Case 195
(Type A). An example of a gradually developing hallucination. The percipient, a young girl, was deeply devoted to her grandmother and was aware of her grandmother's serious illness when she left to visit friends in March 1877. While staying with these friends, she went to bed when, while still awake, she felt a presence which soon resolved into an image of her grandmother leaning on her mother's arm. The pair seemed to move around the room before disappearing. The girl subsequently learned that her grandmother had died around the time of the vision. The coincidence of phantasm and death is corroborated only through the memory of others; there is only implicit corroboration that the percipient mentioned the incident to others prior to learning of her grandmother's death. The percipient suggests that the vision might have been the product of a strong imagination, but that at the time it felt like a real presence.
*
Case 197
(Type A). An example of voice developing from an image. The percipient was a woman well known as a writer and traveler. In 1873 she had befriended "Mountain Jim," a part-Indian Colorado man, during a trip to the Rockies. Upon parting, he swore to appear to her at the time of his death. Over the next year she heard that he had returned to a violent life, had been wounded, and was plotting revenge; in September 1874, while at Interlaken, Switzerland, she was writing to her sister at 6 a.m. when the American appeared before her and, after a short time, announced that he had fulfilled his promise. Later that day she recorded the event with a companion, and eventually learned of her friend's death. She could not consult her diaries during Gurney's investigation, but by her own calculations of time and longitude, she concluded that the death and the phantasm were coincident. Gurney subsequently ascertained (from official sources) that the time of death was midafternoon on 7 May--or 10 p.m. in Switzerland, either eight hours before the vision or sixteen hours after it, assuming that the uncertain date of the apparition was either 7 or 8 May. In his "Remarks on Professor Peirce's Paper" (selection 17), Gurney prints the original letter to the percipient's sister (actually written several days after the vision), which was not available at the time
Phantasms
was published; the letter improves the evidence, but also places the vision outside the 12-hour limit.
*
Case 199
(Type A). Here sound, and then a visual image, develop over an interval of time. One Saturday morning in 1873, the percipient was fully awakened at 5 a.m. by a noise outside his room. He opened the door, but found no one. Just as he returned to bed, he saw the image of a lady friend move across the room. He awakened his wife and described the entire incident. The following week, he called on the subject of his vision and found that she had thrown herself from a window and died instantly at the time of the percipient's hallucination. Gurney's subsequent correction (I:lxxx) notes that the death actually took place on the intervening Wednesday.
*
Case 201
(Type A). Gurney notes that this case "exemplifies the development of a feeling of presence into distinct hallucination" (I:542). The wife of an Army officer stationed in Gibraltar was reading in her quarters one day in March 1875. She felt the presence of a visitor, and looked up to see a man standing before her. She did not recognize the face, but recognized the clothes as a suit which her husband had given to a discharged solider who had served in her previous household in Inverness. The image disappeared; there remained only a servant holding a door as if he had just admitted a visitor. He denied this, but soon resigned because he felt that the household was haunted. The soldier in the vision, who had been near death when he met the lady in Inverness, was placed in service shortly after his recovery, but proved unsatisfactory and was discharged before the family left for duty in Gibraltar. She mentioned the incident to her husband that day; soon word arrived from his previous regiment that the former servant had died in hospital. Further investigation revealed that he had died of a brain tumor, raving about the percipient, on 9 March. Gurney does not provide any indication that the events were coincident, as required by his "twelve hour" rule. The percipient had been in ill-health for some years, but claimed that she was stronger than she ever was in her life at the time of the hallucination.
*
Case 202
(Type A). An elaborately developing case, with horse, carriage, and companion in addition to the agent herself. In August 1881, the percipient had been sent to a cottage by her doctor for complete rest. A good friend had gone to the seaside during the same period, but had promised to visit the cottage in September. About three weeks after this promise, the percipient was riding out in a carriage when she saw her friend with one of her younger children in a passing carriage. She did not see the full face, but recognized her friend's sealskin jacket--clearly out of season for August. The riders did not acknowledge her greeting, and rode on. The percipient returned home, but found that no visitors had arrived; several days later, she read of the death of her friend after a sudden illness, about two hours after the carriage encounter. The percipient was nearsighted but wore corrective lenses. There is no corroborating evidence to prove that the incident is anything more than a case of mistaken identity, but Gurney maintains that the case illustrates how "telepathic percepts, in their sensory character, are really projections from within"; that is, the agent's telepathic contact provides the stimulus, but the phantasm is constructed "from material which the percipient's mind supplies" (I:546).
*
Case 214
(Type A). Gurney notes that, in contrast to Case 202, there are cases "where the dress or aspect includes features which equally clearly could
not
be supplied by the percipient's mind," but rather "must be an element that the
impressing
mind has contributed, and not the
impressed
" (I:554-555). The agent, a wife and mother, fell suddenly ill and died just before Christmas 1874. Knowing that her favorite aunt, a widow living 4 or 5 miles distant, would arrive for a seasonal visit shortly after the new year, the husband sent a memorial note to the aunt to minimize the shock. The aunt never arrived for the holidays, and did not correspond; but she arrived unexpectedly the following spring, having just recovered from severe illness brought on by the shock of the memorial note, which had followed by a few days a phantasm of her niece. On the night of her niece's death and within ten minutes of the time of death, the aunt was in her own kitchen when her niece apparently entered with arms open in greeting, only to disappear when the aunt approached. The aunt noted that the niece was wearing bedclothes and had her hair down in an uncharacteristic way; the husband realized that this was the appearance of his wife during her last brief illness, of which the aunt knew nothing at the time. She thought little of the event until the note arrived, which sent her into prolonged illness. There was no first-hand testimony--the aunt had died prior to Gurney's investigation of the case. (See also Case 588).
Further Visual Cases Occurring to a Single Percipient
*
Case 231
(Type A). The percipient was a Natal militia officer engaged in the Zulu campaigns. The agent, a retired officer of the Coldstream Guards, also commanded a Natal volunteer unit and was a good friend of the percipient, but severe illness forced him out of action and into hospital after the spring 1879 action at Gingihlovo. On the evening of 17 April, the percipient left the officer's mess at Gingihlovo at tattoo and "saw standing the man who, two days ago, I had been told was dying on the other side of the Tugela" (II:48). Upon returning to his command at Ft. Pearson, he learned by telegram that his friend was dying and had never left the hospital; moreover, he had been asking for the percipient constantly. At hospital, the percipient found that his friend had died at the hour of the mess tent vision. There is a discrepancy between the narrative and the actual date of death (19 April 1879); the narrative appeared in the press, and Gurney was never able to track down the percipient.
Case 235
(Type A). A colonel in the Duke of Cornwall's regiment remembered an incident occurring in late September 1864, when he was still a young subaltern in the Carabineers stationed at Shorncliffe Camp. He thought he saw his older brother (then serving with the Royal Engineers in India) walking toward him in the camp, but before he could recover from the shock, the image disappeared. He subsequently discovered that his brother had died of fever at Nagpore, East Indies, at about the time of the incident. He made no notes, and a fellow officer he told of the incident at the time could not remember it when questioned years later. Gurney calculates that the time was coincident with the vision, and found that the date of death was a Sunday--the only date indicator which the percipient could recall in 1885.
*
Case 236
(Type A). A young woman in service as a governess was carrying a tray of glasses out of the dining room when she saw the dark figure of a man with outstretched arms in the doorway; he wore a long dark ulster, similar to one she had last seen her brother wearing. The figure seemed to be her brother, but had disappeared by the time she looked back. At supper, she described the incident to a friend who subsequently corroborated the story; some weeks later, the percipient received notice from her brother's ship captain that he had drowned at sea south of Tristan Da Cunha (very close to the Greenwich meridian) on 12 July 1880--within a few minutes of the vision. Gurney discounts strange sounds--including the constant ticking of a clock, which began when the percipient entered service in June 1880 and continued until the moment of the death notification.
*
Case 237
(Type A). The percipient, a young woman in service, recalled a childhood event from late October 1874. As she sat reading one evening with her mother, she saw a beloved school-friend standing near the doorway. As she was about top remark her surprise at the visit, the image vanished she immediately described the incident to her mother, who was seated with her back to the door. A day or two later, the percipient received word that the other girl had died on the same evening and near the same hour as the apparition. The event was corroborated in writing by her mother; the percipient has had no other hallucinations.
*
Case 238
(Type A). David Duck, a farm-laborer, was run over and killed by his horse cart on the morning of 31 March 1874. The farmer sent a woman to tell the wife, who lived several miles distant. The messenger found that Mrs Duck was out gathering firewood with a neighbor's child. The child soon appeared, saying that Mrs. Duck was in panic from seeing her husband's image appear and disappear silently in the forest. Mrs. Duck herself soon arrived home; when told that she had a visitor from the farm, she proclaimed that she knew her husband had died because she had seen his ghost. The vision apparently coincided with time of death. Mrs. Duck died before giving a written account, but the messenger provided a signed account for Gurney in 1886.
*
Case 240
(Type A fragmentary). The percipient was a married woman with children. "In September 1878 I . . . distinctly saw the face of an old friend, Mr. James Stephenson, who I afterwards heard died that day in Eversley, five miles off. I saw it first about half-past 10 in the morning; the last time it was nearly six o'clock. I knew him to be ill" (II:59). Time of death was not established, but the husband verified that the vision preceded news of death. A tea-time visitor vaguely recalled the incident for Gurney's 1885 inquiry.
*
Case 249
(Type A). The percipient lived on a lane within the Friends' Meeting House premises in Leeds. The houses in his terrace were set back behind a high wall; only the top of the head or the hat of a visitor was visible over the fence. At 4 p.m. on Christmas day 1884, the percipient saw a visitor walking up the yard on the far side of the wall. He made a tentative identification from the hat and hairline "But to see him right, I thought he would think me rude to be standing close to the window and watching him turn the corner, so I walked backwards a couple of paces, expecting to see him pass close to the terrace" (II:71). But the visitor vanished; that evening, the caretaker notified the percipient that the apparent visitor had died that day at the time of the incident at the fence. Gurney notes: "Mr. Carr's house stands in an enclosure which is divided from the street by open railings; and nobody would be walking along the line which the figure appeared to be taking, unless he were coming to the small row of houses of which Mr. Carr's is the first--in which case his whole figure would be visible in a very few seconds after the upper part of it came into view. To disappear as it did, the figure would have had to retire by the way that it came,
but closer to the wall
" (II:71).
Case 258
(Types B and A). A mining engineer related several cases for Gurney, who recorded them all under this case number. The percipient of the first case (July 1869) was a woman in Boston who suddenly dropped a dish and exclaimed that the engineer, long-time friend to the woman and her husband, was dead. The couple contacted his brother within the month and determined that he had arrived in California from a cross country journey and was well. Two years later, the engineer visited the couple and was told of the incident; he related that at about that time, he was marooned in the great Humboldt desert of Nevada when his horse ran off. He chased the horse from 10 a.m. until noon, for it carried all his water. He succumbed to the heat of the alkali desert, and lost consciousness. The engineer was saved by a chance traveler; the type B non-sensory impression by the percipient apparently occurred at the time the engineer lost consciousness. There is no record of date or time, and the percipient and her husband died prior to Gurney's investigation. The engineer related three other type-A incidents for which he again was the agent. He appeared to a woman in Boston in 1870, three friends (including two doctors) in New York, and to another woman (on numerous occasions) in San Francisco in 1883. Gurney admits that the last woman was predisposed to hallucination; there is no corroboration for these cases.
Tactile Cases and Cases Affecting More Than One of the Percipient's Senses
*
Case 298
(Type A). A case of sight and sound. The percipient was a widow who had recently turned down a suitor, who had told her that if she would not marry him he would take employment in India. On the evening of 30 March 1878, she was scrubbing a floor near an open window when she heard her name called twice; on looking out, she saw a face resembling that of her recent suitor. She confided the incident to her sister and to her sister's employer, who corroborated the story in writing. By June, the percipient told her friends that the agent of the vision had died in Madras that very day; Gurney was unable to confirm a death record from the employer or official Indian sources. The percipient had had an auditory hallucination on one other occasion at which she heard herself called by her husband, who, as it turned out, had died at a distance two days earlier.
*
Case 300
(Type A) A merchant sailor in the coastal trade had shipped with his father since youth. After his father's retirement, he was on watch in a ship off the Humber River when his father came to him repeatedly over a period of several hours to remind him to mind the helm. His father spoke through this image, but the young sailor was shaken by it and did not respond; he had another crewmate take finish his watch; none of the other crewmen saw or heard the apparition. The sailor later learned that his father had died at home during that watch. Gurney concedes that the percipient was uneducated and that the duration of the apparition (several hours) suggests either exaggeration or insanity.
Case 306
(Types A and F). The percipient, either student or staff in a large public school, left to marry the former headmaster. They moved away and the wife, at the insistence of her new husband, severed all communication with her school friends. Six months after the marriage, the percipient woke up from a dream in which she was back with other girls in her school rooms; in the final vision, she took the hand of one of her schoolmates and said, "Let us be friends." She related the dream to her husband. Three months later she visited her mother, who had received a letter from that same schoolmate asking whether the percipient was alive or dead. The husband interviewed the letter writer, and discovered that her roommate was not only the subject of his wife's dream, but that the roommate had had a reciprocal version of the same dream, in which the roommate, as co-percipient, had heard the wife's words ("Let us be friends"). Gurney notes that the wife, whose condition was more abnormal than those who remained in school, was likely the originating percipient.
*
Case 350
(Types A and G). Two servants and the cook of the Lindale Parsonage simultaneously experienced the apparition of a face on Friday evening 24 March 1882. The three women saw a face move across the kitchen window and turn about; it was disembodied. One maid and the cook immediately recognized it as the face of Mrs. John Robinson; the third recognized the face some months later when shown a photograph. All three knew that Mrs. Robinson had been an invalid for years, and had been in hospital for some months. The parsonage dog howled at the same time, as it did when a death in the village occurred. The mistress was told of the event; the next day, Mrs. Robinson died between 8 and 9 in the morning. The face had looked pleadingly and reproachfully at the cook; two years later, the cook became the second Mrs. Robinson. During the period of the vision, several young men had periodically annoyed the staff by making noises at the kitchen window.
*
Case 355
(Types A and G). A ship captain's story of the 1850's, passed second-hand to Gurney but verified by the Captain in 1884. Captain Ayre was staying with a friend named Hunt at a small farmhouse near Goole. Upon retiring, both men heard a noise at the side of the house, but only Captain Ayre saw the figure of a man. He described the man to Hunt, who was positive that the description matched that of his own father (Captain Ayre had never seen the man). "After this the men went to bed, and both now heard a noise as if the end of the bedstead had been wrenched, which continued until about midnight, when Hunt's brother arrived on horseback from Gilberdyke with news of their father's death, which occurred about three hours earlier that evening. The noises then ceased" (II:256).
Supplement: Borderland Cases
Case 500
(Types A and E). The percipient was a lady late returned from an evening concert. In the early hours of 17 or 18 December 1872 she retired to bed, but before sleeping saw her husband enter the room and rush around three sides of the bed to her side; the image then vanished. He had been away in Australia for some time. On 30 December she received word that her husband, a long-time invalid, was seriously ill; she subsequently heard that he had died on the 18th at 6:30 a.m. Greenwich time, a fact which would place the death beyond the 12-hour limit if the vision occurred in the early morning hours of the 17th.
Supplement: Visual Cases
Case 552
(Type A). The percipient was a woman whose intimate friend had died shortly after traveling to Australia, although knowledge of the death was not known at the time of the vision. "The gas was full on at the time; there was no light about the figure; he was as natural as in life, but as I came near him vanished. I was going down a corridor, and the vision was certainly `external and palpable.' I should think I saw him for half a minute quite, and expected him to come forward and speak" (II:511). She confided in no one prior to hearing of the death, which was six weeks later, and offered no proof of coincidence between the phantasm and the date of death.
Case 579
(Type A). A second-hand case related by the anti-spiritualist John Maskelyne. His mother-in-law was the percipient; the incident is undated. "Late one evening, whilst sitting alone busily occupied with her needle, a strange sensation came over her, and upon looking up she distinctly saw her aged mother standing at the end of the room. She rubbed her weary eyes and looked again, but the spectre had vanished. She concluded it was imagination, and retired to rest, thinking nothing more of the vision, until the next day brought the news that her mother, at about the same time the apparition had appeared, had fallen down in a fit and expired" (II:532-533).
Case 588
(Type A). A second-hand case related by the narrator of Case 214, in which his wife had been the agent at the moment of her death. In this case, her husband related a much earlier incident in which she was the percipient. While conducting business in a bank, she looked out of the window and saw an elderly gentleman who had been her favorite friend as a child. He was wearing a distinctive coat not seen elsewhere in the area. When she left the bank to find him, he had disappeared and could not be located in any of the nearby shops. Nearly a year and a half later, she returned to her parent's home and inquired about her old friend. She was told he had been dead for more than year, and had been confined to bed for nine or ten months prior to his death. Further inquiry led her to believe that he had died at about the same time as her sighting of him. Gurney concedes that "the degree of closeness in the coincidence is uncertain; and the case may possibly have been one of mistaken identity" (II:541).
Case 607
(Type A). A third-hand case previously published in W. H. Harrison's
Spirits Before Our Eyes.
The percipient was the child of a Royal Artillery officer posted to India. She was playing at a garden party for children of artillery officers stationed at Woolwich, England, when she saw the apparition of her father severely wounded and lying under a tree in the garden. No others saw the vision, but the story was related by the army surgeon whose house bordered the garden and who attended the child at the time of her distress. News eventually reached Woolwich that the percipient's father had been killed by gunfire, expiring under a tree. The date and time of death was calculated to approach the time of the vision, but the accuracy could not be corroborated.
Cases Received Too Late for Insertion in Their Proper Places
*
Case 695
(Type A). The mother of a soldier serving in the Sudan was at home with three other household members present in the room. She was seated at table, speaking with one or more of those present, when she suddenly perceived an image of her son in uniform, bending down to kiss her. When she started in surprise, the image disappeared before bestowing the intended kiss. The others present saw her start, but did not see the image. Prior to this time, she was aware that her son was in hospital recovering from enteric fever and awaiting transport home to England. Subsequently, the family learned by official correspondence that the son had died in the field hospital on the same day as the vision, which occurred seven or eight hours after death.
*
Case 697
(Types A and E). A case where the agent's bond was with someone close to the percipient rather than the percipient herself. The percipient was the wife of a businessman whose clerk was ill and away from work for six months in 1884. After returning from hospital, the clerk returned to work on a part-time basis. Neither the businessman nor his wife felt that the clerk was in danger of serious relapse. Around 1 a.m. on the night of 27-28 April 1885, the percipient saw a disembodied face above the bed, looking at her husband. She awakened her husband and was disquieted for some time (during which period the clock struck 1 a.m.). The next day, the husband found out that his clerk had passed away; when he returned home and told his wife that he had some sad news, she interrupted him to say that she knew what it was, for the face she had seen had been the clerk's. The husband later learned that the time of death was around 1 a.m.; in the delirium of his last moments, the clerk had called upon the businessman to take care of his family.
*
Case 702
(Types A and E). The percipient was in Jamaica in June 1882 and suffering from country fever. He dreamed of a time when he saw much of a lady in England who had nursed him through a dangerous illness three years earlier. He moved distinctly into a state of wakefulness and saw the image of her form at the foot of the bed. The image remained some time and spoke his name, allowing the percipient to distinguish clearly between the previous dream and the subsequent vision. The vision faded, and he woke his suite mate, who came into the room and recorded the time and date in his diary. Three weeks later, he received word of the woman's death, and calculated (with his friend) an exact correspondence (to within ten minutes) of the death and the apparition. Gurney was able to verify the death date and time, but was unable to check the Jamaica diary entry. The percipient initially attributed the case to his illness, but Gurney maintains that he has convinced the percipient otherwise by showing him the large class of similar incidents collected in
Phantasms of the Living.
Peirce did not cite numbered cases from the following sections of
Phantasms of the Living:
The Transition From Experimental to Spontaneous Telepathy (Cases 1-16); Emotional and Motor Effects (Cases 67-87); Dreams (Cases 88-145); Further Auditory Cases Occurring to a Single Percipient (Cases 267-291); Supplement: Further Examples of Thought-Transference, Principally in Hypnotic Cases (Cases 358-369); Supplement: Ideal, Emotional, and Motor Cases (Cases 370-401); Supplement: Dreams (Cases 402-484); Supplement: Auditory and Tactile Cases (Cases 613-630); Supplement: Reciprocal Cases (Cases 641-646); Supplement: Collective Cases (Cases 647-684). |